tvc.dsj.org | September 10, 2019
By Father Brendan McGuire
Pastor of Holy Spirit Parish, San José, and Special Advisor to the Bishop,
Diocese of San José. [email protected].
Moving Forward
Sunday, September 22, 2019
You cannot serve two masters; you either love one and hate the other…You cannot serve
both God and mammon.
What is the Lord trying to say here? By analogy, when we are driving a car, we
are either driving it in forward or in reverse. We cannot go forward and reverse at
the same time. The Lord is asking us which direction are we going. Are we going
forward, following God or are we going reverse, following Mammon and doing
our own thing? This Gospel is not so much about what we have as much as how
we use it or which way we are going.
Jesus asks with who are we in relationship: God or mammon? Which way are
we facing? The dishonest steward, when under pressure, got it right; he turned
and faced the right way. Initially, he did not care about any of the masters’ debtors
but then he realized that he was going to be under pressure himself, he turned
and moved into in right relationship with each of these people. The Lord is try-
ing to get us to face the right way and be in right relationship with one another.
Pope Francis is constantly reminding us as a Church to be people who are
looking out for those who are most in need; the furthest extremities of our society
regardless of whether they are Catholic or not. We need to be a Church who is
constantly facing those who are needy and caring for them because they are exactly
who Christ would have us face and move toward. We are to care for the needy,
the broken the wounded, the hurt. The Lord says it is about right relationship. It
is about how we reach out to one another and about how we use our wealth not
on how much we have. It’s about who we face.
Yes, it is about right relationship. It is about not how much we have but about
how we spend what we have. We cannot go in forward and reverse at the same
time. The Lord wants us to always be in the forward motion and going towards
him at all times. We cannot serve two masters, either mammon or God. We are
called to choose Christ and to be in right relationship with God and not to let our
material possessions own us. We choose Christ. We follow him as our Master not
anyone else.
SPIRITUALITY
Sunday Homilies
Hard Resetting your Spiritual Life
Sunday, September 15, 2019
You know that feeling when your smartphone or your computer just stops
working and often right in the middle of an urgent need or a critical project? That
spinning ball or blue screen can be frightening! We pray hard that we have not
lost too much work. So what do we do?
We reset our phone or our computers hoping that they return to normal opera-
tion and we can go about our projects again. That “hard reset” gets the computer
back to its former condition. The device is programmed that way to “reset” easily
enough and most times it works seamlessly even though we might wait anxiously
for minutes.
The same is true for our spiritual lives. There are times that life throws curve
balls at us and we lose our way a little. We are programmed to “reset” each week
with a Sabbath day and then annually with a vacation. That is the way Lord made
us and he commands us to take a Holy Day every week. The challenge is that
many of us don’t take the weekend to relax but get even busier with more work
projects or other home projects. Then our vacations seem to be equally as amped
up. So what are we do?
We need to somehow “reset” our lives and especially our spiritual lives. When
we don’t, things start to go wrong. We get testy or unpleasant with our spouses or
our children. Work starts to unravel in some way. Our friends seem to be at odds
with us like never before. These are all signals that the system is about to freeze
and go into “blue screen” mode. We need to stop and reset our lives. We need to
come away on retreat or at the very least start a new prayer discipline.
If you need a spritiual reset, I encourage you to take a full weekend away to
join me on retreat October 18-20, 2019 at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Los Altos.
This retreat, led by me, is titled “Hard Resetting Your Spiritual Life.” I will focus
what can we do to refocus our lives back on Jesus and his mission for us. Please
visit www.jrclosaltos.org or call (650) 917-4000 to register.
It is critical to deepen our relationship with Jesus and hear where he is calling
us to grow. We need PRAYER. We need to move closer to Jesus so we can under-
stand how God wants us to lead our lives for the good of all, including ourselves.
Come and reset your life this fall.
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