Homily for March 1, 2009
Liturgical Year B - Cycle I
1st Sunday of Lent
By Fr. John Carney
Topic: Sinners in need of a Savior
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Gospel
Mark 1:12-15
The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert,
and he remained in the desert for forty days,
tempted by Satan.
He was among wild beasts,
and the angels ministered to him.
After John had been arrested,
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
"This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel."
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Each year, on the first Sunday of Lent, we hear this Gospel. We hear either
from Matthew, Mark, or Luke. This is the shortest of the three versions.
The first Sunday of Lent always begins with the story of Jesus, before He
begins His public ministry, as He is preparing Himself. He goes into the
desert for forty days, where He fasts, and He undergoes the temptations that
Satan puts to Him. Of course, He survives, and He resists the temptations,
and then He comes back and He begins His ministry. This is a forty day
period of purification for Him, for Jesus, really for preparation.
You say, "Why forty?" Well, of course forty. Forty is an important number
in scripture. Numerology is an important aspect of sacred scripture. In many
places, we see forty. and most of the time, the use of forty days or years
refers to a period of preparation, purification, or a period of penance.
Moses went up on the mountain, on Mount Sinai, to receive the Ten Commandments,
and he fasted there forty days and forty nights. We heard in the first
reading, the covenant God made with Noah. Man had become so sinful that God
almost destroyed the earth. He purified it with the flood, and it rained for
forty days and forty nights. Elijah, when he was fleeing Ahab and Jezebel,
who were trying to kill him because he prophesied rightly about their sin,
fled them and fasted for forty days and forty nights. The Hebrew people
were in the desert for forty years, purified, before they were worthy, or
at least, God let them enter the Promised Land. There are other cases as
well, where we see forty as a number meaning time of preparation, a time of
purification, a time of penance.
Of course, in Lent, we have forty days of penance and preparation for
Easter. And we need it. We know that, don't we? We all know that Ash
Wednesday is one of the biggest days of the liturgical year. There was
probably 1500, 1600 people here this past Ash Wednesday, getting that little
mark that said, "I am a sinner." We admit that. We come together and we
admit we need to change and we need to purify ourselves and prepare ourselves,
if we are to meet Christ at Easter.
So, what are our sins? This list never changes. Pride. Greed. Lust. Anger.
Hatred. Gossip. Jealousy. Spiritual Laziness. Physical Laziness. Swearing.
Dishonesty. Selfishness. Etcetera. There are no new sins under the sky.
Which ones are problems for you? All of them. It's important that we admit
we're sinners, because then we are ready to get in right relationship with
the Savior. If we're not sinners, we don't need a savior. I have a friend, a
Father Phillipson. His father was Jewish, his mother was Catholic but lapsed.
He is a very, very bright fellow. He was a seeker of the truth. He got into
mysticism, and he went to India to study Zen. He progressed wonderfully in
the discipline of some Eastern mystic religions and philosophies. He woke
up one day and realized, "I need a savior. None of these philosophies give
me a savior. But I'm a sinner, and I need a savior."
It's true, even in this country and throughout the world, that those churches
that are really growing, many of the times, Pentecostal churches, Evangelical
churches, and others are very effective because the pastors get the people to
admit their sinfulness. There was a study done on that by a Father Killian
McDonnell, a Benedictine priest from St. John's Abbey in Collegeville,
Minnesota. He was saying, "Why are the Evangelical churches growing and
the mainline churches dying?" He concluded it's because the pastors get
the people to admit that they are sinners and therefore, they need a savior.
Killian said, "If you're not a sinner, you don't need a savior – you don't
need Christ." And so, it's important that we understand who we are.
Now, having said all this, we have forty days of purification. As Easter
approaches, will you be perfect? Thank you. Of course not. That's the
frustration of this. Of all the verses in scripture, the one I thank Paul
for the most, is when he said, "The good I wish to do, I do not do. The evil
I wish to avoid, I do." Thank you, Paul, for sharing that with me. Now,
this is the Great Saint Paul, as we remember him in this year, and this is
after his personal encounter with Jesus Christ. He still was a sinner, and
he admitted it, and he was frustrated by it. So are we. We are frustrated
by it as well.
There is an idea we have, I think most of us, that, "If I really try, I can
really be good, and I can even be perfect. I can do this. I can not sin
again." That, my friends, is a heresy, known as pelagianism. Pelagianism.
Pelagianism says that in fact-- I can dot all the i's, cross all the t's,
I can do this on my own. If that were to be true, therefore, I wouldn't
need Christ, right? I could do it on my own.
Now, the fact is, maybe the perfect man could go without sin, but I can't and
neither can you. That perfect man's name is Jesus Christ. The rest of us,
try as we might, and it's good to try, we need to try, because sin makes
us sick. All those sins I mentioned make us spiritually sick, and they
really make us physically sick as well. When we sin, we are not happy.
We know that. We don't want to sin. But yet, we know we do.
I hear this in confession all the time. People are so frustrated. I say,
"Take it easy on yourself. You're just a sorry sinner." ("What did Father
tell you?" "He said I was a sorry sinner.") But you're OK, because you
admit it and then you try, but you fail. There's only one thing left to do
and that's to run to Christ, and hide yourself in his wounds, wounds that
you and I inflicted on him with our sin. You hide yourself in the wounds
of Christ, and as Christ presents himself to the Father, he presents you
with him, in his wounds. The Father will not turn away from his Son.
That's the covenant that we sang about in the Responsorial Psalm. God doesn't
make a covenant with you and me, because we'll break it. He makes a covenant
with his Son, Jesus Christ. We enter that covenant in Baptism. We hide in His
wounds, and pass through the gates of Heaven, disguised as Jesus Christ.
That's what Lent's intended to do. It's intended to bring us to an
understanding of ourselves, of our weakness, of our dependency, our
vulnerability, our complete need, our radical need of a savior in Jesus
Christ. It brings us to compunction. That's a nice word, compunction.
It comes from the word puncture. Lent is intended to puncture our egos.
It challenges any self-deceit we have about ourselves as being perfect.
It confronts us with our weakness. We pray for mercy. Most of us have a
Lenten penance. Ironically, if you fail in keeping your Lenten penance, it
does you more good, because it reminds you of your weakness. The purpose
of Lent is not to confirm us in our sense of virtue, but to bring home to
us our radical need for Christ.
We are left with only one option. Try as we will, try as we must, we are
left with one option and that is to ask for His mercy. He will give that to
us, as much as we need. "For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy
on us, and on the whole world."
Today, in Lent, as we begin this first Sunday of Lent, we admit we are sinners.
We don't want to be sinners. We are going to try harder not to sin. But in
the end, our only hope is mercy.
"I confess to Almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have
sinned through my own fault; in my thoughts, and in my words, in what I have
done and what I have failed to do. And I ask the Blessed Mary ever virgin,
all the angels and saints, and you my brothers and sisters, to pray for me
to the Lord our God."
And may Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us
all to everlasting life. Amen.