El encuentro cuaresmal con Jesús que renueva

 Homilía: 3º Domingo en la Cuaresma – Ciclo A

Hermanos, a partir de este tercer domingo de Cuaresma, entramos verdaderamente en el corazón de este tiempo. Con suerte, nuestras disciplinas de Cuaresma nos han estado liberando de nuestros apegos desordenados y voces que distraen para que podamos escuchar a Dios el Padre hablándonos y verlo, cara a cara, una vez más. A partir de hoy y durante los próximos dos domingos, mientras reflexionamos sobre los encuentros personales con Jesús que nos relatan nuestras lecturas del Evangelio, estamos invitados a profundizar nuestros propios encuentros con él.

El primero de los tres encuentros es con la mujer samaritana en el pozo. Para mí, esta es la historia más emocionalmente conmovedora de las tres. Como descubriremos en la historia, esta mujer, quizás por sus propias decisiones o por malos tratos o malas circunstancias en su vida, se encuentra aislada en su comunidad. Estuvo casada y divorciada varias veces, lo que en la cultura de la época siempre avergonzaba a la mujer. Prefiere no ser vista, por lo que acude al pozo al mediodía, cuando no se espera que haya nadie más allí.

Allí, sin embargo, se encuentra con Jesús. Lo que vemos en este encuentro es el camino inteligente que toma nuestro Señor para ayudar a esta mujer a abrir su corazón al don de la vida que vino a darle. Primero, él llama su atención pidiéndole que le dé de beber. Como los judíos y los samaritanos no se mezclaron, ella está asombrada por su pedido. Por lo tanto, aunque probablemente esperaba poder conseguir agua e irse sin siquiera mirar al hombre sentado junto al pozo, ahora se siente obligada a entablar un diálogo con él. “¿Cómo es que tú, siendo judío, me pides de beber a mí, que soy samaritana?” Ella es curiosa y Jesús usa eso para atraerla más profundamente. “Si conocieras el don de Dios y quién es el que te pide de beber, tú le pedirías a él, y él te daría agua viva”. Ella está incrédula de que Jesús, que ni siquiera tiene con qué sacar agua, pueda darle de beber, y se lo dice. Sin embargo, la respuesta de Jesús a su incredulidad toca una fibra sensible en su corazón: “El que bebe de esta agua vuelve a tener sed. Pero el que beba del agua que yo le daré, nunca más tendrá sed; el agua que yo le daré se convertirá dentro de él en un manantial capaz de dar la vida eterna”.

Aunque la mujer todavía malinterpreta lo que Jesús quiere decir, su deseo de aliviar alguna carga de su vida busca aferrarse a la oferta de Jesús. Entonces ella le dice: “Señor, dame de esa agua para que no vuelva a tener sed ni tenga que venir hasta aquí a sacarla”. Bueno, la respuesta de Jesús en este punto puede parecer que está ignorando su pedido y cambiando el tema de la conversación. En verdad, sin embargo, Jesús reconoció que esta mujer ahora se había abierto para recibir lo que él le estaba ofreciendo y entonces comenzó a darle lo que ella pedía. En otras palabras, dijo la mujer. “Señor, dame de esa agua…” y Jesús hace exactamente eso: pero no de la manera que ella esperaba.

En su naturaleza divina, Jesús conocía completamente a esta mujer, incluidas todas las cargas emocionales, espirituales y físicas que había estado soportando. Podía ver que ella estaba más agobiada por la vergüenza que sentía por sus matrimonios fallidos. Así, aunque ella espera ser liberada de la carga de sacar agua del pozo, Jesús sabe que ella más necesita ser liberada de la carga de su vergüenza.

Por eso, cuando pide recibir lo que Jesús le ofrece, primero la hace afrontar su realidad más dolorosa. Lo hace por lo que compartirá a continuación: “Pero se acerca la hora,” dice, “y ya está aquí, en que los que quieran dar culto verdadero adorarán al Padre en espíritu y en verdad, porque así es como el Padre quiere que se le dé culto.” En otras palabras, Jesús le está diciendo a esta mujer samaritana que ella misma podrá ofrecer a Dios verdadera adoración, incluso en su quebrantamiento y vergüenza, pero solo si está dispuesta a reconocer la verdad completa de quién es ella y de la realidad de su vida hasta ese momento. Él enfatiza este punto para ella: “…porque así es como el Padre quiere que se le dé culto”.  Otras traducciones lo dicen en esta manera: “…el Padre busca a tales personas para que lo adoren”.

