Homily for Thursday after Ash Wednesday

For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/020708.shtml

Moses seems to threaten the Israelites to whom he is giving the law that if they do not keep the Lord’s covenant, ruin will come upon them. Without fidelity to the covenant, the Israelites will not have a long life in the land which the Lord gave to their Fathers. It is true that societies that lose their moral compass will eventually self-destruct. Human history demonstrates this. A kingdom divided against itself, one that does not work for the ultimate good of its people, cannot stand forever. Moses’ prophecy, then, is a good one, and one that must be heeded in our own American society lest our American way of life vanishes. Certainly politicians of all kinds appeal to this kind of a motif – unless we are true to the values on which America was founded, our country will not be great, and it will not survive.
But of course Moses’ admonition of the Israelites is true on a more personal level as well. The law he is giving teaches people how to choose life. The law provides a way of preserving life by teaching people how to live in harmony with God and with one another. The law in providing a means to live in right relationship with God allows the conversation, or covenant, which began with Abraham, to continue indefinitely into the future. But there then comes a time when this law open to life in an indefinite future finds its fulfillment at a definite time, in a definite place, and in a definite person, Jesus the Christ. When Jesus comes, he announces that the time for the fulfillment of the promises of life and prosperity given to Abraham and renewed to Moses has arrived. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it in abundance!
With Jesus we see that the most important thing is not God’s blessing of the life guaranteed by the success of our local society. No, Jesus claims that the kingdom of God has arrived in its fullness even as the Israelite nation and its land promised to Abraham and Moses was being dominated by the Romans. Jesus himself is the new Jerusalem – the kingdom of God come among us. Because Jesus is here, to be fully alive is not to have security and prosperity, although these cannot be dispensed with while we are on pilgrimage. To be fully alive is to be in conversation with Jesus, who fully reveals man to Himself. One who puts his faith in his homeland can never be more than partially alive; one that puts his faith in Jesus Christ, has begun a conversation with the one who lives forever, and is ready to receive the living water that wells up to eternal life.