Set Free

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln shocked the world when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In the middle of the Civil War, he declared what should have already been obvious to all: that the slaves in the southern States were free human persons, and not the property of their owners. The battles between the Union and the Confederacy continued to rage for another two and a half years, but from that point forward everyone knew that the war was part of the larger struggle for human freedom and dignity.

Even more than our nation's history, freedom is the hallmark of our Christian religious heritage, and we heard the history of that heritage in our readings today. In the first reading, Joshua leads the Israelite people at long last into the Promised Land. Forty years after God had freed them from slavery in Egypt, after their period of purification and preparation in the desert, they enter at last into the land that God had promised them as their inheritance. And it’s here at last that the manna ceases – the bread that mysteriously appeared every morning, and had fed the people along the way, comes to an end because their journey has come to an end. They are now in their rightful place, their place of rest, their true homeland.

In our second reading, St. Paul explains how this foundational story has been spiritualized, so that all people can be the People of God and receive a heavenly inheritance. It is in Jesus Christ, he says, in the sacrifice of his death on the Cross, that God has restored human beings to himself: he rescued us from the slavery of sin – a slavery even more terrible than what was practiced in Egypt or in the Southern states – and reconciled us to himself. In Christ, humanity has the ability to receive something far greater than it ever lost: access to the true and heavenly homeland, and a new identity as God’s beloved sons and daughters.

This dynamic is true for humanity as a whole, but it is important to understand it not just theoretically but in the way it actually plays out in our lives. A proclamation of emancipation only matters if a person actually experiences freedom as a result. That’s why each of us must recognize that, at a deep level, we are all like the younger son in the Gospel story. By our pride, by our greed, anger, lust, gluttony, selfishness, or whatever else, each of us has squandered our inheritance and gone away from the Lord, like wayward sheep seeking our own way. Unfortunately, like that young man finds out, choosing a path away from the love of our Father doesn’t lead us to success or self-fulfillment, but only to bitter disappointment and loss. However, God does not give up on us. If we can, by his grace, pick ourselves up and turn back to him, we will find that he always welcomes us back with warmth and love. In his house, we find freedom from our slavery, we find newness of identity, because Jesus the Son has made it possible for us to also be God’s beloved sons and daughters.

 

The Prodigal Son (2019) by Wayne Pascall

So, thanks be to God that what the scribes and Pharisees say is true: Jesus welcomes sinners, and communes with them. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is a symbolic explanation of God’s mercy, but that mercy is actually encountered not in a story but in real life. We need to experience it personally, and we do so most fully in the sacrament of penance. We will have an opportunity to participate in this sacrament again this week in our parish’s penance service on Tuesday evening. I encourage us all to come and make use of this great sacrament – if not here, then somewhere, before the end of Lent. Let’s do this even if – especially if – we have been away from the sacrament for a long time. There can be lots of things that might tempt us to stay away: perhaps fear, or shame, perhaps a past bad experience in confession, perhaps a lack of certainty about just where we are at spiritually, of what we need to confess and how we need to change. But don’t let any of those things be an obstacle that prevents you from making your way back to the Father’s house. If you trust that the Lord desires to unburden you and liberate you of your sins, and if listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit urging you to get up and return to the Father’s house, I know you will find the sacrament to be what I myself find it to be: an experience of reconciliation, of being welcomed back by the heavenly Father, who is always loving and merciful.

And if, for some reason or another, it's not possible for you to receive sacramental absolution at this time, don’t lose heart. Consider offering to God just a few words of sorrow for your sins, perhaps through an Act of Contrition, or a prayer of your own making. Tell him how much you regret going astray and how much you desire to be liberated from your sins and renewed in your spiritual life. I bet you’ll find that, much like the younger son in the Gospel, you will hardly begin to speak before the Father interrupts you with his mercy and assures you in some way of his abiding love.

Friends, as we continue our Lenten journey, let’s give thanks to God for the great Emancipation Proclamation he has given us in the love of his Son. We are journeying closer to the solemnities of the Lord’s Passover, the great celebration of his setting us free from sin and death by his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. In these last few weeks, let us set aside our pride and hesitance, and return to the Lord’s loving embrace. And as we prepare for this Eucharist, may we be reminded how it is here in this Sacrament where the Lord restores and renews us, giving us no manna as our food for the journey, but his own Body as our true and living Bread. May its graces enliven us and lead us onward to our rightful place, our place of rest, our true and heavenly homeland.

Confirming Faith

Doubt and uncertainty are part of life. Sometimes we wrestle with those things right after putting ourselves forward boldly in some way. It’s not uncommon for a person who makes a big purchase to feel a little buyer’s remorse right afterward. Or a person who accepts a new job might second guess whether they made the right decision. Someone who declares their love for someone else may feel uncertain if that love is not immediately reciprocated.

And if we know what those experiences are like, in those situations or others like them, we also know, after a moment of doubt or uncertainty, how great it feels to be reassured. Maybe we receive a word of approval from someone else, or some sign that confirms that what we said or did, going out on a limb in some way, was the right thing. Today’s Gospel offers us just that kind of reassurance, if we understand it in its context. The Transfiguration of Jesus is a familiar story for us, but what exactly does it mean? Perhaps we feel we can understand more easily the parables of Jesus, or his words of admonition, or the stories of the miraculous healings he did. But this story is understood rightly only if we know what came right before it.

