By Deacon Jerry
Franzen Cathedral 2/12/17
Sirach
15:15-20 1 Corinthians
2:6-10 Matthew 5:17-37
“Praised Be Jesus Christ” “Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening”
*Let’s look at
the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat.
A thermometer
gives a reading of the temperature
in a particular environment.
The old
fashioned thermometers consisted of a tube
with a narrow opening filled to some
level with mercury.
As the
temperature of the thermometer’s environment rises,
the mercury expands and its level in
the tube rises.
The thermometer
reacts to the temperature of the environment
and will eventually take on the
temperature of the environment.
There are many
different types of thermometers.
On the other
hand, a thermostat is a device that can be set
to maintain a desired temperature.
A home heating
system is controlled by a thermostat.
If the
temperature drops below the set temperature,
the thermostat will cause a heat
source to be tapped
to raise the temperature to
the desired level.
In the air
conditioning mode,
if the temperature rises above the set
level,
the thermostat will admit cooler
air to lower the
temperature.
The body has a
desired temperature of 98.6 oF,
and we can monitor that level with a
thermometer.
The body also has
a type of thermostatic system
to keep its temperature at 98.6 oF when all is well.
A thermometer
changes with the temperature of the environment;
A thermostat controls the temperature
of the environment.
A thermometer
passively reflects what is around it;
a thermostat can actively change its
environment.
I
We can apply this difference
between
a thermometer and a thermostat to the death and life
we
heard about in the first reading from Sirach:
“Before man are life and death, good and evil,
whichever
he chooses shall be given him.”
What is this “death and life” which man can
choose?
Yes life is good, but how is death evil?
Death, as we know it, is the natural end of
life; how can it be evil?
There must be smething else going on here.
**In Deuteronomy
(30:20) Moses told the Israelites
“loving the Lord your God, obeying the Lord,
holding fast
to the Lord; that means life to you.”
That is what
“being alive” should have meant to the Isrealites.
And death, then,
would be idolatry in it various forms,
not just worshiping a golden calf as the
Israelites did,
but also the more contemporary idols:
possessions,
popularity, pleasure, money and power.
Listen to the
prophet Amos:
“Thus
says the Lord to the house of Israel: Seek me and live.”
In the Old
Testament, to be alive was to be searching for God;
to be dead was to ignore God.
We are either
alive with Him like a thermostat
always working to maintain our
relationship with Him.
Or we can be
dead to Him like a thermometer
just going along with the flow of a sinful
life,
not working to change our lives.
If
our hearts are truly Catholic, truly Christian,
if they are filled with knowledge of
God, love for God
and with His grace, then we will be
like thermostats.
But if our faith
only goes skin deep,
if we are only going through
the motions
of friendship with Christ, we'll
just be like thermometers.
We make the
choice.
If we live our faith superficially,
looking like a Catholic on the outside only,
our
lives will never have the meaning or the power
that
they are meant to have.
We will end up just following the latest trends
and fashions,
never
really having stability or making the progress in life that Jesus wants us to.
But if we live our faith from the inside
out,
keeping
Christ alive in our hearts,
we
will be able to help set the trends, not just follow them.
II
Now move
centuries ahead to Paul writing to the Corinthians:
He wrote: “We
speak a wisdom to those who are mature,
not
a wisdom of this age,
nor of the rulers of this age…
Rather we speak
God’s wisdom, mysterious, hidden…,”
the wisdom of God’s plan, not the
wisdom of our plan.
In Paul’s
inspired vision,
the wisdom of God’s plan for our
salvation, for our life,
was through the death of
Jesus on the cross,
the ultimate act of God’s love for us.
So, what was
once life as seeking God in the Old Testament
has become more loving God
because He has loved us.
Turning away
from God has become not loving God.
We can’t know
God and have true life without loving God.
We choose to
love God and we do that
by
loving those made in His own image and likeness.
Our loving
others, and thus loving God, will require a death,
death to ourselves.
If I love God, I
love Christ,
and
I can say as Paul did to the Philippians,
“For me, living is Christ.” (Phil
1:21)
I like that; to
be really living, we must be living Christ.
Our living
Christ will require our dying to our selves.
III
In the Gospel,
Jesus challenged his followers, and us,
to go beyond
meeting the letter of the law,
to find extended ways to treat persons with love.
That’s the
difference between just living and living Christ.
The law says
that we shall not kill.
Well, I haven’t killed anybody or even
hit anybody.
I’m clean on
that one.
But, I have been
very angry with some people,
even to the point of saying some nasty
things about them.
But I haven’t
killed anyone. So, can I say that I am living Christ?Hardly.
If I am living
Christ, living out Christ in my life,
I
must go further, to act out of love, to make my amends
with the person who was the object of my anger.
I will have to
put aside my pride, die a bit to myself
and then
I’ll be more in line with living Christ.
I’ve not
committed adultery, so I am following that commandment.
I’m in good
shape, no problem, living Christ,
doing what the law says. Right? No.
Jesus says that
we must act out of love for God
and for our own bodies to root out other acts
of impurity,
such as lust, from our lives.
Then I am
further along in my quest to live Christ.
I hope that is
sufficient for you to see
that
the message of Jesus through St. Paul and St. Matthew
is that just following the Law is not
living Christ.
It’s like being
a thermometer rising or falling
to just the letter of the Law.
A thermostat has
to sense the conditions at hand
and, if those conditions are not the
desired ones,
then the thermostat must
activate a process
to restore the
desired conditions.
Going beyond the
Law to act out of love for others is living Christ.
That is always where
we want to be.
Last week Fr.
Maher introduced the United Catholic Movement,
a pilot process to bring back to the
faith those Catholics
who have drifted away from
it.
Some have
drifted to other faiths;
Others have drifted completely away
from God.
Many have just
blended in with and reacted to
the conditions around them.
We cannot be
like the thermometer and just recognize the problem,
cite the statistics, wring our hands and
say that it is a shame.
We need to be
like the thermostat,
recognize that the conditions are not
those we want
and that we must work to
bring the fallen-away Catholics
back to the faith.
And how we do
that, what is the work we must do?
It is all about
our living Christ, and thus being Christ for them,
loving them and bringing Christ to
them.
Based on “Before You
Are Life and Death” a homily by Walter J. Burghardt S.J. In Speak the Word with Boldness, Paulist
Press, Mahwa, NJ 1994 pp 65-70 See also
previous Homily from 2014 by J. Franzen
