While I may be a few days late, I thought I would go ahead and share last Sunday's homily with you anyhow. It was actually the first time in the more seven years of my diaconate that I had the opportunity to give a children's homily.
The thing I kept in mind was that although there were 50 pre-kindergarteners sitting around the altar, there were also 600 adults who also came to be fed on the word. The truth is that it probably went a little long for the kids, but they enjoyed interacting and it's too bad that I didn't have a way to record some of their responses. Anyhow, pardon my tardiness—here you go:
In the Gospel story that we listened to today, Jesus teaches his friends an important lesson about being happy. We call this lesson the Beatitudes. Can any of you tell me what you think this word might mean, "Beatitudes?"
I want you to think about another story you may have heard or been taught about in the Bible, where a man went up onto a mountain to talk with God and came back to teach the people some important rules or lessons. Can anyone guess who I'm talking about?
That's right, Moses went up onto a mountain to pray and talk to God, and God gave him the 10 Commandments. God gave Moses the Commandments so that the people could be happy. In today's story Jesus is a lot like Moses.
Now, is there any time in your life when you can remember being blessed or getting a blessing? How did it make you feel?
Have you ever gone through the line for communion on Sunday with your parents and gotten a blessing? Maybe the priest or deacon, or even the communion minister gave you a blessing by making the sign of the Cross over you. Well, that's part of today's lesson too—the Cross is a special blessing for all of us.
The word "beatitude" and the Beatitudes in our lesson are all about being happy—really about being happier than anything we can dream of. The Beatitudes are also about doing something in order to be happy.
They're rules for being happy: just like Moses gave the 10 Commandments so the people could please God, Jesus gives us the Beatitudes to have a life full of blessing.
How do you suppose that Jesus knew these Beatitudes would make us happy? Could it be because they made him happy? Maybe he was teaching his friends about his own life. He could have begun by saying, "Here's what blesses me; here's what makes me the happiest of all…"
Jesus teaches us about many things to make us happy that we might not expect, like maybe letting other people go first when it's our turn, or sharing our things, or even forgiving people when they do bad things or hurt us.
Jesus starts out the Beatitudes telling us that the poor people, the ones who have the least in life, have the greatest blessing of all. I wonder why? Could it be because the poorest people have to depend completely on God and each other for everything? Even if we're not poor can we still depend on God and each other? Sure—it's really the biggest part of Jesus' lesson for us.
The real blessing for you comes from being close to Jesus; from praying to him and worshipping him. All of the happiness and blessings we talked about are in Jesus, so if you're close to Jesus you'll never have to worry about being really happy. God's love—the love that you can have and share—is the greatest of all the blessings. It's the true meaning of the lesson in the Beatitudes.
It was good that parents were there too, listening to the homily and I suppose they were wondering how much their children were taking in. I often wonder, as one who works in a primary school with young children, how many of them when they reach the age for First Communion, are instrumental in bringing their parents back to the sacramentw with them.
Posted by: Ann | February 11, 2008 at 07:12 AM
The kids took it in well. They practically kept their hands raised to make comments and ask questions. I think sometimes we do not give kids--or adults--the chance to understand something deep. Too often we try to aim low, which is always a mistake.
Posted by: Deacon DW | February 11, 2008 at 07:31 AM
It's great that you got such a good response. I know you're right about the understanding of the deep stuff - in as much as any of us can understand it - kids can have surprising levels of understanding and perception. And an area of course where they put us adults to shame over and over again is the one of forgiveness. We can learn so much from ones so young.
Posted by: Ann | February 11, 2008 at 03:42 PM
I really like the way you connected the Beatitudes with the Ten Commandments; that's the way I've always thought about it too. For me, the Beatitudes and the Ten Commandments have always symbolized the New Testament and the Old Testament in a nutshell - the Old being fulfilled in the New, Jesus not coming to destroy the law but to fulfil it, the law being transformed into the heart, into love. And I like the way you expressed the idea of the Beatitudes simply being "what Jesus is".
Posted by: Gabrielle | February 11, 2008 at 10:19 PM
Gabrielle--thanks, I have my sources of inspiration. Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth was a great help in getting things together.
Posted by: Deacon DW | February 11, 2008 at 10:28 PM