Homily for Lent 5 - March 21, 2021

 

Homily for Lent 5

March 21, 2021

The Nobility of Sacrifice

 

            Newly-ordained Fr. Al Schwartz stepped off the train in Seoul, South Korea, into a zombie apocalypse. It was 1957, and the devastation wreaked by the Korean War had left the country a disaster. That first day in Seoul, Fr. Al could see thousands of orphans, some lying in the street dying of hunger. Fully one-half of the adults in the country were unemployed so they spent their days picking through garbage, begging, or stealing. It was absolute anarchy. And it would take nothing short of a heroic and holy priest to make it better.

            Rewind a few years. As a young seminarian on a retreat in Belgium, Fr. Al snuck away from the retreat to visit a small, dilapidated chapel in the Belgian countryside. There, in the tiny house of God, he consecrated his life to the Blessed Mother and promised to do anything for Her – giving up his comforts, his home, his entire life to serve the Lord through Mary. She quickly took him up on the offer, arranging for him to become a lifelong missionary to Korea.

            But where to start, when there were so many problems? He started with one soul. Feeding one child. Taking care of one elderly person. Giving an education to one unemployed youth. These soon started to multiply, and before long he had founded orphanages, hospitals, hospices, schools, homes for unwed mothers, and soup kitchens in Korea. He even founded a religious community of nuns, the Sisters of Mary, so that his work could branch out, and he began to found missions in the Philippines and Mexico. Over 170,000 children were rescued from the streets through his efforts, and despite opposition (he was opposed by bishops who didn’t understand his work, by the Korean mafia, and even by gangs who wanted to kill him), he was unafraid – because his life was not his own, it belonged to Christ through Mary.

            Tragically, he was struck with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), which he offered completely to Christ for the people. With joy, he accepted his condition and continued to sacrifice himself for others. He died in 1992, and was named Venerable in 2015 (an important step towards sainthood). This humble priest from Washington, DC spent his life consumed with sacrifice – and the hundreds of thousands of souls who were saved from poverty, degradation, suffering, and sin were the direct fruit of this sacrifice.

            The word “sacrifice” comes from two Latin words: sacra and facere, which means to “make holy”. Anything that is offered to God in sacrifice – your time, your energy, your money, your pain, your love – becomes something holy. Our ordinary life is transformed it into something extraordinary and sacred when it is offered to God in sacrifice.

            Every sacrifice, done for love of Christ and others, will bear fruit. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we don’t, but every sacrifice done with love bears tremendous fruit in souls. When I was young, I used to love Halloween because after we would carve pumpkins I would cook up and eat the pumpkin seeds. If you’ve ever observed a pumpkin seed or sunflower seed, you’ll notice that there is a tough outer shell and a tender inner seed. If you were to plant the seed, the outer husk would rot away and be destroyed, and the inner part would start to grow and send up a new shoot. A single sunflower seed could produce a sunflower that gives over 1,000 seeds – so from the death of that one seed comes life for a thousand more!

            In the same way, Jesus compares His life to that of a grain of wheat. He had a very productive ministry in Galilee, but notice what prompts this discourse – the Greeks wanted to see Jesus. For salvation to branch out across the entire world, He would need to sacrifice it all. And the harvest is abundant – from that one death, over 2 billion people in the world today profess the name of Jesus, and think of the many billions over the past two thousand years who are in Heaven because of His one sacrifice on Calvary!

            Of course we cannot be quite that fruitful, but every sacrifice we make will bear fruit in souls, even if unseen. I attribute my vocation, for example, to the fact that my father has prayed the Rosary every day for as long as I have been alive. How much grace has been poured into him – and into his family, through his prayers! That sacrifice has not been without fruit.

            So the father who comes home, exhausted, at the end of the day, and just wants to rest and watch TV or scroll through his phone, but who instead chooses to play with his kids and be present to his wife – this sacrifice will bear immense, possibly unseen, fruit. That person who gives up a Starbucks coffee so they can have a little extra to give to the poor – that will bear amazing fruit. The elderly person who stays faithful to her daily prayers despite being tired will lead untold souls closer to Heaven. That young person who holds their tongue and doesn’t talk back to their parents, will enjoy the fruit of a better and more trusting relationship with them. That couple who is open to life and accepts one more child into this world may find that their child becomes a great saint!

            At Cardinal Kung Academy, where I teach, I often bring in food for the kids, usually left over from some parish event. There is one young seventh-grader named Sean who always takes whatever I offer, and then disappears for a minute, and he always comes back with an orange or cookie to share with me. Of course, for a twelve-year-old, giving up an Oreo is a true sacrifice! It always brings a smile to my face and helps me remember to sacrifice those things that are most precious to me!

            In a very real way, sacrifice is what makes man noble. Among all the animals, mankind alone is able to sacrifice out of love – and this is the essence of his dignity. Notice that Jesus associates sacrifice with glory – He says that His sacrifice will glorify the Father, and that it will “draw all people to Himself”. Among all of Jesus’ greatest works and deeds and teachings, His sacrifice is His greatest act, for it is where love wins the ultimate victory. Among all of our good works, we are most noble, most dignified, most like Jesus when we sacrifice out of love. We only have one life to live – but when it is given away in sacrificial love, it bears incredible fruit, both in this life and in the next.

            So we have two weeks left in Lent, the season of sacrifice. Let us push through to the end, sacrificing generously and joyfully, for our weak humanity is raised up to glory when we sacrifice for God and for others, out of love.