(c)Mary TV / Anthony Zubac 2019
November 5, 2019
Dear Family of Mary!
"The Heavenly Father gave Himself through a human face, and this face is the face of my Son. You, apostles of my love, you should always carry the face of my Son in your hearts and your thoughts. You should always think of His love and His sacrifice. You should pray to always feel His presence, because, apostles of my love, that is the way for you to help all those who do not know my Son, who have not come to know His love...." (November 2, 2019)
Here is Fr. Leon's homily:
English Homily in Medjugorje
Sunday, November 3, 2019
Fr. Leon Pereira
"Zacchaeus make haste and come down, for I must stay at your house today."
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
There's
something about seeing, which is more than just believing. Seeing is
also taking part. I remember when Pope Benedict came to England and
Scotland. It wasn't the same just to watch him on television. We had to
see him with our own eyes to take part in that. Because everyone had
feared it would be a disaster and it turned into a resounding success,
contrary to all that the fear-mongers had said.
And
all the people who came out, many of them, most of them non-Catholic,
who saw, saw a humble man and they were entranced. You could see even
the Queen was rather entranced by the Pope. So, seeing is more than
believing. Seeing anchors us somehow in an event. It makes us more than
just a feature on the fringe of the crowd.
Zacchaeus
wanted to see Jesus. He could have listened to His teaching and had the
same benefit as anyone else. But longing to see for himself, he climbs a
tree. And swaying in the branches hanging on for a good view, he finds
instead that he himself is seen.
"Zacchaeus come down quickly for I must stay at your house today."
And
with great joy he rushes down to welcome Jesus. What began perhaps as
just curiosity flowers into a joyful home-coming, as Zacchaeus finds
himself to have been already seen and known and understood.
And
what happens next shows that Zacchaeus has started to see everything in
a new way. If he can be seen directly, not hidden by the crowd, or lost
in the tree's foliage, then nothing in his life can ever look the same
way again. The conversion he embraces is not a way of getting Jesus onto
his side or earning His attention. It is the fruit of finding himself
in the gaze of the Savior. And the life that he has lived is too small a
thing to contain the promises and blessings that Jesus brings.
So
often, we think we have to get God on our side. Come and see things
from my perspective and give me what I want. Give me the heads of my
enemies. Crush them. Destroy them. Give me all the things that I want,
and then I will worship you the way you deserve to be worshiped.
That's
if we stay in the tree and look. But instead we find that we are the
ones who are seen. Salvation, therefore, is as easy as climbing a tree.
It's about not settling for merely hearing. Jesus is our teacher and
tells us how to live a new life. But He's more than a teacher. He is
that new life. He is that great event that we've been waiting for; the
thing that we must not miss.
Our
faith is not just that Jesus tells us what to do or how to live, but
that in seeing Him, we pass beyond the old way of seeing - in which we
are the center of all things - into, we pass into, the real world -
where God is the true center: the Alpha and the Omega.
The
life of sin flattens reality around us. It makes everything into an
object for our use, for our gratification. And how miserable we are when
we wallow in sin, when we have not succeeded in all the things that
we've planned; but have been thwarted, thwarted by our own stupidity, by
our own selfishness, by our sins. But God, too, we can make into an
object in this world, of our world, to be weighed up, evaluated, and put
to one side when inconvenient.
But
coming to see Jesus is an experience that changes our whole way of
seeing. Our salvation begins in the encounter with someone who is not
another object in the world, but who reveals the personal depth of the
Life of God. In Jesus, we learn to see ourselves as called to live in a
world which is The Great Event of Divine Love - and not that empty space
in which our own needs and desires are to be projected.
Salvation
is as easy as climbing a tree; which is, of course, what Jesus does for
us on the cross. He climbs the Tree of Life to open to us His own way
of seeing, the resonance of the sound and shape of the Triune Love
shared by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in all things. The
cross reveals that we are not so much called to look at Jesus, as to see
all things in Him, with Him, and through Him. He is the Light of the
World, and in His Light, we see light.
So
then, climb the tree. See Jesus in the light of faith. And begin to see
how the world is not the empty, impersonal echo of blind forces. But a
place of the encounter between lovers. The Tree of Life, where even, as
Jesus says, the birds of the air find shelter, and where we discover
that, all along, we have been seen, and known, and loved beyond all
measure - beyond all that we dare to believe.
And
then come down. For our God desires to dine with us. Jesus says, "I
must stay at your house today." And He also says, "For salvation has
come to this house today." In other words, Jesus is That Salvation.
That
Salvation desires to dine with us... and, to receive. As we divest
ourselves of all the things that we have held precious thus far, to be
received, that is what He desires. And then let our true treasure be
entrusted to us. For only one can climb that tree and be nailed and
crucified to it, and then turn that into a Tree of Life. We must come
down and let Him dine.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
May we all see the face of Jesus and be saved!
IN Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
IN Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
© Mary TV 2019
"Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world."
Saint John Paul II
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