In all of the Gospels, Jesus’s Transfiguration is preceded by two things: first, the profession that Simon Peter makes in Jesus. Remember that episode? Jesus asks the disciples who people say that he is, and then he asks them who do *they* say that he is. And Simon Peter responds: “You are the Christ, the Son of God.” And Jesus confirms him. He says, “You’re right. And I will call you ‘Peter’, ‘Rock’, and upon you I will build my Church.” But immediately after this, Jesus tells the disciples something surprising – that he, the One whom they had just declared to be the Son of God, was going to Jerusalem to suffer and to die and rise again.

The Transfiguration of Jesus follows on these two things: Peter’s profession of faith and Jesus’s declaration that he’s going to be put to death. If we put ourselves in Peter’s shoes, perhaps that second part would have been enough to make us hesitate about the first. Peter’s conception of who the Messiah was, of who the Son of God was, certainly would not have included the idea of him being crucified. And so perhaps there was for him, and for the other disciples, a little uncertainty. Maybe a little bit of doubt crept in to their minds. Were they wrong about what they had declared – that Jesus was the Son of God?

In today’s Gospel, Jesus answers that question with a definitive YES. The Transfiguration isn’t just a cool, random event – it’s a confirmation that Jesus really is who the disciples have professed him to be. To his inner circle, Peter, James, and John, Jesus gives them a glimpse of his own divinity as the Son of God, and as a sign to reassure them about his upcoming passion and death. St. Thomas Aquinas calls this the greatest miracle Jesus worked because it anticipates his Resurrection: it reveals the glory that Jesus possessed not only within himself but that which he promises to all who believe in him.

Stained Glass Image of the Transfiguration (13th cent.), Chartres Cathedral

In these days of Lent, we are encouraged to adopt certain practices of faith – prayer, fasting, and almsgiving especially. We do these as a sign of our repentance, but they have another purpose as well: that is, to strengthen our will and our spiritual insight. Like Peter, we are called to boldly proclaim our faith in Jesus, but at times, fear and uncertainty can afflict us, especially in times of difficulty or sorrow. The wearying and worrying things of life can get us down and perhaps tempt us to doubt the goodness of God the promises of our faith. In those moments, God wishes to reassure us, to confirm our faith, and to give us hope for the true reality – the heavenly reality – that lies under the surface of our everyday experiences. He does so by reminding us of what he has done in and through his Son; what is true of Jesus can be true of us, too, if we are conformed in the image of Christ.

And that’s where prayer, fasting, and almsgiving come in: they help us to grow a little more into the image of the One laid down his life for our salvation. When we deprive ourselves of material things, when we deny some of our earthly desires, we can focus more fully on spiritual things. And we begin to see, with spiritual sight, how God is confirming our faith, strengthening our hope, putting the challenges we face in the larger context of Jesus’s Passion, death, and Resurrection, and how we share in that. When our attention is focused less on earthly desires, God begins to train our hearts and minds to yearn for a happiness that goes beyond this life – that is satisfied only in the heavenly glory of the life to come.

Friends, let’s strive to let our faith be purified this Lent. Let’s not let doubt or hesitation creep in to our hearts but, like Peter, let’s be bold in proclaiming our faith and looking for the ways that the Lord reassures us in it. It’s important that we understand every day – all of our decisions and actions, and even our words – in the context of something greater: indeed, in the light of what St. Paul tells the Philippians in our second reading: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” It is He, who was Transfigured on the mountain, who is Risen and lives forever, who comes to us now, in our Sacrament of the Altar: to confirm our faith in him and strengthen our hope to share in his heavenly glory.

Tested Together

Sometimes when I am thinking about what to say in my homily each week, I’ll go back and take a look at what I said in previous years on the same Sunday. I did that this past week, and saw that a year ago, the First Sunday of Lent came right after the double snowstorm, which left many people in our area and region in bitter cold and recovering from property damage and other aftermath for long after the snow and ice melted. And then two years ago, I saw that I encouraged us to shake up our routine for Lent, to not be afraid to live differently from how we were accustomed. And then, just a week or so after that, the pandemic began, and our lives changed much more radically than any of us could have imagined.

All of that is to say that sometimes we don’t have to go looking for struggles and hardships – they find us. All year round, we face them, in different ways, but in the season of Lent we look directly at our challenges, our trials, our sufferings, and we strive to accept them, with humility and with faith. We do that because when we suffer, there can at times be a temptation to think that God has forgotten us, that he’s not helping us, and that we are alone in what we face. In fact, this is maybe the most common way that people can lose their faith altogether, in whatever way that looks: when they come to believe that the very existence of struggle and suffering indicates that faith doesn’t do all that much for us.

