4th Sunday of Lent Year C, 2025

 

(Joshua 5:9-12; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32) 

For long, long years, after the ever-present threat of beatings at their place of work, the Israelite slaves found that the short nights at home with the provided ration of Egyptian food had been the sole, and most deeply consoling opportunity, for them to experience human peace and bodily rest. That partial satisfaction of their hunger together with a few snatched hours of sleep and family communion was the only joy to which they could aspire.  Long years of such slavery meant that those Israelite slaves found the thought of freedom decidedly un-attractive if it involved long struggle with as yet unknown dangers, and loss of regular food, to attain it.  Consequently, during the trials of their desert journey they were, at times, much tempted to return to captivity once again for its regular provision of life’s basic necessities.  Only after years of guiding, supporting, strengthening, by God on their way through the desert, did the Israelites learn to recognize their new-found freedom and appreciate their own personal human dignity; and only at the very end of that long journey to the Promised Land, was the Lord able to say to Joshua, those most beautiful words:

Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you.

In our second reading St. Paul spoke of himself as an ’ambassador for Christ, imploring us to be reconciled to God’.   Now, the elder son in the Gospel parable had a somewhat similar office of reconciliation to fulfil with regard to his younger brother remaining in the family, but he, obviously, had been unable to prevent his younger brother claiming the money his father had planned to give him later on, in lustful dash for immediate pleasure in a distant  country where – unknown -- he could feel free from notice and responsibility.

The elder brother could only accept his brother’s return out of reverence for his father … but he seems to have had difficulty in accepting his father’s extreme joy at his younger son’s return home. Nevertheless, the old man remembered his words to his first-born -- ALL THAT I HAVE IS YOURS – so that, although the elder brother could not appreciate or share in, his father’s overflow  of paternal emotion, he ought – mindful of  his father’s firm remembrance, and his own resultant security -- to have made himself accept his brother’s return with respect because of the almost inexpressible joy it gave his father.      

The elder brother in Jesus’ parable seems, indeed, to have given good example to his younger brother in so far as he was always obedient and respectful to their father; and,  In that respect, he is something of a model for senior Catholics today who obey the commandments of God and Mother Church consistently enough, but who can never stir-up enough zeal to give  personal witness to Jesus and the heavenly Father, by showing and sharing their joy and delight, their peace and hope, in the Faith, with others,.

Many young people find such passionless obedience given, they think, more out of fear than love, unattractive; and being unable to fathom the difference between servile fear and the reverential fear, and filial love, of God, they compound their own lack of wisdom by totally ignoring what they cannot easily understand

Failure to delight in the Lord is usually a fault in the believer; don’t we have age-old popular songs telling us to ‘Count your blessings one by one’?  In fact, it can be truthfully said that, no ‘good’ can be suitably appreciated apart from the human instinctive practice of recalling, reviewing, and rejoicing over what has been gained or granted.  And the Psalmist (105:3-5) recalls this human, psychological, fact when he so urgently tells :

Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the Lord!   Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face evermore!   Remember His marvellous works which He has done. 

People of God, I suggest that, on this ‘Laetare Sunday’, you dedicate yourselves to spiritual rejoicing, By that I mean, that you should try, first of all, to look honestly at yourselves and recognize, remember, and delight in, the many blessings you have received over the years, and even begin to look to the promises given us concerning our future in Jesus.

Finally, may we – as the Psalmist said -- be God-graced so as to transfigure our old, private and hidden, obedience, into public confession of, and praise for, God’s great goodness,  since:

Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come!                        

3rd Sunday of Lent Year C, 2025

 

(Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; St. Luke 13:2-9) 

Our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel reading warrant serious attention because He chose them both seriously and deliberately; and they demand, considering the state of our blatantly sinful world, our most serious consideration:

            I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!

We may learn how very seriously  Jesus viewed what would be such a travesty of God’s saving desire. by the fact that, He first of all doubled-up on His original account of the tragedy of the Galileans by recalling those Jews so surprisingly killed at Siloam, and then repeated emphatically His own words: IF YOU DO NOT REPENT, YOU WILL, ALL, PERISH AS THEY DID. 

PERISH AS THEY DID: People of God, notice that Jesus is saying that, for those of His hearers who remain unrepentant, death WILL come upon them just as unexpectedly and disastrously as it had befallen those Galileans and Judeans He recalled.

What does that word ‘repent’ mean in that context? 

Our first reading was all about Moses himself having to understand more deeply the sublime HOLINESS of God before speaking, in His name, to the enslaved Israelites; our second reading from St. Paul to the Corinthians was a warning against spiritual self-satisfaction, attending only to the formalities of Christian worship while ignoring the duties of Christian morality and witness in their daily living; as for Jesus in our Gospel passage, you have heard how He warned explicitly about the lack of repentance and humility before God, and of the dangers inherent in a fruitless Christian life:

He told them this parable: “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. (So) cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’  He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; (by My Gospel Truth, My  saving Death and life-bestowing Resurrection), it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.’”

Bearing all these aspects in mind, we can say that ‘repent’ means ‘a change of  mind’: a TURN-FROM careless, unthinking, evil ways, a TURN-TO serving, looking for and responding to, the God of all holiness and goodness.  Indeed, ‘repent’ can be regarded as being on a level with Jesus’ deliberately provocative warnings such as:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.

