Homily: 2nd Sunday in Lent – Cycle A
Dear
friends, last week, as we entered our Lenten pilgrimage in earnest, we
reflected on 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?” Perhaps,
throughout this past week, you found that, like Eve in the Garden, you’ve been
listening to voices who lack the full wisdom of God—the voices of influencers
and your own, inner voice. If so,
good! The first step to real progress is
to acknowledge the truth of where we are, even if it is uncomfortable to do
so. When we see that we are not where we
want to be, then we find inspiration to take steps towards the place we want to
go. Hopefully, you’ve also acknowledged
that the voice you should be listening to is the voice of true wisdom—that is,
Wisdom himself—God the Father. If you’ve
done these two things, 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 to last week’s Scriptures. At the end of the reading from the book of
Genesis last week, 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.” 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 in Spanish at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish: Carmel,
IN
March 5th, 2023
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