Sometimes forgotten sins of omission

Homily: 26^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C

          One of the blessed parts of the ministry with which I have been entrusted here is to hear confessions.  Blessed because I get to be God’s instrument of healing for your souls when, because of sin, they have been hurt.  It’s not always the most pleasant experience, however.  In fact, sometimes it can be downright frustrating!  One of the frustrating things that happens more than it should is when a person comes in and forgets whose sins it is that he or she is supposed to be confessing.  If you’re one of those people, please let me make it clear for you now: when you come to confession, you are to confess only YOUR sins, not somebody else’s!  Generally speaking, however, folks do focus on their own sins: those things that they have done which they acknowledge have offended God and hurt their neighbor in some way.

          Nonetheless, in recent months, I've begun to notice that there seems to be something missing in the majority of confessions that I hear.  You see, most of the sins that people confess to me are for things that they have done: that is, for offenses that they have committed.  What I’ve noticed, however, is that I rarely hear people confess the sin of not doing something that they should have done.  In other words, not a lot of people are confessing sins of omission.

          Sins of omission are good things that we fail to do when it was in our power to do them.  If we take a look at our world, we quickly realize that, yes, there are a lot of people committing grave sins every day.  Certainly, however, we can also acknowledge that there are a lot of people failing to do the good that they are capable of doing.  This, I would argue, creates a vacuum—an empty space—in which more sinful acts can be committed.  Thus, the fact that I rarely hear people confessing sins of omission means that there isn't a strong awareness among people that these are, in fact, sins (or offenses against God) and , thus, that these are "confessional material".

          Our scriptures today remind us, however, that it isn't enough simply to avoid evil, but rather that we also must actively pursue the good.  In the first reading from the prophet Amos, we hear him declare “woe to the complacent in Zion”, meaning that very dreadful things were about to take place for the people of the southern kingdom of Judah because of the extravagance with which they dine at their banquets, even while their kinsmen (the people of the northern kingdom of Israel) are suffering from the disintegration of their society.  He tells them that, because they have ignored their kinsmen in need, even though they had the resources to do something, they, in fact, will be the first to suffer when the king of Babylon comes to force them into exile.

          Then in the Gospel Jesus tells a parable that describes a similar situation, only in more concrete detail.  A rich man dresses extravagantly and dines sumptuously every day, while a poor man, Lazarus, suffers at his gate, hoping that the rich man will have enough kindness to give him some of the leftovers from his meal.  After both of their deaths their roles will be reversed and the rich man will be the one who suffers.  Nevertheless, this man’s ignorance is further on display when he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to help relieve his suffering.  Can you imagine?  He ignored Lazarus in his need and now he expects Lazarus to help him in his suffering?  How conceited!

          Notice, however, that neither Amos nor Jesus condemn the sin of overindulgence in food and drink (i.e. gluttony)—even though they certainly could have condemned them for it.  Rather, both condemn overindulgence at the expense of the poor one in their midst—the sin of omission in which they failed to act for the good of the suffering ones among them, even though (and especially though) it was in their power to do so.

          Because she was recently canonized, Saint Teresa of Calcutta has gotten a lot of press lately.  Because of this I have been able to learn a little more about this saint and her work.  One of the new insights that I have gained about her life is that she was as much a prophet as she was a charity worker.  Of course we all know her for her dedication to the “poorest of the poor” in the streets of Calcutta, India.  These works of charity that she and the religious order that she started performed brought plenty of attention to her.  She never desired that kind of attention, however.  Nonetheless, she accepted it, because of the opportunity that it gave her to bring the plight of the poor to the attention of those who had the resources do something about it.  In other words, when the spotlight came to her, she used it to help people who were rich to see the poor and, thus, to invite the rich to help them.  In this way, she was much more than a charity worker: she was a prophet.  A prophet who called out the rich and powerful in the world for their sins of omission against the poor.  A prophet whose words are still very relevant today.

          The famous Irish statesman, Edmund Burke, once said that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  My brothers and sisters, our inaction in the face of poverty and need is a sin of omission of the same order that our scriptures speak of today.  And so, what do we do?  First, we need to pray.  We need to learn how to examine our consciousness and our consciences so as to see the poor in our midst and to acknowledge when we have failed to respond to them.  Then, we need to act.  Once we see where we have failed to act, we must begin to fill the void that was created by our inaction with the acts that we have failed to do.  In other words, we need to be good men who do something so that evil will not triumph in the world; and (perhaps, more importantly) so that we won’t suffer the same fate as the rich man in Jesus’ parable.  Finally, we need to repeat the first two steps constantly.  Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus said that the poor will always be with us.  Therefore, once we've acted to fill one void, then we must begin again and pray to discern the next void that God is calling us to fill and then act to fill it.

          Saint Mother Teresa never thought that she could eliminate poverty by herself.  She was simply trying to do her part by loving Jesus whom she encountered most profoundly in the poor.  If each of us would do the same, that is, if each of us would acknowledge the concrete way that God is calling us to act and then commit ourselves to acting out of love for Jesus, then our world would definitely begin to change for the better.  My brothers and sisters, as we approach this altar to give thanks to God for all of the good that he has given to us, especially for the strength that we receive when we receive the very life of God in Holy Communion, let us commit ourselves to this good work so that God’s kingdom may truly be realized in our midst.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – September 25^th, 2016

Lost in the landscape

          Don't let yourself fall into the same old habits this Lent!  Let Jesus turn over the tables of the familiar in your hearts!  Pray, Listen, Act, and Repeat, and you'll have the best Lent ever because you'll be closer than ever to Jesus.

(Side note: I'll be making the Cursillo weekend this coming weekend, so I won't be posting a homily.  Perhaps, however, I'll think to post some reflections about my experience.  Please pray for me and the men making the Cursillo weekend with me!)

