Homily for Monday, 9 June 2014– Ferial

Monday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of St. Ephrem, Deacon and Doctor of the Church

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 17:1-8; Psalm 121:1bc-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8; Matthew 5:1-12

In what and in how many ways are we “blessed”?

We hear today the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. This Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes, a kind of list of ways in which they (and we) might consider themselves (and ourselves) blessed: “Blessed are the poor in spirit… those who mourn… the meek… those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… the merciful… the clean of heart… the peacemakers… they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.”

If we were to look around this assembly at one another; if we were to think of people who have touched our lives beyond our parish, might we be able to identify those who fit into the groups of people Jesus calls “blessed” in our Gospel? Perhaps we have had or will have the occasion to be a blessing to another person.

I see, here and now, many of us who have been a blessing to me in my service at St. Kateri Parish. I have come to know people in this parish and beyond who are humble; “poor in spirit” and “meek” in the way I think Jesus intends these words. I have come to know “those who mourn” deep loss, but with just as deep faith and courage. Right here in this parish I have come to know God’s mercy; “thirst for righteousness”; zeal for peace; cleanliness of heart; people who would risk persecution for their faith. And so I consider myself to be deeply blessed by all of us. Could not many if not most of us say the same: “I have been deeply blessed by the presence of God in my sisters and brothers in Christ”?

And we have been blessed in other ways yet. Today, after the fifty day long blessing that is our Easter season, we are back once again to Ordinary Time. We are back to the longest of the Church seasons; back to a time in which we are invited to reflect prayerfully on ways in which we are blessed even (maybe especially) in life’s ordinary circumstances.

Today is also the feast day of St. Ephrem, the fourth-century deacon who prayed about and knew intimately how much he and all of us are blessed by God and one another. St. Ephrem also knew how much greater are the blessings that await us in heaven.

I invite us then to reflect on this prayer by St. Ephrem, from one of his sermons on the Eucharist: “In our souls, Lord, prepare a dwelling for the day that will never end… In your sacrament we… receive you into our bodies… We have had your treasure hidden within us ever since we received baptismal grace… Teach us to find joy in your favor! Lord, we have within us your memorial, received at your spiritual table; let us possess it in its full reality when all things shall be made new.”

We are deeply blessed in our encounter with Christ in our Eucharist; in baptism; in all the other sacraments; in one another. And so Jesus says to us in our Gospel reading, as he taught his first disciples from the Mount of the Beatitudes: “Blessed are they...” Blessed are we, now and in the fullest of blessing that awaits us with God in eternal life.