Homily

I believe that because of our fallen human natures, we are more attuned to bad news than to good news. We love good news, we wish we could have it all the time, but in fact we believe that bad news is much more common, it comes more often, it affects us more deeply and it tends to have a stronger and longer lasting impact upon us.

How many times when the telephone has rung have you thought, "Oh goody, it must be good news!" And trust me, in my job, probably more than in your case, when the phone rings, it's much more likely than not that someone is in trouble. You get a letter and it is from the IRS. Do you expect it to hold good news for you? The doctor has his stethoscope on your chest and he's listening to your heart beat. He seems to be spending more time than usual listening there. Is your first thought, "Wow, he must be liking the sound of my heart beat." Do you expect good news from him? Apart from children on Christmas Day, how many times a year do we wake up expecting it to be a glorious and wonderful day? How many times do we wake up thinking, "I hope it won't be like yesterday?" We expect and believe that bad news is much more common than good.

Bad news tends to affect us more deeply than good news. "It's a boy! It's a girl!" You passed the test! You're accepted into the program! You're hired! It's not cancer!" These are all expressions of good news, and genuine opportunities to rejoice. These kinds of news can have a big effect on us. But if I asked what news was it that made the deepest impact on your life, I expect you would be able to come up with more on the bad side than on the good side.

And bad news tends to stick with us longer, and therefore it has a greater influence on us. "It's a boy, it's a girl!" Great news. But then look what happens for the next 18 years or longer. But seriously, how long does the impact of that news last? I remember that phone call very well on Sunday morning not very long ago. And since then, every time I drive east on Centennial, past the Pentecostal and Christian Scientist churches, I think of Krystyna Paszeczko who lived just a couple of blocks behind them, and the effects of that bad news from the phone call that Sunday are still present, and I miss her. It's true that good news can have long lasting effects, but in truth the impact of good news often fades very quickly and it's difficult to sustain for very long, but the effects of bad news can last a long time and cling to our lives with a steady and tenacious hold.

Today, we heard the start of St. Mark's Gospel, where he writes: "The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God." The good news, in Greek "euangelion"—we get the word "evangelist" in English from that. And what is an evangelist? Someone who preaches the Good News. Also the word, "gospel," comes to us from early English, "god" meaning "good" and "spel" meaning "news." Gospel. St. Paul uses this word over 60 times in his letters. And St. Mark is the only evangelist who uses it without any modifiers. For him, "euangelion, gospel, good news, describes the whole event of the saving work of Jesus. It is all good news.

So here's our problem, perhaps. We are not well built to hear and receive and hold on to good news. We like the good news but we are much more focused on bad news, attentive and watchful for bad news, more expectant of bad news. Yeah, yeah, yeah we have good news, but it's not the good news we're worried about. It's the bad news. And that is, in a sense, why it's so hard for us perhaps to keep Jesus and His saving love present and active in our conscious lives. We may have at times experienced the joy, the peace, the grace, the goodness of the Lord, but those thoughts, those experiences seem to fade very easily and quickly, while bad news and all it represents can seem so relevant, so persistent, so powerful. It's always ready to dominate our lives and is it not true that we very often allow it to dominate our lives? "Sure Jesus is good news. We know that. But what we really have to focus on is all the bad stuff that can or might or will happen. That's what's most important." So should I be surprised if people, seeing how I live and react and talk, should I be surprised if someone doesn't think I really have good news? Or that the good news I have is not truly as powerful in my life as the fear of the bad news I might receive?

It can happen to people when someone is dying. As people watch the person nearing the end of his life, they can say, "Oh, that's bad, and that's bad, and that's bad, and it is all very bad."

And then the person dies. And people say, "Oh that's good now, he is in heaven with Jesus." It's as if the good news only appears when the situation is totally out of our hands. Now please don't get me wrong, there certainly is bad stuff connected with dying, and death itself is the enemy. But wasn't there good news when the person was healthy, along with the good news that they may now be in paradise. Does the good news somehow then vanish in between those two points of time? Does it disappear because a person is dying? See, how we are? Yes, there can be sadness, and bad things do happen, but Christ our Lord does not disappear because of them. But for us, it's so easy to let that euangelion, that gospel, slip away from our sight and from our lives as we face hard times. And, strangely enough we can also let it slip away even during good times. Only one leper out of ten thought it was time to give thanks to God. I've never had leprosy, so what good news will prompt me to give thanks to God?

It is so easy to lose sight, to lose awareness, to get distracted, to desire self-reliance, to believe that plotting our own way through life will get us where we want to be. And we are prone to pay the greatest of our attentions to bad news, or avoiding bad news, so much so that it is possible we forget the good news we bear. We forget Christ Who is gospel for us.

St. Paul in today's epistle says his life is being poured out as a sacrifice but even so, Timothy ought to continue to preach the good news. St. Mark doesn't say, "The beginning of the biography, the theology of, the story about, an account of Jesus Christ." No, it's "the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ." We cannot afford to lose this news. We must remind ourselves of it at Liturgy, in our daily prayer, when we're faced with temptation, when trouble comes our way, even in the face of disaster and death, we must remind ourselves, again and again and again of the truth that we carry within us this gospel, this great news, which is not a piece of information. We carry the good news which is Christ Himself.