Friday, October,22, , Weekday Homily.

Friday, Lk.12:54-59

A traveling salesman came upon a farmer sitting on the porch of a rundown house. He introduced himself and began his pitch, saying, "I have a fabulous, new book that explains a new way to farm that is ten times better than you're doing now. After a long pause, the farmer said, "Young fella! I know how to farm ten times better than I'm doing. My problem is doing it.'' Paul says he is not able to do the good he wants to do.
Two words came to the fore when reading the texts of today’s mass: action and failure. As followers of Christ we are committed to action but have to cope with our frequent failure to live our faith.

Most of the time we are somewhat aware of the need to live our commitment to God’s Kingdom in whatever we are doing. However, we also experience that we want to do good, but instead do something bad, that we don’t really intend to do. We want to be supportive of relatives who need a good word but instead waste time and energy with shopping for some trivial items. We want to live “green” but instead avoid carpooling. We want to spend quality time with our partners and children but instead decide to focus on our work. The list of such failures is long. At times we may be tempted to give up the ideals that are part of our faith commitment. Why to bother with wanting to do good if we cannot live up to our ideals! Paul shows us how to deal with our frustrations. He does not give up because he is convinced that God will do something good through him. Despite our failures, God will do something good through us. If things go wrong we should not overly worry; we should not loose our ideals and motivation; we should not give up. We should simply ask God for forgiveness for our failures, apologize to others, and then continue being involved in working for his Kingdom.

Failures are common in our commitment to God’s Kingdom, but we believe that God will nevertheless do something good through us, will forgive us when things go wrong, and guide us in our involvement with his Kingdom. Let’s examine What keeps me from better serving God and my neighbor than I am doing now?