Branding

 HOMILY NOTES

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP

NOVEMBER 22, 2020

MATTHEW 25: 31-46

Branding is very important and tricky in trying to sell a product.  Branding tries to connect you to a product that you will then want to buy.  Sometimes it is a song.  Remember the Alka Seltzer brand song, “Pop, pop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is.”  This was a successful simple song you would remember  and with that buy Alka Seltzer rather than brand X.  The Marlboro Man, the rough, outdoor, manly man cowboy connected to smoking Marlboro cigarettes.  Tony the Tiger was a brand connection with Frosted Flakes.  The product identified with some image you would remember that would attract you to the product.  

A brand connection also defines ownership.  Cattle were branded.  Nowadays they get ear tags.  We see this on our monastery ranch with the cattle that graze.  The tags separate one animal from another in ownership identity.  A monk’s stability in a monastery is a form of brand belonging.  The monks here are part of St. Benedict’s Monastery here in Snowmass.  They belong here and not some other monastery.  The monastery is branded “Trappist” and not Dominican or Franciscan.  

I am feeling a sense of being a part of rather than separate from this monastery though I am more goat than sheep.  This Gospel challenges us here to make sure that we are not just looking for the “Second Coming” down the road in some future.  Jesus says quite plainly that he has come back in the hungry, thirsty, lonely, imprisoned, homeless and ill-clothed person.  We can find him there, and be identified or be branded as followers of Jesus by the way we connect with these people.  Will anyone look at you in your actions with the  suffering in this world and think “Oh, there is Christ in that person.” Are you a Christ brand? As I faithfully ate my Frosted Flakes because I identified with Tony the Tiger, I faithfully am branded a Christ follower by my actions.  Among the hungry and thirsty in our midst here are the Elk, Deer, and Cattle who all eat of our pastures that we work to maintain in spite of drought.  And the ditches with water to give to thirsty animals that we dredge each Spring.  

So you have to ask yourself, how will anyone know that you bear the Christ brand?  Being baptized is not on the Gospel list.  Nor is believing the correct creed, nor practicing any of a litany of devotions.  No, the list is pretty clear.  I do wish that Jesus had added caring for our home the Earth.  For if we fail to do this we will all be hungry and thirsty, and maybe worse.  So, are you branded “Christ-follower?"  Sheep or goat?