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Homily: 3^rd Sunday of Lent – Cycle B

          There’s a certain danger in the familiar.  Familiarity tends to lull us into complacency.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but complacency can leave us vulnerable to being caught off-guard by things.  Familiarity also leads to routine.  As humans, we are creatures of habit and we like when things are predictable.  Thus, we have a “morning routine” in which we repeat pretty much the same acts every morning so that we don’t have to think about what we need to do to get up and get on with our day.  The problem with this kind of familiarity is that the surrounding world quickly fades back into the landscape and no longer registers in our consciousness as something of which to take account.

          I’ve suffered from this myself.  When you travel to Saint Meinrad, where I went to seminary, there’s an approximately 8-mile strip of Indiana Route 62 that you must navigate after exiting Interstate 64 coming from the east.  In my first years at the seminary, this was one of the most enjoyable parts of the trip as I passed in close proximity to fields and farmhouses, some complete with hens pecking around in the front yard.  After six years, however, this strip of road became so familiar that I practically could navigate it with my eyes closed.  At times I experienced that I had passed some of the “milestones” along the way without having acknowledged that I had seen them.  Because I was so familiar with the road, the surrounding landscape no longer entered my consciousness.  I think most of us can recognize this experience in our own lives: in our commute to work, our schools and classrooms, our offices and office buildings, in our neighborhoods, and often too in our relationships things become familiar and thus fade out of our consciousness.

          In our 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 that drive down Route 62: as it goes on we might stop and think to ourselves, “Wait, did he/she say the 6^th one?  I don’t remember hearing it.”  For many of us, the Ten Commandments are perhaps so familiar that they’ve become “part of the landscape” and no longer impact our daily consciousness.

          The ancient Jews also fell into this trap of familiarity.  They had had the Law for many years and most people were very familiar with it and with its demands.  Thus, they no longer thought about the Law, but rather had worked their lives around it.  So much so that they turned the Temple Cult—that is, the sacrificial offerings that were prescribed by the Law—into a business for profit.

          Then Jesus breaks into the scene and disrupts the familiar.  He sees the way that Satan, the father of lies, had distorted the truth of what the Temple Cult was supposed to represent: man, in a special relationship with God, offering sacrifices both in worship and homage of the all-powerful creator of the universe and in atonement for offenses against Him.  Offerings, meant to restore and maintain that special relationship, had been distorted into cold demands and business transactions and that is what Jesus was driving out.  By turning over the tables of the familiar, Jesus was hoping to reawaken an awareness of the true relationship to which God had called them.

          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 God, and of what God asks of us so that we can once again see the beauty of the relationship to which he has called us: both collectively as the People of God and individually as adopted sons and daughters.  The difference between Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple and his cleansing of our hearts is that he cannot just burst into our hearts without permission—for that would violate our dignity.  Rather, he must wait for us to invite him in so as to shed light on anything that is untrue, that is unholy in our hearts and our lives.

          My brothers and sisters, if all we have done this Lent is take up our old familiar practices then we have little more to hope for when we arrive at Easter Sunday than a feeling of relief for not having to maintain that discipline any longer.  The challenge we have before us today is to make this Lent somehow different by allowing Christ into our hearts, by exposing to him all of those aspects of ourselves that we are not proud of—the ways, perhaps, that we have become complacent in following his commandments, most especially to worship him alone—and by cooperating with him in the hard work of driving out all that isn’t pure, that isn’t true from our lives.

          Now, Jesus knows that this isn’t easy for us.  He knows that the world is constantly going to pull us towards the comfort of familiarity.  And so he doesn’t expect us to do it all at once.  He simply asks that we begin.  A simple way to begin this work of conversion, that is, of opening our hearts more and more to Christ, is to follow these four steps: pray, listen, act, repeat.

          Pray:  First we must pray that God will help us to examine our consciences and identify those things that need to be driven out.  As he reveals them to us, we need to pray that he will reveal to us some way that we can act to overcome that disposition or attitude in our lives.  For example: perhaps we recognize that we struggle with selfishness.  And so we pray that God will reveal to us someone with whom we can practice being selfless in the coming week.

          Listen:  Once we’ve identified our vice and asked God to show us how we can overcome it, we need to listen—not just in the silence of our prayer time, but also as we go through our day—for God to reveal to us how, in the concrete circumstances of our day, we are to act to drive out this vice from our hearts.  In other words, we listen for that little voice saying to us “Wait! Don’t be selfish here!”

          Act:  If we are sincere in our prayer and attentive in our daily living, we will soon see how it is that God has asked us to give of ourselves in a way that overcomes our vice.  It will click like a light bulb going on.  When this happens we are called to respond.  It usually will be unexpected, but when we respond to these intentionally prayed-for promptings of the Holy Spirit, our hearts slowly change and we become more and more open to allowing Christ to dwell in us and to direct our daily lives.

          Repeat:  Once you’ve responded then the hard part truly begins because maintaining this practice over a lifetime, without allowing yourself to become complacent because of familiarity, is truly a challenging task.  It is a task, however, that will make you a saint.

          My brothers and sisters, we can only overcome bad habits by cultivating good ones and if we try to do it ourselves, we are bound to fail.  If we let Christ direct the way that we cultivate these good habits, however, then our efforts are not only going to be sustained but they’re going to bring joy to our lives as well.

          And so, if your Lent has gotten a slow start, don’t worry… because there’s an app for that: pray, listen, act, repeat.  My brothers and sisters, let Christ turn over the familiar in your hearts so that the joy of the Resurrection—the joy of true liberation from the mundane familiarity of the world—may be yours this Easter.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – March, 7^th & 8^th, 2015