Dead, Buried & Gone

 

Deacon Dave · Dead, Buried & Gone

Homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent, “Laetare Sunday”, March 27, 2022. Readings: 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Gospel of St. Luke 15:1-32. Theme: Dead, Buried & Gone 

The Parable of the Prodigal Son in today’s gospel has never lost its appeal through 2,000 years of being told because it’s a story about brand new beginnings and second chances. It’s a story about how forgiveness means letting go of the past, no matter what that looked like, and being set free from to live a new life. 

Did you notice that the father in the story makes absolutely no mention of what his son had done? He doesn’t even make the slightest reference to how rude, disrespectful and selfish he had been. We don’t hear even one word of reproach from the father about the boy’s life of partying and promiscuity. As far as that father is concerned, it’s all in the past. Jesus is telling us that this is precisely how God acts towards us. As soon as our Heavenly Father sees sincere repentance for sin in our hearts he runs out to welcome us home. He rejoices to have us with him once again. He doesn’t reproach us for what we have done because, as far as he is concerned, it’s all forgiven and forgotten. His love sets us free from the inside out! 

I learned the amazing truth about God’s forgiveness in a dramatic way when I was in college. You see, there was a Jesuit priest, who was an official exorcist and who had quite a lot of experience in that ministry. Whenever he was going to perform an exorcism, he would always take with him a small group as a prayer-team. A kind of back-up spiritual special forces unit. However, to go along with him you had to follow his non-negotiable rule of first making an honest confession of your sins. He had a very interesting reason for this requirement. He told us that during an exorcism, the demon tries to get true believers out of the room because their prayers are part of the all-powerful intercession of Christ, backing up the spiritual power of the ritual. And so, the evil spirit, speaking through the possessed person, will often try to drive people away by calling out their most private and embarrassing sins! You know, the kind that you really don’t want anyone to ever find out about! 

But then the priest recounted something that happened at a past exorcism and that convinced him to make confession a non-negotiable requirement. It seems that on that occasion, when the time came for the demon to try and accuse and scatter the team, he remained utterly and unusually silent. No one had any sins called out. No one had their most private and deepest darkest secrets revealed for all to hear. This amazed the exorcist and when he demanded to know why no one was being named and shamed, he got this disgruntled reply from the demon: “No one here has sinned! There is nothing I can see and accuse them of having done!” 

Now I can assure you that among these college kids who were my peers, there were indeed sins that could have been named and shamed. So, what was up? Well, you see when we come to our senses like the prodigal son and honestly confess to God with contrite hearts and humble spirits, our sins are not just forgiven, but they are completely annihilated…totally obliterated by Christ. Now, of course, this doesn’t mean that we never actually committed the sins. Of course we did, but what really holds us back, what really keeps us prisoners to our past, is the guilty verdict that goes along with our sins. But God’s forgiveness is so total that it lets go of our past. God’s forgiveness is so merciful that it frees us from the guilt of our sins. And that’s what makes all the difference in the world! 

This gift of total forgiveness was made possible for us through the death and resurrection of Christ as St. Paul teaches us in today's second reading. He urges us to accept this gift of reconciliation with God that Jesus made possible when he took the guilt of our sins with him to the cross. And when Christ died as a sacrifice, our sins died with him. And they were also buried with him in the tomb. And then when Jesus rose up from the grave our sins stayed behind, forever buried and gone. This is why St. Paul tells us today that whoever is in Christ is a new creation and that the old things of our lives have passed away. He declares that God no longer holds our trespasses against us and this is why the sins of my college peers were hidden from the demon’s sight. As far as God is concerned, those who repent have no sinful past. 

But now here's the thing: while it is true that Jesus has died for our sins, it is equally true that we do not automatically receive this forgiveness. We have to consciously accept it because God never forces his gifts upon us, not even the gift of his boundless mercy. We have to personally ask for it and claim this forgiveness. The prodigal son shows us the way we do this is by owning up to what we have done. We need to examine our consciences and make an honest and fearless moral self-inventory. Finally and most importantly, we humbly admit to God the exact nature of what we have done, naming our sins and asking for mercy. This is the purpose of the Sacrament of Reconciliation through which we come before Jesus as Savior and are set free from the guilt of our sins by the ministry of his Church. 

