Process/Pattern of Increase - Deacon Marc Gauthier

I asked Deacon Marc if I could post the homily he gave at the Tuesday morning mass this week and here it is: 

Thank you Deacon Marc

Processes of Failure and Increase

2020-03-04

The foundation of the two processes mentioned below are based on the Kingdom Principle that God’s gauge for faithfulness is character development and cooperation with the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

The following are two Kingdom of God processes, or we could call them Character Processes - one that leads to failure and the other leads to increase, especially an increase in God’s grace in our lives so that we may live as faithful disciples. The word process best describes what happens, as one stage leads to another. I give you both so that you can appreciate the difference, but I will lay out a more detailed description of the Process for Increase.

First, the Process of Failure: four stages, or whatever you want to refer to them as, roughly happening sequentially - Deception, Distraction, Dislocation and Destruction.

The Process of Increase involves Identification, Involvement, Investment and Increase.

The process produces an increase of Sanctifying grace within us - the work of the Holy Spirit bringing about holiness and communion with the Trinity of Love.

We must first Identify with our Lord as the disciples did - in the first chapter of St. John’s gospel when they chose to seek out the Lord. Jesus awakens in them a desire to know more about Him, and He invites them to follow Him.

As the disciples watched and listened, day by day, they, and we, begin to get involved. I’m reminded of the distribution duties the apostles had at the event we know as the multiplication of loaves and fishes (see Matthew 14).We should want to be Jesus’ hands and feet, and spread the wonders of His love with others.

Then comes the Lord’s prayer into our lives.

“One day He was praying in a certain place. When He had finished, one of His disciples asked Him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.’” (Luke 11:1)

Jesus was/is a Rabbi in so many ways. His disciples, like the disciples of any Rabbi, wanted to know the prayer of their Rabbi. In this way,  as Jesus offered them His prayer, they would be welcomed deeper into His life (“Put out into the deep…” Luke 5). They, we, would need to invest ourselves, go “all-in” as it were, and call God our Father.  Bit by bit we begin to discover what it means to live as His children, to seek His way of righteousness in all things and to trust in Him for all things.

We learn to live in ways that others will know that we receive the grace to love, as He loves us, from Him. Then, as He sends us out with His message of reconciliation (see 2 Corinthians 5:19), His Sanctifying grace increases in us so that He may be glorified.

Deacon Marc Gauthier