Weekly Sunday Homilies

Fr. Joseph's Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent (Year A)

“True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the pain, the degradation…..the truth…. It is worthwhile, because in the end dealing with the real situation helps to bring real healing to the situation.” – Bishop Desmond Tutu who was the Anglican champion of anti-racism along with Catholics and many others in South Africa.

The light casts out darkness, and the light reveals the truth!

And once we know the truth about the difference between God and Satan’s very different plans for us, we can’t unsee the truth: Satan does have a plan for us as Dc Chuck said, but thankfully his plan is a really bad one, and not just bad for us…its self-destructive and a losing battle.

He pokes, he hatefully prods, he despairingly suggests, because all his capacity to do so is just a dark, dark shadow of the Light. And while he may be given the world to mess with, he cannot mess with God and the Kingdom that we are a part of through Baptism!

Notice that very little airtime is given to the Devil in the Gospels. Only when Jesus is casting out a demon, or warning us, or conquering him in the desert through standing on the Word of God or resisting Him implicitly in the Garden of Gethsemane.

In the crucifixion and resurrection, he is only made reference to in regard to Judas!

He isn’t an equal opponent to God, but a fallen tempter and accuser.

The fact of the matter is that when we sin, we aren’t opposing God, we are fracturing into a million little pieces. When we walk away from the clearness of light Himself, we break and become knotted into hardness of heart, pride, hatred, despair, cowardice and I could go on.

Jesus shows Peter and the brothers James and John in a vision that the Light is their end goal because he is the one who shows us what is real and how to let go of these knotted and painful distractions.

One such distraction that leads us to hard-heartedness is unforgiveness.

Dc Chuck called us to remember the goodness of repentance and practice it: key #1. Now we are looking at practicing key #2, the key that unlocks hardness of heart and helps us receive Christ’s light even better.

Part of our difficulty is that we often get in our own way without knowing it through unforgiveness:

St. Peter does today, not realizing that his otherwise good request, isn’t appropriate, and would only leave him incomplete and selfish, not having the opportunity to share what he has seen!

We know the story,…how we too often get in the way of our own selves:

We want to fast, so we take on more than we can do, then we blame ourselves or God or the Church! We start accusing.

Or we get in the way of others or others get in our way and we feel hurt:

Think about a couple who have not forgiven one another of something and may have even forgotten what it is they got into it about, and so now they argue over who will do the dishes with anger and bitterness when they aren’t even all that upset about the dishes. They may use the words, but they are upset about something deeper entirely, and are, at least implicitly, accusing one another.

Whenever we accuse another person: They should not have done that to me, I am hurt by them and cannot forgive what they have done, we become little accusers.

Now there are many ways that withholding forgiveness of others can impact us, and many ways we get there, to name a few:

• Sometimes we do not forgive because we lack faith, and doubt that God can help us to do so when the knot in our chest feels too tangled to untangle. Sometimes we are just unaware of the wound, have forgotten or have covered it over with other worries, like why they didn’t do the dishes.
• At times we desire revenge and would rather wait on or even pursue their retribution first as if that would make the knot of unforgiveness go away, and this goes hand in hand with pride at being their judge and jury.
• Sometimes we are simply afraid! Afraid that if we forgive, we will open ourselves up to be hurt again, or that God will not have our backs, or that God will not provide. Does the thought of forgiveness scare you because that knot that you believe is part of you would be lost if you let go of it?
• Sometimes we fail to take responsibility for our part in our hurt towards another person. Maybe we did nothing to provoke or cause someone to do us wrong, but by holding on to the hurt we are affecting ourselves and others!
• And sometimes that Unforgiveness is so strong that we even revel in it and allow the spirit of unforgiveness to guide us!

These are the multifarious ways that evil works. Because there are as many evils as there are evil actions, The Devil is no master planner, but simply a reactionary deceiver.

But God promises us a singular and united plan for our life, that of the Light of the Gospel as we hear in the 2nd letter to Timothy today! By the Light, we are instructed in the Gospel to forgive perfectly, 77 times, perfectly, until its done, until we have let go, so that we do not end up like another figure in the Gospel, the unrepentant servant, who though he was forgiven of his debt in the parable, he then went and found a person who owed HIM money and shook him down!

Instead of holding onto and building up feelings of hurt, Jesus commands us to forgive one another, not merely to seek forgiveness of God, who is the only reason we have the grace to truly truly forgive from our hearts anyway. This is how we pass on mercy like a repentant and faithful son and daughter of God. And don’t forget that sometimes that includes forgiving yourself with Jesus’ help. And how do we do so with Jesus’ help?

We can do so by simply saying in prayer: “In the name of Jesus, I forgive this person etc.”

And we do so in the name of Jesus, because it is through the Cross and because of the Cross that we can forgive perfectly for he has shown us what it means to forgive perfectly. From the Cross, if you recall, he looked upon us and said, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing."

THAT is mercy! THAT…..forgiveness! THAT is the LIGHT that sets us free!

This is why the purpose of these 5 keys is the same! Freedom in Christ through the gifts of love, the very tools and keys of love. Christ loves us so that we might love, and by loving, find ever deeper repentance and forgiveness for ourselves and others.

Next week, Deacon Marc will help us to see how that relationship is deepened as we begin to not only repent, receive forgiveness God’s love and grant forgiveness but when we even begin to hate sinful action and renounce old ways! Until then, let the Lord love you into forgiveness.