Why am I so upset?

Homily

3rd Sunday of Lent B2

3 March 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Why am I so upset?

In order to answer this question well, I can take my clue from what gets Jesus bent out of shape.  For He has taken on my nature to reveal me fully to myself.

It will pay all of us well today to pay close attention to what has Jesus fired up.  Let's notice when he cries, shouts, gets perturbed and is grieved, like He is in today's Gospel.  Jesus is angry at what He is looking it. He is consumed with zeal!  In this He is revealing something very important.  This is no moment for us to wish Jesus would calm down, play nice, and leave things as they are.

If I dare faith today, this is a Gospel to spark my own passion, lest I lose zeal for accomplishing the purpose of my own life.

I would do well to remember that Jesus is never selling tickets for me to merely watch His passion.  The cross is not entertainment, not a movie of what Jesus does for me so that I don't have to.  The paschal mystery is no spectator sport.  Instead, I am invited to participate with all my mind, heart and body, with reckless abandon.  This is His process, His way by which all things are made new.  He has invited me to be incorporated into His body, to participate in the passions of His sacred heart, and into the transformation that only comes when I too am conformed to the mystery of His holy cross.

Jesus has always taught me with clarity and conviction that there is one plan for every disciple.  Every person in this chapel is on a journey of faith up to Jerusalem.  The goal is to get ourselves killed.  Each one, without exception is to drink the cup and be baptized in blood as He is.  All are invited to empty ourselves through Him, with Him and in Him, with a love strong as death.  This love, this death, and nothing else, is the raw material of the resurrection, the new dusty from which God makes all things new.

There is only one way that does not end in death, and Jesus has shows us the way.  The process to new life is filled with zeal, anger at the way things are, passion for change, and anguish until it is accomplished.

If my Lent is not about cleansing the temple of my body so that I can participate more readily and more passionate in the paschal mystery of Jesus, then what the hell am I doing?  I may as well quit on Lent if it's anything else or anything less.

The goal is to be more upset, not less.  So we do well not to tell Jesus to calm down, but to be moved by his tears when He sees death having the last say in our lives.  We do well to share his anger that our bodies, built to be the most glorious temples of God, are instead filled with noise, junk and sin.

That's worth both Jesus and my being upset about - that my body is not empty, available and ready to be the privileged place where His paschal mystery will be consummated on those three days set apart for my life to be rebuilt.

I know how to clean house like Jesus does.  But will I make a good confession guided by the ten commandments? Will I fast so that my body is sensitive again? Will I give alms so that my heart is cleansed of pride and selfishness?

Why am I so upset?  The goal is to get more upset, not less.  I would do well today not to ask Jesus to calm down, to look away while I have a relaxing spring break, to quit on me or leave things the way they are.  I bet you Jesus my Lord, to be more upset, and to burn with a zeal that will consume me.

+mj