Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and this is Episode 35 of Season 7 for the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time  - November 10, 2024. Our Gospel reading is from Mark Chapter 12, verses 38-44. 

In the course of his teaching, Jesus said to the crowds, "Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation."

He sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.

A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, "Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.  For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood."

The Gospel of the Lord 

“Practicing God's Unconditional Love,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut

St. Oscar Romero reminds us of Simeon's prophecy that Jesus will be a contradiction; a contradiction. St. Oscar Romero further reminds us that Jesus is also a stumbling block; a stumbling block, and the ruin of many because the selfishness and sinfulness and pride of many will reject him.  

Jesus is a contradiction, a stumbling block, and the ruin of many. 

As we listen to those descriptives of Jesus, and then we use other ones with which we are perhaps even more familiar - Savior, Son of God, Love Incarnate - they sound a bit more direct, pointed, and even harsh. Why do you suppose Sacred Scripture speaks of Jesus in those terms? What sets Jesus up to be that in the first place?  

Well, I think it has something to do with love: unconditional love. When you think about it, God's full essence is unconditional love. Jesus Christ is God, the embodiment of that love. And so, when we put the context of Jesus Christ within that framework, we begin to get an idea of where this might be going. 

Love is basically a choice, a full commitment to work on behalf of the wellbeing of someone other than myself. It is a total self gift when God loves. 

We're going into the sacred time of Advent and Christmas very soon, and we're going to be hearing that passage that God gave us his only begotten son. God gave. God gives. We never hear of God taking back. Whereas, when you and I love, it's considered more of a give and take. I love you, but you have to love me back in return. We have this more relational aspect of love. Whereas God gives himself totally over and over again and doesn't take. 

Another example of this is Jesus hanging on the cross moments before he dies, that famous quote: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." A total act of self-surrender, of love, given over to those who rejected him the most and hung him upon a cross to die.  

God's unconditional love pushes us to the limits. So, as Christians, as children of God born in his image and likeness, we are called to then like God, to love like God in every sense of that word. And so when we're pushed to the limit, can it be that even you and I, as people of faith, can see Christ as a contradiction, as a stumbling block and a ruin? Think about it a bit. Jesus tells us to love our enemies. So that means if someone wants to hurt us, we have to love them. We have to love them. Jesus tells us if someone strikes you on the left cheek, offer them the right one as well and offer no resistance to injury. That’s unconditional love. You see, God's love is not like a faucet. You don’t turn it on and off. It flows always and everywhere. And if we are to love like God, then we have to love unconditionally and all the time. Jesus reminds us you are managers and stewards, not owners. Therefore, be mindful of how you use the world's goods. 

You see, when we hear the Gospel in those terms and we put it into those practical situations, we feel ourselves becoming a bit uneasy because that unconditional love is really calling us to  surrender to God's love, to love as God loves himself, and then to trust  that somehow it's gonna work out in the end; that total surrender of trust.  

You see, the widow in today's Gospel gave unconditionally. She didn’t split it. She didn't keep a coin for herself and then put one in the treasury. The coins are symbolic of her whole being, our whole being. It's not about how much we contribute. It's how much we invest ourselves in this Gospel message. How much do we truly, truly want to be and act like God and live as God lives, not as the world does? 

Love your enemies. Jesus says, don't invite to the table those people who are like you, who are similar to you, who think like you, who behave like you. Invite the stranger. Invite the one with whom you disagree. Invite the one who is different. Those are the folks with which you are being asked to dine. 

The election is over. Many have breathed a sigh of relief that it’s simply just done because the tension in the air over the last several months has been kind of tight. One question you never asked was, who are you going to vote for? How do we become friends again, across those tables of disagreement? Already, I've heard folks mention to me more than one and several, "I'm dreading Thanksgiving dinner."  

As we consider that, and as we look at that when we look at ourselves, you know, we're faithful Christians, and there's a lot of difficult things faithful Christians have to do in their life because we have to take this Gospel message and bring it outside the doors of this church, and live it in a world where, yes, it is a contradiction. It's a voice that's so different than what we hear out there. And so it's difficult. And one of the hardest things we have to do as Christians is vote. It's difficult to vote. And why? You know? It's almost like that challenge game where you're trying to take a round peg and put it into a square hole. No matter how hard you try to do that, it doesn't fit right. Right? And so we have to agonize in our consciences and make the best choice possible for however, we process that within ourselves. But in the end, we have to realize something: God's ways are not our ways, and that's another fact of the Gospel. There's never gonna be a happy wedding between our political philosophy and the Gospel. It's always gonna be living in tension. 

If we gave the task of creating a world's political system over to God, and ask him to design how we live our life together, I would venture to say that the end product wouldn't look like a Republican. It wouldn’t look like a Democrat. It wouldn't look like an independent or anything else that we have in our current political system throughout the world because it would be a philosophy based on the Beatitudes. You know, that beautiful message that Jesus preached about how God wants to see the world work. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the lowly. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. All of those things. That would be God's way of looking at the world. And so, one thing that's true across the boards, no matter how we feel about things, is that we're living in an age where we have some really big issues facing us, and they're real everyday issues, and they're not going away. They're here. And so, if you look at saints and if you look at the body of believers and how they solved problems, they realized that the solutions to things don't come from the worldly design. 

The true solution for things comes from the Gospel, and it's taking the virtue of goodness and seeing that as the eradication of evil. So, goodness is the only thing that can conquer evil. And love is the only thing that can conquer hate, not violence, love. That's what we believe in. That's what the Gospel calls us to: to bring goodness where there is evil, and love where there is hate. And if we can invest ourselves in that message, truly invest ourselves in that message, and give God the credit that he hasn't abandoned us, that he's still working with us, that he's still on our side, that somehow we will find our way through what now appears to be darkness. And maybe those difficult conversations that we are fearing around some of our tables can be tempered with a little twist or change to maybe try to understand why those who differ from us believe what they do, and maybe we could have conversations of how we can find our path to healing rather than to discord. In doing those little things, we begin to sow those seeds of goodness, and of love, which bring us more in line with the kingdom of God and not the kingdom of this world. 

Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.