De forma vacilante ahora, la mente y el corazón de esta mujer estaban acelerados por las cosas asombrosas que Jesús le había dicho. “¿Podría ser este el Cristo?” seguramente pensó para sí misma. Ella expresa su fe en que Cristo vendría y Jesús elimina toda duda diciendo: “Soy yo, el que habla contigo”. Ella cree. Ella cree y deja ir las cargas de su vida que, momentos antes, no tenía esperanzas de ser aliviada. Muestra de ello es que, cuando sale para ir a contar a la gente del pueblo la buena noticia que ha encontrado, deja su cántaro de agua: el símbolo físico de todo lo que la agobia.

Hermanos míos, este camino por el corazón de la Cuaresma nos invita a estar abiertos al encuentro con Jesús (y a ser encontrados por él) para permitirle que nos desvele las verdades de nuestra vida, y particularmente las verdades que dudamos, tenemos miedo, o nos avergonzamos de reconocer. Esto para que le permitamos liberarnos del peso de las mentiras que creemos sobre nosotros mismos y sobre nuestras vidas (que encubren las verdades incómodas) y reconciliarnos con el Padre una vez más. Y ¿por qué es esto importante? ¿Para qué no seamos castigados por él? ¡No! ¡Para que podamos adorarlo en Espíritu y en verdad! Porque, como escuchamos decir a Jesús, “…el Padre busca a tales personas para que lo adoren”.

Por lo tanto, mientras adoramos a Dios aquí en esta Misa, renovemos nuestro compromiso con nuestras disciplinas cuaresmales de oración, ayuno y limosna con la esperanza de que nos preparen para encontrarnos con Jesús para que él pueda ayudarnos a ver la verdad sobre nosotros mismos y sobre las realidades de nuestras vidas. Entonces, viendo su mirada misericordiosa, estaremos dispuestos a dejar que nos libere de nuestras cargas y, así, nos renueve en Espíritu y en verdad. Renovados de esta manera, estaremos entonces listos para ir, como lo hizo la mujer samaritana, descargados al mundo para proclamar las verdades que hemos descubierto e invitar a otros a encontrarlas, renovando así la Iglesia de Dios.

Esta es la obra de la Cuaresma; y es una obra gozosa. Que la gracia de esta Eucaristía nos fortalezca para esta santa obra.

Dado en la parroquia de Todos los Santos: Logansport, IN - 8 de marzo, 2026

A necessary renovation

 Homily: 3rd Sunday of Lent – Cycle A

So here we are at the end of the second full week of Lent.  In many ways, if we have been engaging the work of Lent well, we are settling into this season and perhaps even starting to see the fruits of what this season calls us to do.  Nevertheless, perhaps many of you have been struggling to “get into” what Lent is all about and are ready to disengage from the whole project (or perhaps you already have).  Thus, a word of reminder might be good here.

Lent is a time of preparation.  Did you hear that?  I said “a time of preparation.”  I know most of you heard me say “a time of penance”, but I didn’t say that.  Lent is a time of preparation.  And preparation for what?  Well, for the celebration of Easter, of course!  And why do we need to prepare to celebrate Easter?  Why can’t we just celebrate it?  Well, because celebrating the greatest mystery of our salvation is something much deeper and more profound than, say, celebrating somebody’s birthday (though we do prepare to celebrate those, don’t we?).  Easter is not just a day of remembrance, but it is also a day of renewal: the remembrance of our definitive rebirth in Christ at our baptism and the renewal of our commitment to live that life to its fullest.

You know that the word “renew” is synonymous with the word “renovate”, right?  And we all know that to renovate something is to take something that is old and used and to make it like new again.  We do this with houses and cars, churches and office buildings, and perhaps even our wardrobes from time to time.  What’s the first thing that any renovation project has to tackle?  Cleaning out the old junk, of course!  In other words, the first part of any renovation project is to prepare the space by cleaning out the old, useless stuff.

Thus, if we are to be renewed—that is, renovated—by our celebration of Easter, then we need first to take some time to prepare our space by cleaning out the old junk from our hearts.  Lent is our time of preparation.  By fasting we detach ourselves from the things that keep us from living the new life that we have received in Christ through baptism.  By almsgiving we take up the practice of sharing the fruits of that new life with others.  And by prayer, we deeply reconnect with the one who called us out of our darkness and into his perfect light.

It is in prayer, then, that we also remember.  Each of our journeys is unique.  Each of us, at some point in our lives, has had to come to terms with where it was that we were and where it is that God wanted us to be.  And each of us had to make a decision about whether we would follow Jesus towards where God wanted us to be or remain where we were.  My guess is that, since you are here, all of you have decided to follow Jesus to where God wants you to be.  If so, then part of our preparation for the renovating celebration of Easter is our remembrance of that experience of God meeting us where we were and inviting us to where he wants us to be: for part of our celebration is the renovation of our commitment to arrive at that place where God is leading us.

