Homily For Wednesday Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time Year A, 22nd November, 2023. The Memorial of St. Cecilia V. M

Readings: 2Macc.7:1.20-31; Ps.17; Luke:19:11-28

Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Emenike Onyia.

 

HOW ARE YOU USING THE GIFTS AND OPPORTUNITIES GOD HAS GIVEN YOU

 

In this life, God has given special gifts and opportunities to everyone. If we use these gifts and the opportunities wisely for our benefit and the benefit of others, we will grow and blossom. But on the other hand, if we fail to use them, we will remain dormant and unsuccessful. This is what the parable in our Gospel passage today is addressing. In this parable, we heard how a king summoned ten of his servants and gave them ten pounds to do business until he came back. Some of them utilized these gifts and opportunities and so became successful and for that, they were entrusted with more gifts. While some decided to neglect and abandoned their gifts and so remained dormant and unsuccessful.

 

This parable teaches us that we all have been given gifts by God which we must give account of. Because our gifts are meant to be put to use in the service of God and humanity. And our service to God should not be done grudgingly or fearfully but generously with the willingness to take risks in responding to God's mandate. We must be ready to lose our life in order to find it. God wants us to use the individual gifts and opportunities given to us to make a difference in the world. We are not to relax into a comfort zone doing nothing with them. God wants the best from us and when we have given our best, we receive more from him.

 

Dear friends, we all are special, unique and a masterpiece and God has given us a very unique gift. These gifts may represent different physical and spiritual gifts of God, but their basic foundation is the love of God towards us.  This love is what God has given to us which needs to be reciprocated through an active love for our neighbours. However, we often find it difficult to discover our other gifts or to accept the one God has given to us because we have failed to embrace love. So, we are called today to search and discover our gifts. Love is the greatest gift God has given to humanity, let us discover love and invest in it for in it comes other gifts that will help us to achieve the purpose by which we are created.

 

This gift of love is what made the woman and her children sacrifice their lives for the sake of their belief in God’s instructions and ordinances as we have it in our first reading today. And also in the life of Cecilia whose memorial we celebrate today for she developed the love of God in her heart. Though she came from an extremely rich family and was given in marriage to a young man named Valerian. She wore sackcloth next to her skin, fasted, and invoked the saints, angels, and virgins, beseeching them to guard her virginity.

 

During her wedding ceremony she was said to have sung in her heart to God and before the consummation of her marriage, she told Valerian her husband she had taken a vow of virginity and had an angel protecting her. Valerian asked to see the angel as proof, and Cecilia told him he would have eyes to see once he travelled to the third milestone on the Via Appia (Appian Way). There he was baptized by Pope Urbanus. Following his baptism, Valerian returned to his wife and found an angel at her side. The angel then crowned Cecilia with a chaplet of rose and lily.

 

Cecilia was later arrested and condemned to be suffocated in the baths. Later an executioner was sent to cut off her head in the baths, who struck her three times but was unable to decapitate her so he left her bleeding and she lived for three days. Crowds came to her and collected her blood while she preached to them or prayed. On the third day, she died and was buried by Pope Urban and his deacons. Today St. Cecilia is regarded as the patroness of music because she heard heavenly music in her heart when she was married and is represented in art with an organ or organ pipes in her hand.

 

LET US PRAY: Heavenly Father, you have endowed us with special and unique gifts and opportunities. Help us to discover these gifts and utilize them for the purpose for which they were given to us. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. Do have a fruitful day.