Do knot sin!

4th Sunday of Lent – Cycle C

Jos 5:9a,10-12, Psalm Ps 23: 1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6, 2 Cor 5:17-21, Gospel: Lk 15:1-3, 11-32

Rope – a tool for preaching
When I was about 12 years old one of my favorite toys was a 30’ piece of rope that we found in the woods near our house. We used that rope for everything! It was great for hauling wood to make forts, for swinging like Tarzan through the trees, and tieing up prisoners when we played cops and robbers.

This week I have discovered a new use for my favorite old toy – preaching homilies!

[[PULL OUT A SECTION OF ROPE]]

Prayer, Fasting and Alms-giving
For Lent, Father Dan asked all of us homilists to reflect on the Lenten Disciplines of Prayer, Fasting and Alms-giving and how they permeate our Catholic lives. I would like to reflect together with you about today's Gospel from the perspective of Alms-giving.

Why do we give Alms?
Have you ever wondered why Alms-giving is at the heart of our spiritual life? Why does it rate right up there with Prayer and Fasting? [[PAUSE]] The book of Genesis says that we are created in the image and likeness of God. This means that giving is at the heart of who we are created to be. We know this because when Christ came to earth he was completely self-giving. We become more fully human when we become more like-Christ; when we give selflessly for the benefit of others. This self-sacrifice is at the heart of Marriage, Religious and Family life. Relationships where we need to become self-giving help us to to grow in holiness.

Look at the Prodigal Son in terms of the relationships
This piece of rope that I have can be used to help us to think about what is going on in the parable today. Imagine that this piece of rope is the relationship between the Sons and their Father in the Gospel today. How do the Sons relate to their Father?

The Younger Son [[TIE THE FIRST KNOT]]
The younger son thinks that his Dad is just a bank – the Bank of Dad.

• He uses his Father to get some money.
• He says – Dad you might as well be dead, so fork over the dough – I gotta go!
• He then uses his Father’s money to use other people
• He throws outlandish parties
• He uses women for sex
• What is ironic, is that all of the people who come and enjoy his Father’s money are using him because he has money.
• As soon as the money dries up – they stop using him because he is no longer useful.
• His sin here is that he treats things as more important than people. He treats people as if they were things.

The Older Son [[TIE THE SECOND KNOT]]
The older Son shares the younger son’s outlook on people – they are to be used to get what you want. He simply goes about using them in a different way. While he obeys his Father, his heart is hardened. He does not see that his brother has come back to life – he says to his Dad “Your Son…” rather than “My Brother…” and he refuses to join the celebration because he is disgusted with how his brother has wasted the things – (the inheritance). It is this hardness of heart that keeps the older son from being open to reconciliation.

How are we like these two sons? [[TIE THE THIRD KNOT]]
Some of us here are like the younger son – we are trapped in dissolute living. We have tied our lives into knots of Sin – Alcohol, Drugs, Sex, Lies, Stealing. We value things rather than people. Others of us are more like the older son, we have been externally faithful to the Gospel while inside we are just getting our tickets punched, and our actions during the week do not agree with what we profess to believe here in the Church. We listen to the Gospel with our ears, but we do not allow it to penetrate our hearts.

The Father is the key to everything
It is in the Father of today’s Gospel where we find the key to freeing ourselves from these knots that we have made of our lives. If we think about what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God then we realize that this has huge implications in our lives.

• If we are created in God’s image and likeness then we will find that our lives are most happy and peaceful when we are living in a way that God has created us, designed us to live.
• This means that we are called to live in a love relationship with one another.
• We express this love in three ways
• We love God. When we come to Mass we have an opportunity to express our love for God when we share him in the Eucharist. Take a moment and converse with Him in your soul today when you receive Him.
• We love our families. God designed us to have families because families are the school of love. It is here that we learn to love our spouses, children and parents.
• We love our neighbors. When we recognize that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, then we love our extended family.
• In order for us to live happy lives we need to learn how to love in all three of these areas of our lives.

Alms-giving – The Antidote to Selfishness!
The Father’s relationship with his Sons teaches us selfless love. He does not value his Sons as things, but as people. He practices selfless love, giving himself in relationship to care for their needs.

If we find that we are mired in sin, like either of these two sons, then there are two things that we can do about this.