If not, then perhaps this time of preparation could be a time for you to experience that encounter with God that will help you to come to terms with your life: that is, to see clearly where it is that you are and to experience God meeting you there and inviting you to journey towards the place where he wants you to be.  This is exactly what the Samaritan woman experienced in our Gospel reading.  From the place where she was—a life full of broken relationships which left her marginalized even among her own people—Jesus meets her and invites her to come to terms with her life.  He then invites her to move from where she is to where it is that he wants her to be: a place where her thirsts no longer find only temporary satisfaction, but rather become infinitely satisfied.

At first, she tries to deflect this invitation: introducing a debate about the proper place of worship and then declaring her belief in the coming Messiah.  When Jesus, however, reveals himself to her completely (“I am he, the one speaking with you”) something in her changes.  She drops her guard, recognizes him for who he is, and… what?  She leaves her water jar to announce to all the townspeople who it is that she has encountered.  She left the water jar—representative of her life—that could be filled at one moment but would always become empty again, because she had found the spring of living water—Jesus—and so she no longer needed it.

My brothers and sisters, __ of our brothers and sisters in this community are on a journey towards their definitive rebirth in Christ through baptism at the Easter Vigil.  Lent, at its core, is for them as they make their final preparations for this “ultimate” renovation of their lives at Easter.  In these three weeks we will intentionally scrutinize them, asking them to come to terms with their lives, to recognize in Jesus the spring of living water, and thus to leave their water jars behind.  We, as their brothers and sisters in faith, journey with them so as to be renewed in our baptism at the Easter celebration.

Let us, then, scrutinize our lives during this Lenten season so as to come to terms with them.  And let us seek to remember (or discover for the first time) how Jesus has shown us to be the only source that can satisfy our deepest thirsts.  Then, renewed in the grace of our baptism, we, too, will be inspired—like the Samaritan woman at the well—to take this great message out to the world and to invite all those around us to “come and see”, and to be filled by Jesus’ life-giving water.

Given at St. Charles Borromeo Parish: Peru, IN – March 8th,  2026

Am I ready to let God see me?

 Homily: 2nd Sunday in Lent – Cycle A

Dear friends, last week, as we entered our Lenten pilgrimage in earnest, we encountered two questions that, when answered, will help us derive great spiritual benefit during this holy season.  Those questions were: “Whose voice am I listening to?” and “Whose voice should I be listening to?”  In the first reading from last Sunday, we recounted how Eve, having already heard the commandment of God that they may eat of the fruit of any tree in the garden, except the tree in the middle of the garden, lest they die, listened to the voice of the serpent, and then to her own voice, which led her to break the commandment of God: committing the first sin.  Perhaps it wouldn’t be too hard for any of us to acknowledge that we often fall prey to this same temptation: that is, to listen to voices who lack the full wisdom and authority of God—such as the voices of influencers on talk radio, news programming, and social media, and our own, inner voices.  As with Eve, this is dangerous for us to do, because, left to our own devices, we are quite good at convincing ourselves to do something that we otherwise know we shouldn’t do.  This season of Lent is inviting us to ask these questions of ourselves–“Whose voice am I listening to?” and “Whose voice should I be listening to?”–and to recognize how often we listen to voices that lack the full wisdom of God; and thus to acknowledge that the voice we should be listening to is the voice of true wisdom—that is, Wisdom himself—God the Father.  If you’re nodding your head in agreement–that is, if you acknowledge that you indeed have been listening to the wrong voices and are ready to listen to the voice of God this Lent–then you’re ready for the next step to which this week’s liturgy calls us.

To understand this next step, we have to look back again to last week’s Scriptures.  At the end of the reading from the book of Genesis, we heard that when Eve and Adam had both eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “the eyes of both were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.”  Now, although we didn’t read it in the liturgy last week, the verses that follow that reading describe how God came looking for Adam and Eve, but that they hid themselves from him. /// After the first sin, Adam and Eve hid themselves from each other and from God. /// In art throughout the centuries, this scene of hiding almost always shows Adam and Eve dramatically turning away from God and very specifically shows them obscuring their faces with their arms, so as to avoid looking at God face to face.

This is so telling about the effects of sin, isn’t it?  When someone is in good relationship with another, the persons have no problem looking at each other, face to face.  Yet, whenever that relationship is broken or damaged in some way, the effect is always a turning one’s face away from the other, so as not to face (pun intended) the pain and shame that the hurt has caused.  I remember that, when I was about 12 years old, I was caught doing something about which I was very embarrassed.  Knowing that my mother would soon seek me out to confront me about it, I hid in the closet in my bedroom, so I didn’t have to look at her and face the embarrassing truth about what I did.  My guess is that each of us here has a similar story to tell from our own lives.  Sin—our deliberate (or neglectful) disobedience of God’s commandments for our good and flourishing—causes us to turn from God and to hide ourselves from him.  Lent, and particularly our Scriptures this week, invites us to turn back to God and to look at him, face to face, once again.

