Lifeissues is mainly concerned with publishing thoughtful articles directly related to issues raised in Evangelium Vitae. However, from the very beginning, we have also published a few related homilies, notably by Fr. Al Cariño, O.M.I., Fr. Tony Pueyo, and others.
Please use the pulldowns below to select a homily by Liturgical Calendar date.
The problem today we will do nearly anything to avoid a confrontation or argument. 'Play nice', we are told, like small children, compromise, negotiate and keep the peace at any cost sacrificing even the Gospel. We become so accustomed to evil it hardly moves us. Is religious liberty more important, for example, than religion, a right relationship with our government rather than a right relationship with God?
It does not follow that because someone is divisive, he is not from God. And of course, it does not follow that because someone is divisive, he or she is a genuine prophet; there are lots of false prophets who are divisive. It's not divisiveness that qualifies or disqualifies them. It is Christ that is the distinguishing factor, and Christ tends to divide. Those who do not belong to God hate the truth that Christ is; they love pleasure more than they love the truth. Truth is larger than us, we have to conform to it, not the other way around. Those who are ready and willing to conform to something larger, like Truth, are not uncomfortable when they hear the truth proclaimed
After a quick reading of this text, we might dismiss it as being an obvious mis-remembering of what Jesus actually said. Perhaps Luke has injected his own political perspective into a conversation which, many years after the fact, he can only dimly recall. However, a closer look at Jesus' manic outburst is telling a[euro]* telling us that he said what he meant and meant what he said.
People who mainly attend church on only Christmas and Easter might get the impression that the entire gospel message consists of a baby born in a stable, who came to bring peace on Earth, who was inexplicably killed for his trouble but ultimately rose triumphant from the dead. In our text, however, Jesus said that he came to bring fire on the earth. How does that message fit with the peace he told his disciples he was offering, a peace he claimed the world could not take away?
This is a story depicting faith -- faith that reaches across borders, leaps over boundaries, faith which will draw forth a response from even a reluctant Messiah.