So, let’s do ourselves a favor and listen to God’s Word calling us to be truly set free of those things that might still weigh us down in conscience. Let’s make a good confession as Easter draws near so that we have nothing to hold us back from enjoying real freedom in Christ. There’s no better way for us to prepare for and receive the hope and the promise of new life which is, after all, the joyous message of Easter!

How to Make a Good Confession

• Ask the Holy Spirit for enlightenment and then examine your conscience.
• Be sincerely sorry for your sins with a humble heart
• Confess your sins honestly to the priest who stands in for Christ.
• Resolve to try your best in the future, relying on God's grace
• After your confession say or do the penance that the priest assigns.

About Tragedies & Fig Trees

 

Deacon Dave · About Tragedies & Fig Trees

Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Lent, March 20, 2022. Gospel of St. Luke 13:1-9. Theme: About Tragedies & Fig Trees 

In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus uses a couple of current events and a parable to teach about two terrible kinds of tragedies that can change the trajectory of our lives. The first is the tragedy of sin. And the second is the tragedy of those who ignore God’s invitation to receive the gift of eternal life through Christ. The first tragic event mentioned by Jesus involved some Jews in Galilee who were murdered on orders of Pontus Pilate in some unspecified but gruesome way. Obviously, they were in the midst of worship when soldiers pounced upon them, killing them so fiercely that their blood mingled with that of their animal sacrifice. Yes, this was the same infamous Pilate who would later condemn Jesus to death. The second tragedy was local news about a small crowd who were killed by a collapsing tower. 

Now, according to the typical Jewish mindset of the time, sudden death due to violence or accidents was seen as a punishment from God. But Jesus corrects this warped way of thinking and uses these horrible events as a wake-up call. He turns the people’s way of thinking about sin around by saying that it wasn’t sin that brought about tragedy, rather, it is that every sin is itself the real tragedy in life. How so? Because, while our physical lives are indeed precious and to be cherished, they are by definition temporary and our time on this planet is short in comparison to the whole picture of our existence. But the life of our souls, the spiritual part of who each one of us really are and where our personalities reside, is immortal. Whether we admit it or not, whether we believe it or not, the truth is that every human being will exist forever and what our eternal destiny looks like and where we spend it, is very much up to us. 

We cannot control every circumstance that affects our physical lives, but it’s very important to never forget that every single one of us does have total control over the circumstances of our souls, of our spiritual lives. Not one of us, no matter what age or medical condition we are in, can guarantee that when we wake up in the morning, we are going to find ourselves back in bed that night. Every time we get behind the wheel, go for a walk, board a plane or do many things in life, we make ourselves vulnerable and lose various degrees of control over the circumstances. But the death of the body isn’t the end of our life-story. Our souls, who we each really are, the persons that we have fashioned ourselves to be, carry on beyond earthly existence and shall exist forever. 

We are each in charge of and responsible for the decisions we make for the trajectory of our spiritual lives. And this where the tragedy of sin that Jesus points out to us in today’s Gospel comes into the picture. Jesus asked the crowd to view the tragedies they heard about as providential invitations to examine their own lives and relationship with God. He is telling us that we never know when a similar tragedy could claim our own lives, and when this happens there is no longer the opportunity to change, no longer the time to repent and make one's life right with God. 

To round out the lesson and give us a picture story of this teaching, Jesus tells what has come to be known as “the parable of the barren fig tree”. To recap the parable, the owner of an orchard complains to his gardener that a fig tree has failed to produce fruit for 3 years and so he tells the gardener to cut it down. The gardener urges the owner to leave it for just a little longer so he can fertilize it in the hope that it will begin producing fruit and be saved. Symbolically, the fig tree is each one of us, the owner of the orchard is God and the gardener is Jesus. The 3 years of being patient with the barren fig tree is a reference to the 3 years of Jesus’ public ministry of calling people to repent and believe in the Gospel. 

The bottom line of this parable is that it is up to each one of us to decide if the tree of our lives will grow and flourish or if it will wither, be cut down and thrown out. Our response to this parable is left up to each one of us. Even if we discover that we are not where we know we should be in our relationship with God, we must always remember that as long as we have breath we can always change. But we also need to keep in mind that life is short and we do not know when our time on planet Earth is due to end. The Good News is that no matter what stage of growth the tree of our life is at, the fertilizer of repentance and the water of grace can enable it to grow and bear fruit, becoming something beautiful for God and for the world.

