Greetings friends! Here is the homily that I preached this past weekend in Jeffersonville. I am particularly sure that the Holy Spirit was directing this one because even though I had no contact with whoever it was that wrote the Prayers of the Faithful for the parishes at least half of them matched up almost perfectly with different aspects of my homily. Praise God for that!
As always, if you have any feedback (positive and constructive) I'm happy to hear it!
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Homily: 3rd
Sunday of Lent – Cycle B
Familiarity
breeds contempt… at least that’s what the modern proverb says. What this saying is, well, saying is that as
we come to know someone more deeply, we realize just how much we actually don’t
like that person; that is that with familiarity comes knowledge not just of the
person’s attractive traits, but also of their more ugly ones (and we all have
them, don’t we). I think, in a certain
sense, we can all see some truth in this saying. But there’s another aspect of this saying that
also carries some truth: that is, that familiarity also breeds complacency.
We can see this in our daily
routines. If you’ve lived in
Jeffersonville for some time, the landmarks that you used to notice as you went
about your daily tasks—such as taking the kids to school, or making a run to
the grocery store, or even just commuting to work—after a while just kind of
fade into the landscape. After years of
living in this one place, you might even find that the features of your neighborhood
no longer seem to register in your consciousness.
This can happen with people, too. Our co-workers, classmates, close friends,
brothers and sisters, and even our spouses become so familiar to us and part of
our daily routine, that the appreciation of how special they are to our lives
is not something that enters our daily consciousnesses. And so, while this familiarity doesn’t
necessarily breed contempt, it does often breed complacency.
In the first reading today, we heard
the recounting of the Ten Commandments.
For many of us, I suspect that listening to these being read is kind of
like making our daily commute: we were conscious that we began the trip, but
when we got to our destination we weren’t quite sure how we got there. In other words, the Ten Commandments are
perhaps so familiar to us that they’ve become “part of the landscape” and no
longer impact our daily consciousness.
And this is nothing new. The ancient Jews also fell into this
trap. They had the Law for many years
and most people were very familiar with it and its demands. Thus, following the precepts of the Law had
become for them like our daily routine: nothing more than part of the daily
landscape through which they had to navigate.
And this to the extent that they turned what is called the “Temple
Cult”—that is, the sacrifices offered in the Temple both in homage of God and
as an atonement for sins—into a business for profit.
That’s when Jesus breaks into the
scene and disrupts the familiar. He saw
the way that Satan had distorted the truth that the Law represented—that is,
that it was a way for God’s chosen people to remain in “right relationship”
with Him—and turned it into a Law of cold demands and business
transactions. Jesus saw that this had
become so familiar to the people that they simply accepted it as the conditions
for living as the People of God. By turning over the tables of the familiar,
Jesus was hoping to reawaken in them an awareness of the true relationship that
God had called them to.
The zeal with which Jesus desired that
the Temple—his Father’s house—be free from defilement is the same zeal that he
has for our hearts. He wants to turn
over the tables of the familiar in our hearts and drive out any distorted images
of self, of others, of God, and of what God asks of us so that we can once
again see the beauty of the relationship he has called us to: both collectively
as the People of God and individually as adopted sons and daughters. Yet, unlike the Temple, Christ cannot just
burst into our hearts and start turning things over. God created us for freedom and for him to do
so would violate that dignity. And so
this Lent—as he does throughout the year, but particularly in this holy
season—Jesus calls us once again to open our hearts to him and to give him
permission to shed light on anything in them that is unholy, that is untrue,
and thus to drive them out, so as to purify his “temples of the Holy Spirit.”
My brothers and sisters, if all we
have done this Lent is take up our old familiar practices of prayer, fasting,
and almsgiving, then we have little more to hope for when we arrive at Easter
Sunday than a feeling of relief for not having to maintain these disciplines
any longer. The challenge we have before
us today is to make this Lent different by “opening wide the doors to Christ,”
which was the clarion call of our late Holy Father, Bl. Pope John Paul II. We do this by turning our gaze away from
ourselves and towards others. In prayer,
we ask God to show us ways that we can overcome our sinful habits by turning towards
our neighbor and offering a word of encouragement, a gentle correction when
they need it, a helping hand in their difficulties, and a humble
acknowledgement of how we’ve hurt them in the past that is accompanied by a
sincere desire for forgiveness. Then we
return to God, offering him our successes and our (inevitable) failures and
asking again for the grace to recognize our weaknesses and to trust in his help
to overcome them.
This work, of course, is
uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable
because we have to give up our control to Christ and make ourselves vulnerable
to him and to others. But that’s ok, because,
as our current Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI has said, “the world offers you
comfort, but you were not made for comfort; rather you were made for
greatness.” My brothers and sisters,
this Lent cannot be just about “sticking it out” to the end, but rather it must
be about achieving the greatness we were made for. And so, let Christ—the Christ we encounter
here in the sacrifice we offer and in the meal we share—turn over the familiar
in your hearts. If you do so, then you
will be truly ready to encounter anew the joy of Easter.
~ Given at
Saint Augustine and Sacred Heart Parishes, Jeffersonville, IN - March 10th-11th,
2012
