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Homily:
6th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle A
On April 26th, 2003, outdoorsman Aron Ralston
was hiking alone through Blue John Canyon in eastern Utah when a boulder that
he was climbing down came loose, causing him to fall into the slot canyon in
which he was climbing and subsequently pinned his right hand against the canyon
wall. Unable to move the 800 pound
boulder, Aron was trapped and, having told no one where he had gone out hiking
(let alone, that he had gone out hiking), he had little hope that anyone would
come looking for him.
For five days Aron tried to free his hand from beneath the
boulder to no avail. At one point, he
even considered using his multi-tool to cut off his hand from his arm; but he realized
that the knife would be too dull to cut through the bone and so he didn’t
attempt it. Desperate, dehydrated, and a
little delirious, Aron had an epiphany on the fifth day. If he first broke his arm near the pinch
point, he thought, he could then successfully cut off his hand from his arm using
his multi-tool and escape in the hope of being rescued. With nothing left to lose (except his life),
he did just that. Amazingly, he then
made his way out of the canyon and hiked a few miles back towards his car before
encountering other campers who gave him food and water and helped alert the
authorities who would then come and airlift him to the hospital. Not only did Aron survive the ordeal, but he
still makes challenging hikes through mountains and canyons today.
So why do I share such a graphic story with you during
Mass? Well, because I think that it
vividly illustrates some of what our Scriptures are teaching us today. When Aron fell into that canyon and became
trapped, he was faced with a choice.
Probably never so clearly in his life, Aron knew that whatever he chose
to do while trapped in that canyon was a choice either for his life or for his
death. And he knew that he had no choice
not to choose, because he knew that not to choose was actually a choice for
death.
In our reading from the Book of Sirach, the author reminds
us that each of us has been given the freedom to choose life or death and that
“whichever he chooses shall be given him.”
Just as with Aron, the choice that the author is describing for us is
not a casual one, but rather one with significant consequences. In order to choose life, Aron had to leave
behind a seemingly essential piece of himself.
And, as Jesus describes for us in the Gospel, for us to choose life, we
too must do the same.
We continue to hear from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and
today Jesus is inviting us to see that every encounter with sin is an encounter
with the choice for life or death. After
defending himself against accusations that he was trying to abolish the Law of
Moses by teaching his disciples that the evil or malicious thoughts that we
harbor in our heads and in our hearts are tantamount to having committed the
sins themselves, Jesus goes on to teach that therefore we must sever from our
lives the very sources of our sin. Jesus
meant his teaching about cutting off the sources of sin in our lives to be
every bit as graphic as the story of Aron Ralston seems to you here today. He wanted them to understand clearly that to
maintain their attachments to sin was to choose certain death; and thus that to
choose life would often mean that they would have to sever ties with things
that, perhaps, seem to them to be essential.
My brothers and sisters, this is the same teaching that
Jesus gives to us today: we have to choose.
In other words, the choice for life or death has been given to us. God will not choose for us and, like Aron
Ralston, to choose not to choose is to choose death. This, of course, is not easy. Before sin, we didn’t have to struggle so
much against our passions. After sin,
however, our passions have become disproportionately strong, which clouds our
judgments and makes it extremely difficult to choose what is right: that is, to
choose life. (This is why even Saint
Paul could write, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I
want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
Can anybody here relate with that?)
God, of course, knows this too. This is why he sent his Son, Jesus, to save
us. God knew that, after sin, we could
never overcome our passions and fully choose life once again. And so he sent his Son to become one of us—a
human person that would experience all of the weaknesses of our human
nature—who nevertheless possessed divine power to overcome our weaknesses so as
to choose life.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was faced with the
ultimate choice of life or death. He
knew, however, that any choice that would spare his life, but which was outside
of the will of his Father, was really a choice for death. Thus, he handed over his life completely and
in doing so made it possible for us to receive the grace that we need to sever
our ties to sin and thus to choose life also.
The grace that Jesus’ choice won for us we first received in baptism;
and we continue to receive that grace whenever we receive his Body and Blood
from this altar.
This grace, however, is ineffective if we refuse to use it
to free ourselves from our bondage to sin.
Rather, it must be the sharp knife that we use to cut off any part of
our life that continues to lead us into sin.
With the same desperate energy that Aron Ralston used to cut off his
hand and thus escape to be saved, we must attack our attachments to whatever it
is in our lives that leads us to sin with the grace that we receive from this
altar so as to sever our ties to them completely and thus escape to be saved.
My brothers and sisters, every day we encounter the choice
for life or death whenever we encounter a temptation to sin. We need not be afraid, however, because we
have been given the help that we need to choose life: the sacrifice that Jesus,
our Lord and our brother, chose for us.
Given at All Saints Parish:
Logansport, IN – February 15th & 16th, 2014
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