False Expectations

 

Deacon Dave · False Expectations

Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 13, 2022. The Gospel of St. Luke 9:28-36. Theme: False Expectations 

The Transfiguration of Jesus which we are told about in today’s gospel was a manifestation of who Christ really was and what his mission as the Messiah was meant to be. Not only did the three disciples catch a glimpse of his divinity brilliantly radiating from within him, they also heard the voice of God the Father declaring that Jesus was his Chosen Son. Standing next to Jesus in this mystical vision are two great prophets of the Old Testament: Moses and Elijah. St. Luke makes a point of telling us that the three of them were discussing Jesus’ “exodus” which is Bible-speak for his approaching Passion and Resurrection. In other words, they were conversing about his ultimate mission as the Messiah. This is a very important part of the manifestation because the disciples, like most of the Jews at the time, had some very definite, preconceived, and erroneous ideas about the Messiah. 

The prophets of Israel had foretold the coming of this Great Hero, a Savior sent by God, who would deliver them from evil and bring them joy, peace and fulfillment. Most of them interpreted this to mean that the Messiah was going to be a great Warrior-King who would free God’s people from Roman tyranny. They expected him to expel the enemy and re-establish a glorious Jewish nation. They clung to this idea because it fit the plan that they themselves expected. It was what they wanted; it was what they thought that God should do. But they had misinterpreted the Word of God spoken through the prophets. 

Like them, I think we all run the risk of developing false ideas about who God is and how he should act in our lives. And I am sure that we all have our own expectations of how we want him to intervene in our lives. And I think that if we are really honest about it, our default expectation is that God will grant us all our wishes and make our lives happy and perfect, that is, according to how we define “happy” and “perfect”. When we do this we are setting ourselves up for disappointment and failure. We are creating an unrealistic god for ourselves, a god fashioned according to our own making, a god of our own imagining and hoping. In other words, we are worshipping a “magic genie-in-a-bottle” kind of God and telling him what wishes we want to come true in our lives. 

I honestly think that is a major reason behind the loss of faith among so many people today. You know, we hear a lot of people these days, especially the young, declaring that they are atheists. But I don’t buy it from most of them. I think that what they have rejected is the false god of their own making. I say this because when having a sincere conversation with such people it becomes apparent that their real issue is actually not unbelief in God. Instead, it seems mostly to be anger at or disappointment with God, or more accurately, with the false god they have fashioned and expected him to be. 

Typically, such people developed their magical image about God when they were children but they never progressed into an adult understanding. They never came to know the real God through prayer from the heart and encountering him in the Scriptures. And so quite often their faith and hope in this god of their own making comes crashing down all around them after he failed to hear their prayers in some difficult times, such as preventing a divorce in the family or sparing a loved one from death. But this false god, of course, doesn’t exist and so could never have delivered what they desired in the first place. He could never be all that they expected him to be. And so they lost faith in him. 

It’s very much the same way that the Jewish people formed a false idea of the Messiah and then rejected him when he was not what they expected him to be. Peter, James and John had their erroneous preconceived notions about God and the Savior shaken out of them on that mount of the Transfiguration. And it’s so vital that we, too, leave our preconceived ideas and unrealistic expectations behind and come to know and encounter the real God who is revealed in Jesus. 

And the best way for us to do this is by heeding the words that God the Father spoke at the Transfiguration when he said: “This is my chosen Son, listen to him.” We need to listen to Christ and ponder his words in our hearts and minds. We need to develop the habit and practice of prayerfully reading the Gospels, through which the Holy Spirit will help us to banish from our minds any false ideas we may have built up about God. This is precisely why Pope Francis never tires of urging us to read and reflect upon the Gospels frequently. 

When we start coming before Jesus in this kind of prayerfulness - and with trust and humility - we will begin to see him in a new light. And we will see ourselves as Christians in a new light as well. Our meaningful encounters with him through prayer of the heart while pondering the gospels in our minds can be like our own personal transfiguration experiences. These can be times when God allows us to see Jesus with spiritual vision, to contemplate him in a new way and better understand who he really is and who he wants to be for us. 

And then, by sharing what Jesus means to us and how our faith-relationship with him makes a difference in our lives, we can hopefully inspire others to discover and encounter the true image of God for themselves. We can encourage them by our own personal testimony and experiences to listen for the voice of the Chosen Son speaking to their own hearts. And then once they begin to do so, they too will find the love, the inner joy, the acceptance, the serenity and peace of heart that they have been desiring and seeking for so long.