In a way, since that first sin and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, God has turned his face away from us.  Throughout the Scriptures, we see that, even when we were ready to look at God once again, God nonetheless kept his face hidden from us.  Perhaps most poignant is the story of Moses.  After leading the Israelites out of Egypt and after spending many days and nights communing with God in prayer on Mount Sinai, Moses asked to see God’s face.  God agreed to allow himself to be seen by Moses by passing in front of him.  Yet, he obscured Moses’ vision as he passed so that Moses could not see his face, but would only see his back.  Mankind was still not ready to see God face to face again.  Later, in the time of King David, when many of the Psalms were written, the psalmist wrote verses like, “Turn to us, O Lord, and let us see your face.”  In spite of our sin, which turns us away from God, something deep within us still longs to look at God face to face.

This is why the story of the Transfiguration is so powerful for us (and why it is included every year in the readings for Lent).  There on Mount Tabor, Jesus reveals the full glory of his divinity—that is, he reveals his divine face—and his chosen ones, Peter, James, and John, do not hide their faces, but stare back in unspeakable joy at what their ancestors longed to see.  Through this, we come to know that, in Jesus, God’s face is no longer hidden from us.  Rather, like in the Garden before the fall, we can look at God, face to face, once again.

The question before us, then, is this: “Are we ready to let God see us?”  In other words, “Are we ready to turn our faces back to God and to let him see us, ashamed as we are by our sins, risking rejection by him, so as to be restored and renewed in our relationship with him?”  My guess is that most of us might answer, “Not fully.”  We want to see him face to face, but shame for our sins often keeps us “hiding in the closet”, like I did when I was 12 years old.  The challenge for us is to trust that, if God has made it possible to look at him, face to face, again, then he has determined that we are ready to do it.  Lent, therefore, is our time to prepare ourselves and to make a full reckoning for our sins—which is hard!—so that we might bask fully in the glory of God revealed to us in the Paschal Mystery: that is, in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. ///

With this in mind, let us listen again to the words of Saint Paul in the second reading and be encouraged in this work that we have begun, so that we may not fear to turn back to God—who has first turned back to us!—but rather open ourselves to his merciful gaze, shining forth with the brilliant light of his love for us:

Beloved:
Bear your share of hardship for the gospel
with the strength that comes from God.

He saved us and called us to a holy life,
not according to our works
but according to his own design
and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began,
but now made manifest
through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus,
who destroyed death and brought life and immortality
to light through the gospel.

May our encounter, face to face, with God here in this Eucharist fill us with the grace to fulfill this good work.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN - February 28th & March 1st, 2026

No racionalices tus tentaciones

 Homilía: 1o Domingo de la Cuaresma – Ciclo A

Bueno, ya lo hiciste, ¿verdad? El miércoles no fue tan difícil pasar junto a ese tarro de dulces en la cocina, pero el jueves no fue tan fácil, ¿verdad? O quizás un compañero de trabajo trajo donas para celebrar su cumpleaños el viernes. O tal vez fue esa cerveza o copa de vino que compartiste con un amigo en la cena del sábado. Es decir, Jesús mismo dijo: “Cuando ayunes, no hagas alarde de ello”, ¿no? Ciertamente no querías presumir de lo que renunciabas durante la Cuaresma, así que decidiste ceder, solo esa vez, para no revelar a qué habías renunciado. Qué nobleza…

El enemigo ciertamente no tiene que esforzarse mucho, ¿verdad? Sabe que en una de nuestras mayores virtudes reside una de nuestras mayores debilidades. Nuestra capacidad de razonar–es decir, de pensar las cosas–es la característica exclusivamente humana que nos asemeja más a Dios. Nos permite ordenar, crear y explotar las características de casi cualquier cosa en la creación para nuestro propio beneficio. También nos permite convencernos de casi cualquier cosa si reflexionamos lo suficiente. Esta es la debilidad que el enemigo se esfuerza por explotar. Sabe que, a menudo, basta con sugerirnos algo y que, si nos dejamos llevar por nuestros propios recursos, no tardaremos en convencernos de hacerlo.

Basta con mirar a Eva (pobrecita, ni siquiera sabía lo que le esperaba). Conocía bien la abundancia con la que Dios la había bendecido y las instrucciones que le había dado. La serpiente (astuta como era) vino y simplemente sugirió una mentira, velada por la verdad. “De ningún modo. No morirán”, dijo. “Bien sabe Dios que el día que coman de los frutos de ese árbol, se les abrirán a ustedes los ojos y serán como Dios, que conoce el bien y el mal.” Todo cierto… hasta cierto punto. Eso era todo lo que Eva necesitaba, al parecer, para poner en marcha su capacidad de razonamiento. “La mujer vio que el árbol era bueno para comer, agradable a la vista y codiciable, además, para alcanzar la sabiduría.” Todo muy cierto y, por lo tanto, según todas las percepciones, no había absolutamente nada en esos frutos que hiciera perjudicial comerlos… excepto que Dios lo había prohibido.

