tvc.dsj.org | June 25, 2019
Pastor of Holy Spirit Parish, San Jose, and Vicar General for
Special Projects, Diocese of San Jose. [email protected].
I was recently given a little bottle of oil essence. It is just a small bottle of oil es-
sence. The one I received was lavender and another one was fennel. This oil essence
is like super concentrated oil. It is like a whole bunch of lavender and squeezed into
tiny little drops and every drop seems to contain so strong an aroma and essence.
That is the whole purpose of essence. It is the essence of the minerals, oils and the
aroma of that particular flower or plant.
We hear in the scripture passages today the essence of discipleship. It is distilled
down to a few, simple phrases. We often think that if we know about Jesus is enough
but knowing about Jesus is not enough. It is not even enough to believe in Jesus. We
have to follow Jesus. That is the essence, the essence of discipleship; to follow Christ.
There are lots of people who know about Jesus and indeed, there are lots of people
who believe in Jesus. They are believers in Jesus, but they just do not follow him in
their own lives. We are called to be disciples; we are called to follow in his footsteps.
That is exactly the exchange we hear in today’s Gospel passage.
It is somewhat hard to hear. “Let me go take care of my family first.” The Lord
says no; come follow me. There is a sense of great urgency to it. The Lord says, “Let
the dead bury the dead.” It seems so harsh. The Lord is not saying that family is
not important and that our obligations are not important; or that our work is not
important. He is saying we come and follow him in the midst of doing that. It is not
an afterthought that you do this and then follow Jesus because those family duties
never stop. Work never stops. Family never stops. We have to come and follow Jesus
in the midst of all of that. And once we follow Jesus then that defines us.
If we look to Paul’s letter to the Galatians where he lists the fruits of the Spirit.
One of those fruits is love, to love one another as God has loved us. People who are
loving are people of forgiveness.
Can we say that we are people of forgiveness? Can we say I genuinely forgive
everyone who has hurt me and to leave it behind? That will be defining ourselves
as disciples.
It is not enough that we come to Church and we know Jesus. It is not even enough
that we believe in Jesus and it is not even enough that we come and praise Jesus. It
is to follow him. That is the essence of discipleship. Jesus says to every one of us:
“Come, follow me.”
13
Sunday Homilies
By Father Brendan McGuire
Essence of Discipleship
Sunday, June 30, 2019
SPIRITUALITY
Traveler Not Tourist
Sunday, July 7, 2019
The historian Daniel Boorstin writes in his book “Hidden History: Explaining Our
Secret Past,” concerning the distinction between a “traveler” and a “tourist.” He says a
traveler is what the history books are written about; the traveler is the adventurer; the
traveler is the one who discovers worlds. The traveler is active in their journey. They
engage and search for not only just places but people of different types. They engage
in everything and in everyone they meet so they can learn from them, knowing that
in them, whoever they meet there is something new, something magical. 1
On the other hand, a “tourist” is one who comes to observe. While the traveler
is actively engaged, the tourist merely observes, looking on as a bystander; like a
third-party watching people do what they do. The tourist expects interesting things
to happen to him or her but does nothing to engage the reality that surrounds them.
The root word for these two words are different themselves. The word “travel”
comes from the same word “travail” which is to work or to labor and sometimes even
translated as burden. The traveler is one who burdens oneself; one who works at it.
The word “tourist” comes from the root word “turnus” which means to go in circles.
It means to go and to come back. When you think about it, this is exactly what tourists
do: they visit, they look, they take pictures, they take in mementos and then return to
where they were, and they stay in a nice hotel. They have observed everything, but
they have gone nowhere. They have learned nothing, but they have observed lots.
The Lord in today’s Gospel does not send any of his disciples, or us, as tourists
but as travelers. He sends us out as travelers to engage the world, to recognize that
every possible encounter is a new adventure which communicates that the kingdom
of God is at hand. For us as disciples thousands of years later, we recognize that when
we encounter somebody, we come not to deliver a message as much as to discover a
message. And what do we seek to discover? We seek to discover Christ and his Spirit
who has been here way before we ever got here. The Spirit always moves ahead of us.
We are never the deliverers of the Holy Spirit, we are the “namers” of the Holy Spirit.
We might name the encounter with Christ but we are never the ones who bring the
encounter.
When we minister at the margins, we need an open heart because as the encounter
unfolds. We acknowledge that everyone has a story. We have a story. The person who
we sit beside whether it be on the bus or at dinner, or in the community has a story.
Our role is to discover that story; to hear that story for the first time. We are called to
share our story when asked because it is in the sharing of our story that the encounter
of Christ is made known.
1
Jay Cormier, Connections, (July 2016: Mediaworks,7 Lantern Lane, Londonderry, NH) page 1.EndFragment
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