Homily for Lent 1
February 18, 2018
All Is Grace
A young
boy was trying to move a large rock that was in the middle of his backyard. He
strained and pulled but was unable to budge it. His father saw him struggling
and came over to him. The dad asked, “Son, have you done everything you could
to move this stone?” The son replied in frustration, “Yes! I’ve tried
everything!” The father replied, “No, you haven’t done everything…you haven’t
asked me to do it for you.” With that, the father picked up the stone easily
and moved it out of the way.
There
are some things in life we can’t do on our own. When we’re kids, we’re
dependent on our parents for everything: food, clothing, shelter. Even as
adults who like to think we’re so independent, we need each other for
friendship, support when we’re suffering, and so many other things. We were
made to depend on others, and there are some things we just can’t do…like save
our souls.
A lot of
times in Lent we make it all about what we
are doing for God. I’m giving up chocolate, I’m praying more. All of that is
great, but let’s start at the beginning…what God has already done for us! All that we do is only a response to
His free gift of grace.
And what
a grace it is! Today’s first reading features God swearing a holy covenant with
Noah. Covenants established family bonds, so God is inviting Noah to enter into
His family. But lest that family be only for the Jewish people as the descendants
of Noah, our second reading speaks of the covenant being opened to all mankind
through the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross. Just as the human race was
cleansed and purified through Noah’s flood, so the human race is now cleansed
and purified from sin through the waters of baptism, which first flowed from
the side of Christ as He hung on the Cross.
We hear
that word “covenant” a lot in Mass, especially as we consecrate the wine into
the Precious Blood. It is the “blood of the New and Everlasting Covenant” –
Jesus’ blood did for us what we could not do for ourselves – we could not
forgive our own sins, we could not belong to God as His beloved Sons and
Daughters on our own, we could not enter Heaven by our own efforts. It was this
New Covenant that Jesus Himself established that allows us to do so!
We
Catholics like to believe that if we
do enough, we get to Heaven. That’s actually completely false – and a heresy
(Pelagianism, which was condemned in the 500s!). We do not get ourselves to
Heaven, only Jesus Christ can do that! I always cringe when I hear people say
at funerals, “They were a good person, so they’re in Heaven.” We don’t get to
Heaven by being good people – we inherit Heaven solely through the free gift of
Jesus Christ. Of course, if we are followers of Jesus, we will want to walk in
His footsteps and live a life of holiness. Our faith in Him cannot remain only
on the surface if it doesn’t permeate our entire lives. But it is precisely
that – faith in Him – which saves us!
St.
Thomas Aquinas had an experience like that. He was one of the greatest writers
the Church has ever known, and one of the most profound thinkers in history. He
wrote over one hundred volumes about Christ, the Bible, the Catholic Faith…it
was said that he could literally write six books at one time with six different
scribes in the same room! But towards his later years, he stopped writing his
masterpiece, the Summa Theologica.
People asked him why he stopped writing, and he told them that he had seen a
vision of Jesus on the Cross. St. Thomas said that when looking at the Cross,
he realized that all he had written and all he had done “was like straw” – it meant
very little compared to the grace of the Cross.
All of
our good works are like straw compared to the good work Christ has already
accomplished – that of reconciling us to God through the Cross.
So this
Lent, as we begin our fasting, our prayer, and our generosity to the poor, let
us not do them in the hopes of “earning” Heaven. We don’t earn it. We receive
it as a gift – the gift of grace, which is freely given to those who have a
faith in Jesus Christ.
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