My friends, often, I speak and write to you, through my weekly homilies about how, as Jesus’ followers, we must react more and more from our hearts, and less and less from our heads.  Last week I suggested that perhaps we “shouldn’t over-think” our response to the world in our attempts to follow our brother Jesus. 

   Our prophets in today’s Scriptures; Sirach, in the 1^st reading, the writer of Psalm 103, Paul, in the 2^nd reading, and Jesus, in the gospel, give us some good clues on how to do this:  Sirach seems to combine the thoughts of all in repeating the phrase heard so much throughout the Scriptures, “treat others as you want to be treated.”  He goes on by saying that “wrath and anger” are the ways of hate—we should instead, “show mercy and forgive others.” 

   The psalmist tells us of our God, who is “tender and compassionate, slow to anger and most loving,” again indicating how we are to respond in our world.  Jesus fine-tunes this point, in the well-known story of the compassionate ruler who was, “moved with pity” toward the official who owed him a great deal.  We could say that this ruler didn’t “over-think” his response, but acted from his heart, instead of his head. 

   Looking to Paul’s message to the Romans where he speaks in a more ethereal way about Jesus, as the Christ, we must remember that Paul never knew Jesus, the man, but only the spiritual figure that came to him one fateful day in the image of a “blinding light.”  In today’s reading then, Paul simply says that “Christ reigns” [over all in creation].

   To help us more fully understand Paul’s meaning, Father Richard Rohr says it like this: [The] “Christ mystery,” simply put, means that God is in every thing that is created—notice that the two words, “every” and “thing” are used, as opposed to one word, “everything,” to be very clear that every-single-person, and thing in creation is infused/filled with God.  Imagine our world, Father Rohr suggests, if we truly believed this idea, and treated others and our world accordingly—that each, and all are, filled with God! 

   I am presently working my way through Tracy Kidder’s new book, as of this year, entitled, Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission To Bring Healing To Homeless People.  This book begins 30 years prior as Dr. Jim is finishing his medical school residency at Harvard and has been selected for a prestigious fellowship working in the field of oncology. In the midst of all this, he has also been asked to give one year toward setting up a program to care for the medical needs of Boston’s homeless population.

   Now as you may have already guessed, one year turns into 30 as Jim finds that he can’t leave this ministry because of the magnitude of need that he discovers there.  Over the years, more doctors and nurse practitioners have come to join this team that had originally begun with registered nurses doing what they were able to do at the time. 

   For Dr. Jim and those who would follow, it was not something that they either, could “over-think”—it was about, “listening from the heart.”  And additionally, not to sugarcoat this, not everyone could do this work—many couldn’t get past the smells, the raw-look of disease, and lack of care over the years of these homeless (rough sleepers) individuals, to get to the stories of how they had come to such an end. And it is worth mentioning that, unless you were willing to listen to their stories, these homeless folks didn’t really want anything else you had to offer. 

   Thankfully, for many of them, Jim was able and willing, and had the patience to find the “human being” disguised beneath the filth and lack of care.  Thus, this became his life-long journey. 

   So, for those of us who don’t feel “called” likewise to this ministry, are we let, “off the hook?” No, we are not!  In a country as great as ours is, can any of us be okay that thousands upon thousands are living on the streets of our cities across this nation?  I don’t think so.  It seems that this may be one of those “problems” that too many have “over-thought.”

   There is a good deal of false theology out there in our Catholic world about “Jesus coming to save us from our sins,” and because of that, “we should be worshipping him all our days.”  This is very black and white theology. 

   Fr. Rohr speaks of the Incarnation as a trilogy of action:  First action, “creation of all of life, second action, Jesus’ entry into humanity [showing us, in fact, how to be human], and the third action is on-going to the present and beyond, of God, as “Christ” being “infused” into all people and our beautiful world of life.  So, in this, I think we can see that we need to be beyond “denominations,” one over another.

   Rohr says, “this beautiful notion, of the Christ –infusing all of creation was halted” in the 3^rd Century with the “romanization” of the Church, which for all intents and purposes, became more about law (over-thinking the matter) than about love.

   Rohr continues, we need to get back to the church that Jesus prayed for in his priestly prayer the night before he died—a church where, “all would be one.”  And again, as you all know, this is the very reason why our community of believers, 15 years old now, our piece of the Body of Christ is named, “All Are One” where all are welcome at our table, and where we attempt to be accepting of every one. Richard Rohr would say, “Take your Christian head off, shake it wildly, and put it back on!”

   All that brings us back to our universal calling as followers of Jesus, our brother, who in his living, dying, and rising, became, “the Christ”—the face of God big enough to include every-one-and piece of creation. Our walk with Jesus calls each of us to find a way to make life better and more just for every one—we can’t get caught up and distracted by surface religiosity which seems to be the case of one group of the two opposing factions within our beloved Church today. Let us each, and all, pray today for the strength to “get out of our comfortable boxes,” “walk on those sometimes-scary waters,” and again, as Father Rohr says, “shake our Christian heads wildly” and get on with the work of our brother, Jesus.  Amen? Amen!