DAILY HOMILIES

sin is worse than Leprosy and must be treated as such. Leprosy was such a dreaded disease that it was seen as a curse; a disease that only God could cure. In the same way, we must never joke with sin but avoid it all cost. It is true that only God can cure us of our sinfulness but we must first hate sin so much as to break off from our comfort zones to present ourselves to Jesus with complete faith and trust.

Hunger and suffering in our world today is a direct consequence of sin at the beginning. Nonetheless, in Jesus Christ, we come to realize that all hope is not yet lost. People came to spend time with Jesus and he could see they were hungry physically and he decided to feed them miraculously with just seven loaves and few fishes.

In every temptation, Satan presents that which we think is lacking in us. To Adam and Eve, Satan presented the possibility of becoming like God. When Jesus was hungry, Satan asked him to turn stones to bread. When you are broke, Satan will tempt you with money. Satan always tries to take advantage of our wants, tastes and expectations.

The second account of creation attests to the fact that there is nothing in this world that can satisfy our heart as much as the love we feel for our fellow human beings. Just as Adam was unhappy until he met Eve, the Syrophoenician woman in our Gospel passage was restless so long as her daughter was under the possession of unclean spirits

The book of Proverbs says: “Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life.” (Proverbs 4:23). Your thoughts are powerful, they determine what becomes of your life. Where your thoughts are now, there you will soon be. Where you are now is where your thoughts were in the past.

I can only imagine that many years after this coronavirus saga, many would still be arrested and molested (treated as grave sinners) for not wearing facemasks in public. It is so easy for humans to begin a tradition but once its original purpose has been served or if it takes too long, it can become extremely difficult or impossible to stop it.

t was to an imperfect world that Jesus came. He came that we might return to the status quo. Jesus did not just bring healing to many, he left humanity as a whole with the secret to wholeness. To love God with all our heart, with all our mind and with all our souls and to love our neighbours as ourselves.

Somehow, we tend to shut Jesus out of our homes, we refuse to allow him to enter our space. The moment we leave the church premises and return home, we pull off our Christianity along with our Church attire and change into something else; we begin to behave like strangers to the faith.

In Nigeria today, the one factor responsible for large crowds flocking around men of God and churches springing up everywhere is the overwhelming failure of our leadership. The honest truth is that over seventy per cent of those who come into our churches are not looking for Jesus like these crowd in our Gospel passage. Today’s Christians are looking for those basic things that any responsible government should provide.

Dear friends, let brotherly love continue. Do not be a Herod to someone just because he or she is telling you the truth. Do not be like the kinsfolk of Jesus who were almost throwing him down the cliff because He told them the truth.

Jesus sent them out two by two. As far as winning souls is concerned, no one ever succeeds alone.

Like Jesus’ kinsfolk, we need to ask ourselves today: “Why do I look down on what is my own? What is stopping me from seeing beyond the Carpenter’s son? Why is it that I cannot see the hand of God even in midst of this painful situation I am facing right now?