Don’t Tell Anyone!

WE ARE GROWING AS A COMMUNITY!

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Good morning sunshine! I hope you’re being a ray of light today … another pretty cool Gospel. Jesus is back at it doing all these miracles, but there’s a bit of a twist on this one.

Gospel MK 7:31-37

Again Jesus left the district of Tyre
and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee,
into the district of the Decapolis.
And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment
and begged him to lay his hand on him.
He took him off by himself away from the crowd.
He put his finger into the man’s ears
and, spitting, touched his tongue;
then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,
“Ephphatha!”— that is, “Be opened!” —
And immediately the man’s ears were opened,
his speech impediment was removed,
and he spoke plainly.
He ordered them not to tell anyone.
But the more he ordered them not to,
the more they proclaimed it.
They were exceedingly astonished and they said,
“He has done all things well.
He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

It’s not just that Jesus performed a miracle, it’s where Jesus performed the miracle.

Okay, so he came through Decapolis which is the city of 10 cities, and it’s pretty filled with pagan and gentiles, not the chosen Jews. So he specifically went through an area of non-chosen Jews. And back in the day, if you touched a gentile, a pagan, or someone who wasn’t the chosen people, you were unclean. You were defiled, let alone, touching someone who was mute, deaf, blind. It was as if they were punished when they were born and they were unclean, too. So you didn’t go touching lepers or people that have these ailments, if you will, because then you will be defiled. So Jesus specifically went through this area and touched and healed a gentile. That’s really Jesus’s message is the love of God and miracles. He wanted to spread this to everyone, not just a chosen group of people and that was pretty much what Jesus was doing.

You don’t have to go through another country, taking into consideration different cultures, different beliefs, different attitudes. You could just look right in your own home and your own family or your own workplace and see just the political differences forget the countries. You get kind of bent out of shape when you know that you’re going to have to have that conversation or when you don’t agree with someone or you don’t understand their culture or their faith or their beliefs. But the point again, it doesn’t matter. You are called to love everyone. You’re not called to it, you’re commanded to it. And the only one who can get you there is Jesus.

How about Jesus, saying, “Hey, hey, hey, hey … don’t tell anybody about this. Just keep it to yourself.” I mean, that’s not what he was out there for … notoriety. He didn’t want people to know he is the son of God and be boastful. That wasn’t what he was after. But what happens when you do get touched by Jesus and you do receive graces, let alone miracles? I can’t even imagine what that’s about! Although I look at myself and say, I must be a miracle because I can’t imagine that God would give me these graces and change my life.

But he has changed my life so fundamentally, I can’t help but scream it from the mountaintop. I left my career in corporate America to be sure that you find this, too. Everybody has to find this! And I am kind of wagging my finger there a little bit, but I’m really trying to say there’s a better way to live and with love and compassion and peace and put your head on the pillow at night and actually go to bed. Get up in the morning and know God’s got your back, the only one in this entire universe who can give you the graces and help you live your life with all of the unique talents that he created you for … to give you that courage to put your fear aside. Put your worrying out the window and rest in him. When you build this relationship with Jesus, your life changes whether you want it to or not.

I went into this ‘religious thing’ not really wanting to change. I really didn’t want to Catholicism to be the truth. I wasn’t even going into it to find something, but what I did find was the answer to all of my former “Something mores”. There must be something more, not only to my purpose and meaning on this planet but something more, some more love, some more peace, and more joy. Is all this life is about is all these tasks and to do’s and this stress and this wigging out all the time? Only to put my head on the pillow and not be able to fall asleep because my mind is running 150 miles an hour with the next list of things that I have going on the next day.

That is why people ran around and could not keep the secret of Jesus because he impacted their lives in such a way that they couldn’t stop talking about him and how good he is and all the good he does. There are reasons why people come from all over, the 5,000 that were sitting there at the bread of life discourse where he took five barley loaves and two fishes and fed everybody.

People are drawn to faith-based Christians. When you love like God loves you. When you see the world through the lens of your faith, and that only comes from God. Everything changes. I cannot explain it. It’s not something that I can put in words, “It’s like when you do this and you get that.” It’s not like when you buy a new car and it’s a new Benz and you’re all jazzed about it and you’re thinking, “Woo, I’m happy.” No, because then you want a Porsche or then you want this or then you want that. We never satisfy what that something more is until we find God and that is why I’m standing in front of you right now.

Jesus has changed my life and I’m here to share it and I’m going to spout about it. He has pretty much given a miracle to me which is giving me faith, love, compassion peace and knowledge and a thirst for understanding exactly what he wants us to do on this planet.

I know what my role is on this planet and I have the courage to do it with him because I have those voices in my head just like everybody else. I’m not smart enough, good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, technical enough, educated enough, whatever your ‘enough’ sentence is, it doesn’t matter.

Everything that I used to wig out about in my life I no longer wig out about because I just go to God now and through my deep prayer life I can hear, I can see, I can rest. It’s phenomenal!

So this week, keep loving people, especially the ones that you don’t know or don’t understand. I’m going to give a challenge to some of you Christians out there, all of you Christians, some that are Catholic and some that are not and ask that you love your fellow Christian! I have to be honest with you, there are some times I see on social media or hear people on radio call-in shows where we surely do not love each other.

We may not agree with each other, but we need to love each other. I mean, if you can’t love a Christian and yes, Catholics are Christians, that’s a kicker for me … then what are we doing? How do we even remotely show how wonderful God is?

This was exactly the way I felt when I went to a Lutheran Pastors Wives event as a Catholic and I thought, “Am I going to be eaten alive here?” Was going in and talking about my joy and my relationship with God and how it’s fundamentally changed my life and they didn’t know that I was Catholic until I got up and started speaking. And I didn’t turn away from my faith, but I also wasn’t trying to convert them either. I plainly shared with them the ‘why’s’ and shared with them my journey and afterwards about 12 of us, including myself, were in tears. They all prayed over me and it was the most amazing talk—now that is Christianity at its finest. They loved me. I loved them, and I still get notes from some of those women in that audience saying, “I keep praying for you. You keep doing Jesus’s work.”

So let’s remember, love everyone this week and that really means every day, every hour.

Have a blessed and inspired week. I’ll talk to you soon. Take care.