Homilía de Fr. Nelson Medina, O.P.

Joy is far more than life decoration; and more than once it is just something you need to move forward.

Homilía o173001b, predicada en 20140730, con 5 min. y 48 seg.

Transcripción:

Dear friends, today is a good day to reflect upon Christian joy. Joy is not simply a decoration in Christian life. It is not, so to speak, the cherry on the ice cream. We need joy, we need joy to move forward. We need joy to fight against the many idols of this world. We need joy to stand our ground when we are rebuked or when we are, as we said in the responsorial Psalm, the Day of Distress.

What is the nature of Christian joy? It is not something that you create by yourself. It is not just convincing yourself or trying to make yourself believe something. It is not something in your brain. In this sense, it is very different from the very proposals, the many proposals that we receive nowadays from different branches and sorts of spiritualities, concretely, eastern spiritualities that try to encircle yourself in your brain and just to make some silence, and then you get some joy. It is not something that you create, the gospel is very clear.

It is something that you find on the outside, something that you find, like the treasure that is not in you, but is close to you. It is like the pearl that you find somewhere in the market, but not certainly in yourself. And this is important because this means that we need some kind of openness, some capacity of listening to, some capacity of receiving something, and that what we receive is exactly the good news, the Word of God, the presence of Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are receiving something, we are finding something, and then, because of this discovery, because of this receiving, because of receiving the gift, then we become joyful.

And that joyful is the natural response when we receive a beautiful gift, a precious gift. So, we find something, we receive the good news, we receive Christ and the gospel. We receive the many, many gifts that the church communicates with each one of us, and then we become joyful. And the fact that we feel that we have been preferred, the fact that we feel this is great for me becomes the strength, becomes the power becomes the fuel, so that we can move forward in the many fights and the many difficulties of life.

This was the case of prophet Jeremiah, he was in the midst of a terrible fight, because preaching the Word of God had pushed him into trouble. The reason was that he had to denounce sins and this is clearly something that people are not ready to admit. So, he was preaching about sins, and he was preaching about misbehaviour of the people. And of course, the response was rejecting him. You know, the story of killing the messenger, this is the usual response of many people, killing the messenger. I do not want to hear of my problem. So, you are a curse for me.

That was what happened to prophet Jeremiah. But the Lord answered him: If you bring forth the precious without the vile, you shall be my mouthpiece. So, let us ask the Lord in this mass that we have eyes and ears to appreciate what we are receiving every day. Today, for example, we are receiving this precious gift of this Word of God. And most of all, we are receiving Christ Himself and the Holy Eucharist, we are receiving the treasure of treasures.

As we receive Christ, as we become so, so rich in so many ways, we are ready to stand our ground with kindness, of course, with serenity. But we are ready to stand our ground and to move forward, giving testimony of the beauty and the power of the gospel. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit.

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