Doers of the Word

Be doers of the word and

not hearers only deluding yourselves.

The root word for religion comes from two words, “re”, to do again,

and “ligo” to bond or oblige; putting them together we get

to “re-bond” or “to re-connect.”

So good religion reconnects us with God and with one another.

And for us as Catholic Christians,

that means we reconnect with Jesus

and we also connect with one another

thus becoming the body of Christ to others.

Jesus is trying to get his hearers in today’s gospel

to reconnect to the core of what good religion is.

The letter of James talks about pure and undefiled religion

in the sense that we are humble servants before God,

and that every good gift comes from God.

Then we are called to return those gifts to God

by sharing them with one another.

Jesus is pretty upset with the Pharisees.

He saves the harshest words

for the religious leaders of the time

as he calls them hypocrites

because they say one thing and do another.

And this is what upsets him the most.

He uses this word “hypocrite”

which comes from the word for “a mask.”

The hypocrite was a mask that actors on stage

would wear when they were acting as a charater.

They did not have dresses and costumes like we have now.

They would just have a face mask on a stick.

And when they played a role,

they would just put that stick with a face mask in front of them,

and then they would play that role.

That was the hypocrite; an actor on stage!

Jesus is calling them hypocrites,

saying they have a face masks on and they are only acting.

They are something different on the outside

than what is happening on the inside.

He calls them back to this undefiled religion,

reconnecting back to themselves.

Saint Ignatius, over 500 years ago in his spiritual exercises,

tried to help people to reconnect to this internal,

what he called the holy desire of the heart.

He tried to connect it to our own desires first.

And now, unfortunately in our modern America,

we still have the puritanical roots of this word “desire”

always associated with sexual desire.

That is not what Saint Ignatius was talking about.

This holy desire, the preternatural desire

is in the inner recesses of our heart.

Saint James says, this seed of God

is planted within us when we were born.

We have the seed of God in us

and that is what draws us to God.

Once we come in touch with that holy desire,

then we reconnect, in a sense, to God inside of us.

Then we are called to reconnect to the rest of the world.

It is beautiful.

St. Ignatius has a whole list of exercises,

that work out in our own life to try

and to work our way there, in a sense, opening ourself to God.

Henry Nouwen, the great Catholic priest

and theologian of modern times,

tried to explain this same concept using four words:

taken, blest, broken and given.

These connects us back to God as his beloved.

When we truly discover that we are the beloved of God,

that changes everything.

Once we understand that we are that chosen one, the beloved,

we have rediscovered the seed of God;

that is God’s own message inside of us.

From that moment onwards,

it changes just about everything in our life.

These four words come straight from Eucharist.

Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and then gives it.

Nouwen says that is what we are called to do.

Nouwen replaces the word for taken

to a more modern version “chosen.”

We are the truly chosen and beloved.

What we do then is allow the Lord to bless us, break us,

but then we must transition to the last part,

which is to give ourselves away.

These are the crucial movements that we do at every Eucharist.

We come to receive the message that is Christ,

and we come to receive it inside of us.

But then we must promise to become what we receive,

to become the body of Christ broken for others.

That is the true re-connection.

And that is truly good religion.

That is what a true good Catholic does,

not only receives the body of Christ,

but then becomes a body of Christ.

What Saint James says “to be doers of the word,

not just hearers, not deluding ourselves.”

As if somehow what we receive here, that is enough.

It is never enough to just come to receive.

That is the beginning of our practice this week.

We must promise then to go forth into our lives

to become what we receive for others.

To give ourselves away is to use the words of Henry Nouwen,

to basically take and to give ourselves away.

That is all great theology but

what does that actually mean in practice for us?

It means that every little thing we do

for somebody in giving ourselves away

is practicing what we have here.

We could do it in small ways,

but some of us are are going get called

to do it in larger ways this week.

We must all be ready if that one is us.

The little ways that we are called to give ourselves away

by being kind and gentle and generous to everyone around us.

Starting obviously first with our family,

our parents or our children or our grandparents,

whoever is surrounded or in inside our nuclear family.

But it has to go beyond just us.

It has to go beyond into the world.

It has to go beyond to all we meet.

Just being kind and respectful and gentle

to the barista, to the cashier person,

to every person whom we meet,

every worker in our world;

recognizing also the seed of God inside them.

Then we start to reconnect.

You see how it works.

We start to connect with one other.

But where this becomes most potent,

where we have the greatest opportunity to witness

is when we do it for those who most feel unconnected,

those who are on the peripheries as Pope Francis calls it,

they are the ones we are trying to connect back.

Those who feel most disenfranchised,

those who feel a bit out of sync

or maybe even those who do not believe.

We are are going to get them to believe by our actions,

by being the doers of the word,

by connecting them with God through our love.

That is the witness of the gospel we are called to.

When we are kind and gentle and forgiving

to somebody who does not return it,

who does not want to even have anything to do with us

as Catholic Christians, then we are on the path.

Now we know we are the true religion

because we are connecting to God

and connecting to one another.

So as we come forward to the Eucharist this morning

and we reach out to say amen,

know what we are accepting,

know that we are saying amen

to becoming what we received,

the body of Christ broken for us.

We receive, we are blessed, we are broken.

And now we give away, we reconnect with others.

So today, as we leave here, as James says,

let us be doers of the word and not just hearers deluding ourselves.

We come to proclaim by our actions.

We are the body of Christ broken for one another.

True religion connects with God and with one another.

Be doers of the word and

not hearers only deluding yourselves.