Homily for Advent 2
December 4, 2022
God and Sinners Reconciled
In the
early 1900s in a small town in Italy, there was a very, very poor family: the
Goretti family. They were so poor that they continually had to move to smaller
and smaller homes as their crops failed, the father became ill and died, and
eventually they had to move in with another family, the Serenellis, and share a
house with them
The
eldest girl was a very devout young lady named Maria Goretti. She loved to
attend daily Mass and pray during her daily duties. Though uneducated, she knew
that she loved the Lord and always wanted to please Him.
The
Serenellis had a nineteen-year-old boy named Alessandro. Unfortunately he had
started looking at dirty magazines, and began to have unholy lustful desires
towards twelve-year-old Maria. He would try to get her alone, but she would
always insist, “I will never sin with you! I will never displease the Lord!”
Finally,
one day when everyone was out in the fields and Maria was home mending clothes,
Alessandro insisted one last time that she sin with him. She refused, saying,
“It is a sin!” Enraged at her constant refusals, Alessandro picked up a knife
and stabbed the innocent girl fourteen times before fleeing.
Her
family heard her cries from the house and immediately tried to take her to the
hospital, but it was too late to save her. As she was dying, she said, “I
forgive Alessandro,” before passing on to the Lord.
The
police, of course, quickly found Alessandro and a judge gave him thirty years
in prison. For the first many years, he was angry and hateful, refusing any
visits from priests. He was feared for his surly manner, and his heart was
rock-hard. But one night, he had a dream in which he saw Maria in glory,
holding out fourteen lilies in her hand, assuring him that she had forgiven him
before he died.
Alessandro
awoke a changed man. He made a good Confession and lived out the rest of his
sentence in prayer and penance. When he was finally released, he went first to
Maria’s mother and begged for her forgiveness. Maria’s mother was able to say
with a smile, “If Maria could forgive you, how can I do any less?” The very
next day, the two of them went to Mass and received Holy Communion together,
and they were side-by-side in Rome when Pope Pius XII made St. Maria Goretti a
saint. Alessandro lived the rest of his life in a monastery and died a holy
death in 1970.
How
could these two people – Alessandro and Maria’s mother - who should have been
mortal enemies, be reconciled to each other? How could they have formed a
friendship: the murderer and the victim’s mother? Only in Christ does such
reconciliation take place.
Today’s
first reading gives a beautiful view of mortal enemies becoming friends: the
lion and the lamb, the bear and the goat, the baby and the viper. What a great
vision of the Kingdom of God…but not one that we see in the world. Here, we see
Russia versus Ukraine…Palestine versus Israel…Republican versus Democrat…and
even division and hatred in our own families. How many of us have family
members that we’re not talking to any more? I’ve got at least one in my own
family…
So where
is this reconciliation that we hear promised by Isaiah? The key is the Gospel –
repent. Unless we are at peace with God, we can never be at peace with one
another. Christ is the great reconciler – don’t we sing in that beautiful
Christmas carol, “God and sinners reconciled”?
At every
Mass when we mingle the water and wine, the priest or deacon prays silently a
very beautiful prayer: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to
share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”
Just like we can’t take the water out of the wine once it’s been mingled, we
can no longer separate the divinity from the humanity in Jesus Christ – which
means that He’s in it for good. He has wedded our frail, weak humanity to the
unconquerable power of God. This is the true meaning of Christmas – that God
has united, in the Person of Jesus, the Creator and the creature, fallen flesh
with pure divinity, a man like us with the All-Holy One.
And
those who are in Christ – who repent of their sins and believe in Him –
have the joy of knowing the peace of God. And we can’t have “peace on earth”
until we are first at peace with God.
So –
what is holding you back from peace with God? If He stood before you now, would
you embrace Him, or would you go and hide? I ask you to do two things this
Advent to get to peace with God – first, consider what hidden sins are in your
life that prevent you from living and breathing for Christ and in Christ.
What secret sins are we hiding that we need to repent of? And secondly, get to
Confession. If we accuse ourselves of sin in Confession, Jesus will not accuse
us of sin when we meet Him as our Judge.
Let’s
make Isaiah’s vision a reality – peace among men of good will. This starts by
making our peace with God.
No comments:
Post a Comment