Homily for Thursday of 3rd Week in Ordinary Time Cycle II (1)

Homily for Thursday of 3rd Week in Ordinary Time Cycle II

Theme: IS A LAMP PUT UNDER A BUSHEL?

By: Ben Agbo (Rev Fr)

Homily for Thursday January 27 2022

*2 Sam 7: 18 – 29, Mk 4 : 21 – 25.
Is a lamp brought to be put under a bushel? This is a very serious question Jesus is asking all of us who claim to be Christians today. We are supposed to be lamps giving light to our society that is full of darkness and evil. But what we see today happening in Nigeria is that it is the few Christians struggling to condemn evil in the system that are suffering. For instance, it is the few Senators who were talking sense at the last Senate (8th Senate) that are being assaulted today in the name of EFCC and so on. The rest watch it on the television and keep quiet.

Edmund Burke has said it, that “The only reason for the triumph of evil is that good people keep quiet”. It is the duty of prophets not only to condemn evil but to condemn the excesses of false prophets among them. Only good doctors can detect the error of bad doctors. Only good judges can correct the error of corrupt judges. Only good priests can correct the error of erring priests and those who have erred publicly should be condemned publicly, otherwise it becomes complicity in evil.

Sycophancy is the evil of failing to tell the leaders the truth when they are in error. Clericalism is the evil of thinking that priests are a privileged class that cannot be corrected. And many don’t know that this usually comes immediately before anti clericalism sets in. And once anti clericalism overthrows any society, like it has happened in Europe and America, Christianity begins to nose dive there. I am afraid it is gradually setting in Nigeria if care is not taken. Jesus says that a lamp cannot be put under a bushel. A priest is a light. A leader is a light. Once these fail to shine in the community there is bound to be a social disequilibrium. Every Christian is challenged to shine out like a light in his/ her society and correct all the vestiges of darkness in it; indiscipline, violence, hooliganism, bribery and corruption, injustice, idolatory, immorality, etc.

May God bless you today!