“Tomó, pues, de su fruto, comió y le dio a su marido, que estaba junto a ella, el cual también comió.” ¿Y qué saben? ¡Todo lo que dijo esa astuta serpiente era verdad! No murieron (al menos, no inmediatamente) y sí llegaron a conocer el bien y el mal (fíjense en cómo reconocieron de inmediato que estaban desnudos: en otras palabras, sintieron vergüenza; demostrando que sí tenían conocimiento del bien y del mal). No, lo que dijo la serpiente era verdad… solo que velaba una mentira. Resulta que morirían; aunque no sería inmediatamente. Y ya eran como dioses, porque Dios les había dado el poder de razonar. ¿Fue pecaminoso en sí mismo el acto de comer el fruto? No. Más bien, su pecado fue que eligieron confiar en su propia razón en lugar de la voluntad providencial de Dios. Decidieron tomar para sí mismos, en lugar de simplemente recibir todo lo que Dios les había dado.

Comparemos esto ahora con Jesús. Tras cuarenta días de ayuno en el desierto, siente hambre (lo que, en términos bíblicos, significa que está débil: físicamente, mentalmente y espiritualmente) y el diablo viene a tentarlo. ¿Y a tentarlo a hacer qué? A negar su humanidad y afirmar su divinidad. El diablo sabía que si Jesús negaba su humanidad y permitía que su divinidad la anulara, su vida sería inútil para salvarnos–pues Jesús tenía que ser completamente obediente a la voluntad del Padre, usando solo su voluntad humana para contrarrestar la desobediencia de nuestros primeros padres–y por eso tienta a Jesús tres veces para que manifieste su divinidad sobre su humanidad.

En cada una de esas tres tentaciones, ¿qué hizo Jesús? ¿Intentó razonar para entrar o salir de ellas? Es decir, ¿miró esas piedras y dijo: “Me vendría bien comer algo. Mi Padre no quiere que me muera de hambre, ¿verdad?” ¿O dijo: “Mejor me lanzo para demostrarle a este diablo que las promesas de mi Padre son verdaderas”? ¿O qué tal: “Si yo fuera el amo de todos estos reinos, podría asegurar la paz en todo el mundo; y eso sería bueno, ¿no?” No, no dijo nada de eso. Más bien, eligió confiar en la voluntad de su Padre en lugar de en su propia razón y así venció al tentador. Decidió recibir lo que el Padre le ofrecía, en lugar de intentar apropiarse de las cosas. (Ah, y por cierto, ¿cuál fue el resultado? En cuanto el diablo lo dejó, ¡se acercaron los ángeles para servirle!)

Hermanos y hermanas, en nuestro esfuerzo por cumplir con la buena obra que nos hemos propuesto–es decir, orar, ayunar y dar limosna esta Cuaresma–¿cómo combatimos las tentaciones que nos asaltan a diario y que intentan frustrar nuestros esfuerzos? ¿Intentamos justificarnos para ceder, convenciéndonos de que está bien romper nuestras reglas? ¿O, en cambio, confiamos en la Palabra de Dios y en el ejemplo de Jesús: la promesa de que, si le somos fieles, él proveerá para todas nuestras necesidades? Dios nos insufló el aliento de vida eterna en el bautismo y nos colocó en el jardín que es su Iglesia. Los frutos del jardín son los sacramentos–el más destacado de ellos, la Eucaristía–y somos libres de alimentarnos de esta abundancia siempre que obedezcamos a Dios y permanezcamos fieles a sus mandamientos.

Sin embargo, preferiríamos ser como dioses, ¿no?; racionalizando tanto nuestros pecados que perdiéramos por completo lo único que ganamos al pecar: nuestra capacidad de distinguir el bien del mal? Hermanos y hermanas, debemos recuperar un remordimiento equilibrado, pero firme, por nuestros pecados. Para ello, primero debemos recuperar la sensación de que Dios está verdaderamente cerca de nosotros; que él no es un “relojero divino” que armó el mundo y le dio cuerda y ahora se sienta a observar cómo funciona, sino que está íntimamente involucrado con su creación y quiere guiarnos y conducirnos en el camino.

Con esta sensación de la intimidad de Dios con nosotros, profundizaremos nuestra amistad con él. Y a medida que nuestra amistad se profundiza, también lo hará nuestro remordimiento por cualquier acto que lo ofenda. Así como cualquiera de nosotros se sentiría fatal por hacer algo que ofendió profundamente a un buen amigo, también nos sentiremos fatal al darnos cuenta de que hemos ofendido a Dios al justificar nuestra forma de ceder a las tentaciones. /// Sin embargo, este tipo de amistad no se forja de la noche a la mañana. Toma tiempo.

