Yesterday/Friday was of course Black
Friday, and in keeping with the idea of getting a bargain, today you get two
homilies for the price of one. Now my
preaching professor said if you preach two homilies, the people won’t remember
either one, but I guess we will see.
First homily -
Advent. When we think of Advent, we should think of a
time of preparation – of getting ourselves ready - ready for the coming
of Christ. Both His coming on Christmas
morning as an infant, and His coming at the end of time, or at the end of our
time, mine and yours.
Our readings today speak both of
that first coming – Jeremiah the prophet speaks for the Lord, saying “I will
raise up for David a just shoot.” And His last coming. St. Paul, in his first letter to the
Thessalonians, prays for his readers, and for you and me – that our hearts may
be strengthened and that we may be blameless in holiness at the coming of Our
Lord Jesus Christ.
And in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells
the disciples, as well as you and me, to be vigilant at all times and pray that
we have the strength to endure tribulation and stand before the Son of Man.
Sisters and brothers, it is good, I
think, to remember that you and I will one day stand before Our Lord and render
an account of our lives. So it’s good for us to always be prepared.
Advent is a time of preparing
ourselves – examining our lives, seeking His strength and growing in holiness,
preparing for that day that the Lord comes.
And part of that preparation, like the season of Lent, involves penance
and reconciliation. Oh maybe not to the
same degree – no times of fasting and abstinence in Advent to be sure, but a time
of purification nonetheless.
This year, the beginning of Advent
is very close to the beginning of the Jubilee Year of Mercy which our Holy
Father Pope Francis proclaimed, beginning a week from Tuesday on the Feast of
the Immaculate Conception of Mary. So I
think it will profit us greatly to think of this Advent as a time of mercy. Of seeking out and being washed clean in the
mercy of Jesus Christ.
Mercy – You’ll recall one of the
most enduring and memorable ideas Pope Francis has taught during his short
pontificate is the idea of the Church as a field hospital for sinners. A place for spiritual triage, for binding up
the spiritually wounded, a place of healing.
Mercy to sinners, three words that sum up the entire mission of
Our Blessed Lord, huh? The catechism tells
us quote “The Gospel is the revelation in Jesus Christ of God’s mercy to
sinners.” And the angel announced to Joseph “You shall call Him Jesus, for He
shall save His people from their sins (Mt 1:21).”
That’s easy to forget, huh? In the hustle and bustle and everything that
goes on in a Catholic parish, it’s good to remember that the reason we’re here,
the reason we come here, the reason HE came, is mercy. Mercy for our sins.
For we are all sinners. It starts, I think, with that recognition. One
of Pope Francis’ most memorable lines in his short pontificate was the very
first, when being interviewed for a magazine article and asked to describe
himself, his simple and humble response?
“I am a sinner.” When I first
read that, I was taken aback – the Pope? A Sinner? Wow. But
I must say I was strangely comforted – wow he’s a sinner, too, a sinner like
me.
And by sin, we’re not just looking
at violations of the law, violations of the commandments, violations of a list
of rules. But for me at least, I think
it’s helpful to think of sin in terms of relationship with God – in my sin I
turn away from God, I wound my relationship with Him. In mortal sin, we in fact sever our
relationship with God.
But the good news of the Gospel, the
great joy of the Gospel, is that Jesus came to call sinners to
repentance, to conversion, to reconciliation with Him. Jesus came to bring us His mercy, the mercy
we are celebrating all next year in the Jubilee year of mercy. It’s a celebration not that our sin is
somehow OK, or that sin doesn’t matter anymore as the world would have you
believe.
No, it’s a celebration that we don’t
have to be stuck in our sin, slaves to our sin, that even though we turn away
from God and wound our relationship with Him and sometimes even cut off that
relationship, He is always waiting for us with open arms, like the Father of
the Prodigal, standing at the window, staring off down the road, waiting patiently
for our return. Waiting until He sees us
coming so that He can run, sprint out to embrace us and welcome us home.
Sisters and brothers, one of the
greatest gifts Our Blessed Lord left us, a gift I am most thankful for, is the
Sacrament of Reconciliation. You see, He
gave Peter the keys to the Kingdom and conferred upon Peter and the Apostles
the power to forgive sins, the power to lavish us with His mercy, and that
power has been passed down over 2000 years to our bishops and priests.
Our Blessed Lord is calling each of
us this Advent to come home to Him, to come to a realization of all the ways in
which we’ve wounded or broken our relationship with Him, to come to a deep sorrow
for those sins, and to come to Him in the confessional, whether it’s been one
week or thirty years - to seek His unfathomable mercy, to trust that He will
embrace us in His merciful love and shower us with great grace to grow in strength
and holiness, fully ready to stand before the Son of Man when He comes.
Now the second, and
I promise - much shorter homily –
The United States Catholic Bishops met
a couple weeks ago and spoke out for the first time about a specific sin. That specific sin is the epidemic of
pornography in our nation, in our world, and yes, even among believers in the Church. I could cite statistics, but in the interest
of brevity, suffice it to say that with the advent of the internet, pornography
has become something of an epidemic in our culture, even if rarely acknowledged. Affecting men, to be sure, but also women,
teenagers and youth. A sin to be sure,
but also something that can become habitual, and even an addiction.
At their meeting, the bishops
approved a formal pastoral statement entitled “Create in me a Clean Heart: A Pastoral
Response to Pornography,” beautifully citing David’s psalm of repentance, Psalm
51 – create in me a clean heart. Their
statement, along with many helpful resources, is available at the bishops’
website, usccb.org.
Now some might expect the bishops to
sit in harsh judgment and wag their finger, but reading through this statement,
nothing could be further from the truth.
Their statement is filled, I think, with love and mercy. Bishop Malone of Buffalo, who led the effort
to develop this pastoral statement, said the following: “virtually everyone is affected by this in
some way. So many people – including within
the Church – are in need of Christ’s abundant mercy and healing.”
And that is the very good news the
bishops are proclaiming in Create in me a Clean Heart – that for this sin, as
for every sin, Christ is our hope! That Christ’s
abundant mercy is always available, that no sin, no matter the shame, no matter
the despair, no matter how deep the wound, can ever put us out of reach of Christ’s
redeeming grace.
The bishops write: quote “Jesus is the way of freedom. The Church says, ‘Be not afraid!’ Come to the
Lord Jesus, whose mercy endures forever! The Lord never tires of forgiving.”
This pastoral statement, brothers
and sisters, is a powerful invitation to all in sin, and not only this sin but every
sin, to turn back to the Lord and trust in His unending love and mercy,
and find in Him healing, to grow in strength, holiness, and purity of heart.
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