The Fourth Sunday of Lent (B)
Dear
brothers and sisters,
As
we approached the altar of the Lord this morning, we implored him for the grace
of “prompt devotion and eager faith” (Collect).
Just two Sundays ago, we considered what it means to be devoted, how being
devoted means to be dedicated by a vow, to have sacrificed oneself, and to have
made a promise in a solemn manner. How often are we prompt in our devotion to
the Lord? How prompt are we to keep the vows made at our baptisms and to hold
fast to the promise we received? How prompt are we to make a sacrifice of
ourselves to God each day?
It
sometimes happens that, by a sudden inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the notion
pops into our head that we should pray the rosary, that we should pick up our
Bible, or even that we should make a visit to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
After recognizing the goodness of this thought, we frequently decide there are
more pressing matters requiring our attention and put off this holy inspiration.
Sometimes we return to it, but more often we forget about it. At other times in
our conversations with others, we realize we should say something about the
goodness of the Lord and his action in our lives, but we become concerned about
offending someone and remain silent. If we are honest with ourselves and with
the Lord, we are not always very prompt in our devotion or eager in our faith.
Whenever
we are not prompt in our devotion to the Lord and fail to keep our promises to
him, we can be certain of one thing: we will grow distant from him and our love
for him will fade. As the distance between us and the Lord grows, as the fire
of our love for him dies down, our faith becomes weak and we risk separating
ourselves from him. “How can this be?”, you might ask; “how can we be separated
from God?”
There
is a difference between saying. “God is with me.” and saying, “I am with God.” Reflecting
back on his sinful past in his Confessions, Saint Augustine said to the Lord:
Late have I loved you, beauty so old
and so new: late have I have loved you. And see, you were within and I was in
the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into
those lovely things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you.”[1]
We
see something of this in the reading from the Second Book of Chronicles in which
the Israelites “added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations
of the nations and polluting the Lord’s
Temple which he had consecrated in Jerusalem” (II Chronicles 36:14). The Lord
was with his people, but his people was not with the Lord.
In
response to their repeated infidelities brought on by their lack of devotion,
the Lord allowed them to fall under the power of the Babylonian Empire to shake
them back to their senses. When their homes were destroyed and their
possessions taken as spoils or war, they, too, were carted off to Babylon where
they sat by the streams and wept, remembering Jerusalem and the Temple of the
Lord that their conquerors destroyed (cf. Psalm 137:1). In their grief, they
cried out, “May my tongue cleave to my palate if I remember you not, if I place
not Jerusalem ahead of my joy” (Psalm 137:6). The Lord allowed them to remain
under the Babylonian Captivity until they again grew eager in their faith and
renewed their devotion to God.
When
they sang of placing Jerusalem ahead of their joy, what did they mean?
Jerusalem was more than the capital city. Jerusalem was home to the Temple, to
God’s dwelling among men. Jerusalem was, therefore, the location of contact
with God, where praise was given to God, where sacrifices were made and sins
forgiven, where God and Israel communed together. To place Jerusalem ahead of
their joy meant to keep things in right order, to keep their relationship with
God first and foremost in their thoughts and deeds.
The
Lord Jesus Christ came among us “even when we were dead in our transgressions”
and “brought us to life” by his Passion, Death, and Resurrection (Ephesians 2:5).
In his Incarnation, we see that even “if, at times, the flame of charity seems
to die in our own hearts … this is never the case with God! He constantly gives
us a chance to begin loving anew.”[2] Even
now, he calls us to keep the Heavenly Jerusalem ahead of our own joy – to keep
our relationship with God first and foremost - so that his joy might be in us
and our joy might be complete (cf. John 15:11).
Just
as at the beginning of this Holy Mass we asked God for “prompt devotion and
eager faith,” so, too, at the end of this Mass will we ask him to “sustain the
weak” so we might “reach the highest good” (solemn blessing). It is impossible
to reach the highest good apart from the Cross, for it was on the Cross that
the highest Good – Christ Jesus - was himself lifted up “so that everyone who
believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:15). He was lifted up upon the
Cross to heal us and make us whole, and it is from his Cross that his light
shines forth, beckoning all who turn to toward the light.
It
is not hard to see that “people preferred darkness to light, because their
works were [and are] evil” (John 3:19). So often we know our sin and yet we
refuse to humble ourselves before the Lord to seek his mercy and receive his
absolution. We hide from him, thinking somehow that if we stay in the darkness
we will be at peace, but our experience proves this false. The more we hide
from his light, the greater our pain becomes. It is only by stepping into his
light, by seeking his forgiveness, that our hearts find peace.
Pope
Benedict XVI once said, “In the heart of every man, begging for love, there is
a thirst for love.”[3]
Are we not all beggars for love? Saint Augustine said, “Only the lover sings.”[4] Given
that both are true, let us not leave our harps on a tree in our anguish; let us
not abandon or song of love. Let us, rather, look to the Cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ and see there the depth of his great love so freely given and
“sing to the Lord a new song”
(Psalm 96:1). Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment