Homily, 4th Sunday of Lent "C" March 27, 2022

 Homily, 4^th Sunday of Lent "C"                                                                          March 27, 2022

 What is the name of the parable that we have just heard??  The Prodigal Son.  This younger son certainly is a significant character in the story.  With great brashness and insensitivity he asks for his share of the inheritance before the Father is even sick, much less dead, and then goes off and wastes it all on a “life of dissipation”, or as the Jerusalem Bible more evocatively translates it, “a life of debauchery”.  Debauchery is such a juicier word than dissipation.  In any case this younger son certainly did some stupid, mean, and very destructive things.  He hurt his family, wasted his money, and very easily could have ended up dead.

          We know, in fact, that God has given us a terrible freedom, and does not prevent us from doing horribly wrong things.  We know we are free to do mean, hateful, demeaning things that are destructive to ourselves and to others, things with really serious consequences.  We know this because we see them on the news every day.  We know this because we’ve ourselves have done them.  And God does not stop us.  God does not protect us from ourselves.  It would be nice if God would.  Think of all the heartache, embarrassment, painful regret and lasting, gnawing guilt that we could avoid if God would only stop us before we do something mean or vile or stupid.  If you’ve ever awakened some morning and said, ..”Oh God, what did I do?”… you know what I am talking about.  So we can identify, at least to some extent, with the younger son.  But in spite of it’s name, the parable is NOT about him.

          Then there is also the older son, the “good” son.  Given the way the story works as a story, he is the key.  For at the end of the parable the issue is not with the younger son.  That is resolved.  Nor is the issue with the Father.  He’s O.K.  The critical issue is with the older son.  ¿Will he go into the party and accept his Father’s love and accept his brother as his brother, or will the older son remain caught in his bitterness, pride and self-righteousness, and choose to isolate himself? 

          We are given a clue to the centrality of the older son at the beginning of the Gospel.  You remember that the sinners and tax collectors were all gathering around Jesus to hear him. 

This upset the Pharisees and the scribes.  They murmured and grumbled about this.  They didn’t approve. 

          You see, they didn’t think it was fair.  The Pharisees and scribes could tell that Jesus was something special, that he was very much in tune with God.  But here they were, the good people, the people who worked hard at keeping the law, doing what was pleasing to God, keeping the commandments, not sleeping in on Sunday morning but getting up and coming to church, and they end up standing on the outside of the circle around Jesus.  Meanwhile, all these sinners, tax collectors, drug dealers and prostitutes, had elbowed and pushed and squirmed their way up to the front, right in front of Jesus.  And instead of shooing them away and sending them to the back of the crowd, where they belonged, Jesus welcomed them.  And the Pharisees and the scribes did not approve.  They felt slighted.

          And so, Jesus addresses this parable to them.  Not to the disciples.   Not to the sinners and tax collectors, but to the Pharisees and the scribes.

          The Pharisees and scribes have gotten a bum rap.  They weren’t bad people.  In fact, they were the good people, the people who worked at it, who tried to do what was right. They were like us.  But they did have a problem.  They, like so many of us, began to believe that they did it. 

          That is understandable.  It is so easily, almost inevitable it seems, that when we have put a lot of effort and energy into something, worked hard at it, tried our best, stayed with it and succeeded, that we begin to believe that we did it.  But that is not really true.  ¿Where did the talent, the energy, the perseverance, the intelligence, even the time and the opportunity come from?            We are tempted to believe that they all came from ourselves.  But they didn’t.  They came from God.  Everything is a grace.

          And so, it is to them Jesus addresses this parable and forces them – and us – to make a choice. 

Do we want to stand on our own self-righteousness and remain outside, OR are we willing to accept God’s free gift, not just to us, but to those undeserving others, and so embrace them as brothers and sisters?   It is not easy.  And Jesus does not answer the question for us.  We have to do that.

          Finally, there is the Father.  When the younger son comes to him with the outrageous request that he receive his share of the inheritance, and in effect telling his Father ‘I wish you were dead,’ the Father, instead of doing what he should do and smacking the younger son up the side of his head, foolishly gives in and divides the property.  ¿Would it not have been better, for the younger son’s own good, for the Father to not give the son any money, to take away the car keys, and to ground the younger son for a year or more until he got sane again?  I often think this way. 

          But God so badly wants us to be free to give ourselves to Him, that God even allows us to freely hurt one another and our own selves.  And so the Father lets the younger son go.  Freedom is tough.

          The Father is MUCH more prodigal in His love than even the younger son was with money.  What an image for God!  Here is a God Who is anxious and eager to forgive.  The Father stands on the hill top, anxiously searching the horizon for the younger son’s return.  As soon as he sees him, still a long way off, the Father doesn’t wait till the son gets back, but unable to restrain himself – with no concern whatsoever over his dignity and how he appeared - the Father runs out to meet him, throws his arms around him, kisses him, won’t let the son finish his little rehearsed speech of apology.  The Father does not demand an apology.  He does not demand an accounting of where all the money went.  He does not require a listing of all the things the son did wrong.  Quite the opposite.  The Father gives him a new outfit and throws a big party.  This Father is more prodigal with his love and forgiveness than even the younger son was with his inheritance.  The Father is a great lover and a great image of God.

