Homily for Lent 1 - February 18, 2018

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.