3rd. Sunday of Lent (C)
(Exodus 3:1-8,13-15; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9)
In this country many in Mother Church still – despite the
fact that persecution shows signs of bearing its claws again -- have a very comfortable
understanding of God and their relationship with Him: He is good, merciful,
forgiving, and, above all, our Father.
In reality, however, for many such believers, those are empty
words, for they consider His goodness to be such they can make requests regardless
of whether they are for the spiritual good of themselves or those they love or
want to help; and they imagine that the fact that He is merciful and forgiving,
means that He won’t punish us for our sins if we just occasionally use the word
‘sorry’. For after all, He is our
Father, and therefore He – along with today’s publicly admired ‘good parents’ –
must indulge His children.
Although some may think I am exaggerating somewhat
unpleasantly, that is the attitude in which, I believe, many Catholics today
live out their relationship with God: they treat Him as One almost irrelevant
as regards the determining of their life-style and personal character. And yet, they regard themselves as acceptable
Catholics and, indeed, as somewhat special people, because they are still attending
Church, whereas very many people today in our proud and pleasure-seeking West do
not believe in God and never enter a church.
Those who have given up practicing their Catholic and Christian
faith still ‘like’ Jesus as a man for the most part, but they do not believe in
Him to be God since ’God is redundant’ they say: ‘we can explain all things
without Him; He does not interfere in any way in our world, look at all the
suffering going on around us, and what He does He do?’
However, we who do believe, we who are serious in our
desire to know and love God in Jesus, and serve Him by the Spirit of Jesus, find
a truer appreciation of God when we look at our first reading today where Moses
was drawn by curiosity to approach a blazing bush in the desert:
I must go over to look at
this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned.
God called to him, apparently from the middle of the bush:
Come no nearer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the
place where you stand is holy ground.
And, what is more, He said it in such a tone that:
Moses hid his face, for he was
afraid to look at God.
Obviously, Moses knew what ‘holy’ meant, and he was ready
to learn more. Curiosity and holiness
are, it would seem, incompatible; for not even Moses was allowed to draw close
to God out of mere curiosity. That Moses
was ‘afraid’ to look at God, however, being much more appropriate to the
situation, did win God’s approval and He allowed Moses to draw closer to hear
His word, because reverential ‘fear’ is an essential component of ‘love of God’!
And this is the teaching we heard in the
psalm reading:
For as the heavens are high
above the earth, so surpassing is (the Lord’s) kindness toward those who fear
Him.
All that shows quite clearly that our God is not a soft and
easy touch as many so fondly imagine.
That appreciation is confirmed when we turn our attention
to the second reading taken from St. Paul’s letter to his converts at
Corinth. There, he recalls how God had
led Israel through the desert with miracles -- above all the stupendous
crossing of the Red Sea -- and many other subsequent blessings of protection, food
and drink, in times of great need. And
yet, despite all that, Paul concludes:
God was not pleased with most
of them, for they were struck down in the desert.
He then goes on to draw a lesson for us from this rejection
by God of many members of the Chosen People:
Now these things happened as
examples for us, so that we should not crave after evil things as they also craved.
What were these evil things that Paul says so angered God:
they worshipped their stomachs, delighted in sexual revels, they tried to put
God to the test in their lives with a defiant: ”if He doesn’t give some sign, I
won’t believe” sort of attitude; and then, of course, they were great
grumblers. Paul insisted once again for
the benefit of his converts in luxurious Corinth and for us today:
These things happened to them
as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us, upon whom
the end of the ages has come.
The true God, is no soft touch! He is not One Who will allow us, like spoilt
children, to remain at the level of infantile pleasures, for He intends to
raise us up to maturity in the likeness of Jesus, as His own true children.
Heaven, most certainly, is not for spoilt brats who like to pretend they can be
just care-free little dears enjoying themselves in Daddy’s wonderful world.
However, some might still be thinking that those are only
readings from the Old Testament and from the writings of St. Paul, whereas
Jesus Himself was different. Let us now,
therefore, turn to Jesus as we heard Him speaking in our Gospel reading.
The Jews had tried to stir up hatred of the occupying Roman
forces and trouble for Jesus by asking Him about the fate of some Galileans
killed by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, as they were offering sacrifices
to God. Jesus, however, would not be so
easily deflected from His main purpose which was the sanctifying His people’s
relationship with the God of their Fathers, not leading, or sharing in, a
political confrontation with Pontius Pilate and the Roman power; and therefore,
He replied:
Do you think that because
these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater sinners than all other
Galileans?
