Fr Ed Homily 11-20-20

You Are What You ____?

John is told to take the small scroll and eat it. It will be sweet in his mouth but turn sour in his stomach. Ezekiel was given the same instruction centuries before this. For Ezekiel, he was to teach the people that each person is responsible and accountable for their actions. John is to continue teaching the good news of Jesus and salvation for us. First, they had to take what God wanted them to know, eat it, make it become who they are, before they could go out into the world to share with others.

What God gave them was good. What we learn from the Bible is good. What we learn when we study our faith is good. But sometimes when something is good for us it does not always taste good. Just remember a time you had to take medicine as a child. For that matter, even some of the medicine we take as adults does not taste all that good. But we know it is good for us and will make us better.

But who we are is not just what we eat. It is what we see and hear. Think for a minute, all those news casts. Are you absorbing the anger, the bitterness, the animosity? Are you becoming what you are seeing and hearing? Is all that noise making you who you are today? Or are you better than that? I think so. To be the person God wants us to be means sometimes we have to turn off the things that are telling us how to be better, how to be smarter, how to smell better, how to be taller, how to look better, and so on. That is not who we are. Take the Word of God into your heart, let it become bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh. Be who God made you to be.

May the Lord bless you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen