Homily 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C - How can we love others, if we don't love ourself? By entering into God's tender love through prayer.

Over a week ago I was preparing this homily I felt a call in my heart to preach on Abraham’s appeal to God for mercy on the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. The recent violence against innocent people in the school in Uvelde, TX and grocery store in Buffalo, NY, was on my mind and a need for peace to be restored in these communities and for an end to the acts of violence from occurring.  Fr. Andy preached a few weeks ago that to be a disciple of Jesus you must love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.   He made a point that in order to love your neighbor that you must first love yourself because If you don’t love yourself, how can you love your neighbor? 

 

I’ve been thinking that heart of issue with the people who commit these violent acts is they don’t love themselves, because they have not experienced love themselves, be it the love from family, friends, or the love of God.  We are usually far removed and not personally involved in situations like this and can have empathy by offering prayers for those impacted.  I never imagined that our own community would be dealing with the tragedy that occurred at Greenwood Park Mall the past Sunday.  What can we do in response to these troubling situations?  Prayer is one of the most important things we can do.

In today’s first reading we have a good example of prayer with Abraham in dialogue with God. It’s interesting to note that God initiates the interaction with Abraham to investigate

the sins of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah. Why does God do this? God knows everything.  Why does God need Abraham? God does so because of the love for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. God doesn’t just leave the people to continue down the path of sin. So God enters into a dialogue with Abraham, who intercedes on their behalf asking for God’s mercy. Abraham has faith there are some innocent people and he pleads six time’s requesting mercy on all the people of those cities for the sake of the few innocent. God in his mercy, responds to Abraham that he will not destroy the people

 

This a good example of how we can personally speak to God. Prayer is not just a one-way conversation.  It is a dialogue where we are speaking and most importantly listening to God.  Very few of us will  everhave the direct feedback from God like Abraham did. But we do have the gift of the Holy Spirit, through our baptism and confirmation, which helps in discerning God’s response in prayer.  It takes time, quiet reflection, and new insights to determine how God answers our prayers. Our prayers are often please to God to directly intervene and change the situation to what we want or need. God can certainly do that. But the answer to prayer most often is the change it brings in us to accept the situation and trust that God loves us in the midst ofour difficulties.   It’s important for us to pray not just when there is trouble, but also when times are good as well.  Having an ongoing prayer life with God open us up to the graces that build a strong foundation to weather the storm when we encounter life’s challenges. It will provide us hope that we are not alone in our struggles and that God loves us.

 

Friday evening there was a prayer vigil in downtown Greenwood that included leaders of the many faith traditions we have in our community, which included Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Sihk’s to help people deal with the trauma and help restore peace to the community. The leader from the Sihk community in Greenwood spoke about the Fedex incident that specifically affected their community last year. Her tradition believes that those who commit acts of violence have done so because they have lost faith in themselves.  She asked the community to pray for those who have lost faith in themselves, and also to take action as a community to help those in this situation. think this is another way of saying they don’t love themselves. She said that we can’t just leave it up to the government solve these issues. It takes people of faith and good will to care about others who have lost their faith to help bring an end to these acts of violence.

God deeply loves for each individually and wants to be involved in our lives.  Pray to God daily sharing your cares, concerns, joys and triumph so we can continuously be in relationship with God, love ourselves, and loving others. God loves each of us tenderly like a parent loves a little child. In response to the Greenwood Park Mall incident this Sunday, I’d like to ask all of us to pray, Please pray for the people who died, were injured, or were traumatized by the incident. Pray for those who have lost faith in themselves and how we can show them that God loves and cares for them.Pray for peace to return to our community. Jesus wants us to have peace in our lives. His peace is offered to us every time we come to Mass, through His grace mercy, so we can be instruments of God’s peace in the world.