Brothers and sisters, I find it interesting about what Jesus tells these people who say they ate with him, and he taught on their streets, “I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!” That is because we are called to do more than just eat with Jesus, with the Eucharist, and listen to him; we are called to be his servant, his follower, his preacher, and to know and love him above everything else. To sum this all up, we are called to be like Christ.
I think sometimes we can just go through the motions and act like we are followers of Christ, but we do not do anything more than just come to Mass. Jesus is very clear: just because you come to Mass does not save you. We need to be like Christ. What does it mean to be like Christ? It is to do what he did on Earth, and the first thing he did is that he loved his Father above everything. He wanted to do anything he could to be with him and stay with him. We should want to do the same with our lives and take it seriously that we stay as close as we can with God. It does not matter what doubts or what is going on in our lives; we need to turn away from anything that does not us get closer to God.
Christ was also a preacher and teacher that would lead others towards God. I think this is what most of us think about when we think about Christ and it is front and center in the Gospel. He is preaching and teaching and showing people the way to his Father. We are called to do the same with our lives. Are we teaching others who God is? Are we preaching with our words and actions? Are we being like Christ every single day? These are very important to be like Christ. Let us do the same.
He was also a servant that would help others. He wants to make other people’s lives better. We are called to do the same; how do we serve others? How do these actions reflect Christ? This is where we need to be charitable and kind towards others, especially when we do not want to.
He also knows and loves God. Christ very much knows and loves God and wanted to do anything to stay in that love. He never wanted to do anything that would not be loving God. When we love someone, we will never leave them and would do anything in our power to be with the ones we love. We would not want to hurt them and make them upset. I would hope that this would be the same with God. I think that when we know and love God, we would want to stay with him and keep on praying, going to Mass, doing the right things because of love for God. We usually love him because he has touched us and felt his loves and we would never want to get away from that.
There is plenty more of what it takes to be like Christ, but I think these are most of the major ones that Christ is all about. We are all called to be like Christ and the more we are like Christ the more likely we will get to heaven. So let us all try to be like Christ in our lives.
Given on Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C