A Homily for the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
[Photograph uploaded to Flickr on May 18, 2007 by Jeanette's Ozpix]
“Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!” St. Ignatius Loyola gave this phrase to his Jesuits as their unofficial motto. It translate as “for the greater glory of God.” In today’s second reading St. Paul says basically the same thing when he says, “do everything for the glory of God.” One of our most common prayers, is “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever. Amen.” Giving glory to God, is front and center at every Mass, right after we ask God’s pardon for our sins, when we sing: “Glory to God in the highest.” These prayers are so basic to our Catholic faith that they must have an important and deep meaning for us. Yet in the busyness of our lives these prayers can become routine and we might forget their important meaning. It is good to take time to polish up on the meaning of God’s glory in our lives of faith.
What is the Glory of God? The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: ‘The world was made for the glory of God’” (#293). In other words, the glory of God is the motivation behind both God’s creation and redemption of the universe. Since this is God’s motivation for His work of creation and redemption, when we make the Glory of God the reason behind our decisions and actions, we are uniting our deepest desires to his deepest desires, which is the secret to wisdom and happiness.
Yet we can say even something more about the glory of God. It is not just the reason behind His creation and redemption; “the glory of God consists in the… manifestation and communication of his goodness” (CCC #294). In other words, to glorify God, to give glory to God, means to experience his goodness or to help someone else experience it.
Let’s consider a simple example. Imagine that your mother makes the best cherry pie in history. When you taste that cherry pie and experience its goodness, you are glorifying, in a sense, your mother. And when you invite your friends to experience the goodness of that cherry pie, you are giving glory to your mother even more. She is the source of all that goodness. But until we taste how good it is, we don’t know that. To “give her glory” is to partake of that goodness and to make it known.
God’s goodness, of course, is much greater than that because it is infinite and the ultimate source of every other non-infinite goodness – even Mom’s pie. God wanted to share that goodness with us, which is why he created us – for his glory, to allow us to experience his goodness. So, when we say, “Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” we are saying, “may God’s goodness be known and experienced by us and by everyone more and more forever and ever, amen!” That is why the “Glory be” is such a beautiful and powerful prayer – it points us directly towards the incredible adventure of everlasting life.
Today we are all witnesses as these four children begin this incredible adventure of everlasting life. Their parents have brought them to be baptized, which is the beginning of the adventure. So how do they, and we, make this prayer come true? How do we experience God’s goodness?
Experiencing Mom’s pie is easy, all we need to do is take a bite. How do we take a bite of God’s goodness? The Catechism of the Catholic Church helps us here too. It says, “the glory of God is man fully alive.” By living our human life to the full we experience God’s goodness, and give Him glory. Sin and selfishness, in every form, are evil precisely because they hold us back from experiencing life to the full, life as God meant it to be experienced. This is why Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly!” (John 10:10).
This is why it is such an amazing gift to be a Catholic Christian. Through the Church, Christ teaches and guides us surely away from all sin and evil. Through the sacraments, he gives us the grace we need to grow in virtue and wisdom, so that we can become more fully alive every day. This is why faithful Catholic couples and families are not just stronger, but healthier and happier too.
By discovering and developing our talents and those of our neighbors, we are glorifying God, because he is the origin of those talents, and of our ability to develop and discover them. Following Christ doesn’t stifle our human nature, it maximizes it! The only danger is to forget that God is the origin and goal of all these wonderful things. When we do that, we turn one of them into an idol, and it becomes poison for our souls and for the world around us.
So, how do we glorify God? By living our lives to the full, exactly as he meant them to be lived.
