{"id":6378,"date":"2018-01-21T12:23:46","date_gmt":"2018-01-21T20:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=6378"},"modified":"2024-11-27T18:22:47","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T02:22:47","slug":"one-chapter-a-day-homily-for-the-3rd-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/one-chapter-a-day-homily-for-the-3rd-sunday-in-ordinary-time-year-b","title":{"rendered":"One Chapter a Day: Homily for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LesMany of you know that Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> is one of my favorite books,
\nbut it\u2019s a long one, almost 1500 pages, so reading it takes a while.
\nLast year I found out that it has exactly 365 chapters,
\nso I decided that in 2018 I would read one chapter a day,
\nstarting on January 1st and going to December 31st.
\nThey\u2019re short chapters, about 5 pages or so,
\nand I I thought it would be kind of a meditation and exercise
\nin patience and delayed gratification to read it so slowly.
\nI also thought I would stay motivated if I read it with others,
\nso I sent word out through the Internet and invited anyone to join me<\/a>.
\nSo far there are almost fifty people reading it,
\nincluding some of you, and some former students of mine.
\nThere are also readers from California, Texas, Illinois, New Hampshire,
\nand even as far away as The Netherlands and Australia.
\nAnd we\u2019re all reading one chapter a day.<\/p>\n

As the book begins, the first main character is the Bishop of Digne.
\nThe first fourteen<\/em> chapters describe what a good man he is
\nand how he spends his days,
\nhow he takes care of the poor, the sick, the suffering.
\nHe\u2019s a saint, really, and we get fourteen<\/em> chapters to tell us that.
\nFor the first two weeks of January, reading one chapter a day,
\nnothing really happens to advance the plot.
\nBut finally, in the fifteenth chapter, something does happen.<\/p>\n

A stranger comes to town,
\na wanderer, a traveler, a scruffy-looking vagrant named Jean Valjean.
\nHe enters the town of Digne, where the bishop lives,
\nand everything begins.<\/p>\n

Sometimes life is like that.
\nWe go on living ten, twelve, fourteen chapters of our lives,
\nwith nothing really new, nothing really dramatic.<\/p>\n

And then suddenly a stranger comes to town, a stranger enters our lives.
\nMaybe we meet the person we end up marrying.
\nMaybe we have a baby.
\nMaybe we get a new coworker or neighbor.<\/p>\n

When a stranger comes to town
\nlife gets interesting and dramatic for awhile.
\nThere\u2019s no telling what might happen.
\nA stranger is mysterious, a stranger catches everyone\u2019s attention,
\na stranger breaks the monotony of ordinary life.<\/p>\n

Jonah is a stranger to the Ninevites.
\nThe Ninevites are living their lives as usual,
\nliving their chapters one day at a time,
\nwhich for Nineveh means they\u2019re living in sin and wickedness.
\nSuddenly here comes Jonah,
\nwalking from one end of the city to the other,
\nannouncing that Nineveh is going to be destroyed.
\nHe\u2019s a catalyst, a trigger for change.
\nThe Ninevites listen to Jonah, they repent and believe in God.
\nA stranger comes to town and their lives are forever changed.<\/p>\n

Jesus is a stranger to the Galileans,
\na stranger to Simon, Andrew, James and John.
\nThey\u2019re living their lives as usual, living their chapters one day at a time,
\ncatching fish, doing their daily work.
\nSuddenly here comes Jesus saying,
\n\u201cRepent and believe in the gospel.\u201d
\n\u201cCome after me, and I will make you fishers of men.\u201d
\nJesus, too, is a catalyst, a trigger for change.
\nThe apostles listen to Jesus, they abandon their nets,
\nthey follow him.
\nA stranger comes to town and their lives are forever changed.<\/p>\n

And here we are,
\nliving our lives as usual, living our chapters one day at a time,
\ndoing laundry, paying bills, raising children,
\ngoing to our jobs.
\nSuddenly here comes Jesus,
\nsaying in today\u2019s Scripture readings,
\n\u201cRepent, and believe in the gospel.\u201d
\n\u201cCome after me.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Jesus isn\u2019t a stranger to us
\nthe way he was to the fishermen, to the Galileans.
\nWe know who Jesus is.
\nFor most of us,
\nas far back as we can remember,
\nwe\u2019ve known the name of Jesus.
\nWe\u2019ve been raised with him.
\nWe\u2019ve heard this story before, many times.<\/p>\n

And that can be a problem.
\nMaybe this story isn\u2019t as dramatic for us as it used to be.
\nWe\u2019re in Ordinary Time now,
\nand maybe this story is too ordinary to move us
\nbecause we\u2019ve heard it so often.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s so easy for the new or the strange to become the familiar,
\nto lose its ability to move us.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like when a house you live in
\nor a place you go to for a long time
\ndoesn\u2019t seem special anymore.<\/p>\n

Do you remember walking into this church building for the very first time?
\nMaybe you just moved to into the neighborhood,
\nor maybe you started going back to Mass after being away for awhile.
\nFor some of us, the first time we came into this building
\nwas right after it was built.
\nRemember how we used to have Mass in what is now the gym,
\nwhen the parish hall was just a big empty space in the back,
\nseparated by that folding accordion wall divider?<\/p>\n

