Please read this passage before reading this homily.
Does the Lord ever take a vacation? Not as we consider vacations. Pagan gods may be out to lunch, in meetings, on the phone, in bed, or otherwise occupied, but our God is always available, active and working. Our God is so much one that God never needs a vacation to get body and spirit back together again.
Our God makes the rounds for God’s people. God gets people out of jail free, resets boundary markers, gives flashlights to those in darkness, shelters people, leads them to water and takes care of all our needs. For us to do these things we would need have a full-time job, but for God it is but a reflex action.
Can a mother forget her child? Possibly, but God will never forget us. God is stuck with us, or we are stuck with God. Actually, God is not struck with us because has chosen us and knows who and what we are. God has freely chosen us. We must freely choose God.
God gives us the example. Being with us, who are God’s creation, is the heart of God’s existence. Being with God has to be the heart of our existence.
Jesus had an intimate and very special knowledge of how God works. Being Son of God, Jesus tended to work the way God works. This is the message of his signs and wonders. This is the meaning of Christ’s dying and rising. This is our challenge, to do the work God does and to imitate the work God does.
Why does God work? For us, work is an integral p[art of our existence. Even the richest person with the most up-to-date inventions cannot spend all the person’s days in bed, loafing, or not doing anything. We need work because we are made to be creative human beings. God always works because of God’s innate and intimate need to communicate God’s creativity by creating and sustaining the universe. The fulfilment of God’s work is that every created thing reflect, as best each creature can, the image of God to one another.
Our vacation is to empty our egos and replace them after the pattern of God’s working with us, without ego and without drawing attention to self.