It is not my problem...

The following blog entry was Fr. Robert Murphy's homily for Sunday, January 17. The readings for Sunday are available here.


It is not my problem. It is not my problem. This is basically Jesus’ initial reaction today in the Gospel. We hear that he is at a wedding with his mother and his disciples and at a certain point during the reception they run out of wine and for those of us who have planned weddings and know how much things cost it is no surprise that ran out because things add up and there is only so much money to go around and for those of us who have attended weddings it is no surprise for we know how much people like to, let’s call it “celebrate.” Now Mary knows her Son, and she knows that he can do something to help in this situation. And so she asks her son to help and he is like well how does this concern affect me, my hour has not come. Basically, It is not my problem, I not ready.

Now before we give Jesus a hard for being like this, let us check ourselves because often enough we can be like this, we can have this mentality. We can look at our country and see questions about immigration and think well I am a citizen not my problem, and we can look out and we can see abuses against life and think I not pregnant or I am not terminally ill not my problem, we can look around our city and see homelessness and think I got a place to stay, not my problem, and we can see racism and think well I am not a person of color so not my problem. And in addition, we can tell ourselves I am just a college student, I am not ready, once a get my degree and graduate then I will be ready, then it will be my time. And so we can let ourselves off the hook.

Now fortunately, for everyone at the reception, Mary will not let Jesus off that easy, so “encourages” him to do something by she simply volunteering him. And this gets Jesus to act and through the use of his gifts, his abilities, he is able to help the married couple resolve their problem even though he is not married, even though it was not his problem and even though he did not think he was ready.

And fortunately, for everyone in our country, Martin Luther King, would not let certain inequalities stand. And so he decided to do something about it, and this encouraged other people to act. And they began to use their gifts and his abilities in the civil rights movement even though many people were not ready or prepared and even if it might not have been an issue for them.

And so like Isaiah the prophet in the first reading, they could not be silent. And we my brothers and sisters cannot be silent. There are certain issues facing our city and our country that our faith, our Catholic faith not only encourages, but calls us even demands that we speak out that we act that we act until the day of vindication, until the day that certain people are no longer considered forsaken but delightful. Take a minute and think about all the different people that are hated right now who are demonized and imagine what it would look like if they were accepted and appreciated. And since we know that we are not there the question for us is not if we should act, if we should respond, it is how, not if but how.

And for this we turn to our second reading, for St. Paul explains that there are different types of spiritual gifts but the same spirit, and different forms of service but the same Lord, and different workings but the same God. And then he goes on to list out different gifts and how the spirit gives these different gifts to different people. And so my brothers and sisters, we have each been blessed with our own unique set of gifts and abilities. And so each of us has to identify our gifts and abilities and decide how best to put them to use. And this can be hard and so sometimes we need someone to be like Mary and encourage us.

And while at SLU we are here to be this person for each other. We are here to not only help each other recognize our gifts and develop new ones but in the mean time we are to here find opportunities for us to use them and encourage other to do the same and in this way work on the problems facing our city and our country.



Now my brothers and sisters, Jesus did not work alone to solve the problem, he worked with other. He did his part and they did theirs. So look around this space, look around this space at all the different people, and as you do think about all of the different gifts, all the different gifts that God has given us and with this in mind let us realize that there is no problem, that there is no problem that we cannot solve if we work together.