Homily
Ash Wednesday 2011
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas
9 March 2011
Daily Readings
JMJ AMDG +m
Brothers and Sisters. We are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ. Be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
To me this reading from St. Paul has Pentecost overtones. I know, I know. I'm jumping the gun. Today is not about being sent by the Holy Spirit to extend Christ's mission of salvation to every time and place, to the very ends of the earth. But as with anything in life, knowing where we want to end helps us to begin. Our Lenten sacrifice gets its jump start by the sobering words - Remember man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. We know how to start Lent from the perspective of our eventual death. Yet we begin Lent for another reason as well. We begin Lent is in response to God's invitation to eternal life. Beginning Lent is remembering how our lives on earth will end, to be sure, but it is more a proclamation that we do not wish our natural death to be the end of the story for us.
St. Paul urges us to be reconciled to God, because God wishes us to be ambassadors for Christ. We repent of our sins beginning today so that we will be ready to be Christ's ambassadors at the end of the Easter season, at Pentecost. St. Paul narrates an incredible inversion in reality that we cannot afford to miss contemplating. For our sake God made him who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This is the exchange God proposes to us - that the most innocent person ever would be seen by ordinary men as the greatest sinner, so that anyone who is a great sinner, might one day be seen by ordinary men to be a saint. If Christ was not seen as a sinner, there would be no way not to be envious of his heavenly perfection, but because He humbled himself, he wishes for us to be seen as holy more than he desires himself to be known as holy. That is why Christ is so clear in the Gospels - don't worry whether or not other people see you as holy. He himself was counted as the greatest sinner. What is more, Christ came to begin loving us at our most unlovable point, so that we would not go through life wondering who will notice us, who will love us, but might be free in the love of Christ to go out and begin loving others exactly where Christ first loves us. So we begin repenting of our sins today in Lent, so that we might be sent by him to be his saints at Pentecost. Knowing the end of our journey helps us to begin it well.
God is love. He will not love us more if we give up chocolate, or say extra rosaries, or give all that we have to the poor. We should do these things, but not to earn God's love. He already loves us completely. He could not love us any more than He already does. God will always be love. He does not change. So Lent is not about making ourselves more lovable in the sight of God. Lent is not a contest to see who can punish themselves the most for the sins they have committed. While it is true that we can become distracted, complacent, and mired in ruts of mediocrity, and the prayer, fasting and almsgiving of Lent can provide some relief from this, the reality is that we are all sinners, and we all know we will always be sinners, and we all know ourselves already by the worst things we have done, and we usually hate ourselves fairly perfectly, and we know deep down how sin has damaged us, and we know we are not worthy of eternal life. Although Lent can strip us away from comforts and distractions, deep down we already know that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Lent reminds us of this, but deep down we have never really forgotten it. We all know that there is a real possibility that our final breath will be the end of the story for us.
Lent then is more than a contest to see who can punish themselves the most. It must be more than this. It is not a contest to get other people to see us and love us better, least of all God, who knows us already today more than we know ourselves, who will never forget us, and who already loves us perfectly. Sometimes we can see Lent as a contest of willpower to see who is worthy of heaven, and who is worthy of death. Yet in many ways, this is the opposite of what Lent is.
We pray, fast and give alms not so that we might be more worthy of heaven, but to give priority to the reality that we in many ways have already passed over into heaven by virtue of our baptism, and that we exist now primarily not to worry about our salvation, but to build the kingdom of God everyday by what we say and do in the days we have on this earth. We pray, fast, and give alms not because these things are harder, but because they are easier than forgetting that we have already passed in baptism from death to life. Praying, fasting, and giving alms is easy, compared to the spiritual pain of forgetting who we are, temples of the Holy Spirit called to build heaven with Christ. Praying, fasting and almsgiving is easy compared to living in this world with a cowering fear, not knowing if we have done enough to merit heaven, and having no way of knowing for sure. Living in fear and uncertainty, especially at a spiritual level, is painful. So we pray, and fast and give alms for a much nobler purpose, to which St. Paul calls us, not merely move away our sins by our own willpower, although this too is good, but to recover that dignity of those who are even on this side of heaven already ambassadors for Christ. Praying, fasting and giving alms can increase our willpower against temptations, but more importantly, it moves us back into the mission of forgetting our earthly attachments because we are emerging saints intent on proclaiming to the world what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, and are building with Christ from this inside out a new kingdom that will last forever. Praying, fasting and almsgiving is much less about perfecting ourselves, but is about re-orienting ourselves to God's perfections and his glorious works. Praying, fasting and giving alms is less about making ourselves good, and more about giving witness to the goodness of God and his many blessings. Praying, fasting and giving alms is less about making ourselves more lovable, but is a way that we proclaim the strength of the love of Jesus Christ, a love that is stronger than death. Amen.
JMJ AMDG +m
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