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We are world Christians at EMHMusicPlus, Inc. and we want each of you to know that a relationship with God is not based on what we can do;  We don't tell people about Christ because we are "worthy."  We share our relationship [with Him] because He is worth talking about.   "All have sinned and fall short..." (Romans 3:23)  World Christianity is not based on us at all; it is based only on what God has done. 

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     Just Some Important Thoughts

 Don’t Give Up  by Elisa Morelli-Hobbs

 (Isaiah 40:28-29; 30-31)  Don’t give up.  Having done everything to stand God will make you stand. 

He was bruised for our transgressions.  (Are we His hands and His feet?)  Do we allow the full OUT-WORKING of what God has done in us?  Or do we stand in the shadows watching what others "do in the kingdom" yet we don't participate?  We shy away from the "hard things" why?  Because of grief?  Because "Life isn't fair?"  Or "Why me?"  These are universal questions asked by EVERYONE around the globe.  Welcome to the human condition. 

Sometimes our lives are better than others, but every person's life is laced with disappointment and grief: a divorce, a loss of a spouse, the LACK of having a spouse, the loss of a job, the LACK of having a job.  The list goes on and on. To "him" who has much, much will be required.  How will we "grieve with those that grieve" if we have never allowed the full extent of that grief to touch our lives?  But think about it:  if we allow the process of grief to not only "touch" our lives but to utterly consume us, THEN AND ONLY THEN HAVE WE ENTERED INTO THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. 

Are all these losses for a higher purpose?  Can we [who call ourselves Christians] find hope?   If the answer is "yes," then we have gone beyond the daily grind and we definitely have something REAL AND CONCRETE to offer people. 

 Prayer: Lord, help me to know that You, God, are a God of second chances, and that I am one of Your chosen people.  Lord Jesus, Your life dwells in me.  Make my life like Jesus’:  a living sacrifice for all who need His love.  And make me whole again;  put a guard over my heart. 

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(The following is a Sermon by Deacon Michael Wesley on "what our mission should be as believers in Jesus Christ")

    A story about St. Francis of Assisi tells that shortly after his conversion he was praying at a crucifix in front of an old, run down church called San Damiano’s.  While he was praying, he heard Jesus speak to him three times from the crucifix saying, “Go, Francis, and repair my Church, which, as you see, is falling into ruin."  Francis assumed that the command was to make structural repairs to the church that he was praying in.  He then begged people for materials that he would need. Not only did he repair San Damiano’s church but several other run down churches in the area as well.  Some time later Francis realized that the “Church” that Jesus was talking about wasn’t the worn down church buildings to repair the whole Church.  Francis had assumed that the call God was giving him was for something very small when in fact what God was calling him to was for something very great.

    The reason I’m telling you this story about St. Francis of Assisi is because anyone who has been baptized has been called by God.  And anyone who has been baptized has been given the gifts and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to serve God in a very big way.  The question, though, is:  what exactly is this service - this work or this ministry - that God has called us to participate in?  Someone might answer this by saying “Well, we go to Mass on Sundays and Holy days of obligation.  What more does God want from us?”  Another person might say, “We receive sacraments;  that’s what it means to be a Catholic.”  And still someone else might say, “We try to live good, holy and moral lives.”  While these are all good answers they are only a very small part of what God’s call to us is. We often see God’s mission for us, as St. Francis did, as being something very small; whereas God sees His mission for us as being something enormously large and important. But if it’s more than going to Mass on Sunday and receiving the sacraments, then what exactly is our mission?  By virtue of our baptism each one of us has been called, (like Isaiah, St. Francis and St. John the Baptist) to be a prophet of God.  So, what does a prophet do?  