LECTIO DIVINA means "sacred reading".  If you want to learn how to pray from the heart pondering the Gospels, follow the simple steps in the diagram below.  You can choose any story from the Gospels you wish. Some people find it easiest to use the Gospels chosen the day's Mass. you can find these at https://bible.usccb.org/

Solidarity With Jesus

 

Deacon Dave · Solidarity With Jesus

Homily for the First Sunday of Lent, March 6, 2022. Gospel of St. Luke 4:1-13. Theme: Solidarity with Jesus 

The Temptation of Christ by Satan is a vitally important story because it teaches us two fundamental things. First, it conveys to us the stark reality of Jesus’ true humanity. And second, it reveals that temptations, no matter what they are specifically about, are all aimed at one thing: enticing us to question our relationship with God. Wavering over God's love is the first step towards choosing to sin because it causes us to doubt that he truly desires only what is best for us. This is why Jesus responds to each of the devil’s offers by reaffirming his commitment to the Father. 

At first glance, the temptation story may seem a bit unreal, quite far removed from our experiences of temptation. I mean, the devil doesn’t appear to us and transport us from place to place as he did with Jesus. The temptations we experience are often not so clearly recognizable and the choices we face are not always so clear cut between good and bad. They are often between bad and worse or good and better and most of the time they bring us into gray areas, not the easy decisions in black and white. But no matter how they come to us, temptations always aim at one thing: to break us down and drag us away from our dignity as human beings and children of God the Father. 

Temptation is something that every human being must wrestle with and so the Gospel writers want us to know that Jesus himself experienced these things. Christ did not merely pretend to be a man or simply put on humanity the way an actor might put on a costume for a role. Our Christian faith has always professed that when the Son of God came to planet Earth he took on our fallen human nature, and not the perfect humanity untouched by sin such as Adam and Eve originally possessed. He became a real, true, full 100% human being. What this means is that Jesus not only came down from Heaven TO us, but he came down TO OUR LEVEL. And this means that he, too, had to deal with temptations concerning his relationship with God. You see, he could not have truly been our Savior otherwise. He could not have healed our spiritually wounded human nature from the inside out, unless he himself embraced it and lived it, and by doing so sanctified every aspect of it.  Some people might think this is a very strange teaching but this solidarity of Jesus with us is at the very heart of our salvation. 

Also important to our full understanding of Jesus’ solidarity with us is the other side of the coin, so to speak, about Jesus. What I mean is his divinity. The Christian Faith has also always taught that Christ’s humanity was in no way changed, enhanced or supercharged by his divinity. In other words, being the Son of God did not make life, including facing temptation, any easier for Jesus. He refused to be a kind of superhero with awesome powers to be used for himself and his needs. This is why he refused to turn stones into bread. It’s why he refused to perform supernatural feats to prove his greatness. He refused to do these things because we can’t do them either. In his great love for us and in deep humility, God the Son freely gave up the use of his divine powers in order to live in total solidarity with us. 

We have a word for this kind of solidarity. It’s called empathy. It’s the ability to enter into and experience the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. Empathy means being able to help bear the struggles of another person and to share meaningfully in their hardship, in their situation. Empathy creates a bond between persons, allowing the one who is suffering, who is struggling, to see that he or she is not alone. That there is someone who truly understands and cares. Jesus extends this kind of empathy to each one of us. 

And he goes even further in his empathy because he promised that his solidarity with us would continue and even deepen after his Resurrection. Now that he is risen and glorified, he is able to actually enter into our hearts, into our very lives and remain with us, if we invite him. He said that he would come to dwell within those who love him and obey his Word. He declared that he would abide and remain in those who eat his Flesh and drink his Blood in the Eucharist. 

The Risen Lord Jesus is now not only with us but more-so, actually dwelling within us, as we face our own personal temptations. He can lead us victoriously out of them if we so desire. But for this to happen, we must choose to intentionally live in solidarity with him, just as he intentionally chose to live in solidarity with us. This means we must nourish ourselves with the Word of God as our daily bread. We must feed on the Sacrament of the Eucharist which is his holy and life-giving Body and Blood. In this way we deepen our solidarity with Jesus which will bring us power in our powerlessness. Solidarity with Jesus in his battle against Satan and temptation means that we can indeed become healed of sin and selfishness from the inside out through this indwelling Presence of our Lord, Savior and Brother.