HOMILIES
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Second Sunday of Lent C
February 28, 2010
One of the problems Saint Paul was dealing with in his letter to the Philippians was some who believed that Christians still had to follow all the regulations of the Old Testament. They included complex dietary rules which is why Paul writes that “Their God is their stomach.” He says that they are putting those who put their hope in these external regulations are “enemies of the cross of Christ.” Not one to mince words! We may think that none of this applies to us since we are not even remotely tempted to follow all those rules, but it does apply to us.
They liked the external regulations because those rules were under their control. They could use them to measure their holiness by how well they kept them. We can be tempted to do the same thing, to measure our worth by our achievements and appearances — by things we can control. But that is not where true holiness comes from.
True holiness comes from having “our citizenship in heaven.” That means following the law of Heaven, which is the law of Christ, the law of love of God and neighbor, an interior law. To follow Christ, in other words, we have to give up control. It is no longer our achievements that matter; it is our trusting obedience to Christ. We cannot save ourselves no matter how hard we try. So what God asks is for us to trust Him completely, to give Him a blank check.
We have to ask ourselves if we are trying to get by with small payments or have we given all to Jesus.
The issue of control is a common theme in literature because it’s such a fundamental issue in everyone’s relationship with God. One example is found in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It is all about control or surrender. The ring of power which the hobbit Bilbo finds underneath a mountain is a symbol of control. It makes the one who wears it invisible allowing eavesdropping, stealing and sneaking. It also gives its owner long life and the power to enslave others. But the ring always ends up ruling over the person who tries to use it.
The spiritual life is similar. Every sin is based in asserting selfish power. The businessman who lies to get a contract signed is dominating another person. The neighbor who spreads gossip is trying to be superior at the expense of someone else. These sins which seem to increase our power and offer us greater freedom actually turn us into slaves. In fact, every time we sin, we become more addicted to power. We become less free to choose as our selfish urges take over our lives. Just as whoever used the ring of power fell more and more under its influence.
The only path to true freedom, as Saint Paul teaches, is to surrender the desire to dominate, to be like God. We must surrender to Christ, letting Him be God and obeying His will. We have to throw our hopes for happiness into the fire of His love just as the ring had to be thrown into the fires of Mount Doom.
How can we learn to surrender control, to give everything to Christ as He wants and needs? Saint Paul gives us one way. He encourages us to stop occupying our minds with “earthly things” and to become more aware that “citizenship is in heaven.” That takes time and effort and is only possible by prayer. Without often going up the mountain with Jesus to pray, like Peter, James and John, we will never learn to see ourselves and this world from a truly Christian perspective.
We all need to improve our life of prayer. We just have to choose a way, a concrete activity that we can do to give Jesus the opportunity to speak to our hearts.
It might be to read a good book on the spiritual life before Easter. You could download a daily meditation online everyday (www.regnumchristi.org). Learn and practice a new devotion or return to an old one, perhaps the rosary or the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Carve out 15 minutes a day to read the Bible or simply to sit in silence.
Jesus is waiting for us to surrender and to trust in Him so that He can fill us with His grace and lead us to the happiness we long for. Today let’s at least take out the check book even if we are not ready to sign a blank one. Let’s not leave here without committing to go up a notch in prayer before the next week is out. If we give Him that much today, He will be able to give us much more tomorrow.
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
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First Sunday of Lent C
February 21, 2010
C. S Lewis wrote a spiritual classic on the temptations of the devil. It is called The Screwtape Letters. It is a collection of messages from Screwtape, an experienced tempter, to his nephew and apprentice Wormwood. Lewis writes from the perspective of the tempter about what works to draw humans away from the One that Screwtape calls the “Enemy.” That is God. In one of the letters, Screwtape writes, “It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
On the First Sunday of Lent the Church always gives us the temptations of Jesus in the desert. This year we hear about them from Saint Luke. It really is very good news for us since we are always challenged by temptations. The Letter to the Hebrews says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin” (4:15). Christ sympathizes with our weaknesses and He shows today how our weaknesses will not be overcome by temptation. He wins the victory for us against every temptation.
How does Jesus win the victory for us? It can be described in several ways. One can be seen through the use of memory. If it is true that the tempter’s best work is done by keeping things out of our minds, as C.S. Lewis says, then it is also true that the Lord’s best work is done by putting something in our minds. In each of the temptations, Jesus recalls Scripture as the best defense against the devil. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 after the first temptation and Deuteronomy 6:13 after the second. The devil seems to have caught on and so he quotes twice from Psalm 91 to tempt Jesus the third time. (Even the devil can quote Scripture!) Then Jesus returns again to Deuteronomy (6:16). That time the devil “departed from him for a time.”
Memory plays an important part in our relationship with God. The first reading is from the same book that Jesus quotes, Deuteronomy. The name means “the second law.” It is a remembering given in the form of Moses reflecting near the end of his life before the people enter the Promised Land. It tells the people to remember how they were once aliens in Egypt. How after being maltreated and oppressed, they cried to the Lord and He heard their cries. He brought them out of Egypt with signs and wonders and brought them to the Promised Land. Memory is the motivation for them to give thanks. How can we give thanks if we do not remember God’s goodness? In the same way, in the second reading from the Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul recalls the Lordship of Jesus and how He was raised from the dead. How can we confess that Jesus is Lord if we don’t remember the power of the Resurrection? Having a memory formed by Scripture can transform our state of mind from temptations to giving thanks and confessing our faith in Christ.
How does this relate to the First Sunday of Lent for us? We often think about what we give up for Lent, which is a good thing. But now is a time to think not so much of chocolate, TV or meat as overcoming temptation to sin. Every temptation is a narrowing of reality. It takes some good and highlights it in disproportion to the whole. By God’s grace, we want our memory to be equipped to withstand temptation because we remember the whole of God’s goodness. Then temptation collapses into a single moment seen under a single spotlight. Our memory can help us realize that temptation is too small; it is not enough for us.
This remembering can be done in many ways. It might mean memorizing some short verses of Scripture for times of temptation. For example, “God come to my assistance. Lord make haste to help me” is the beginning of Psalm 70 a prayer for help in time of trial. We may not have a particular passage to remember but we remember Jesus Christ and His victory over temptation.
There are all sorts of things to remember to help in times of temptation: God’s love; the promise of Heaven; the final judgment. We might remember what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony and his Passion, and gave himself up for each one of us: ‘The Son of God…loved me and gave himself for me’” (478; Gal. 2:20).
When the devil tries to keep things out of our minds, we can have our memory filled with Christ!
The material in this homily has already been copyrighted and so may not otherwise be published or copied. It is for personal use only.
Rev. Gerald F. Mullally
Saint Patrick’s Church
Milford, Pennsylvania
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