 For Jesus knows a God who is always, always, always, eager and anxious to forgive.  God wants badly to reconcile us and to heal us and to love us. 

           The Father is the engine that drives the parable.  We know about people who do stupid and selfish things like the younger son.  We know about self-righteous and proud and closed-in people like the older son.  But the Father who loves and gives and forgives so eagerly, so prodigally, so overwhelmingly, is not common.

           The Father loves.  That is what He does.  He loves the younger son even when he is selfish and stupid.  He loves the older son even when he is self-righteous and up-tight.   It makes no difference.  The Father loves, because that is what God the Father does.  God loves.  Period.

           The correct understanding is given to us today by St. Paul in the second reading: "All this has been done by God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ." 

           "All this has been done by God,"   God does it.  God chooses us to be His children.  Any choosing we do is almost irrelevant compared to that.  God reconciles us to God’s self through Jesus Christ, and any good that we accomplish is the result of God’s grace, not the prerequisite for earning it. 

          This beautiful parable of the prodigal son is not addressed to the sinners out there on the streets, not addressed to the indifferent people out having coffee at Starbucks this Sunday morning, but to us, the church goers, the good people.  The parable instructs and warns us not to take our goodness as our accomplishment, but as God’s gift to us. 

 "All this has been done by God,"    

 "All this has been done by God,"    

Thanks be to God!

First Sunday of Lent March 6, 2022 Cycle C

First Sunday of Lent   March 6, 2022  Cycle C

A long time ago, when I was a new priest in Chicago, I was fortunate enough to take several summer seminars on spirituality at Mundelein Seminary.  They were very good, and I was taught that one of the first, most basic questions of spiritual mentoring is, “what do you see?”

          What do you see?    You see, where you are determines what you see.  So, if you are outside on Guadalupe Street looking at our church building, what you see is the front.  But once you walk inside, you are in the back, just the opposite.  Right now I am up in the front of the church, but from the outsid where I am looks like the back.  What do you see?

          Our Gospel today tells us that Jesus spent forty days in the desert, not eating anything during those days, and when they were over He was hungry.   What was Jesus hungry for?  Well obviously for food, since He had not eaten for 40 days.  But probably Jesus was also hungry for company, for other people, for human interaction.  I don’t think Jesus ran into many other people in the desert.  Maybe He came across no one.  Now I admit that sometimes the idea of not having to deal with anyone else for a couple of days sounds pretty attractive, but to be isolated for 40 days, with no human interaction, would be rather tough.  So, I believe Jesus was hungry for human interaction.

          And I would be willing to bet that Jesus was hungry for something green and verdant.  The desert has its own special beauty, but 40 days of being in the wilderness, with no homes or stores, no gardens, no green plants other than some cacti and creosote bushes, can be kind of depressing.  So probably Jesus was hungry for something green and lush and growing.

        As the Gospel tells us, Jesus was hungry: for food, and for human interaction, and for life and beauty. 

          But looked at another way, it looks different.  The first words of our Gospel are “Filled with the Holy Spirit..”  FILLED.   In one sense Jesus was hungry and empty.  In another sense, Jesus was filled and overflowing.  He was filled with the Holy Spirit, and was absorbed with the presence of God.  He was hungry, but also filled. 

          Jesus is able to resist the temptations of the devil because He was filled with the Holy Spirit.  The emptiness is really fullness.

The same is true with you and me.  Lent is a time of emptiness and poverty, but also a time of great fullness and richness.  So this Lent you put a dollar in the mite box to help people in need.  You are now out a dollar.  Is that a loss?  … Or is that an act of generosity that makes you a fuller and more compassionate, a more holy, person?  Is it emptiness?  Or is it fullness?

          You spend some time listening to a lonely neighbor or coworker, to their list of woes and complaints.  There isn’t anything you can do about any of it, but the person feels heard.  Is that a waste of time, some time you could have been binge watching your favorite program?   A lost opportunity to do some chore around the house?  Or is it an act of compassion that makes you a more sensitive, other-directed, mature person?  Is it a loss, or is it a gain?

          You resist going to a porn site on the computer.  Or you resist spreading a juicy rumor you heard about a co-worker or neighbor.   Or you tell the truth when you easily could have made yourself look good with a lie.  

 // Is it a loss?   Or is it a gain?  Is it fullness or emptiness?  What do you see?

The way of Jesus is not about deprivation and suffering and loss.  The way of Jesus is about seeing the truth differently: about seeing grace and God’s presence when others see only loss and emptiness.

          Our call this Lent is not about emptiness, but about fullness: being filled with the Holy Spirit.  Lent calls us to see in a new way, where what the world sees as loss is often gain, and what the world sees as gain is in fact actually loss. 

          Jesus triumphed over the temptations to see as the world sees.  Jesus triumphed over the Devil who deceives and manipulates to make things appear different than what they really are.  Jesus saw clearly because Jesus emptied Himself of his SELF, so that he could be FILLED with the Holy Spirit.

          Jesus is our example for Lent, to empty ourselves of our SELF, not so that we will be empty, but so that we will be FILLED with the Holy Spirit, and hence, truly see.

What do you see?