…Rerouting – 11/17/24 Homily

“Well, when I finally got a car, I had that old car for about 20 years. I loved that car, but it finally died and I got myself a brand new car. I have this GPS tracking system, and you might have one in yours! They’re kind of interesting; You connect it to your phone, and then you type in the address to where you’re going, and then I guess the computer on the machine will talk to you and tell you to ‘turn left here,’ ‘turn right here,’ ‘in two miles make a left.’

It’ll just explain the whole route for you. And I have to say, I benefited from that greatly. I’ve learned the hard way that, it’s probably right. Most of the time when I think it’s wrong, I try a different way and I end up regretting it. And so I have found that this is very useful. And I thought about that in terms of our journey to the Heavenly Kingdom.

God is a lot like that tracking system. Here, He gives us freedom. We’re created in His Image, and being created in the Image of God is being created with the capacity to receive love and to give love. Because God is love – First letter of John.

So it must be freely given and freely accepted. Which means that God gives us freedom of choice. We have to choose every day, and so on this drive to the Heavenly Kingdom, we’re the ones behind the wheel. We’re the ones making the choices. Now, God is going to give us directions. He gives us directions in many different ways.

But let’s just say, taking the example of the GPS system, when we follow His directions, we may not understand them. We may think that there’s a better way. We may think, ‘well, maybe this isn’t exactly the right way to go.’ And so we veer off the road. What is the GPS tracking system going to do? It’s not going to give up on us.

Oh, no. You pull off the road and you go a different way. It starts rerouting you right away, right? Sometimes it’s trying to get you back to the original route, but if you’ve gone too far, it comes up with the new route. But it never gives up on you.

The only way to turn that thing off is if you get to where you’re going, or you just shut the phone off. Well, that’s how it is with God. If you choose to accept Him and follow Him, He’s never going to give up on you. And no matter how many errant paths you may take on that road to the Heavenly Kingdom, He’s going to be constantly sending you back on the path to Him.

We may not always understand it, and we may not always appreciate it. We may get through a lot of traffic there, just like you get in traffic and stuck by trains and all kinds of construction on a road trip. So in our path to the Heavenly Kingdom, Jesus never said it was going to be easy, but He’ll never give up on you.

And His directions are true. If we keep following His directions and His corrections that He makes for us, then we will arrive at a destination that will be well worth the trip!”

~ Fr. Joseph Gembala