Homily: 2nd Sunday of Lent - Year B

 Readings: Gn 22:1-2,9-13,15-18;Ps 116; Rom 8:31-34; Mk 9:2-10

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Not long ago I thought my wife’s hearing might not be what it used to be, so I decided to conduct a little test. I stood some distance behind her and said softly, “Diane, can you hear me.” Getting no answer, I moved closer and again asked, “Diane, can you hear me?” Again having received no answer, I moved right up behind her and said softly, “Diane, can you hear me?” And that’s when I finally heard her say, “For the third time, Yes!”

Well, that’s pretty much how you and I communicate with God. We’re so intent on making sure He’s listening to us, that He doesn’t miss all those needs and wants we’re always placing before Him, that we neglect the more important task: We fail to listen to Him. We forget, or simply can’t believe, that God hears our every prayer, that He knows our every need. Not only does God hear us, but He also speaks to us…and He does so definitively.

We need only listen, listen as the Father commanded us. That’s right, twice in the gospels the Father speaks aloud regarding Jesus. At Jesus’ Baptism the Father said:

This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

As Jesus begins His ministry that culminates in His death and resurrection, and in our salvation, we learn that the Father sent Him to become one of us; that He is Emmanuel, God with us. Yes, the Father states unequivocally, that He is well pleased with His Son: this Jesus, My Son, has met all My demands for holiness, for righteousness, for goodness. What greater statement could God have made about His Son?

And then, in today’s Gospel passage, the Father again speaks aloud:

This is my beloved Son; listen to him.

With these words we are given our primary responsibility as disciples of Jesus.

Listen to Him.

It’s a simple message, for God never complicates, He always simplifies. Simple but profound, God’s message isn’t obscured by some long to-do list of responsibilities and behavioral expectations; rather, it consists of one, simple command, “Listen to him.” For this is the essence of discipleship, and it hasn’t changed since the days of Abraham.

I can remember as a child -- I think I was about seven years old -- being fascinated by our family Bible. Every week my father would open it up, read aloud whatever passage happened to interest him that day, and then discuss it with us. To be honest, I was probably more interested in the remarkable illustrations in our Bible.

One in particular both fascinated and terrified me. It was a brilliantly clear picture of an old man forcibly holding the body of a young boy against a stone altar. Even more disturbing was the large knife in the man’s hand, a knife pointed straight at the boy. That painting, by Caravaggio, was my introduction to Abraham and Isaac, and the caption beneath it consisted of a single word: “Ready!”

I remember thinking, ready for what? And so I asked my father, and he said, “Ready to sacrifice his son.” Well, that certainly didn’t help; nor was it very reassuring. I asked more questions and received more puzzling answers that pretty much boiled down to: “Because God asked Abraham to do it, and because Abraham loved God.”

It was all very confusing. I also found myself looking at my father a little differently, wondering if God might ask him to do what He’d asked Abraham. Eventually, though, I came to realize that Abraham and Isaac were a kind of special case.

God might not test us as He tested Abraham, but He still wanted us to listen, to obey, to be ready. Yes, Abraham loved and trusted God so deeply, He believed in God so faithfully, that he was ready to do whatever God asked of him. And God, seeing Abraham’s readiness, provided the ram to be sacrificed in place of Isaac. Years later, I learned that this readiness to do God’s will is the mark of the true disciple.

Brothers and sisters, in today’s Gospel passage, they apostles are generations away from Abraham, on another mountain where they encounter another who is ready. Peter, James and John follow their Master up its slopes, separating themselves from the world.

On that mountaintop Jesus gives them a glimpse of what is to come, a glimpse of the promise they don’t yet understand, a glimpse of God, of eternity – and they see it all through Jesus. Standing in His glory with Moses and Elijah, Jesus is fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.

There was no caption explaining that scene for the apostles, but maybe Peter was starting to get the picture. Maybe deep down he’d come to realize another Biblical sacrifice was about to be offered. Like Isaac, another Son would carry his own wood of sacrifice up yet another hill.

Unable to grasp this fully, Peter is overwhelmed by the moment: Let’s build tents and just stay here forever. It’s so good to be here. But to be content with the present is not a statement of readiness, is it? It’s a statement of complacency. And complacency isn’t the mark of the disciple.

To help Peter and the others understand this, God speaks, and Peter hears the voice of God, the voice that causes a healthy fear:

This is my beloved Son – listen.

In this Lenten season, as we page through our history as a people…as we are presented each week with the stories of God’s faithfulness…as we picture the scenes and try to understand the captions God writes beneath them…as we do all these things, let’s remember what we’re called to do: to listen and to be ready to act.

Will we listen to Jesus as he speaks to us in so many ways: through the Gospel; through the Church; through each other?

But are we ready, ready to act, ready to sacrifice? We’re asked to make only one sacrifice: total dedication to God – to be ready to serve Him always.

Ready to listen and respond to His call.

Ready to put sin behind us.

Ready to name grace when we see it.

Ready to love the unloved.

Ready to defend Christ and His Church in the public square.

Ready to challenge the world when it turns its back on Christ, when it embraces not life but death.

Here lies the very essence of our Christian spirituality: having hearts and minds spiritually tuned to hear what God is telling us. These days of Lent should be our listening time.

Days begun with a moment of quietness, a moment when we pray young Samuel’s simple prayer: Speak Lord, your servant is listening.

Days when we look for God and His message in life’s simple experiences and our encounters with others.

Days that end with a moment of thanksgiving.

Do we thank God for the love that gave us our very being?

Do we thank Him for the sacrifice that promises us eternal life?

Do we thank Him for each other?

Brothers and sisters, the Father who spared Isaac’s life, spared nothing in sacrificing His own Son.

