Homily:
1st Sunday of Lent – Cycle C
Back almost sixteen years ago now, when I was in the throes
of my “reversion” (or “adult awakening”) to the Catholic faith, I remember
feeling very guilty. For the first time
in my life, I recognized that religion wasn’t just something that you ‘do’, but
that it was about a relationship… that it was about the relationship between God and his creation: most especially,
with us. I felt guilty because I
recognized that I had been ignoring that relationship.
As a result, during those first months I threw myself into
prayer, fervently asking God what it was that he wanted me to do with my
life. When those prayers eventually led
to the consideration of a vocation to the priesthood, I found myself at an
impasse. I had never considered the
priesthood and so I didn’t know what to think about it. “But,” I thought, “this is so radically
different from anything that I’ve considered before; so, if I did it, I’m sure
that I would be doing what God wanted
and not what I wanted.” I clearly remember making this prayer: “God,
I’ve been living my life my own way for twenty-five years, why shouldn’t I do this for you?”
Soon, however, I learned that feeling like you owe God
something is a poor reason to enter the seminary. Thus, I put the discernment away for a
while. A few years later, when I was
blindsided by the notion that I wasn’t yet doing what God wanted me to do with
my life, I once again threw myself into prayer.
This time, however, I felt more fearful of damaging the relationship
that I had built than guilty for having ignored it. And so I turned to fasting in an attempt to
disinterest myself from anything that could distract me from knowing God’s
will. Eventually, I heard again the call
to the priesthood and this time I was sure that it was love, not guilt that
motivated me, so I responded and entered the seminary.
I continued many of my habits of fasting after entering the
seminary. What I found there, however,
was that my fasting was becoming a barrier: first to my relationships with my
fellow seminarians, and eventually to my relationship with God. Right fasting is the kind that turns our
focus away from ourselves and back towards God and others. I had become focused on myself and my need to
maintain these fasts; and so to turn my focus back towards God and others, I
actually had to learn how to “fast from fasting.” I needed to remember the relationship, and not just the relation. In order to do so, I needed to detach myself from trying to control it
through fasting.
Remembrance and detachment are two themes that we find in
our Scripture readings today. In our
first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is instructing the people
about making the annual offering of the first fruits of the harvest to
God. What we hear is not the details
about the offering itself (for example, how much is to be offered and when),
but rather we hear what the Israelites are instructed to say after they’ve made
their offering. It is a statement meant
to remind them of why they have brought their offering to the altar.
First, it’s a remembrance of the place from which they
came. Jacob was a small tribe of only
seventy-odd persons when they went down to Egypt Egypt
In the Gospel, Jesus’ forty days in the desert produces in
him a deep sense of detachment. In the
greatest understatement of all time, the Gospel tells us that, after forty days
of not eating, Jesus emerged from the desert and that “he was hungry.” Duh!
Actually, what the author might have been emphasizing was that he was
“weak with hunger.” The devil seeing
this probably thought to himself, “Now is my chance!” and so he tempts
him. Jesus, having detached himself not
only from his desires for food and drink, but also from his instincts for
survival, and having placed all his trust for survival in his Father, was not
fazed by the devil’s temptations. Jesus
knew that his Father was in control, because he had just experienced it for
forty days; thus, he could not be moved to betray him now, even though he was physically
weak from lack of nourishment. His
fasting produced detachment and thus solidified his relationship with his
Father, who cared for him. ///
“Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This, my brothers and sisters, is our task
during Lent: to remember our right relationship with God and with others. We do this primarily through the three Lenten
disciplines of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.
Fasting, I would argue, is primary: for when we fast, we remind
ourselves of the punishment due to us because of our sins and thus acknowledge
that God is God and we are not. Fasting
also has the effect of detaching ourselves from our disordered desires for the
things of this world: desires that place a barrier between us and God, as well
as those around us. A natural result of
this detachment is that we are more available for prayer and have more
resources to share with others who are in need, thus facilitating our prayer
and almsgiving. Finally, fasting helps
us to remember to place our trust in the fact that God is in control and that
he cares for us and so will provide to us whatever it is that we truly need.
And so, my brothers and sisters, on this first Sunday of
Lent, let’s take a look at what we are doing this Lent in order to see where
our disciplines are pointing us and let’s ask ourselves these questions: Are
our disciplines motivated by guilt and the hope that God will pleased with them
and so not ask too much of us? Or are
our disciplines about conversion: that is, about letting go of our control and
turning back to God, remembering that his care alone is enough for us?
If you find yourself (as I often do) more in the first
group than in the second group, don’t worry.
We still have about 36 days left to work it all out (which is plenty of
time!). And what a good work that it
is. I promise you that if you do it
well, on Easter Sunday you will have forgotten that you are hungry, because you
will have remembered God’s love and mercy as you celebrate his resurrected glory.
Given at Saint Mary’s
Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – March 9th & 10th, 2019
