How healthy is my community?

Homily

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

11 February 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

How healthy is my community?

We all sure hope the Chiefs have a healthy community today!  This pivotal question will fall right to our favorite team.  How healthy are the Chiefs? After a long season, are they still fast, strong, smart, together, passionate and determined?  Will they glorify God by writing an incredible story of faith at the Super Bowl?  It will depend on how healthy their community is - relationally, spiritually, psychologically, physically and emotionally.

I need a healthy community to fulfill my purpose too.  So did the leper in today's Gospel.  To be alone, to be cut off, is to be dead.  Social distancing is the original and precise definition of death.  As smart as it can be to quarantine ourselves to preserve physical health for others, ultimately to be alone is to die.  

Human persons are relational at their core.  Love only exists within relationship and community.  Relationships for bodily persons are necessarily sensory experiences, and this includes the healing power of life-giving touch.  This year at SLC we're talking about not being able to live without the Mass, for it is here that the health of our community is consummated by our teaching and becoming the body of Christ.

Too many people are unhealthy because they do not live in healthy communities.  Unhealthy behaviors thrive in isolation.  We can be addicted to choice and privacy when we are meant to experience life by seeking the good of others more than our own good.  Life depends on being a part of something bigger than ourselves.  Life is a gift with a responsibility and capacity to give life rather than take it.  Healthy communities consistently touch our lives in a way that is healing and freeing.

How healthy is my community?  And as much as I believe the Chiefs will win today, I'm not talking about the community that is the Red Kingdom.  I'm talking most of all about the Church, and the healing touch of Mass and confession especially.  The touch of these sacraments consummate the ultimate communion that is the body of Christ.  Are we healthy enough as a St. Lawrence community - relationally, morally, spiritually, psychologically and emotionally - to win together the ultimate victory that is the gift of new and everlasting life?

+mj