Homily for Monday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time
How many times have we been faced with making an important decision about something in our lives and turned to the Lord and asked: “Lord, if only you would give me a sign of what to do”? I’m pretty certain that most of us have been in that situation at one or more points in our lives. And it’s not necessarily a bad place to be in. I mean, at least we’re turning to the Lord in that moment and kind of asking for guidance. But I think asking the Lord for a sign can also be a revelation of something a little deeper within us: a lack of complete trust in our relationship with the Lord.
If you’re anything like me, I try to control a lot of my life and I struggle with trusting the Lord completely. When things are out of our control, it can lead us to a place of immense fear. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, we don’t know how a situation is going to be resolved and so we kind of freak out. In the midst of those moments of fear, there is an invitation from the Lord to go a bit deeper with Him. In those moments, he is calling on us to reflect and ask ourselves: what is at the heart of that desire for control? What is at the heart of our lack of trust in Him?
I think at the heart of those two things is fear. Maybe we are scared that the Lord is going to let us down. Or we don’t really want to let Him into our hearts because we’re scared that we’re going to get hurt in some way. Or maybe we simply don’t believe that the Lord has our best interests in mind. What is it for you?
I would like to encourage all of us to pray with that question today: what is preventing me from trusting the Lord completely? May our prayer today be one of asking the Lord to open the eyes of our hearts to recognize what it is that stops us from having full trust in Him. But also pray that we might have the courage to let go of that control over our own lives and instead relinquish control over to Him. Because it is in giving Him total access to our hearts and following His will that will lead us to lasting peace. When we grow to trust completely in the Lord, we won’t need to search for signs when faced with difficult decisions. Instead, we would simply let those situations play out and, in total abandonment, trust that the Lord is walking alongside us and guiding us through everything we experience.
Fr. Tom Pringle 