And then we built this church building.
\nHow fresh, how new, how inspiring it was!
\nDoes it still feel that way?
\nIt doesn\u2019t take long for something new to become so familiar
\nthat it doesn\u2019t affect us in the same way,
\neven if you keep changing it and adding to it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve painted the walls, added tile in the narthex,
\nand finished the parish hall.
\nWe have a beautiful new statue of John the Baptist
\nin the baptismal font
\nand an icon of the Ascension.
\nBut after awhile we get used to them,
\nand they all become ordinary, part of the background.
\nIt takes deliberate effort to notice and appreciate them.<\/p>\n

The same thing can happen with Scripture.
\nThis weekend we begin reading from the Gospel of Mark,
\nthe gospel that we\u2019ll be reading all year,
\nthe same words we heard three years ago,
\nwhen we last read it,
\nthe same familiar stories we\u2019ve heard for most of our lives.
\nHow can we make them fresh again?
\nHow can we recapture the newness of the Good News?<\/p>\n

One thing we might do is read a different translation,
\nand hear the same stories and events, but with slightly different words.
\nOr maybe when we read the Bible at home we could read out loud.<\/p>\n

We could shake things up a bit when we come to Mass, too.
\nWe could play musical pews.
\nEverybody seems to have their own spot in the pews,
\nbut have you ever wondered what Mass looks like from a different seat?
\nYou\u2019re probably used to looking across the sanctuary
\nand seeing the same people sit there week after week,
\nthe same people in front of you, the same people behind you.
\nWhat if you moved to a different part of the church for Mass?
\nThat<\/em> would be strange.<\/p>\n

Or what if you came to Mass at a different time?
\nThe 4:30 Mass goers could wake up early on Sunday
\nand see what the church looks like in the morning sunlight.
\nThe 8:00 crowd could come to 10:30
\nand meet people they didn\u2019t even know went to St. Peter\u2019s.
\nOr the 10:30 Mass goers could come Saturday night
\nand find out what kind of mischief Fr. George is up to.<\/p>\n

Each of these things could help us to see things from a different angle,
\nand make the familiar seem new again.<\/p>\n

But after awhile they become ordinary, they become the new status quo.
\nWe can\u2019t live that way all the time, constantly trying new things
\nsimply to make our lives interesting.
\nLife is interesting enough!<\/p>\n

This is what Catholic author G.K. Chesterton meant when he said,
\n\u201cThe most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man<\/em>
\n and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The challenge is to see the events of our ordinary days
\nas moments of grace-filled strangeness,
\nto see the Mystery that lies behind each moment of our lives.<\/p>\n

Washing dishes, the daily commute, grocery shopping,
\nweekly Mass with stories we\u2019ve heard dozens of times,
\nthese are the chapters of our lives.
\nThese are the moments in which Jesus says to us,
\n\u201cRepent and believe in the gospel.\u201d
\n\u201cCome after me.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s enough grace in our ordinary lives
\nto give us all the opportunity we need to change our hearts
\nand follow Jesus.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need to wait for the dramatic to happen.
\nEach day the drama of salvation unfolds again and again,
\nif we would only notice it.<\/p>\n

But it does take time and a conscious effort.<\/p>\n

Even though it took fifteen days
\nto get to the real beginning of Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em>,
\nthose two weeks where nothing seemed to happen
\nwere important in their own way.
\nBy slowing down,
\nreading the chapters deliberately and meditating on them each day
\nwe were able to savor the beautiful language
\nand get to know the character of the Bishop.
\nEven though I have read Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em>\u00a0several times before,
\nthere were sentences in those chapters I had never really read.<\/p>\n

We can do the same thing with our lives,
\nby slowing down and reading the chapters of our lives
\nand meditating on them.
\nWith time and conscious effort
\nwe can better recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives
\nand be moved by Jesus\u2019 invitation to change our hearts and follow him,
\nso that today and tomorrow and the next day
\nwill be the beginning of a brand new story for our lives,
\na story that leads to the happiest of all possible endings,
\neternal life.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/stpeter\/SP-2018-01-21-642.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: RSS<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of you know that Les Mis\u00e9rables is one of my favorite books, but it\u2019s a long one, almost 1500 pages, so reading it takes a while. Last year I found out that it has exactly 365 chapters, so I decided that in 2018 I would read one chapter a day, starting on January 1st and going to December 31st. They\u2019re short chapters, about 5 pages or so, and I I thought it would be kind of a meditation and exercise in patience and delayed gratification to read...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"One Chapter a Day: #Homily for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1219,349],"tags":[260,357,384,1035,369,1034,527],"class_list":["post-6378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chapter-a-day-read-along","category-homily","tag-g-k-chesterton","tag-gospel-of-mark","tag-jean-valjean","tag-jonah","tag-les-miserables","tag-nineveh","tag-victor-hugo"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/les_miserables_readalong_final.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-1ES","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6378"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6390,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6378\/revisions\/6390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}