Homily: October 12, 2022, Wednesday of the twenty-eighth week in the ordinary time.

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 “If you are guided by the spirit, you are not under the law”. 

From my kindergarten years to grade 4, I used to walk two miles to school and the same distance back home. I would always get really hungry on the way home. My friends and I would pick and eat whatever that was edible along the road.

One of our neighbours grew a special cherry plant in his garden. We used to pick the juicy cherries to eat as we walked past. One day, he put up a handwritten sign on the tree which read, “Don’t pick the cherries”.

One naughty kid continued to pick the cherries and even tore up that sign. Thereafter, the owner began to guard his cherry fiercely. 

If we behaved right and showed respect for his property, there would not need the sign board nor the guarding, right? Similarly, if everyone in society knew how to behave and treat one another, we would not need to have laws.

Those who are guided by the spirit of right behaviour will not need laws, because they are above the law. 

Is it any wonder why God gave the Israelites, and all of us, the ten commandments?

Do you attend Sunday Mass and receive the sacraments because it is an obligation? Because you don’t want to sin against the commandments? If it is, then it becomes a burden. But if we are guided by the spirit, we do it for love, it becomes liberating.

If we understand that every Mass is re-living Jesus’ sacrificial love for us, we will also respond in love. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, it was His ardent desire to give Himself fully to us all through history, through eternity. His last wish for us was to “do this in memory of me”. And so we fulfil His wish, not obligated, not burdened, but with love.

We are Christians not because we follow a certain set of difficult rules, but because we follow a certain man of great love, Jesus.

Let us not live under the law but above it. Let us live, guided by the Spirit, the spirit of love, freely and fully. 

Amen


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