Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time September 7, 2003 Isaiah 35:4-7a James 2:1-5 Mark 7:31-37	Listen to Audio

Which is more important, what you want or what God wants?

If you agree with me that what God wants is more important than what we want, then the most important thing that we can do in life is to seek God’s will. If you agree that what God wants is more important, then we have to be at least a bit mistrustful of what we want, what we think is important. We have to at least try to be careful that our thoughts and our plans, our desires and our decisions do not contradict what God wants. We have to put aside the selfishness and stubbornness that blind us to anything but our own righteousness and our own way. In a word, we have to learn hard lessons of submission.

But when we embark on the journey to discover what God’s will is for us, how do we navigate? How do we discover, with some assurance, just what God wants? Sure, there are a lot of people who are ready and eager to inform and enlighten us, sometimes with loud and strident voices, what they think God’s will is, and what we should do about it. But Christian experience throughout the centuries tells us that often God is better found in the whisper of the gentle breeze than in storm and fury.

It’s easy to say, well, the Bible is the Word of God – you find God’s will there; just read it and follow it. But if you look seriously at the inspired collection of books we call the Bible, you find that it’s hard to distill a sure and certain direction from the huge and complex collection – often things in the Bible seem confusing and even contradictory.

We have in our readings today a few hints on how to seek the will and the way of God. The first reading, for example, begins: “Say to those whose hearts are frightened: be strong, fear not.” One of the most often repeated commands in the entire Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, is “Fear not. Don’t be afraid.” Is that all there is to it? No, but it is the necessary beginning. We cannot take even the first step towards discovering God’s loving will for us if we are bound up by fear. And yet our fears run deep and strong, don’t they? “Don’t be afraid” is easier said than done. But we are not told to ignore, or deny, or run away from our fears. The only way we can obey this command is by facing our fears, and the very real reasons why we are afraid, and placing them into the Lord’s hands, asking him for the gift to be able to trust that he will remove our fears, and to help us to face with confidence the sources of our fears.

When we can place our fears into the Lord’s hands for healing, we become like the man who could neither hear nor speak in the Gospel reading. Jesus took him by the hand away from the crowd, into a place of quiet and solitude, and touched deeply the parts of him that needed healing.

That’s what he will do for us, if we let him. He will heal everything in us that is not of him, the roots of our fears that keep him at a distance from us, the barriers that make us deaf to his word, blind to his will, and speechless in speaking his truth.

To enable us to discover the barriers to the love of God in our lives, to let God remove them, and to seek and find his will for us – that’s the purpose of a retreat. By now you have probably heard or read about the opportunity for a “Retreat for Everyday Life,” that is offered in the parish. There’s more information about it in my “Pastor’s Desk” column in the bulletin and on our parish website.

It doesn’t cost anything or involve traveling anywhere or going to meetings, although it could be helpful to form your own small groups, or even to share your experience of the graces of the retreat with others by email. There are instructions about how to do this in the retreat guides. We realize also that not everybody is comfortable with computers, and so printed guides will also be available, beginning next week.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are his own notes of how he experienced the will of God in his life, and sought to follow it. Based on the Spiritual Exercises, this retreat can be a good guide to help us explore the question we considered at the beginning of this homily, “How do I discover what God wants for me in my life?”

© Thomas Welbers 2003