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 36 of Season 7 for the Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time  - November 17, 2024. Our Gospel reading is from Mark Chapter 13, verses 24-32. 

Jesus said to his disciples: "In those days after that tribulation the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. “ And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the clouds’ with great power and glory, and then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky. "Learn a lesson from the fig tree. 

When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that summer is near.  In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that he is near, at the gates.  Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. "But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

The Gospel of the Lord 

“Seasons of Faith, Hope, and Love,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut

I'd like to use the top of our prayer basket today to visualize today's homily. The church looks at the liturgical year almost like a circle.  Now, why this is important is because the cool thing about a circle is that wherever you put a point, that point is the beginning of the circle, but it's also the end of the circle. And circles keep moving around and around and around. So, where they start, they also end and they begin again.  

So the church begins its church year with Advent, which is going to happen in two short weeks. And in the season of Advent, the church says, "Let's pay attention. Let's watch, and let's wait because something is happening that's pretty special." 

So, as the church begins to celebrate these moments in time, it begins with the season of Advent. Then, after the season of Advent, we move right into Christmas, which marks the incarnation of God in Christ. Then, the church year begins to move through ordinary time. Then we go into Lent, then to Easter, then ordinary time again, and then continues to come around until we find ourselves here, today, looking toward that second coming, looking toward the end, and wondering, what is this all about?  

Well, what's interesting here is that when God creates us, when God creates anything, God puts himself into what he creates.  So, what that means is that God, being total unconditional love, puts that love into every one of his artistic creations, into you, into me, into everyone, so that we become made in the image of God. Therefore, at our center is love, the perfect love of God. And as we look at each other, we're all very different. And what's kind of marvelous about this is that when love expresses itself, it's always different. It's never the same. Even the way you love your mother or your father, they're different. They’re both deep, and they're both very special, but they're different. So when love gets expressed, it always gets expressed in a different way. And so, as we look at each other, we're all very different expressions of God’s love. So what God did in Jesus, God does in us. He places a part of himself in us.

And so as we go through this liturgical year, as we go through all of these cycles, we're not only learning things about God, but we're also learning things about ourselves, and our relationships with one another. So the church says, if you want to know who you are, this  is where you find out. This is where you find out what God is doing in you and how you find your way to one another. 

And so the church, as we gather now, says that God came in time when he became Jesus, but he's also gonna come again. And we hear these stories of the second coming of Christ, when Jesus will reign as king over the universe, which is the feast we celebrate next weekend and everything will be one in Christ, everything will be one in Christ and the world as we know it passes away. 

Now that can sound kind of scary as we listen to those stories being told. And it can sound very intimidating, but it really isn't if we listen to the story that is being told in our liturgical year and what God has done in history and what it's saying about us. Let me give you an idea and an image. 

Every one of us has started in our mother's wombs, and if he can take a child growing in its mother's womb and give that child an adult brain and ask that baby to reflect on its experience, I have a feeling that child is going to tell us something like this: that every day is a new adventure, always growing, always becoming. That it's safe and feels very warm, feels very content, and very secure. It wants for nothing.  All of its needs are met, and it's very happy in this place that he is calling home. Off in the distance that child may hear a voice, but he doesn't know quite yet from where a voice comes. He may even experience a gentle touch but doesn't really yet know the art of touching.  

Living and moving and growing and being, it's very happy where it is, and with no desire to leave. Shortly, life begins to change, and that young child begins to move and finds himself being removed and thrust from that very safe and warm place out into a world that is much colder and not as warm, a world that is a bit scary and intimidating for sure. Not wanting to leave its place it called home, it finds itself in a different land. But after living and growing and learning and becoming and understanding the art of love and learning the miracle of touch and the gentleness of a voice, over time, it learns to call this place home, and it surrounds itself with people who love and ways that that person can lend love in return. And finding a home here, it has no desire to leave, yet off in the distance, it hears a God saying, “There is more. There's life beyond this. I'm not finished with you yet.” But yet, in this very secure place, it doesn't really know what that is all about, the particulars of that new home to which they know one day they will be called. 

But then, one day, without wanting it and without willing it, they find themselves asked to leave this other place they learn to call home.  And as they look back and they look forward, they realize that they must go into yet another foreign land to discover something new. And that really is the second coming of Christ. It's really that time when God takes what he has started in us, the master artist, and he finishes his work. He takes that love that has been placed in us and found in the image and the body we now live in and refashions it and remakes it in a way that is eternal, never to be destroyed, a world filled with wonderful surprise. 

And so if we listen to what God is saying in the liturgical year of the church if we listen to the seasons and the cycles and the readings and the lessons, then we will be developing a longing and a hope not to end this life, but to complete it. And then, as we hear those stories of Jesus coming again, they will not fill us with fear and trepidation, but they will fill us with longing and expectation and love and joy, and hope. We will change the way we prioritize our life, what we see as important, the choices we make, and how we view ourselves. 

So over this period of time, the church asked us to hover in this very small piece of our liturgical year for a while, to look backward at what God did in Jesus Christ, to look forward to what God is going to do at the end of time, and to watch and to wait, and to wake ourselves out of our sleepwalking, which the demands and all of the particulars of life can easily cause us to do. And to be awake and vigilant so that when that day comes, we can eagerly be ready to go home and have that master artist finish what he did when he first began many years before. 

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.