Wake Up

Notes for today's sermon

We are by nature sleepers, snoring away, living in a wold of dream and fantasy and occasionally nightmare. Sometimes our sleep resembles death

Christ calls us to awake, to arise, to come to life, to come out of the Tomb!

He says, "I come that you might have Life and have it to the full".

Irenaeus of Lyons writing just less than a century and half after the Lord's Resurrection says, "The Glory of God is Man fully alive".

How do we live if we are fully alive?

We live according to the Gospel.

If you read the Sermon on the Mount, the standards of Christ are more demanding than those of the past, think of what he says about looking at someone lustfully, about marriage, it is all much, much more demanding than what Moses taught.

We are afraid to wake to come to life, to give up sin, yet Christ doesn't imposse burdens on us but give us strength and power.

St Augustine hears the call of Christ and puts it off, "Lord make chaste and continent, but not today!"

What changed for Augustine?

The realisation that following Christ is about a relationship.

Relationships, not rules or even Catechisms, change us and bring us to alive.

Being in love changes us, having a child changes us, truly encountering Christ changes us and causes us to awake.

Our relationship with Christ changes us and causes us to rise from our beds, from our graves even.

The Power and Might of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation causes us to awake, to come to Life.

The Blood poured out on us in the Holy Eucharist causes us to awake, to come to Life.

The healing love we encounter in Confession causes us to awake to come, to come to Life.

See the lives of the Saints, these are men and women, and children Awake and Alive in Christ.