You and I are asked to do no less. But are we ready?

 

Homily: 1st Sunday of Advent - Year B

Readings: Is 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7; Psalm 80; 1 Cor 1:3-9; Mk 13:33-37
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Happy New Year!

That’s right. Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of a new year, a new liturgical year. But unlike January 1st, that other New Year’s Day, this New Year kind of creeps up on us, doesn’t it? Suddenly it’s Advent, and with Advent, everything changes.

Among the changes that come with the new liturgical year is the change to Mark’s Gospel. Last year was Matthew and next year will be Luke. But this year we’ll hear a lot from Mark. One thing about Mark: He doesn’t waste words. He moves through the Gospel story almost breathlessly, powered by a sense of urgency, constantly reminding us of the high stakes involved.

Mark tells the Gospel story without suspense. He tells us what it’s all about right from the beginning. Indeed, he opens his Gospel with the words, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” [Mk 1:1]

“The beginning,” Mark tells us, the beginning of Christ’s appearance in the world, a beginning that points back to another beginning, to a beginning of creation with God. From the first verse of Genesis – “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” [Gen 1:1] –  to the first verse of John’s Gospel – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God” [Jn 1:1]

Yes, the Word has an eternal beginning in God; and the Gospel has a beginning in time in the world. This, Mark tells us, is the beginning of the Gospel, the Good News the entire world longs to hear. In the Gospel we have the answer to humanity’s long-pondered question: Why are we here?

God answers through the words of His Son, Jesus the Christ, the Promised One. For that’s what He is, the Christ, the One promised down through the ages, the One promised to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David…But Mark tells us this Jesus is more than that, more than the Messiah; He’s the Son of God Himself.

Yes, indeed, Mark doesn’t waste our time, but lets the cat out of the bag right from the very beginning: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” From there Mark moves inexorably toward Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection, toward the Cross and the journey Jesus makes along the way.

But Mark also focuses on another journey: the journey of the disciples as they move from cluelessness, to misunderstanding, to failure, betrayal, abandonment, denial, guilt, and finally to understanding, acceptance and obedience. Yes, you and I often find ourselves on that same journey. And it’s in the midst of this journey where we find ourselves in today’s Gospel passage from the 13th chapter of Mark.

It begins with a command: “Be watchful! Be alert!” [Mk 13:33] and ends with the same command: “Watch!” [Mk 13:37] Responding to His apostles, Jesus had just told them a little about the last days, the time of fulfillment when He will return in glory to judge the living and the dead. But no one – no man or woman, no angel, not even He, in His humanity, knows the day or the hour – only the Father [Mk 13:5-32].

Jesus then relates a parable in which the “when” is far less important than how we prepare for it. Listen again to His Word:

“It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work, and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch.”
That’s it – a one-line parable – but long enough to make his point. We are commanded to watch, to be ready…but not to wait in idleness. Each is to do his own work, the work of the disciple, the work that God asks of us.

And what is that work? Only moments before Jesus had told the disciples: “the Gospel must first be preached to all nations” [Mk 13:10] That’s our task as we wait: to proclaim the Good News, God’s presence among us, and to proclaim it to everyone. How much Gospel proclaiming have you and I  done lately?

And while we do His work, we’re also to watch, because we won’t  know when He’ll come again: “… whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping” [Mk 13:35-36]

Jesus actually gets specific here, doesn’t He? He uses the four night watches common in the ancient world: evening, midnight, cockcrow, and morning. It’s no coincidence that each of these times comes into play in the closing chapters of Mark’s gospel.

It’s evening when the apostles celebrate the Passover with the Lord -- watching, waiting. One of them, though, isn’t watchful, but leaves early that evening. He rejects Jesus’ gift to His Church at that first celebration of the Eucharist. He leaves to commit an act of betrayal.

Later, in the garden, as Jesus prays deep into the night, He invites His remaining disciples to watch and pray with Him. It must have been near midnight. But they, too, succumb to weakness and are unable to watch. Each time He returns from prayer Jesus finds them asleep. And it’s then that Judas returns at the head of a mob and completes his betrayal. Once again the disciples are unprepared. In fear and confusion, they all forsake Him and run away.

And the cockcrow…Who can forget the fateful cockcrow that marks the threefold denial of Peter? Peter, the leader, the one chosen by Jesus to be the rock on which He would build His Church, the one so full of empty promises and bluster…Yes, Peter the rock is, at this point,  still Peter the weakling. For Peter could watch only from the shadows, and overcome by fear, would repeatedly deny His Lord.

And finally, the morning, very early on that first Easter morning, the Risen Lord appears to the disciples and is greeted with disbelief; for they are still caught off guard; they are still unprepared for the challenges of faith.

Yes, at first the disciples failed miserably at their halfhearted attempts to keep watch. But are you and I really any different? While we’re having the time of our lives, the actual time of our lives is slipping away, bringing us ever closer to that moment when we will stand face to face before our God.

You see, time is God’s domain, His gift. None of us can predict what tomorrow will bring, not even the next hour nor the next minute. Time is God’s possession alone. In time, God encounters us and we encounter God. Time holds the very presence of God. We need only open our eyes — our inner eyes — to find Him. God is always present, and there’s never a time when we’re without Him.

Brothers and sisters, let’s make this Advent a time of finding, a time when we celebrate God’s coming among us. In Advent we relive His first coming, His Incarnation as one of us, a coming that leads ultimately to the Resurrection, an event that profoundly changed both time and history…an event that erased the line separating earthly time and eternal time.

Because of Jesus’ coming and living among us, we who exist in time also exist in eternity. And so time doesn’t just pass away; no, our time is the stuff of which eternity is made, transforming us until we enter into the fullness of God’s presence. