This Sunday my homily is based on the Gospel of 3rd Sunday of Lent from Year A, as it is used for the first 'Scrutiny' which is for those about to be received into the Church.
All
around us we see signs for Tarot card reading, fortune telling,
psychics, all kinds of alternative healing and other practices that
come under the general heading of ‘occult’. We are told to
stay away from these things that so many people find fascinating.
Why is this? What is so wrong with it? Are we just
over-reacting because we do not understand it?
If
God tells us to stay away from something, there is a good reason for
it. God does not give us rules just for the sake of rules.
There is a reason for everything. In the Old Testament in the
book of Deuteronomy it says:
You
must not have in your midst anyone who... practices divination, or
anyone who consults the stars, who is a sorcerer, or one who
practices magic or who consults the spirits, no diviner or one who
asks questions of the dead. For the Lord abhors those who do
these things. (Deut 18:10-11)
So
what is the problem with these thing? Anything that is ‘occult’
is generally an attempt to gain knowledge or power of the future.
One
of the greatest things that God has given us is the gift of free
will. All through this life we have the freedom to choose to do
what we want, even to rejecting God, which is quite amazing.
God does not reveal the future to us because if He did it would
influence our free will. If I thought there was going to be an
earthquake in the city centre tomorrow, the chances are I would avoid
the city centre. If I think I know what is going to happen, I
am most likely to make decisions based on that information, but the
problem is that then I am not totally free to choose, because my free
will has been influenced. That is the main problem with things
such as fortune telling, tarot card reading, etc. We think we
are gaining knowledge of the future, but this influences our freedom.
It
is also true that we have no way of knowing whether the information
we are given is true or not and perhaps more importantly, where it is
coming from. If God deliberately does not reveal the future to
us, then the information is not coming from God. So where is it
coming from and how can we trust that it is reliable? We are
dabbling in the world of the spirit, without knowing what we are
dealing with and make no mistake about it Satan is very cunning and
knows how to deceives us. Jesus himself called him ‘the
father of lies.’ And don’t be fooled by the fact that a
fortune teller starts of with a Christian prayer, as some of them
do. If the Lord tells us that these things are detestable to
him, then we would be wise to stay away from them.
I
know of a woman who was given the initials of someone she was told
she would marry. And she met a man with those initials, and she
married him, and it was a disaster. If you have dabbled in any
of these things confess them and let them not have any kind of
influence over you, spiritual or otherwise.
Now
listen to what Jesus says to the woman at the well:
If
you only knew what God was offering you and who it was that was
asking you for a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he
would have given you living water.
What
is God offering us? What is this living water? First of
all it is the life of faith, the path to God, the truth about God as
given to us by Jesus who is Son of God. Jesus is either telling
us the truth or he is not. If he is—and we say we believe he
is—then we need to listen. For two thousand years the
teachings of Christ have been guiding people on the path to God.
The fact that it has lasted that long is itself a sign that this must
be from God, especially when you look at the history of the Church,
which is nothing to boast about. Yet in spite of that, the
message of God is still passed on, through sinful people like me it
is true, but passed on none the less. It is there for anyone
who wants it. Many things are continually offered to us, but
not all of them are good and not all of them will help us. What
we believe is that what God offers us—the waters of life—is what
will lead us to total happiness, beginning now and fulfilled in the
world to come. This is what the Lord is teaching us. Do
we believe that?
Sometimes
I think it comes back to something as basic as asking ourselves, ‘Do
I believe the Scriptures are from God?’ ‘Do I believe that
Jesus teaches us through his Church?’ If we believe that,
then we need to listen to it. If we don’t believe that, we
shouldn’t be here in the first place. God offers us his word
to guide us, his Body and Blood to feed us, his forgiveness to heal
us, but if we want to follow the path that He is showing us, then we
must listen to what he teaches us and act on it.
If
you only knew what God was offering you and who it was that was
asking you for a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he
would have given you living water.
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