Homilies (Page 42)

Trinity: The God that We Know! Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20 Today is testimony Sunday, when we recall and celebrate what God has done in our lives. We count our blessings and acknowledge that we are beneficiaries of a lot of good things, which we frankly do not either merit or deserve. Like the proverbial blind men who touched different parts of an elephant and described the animal from the parts of the body they touched, as children of God, we have experienced God in varied ways, and we confess today that he is three-in-one! Eureka moments reveal the God we know toRead More →

Stop that Prayer, Become the Prayer itself! Acts 1:15-26; 1 John 4:11-16; Jn 17:11b-19 This is Prayer Sunday, the Sunday between Ascension and Pentecost! Interestingly, it is not only human beings alone who pray, as it is evidently the case in the first reading of today, where the apostles pray and show us the importance of prayers in order to know the will of God, God’s choice in an election context; in today’s gospel, God also prays, through Jesus Christ his Son, the so-called Priestly Prayer of Jesus Christ – the prayer for oneness/unity. Earlier in his ministry, Jesus taught us how to pray, “whenRead More →

Heaven is our Home, Jesus is our GPS Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 4; Mark 16:15-20. Do not ask scientists about Heaven, because they do not know where to find it. Of all the places they have been able to locate, Heaven is not one of them. The closest they have come to Heaven is the statement, “Heaven doesn’t exist”. Come to think of it, how does science get its knowledge – by discovery! For instance, America didn’t exist, up until Christopher Columbus “discovered” it; River Niger didn’t exist before Mungo Park “discovered” it. My friends, beware of those who “discover things,” because they are yet toRead More →

Refuse to be Sad, Be Hopeful about your Salvation, since God is the Arbiter of Salvation Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 John 4:11-16; John 15:9-17 A major preoccupation of our generation is the refusal to accept uncertainty. We live in an era of precise science, where the margins of errors are seriously blurred, accuracy is the watch-word and certainty the capstone of science. In a lot of instances, medical science can guess, with relative accuracy, the day and time of conception and delivery of a baby, the day of death, in terminally ill cancer patients, and astrophysics can predict the day and time for theRead More →

“The Only Thing to Fear is Fear itself”: Breaking our Enslavement to Fear Acts 9:26-31; 1 Jn 3:18-24; John 15:1-8 Tuesday, April 24, 2018, started out just like any other day. Many woke up from sleep, and to give thanks to the author of life, God himself, they went for morning Mass. At Mass, in the house of God, the day turned out to be a blood-bath-day; the house of God was turned in an execution arena; AK 47 rang out, and dead bodies tell the tale of what happened. A double tragedy – the temples of God, human beings, were destroyed, and the houseRead More →

Putting Human Life First, When the Defense of Life is the Measure of a Good Shepherd Acts 4:8-12;1 Jn 3:1-2; Jn 10:11-18 The notoriety of the cattle-herdsmen in Nigeria has given a bad name to all the shepherds of Nigeria. The Nigerian experience is one that shows that the lives of animals, especially cattle, are of more worth than human beings. The fear of cattle-herdsmen has become the nightmare of rural and urban dwellers; their presence smells death. In this scenario, can anything good come from shepherds and shepherding? Of all identifications possible, why would Jesus compare himself to a shepherd? If cattle-herdsmen specialized inRead More →

I am a Christian Gossip, When Gossiping turns into Salvation Story and Good news Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; 1 Jn 2:1-5a; Lk 24:35-48 Do you know that “god-sibb” is the forefather of “gossip”? Just google the etymology of “gossip” or look up that word in old English dictionaries or dictionary of etymology. “God” is included in the word “gossip”. God-talk was gossip, and in the nations where freedom of religion is unacceptable, it remains a gossip. For us Christians, Easter fever has gone viral, and salvation virus has gone nuclear. The fever and virus in town is GOSSIPING! The trending gossip, you know, is the resurrectionRead More →

“Thank you Sunday”: Be Compassionate as the Heavenly Father is Compassionate Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31 A story was told of a man who died and went to Hell. While in Hell, he decided to review his life on earth to ascertain that he really deserved to be in Hell. In his retrospections, he consoled himself for being in Hell because he began to enumerate his sins to himself and his conclusion was that Hell was where he belonged, on account of his wrong doings on earth. However, he lifted up his gaze, and to his utmost surprise, he saw his pastor/parish priestRead More →

When I am Like Mary Magdalene: Even Sinners have Rights Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9 There is a huge consolation that comes from reading the gospel of today because of Christ’s resurrection. In Christ, and because of his death and resurrection, a new dawn of grace has arrived. This new dawn, according to the gospel, is “the first day of the week”. Christians have a new day, which is now known as Sunday. This “first day of the week” inaugurates the effects of Christ’s resurrection as the dispelling of the darkness of sin and death, and have given way to the light ofRead More →