21st Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle “C” August 21, 2022

 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time   Cycle “C”        August 21, 2022

 Do you remember the responsorial psalm we just sang?   If you are like me and have a very short attention span, you may have forgotten it.  So let me remind you.   “Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.”   I like that because it is positive.   In this time of difficulties, woes and strife, we can certainly use some Good News.  Would you agree?  So it is good for us to sing, “Go out to all the World and tell the Good News.”

People really, really need to hear good news.  There is so much bad and depressing and sad news that it gets us down, makes us sad, and even irritable and angry.  Have you experienced that?   Of course you have. 

But to go out and tell the Good News you first of all have to hear the Good News.  Have you heard it?   Not just with your ears, but with your mind, and your heart, and even with your guts.  You have to invite in the Good News to come and live and thrive and flourish in you.  That is much more than just passive listening.  You have to open the ears of your heart and actively listen. 

Listening is not easy.  Listening is work.  It means pushing aside distractions, focusing on the Word of God, opening and being receptive to whatever God wants to tell you and not go through the agenda of things you want God to do.  And that sort of listening takes work.

It takes discipline.  Our second reading today, from the Letter to the Hebrews, tells us “do not disdain the discipline of the Lord.”  The Letter to the Hebrews instructs us: “At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” 

You need the discipline of quieting your concerns, your thoughts, your impulses, to rather attend to the Lord and listen.  //  Listen. 

And when you listen, and you hear the Good News of God’s love for you, and for every person on earth, and take that Good News into the core of your being, then you can, as our Psalm Response says, “Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.”  

This is not only, nor even primarily, a verbal telling of the Good News,  Much more powerful and effective is a silent telling of the Good News by living it out.  You need to look and act like you have heard Good News, the Good News of God’s saving Love for us in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. 

You should look and act with such conviction of God’s overwhelming love for you and for every person that other people will wonder what is up with you, what motivates you, what are you on? 

Because the Love of God, when you truly realize it, and genuinely live it, is a high.  The people I have known, who truly love God, radiate that Good News.  They shine.  They are illuminated.

Brothers and Sisters, there is lots and lots of BAD NEWS out there: in the world, in the Church, maybe in your neighborhood and your own family.  You don’t need to go looking for it.   It will come seek you out.  There is no shortage of bad news.

But we have GOOD NEWS.  The Good News of God’s love for each of us, and all of us together, in Jesus Christ.  And we have the privilege, and the responsibility, of proclaiming that Good News by our lives.  “So strengthen your drooping hand and your weak knees.  Make straight paths for your feet.”   Take to heart our Psalm response today:  “Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.”               God bless!