(6th Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year
A; This homily was given 15 and 16 February, 2014 at Holy Apostles Church, in Cranston,
R.I. and 16 February, 2014 at St. Luke’s Church in Barrington, R.I.; See Book of Sirach 15:15-20, Romans 7:19-25
and Matthew 5:17-37)
The Scriptures
for this weekend allow us to reflect more deeply on one of the most awesome,
beautiful and powerful gifts we possess as human beings: the gift of
freedom. The saints and theologians
teach us that freedom is one of the qualities that make us most like God. The animals act by instinct, but we live by
the decisions that we make, using our God-given freedom in creative choices
that imitate God Himself.
It is freedom
that makes the possibility of love so terrifying. I could choose to offer myself in friendship
and love to another person who is under no obligation whatsoever to receive or
return that love. Truth be told, many
people never reach out to those around them simply because it is such a risk, because
it leaves them so vulnerable…But isn’t that also what makes friendship and love
so exhilarating, so fulfilling? When our gift of love is freely received and
freely returned, or when we choose to accept the friendship of another person
and return it, it bears fruit in joy and new life. Freedom is that powerful.
More than love, however,
our freedom and the decisions that we make in many ways define us. When
we choose the good and make decisions based on God’s loving plan for our lives
then we become more and more the men and women God always created us to
be. We become even more free and begin
to experience the joy and peace that are the natural fruits of freedom
exercised well.
But the opposite
is also true: the more we choose to live contrary to the way God created us, when
we choose sin and reject the love that God has offered us, our lives often become
more constricted. Many times we can
become imprisoned in our own failures and in the regret that follows from an
abuse of freedom that had originally promised much but in the end delivered
very little.
This is the
mystery of freedom that the Old Testament sage, Ben Sirach, is introducing to us
this weekend. He says:
If you choose you can keep the
commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live; he
has set before you fire and water; to whichever you choose, stretch forth your
hand. Before man are life and death,
good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.
—Sirach 15:15-17
How astonishing,
the power that is on display here! What
becomes clear in Sirach’s description, however, is that the power is not found
in the fire or in the water. It is not
found in life or in death; the power is not in what is good or in what is evil. The power revealed here is found in us.
The power to choose good or evil
is in us; the power to enter life or inherit death rests deep within the human
heart.
In our Gospel
for this weekend, Jesus Christ is calling our attention to the commandments,
for sure, and also to the consequences of choosing good or evil. But what He is most adamant about in this 5th
Chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel is the situation of the heart.
You have heard that it was said to your
ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and
whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’
But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to
judgment…
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, everyone who looks at a
woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
—Matthew 5:21-22; 27-28
Like Sirach
before Him, Jesus Christ teaches us clearly that murder and adultery are not
things outside of the person, as if they possessed some kind of mystical power
to ruin us. No, murder and adultery
begin deep within the human heart. It is
the heart that is sick from original sin, and the choices and decisions for sin
that follow us all throughout our lives.
The anger, lust, selfishness, pride, envy; these are the things that
corrupt the heart and turn us away from God, from each other and from the
eternal life that God desperately longs to give us.
The heart is
broken. If we are to make any choices at all for love,
for life and for God, then it is the heart—above all else—that needs to be
healed.
St. Paul, in his
Letter to the Romans, mediates on this very mystery and the agonizing struggle
to choose what is right and true:
For I do not do the good I want but the
evil I do not want is what I do…when I want to do the right, evil lies close at
hand. For I delight in the law of God in
my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my
mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of
death? Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ our Lord!
—Romans 7:19-25
That is St.
Paul’s answer, his solution, his saving grace: Jesus Christ! “Thanks
be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
We are healed
and our hearts are restored by freedom.
We are set free by a decision, a choice... But not yours, and not mine. We are healed and made whole by the freedom
and the decision of God to send His only begotten Son to save us. We are chosen by God, even when He knew the
world would not accept Him, and even when He understood that His offer of love
would be rejected and His body would be nailed to the cross. He chose to love us anyway, and to offer us
the forgiveness and mercy that we so desperately need and the healing that we
long for deep within our hearts.
Receiving that
love, that mercy, is the one choice above all other choices that begins to
transform our souls and sets us free to live our lives entirely for God. Choosing the mercy of God we begin to grow in
the grace and favor of a love that never leaves us, and a God who lives within us,
teaching us to make the decisions and choices that will lead to true life and
eternal bliss.
But we must make
the conscious and persistent choice to accept and embrace that mercy; we must
be willing to admit that we need it.
The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen would
often say that sin is not the worst thing in the world. The worst thing in the world is the denial
of sin. He once received a phone call
from a woman whose brother was dying in the hospital. She described her brother not simply as a bad
man, but as an evil man. He was a very
rough character. Over 20 priests had
been in to see him on his deathbed, and he had thrown them all out! As a last resort, his sister asked Fulton
Sheen for help.
Realizing that he would fare no better
than the other priests, Sheen stayed only 15 seconds on his first visit, and
said nothing. The next day he came back
and stayed for 20 seconds. Again he said
nothing. After 40 days he was finally
staying for up to 15 minutes a visit, and it was then that he finally broke the
silence: “William,” he said, “you
are going to die tonight.”
“I know,” was the man’s reply.
“I am sure you want to make your peace
with God,” Sheen
said to him.
“No, I do not. Get out.”
Realizing that he wasn’t going to get
through, Fulton Sheen agreed to leave, but before he did he went over to the
man and said to him, “Just one thing. Promise me that before you die tonight, you
will say, ‘Jesus, have mercy’.”
He said, “I will not. Now get out.”
Later that night, one of the nurses
called Fulton Sheen to tell him that the man had died, and she said that he had
died well. “Why would you say that,”
he asked. She said, “Because from the moment you left
the room, he began to say, ‘Jesus, have mercy,’ and didn’t stop until the
moment he died.”
Jesus Christ
invites us today to receive His mercy and forgiveness. We do not have to wait until we are on our
deathbed to recognize that it is time to be reconciled to God. We do not need to commit the sin of murder or
adultery to see that we are desperately in need of the mercy of Jesus
Christ.
Here in the
Eucharist may we make that choice for Him that has the power to heal the
brokenness and sorrow that a lifetime of poor decisions and bad choices have left
in their wake. Here, as Jesus Christ
offers Himself to us, may we respond in our hearts, “Jesus, have mercy.” And may we never cease to offer that prayer to
Him until our earthly journey is complete.