Y para dedicarle tiempo a Dios, tendremos que bajar un poco el ritmo de nuestras vidas. Tendremos que ayunar de algunas de las cosas que disfrutamos para poder tener tiempo para estar con Dios en oración–tanto individualmente como en familia–y para verlo en necesidad en nuestros hermanos y hermanas. Y tendremos que confesarnos con él (y créanme, todos tenemos algo que confesarle a Dios).

Pero cuando lo hagamos, hermanos y hermanas, comenzaremos a ver el poder de Dios obrando en nosotros para vencer nuestras tentaciones: es decir, el poder del amor que sentimos por Dios, que nos lleva a despreciar cualquier tentación de elegirnos a nosotros mismos en lugar de a Él. Con este poder obrando en nosotros, nos gloriaremos verdaderamente en la celebración de la resurrección del Señor el Domingo de Pascua: la alegría que saboreamos incluso ahora, aquí en esta mesa.

Dado en la parroquia de Todos los Santos: Logansport, IN – 22 de febrero, 2026

Don't rationalize your temptations.

 Homily: 1st Sunday of Lent – Cycle A

Well, you’ve already done it, haven’t you?  On Wednesday, it wasn’t so hard to walk past that jar of candy in the kitchen, but Thursday it wasn’t so easy, was it?  Or perhaps a co-worker brought in donuts to celebrate his birthday on Friday.  Or maybe it was that beer or glass of wine that you shared with a friend at dinner on Saturday.  I mean, Jesus himself said that “when you are fasting, don’t make a show of it”, didn’t he?  You certainly didn’t want to brag about what you were giving up during Lent so you decided to give in—just that one time—so as not to reveal what it was that you had given up.  How very noble…

The enemy certainly doesn’t have to work very hard, does he?  He knows that within one of our greatest powers lies one of our greatest weaknesses.  Our ability to reason—that is, to think things out—is the uniquely human characteristic that makes us most like God.  It allows us to order, to create, and to exploit the characteristics of just about anything else in creation for our own use.  It also allows us to convince ourselves of just about anything if we think about it long enough.  This is the weakness that the enemy strives to exploit.  He knows that very often all he needs to do is to suggest something to us and that then, left to our own devices, it won’t be long before we’ve talked ourselves into doing it.

Just look at Eve (poor thing, she didn’t even know what was coming).  She knew well the abundance with which God had blessed her and the instructions that God had given her.  The serpent (cunning as he was) came and simply suggested a lie, veiled in truth.  “You certainly won’t die”, he said.  “No, God knows that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.”  All true… to a point.  That was all Eve needed, it seems, to get her powers of rationalization going.  “[She] saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.”  All very true and, thus, by all perceptions there was absolutely nothing about those fruits that would make them harmful to eat it… except that God had forbidden it.

“So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her (by the way, what was he doing all this time?), and he ate it.”  And what do you know; everything that that cunning serpent said was true!  They didn’t die (at least, not immediately) and they did come to know what is good and what is evil (notice how they immediately recognized that they were naked: in other words, they felt shame; demonstrating that they did have knowledge of what was good and what was evil).  No, what the serpent said was true… except that it veiled a lie.  As it turns out, they would die; even though it wouldn’t be immediately.  And they were already like gods, because God has given them the power to reason.  Was the act of eating the fruit sinful in itself?  No.  Rather, their sin was that they chose to trust their own reason instead of the providential will of God.  They decided to take for themselves, instead of simply receiving all that God had given them.

Contrast that now with Jesus.  After forty days of fasting in the desert, he’s hungry (which, in biblical terms, means that he’s weak: physically, mentally, spiritually) and the devil comes to tempt him.  And tempt him to do what?  To deny his humanity and to assert his divinity.  The devil knew that if Jesus denied his humanity and allowed his divinity to override it that his life would be useless to save us—for Jesus had to be completely obedient to the Father’s will using his human will alone in order to counteract the disobedience of our first parents—and so he tempts Jesus three times to manifest his divinity over his humanity.

In each of those three temptations, what did Jesus do?  Did he try to reason his way into or out of them?  I mean, did he look at those stones and say, “Gee, it really would be good if I ate something.  I mean, my Father certainly doesn’t want me to die of starvation, does he?”  Or did he say “I better jump so as to prove to this devil that my Father’s promises are true”?  Or how about, “You know, if I was master of all of these kingdoms I could make sure that there was peace over the whole world; and that would be good, wouldn’t it?”  No, he didn’t say any of those things.  Rather, he chose to trust his Father’s will instead of his own reason and thus he overcame the tempter.  He chose to receive what the Father offered, instead of trying to take things for himself.  (Oh, and by the way, what was the result?  As soon as the devil left him, angels came to his aid, anyway!)

