by Fr. Tommy Lane
The following is an account by a family.
“We greet you as a family trying
to imitate the Holy Family. We would like to share our story with you for the
glory of God and in praise of Jesus and Mary. We are a couple married for
twenty-eight years and have two young adults. We were a family with two passions
- God and television. . A certain time of the day was devoted to Mass and the
Holy Rosary, yet it was given often begrudgingly by all members of our family
because it collided with the various different TV programs. The moment prayer
was finished our adoration began. Not the adoration of the Eucharist, but of the
television. The four of us would sit glued to the set, often without a word
spoken among us for hours except maybe to comment on Vera Duckworth’s perm or
who was going to win Spin the Wheel. When the kids went to bed after spending
“Quality Time” with the beloved Telly, my husband and I would carry on our
shift with the TV. Hours and days of precious God-given moments were wasted,
until one evening a particularly grotesque and unbelievably inhuman scene
flooded our living room and our minds. Suddenly, my husband said, “Let’s get
rid of the Television” We all thought he had lost his marbles, it was so
remote we thought he was out of control, pardon the pun! As the dirt and filth
continued to light up our TV screen the idea became more and more inviting,
naturally quicker to us than it did to our children. So after a lot of
discussion and yes, prayer, we ridded ourselves of the box, we dumped it, still
with feelings of doubt. Yet after a while the doubt among us soon dispersed as
true family life set in. Without the television, we came to know one another not
only as a wife, a husband, a son, a daughter but as individuals. We began to
live our lives, and our minds, our hearts and our soul were awakened to a lot of
things,- to God’s love and beauty in nature, to each other, to every grace and
blessing given to us as a family. Praise Jesus! Our home is now a home of love,
joy, openness, communication and a house full of life and soul! Not just a house
with four people and a Television. Today a Medjugorje
crucifix fills the place where the TV used to be…We thank God for this grace
He has given us and we ask pardon for all the precious moments spent in front of
the box…”
(by a family but unfortunately I do not know the source. If you knew please email me. Thanks.)
Our minds control all, our mind is our kingdom. If our minds are turned from God they can become filled with all kinds of rubbish and it is difficult to be a follower of Jesus. Allowing our minds to be filled with Christian thoughts is the first step on the road to following Jesus.
In our Gospel Jesus began his preaching by calling on people to repent. Repentance, as you know, means a change of mind. It means turning our minds again to God. Then Jesus called Simon, Andrew, James and John. They answered his call. They had to change their minds about their present circumstances and about the meaning of life before they could answer Jesus’ call. In the legendary story of Jonah, Jonah asked the people of Nineveh to repent. They did, they changed their minds, they turned their minds from the rubbish of the world and fixed their minds on God.
So to follow the Lord’s call to us we have to think in a way that is often different from the culture around us. Remember what Jesus said to Peter once, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.” (Matt 16:23). In Isaiah 55:7-9 we read,
Let the wicked man abandon his
way,
the evil man his thoughts…
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
my ways not your ways – it is Yahweh who speaks.
Yes, the heavens are as high above earth
as my ways are above your ways,
my thoughts above your thoughts.
In his letter to the Philippians (2:5) Paul wrote, “In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus.” So we begin following Jesus in our minds, inside in our own heads. No wonder that Jesus says in Mark 12:30 “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” Why am I singling out today following Jesus with our mind? Because there are so many attempts to get at your mind, to feed your mind with unchristian rubbish. Much of what you could see on TV would not help us to have the same mind as Jesus. Serious sin is glamorized and presented as normal and must be having an effect on society. We could say the same about newspapers. I have said to you before that our minds are like sponges, they soak up dirt just like a sponge. We can wash a sponge and we can wash our minds. We can wash our minds by filling them with what is good and holy and cutting out from our lives what contaminates our minds. Yes we can become contaminated but we can also decontaminate ourselves! Do you need to be contaminated? If you do, ask Jesus and Mary to help you. What efforts do you make to fill your mind with what is good? As we heard at the beginning an Irish family totally changed when they decided to stop filling their minds with rubbish. Jesus began his preaching by asking for repentance, a change of mind. If we turn our minds from the filth and rubbish of the world and fill our minds with what is of God we will have peace of mind. The prophet Isaiah said,
“You keep him in perfect peace,
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.” (Isa 26:3)
Jesus said,
“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30)
and Paul wrote,
“In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus.” (Phil 2:25)
This homily was delivered when I was engaged in parish ministry in Ireland before joining the faculty of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland.
More related material for the Third Sunday Year B
Related Homilies: on vocation see Second Sunday
on the call to repent see God Continues to Call Us to Bear Fruit
stories of vocation
and repentance