Homily for the First Sunday of Lent, February 18, 2024. 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 fulfillment, 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, turning away from ourselves and towards God. “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 too 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 fulfillment...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, and began calling the inmates his sisters. He told them that the moment they freely chose to claim a clean conscience through 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 thought would be “useless and a waste of time”, was an extraordinary success! The inmates, until then rejected and despised women, had suddenly discovered how precious they were in the eyes of God. They had been rehabilitated by his tender mercy. And as a result, several women, after they were released from prison, came to see him. Together, they started a now worldwide religious community called the “Dominican Sisters of Bethany”. It was the first time ever that a religious community was started by ex-convicts and Fr. Lataste had to fight long and hard for its right to exist.
To give them a real chance for a totally fresh start, Fr. Lataste made a rule that the membership would include both women who had been in prison and those who had not. 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 for good reason. 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 looks only at what we are today.”
This is the very same message of hope that Jesus proclaims to us today. He is calling us seemingly respectable people out of other types of prisons besides those made of brick and mortar. These are the prisons of addiction, of a life of selfishness, lust and greed. The prison of a destructive existence that seems to spiral into hopelessness but which looks so good and normal to others from the outside. Anyone and everyone, no matter who they are, what they are, or where they are, can experience liberation from the inside out by having their slate wiped clean through the mercy of Jesus. And in Christ, anyone and everyone can find hope beyond all hope, simply by starting with the words of the Gospel that we heard proclaimed to each one of us today, “The time of fulfillment is at hand. The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the Gospel.”
A Community of Dominican Sisters of Bethany Today
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