My brothers and sisters, in our efforts to fulfill the good work that we’ve laid out before us—that is, our prayer, fasting and giving alms this Lent—how do we fight off the temptations that come to us daily, trying to thwart our efforts?  Do we try to rationalize our way into giving in, convincing ourselves that it’s “ok” to bend our rules?  Or do we rely, instead, on God’s Word to us and Jesus’ example for us: the promise that if we remain faithful to him that he will provide for all of our needs?  God has breathed the breath of eternal life into us at baptism and has placed us in the garden which is his Church.  The fruits of the garden are the sacraments—most prominent among them, the Eucharist—and we are free to feed from this abundance as long as we obey God by remaining faithful to his commandments.

Yet, we’d rather be like gods, wouldn’t we; rationalizing our sins so much so that we’ve completely lost the one thing that we gained through sinning: our ability to know what is good and what is evil?  My brothers and sisters, we must regain a balanced, yet strong compunction for our sins (many of our not-as-young parishioners will “light-up” to hear that word being used in church again, but it is exactly what we need to hear).  To do this, we must first regain our sense that God is truly near to us; that he’s not some “divine watch-maker” who put the world together and wound it up and now sits back to watch it work, but rather that he is intimately involved with his creation and wants to lead and guide us along the way.

With this sense of God’s intimacy with us, we’ll deepen our friendship with him.  And as our friendship deepens, so will our sense of compunction for any act that offends him.  Just as any of us would feel horrible for doing something that deeply offended a good friend, so will we feel horrible when we realize that we’ve offended God when we rationalize our way into giving in to temptations. /// This kind of friendship doesn’t happen overnight, however.  It takes time.

And in order to make time for God, we’re going to have to slow down our lives a little.  We’re going to have to fast from some of those things that we enjoy doing so that we can have time to be with God in prayer—both as individuals and as families—and to see him in need in our brothers and sisters.  And we’re going to have to come clean with him in confession (and trust me all of us have something about which we need to come clean with God).

But when we do, my brothers and sisters, we’ll begin to see the power of God working in us to overcome our temptations: that is, the power of the love that we have for God which leads us to despise any temptation to choose ourselves over him.  With this power working within us, we will truly glory in celebration of the Lord’s resurrection on Easter Sunday: the joy of which we taste even now, here at this table.

Given at St. Charles Borromeo Parish: Peru, IN – February 22, 2026

The transcendental goodness that evangelizes

 Homily: 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A

Dear Sisters and friends, as we journey through these weeks of Ordinary Time, we are challenged to grow in our discipleship of Jesus.  In previous weeks, we have been encouraged to behold Jesus, the Lamb of God, in the different moments and encounters of our daily lives, to see in the Word of God both a record of God’s promises to us and the evidence of their fulfillment, and to be lowly and pure so that we might be blessed to recognize God’s presence among us.  This week, I believe that the Mass moves us to remember that we have been given a mission to evangelize, and what that evangelization looks like.  And so, let’s dive in to see how it reveals this to us.

Bishop Robert Barron, a great evangelizer himself, often speaks of the difficulties of trying to proclaim Jesus in a world that has lost much of its religious sense.  What he means by that is this: that since, in western culture, people have lost a sense of who God is—or that God even exists—to approach them with a proclamation of Jesus is ineffective, since they wouldn’t have a context in which to place him and thus accept him.  To counter this, Bishop Barron often proposes introducing people to what are called the “transcendentals”: that is, truth, beauty, and goodness.  These, he argues, are things, not specifically religious, that anyone can experience, and which can lead them to acknowledge realities that are beyond themselves (that is, realities that “transcend” their own).  When someone is able to do this, Bishop Barron argues, then they can be introduced to the idea of God and of our need for a savior, who is Jesus.  Okay, that said, let’s look at these transcendentals.

Truth, Bishop Barron argues, is a difficult one to begin with.  This is because our culture is so rife with relativism—that is, the idea that truth is relative to the person who perceives it—that even when presented with a universal truth, a person might not be open to experiencing its transcendent quality.  Beauty, he says, is a similarly challenging mode of evangelizing.  This for a couple of reasons: first because to truly encounter beauty one has to “raise his/her eyes” above the world.  In western culture, so rife with images that speak to our passions and our primal urges, it’s hard to pull our eyes away to see something that is truly beautiful in and of itself.  Second, because the idea of beauty has also been subject to relativism.  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” the saying goes.  But this is not true.  Transcendent beauty is something that has an objective quality.  You might say that Saint Patrick’s church here in Kokomo, or our cathedral church in Lafayette, does not appeal to your taste in regard to style, but you’d be wrong if you said that it wasn’t beautiful.

