Advent day 22

Hebrews 10:5-10           Advent day 22

               There's a line in the movie Moonstruck by Vincent Gardenia when he is talking to Cher in the family kitchen. They banter about her getting married a second time. Her first husband was hit by a bus ("bad luck" he says). Cher tells him her new fiance's mother is dying and Vince adds, "more bad luck". Of course you really have to see it. No really, you have to see it. But I digress... slightly.

            For us this reading today is 'more good news'. When Christ was born, the apple cart was overturned, the money changers would be thrown out of the temple and the temple elite would get their cumeuppance from the Big boss, our Lord Jesus Christ.

           Stop with the rules and rubrics. It doesn't matter what the precise angle is when we pray with our hands as we learned in Catholic grade school.  It really isn't importnat that so much energy is expended on converting the faithful to use the proper words in Mass.  Is it truly essential that a precise and unchangeable formula be used for the host in Mass? Are we bound by "Holy days of obligation" that are all man made days, no matter how the good intention may be?  Is eating meating on a friday in Lent a true mortal sin? Or can we dispense with that rule if Saint Patrick's day falls on a friday in Lent? How could we eat our cabbage with corned beef? Now wouldn't that be a mortal sin, eh?. Yes the rules and rubrics, the sacrifices and prescribed incense are NOT what God is looking for and this reading spells it out.

            We are free from the nonsense, more good news! Perhaps we should think about this gift and what it means to do your will. Perhaps this is not easier, or even more difficult, than following all the prescribed rules and rubrics. What is God's will after all? John the Baptist pointed to it and Jesus was quite clear about it in word and deed.

             The two great commandments for sure. What about that love of self and neighbor? Does that include respect, assistance, sharing the wealth, uplifting each other? Does it include respect for all of God's creations, all God's creatures great and small? Do we respect the diversity of this planet in all it's forms? Do we respect the planet? Do we love this plant we call home? Many questions for sure.

         The gift of freedom from the minutia that really stands in the way of a pure heart is lived out in doing His will. A beautiful gift for us (more good news!). The world should be better for if we look, listen and do His will.

Brothers and sisters:

When Christ came into the world, he said:

"Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,

but a body you prepared for me;

in holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight.

Then I said, 'As is written of me in the scroll,

behold, I come to do your will, O God.'"

First he says, "Sacrifices and offerings,

holocausts and sin offerings,

you neither desired nor delighted in."

These are offered according to the law.

Then he says, "Behold, I come to do your will."

He takes away the first to establish the second.

By this "will," we have been consecrated

through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.