Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. A reading from the holy gospel according to mark glory to you, O Lord. The pharisees approached Jesus and asked, is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?
They were testing him.
He said to them in reply, what did Moses command you?
They replied, Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.
But Jesus told them, because of the hardness of your hearts, he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate in the house. The disciples again questioned Jesus about this.
He said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.
And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.
And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them.
But the disciples rebuked them.
When Jesus saw this, he became indignant and said to them, let the children come to me. Do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
Amen. I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child, will not enter it.
Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them. The gospel of the Lord praise to.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: You, Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Jesus advice that we become childlike in order to receive the fullness of the kingdom of God is perfect advice, because all you need to do is look at how a child behaves and how they react to their parents.
For children recognize that absolutely everything they need to sustain them, to protect them, to allow them to grow, comes from the loving gifts of their parents.
And without the gift of their parents and the love that they receive from them, they can do virtually nothing.
That is how our relationship is with God.
And if you think about your own life, you're going to agree with me. Because everybody I've ever talked to has always said those times where we think everything is about what we do, about how hard we work, about how smart we are, what happens, we fail.
We screw things up. We don't quite live up to the expectations that were set forth.
But every time we recognize that we can't do it on our own, every time we lay our lives in the hands of God, amazing things can happen. Things that are way beyond our individual talents and abilities.
Well, I've got a story to share with you about a priest I know really well, who, like most priests, tends to fall into the primary category of thinking. Everything is about how hard they work and what they do.
And it is easy in that situation to become, at times overwhelmed when demands fall upon you.
Because the thing that can happen is you can have a day where there's absolutely nothing going on. And then in a period of about ten minutes, you get eight different things that people need you for, and you recognize, I can't do it.
And one of those situations happened to this priest.
He was spending his Saturday doing a few things, not really getting too wound up about the weekend yet.
And as mid afternoon approached, he had about a half an hour before the weekend's confessions were scheduled. So he thought, well, I better get at least better looking clothes on and get ready to go over to church.
And as he was doing that, he got a phone call from the hospital, and it was the emergency room at the hospital, saying that one of his parishioners was gravely ill and he was being helicoptered to another hospital to receive treatment. And the son had requested that this priest come and pray with him.
And he's just, oh, my. What am I gotta. He's going nuts.
And he says to the nurse, you know what? I'm gonna do my best to get there, but I've got this going on, that going on the other thing, and there's only so many things I can do. And he just kind of verbally threw up at her with all this stuff.
And he found somebody and said, go into church, and if anybody's here for confession, tell them I'll be here as soon as I can get there.
And he went over to the hospital, and on his drive to the hospital, he put about two cars into the curb because he was driving like he was going to a fire, bursts into the emergency room, goes to this person's room, calms down just a little bit, and prays with them.
And during that prayer, the person who was the patient, the one who was the most gravely ill, looks up with an appreciative look and just says, thank you for being here. I know it's going to be okay. Now he leaves, gets in the car, goes back to his parish, and he's still got five minutes to spare.
And he walks in to. And one of the people that was there for the sacrament looks at him and says, oh, so you're late. And I said, look at your watch. I'm five minutes early because that was me yesterday.
Because I thought it was all about me and how hard I worked and didn't recognize that it was God that's going to be working through all of that, no matter how stressed out I get.
Good lesson for me to be a little more childlike, perhaps. You've had experiences like that as well. We just need to learn from them.