    Some people think that the job of a prophet is to foretell the future.  In today’s first reading we hear from "the prophet Isaiah."  Let me give you some historical perspective: both the nations of Israel and Judah had been defeated by foreign powers and its people were scattered to different places in the known world.  This is tragic because at one time they were two of the great and powerful nations; now they weren’t a people at all. Now they were either slaves or had become a part of other cultures. Through the prophet Isaiah God was telling His people not to lose hope because not only was God going to unite them again as a people, but He was going to do a tremendous work through them.   We know now that this tremendous work that God was going to do through them was the birth of  Jesus Christ.  Jesus was born some 500 years after Isaiah.  We tend to think that Isaiah was predicting the future, but in reality all Isaiah was doing was calling the people forth to give up their discouragement and to place their hope in God, because God was going to do a work among them that would astound them. 

    In today’s Gospel we hear from another prophet who Jesus said was "the greatest of all prophets:" John the Baptist.  John was different from Isaiah in that, instead of calling people to look ahead at something that God was going to do, he called the people to look around them at what God was doing right then.  Essentially he was saying, “Hey, people, open your eyes! The Messiah whom we have been waiting for is right here among us!  He is the one who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and give us the hope that we’re longing for.  THAT is what our prophetic call is as well.  Jesus, before He ascended into heaven, said, “And behold, I am with you always to the end of time.” Jesus is still present to us and we can experience His presence through the Holy Spirit who lives within each of our hearts.  And our prophetic mission is to proclaim to the world that Jesus is still alive!  He is present in the world today and he will still meet our needs when we cry out to him.

       The  prophetic message that we have been called to bring to the world is that there is hope in Jesus Christ.  One way we can do this is simply by telling people just how much Jesus has changed our lives.   St. Paul tells us “Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation.”  All we need to do is tell people how Jesus has changed our lives and this will plant seeds of faith that God can change their lives as well. A second way can practice our prophetic ministry is through our actions; just being who we are and allowing Jesus to minister to people through us.  Not too long ago, for instance, Fr. Ron Carrillo, who was the pastor here a couple of years ago, was telling me a story about how he had spent some time recuperating at a hospital in California.  During the time he was there, he didn’t wear any of his clerical garb and no one had any idea that he was a priest.  Just before he finished his stay in the hospital one of the nurses said to him, “I don’t know what you do for a living but during the time that you’ve been here, you’ve brought new life to everyone in this ward.”  It wasn’t Fr. Ron who was doing this but in a prophetic way, he was allowing Jesus to bring hope to those people through him.  A third way that we can prophetically proclaim Jesus’ presence is by praying for people.  This is a way that we can bring Jesus to those we don’t often come in contact with, and to those who really don’t want anything to do with Jesus.

    In 1992 there was a retreat in Monterey, Mexico, where over 1700 priests and about 700 bishops had gathered together.  One of the talks at the retreat was on the need for prophecy in the Church.  After the talks were over one of the priests approached the speaker and said, “Bendigame, Padre,  quiero ser profeta de Dios!” “Bless me, Father; I want to be a prophet of God!”  That should be our prayer to God everyday:  “Bless me, Father; I want to be your prophet.”  And the prophetic message that we’ve been called to share with a world that struggles to find hope, is that there is hope in Jesus Christ.

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(The following is a Sermon by Deacon Wesley on “Joy isn’t the absence of suffering; joy is the presence of God.”)

     It seems like whenever we’re going through some trial, suffering, or some misfortune in life, there’s always someone who will come up and tell us that instead of looking at the bad things in life we should be counting our blessings and thanking God for these instead.   Have you ever encountered someone like that?  But you know, while at times this is a little easier said than done, it’s actually very good advice.

     This is what Naaman discovered in the first reading from the Second Book of Kings.  Naaman was a highly respected military leader in the Kingdom of Aram.  Now, being Aramean, Naaman would not have been familiar with the workings of the God of Israel since he had his own gods that he worshipped.  In any case, the fact that he was held in such high esteem by his people was very little comfort for him because he suffered tremendously from the disease of leprosy.  Now at the time, getting leprosy was seen as being the worse thing that could possible happen to someone.  Not only was there the physical suffering that came with leprosy but there was also the social stigma that came with it; no one wanted to be around you because no one wanted to get it from you; you would be shunned by society. 

