Homily: 3rd Sunday in Lent – Cycle B
Friends, as we continue this
pilgrimage of Lent, today we are presented with the Ten Commandments. Whether we can recite all ten of them from
memory, all of us know how important these commandments are. I would like to say a few things about the
commandments themselves, but then I will try to put them into the greater
context of our lives as Christians and, finally, I will try to connect how the
commandments connect us to the actions of Jesus in the Temple, which were
recounted for us in the Gospel reading.
Okay, about the Ten
Commandments. First, I think it
important to note that the first three of the ten commandments are given a disproportionate
amount of text in the reading compared to the other seven. These three refer, of course, to our
relationship with God. This evidence
alone ought to invite us to stop and consider that these three might be significantly
more important than the other seven, right?
If so, then we should also recognize immediately the meaning of this:
that our right relationship with God is the most important thing for us to get
right in our lives. It’s like laying the
foundation for a house: if we don’t get that right, then the house is doomed to
fall. Therefore, we have to take these
first three commandments very seriously!
These first three are ordered
to each other, of course. It is God and
God alone who has saved us and so we owe all of our worship and loyalty to Him
and Him alone. We cannot do this completely
if we do not respect the use of His name nor maintain a Sabbath day in which we
rest from our daily work so as to rightly honor and worship Him. In order to verify whether our right relationship
with God is first in our lives, we can ask ourselves these two questions: “Am I
cautious in my speech so that I don’t use God’s name too casually?” and “Do I
take time off each week from my daily chores and duties to rest and to renew my
relationship with God?” If my answer to
either or both of these is “no”, then perhaps I don’t honor God as I should
and, therefore, should strive to correct these failings, because any work that
I do to try to correct other failings will fall short because this foundation
is not yet firm. Does this make sense?
Second, I find it very
interesting that the first of the commandments that addresses our relationship
to one another is directed to our relationship with our parents. This means that, next to God, our most
important relationship is with our parents.
In other words, right ordering of our world begins with our right
relationship with God, then with our right relationship with our parents, then
our right relationship with others. Some
of us, perhaps, have had very difficult relationships with our parents. Nevertheless, in whatever way that we are
able, we must strive to form a relationship of respect and honor with them if
we hope that the world around us will be rightly ordered.
The other commandments I won’t
go through, but hopefully you are seeing now how the Ten Commandments are not
just rules that we have to follow while we go about doing whatever else it is
that we do in our lives. Rather, they
are the foundation blocks and the boundary markers by which we can order our
lives rightly—that is, according to the order God has planned for them—so that
we can stay in God’s good grace and, therefore, avoid hell: both in this world
and the next.
Notice that these rules allow
for a lot of freedom, right? The Ten
Commandments don’t say things like, “You shall only buy blue cars” or, better
yet, “You shall not buy any car at all”.
No, they are guidelines for right relationship with God and others that
can help us tune our freedom to its proper use.
For example, “You shall not kill…”
This, of course, means that when I think to myself, “Ugh, I want to kill
him right now!” I don’t actually do it, since I know the commandment. Nevertheless, it should also mean that, when
I am tempted to speak poorly about another person, I also stop myself from
doing that: recognizing that “killing” a person’s good reputation is on the
spectrum of things prohibited by the commandment, “You shall not kill”. The commandment helps me to order the use of
my freedom rightly so that greater harmony among me and my neighbors can be
achieved. Does this make sense? I hope so.
Okay, so what does this have
to do with Jesus and the “cleansing of the Temple”? When Jesus came into the Temple and saw all
of the business that was taking place in the outer courtyards of the Temple—business,
by the way, that was legitimate for those coming to make offerings to God in
the Temple—he saw a distortion of the Temple’s real purpose. The purpose of the Temple was to be the place
where God and the people met; and the sacrifices and offerings made in the
Temple were the ways that God’s people could maintain their right relationship
with Him: sacrifices of atonement for sins and offerings of thanksgiving for
blessings received. What Jesus saw,
however, was that the Temple had been turned into a business itself; and that
the offerings that the people were making had become transactions: paying off
debts and paying for future benefits. By
upsetting the business of the Temple, Jesus called the people to remember that
the Temple was for ordering our relationship with God, who loves us as sons and
daughters, not for cold transactions in order to appease God and stay in his
good favor. The latter (appeasing God
and staying in his good favor) is a consequence of the former (right
relationship with Him), but the people of that time had made appeasing God the
primary focus.
Friends, this is one of the
purposes for Lent: a season in which we examine our lives to see if our
relationship with God and with others is truly rightly ordered, so that, if it
isn’t, we can make changes so as to order our lives rightly. For example, perhaps I have been faithful in
coming to Mass, but I find that, like the Temple in the time of Jesus, I am
participating in Mass as if it is a cold transaction with God: “I give you
this, so that you’ll give me that”. The
challenge for me then is to be more intentional about how I participate in Mass. Can I prepare better to encounter God in the
Mass and to allow myself to be encountered by Him? Maybe I find that I have been gossiping about
others, hurting another’s good reputation. The challenge for me then is first to stop
gossiping and then to try and restore the good name of the person who I’ve
hurt. Maybe I have not been as attentive
to my parents as I could be. The
challenge for me then is to identify the things that I need to sacrifice in
order to be more attentive to my parents.
In every case, I am allowing the Ten Commandments to guide how I order
my freedom so as to choose the things that will strengthen my relationship with
God and with others and to identify the things from which I must repent and ask
forgiveness so as to be reconciled with God and others.
Friends, this is hard work, no
doubt. It is also work that extends
beyond Lent. Nevertheless, let us take
this graced time that is before us to recommit ourselves to this good work:
cleansing God’s Church of all selfishness and disharmony by cleansing ourselves
from these things. In doing so, we will
find a greater joy when we celebrate the resurrection of Christ at Easter. May the grace of this Eucharist and the
intercession of Mary and all the saints strengthen us in this good work.
Given at Saint Patrick Parish: Kokomo, IN – March 7th,
2021
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