Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
By Rev. Joseph McCloskey, S.J.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved. Ephesians 1:3-6
He said to them, "Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave from there. Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them." So they went off and preached repentance. Mark 6:10-12
Piety
In Christ we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. We are chosen in Christ. Christ is the fullness of spirituality. All our goodness has its ultimate meaning in Christ. Our goodness captures the essence of what life is about. Christ is the fulfillment of the meaning of every gift we have. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. In him we have our being. We are created in the image and the likeness of Christ and he gives us the fullness of self discovery when we find ourselves in him. We are chosen in Christ to be holy and without blemish. It is by Christ that we belong to the Father. It is our being in Christ that makes us brothers and sisters and heirs of heaven. Christ is the richness of our lives and it is in Christ that we find salvation. The plan of God for us sums up all things in Christ. Our very belief in Christ is sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Thus we are God’s possession and our lives are able to give God glory. Before the foundation of the world we have been chosen in Christ to know the forever of God’s glory in our life in Christ.
Study
Our holiness grows in its connection with the life of Christ. We study the Sacraments of the Church to discover how we belong to Christ in how Christ shares his life with us in the Sacramental life of the Church. He gives us in the Sacraments as the hands on touch of the divine in our lives by how his humanness continues in us by each of the Sacraments. The humanness of the Risen Christ is our foothold in heaven. Christ by the Resurrection is in heaven. But He lives in us by our participation in the Sacramental life of the Church. Christ walks the earth in how we share the message of the love of God both through our example and our words. The Sacraments make this possible. The Church is the People of God. The people of God are the Mystical Body of Christ. All the ways we can embrace the fullness of Christ in our lives by the sacraments and the word of Christ in us are how God has blessed us and goes on blessing us in Christ.
Action
The paradox of Christianity is the simplicity of the fact that the only way we can hold unto Christ in our lives is by sharing him. We are all sent in our very Baptism and Confirmation to be the living word of Christ. We have the responsibility to take Christ whither we would go and to live Christ by our lives and our words. We live Christ by making our lives a daily sermon. We share Christ by bringing him into each contact with each other. Wherever there is love, God is there. Whoever receives us in the name of Christ, receives Christ as the one who sends us into life with his name. We can never be poor when we go out in the name of Christ because we are rich with Christ. Our lives can never be without meaning when we are willing to be Christ to each other. We need to come to realize that our spiritual journey makes it possible to live in Christ and to be able to say with Paul. “Now I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Our happiness will never end because the love of Christ is forever. God sums up all things in Christ. This is the hope that belongs to our call.
