Homily
1st Sunday of Lent
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas
26 February 2011
Daily Readings
The story of man's salvation as told in the Bible unfolds the infinite mercy of God. At his core, God is love. He is mercy. That is his innermost reality. The story of the bible is a story that gets to the heart of God, slowly but surely, page after page.
The story of Noah, as we know, is near the beginning of the bible. At this point of the story, we have yet to be shown God's heart, his innermost reality. In the story of the flood, we see God's justice. As unfair as it may seem to us for men to have to die for their sins, and as much criticism as God gets sometimes for permitting bad things like the flood to happen, we all know deep down that it is a greater injustice to allow sinners to live forever. What would it mean for man to live forever temporally and horizontally but never realize his full potential to love spiritually and vertically? The result would not be eternal life but eternal frustration, never realizing that ultimate reason for which we are made. Death then, no matter how difficult it is to face, and as unfair as it may seem at times, is a gift to a sinner, for it gives shape to life and forces man to face the reason he was made and the meaning of his life. Jesus announces in his Gospel this urgency that should strike every human person to the heart; repent, and believe in the Gospel. It is his first message and a starting point in our Lord's desire to reveal man to himself.
In the story of the flood we see God's justice, that as tragic as the flood is, it is more merciful than to let man continue down the path of total frustration. Yet although God is just, the moment after the flood is a chance for us to learn that there is a deeper attribute of God than his justice, and that deeper attribute is mercy. Although the flood was a perfectly reasonable way for God to reorder man toward his own good, by discarding the unrighteous and moving forward with the righteous, God instead sets a rainbow in the sky as a sign that he doesn't want to continue down that path, but instead wants to increasingly reveal his love for his people, and to make a covenant with them. This covenant will be not merely an exchange of justice but an exchange of love.
We see by the end of the bible, and by the end of Christ's revelation, that God has shown his heart completely through the gift of his only son. By sending his son ultimately to the depths of hell, farther away from himself than even those who were destroyed in the flood, God reveals his desire that all men be saved, especially those who once were thought to be lost to the power of death.
In the sacrament of baptism, a sacrament that St. Peter urges us to contemplate and to renew, we have already died. If we have been baptized, are dead. There is nothing for us to fear, not even an untimely or arbitrary death, because with Christ there is no such thing. In baptism, we have chosen to die with Christ well before an earthly death can choose us. We have died but also risen with Christ, and so all is completed for us, and we live a new life now, an eternal life, alongside our earthly life, a life that earthly death cannot destroy.
Lent is not a time for us to earn God's love, to make ourselves more worthy of it. As sinners, that would be futile, and we would use this season only to grow in frustration and despair at our inability to make ourselves perfect. No, Lent is something much different. It is a time to stir up the grace of our baptism, not to earn our salvation, but to accept it. We do battle not to earn our salvation, because God cannot love us any more than he has in Christ, he could no do any more than he has done for us in sending his son to the depths of hell. No, we do battle for these forty days so that the victory of Christ over sin, as exemplified in the desert, may be accomplished anew in the time and space of our lives. Lent is not a self-improvement project, but a surrender to the reality of our baptism, and the reality of Christ wanting to win his victory again in us and with us and through us. As fun as the 19 point comeback was yesterday against Missouri, so too is the adventure of allowing Christ to accomplish his victory of sin and death and evil in each one of us. So let us take another step on our Lenten journey, and listen to him tell us to repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
1st Sunday of Lent
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas
26 February 2011
Daily Readings
The story of man's salvation as told in the Bible unfolds the infinite mercy of God. At his core, God is love. He is mercy. That is his innermost reality. The story of the bible is a story that gets to the heart of God, slowly but surely, page after page.
The story of Noah, as we know, is near the beginning of the bible. At this point of the story, we have yet to be shown God's heart, his innermost reality. In the story of the flood, we see God's justice. As unfair as it may seem to us for men to have to die for their sins, and as much criticism as God gets sometimes for permitting bad things like the flood to happen, we all know deep down that it is a greater injustice to allow sinners to live forever. What would it mean for man to live forever temporally and horizontally but never realize his full potential to love spiritually and vertically? The result would not be eternal life but eternal frustration, never realizing that ultimate reason for which we are made. Death then, no matter how difficult it is to face, and as unfair as it may seem at times, is a gift to a sinner, for it gives shape to life and forces man to face the reason he was made and the meaning of his life. Jesus announces in his Gospel this urgency that should strike every human person to the heart; repent, and believe in the Gospel. It is his first message and a starting point in our Lord's desire to reveal man to himself.
In the story of the flood we see God's justice, that as tragic as the flood is, it is more merciful than to let man continue down the path of total frustration. Yet although God is just, the moment after the flood is a chance for us to learn that there is a deeper attribute of God than his justice, and that deeper attribute is mercy. Although the flood was a perfectly reasonable way for God to reorder man toward his own good, by discarding the unrighteous and moving forward with the righteous, God instead sets a rainbow in the sky as a sign that he doesn't want to continue down that path, but instead wants to increasingly reveal his love for his people, and to make a covenant with them. This covenant will be not merely an exchange of justice but an exchange of love.
We see by the end of the bible, and by the end of Christ's revelation, that God has shown his heart completely through the gift of his only son. By sending his son ultimately to the depths of hell, farther away from himself than even those who were destroyed in the flood, God reveals his desire that all men be saved, especially those who once were thought to be lost to the power of death.
In the sacrament of baptism, a sacrament that St. Peter urges us to contemplate and to renew, we have already died. If we have been baptized, are dead. There is nothing for us to fear, not even an untimely or arbitrary death, because with Christ there is no such thing. In baptism, we have chosen to die with Christ well before an earthly death can choose us. We have died but also risen with Christ, and so all is completed for us, and we live a new life now, an eternal life, alongside our earthly life, a life that earthly death cannot destroy.
Lent is not a time for us to earn God's love, to make ourselves more worthy of it. As sinners, that would be futile, and we would use this season only to grow in frustration and despair at our inability to make ourselves perfect. No, Lent is something much different. It is a time to stir up the grace of our baptism, not to earn our salvation, but to accept it. We do battle not to earn our salvation, because God cannot love us any more than he has in Christ, he could no do any more than he has done for us in sending his son to the depths of hell. No, we do battle for these forty days so that the victory of Christ over sin, as exemplified in the desert, may be accomplished anew in the time and space of our lives. Lent is not a self-improvement project, but a surrender to the reality of our baptism, and the reality of Christ wanting to win his victory again in us and with us and through us. As fun as the 19 point comeback was yesterday against Missouri, so too is the adventure of allowing Christ to accomplish his victory of sin and death and evil in each one of us. So let us take another step on our Lenten journey, and listen to him tell us to repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
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