Catholic Homily for the First Sunday pf Lent, February 21, 2021. Readings: Genesis 9:8-15, 2 Peter 3:18-22, Gospel of St. Mark 1:12-15. Theme: Hope Beyond All Hope
All three of today’s readings carry the hopeful theme of receiving a second chance, making a fresh start, turning our lives around. We heard the Old Testament story of Noah and his family escaping the Great Flood and receiving a second chance at life on planet Earth. Then in the second reading from St. Peter we are told that baptism connects us with Christ’s death and resurrection, and like the wood of Noah’s Ark, the wood of the cross gives us a second chance at living right with God. Lastly, Jesus proclaims the time of fulfilment, meaning he is going to open the gates to the Kingdom of God for all who repent and believe in the gospel.
“Repenting” means turning our lives around and “believing in the gospel” means trusting in Christ as the one and only Savior, who can make us brand new persons from the inside out. This sounds almost do good to be true for a lot of people, especially to those who think that what they have done in the past cannot be repaired and what they have made out of their lives is beyond redemption. But in the second reading St. Peter assures us that anyone who truly turns to Christ can claim a clear conscience and live a new life. This hope-filled truth of Scripture was the inspiration behind the unbelievable story of the Dominican Sisters of Bethany. They are living proof that repenting and believing in the gospel is a sure way to a fresh start, a second chance, a turning around of one’s life.
In 1864, a young Dominican priest named Fr. Lataste was send to give a series of religious talks in a notorious women’s prison in France. He accepted this assignment admitting that he shared in the social attitude and prejudices towards these female prisoners, and thinking it was a useless endeavor to preach a retreat to over 400 inmates who had been prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves and murderers. But something came over him soon after he stepped past the gates and began to really look at the women in their poverty and reality. The words of Christ began to ring in the ears of his heart and echo in his mind, “Now is the time…now if the fulfilment...repent…believe….I have come to heal the sick, to restore the sinners…”
As the retreat moved on Fr. Lataste found himself deeply moved with compassion and mercy, calling the inmates his sisters. He told them that the moment they freely chose to claim a clean conscience trough confession and then embrace the grace of their baptism with a new spirit, their lives, even as prisoners, would assume a new value. He concluded his several days of retreat with these words, “Whatever may have been your past, do not any longer consider yourselves inmates. You can choose to be people consecrated to God just like the Sisters are...” He assured them that they could turn their lives over to the service and praise God even in prison, just as much as nuns do in the seclusion of their monasteries, because what God looks at is the love and sincerity of the heart, not our external surroundings.
The retreat which Fr. Lataste had originally deemed as useless and a waste of time had an extraordinary success. The inmates, until then rejected and despised, had suddenly discovered how precious they were in the eyes of God, rehabilitated by his tender mercy. As a result, several women, who were due to be soon released from the prison, made plans to visit with him once they were paroled. Little did Fr. Lataste know that God’s finger was upon this meeting and that these former prisoners were the beginning of what would grow to become a worldwide religious community called the Dominican Sisters of Bethany.
To give them a real chance for a totally fresh start, Fr. Lataste made a rule that the Sisters were to include in their ranks both women who had been in prison and those who were untouched by crime and came from good backgrounds. This would allow those “with a past” to truly blend in and leave the details of their former lives behind them. If you go today to a monastery of these Sisters, you’ll have no clue as to who is who. Last names are not used in Bethany nor is one’s past ever discussed. Everything about their community life is structured to assure privacy and support fresh starts, remembering that Fr. Lataste had said, “God does not ask us what we have been; he look only at what we are today.”
In every convent of the Dominicans of Bethany there are a few Sisters who go out to local women’s prisons carrying the same message of hope that they heard and embraced. They also minister to those who are in other types of prisons besides those made of brick and mortar. These are the prisons of addiction, of attachment to a life of hedonism and greed, of a destructive existence that seems to spiral into hopelessness. By the witness of their own lives, the Bethanies assure us that anyone and everyone can have a clean conscience through Christ. In Christ, anyone and everyone can find hope beyond all hope by simply responding to the words of Jesus we heard today, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Two Bethany Sisters with a photo of Fr. LaTaste and Sister Henri-Dominique, the first member.
Prayer to Jesus by Blessed Jean Joseph Lataste
Oh my Jesus, I want to love you. Give yourself to me and grant that I may give myself to you. Make me one with you. May my will be yours. Unite me to you, so that I may live only in and for you. Grant that I may spend for you, all that I received from you, keeping nothing for myself. May I die to self for you and bring others to you. Oh my Jesus, may i bring many others. Amen
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