Homily: 1st Sunday in Lent – Cycle C
Friends, as we enter into this first
full week of Lent it is good for us to remember the purpose of Lent. Lent, of course, is a time of preparation for
the celebration of Easter—that is, the defining moment of the history of the
universe—when God, having become one with us in our human nature, suffered and
died in order to redeem our sins, and then (by his own power) rose to new life,
thus destroying forever the power that death over us. This is a really big deal! As such, we spend a dedicated amount of time
to prepare ourselves to celebrate it.
This preparation takes the form of
doing penances—that is, voluntarily making sacrifices. Although on the surface, this voluntary
self-punishment may seem arbitrary, it is actually very reasonable. Any time that we are preparing for a big
event—for example, a wedding—we voluntarily make all kinds of sacrifices so that
the celebration of the event can be as special and joy-filled as it can
be. For example, we stop spending money
on things that we don’t need so that we can afford to spend it on the nicest
things for the event. We clean our homes
and prepare the nicest clothes to wear.
We shine our shoes and ensure that our hair is perfectly groomed. In other words, we take extra measures to ensure
that we are well prepared to celebrate the special event.
A deeper (and, perhaps, more ancient)
reason that our preparation involves doing penance is a religious one. You see, our Lenten preparation is not only
to celebrate Christ’s victory over death, but also to make a renewed offering
of ourselves to God. As we know from
reading the Old Testament, whenever God asks for a sacrifice, he asks for a pure sacrifice: an offering of the best of what we have. This is not unreasonable, either. God is pure goodness—pure love—and pure love
is the thing that our hearts most desire to experience. Only in God can we experience pure love; and
we can experience it when we give ourselves entirely to him. If our offering of ourselves is disfigured by
our pride and selfishness, however—that is, by our desires to serve our own
interests over those of God and others—then God will not accept it. Pure love is completely self-sacrificing; and
so in order to enter into pure love, our offering must be completely selfless
and humble: that is, a sacrifice purified
of all pride and selfishness.
The Lenten disciplines of prayer,
fasting, and almsgiving are the ways that we purify ourselves from all pride
and selfishness. In prayer, we
communicate with God and ask him to show us the ways in which pride and
selfishness have taken root in our hearts.
Prayer also rekindles the fire of our desire for God. In other words, prayer helps us to remember
that union with God is not something that we have to have (out of obligation),
but rather the thing that we most desire, but often forget because we allow our
desires to become attached to earthly things.
Through fasting—that is, by voluntarily
abstaining from some earthly pleasure (e.g. food, drink, video games, YouTube,
TikTok, etc.)—we detach ourselves from these earthly things so that our desires
can be completely refocused on desiring union with God. Almsgiving furthers the work of fasting by
making our detachment into a gift for others.
For example, perhaps gambling or unnecessary shopping has become a
problem for me. When I fast from those
things, I will have additional money that I would have otherwise spent. If I give that money away to those in need,
then my detachment has become a gift for others.
To recap: in Lent, we are preparing to
celebrate the resurrection of Christ and to make a renewed offering of
ourselves to God, because union with God is what our hearts most desire. In order to make a pure offering, we pray,
fast, and give alms. Prayer purifies our
vision so that we can see clearly in what ways pride and selfishness have
separated us from God. Fasting purifies
our desire, detaching it from earthly things so that it may be refocused on
union with God. Almsgiving purifies our
actions, turning our detachment from earthly things into a gift for
others. Simple, right? Simple, but, of course, not easy. ///
Okay, let me pause here and say again why
we are doing this. I’ll begin by
reminding us of Saint Augustine’s famous words: “You have made us for yourself,
O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Friends, we are made for union with God. In other words, union with God is the
greatest good that we can ever experience and God made us so that we can
experience it. It is the fulfillment of
our desire to love and to be loved and, thus, the greatest happiness.
This is important to remember because
the disciplines of Lent by which we strive to make a pure offering of ourselves
to God are not easy to accomplish. Thus,
we need a strong, internal motivation in order to persevere. External motivations, such as a fear of
punishment if we keep sinning, are not strong enough to overcome every
difficulty. Internal motivations, such
as a desire for an experience of fulfilled happiness, are strong enough to
overcome these difficulties. One strong
internal motivation to help us persevere in the disciplines of Lent is to
remember the story of salvation and how it has manifest itself in our own
lives.
In the first reading from the book of
Deuteronomy, Moses instructs the people that, when making their sacrifice of
the first fruits of their crops to God (that is, their most pure sacrifice), they must first recount the history of how
God had worked to save their ancestors and then led them into a fertile land
from which they could harvest abundant crops.
Moses instructed them in this way so that they wouldn’t forget the “why”
behind their sacrifice: it wasn’t because God would punish them if they didn’t
offer them, but rather because God had been so good to them and so deserves a
generous offer of thanksgiving. Those
who experienced this strong internal motivation joyfully fulfilled this precept
year after year, even when they found it difficult.
Therefore, in order to find the
internal motivation to prepare our pure offering to God at Easter, we too must
look back at our story and recall the ways in which God has worked powerfully
for the good in our lives and so deserves our generous offer of
thanksgiving. The most powerful way, of
course, happened way before any of us were alive: that is, the redemption Christ
won for us by his passion and death, and the victory over death that Christ won
for us by his resurrection and ascension into heaven. Nevertheless, I imagine that most of us have
a story to tell about how God worked powerfully in our own lives: to save us
from some calamity or to turn us away from a life of sin. When we take time to remember these powerful
events, we become powerfully motivated to prepare to make a pure and joyful
offering of ourselves in thanksgiving to God on Easter Sunday.
Therefore, Friends, let’s make it a
point to spend this first full week of Lent remembering the ways in which God
has worked powerfully for the good in our lives. Motivated by these thoughts, we will find strength
to persevere in our efforts to turn away from our sins and to make of ourselves
a pure gift to God and to others. Having
done so, we will be ready to experience the true joy of Easter: the union with
God made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
May our re-presentation of that same
sacrifice here at this altar, made in thanksgiving to God for his loving mercy,
strengthen us in this good work.
Given at St. Joseph
Parish: Delphi, IN – March 6th, 2022
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