Holy Spirit Catholic Church
Homilies
THIRD SUNDAY
OF LENT ( C ) 2010
In March 1863, our nation was in the midst of a dreadful civil war.
Its very future hung in the balance.
With a troubled heart, and after a lot of reflection and prayer,
President Abraham Lincoln picked up his pen and wrote the following
words:
"We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other
nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God.
We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace . . .
We have vainly imagined . . . that all these blessings were produced by
some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too
self-sufficient, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves . . . to confess our
national sins, and to pray for forgiveness . . .
I hereby request all the People to abstain on this day from their
secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of worship and
their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord . . .
All this being done . . . let us hope that the united cry of the Nation
will be heard on high, and answered with the restoration of our divided
and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace .
. . Done in the City of Washington this 30th day of
March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-three."
With very few changes, those incredible words of Lincoln are descriptive
of the Israelites in the time of Moses.
Today's first reading recalls how God blessed the Israelites by
raising up Moses to lead them out of Egypt to freedom.
Then,
under the leadership of Moses, God chose them from all the nations on
the earth to be his special people.
He blessed them with bread from heaven, and increased their
numbers beyond counting.
Our
second reading recalls that in spite of everything God did for the
Israelites, they turned to other gods.
They forgot who it was who blessed them so lavishly.
And so God let them fall upon hard times.
St. Paul says, "Now all of this is an example for us, to warn
us not to desire evil things as they did."
That brings us to the Gospel reading.
There St. Luke makes it clear that in spite of God's special
blessings, in spite of God's warnings, and in spite of Jesus' preaching
and miracles, God's chosen people did not bear the fruit God offered
them. For three years Jesus
pleaded with them to repent.
But His pleas fell, for the most part, on deaf ears.
It's
against this background that Jesus told the crowds the parable of the
fig tree, offering them one last chance to repent.
Those who heed this second chance will be saved; those who do not
will perish.
That
brings us to our own time.
We are like the people of Jesus' time, listening to his parable of the
fig tree and its last chance warning to repent.
We are like the people of Abraham Lincoln's time, reading his
proclamation. We are like
the people of St. Paul's time, being reminded by Paul:
"All these things happened . . . as examples for others, and
they were written down as a warning to us.
If you think you are standing firm you had better be careful that
you do not fall."
Each
one of us must now decide whether we will heed these warnings or ignore
them and perish. This is the
message that the Church speaks to us, individually and collectively, as
we begin this third week of our Lenten observance
Have
we been doing everything possible to make our Lenten spiritual journey
fruitful and productive?
Have we been watering and nurturing the "fig tree" of our soul with
fasting, prayer, and alms-giving, so that we will produce the fruit God
expects from us? We should
be doing something special every day during Lent.
These are not "ordinary" days.
We are not in Ordinary Time!
This is a very special time, an extraordinary time!
The
Catholic Church recognizes the season of Lent as a special time of
preparation for the coming of Easter.
It is the time for Catholics to become reconciled to God and his
Church through repentance and the celebration of the Sacrament of
Reconciliation. We should be
turning our attention to our need for repentance and forgiveness.
Every
single Catholic, over the age of seven, is bound by an obligation
faithfully to confess their sins at least once a year.
The Church strongly recommends it be done on a more regular
basis. St. Augustine said,
"The beginning of good works is the confession of evil works."
We should all be making plans to celebrate the Sacrament of
Reconciliation as the single most important part of our
Lenten preparation for Easter!
If you can't get to Confession here on Saturday afternoons every
parish in our Macon Deanery will be hosting Lenten Penance Services.
We had a good crowd at our Penance Service this past Wednesday
night. Dates, times, and
locations for the upcoming ones are in the bulletin.
If you can't make one of them call me and I will gladly set up a
private appointment with you.
Are you going to heed God's warnings, seek his forgiveness, and be saved
or are you going to ignore God's warnings, refuse repentance, and
perish? God's gift of free
will gives us the choice!