There, Jesus’ teaching is to be understood according to His other words such as: love your enemy; or, If your leg, arm, eye hinders you in God’s service, cut it off, pluck it out: Intentional exaggerations to emphasize a most important spiritual teaching:

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  (Matthew 10, 34-39)

Dear friends in Christ, ‘Repent’ can be accurately understood as the decisive effort a disciple needs to make in order to understand more, appreciate better, and more humbly try to adopt into his own style of life, all of those words of Jesus where He demands first place and supreme love for God and for Himself as Son sent by the Father, and our, His disciples', total death to selfishness.

We are all called to Our Lord, to Holy Mass each Sunday, as was Moses called in the first reading, Moses! Moses!  Moses answered, Here I am Lord as he walked towards the burning bush:

God said, ‘Come no nearer!  Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.’

Moses had been drawing close to God from curiosity:

I must go turn aside to see this great sight why the bush is not burned.

The ‘repentance’ God so urgently required of Moses was shown as he drew nearer to the bush:

            Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

We too should present ourselves at Sunday Mass with a sincerely repentant attitude; not necessarily  an emotional one, however; that is, a sincere intention to worship God as best we can; to try to  learn more of His glory and goodness, wisdom and beauty; to seek His will, His way forward for us, as we hear the Scriptures read and the homily delivered; and, above all,  we should be most intent and committed in offering Jesus’ self-sacrifice of love through the ministry of His priest: most humbly  joining our own sacrifice-of-self with that of Jesus, to His Father, for the praise and glory of His most holy Name.

Finally, it is most desirable for us to leave Holy Mass not only with a repentant and grateful heart, but also with a certain awareness of how we can make progress in our efforts both to please, and draw ever closer to, the God and Father Who so loves us.

Saint Paul gave us such advice adapted to our every-day living:

DO NOT GRUMBLE; You are trying to put yourself into God’s hands; God is now --- if you will let Him -- arranging your life; learn by patiently, consistently, persistently,  trying to do His will as best you see it in those unexpected – but not infrequent -- times of apparent ‘nothing-ness’ or perplexity;  and, whoever thinks he is standing secure, take care not to fall.

Do you fear that all these warnings might make life burdensome and tiring for you?  Dear friends in Christ, His warnings are not against you, they are to protect you, and they are covered in the saving, fertilizing, blood of Jesus, so that they may:

           Cultivate and fertilize (your souls) that (they) may bear fruit for the future.

Rescue us and lead us into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey,

our very homeland, where the Father is waiting to embrace us as did the all-forgiving father in Jesus’ parable:

 This son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ (Luke 15:20–24)

The ‘boy’ had suitably repented …. so may we all do likewise, in Jesus, by His most Holy Spirit, before the Father.

2nd Sunday of Lent Year C, 2025

 

(Genesis 15:5-12; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28b-36) 

In today’s Gospel reading, God the Father -- speaking from a cloud -- told the disciples Peter, James and John:

          This is My Son. My Chosen One; listen to Him!

There was to be no heavenly – mysterious and potentially terrifying -- voice from a cloud addressing the new Israel, but the earthly words of Jesus alone would be all that could be desired or would be needed. 

There, indeed, we have the first of all commandments for Christians, a command which Jesus Himself confirmed:

If you love Me, keep My commandments. (John 14:15)

But there is more in the Father’s words beside the commandment to ‘hear’ Jesus; there is also a most intimately Personal invitation or call – This is My chosen, My beloved, Son, hear Him – to hear Him in such a way as to learn to love Him as well as to obey Him; the implication being that the only true knowledge of Jesus (‘hear Him’) is that which results, fulfils itself, in love for Him.

Our ‘Father’ in faith (God’s gift) was and is Abraham, our ‘Mother’ is Mary (Jesus’ gift) immaculate in faith and body.

Abram (willing to sacrifice his own beloved son at Gods command) put his faith in the Lord, Who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.

Described by St. Paul as one whose ‘citizenship is in heaven’, Abram was subsequently named Abraham and, as befitting our Christian awareness of him as our ‘father in faith’, he lived St. Paul’s exhortation in today’s second reading, in the most exemplary manner:

          Stand firm in the Lord.

People of God, let us closely observe and carefully imitate both Abraham and Mary.  Yes indeed, let us keep our eyes firmly on Abraham whose admirable faith in God was  confirmed by the Lord’s mysterious and fiery self-manifestation exemplifying His acceptance of Abraham’s sacrifice; let us keep our eyes even more firmly fixed on Mary, whose supreme faith in God’s promise was confirmed both by the beautiful mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation brought about in her womb, and by the consummate mystery of the His Passion, Death, and Resurrection given us for our confirmation and constant growth in the faith we have received from God the Father Who first drew us to Jesus.

Today, God renews His choice of us by calling us anew to ‘hear’ His Son -- Who speaks clearly and surely to us in and through His Church -- and on hearing Him, to love Him by His Spirit, now gifted us in Mother Church by God for that very purpose, that we might in some measure become consumed with the Father’s own love for His Son.  Only in the fulness of an authentic Divinely-Human Faith is the Christian Way able to communicate its awareness of, and response to, the fulness of Divine Goodness in Jesus.  Therefore our Catholic – original and universal experience of Christianity -- is founded on literally (humanly) unimaginable promises and mysteries which are literally (humanly) unfathomable.   There, indeed, lies an inescapable tension, but it is one designed not for our destruction but for an ever-continuing and harmonious development of all our human capabilities originally given us as the ‘image and likeness of God.