New Beginnings

Today I thought I'd share my Homily from last night's Mass...it's been tweeked for the web =)
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The new year is almost through it's first month, yet we are still adjusting to the new beginnings we started at New Years. Everybody is fighting to maintain our resolutions. At the gym, slowly attendance is returning to normal, after the new year influx. At work many of my customers who had sworn away from alcohol in 2010 are slowly returning to their old ways. Diets that began are beginning to slip away, and I myself who swore to quit smoking in 2010, am puffing on a Marlboro as I am writing this. Despite our perhaps failed or at least challenged resolutions, we remember that something new has happened, something important is beginning…God is with us. As Jesus tells us in the Gospel this weekend, this day a prophecy has been fulfilled in our hearing.

I would share the story of Grant Desme. He is a 23-year-old minor league baseball player - in fact, one of the most promising athletes in the country. He was considered a star prospect for the Oakland A's. He was a figure of incredible talent and potential - he'd hit 31 home runs, stolen 40 bases. He thought, any day, to get the call from Oakland to join the majors and begin a stellar career - one that would likely reap him millions. Well, he got a call. But it wasn't the one he expected. Friday, Grant Desme told a stunned group of sportswriters that he was giving up baseball. Instead, he was going to study for the priesthood.

"I love the game," he said. "But I aspire to higher things. I really had to get down to the bottom of things - what was good in my life, what I wanted to do with my life, and I felt that while baseball is a good thing and I love playing, I thought it was selfish of me to be doing that when I really felt that God was calling me more." He concluded: "It took me a while in my life to really trust and open up to it and aim full steam toward Him."

We also have the example of Emmanuel Buso. Emmanuel is not a priest or a seminarian. He's a student who lived near the presidential palace in Port au Prince Haiti when the earthquake struck. He was buried under the rubble, unable to move. For 10 days, he waited, and prayed. He slipped in and out of consciousness. Finally, on the 10th day, defying all the odds, an Israeli rescue team discovered him and pulled him to safety. Emmanuel was dehydrated and weak, but he's expected to make a full recovery. Friday, he talked to reporters from his hospital bed. "I am here," he whispered, "because God wants it."

God calls each and everyone of us everyday, and the presence of Jesus in our world since His birth at Christmas, and His continual presence in our world among us through the Sacraments is a great hope for all of us. Luke writes His Gospel as a letter to someone named Theophilus. The name Theophilus is not directly associated with any one person. In Greek the name means, “friend of God”. Tonight in the Gospel Jesus announces why He has come. To bring us freedom, sight, liberty, and glad tidings. Jesus announces that something very important is beginning. Luke addresses his Gospel to all of us, as we know that we are all beloveds of our God.

Emmanuel Buso and Grant Desme have begun anew in this new year in their relationship with their God. Let us all do the same. Let’s embrace the joy in this new beginning Jesus has announced. Let’s recommit ourselves to growing in our relationship with the Lord. We are almost through the first month of this new year, let’s not let that drive, and that determination we had when the ball dropped at midnight three weeks ago slip away. Let us rejoice and be glad, and turn to the Lord for the strength we need to bring ourselves to where we should be in our own lives. Like Grant Desme, this day let’s be inspired by his words to, “really trust and move full steam towards him.” We have nothing to fear, for as we have been told, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in our hearing”

God Bless You.