     Anyway, in one of the raids that Aram had led on Israel - possibly one that Naaman had previously led - a young Jewish girl had been captured who became the servant of Naaman’s wife.  Now this young girl could’ve really been ticked off at Naaman, his wife, the Aramean people, and at God for her current situation.  She had been taken away from her family, her friends and made a servant in this foreign land.  This probably was not what she had planned for her life.  And yet her attitude seem to be one of total surrender to God.  If it was God’s will for her to be a servant girl, what concern was that of hers?

     So after Naaman had become infected with the leprosy, the servant girl came to Naaman’s wife and told her that there was a prophet in Israel named Elisha and she was sure that he could heal her husband from his leprosy.  So Naaman took her advice: he went to the prophet Elisha and he was healed of his leprosy.  And he declared that there is no God in all the earth except the God of Israel.  And he shows his gratitude to God by pledging worship to Him for his entire life.  This was from a man who formerly did not even know the God of Israel.

     Now, in Luke 4:24 Jesus said, “There were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”  How come God chose to heal Naaman - a foreigner and a pagan to boot - and no one else in Israel?  One of the reasons, I believe, is because God knew that Naaman was going to thank Him for the miracle he received.  Now God does want to work miracles in our lives!  God does want to answer our prayers!  But God isn’t like a cosmic Santa Claus:  he doesn’t bless us just because there’s nothing else for Him to do.  The reason God blesses us is to increase our faith in Him; to make us aware that there is no other God in all the universe than Him!  But if God can’t trust us to thank Him for the smaller things in life, will He trust us to thank Him for the bigger things?

     In the second reading from 2 Timothy we see that St. Paul was in a situation pretty much like the Israelite slave girl in the first reading.  First of all, St. Paul is in prison; his freedom has been taken away from him and he is no longer able to go about and share Jesus with others.  And yet his attitude, like that of the Israelite slave girl, was that if it’s God’s will for him to be locked up in prison, so be it.  His faith had grown to a level where he knew that no matter what happened to him God was still going to work in it for the good.  And he showed his gratitude to God by trusting in Him in all circumstances.  Even, and especially in those circumstances where he didn’t understand what God was doing at all, how could Paul possibly serve God from prison?  But Paul knew that it was in this way that his faith, and His trust in God was going to grow.  That’s the kind of faith that St. Paul had, and it’s that kind of faith that God is calling us to as well.

     In any case, in the days of Jesus, leprosy was just as dreaded a disease as it had been in the days of Naaman [and the prophet Elisha.]  In fact there wasn’t even a medical treatment for leprosy until the 1940’s.  In the days of Jesus, one day ten lepers approached Jesus, asked him to heal them, and they were told to go and show themselves to the priest.  As they were walking on their way, they realized that they had been cleansed from their leprosy and they were filled with joy.  But only one of them recognized that he had been touched by the living God.  And, like Naaman, this was a non-Jew who would not have been familiar with the ways of God.  The others should have known better, but this foreigner recognized the awesomeness of the gift he had received and he returned to give praise and thanksgiving to God.

     Now we who are in the Church, we also should know better.  We should know that every good gift we have, no matter how small it may seem, comes from God and we should thank Him for it.  We should know that “all things work together for the good for those who love God,” and thank Him - no matter what situation we might be in.   

     In Psalm 22:3, we’re told that God is present in the praises of His people.  When we thank and praise God for all the little things in life, and acknowledge that He can work even in our misfortunes, then we will begin to know true joy.  Because, as St. Augustine told us, and St. Paul knew, and the Israelite slave girl experienced in her everyday life, “Joy isn’t the absence of suffering; joy is the presence of God.”

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Last modified: 09/01/11.