Homily for December 7, 2003
Year
C - Cycle II
2nd Sunday of Advent
by Fr. John Carney
Topic:
Destruction and Restoration
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Gospel Reading:
Luke 3:1-6
"...A voice of one crying out in the desert: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"
I would imagine most of us here are familiar with Michelangelo’s great work, the Pieta. Have you actually seen the Pieta, at St. Peter’s? Most of you have at least seen an image of it, or a copy of it. If you haven’t, the work is the disposition of Christ, when He is taken down from the cross. He’s in His mother’s arms, and of course, He’s dead. It’s sculpted out of a beautiful piece of Carrera marble. I think it was the 14th century, if I’m not mistaken, when Michelangelo lived. And it is just absolutely magnificent. It’s a beautiful creation – truly amazing, the image of God and His Blessed Mother. I first had the privilege of seeing it at the World’s Fair in New York City in 1964. It’s just magnificent. And I’ve seen it subsequently, when I visited Rome.
In May of 1972, there were hundreds of people in St. Peter’s Basilica, admiring the Pieta, when a madman, a deranged individual, broke through the crowd, jumped over an altar rail, and attacked the statue with a hammer. And before he could be subdued, he had struck it 15 times. He had fractured 50 significant pieces of marble, and some 150 smaller pieces. And the world heard the story, and donations came in. It was as if someone had died. One newspaper said that it could not be repaired, but the curator of the Vatican Museum, a man named Federici, was not discouraged. He gathered around seven other experts. For 10 months, they labored over the Pieta, and they put it back together again. They marked each piece, and they photographed it, and they used the state-of-the-art techniques of 1972 to restore this beautiful work of art. Federici said he felt like a doctor working over a patient that was very sick. Ten months later, on March 25, 1973, the Feast of the Annunciation, Michelangelo’s work was again on display. It’s still there now, just as you enter St. Peter’s, to the right. Except now, it is way back, behind bulletproof glass. This poor man who did this was insane. He claimed he was Jesus Christ and he said he didn’t like his mother. As a matter of fact, he was never even imprisoned. He was sent to get some help and was released.
Now, what’s the Pieta got to do with Advent? The Pieta is a beautiful creation, in the image of God and His mother, but so are you. Indeed, you are much more beautiful than any carved marble. And the artist is God Himself, who sculpted you, who created you, who put you together, who knit you in your mother’s womb before she knew she was pregnant. You are sacred, and precious, and beautiful. But, we sin, and sin destroys our beauty, just like the man who took the hammer to the Pieta. Sin hammers us into pieces. And we lose that image of God that is in us when we are steeped in sin. So Advent is something we need. Advent is a time when we start to put the pieces back together again…to restore the image of Christ that is in each one of us, in the image of His Mother as well. Except we don’t have ten months – we only have 18 more days.
Advent is eight days old. What have you done so far to prepare the way of the Lord? Who here is not a sinner, by the way? Whose path to Christ, to heaven has been perfectly straight, without curves or dips or perhaps detours? Anybody? Well, maybe the child who hasn’t reasoned yet. He’ll learn to sin though – we’ll teach him. I got my PhD in sinning before I got my Masters of Divinity! We’re all sinners and we know it. There’s something in us, a tendency towards sin. St. Augustine called it “concupiscence.” After original sin is removed in baptism, there’s still something wrong with us, isn’t there? There’s something wrong with you, and with me. (Remember, every time you point, you get three fingers looking back at you.) There’s something wrong with us. And Advent is a time to address whatever those things are, the big pieces and the little pieces…to try to restore this work of art that God takes such pleasure in, the human person. So I encourage you, if you haven’t started, to begin.
Psychologists tell us that a lot of people are depressed at Christmas. I have an idea why – because they treat Christmas as a holiday, and they prepare their homes and their decorations and foods and gifts. If we treat Christmas as a holy day, and prepare our hearts first, I don’t think we’ll be depressed at Christmas. Not if we have prepared our hearts, and purified ourselves. Try to restore the beauty God intends to see in us. Then I don’t think we’ll be depressed at Christmastime.
So, examine your conscience. How do we do that? Well, there are a million ways. You can use the Ten Commandments. You could use the two Great Commandments – to love God above all else and your neighbor as yourself. Remember the Seven Deadly Sins? Anybody remember those? Do we teach them in catechism any more? They are still deadly, and they’re still sins – pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, sloth (laziness). If you want to do a good examination, if you have a computer, do a search on “examination of conscience” plus “Catholic”. I did that this morning, and got 7,192 hits in 0.16 seconds. And there are some really excellent guides. What a resource (and what a danger) this Internet is.
Now, we admit our sinfulness. There’s something wrong with us. Now is the time, in these next 18 days, to fix that image of Christ. How do you do that? Well, there are lots of ways. We can start by loving the poor. Throughout the Scriptures we hear that the more you love the poor, the less God sees your sins. We do it by repenting from our sins, through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We do it through additional prayer, and visits to the Blessed Sacrament. There are lots of ways.
Let me leave you with one last question today. In your own small way on this Sunday, what can you change, one thing, big or little, one thing that you need to change to become holier. What is it? Think about that for a moment.