am I blue collar?

Homily

Wednesday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time C2

16 February 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Am I blue collar?

Today's scriptures reject a sanitized experience of reality.  Yes, in the end, God's mercy and grace will make us clean and white as new snow.  Yet the process to get there will be messy.

St. John cautions against an ephemeral religion.  Our encounter with the word is more than a fleeting glance into a mirror.  The encounter leads to a blue-collar perseverance in almsgiving.  That's the true way.

So is the experience of the blind man, whose therapy is not a sermon but a messy, private mud bath from Jesus, twice over.  It's followed by Jesus's instructions to not show-off, or indulge sensationalism, but to go straight home and get back to work.

True religion is more than a show.  It's for people who roll up their sleeves.