He then immediately went on to recall a very tragic and provocative
incident that had only recently occurred.
With us these days, it is customary to refer to sufferers of
regrettable accidents as being now most certainly at peace and happy, somewhere
above, after having been so unfortunate on earth. That was not the way Jews of
ancient times reacted, for they tended to think that there must have been some
secret sin in the lives of those tragic sufferers which would account for their
untimely deaths. As for Jesus, His own
attitude was in contrast to both the religious attitude of His Jewish contemporaries
and to our modern humanitarian outpourings, for He neither judged the dead nor
did He indulge any banalities such as many of our politically-correct, overly-sentimental
expressions of condolence, for He simply went on to say:
Those eighteen people who
were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them, do you think that they were more
guilty than everyone else in Jerusalem? By
no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent
you will all perish as they did!
From such a vignette of readings you can, perhaps, begin to
appreciate how alien much modern clap-trap piety about “God’s goodness”; modern
words – heavy in emotional content but little serious and prayerful thought -- about
the dead now looking down from above on those left behind, though heaven is not
to be mentioned; and, finally, those ‘heartfelt thoughts’ – a popular modern
coinage-- without any mention of ‘prayers’ for the dead! How alien indeed such tokens of sincere love must
be both to Jesus and God Himself Who are deliberately excluded.
Now, I am not denying that God is good. Far from it!
He is GOOD; indeed, He alone is good, as Jesus Himself said, but He is
not good in the way our sinful world imagines Him to be. God is good FOR OUR BETTERMENT, good to
those, who, as Jesus said, repent. That is, God’s goodness is geared
first of all towards our repentance and then, further, towards our
sanctification; it is not the goodness of indulgence, indifference, or imbecility.
Jesus’ first message as He began His
public ministry had been:
The time is fulfilled, and
the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel. (Mark
1:14-15)
That word “repent” was, and is, absolutely essential. Only human beings can repent: it is part of
our unique likeness to God that we can learn to recognize, reject, and hate sin. No one who fails to repent for sin can be
acceptable to God, as St. John tells us:
God is light and in Him is no
darkness at all. If we say that we have
fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the
truth... If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:5 ff.)
Jesus had been sent by His Father to plead for and to save
those who were sinners, worthy of God’s punishment, just as the fruitless tree
in the Gospel parable deserved to be cut down.
Jesus’ parable-plea to His Father, however, was:
Leave it for this year also, and
I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in
the future. If not, you can cut it down.
That is, Jesus, of set purpose, would pour out His blood in
the agony of His crucifixion to fertilize our lives, giving us another and
final opportunity to learn to repent and bring forth fruit for God, fruit acceptable
to Him. And, to those who do repent, God is quite unimaginably
good; for, having purified them through the blood of His very own Son, He then
goes on, as St. Paul expressly assures us, to bestow upon them blessings
unlimited:
He who did not spare His own
Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely
give us all things? (Romans 8:32)
Paul then intones (8:34-9:1) one of the most beautiful
songs to God’s great goodness that could ever be conceived, a song that makes
all modern sugar-daddy imaginations seem, as they truly are, sick and utterly
unworthy:
Christ (it is) Who died, and Who,
furthermore, is also risen, Who is even at the right hand of God (and) makes
intercession for us. Who shall separate
us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written: "For Your sake we are being killed all day long, we
are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."
Yet, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who
loved us. For I am persuaded that
neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things
present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
People of God, may that love of Christ pierce us through
and through; may it be seen in us as humble repentance for our sins, as loving
zeal for God’s glory and the well-being of Mother Church, and as sincere
fellowship with all men and women of good will.
The love of Jesus is being offered us still today: indeed, His Precious
Blood -- poured out for us on Calvary -- continues to be sprinkled over us
throughout our lives through Mother Church’s sacraments, that we may bring
forth fruit ever more befitting God’s great goodness and mercy. Without repentance, however, He will be found
to be no soft touch; for He is a holy God Who, in response to the gardener’s
words and Jesus’ saving plea, has warned us:
If it does not (henceforth)
bear fruit, you can cut it down.
