The Lord be with you and with your spirit.
Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you,
O Lord.
When some were talking about the temple,
Remarking how it was adorned with fine stonework and votive offerings,
Jesus said,
All these things you are staring at now,
The time will come when not a single stone will be left on another,
Everything will be destroyed.
And they put to him this question,
Master,
They said,
When will this happen then?
And what sign will there be that this is about to take place?
Take care not to be deceived,
He said,
Because many will come using my name and saying,
I am he,
And the time is near at hand,
Refuse to join them.
And when you hear of wars and revolutions,
Do not be afraid,
Do not be frightened,
For this is something that must happen,
But the end is not so soon.
Then he said to them,
Nation will fight against nation and kingdom against kingdom.
There will be great earthquakes and plagues and famines here and there.
There will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.
But before all this happens,
Men will seize you and persecute you.
They will hand you over to the synagogues and to imprisonment and bring you before kings and governors because of my name.
And that will be your opportunity to bear witness.
Keep this carefully in mind.
You are not to prepare your defense because I myself shall give you an eloquence and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to resist or contradict.
You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers,
Relations and friends,
And some of you will be put to death.
You will be hated by all men on account of my name,
But not a hair of your head will be lost.
Your endurance will win you your lives.
Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you,
Lord Jesus Christ.
I'm a bit confused now.
I was very happy saying the glory,
Our glory to God in the highest because we talk about God being a God of peace,
God being a God of love.
And here Jesus comes and does it again,
Completely contradicting what we think we believe in God.
How dare God do this?
How is it that God allows us to be persecuted?
How is it that there is war in this world,
That there is famine,
Nation fighting against nation and kingdom fighting against kingdom?
We see that happening right now.
We see that war in the Ukraine and strife all over the world.
So then where is God in all of this?
How dare a priest then come and say glory to God in the highest?
How dare a priest?
I think the answer is not a very easy one.
And we had a discussion about that earlier on in a live session on InsideTimer on exactly this.
God is supposed to be this God of love.
And yet we go through strife.
We go through pain.
We go through disease.
We go through so many bad things.
How is God then a God of love?
Jesus says you will be hated by all men on account of my name.
We see that.
We experience how we try and be good people.
We try and live our lives as as upstanding community members,
As as good Christians,
As good human beings.
And because of that,
We are ridiculed.
Because of that,
People take advantage of us.
Where is God?
Today we celebrate the 33rd Sunday of the year in ordinary time.
And a very interesting title for today,
The triumph of God.
The day is coming when all that is evil will be brought to nothing.
Already Christ has given us the strength to come to overcome evil.
We receive it in the Eucharist.
Something that we didn't read is the entrance antiphon.
And this,
This is where the answer lies.
Where is God?
And why doesn't God not see our pain?
The Lord says,
My plans for you are peace and not disaster.
When you call to me,
I will listen to you and I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.
Back to the place from which I exiled you.
My plan for you,
My plans for you are peace and not disaster.
So then where is God?
God is right there with us,
Experiencing every single thing that we are experiencing.
We believe that we have received the Holy Spirit,
That we have the Spirit inside of us and that that Spirit resides in every single human being on this planet.
So God is experiencing everything with every single human being on this planet,
Which means we are not alone.
God is there in every moment that we experience.
And more so,
I know it seems like a beautiful cop out.
You know,
It's nice to stand here and have all these beautiful sayings and say,
Believe,
Be strong.
Things will get better.
Things might not get better.
We might just die before we have been delivered from the pain that we are going through.
We might die from the pain.
But as Christians,
We believe that there is a reason.
Maybe the pain was cleansing.
Maybe the death that we experienced from the pain,
If we had survived it,
Would have been so much worse.
And we don't know and we won't know until that moment that we become like God.
And that's not today and that's not in this lifetime.
That is only after we pass,
After the veil of separation is torn and we will see and we will experience that all the things that we are going through now are just things that this expression,
This part of us that has forgotten that we are part of God is going through.
I know it doesn't make things better.
It doesn't necessarily lift the pain.
It doesn't lift the anguish,
The angst that we are going through.
But for me,
It gives me hope.
I don't feel so alone knowing that God is right here,
Seeing through my eyes,
Feeling what I am feeling and that there is a plan.
I believe that.
And I hope that one day we can maybe get together.
I hope they have tea and coffee in heaven and that we can have high tea with Jesus and we can have a giggle over what thoughts we had and how we got so caught up in things that don't truly matter while we were living a life that matters.
Amen.