1. Be like the younger son and recognize our Sin, confess and strive to live a more selfless life.
2. Practice Alms-giving as an anti-dote to selfishness. One of the ways the Church has done this for centuries is to practice the corporal works of mercy (love).
a. Clothe the Naked – Go though your closets and bring your extra clothes here. We run a clothing bank for the homeless.
b. Feed the Hungry – Go through your pantry and bring some extra food here. We also run a food bank for the hungry.
c. Educate the Ignorant – Speak with Tina and Marina and volunteer some time to help out our religious education program. If you are like me you will find that the more you teach, the more you learn!
d. Shelter the Homeless – Call Avalina and volunteer to help with our outreach to the poor in this community. Just visit with those in need.
e. Bury the Dead – Come to a funeral mass for one of our parishioners. Pray with their family, or visit with some of those who have lost loved ones this year.
f. Visit the Sick – We have an active ministry here of caring for the sick and elderly in our parish. Speak with me after Mass to visit the nursing homes.

Repent and receive God’s Mercy – so that you can be free to proclaim the Gospel
When we come to our senses, and recognize our sin, then we are ready to reconcile with God. This is what the younger son does. He recognizes that he is not happy, not fulfilled, and has made the biggest mistake of his life. When the Father see’s him coming a long way off, he has mercy, and rushes to embrace him. Why, because the Father is now rich in relationship. He does not count the cost of things, but he counts the cost of relationship. His Son who was dead to him in sin is now alive in truth!

God’s Sacrificial love – it unties our knots!
When we find that our lives are filled with knots of sin we too can come to our senses. The Good News of the Gospel is that we can go and be reconciled to the Father. He is waiting for us so that he can untie the knots that sin has made in our lives through the sacrificial love of his Son. [[UNTIE THE KNOTS]]

The Invisible Men

Feast of Christ the King – Cycle A

Ez 34:11-12, 15-17 Psalm Ps 23:1-2, 2-3, 5-6 1 Cor 15:20-26, 28 Mt 25:31-46

I want to focus our reflections today on four different perspectives of the Gospel; Reflection, Examination, Penance and Action.

Reflection
The Gospel today helps us to anticipate the great celebration of the coming of Christ as king. In the movie the “Return of the King” there is a great scene towards the end of the movie when one of the Heroes, Aragorn is crowned king of Gondor before all of the peoples of Middle Earth. It is a scene filled with majesty, grandeur, and joy, because it celebrates mans triumph over omnipresent evil in the world, and the restoration of the world to a right order.

This is a useful image for us to keep in mind as we reflect on the Gospel today because today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, where we celebrate the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven and rejoice in the fulfillment of all the good that God has done throughout time.

Christ and the Angels
In the Gospel today, Jesus describes this time when he says that he will come “in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him.”

What comes next in the Gospel today is almost a counterpoint to the grandeur, pomp and circumstance that almost always seems to accompany such great events. Jesus turns to all of the nations gathered before him, and begins to separate them onto his right and his left.

His Right
He turns to those gathered on his right, and says to them; “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”

His Left
Then he turns to those who are on his left and says to them; “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.”

The Invisible Men
The elect, those on Christ’s right ask “when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?”

Likewise, those on the left also asked Jesus “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?”

Corporal Works of Mercy as an Examination of Conscience
(How the Gospel Challenges our hearts)
What is startling about the dialog between Christ and the people is that both of them seem to be blind. Both of them fail to recognize the invisible men in their lives.

Caught up in all of this grandeur and magnificence of Christ coming in glory are the invisible women and men who are the key to our salvation. If we are able to recognize these men and women in our lives, then they can help us into the kingdom of heaven.

The Kingdom of God is about sharing our hearts with our neighbors, our brothers and sisters here on earth, with those who are in need. When Jesus separates the sheep from the goats, he does so based on the actions of their hearts.

The challenge of the Gospel today is for us to open up our hearts to those who are hungry for God, thirsty for his love, strangers, naked, sick or in prison.

The Hungry need the Bread of Life
Who are those invisible people in our world who are hungry for the Bread of Life, the Word made Flesh? What about those who are starving for God and we don’t speak to them about the love of God that lives in our own hearts? Is it because our hearts have grown cold, or hardened, or we are ashamed to proclaim Christ as king?