This leaves us with goodness.  This, Bishop Barron argues, is where we have the most opportunity.  This is because many in western culture still believe that we have a responsibility to care for those who are less fortunate than us: that is, to do good for others.  Therefore, when folks see Christians serving the poor—especially if it is poor Christians serving the poor—they more readily recognize that there is something valuable in goodness and, thus, will be open to knowing what it is that motivates us to service; which, then, is our chance to share the Gospel.  This third transcendental as a means of evangelization is exactly what our scriptures point towards today.

In the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, we hear the Lord telling the Israelites how it is that they will be restored to God’s good graces and begin again to fulfill their purpose as God’s people, which is to be a light drawing people from every nation towards God.  And what does he say?  He says, “share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless; clothe the naked when you see them, and don’t turn your back on your own.”  Still further he says, “remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech... bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted...”  In other words, “Do good and avoid evil and the light that you have been given will shine brightly in the world, drawing people into my kingdom.”  Friends, if you read through the Old Testament, you’ll see that every time that the Israelites get in trouble with God it is because they have failed to be the light of God’s goodness in the world, thus turning people away from God, instead of towards him.

Then in the Gospel reading we hear Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount sharing with us the metaphors of salt and light.  “You are the salt of the earth”, he says to his disciples, meaning that they are meant to take what is good in the world and enhance it.  “You are the light of the world”, he also tells them, echoing the purpose that God gave to the Israelite people to be a light to all peoples so that they might turn to God.  He continues, saying, “Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”  There it is, once again: by displaying goodness to others, others will, in turn, discover and glorify God. ///

Not included with today’s first reading, but implied by our Lord in his sermon, are the consequences for not evangelizing.  The result of evangelizing, of course, is that things get better: for the kingdom of God will grow and the brotherhood of mankind, united to God through Jesus, will bring peace and harmony to the world.  The consequence of not evangelizing, however, is not that things stay the same, but rather that they get worse.  As Jesus says, salt that loses its taste is good for nothing but to be thrown out.  When it is thrown out and trampled underfoot, it makes the ground sterile: that is, unable to support plant growth.  A burning flame (which is what Jesus means when he says, “light”, by the way) that is hidden by a basket will not keep burning, but rather will burn out after it consumes all of the oxygen under the basket.  In both instances, when the thing is not used for its good end, it doesn’t keep things status quo, but rather make things worse.

And so, my friends, it does, indeed, seem that our Mass today is encouraging us to consider our mission as disciples to evangelize and to do so through goodness: that is, by doing good so as to enhance the inherent goodness in the world and to be a light that draws men and women to know God, who is goodness himself, and, thus, to glorify him.

My dear Sisters… I imagine that you’re probably thinking to yourselves, “Gee, Father, this has been a really great homily so far, but how does this apply to us, who have taken this vow of enclosure?”  I’m glad you asked that, because I was asking myself the very same question.  As a matter of fact, when I first thought of proclaiming this Gospel to you and about what I might preach, I thought I was going to have to chastise you for taking your light and hiding it under the bushel basket of these monastery walls!  I mean, I knew that wasn’t true, but I had to fight that thought away, so that I could let the goodness that is your way of life speak to me and illuminate me as to how your life is salt and light for the world.

Soon, I heard the word that brought the light: mystery.  Sisters, your life is a confusing mystery in the modern world.  On the surface, it makes no sense.  And that’s exactly the point.  Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard, Archbishop of Paris from 1940 to 1949, famously once said: Every Christian… must be a witness. To be a witness consists in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”  Sisters, if God didn’t exist, your lives would make no sense, and to the world it would look like you did, indeed, place your light under a bushel basket.  But God does exist.  Therefore, what you’ve done by isolating yourselves in this monastery is you’ve hyper-consentrated that light, so that, by being a living mystery to the world, it can shine to the farthest ends of the world and beyond, into the spiritual realm.  Just think about the oil or fuel lantern with the wick adjustment: when the wick is “up”, the light spreads across the exposed surface of the wick and provides adequate, but dull light; but when you move the wick down, almost below the surface, the light concentrates towards the end of the wick and it becomes exceedingly bright, shining light much farther than before.  Sisters, the goodness of your lives–lived authentically and with devotion–is a light by being a mystery: an infrared light, if you will: an invisible, yet piercing light that permeates the world.  And our gospel message today is a call to each of you to continue to be that light in the world.

And so, dear Sisters and friends, let us all commit ourselves to spend time this week to consider once again how God has called us to evangelize through good deeds in our daily lives and to seek to live out this call in ever more authentic ways; so that we might become more fervent disciples of Christ, and so that God’s kingdom of harmony and peace might be realized in its fullness here and now.

Given at the Monastery of the Poor Clares: Kokomo, IN – February 8th, 2026