THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Her Doctrine and Morals Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost 11 September 2011

The Sunday Sermon

Dear Friends,

We are all the recipients of God’s goodness and mercy. If we will only honestly consider our lives we will see that we have been given very much. Our very existence speaks volumes of God’s love for us. He has thought of us from all eternity; He has brought us into existence; He has redeemed us with His own precious Blood; He showers us with countless blessings every day. Yet, more often than not we are very ungrateful and turn out more like the other nine lepers rather than the one leper that returned to give thanks to God.

Our human and social mores are shocked and repulsed by ingratitude, but when it comes to God and our souls it appears more acceptable. Our materialistic world and society leads us to think that all the good things that we receive are somehow not gifts to us but rather payments or dues that are deserved or earned by us. We act as if we have some right of entitlement and that God is somehow in debt to us.

Many of us pray only as spoiled children that act as if God were our servant to do our bidding and follow our wills. When God does not correspond with our wills we then begin to doubt His existence and turn away from Him. When He sends or allows crosses or burdens to weigh upon us we accuse Him of injustice with the thought that we have done nothing to deserve this.

We pretend to acknowledge God as God but we act and think more along the lines that we are god and God is our creature and servant. Our actions suggest that He exists only for us; rather than that we exist only for Him.

We act as if we have been given a heart but to wish, and a tongue but to ask. There is so much more for the heart and tongue if we would only love. Let us focus today upon the virtue of gratitude and thanksgiving. If we truly love then our hearts and tongues are constantly overflowing with sentiments of thanksgiving. Love brings our attention and focus upon the maker and giver of all good things. Even in the most trying of circumstances there is always something for us to be grateful for, and the loving heart readily sees these things and is brought to these sentiments of gratitude and an ever increasing love.

God’s presence and goodness are always with us. Even in the midst of sinning God is still present and showering us with His gifts. It is His grace that causes the pangs of conscience, or the disgust that follows the fruition of our abuses or over-indulgences. The very pain and discomfort we experience in our sins is a tremendous gift from God that we should always welcome and be most appreciative for. God does not wish or seek our damnation but rather our eternal happiness with Him in heaven.

God does want us to ask Him for all that we need and desire. He wishes that we would come to Him continually, as we pray in the Our Father, for our daily bread. He also desires for us to be gracious and grateful in acknowledging His goodness and His gifts. Thanksgiving and adoration are also reasons for prayer, we must be careful not to confine our prayers to only those of petition. With every prayer of petition we should also join the prayer of thanksgiving. We must thank God for the things that He has given us and for the things that he has refused us -- realizing through love that He gives and refuses always for our own good. His desire is our ultimate happiness in heaven. When we receive a good thing from God it is relatively easy to be grateful, but the true test of our love and gratitude is when we are able to be thankful for the crosses and difficulties that we are given or are grateful for the petitions that we are denied. We should be most grateful because God knows what is for our own good and He gives graces in both answering our desires and in refusing them.

In all occasions and times of our lives we should imitate the one leper out of the ten and always return to give thanks and praise to God.