C Cycle Homilies – 3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 25

Lk.13:1-9

There is no doubt the message Jesus is revealing to us today is we must bear fruit.  There was a purpose for our lives which was ordained for us the moment we were formed in our mother’s womb.  We like Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God.  We know God blessed them and instructed them to “…be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen.1:28).   We know they failed to fulfill the meaning and purpose of their being, and the result is the uncertainty of life in this world we are living in today.

The meaning and purpose of our lives is specific for each of us and in another way, it is common to each of us.  The fact God has a plan for each of us is revealed to us in the scriptures.   One such passage is given to us through the inspired words of King David.  We all know he was chosen and prepared by God to become the King of Israel.  David acknowledged his destiny acknowledging God had: “… seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them” (Ps.139:16).  Before one day of his life existed God had ordained his destiny.  That means that every experience in David’s life was used by God to prepare him for that one moment God broke through and David responded.

We can easily dismiss David’s destiny as not being relevant to us because he is one of the great figures in salvation history.  We can just as easily dismiss the life of John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph, Peter, Samuel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, the disciple John, and Paul the apostle.  Surely, each of them was anointed and gifted by God.  We realize we are not in the same category as any of them. Our faith does not match theirs. Nor can we equal their exploits. We fall short in every category.  We are ignoring a spiritual truth – in His book is written every one of our days and the good deeds God ordained for us before anyone of those days existed.   

Saul of Tarsus adamantly denied Jesus was the Messiah.  His life experiences formation formed him as a Pharisee.  He used his God given talents to form people in their understanding of the law and the prophets.  To him, Jesus was a blasphemer, one who broke the law and mocked the Pharisees. Instead of living as God intended, Saul was living according to his plan. His faith formation had him opposing Jesus because Jesus did not fit his understanding of the Messiah.  Saul needed something beyond his intellectual training; he needed a revelation. He had had not yet discovered God’s meaning and purpose for his life. 

That revelation came as he encountered Christ on the road to Damascus. Paul’s letters reveal to us how our sinful nature prevents us from understand God’s mercy and who we are destined to become.  We are destined to conform to the image of Christ.  That theme became the foundation of the now apostle Paul’s preaching. That one moment on the road to Damascus and later in the house of Annais opened his eyes and his heart to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit and gave him insight into the meaning and purpose of his life. We need to get past our sinfulness by praying for our own encounter with Christ.

It would be great if we were like John the Baptist who grasped the meaning and purpose his life while he was in his mother’s womb.  The scriptures give us other figures who were prepared for their role in salvation history.  Figures whose lives indicated they knew their destiny.  Mary is one of them, Jeremah and Samuel are others but many of them were ordinary individuals doing ordinary things.  That is until something happened in their lives – an encounter with God.   

We can certainly point to Peter who seemed to stumble frequently and acted on impulse rather than discernment.  Yet, it is in the story of Paul the apostle and Peter the disciple we get a realistic look at our own journey of discovery who we were created to become. Our faith formation has ignored the need to discover how gifted we are to fulfill our destiny.  What God has prepared for us from the moment we were conceived – “… we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Eph.2:10). 

Paul understands the need for this spiritual journey of discovery is filled with God’s constant revelation and how easily we miss them or ignore them. Paul’s journey is our journey as it begins with faith formation but ignores highlighting the meaning and purpose of our lives.  Most of us are taught to discipline ourselves, to follow the laws and demands of our faith.  The law becomes our mentor, and we measure our spiritual progress by how well we discipline ourselves.  Unfortunately, we have become Pharisees and like Paul ignore Jesus’s invitation to surrender. 

 By now hopefully you are wondering how to discover the meaning and purpose of your life.  The answer is not hidden, we need to repent and believe.  Repentance is easy, believing God has something prepared for you and how you should be living in it is not as hard as you might believe. To discover your meaning and purpose you only need to desire it and ask the Holy Spirit to help you discover and cultivate it.