Look forward like God (Sunday homily)

 Do you know what one of the biggest differences 

between us and God is? (Changed after 5 pm Mass.)

There are a lot of ways we are different from God.

One of them is that…

You and I look backward. God looks forward.

For us, only what has already taken place, is real.

The future is guesswork. It hasn’t happened yet.

And when we set our highest dreams against bitter experience,

hope seems a slender thread indeed.

But God knows the future – because he is already there. 

God looks forward, and over and over again, 

he tries to get you and me to do the same. 

What did you just hear?

“Remember not the events of the past,” God says in the first reading.

“I am doing something new!”

Saint Paul tells us he counts everything as “rubbish”

and forgets “what lies behind,” because Jesus Christ is his prize!

The pharisees say, “look what this sinner did!”

Jesus says, “start new.”

At the risk of being tedious, I’m inviting you again to confession.

Maybe someone needs just one more nudge.

The truth is, I can’t change the world. 

Maybe I can help you change you. 

You can’t change the world. 

But there’s one little chunk of this world 

that you and I have supreme power over. 

And that is our soul! Our choices!

That’s why we go to confession. 

I can’t speak about anyone else, but about myself I say this:

If I didn’t go to confession regularly, I believe I would go to hell.

I would lose my way, little by little.

You’ve heard of the “invisible fence”: to keep your dog in the yard?

You know how it works: there’s a wire underground,

and if the poor dog crosses the wire and ZZZZZT! 

That’s what my conscience does for me, and yours for you!

Confession keeps my conscience alive and reasonably healthy.

You want to make the world better? You want to bring peace?

Start with your own soul. It’ll radiate to your family.