It’s fortunate, therefore, that we begin each Lent hearing that Jesus himself struggled – that for forty days and nights he suffered hunger in the desert, and at the end of that time was tested by the devil. This Gospel episode is important for us in a couple ways. First, it shows us a preview of what Jesus will endure at the end of his life, in the testing of his Passion and Death. The Cross of Christ gives meaning to all suffering, since it is the path – the only path – to the Resurrection. All of Lent is directed in this way: to see our trials and testings in the light of that final reality – that is, not as meaningless experiences, but as preparations, steppingstones toward the light of heaven.

But today’s Gospel is important in another way, too, and that is as a sign of solidarity. In the temptations of Jesus, we see that the Son of God in his humanity really knew what it was like to endure testing and trial. You might say there is an exchange that happens. Jesus, the Word of God made Flesh, takes on himself the human experience of suffering and temptation, showing solidarity with us in our trials. In exchange, he offers us a share in his victory; because he resists the devil’s allurements, he shows us that in him we can do the same. Jesus is not just our Savior; he is our Salvation – he is literally the means by which we conquer the evils that we face. When we see God as not absent from our trials but very much entering into them – redeeming them and allowing us to overcome them through the presence of his Son – then it can change the whole way that we understand them and face them. We begin to understand that the Lord is not just with us – in our spiritual corner, so to speak – but even more, he is the one fighting within us. It’s his grace that enlivens us and helps us persevere, to overcome temptation and to endure suffering.

Moretto da Brescia, Christ in the Wilderness (c. 1520)

What’s more, the solidarity that Jesus shows us, and that he gives us with him, also allows us to show solidarity with others. St. Paul recommends just that in his Letter to the Romans: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another” (Rom 12:15-16). Lent gives us a chance to recognize and even enter into the experiences of those with whom we are spiritually connected. Maybe that is a family member or a friend who we know is going through a rough time, and by prayer or generosity, we can show our support for them. Maybe it is to support in the same way those who, though distant from us physically, nonetheless are connected to us spiritually: Christians in Ukraine living in bunkers and risking their lives to protest an unjust invasion of their country; priests and catechists in China who have been arrested for their faith and will spend this Lent incarcerated; religious sisters and seminarians in Africa who face ongoing threat of kidnapping and other violence. With these and others, we recognize that we are united in Christ: “the same Lord is Lord of all,” he who is our Head enriches all of us in his Body, so that tested together in him, he sustains in our trials.

Friends, take some time this week to think about you’re being tested this Lent; but think also about how the Lord is with you in those trials, sustaining you, giving you faith and perseverance. And then consider how he’s inviting you to show your solidarity with others, just as he has shown his with you. How can you be the presence of Christ for another in these next forty days? May his Real, sacramental Presence be our food for the journey ahead.

Humble Repentance

Evil is real. That’s a basic truth that we hopefully agree with, one that our faith teaches. We tend to think of evil as external – as something outside of us, out in the world. The current war in Ukraine might be a good example and a painful reminder of that. But the Christian faith teaches, just as the Jewish faith before it, that human beings also must recognize that there is evil within our hearts. We heard about this idea just last Sunday, when Jesus said the fruit we bear in our lives is a reflection of what is within us. And so, because each of us has within us a mixture of some good and some evil, the idea of repentance is central and essential to our lives of faith – to recognize and turn away from that which has crept up within us that is not Godly and not in accord with what God calls us to.

The season of Lent, that we begin today, is the season of repentance par excellence. But even here there is a danger, one which Jesus talks about in our Gospel today. Even the desire to repent can become an opportunity for pride and for boasting, especially when we do it not for God but for others to see us. Isn’t there a little bit of that in how we typically approach Lent: “Oh, look at me and what I’m giving up! See these great and pious things that I am going to do to show my faithfulness!” I know that’s true in my life. Even our practice of coming to receive ashes – a good sign of our repentance – can be, if we are not careful, a temptation to feel self-righteous, to show off our penitence, and maybe even to think ourselves a little better than others.

Jesus tells us in the Gospel today that repentance is good – our works of fasting, prayer, and giving alms are good – but at the heart of them must be a spirit of humility. Do you remember the parable of the publican and the Pharisee in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 18? It could well be another passage to reflect on for Ash Wednesday. Both the Pharisee and the tax collector go to the temple to pray. But the Pharisee prays boastfully, thanking God that he is not like other people, that he prays and fasts much better than others, including the tax collector next to him. For his part, the tax collector only lowers his head and asks God to forgive him, and Jesus says that because of his humility he went away justified before God, while the Pharisee did not.

The Pharisee and the Publican by John Everett Millais (1864)

Friends, let’s make sure that’s we begin this Lent with that same spirit of humility. Our praying and fasting and almsgiving are good, we need to do them; but as Jesus says, we also have to guard against the temptation to take pride in them, as if we want others – or even just ourselves – to be convinced of our repentance. Maybe God isn’t so concerned with what we are giving up, or what we are going to do this Lent – in fact, maybe he prefers we keep those things to ourselves, since they are really just between us and him, anyway. Maybe he’s much more concerned with whether we’re doing whatever it is we are doing with a humble attitude. Maybe that’s the best way, in the end, to recognize what is not Godly within us, to repent of the evil present in our hearts, and to show God in these forty days how much we truly desire to return to him.