Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and this is Episode 7 of Season 6 for the Epiphany of the Lord: Jan. 8, 2023. Our Gospel reading is from Matthew: Chapter 2, verses 1-12
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.”
When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.
They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet: And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people Israel.”
Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search diligently for the child. When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.” After their audience with the king they set out.
And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother.
They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way.
The Gospel of the Lord
“The Reality of Peace” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut
We've all had moments in our life when we may be trying to figure out a piece of life's puzzle or working through an issue or a problem, and all of a sudden, the light bulb goes off, and we can see very clearly what we were hoping to be able to see in order to get to the truth of the concern before us.
These personal revelations or epiphanies are a part of the human experience. That moment when everything just seems to come together and make sense in a particular situation. Now we're very accustomed to these things happening in our everyday comings and goings. But here today we're gathered, and the question is before us, what then is the significance of this epiphany? This revelation? This showing manifestation of God to us? What light switch is getting turned on and what is being illuminated by the presence of the birth of Christ?
God wants to show us something with greater depth and clarity. What is is?
Until we're able to flesh that out and define that in real terms, what we celebrate today is just a pious thought. As we begin to look at that question more deeply, there are several things that are illumined by the birth of Christ. One thing for certain is that humanity now has a greater understanding of who it is. We don't see ourselves now as just random occurrences, but we're here because we've been divinely blessed that God has willed each one of us into existence to become one of his daughters and one of his sons. And so our dignity has been raised a bit because of the birth of Christ, and we see ourselves through that clearer lens of God's love.
Second of all, the truth of who we are is revealed in this wonderful event. We now see ourselves not as creatures just of this world but that we are on this other journey to life eternal, where what is begun here finds completeness in eternity when we can finally be one with God in Christ and enter into the fullness of who we are.
And so our truth and an understanding of ourselves are two significant things, and there are many other lessons that can be learned through the illumination that comes with the birth of Christ. But I would offer one more that is of significance, especially as we find ourselves dealing with the circumstances of our world and becoming more globally minded.
Well, I think part of that comes with understanding truly what peace is, and I think sometimes we get very confused about how to achieve peace and what it really means because I think most of us look to the circumstances of our lives. So if the pieces of the puzzle are coming together well, we find ourselves at greater peace. If the relationships in our lives are functioning in a healthy, constructive way, we find ourselves at peace. If my health and my general well-being is in a positive place, we find ourselves at a place of peace. And then, when one of those pieces is not working well, then we find ourselves at a place of discord.
And so our feelings of well-being, our feelings of peacefulness, are very often tied to what is happening around us. So is it reasonable to think here we are over 2,000 years later that the birth of Christ really came to change the furniture of our lives. That somehow God, through the gift of his son, was going to automatically put all of those pieces together so that everything works in harmony and peace, and we can just sit back and now enjoy the ride.
Is that how this works?
Well, the answer to that is obviously no, because it would've happened if that were God's will and intention. So obviously, there's a different kind of peace that is being brought into the world illumined by the birth of Christ that's being shown to us today. And it really is an inner peace, an inner peace, that has nothing to do with the particulars of our lives.
It is this interior sense of well-being, this interior sense of contentment, this interior sense of confidence, this interior sense of okayness which is really the peace that Jesus brings into our world.
Think for a moment how this works in our lives. You know, very often, we find ourselves in an interior struggle. We're actually fighting with ourselves. You know, there are tensions in every human life. We trip over ourselves so often. We focus on our weaknesses. We see our brokenness. Our fears and our anxieties consume us. Sometimes, we find ourselves wrestling with deep disappointment, deep dissatisfaction, the depth of sadness or loss. Sometimes we find ourselves dealing with anger, with passion, with greed. Sometimes we find ourselves becoming very self-focused, very concerned about the particulars of my life, what I have and not what you have.
And so these inner fights that we have with ourselves, these inner struggles that we all experience, well, guess what happens? Those get transferred over into how we interact with life. So if I'm angry, my anger is going to be extended outside of myself, and others are going to see it. If I'm disappointed, my sadness is going to color the relationships in my world. If I'm fearful or anxious, then the world becomes fearful and anxious. If I'm brooding over an injury that you have caused to me, then that relationship is going to suffer as a result of that pain.
You see so very often in our lives this unresolved stuff, these conflicts that are going on inside of us, and we deal with these all the time, then create greater conflicts in our world. And so then cynicism, fear, anxiety, all of that stuff begins to be evidenced and seen. And so, where do we find this sense of peacefulness? Where do we go to get what we need interiorly to deal with ourselves and put us in a more positive place?
Well, the peace of Christ that comes through the gift of his birth as the Prince of Peace points us in the direction of God. Because guess what? We can't bring peace into ourselves on our own. It can't be achieved just by human standards. It has to come from another source, a power greater than ourselves. And there's two gifts that we can receive from this wonderful gift of the birth of God's son. The first is freedom, and the second is love.
With the birth of Christ, we're brought into God's gift of freedom. In other words, we can become free of ourselves, free of our weaknesses, free of our fears, free of our obsessions with ourselves, free of our sinfulness, free of our mistakes, free of our failures. We begin to understand, in looking at the birth of Christ, just how fragile and weak we are.
And in order to find our way to peace, to find our way to happiness, we truly need the love of God because it's only with that love and that power that our lives are orientated and focused where they need to be. Where we begin to understand that we're not here alone to figure out this whole thing called life, but that we're being led, and if in humility, we continue to go back to that relationship to God and continually see him as the source of our healing, the source of our strength, then we can begin to see that what's going on in me is also going on in you and you don't become the enemy anymore. we, we become brothers and sisters in the truth of faith. Because even when we are interacting with each other, and there becomes a point of conflict, we are both weak individuals, and my inability to forgive you is tied to my own inability to forgive myself. My inability to understand you is tied to my inability to understand myself.
And so until we work our way to the truth and stop this inner fighting within, there is no way to achieve true peace because what is going to come forth is always going to be the struggle and not the resolution. And so when all people truly understand that the gift of the Prince of Peace has been given to us to illuminate the paths of our lives, not only into ourselves but the path to one another, then peace will never be achieved because we're gonna constantly be stumbling over ourselves, as we see over and over again in the course of world history.
And so the light has indeed dawned, but it needs to illuminate each one of us before we can then bring that gift of light to one another and then, by extension, to the world.
Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.