Homilies (Page 8)

Compassionate as the Heavenly Father: Only a Sinner Understands it Jeremiah 23:1-6; Ephesians 2:13-18; Mark 6:30-34 Any praises of shepherds and herdsmen is out of sync with Nigerians, with the continuous  murderous escapades of herdsmen in Nigeria. Family after family bury their loved ones murdered in cold blood. The question on every lips is “when will this end,” and “what have we done to merit this”? The more the questions asked, the less the answers received – as the saying goes, “the more you look, the less you see”. Not even the readings of today praise cattle-herdsmen or shepherds. God himself is disappointed with theirRead More →

God needs Missionaries NOT Mercenaries: When Collaboration marks us out as God’s Children  Amos 7:12-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:7-13 Every human being is a potential slave to his/her desires. The moment one distances oneself from God and surrounds oneself with all that make one different from the other, one puts on a  self-made chain. According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains.” The chains in question are human-made. At birth, a child comes into the world carrying nothing, as a sign of freedom and dependence on God. For the Yoruba of South-Western Nigeria, every childbirth affords human beings theRead More →

What you need is Fidelity NOT Success: Coping with Failure Ezekiel 2:2-5; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6 In our age of stars and celebrities, thanks to the Oscars and pageant contests, to be famous, one needs to receive human approbations and ovations simply by playing in accordance with earthly rules, especially by being seen to oppose the Christian way of life. To preach the awfulness of sin is to be out of sync with contemporary culture; to promote virginity up until marriage is considered a sign of mental derangement; and to manifest one’s faith in the public squares and spaces is seen as a signRead More →

More of Divine Wisdom, Less of Human Science: It takes Just a Touch of Jesus! Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43 or 5:21-24, 35b-43 Human beings have conquered and dominated the earth, little wonder the earth is on edge, and science is leading the way towards conquering other planets as alternative habitations. Human beings are good at destroying, but have not learnt the wisdom of living and helping others to live. We plan our vacations in distant places, we spend our time far away from familiar territories; like Ulysses, in our explorations, “we seek to find and not to yield!” LordRead More →

Examination Sunday Job 38:1, 8-11; 2 Corinthians 5:14-17; Mark 4:35-41 Last Sunday, in the parable of the sower, the sower sowed his seed and went to bed, and God took care of his seed for him while he slept, and his seed yielded a pumper harvest. This Sunday, it is Jesus who slept — God slept — and there was commotion, threat of death, and helplessness! Last Sunday, our readings were talking about trees, plants, seeds and farming; this Sunday, there is water everywhere — the sea that God gave limits to, in the first reading, and the sea on which the boat is strugglingRead More →

Dwelling with the Lord, Despite Sin: “I am Naked” is NOT the Last Word! Genesis 3:9-15; 2 Cor 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35 Today, an African proverb explains our homily: reculer pour mieux sauter – to draw back for an effective attack! The etymology of this proverb is derived from animal fight by butting, where an animal needs to back up (draw back) to gather speed before a butting attack. For us, we return to Genesis, in our first reading, and the creation account of the Fall of humanity for the purposes of learning how to live  better. Our first reading is not meant to make usRead More →

Becoming One with the Lord, through what I Eat and Drink: The Meaning of Corpus et Sanguis Christi  Ex 24:3-8; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26 There is a physical dimension to our residency of the planet earth. Neither the physical is the enemy of the spiritual nor is the mundane necessarily against the spiritual. Having dealt with the metaphysical and spiritual, the Pentecost and the Holy Spirit, last Sunday we dealt with the mystery of the Trinity, today we concern ourselves with food and drink, the physical and mundane components of human life. The spiritual and the physical both have the imprint of God, andRead More →

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 →

Times and Pentecost: The Continuous Intervention and Presence of the Holy Spirit in the World  Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23 Why do we talk of 1900 or 2017 or 1960? Obviously time is the measure of human activities, and astronomical and galaxic movements help human beings to talk about times and seasons. This is not the case for a Christian. What is “time” for a Christian? “Time” is always in reference to Christ and the salvation he wrought for humanity. When a Christian talks of centuries and millennia, it is always in reference to the Christ event. Even within Scripture itself, timeRead More →