[[PAUSE]]

One of the beautiful things about taking a spiritual retreat, a day for refreshing our souls is that it allows us to open up and realize that we are spiritually hungry, starving for the love of God to become active in our lives.

[[PAUSE]]

The Thirsty need life-giving water
Who are those in our midst who are thirsty to know that they are loved by God through us? It was an awareness of God’s thirst to love souls that motivated Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta to start literally feeding the hungry, stay with the dying, just to be in relationship with those people who had been abandoned on the streets of Calcutta. Christ is thirsting for souls, that his love be made known to those invisible people who are around us every day, and he is asking you and I to be the vessels of that love.

[[PAUSE]]

Welcome those who are strangers to the Kingdom of God
Why is welcoming the stranger in this list? Doesn’t it seem a little out of place in the context of all of the rest? Jesus came to welcome us (who had become strangers to God, because of our sin) back into relationship with His Father. Similarly, He invites his disciples (us) to welcome strangers into relationship so that they too can experience the love of God through us; through our lives. Who is the invisible stranger in our lives? Are they here at the Church, standing beside me, or behind me, or before me? Are they at my work or at my school? God is calling us to share our hearts with our brothers and sisters, because love is always expanding, and it is through us that He has the opportunity to show His love in this world.

[[PAUSE]]

Clothe the Naked – Return dignity to the people.
Who are the invisible naked people in our lives? Who are those whom we dehumanize? Who are those who live as objects rather than people in our lives? What do I mean? When we dehumanize someone, when we treat them as a thing and not a person, when we fail to recognize the beauty that God has created in them then we fail to clothe the naked. Sometimes the naked people are those who are at work, either customers or employees that we treat callously, and without love. Sometimes it is when we are trapped in pornography, that we learn to look at everyone as being naked. Is the naked that we are called to clothe ourselves? Have we destroyed the dignity of our bodies through the abuse of drugs or alcohol? Stop and think; who are the naked in your life that need clothing?

[[PAUSE]]

Care for the Sick and Imprisoned
Who is imprisoned by sin, trapped by some way of acting or behaving that God is inviting us to go and visit them, so that they can know his love. When Christ came he went and stayed with those who were sick (with sin) and in prison (because of their life style). He stayed with them to heal and to liberate. When the Gospel is lived it always heals (it cures the sickness of our souls), and it frees (It frees us from the shackles of Sin so that we can live as God created us to live. Who are the sick and those in prison that Christ is calling us to visit this week?

[[PAUSE]]

Penance – The Corporal Works of Mercy in Action
The Catechism refers to this passage from the Gospel of Matthew as the Corporal Works of Mercy – Meaning that these are ways that we can show God that we love him with our actions, in what we do.

Penance is spiritual medicine for our soul. Practicing penance means that we take concrete actions to correct the habits of sin that we have established in our lives. We can look at the corporal works of mercy as an examination of our conscience, and allow ourselves to be convicted by our sin. After acknowledging our sin, we are called to penance, to show that we can work at reforming our lives. We can use the corporal works of mercy as an opportunity to show our repentance by doing something concrete about our sins.

Faith in Action – Live the works of mercy
Take some time this week and practice the Corporal works of Mercy
• Bring some food to those who are hungry for the food bank.
• Bring some non-perishable drink, or drink mix (dried milk and the like).
• Step out of ourselves and greet those who are strangers in our midst, be they the immigrant, or someone here at mass who we have worshipped with for years and yet do not know.
• Go through our dressers and closets and bring some of our excess clothing here to clothe the naked.
• Consider volunteering some time to visit the sick, those parishioners who are lonely, imprisoned in their homes or at a nursing home. There are parishioners who are going to visit the sick tomorrow and in two weeks to visit the sick after the 8:30 mass on Sunday.

At his coronation the King will point out his servants
At the end of the movie “The Return of the King” in the midst of the victory celebration in which the King is crowned, and honored the King turns and draws attention to those who did his work throughout the story. They were the invisible agents of the King, doing his work, and making his kingdom known.

My dear brothers and sisters, the Gospel calls us to spend our life this week being the invisible agents of the King, feeding the hungry, giving drink to those who thirst, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, and visiting those who are sick and in prison so that they can come to know the fullness of God’s love.