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
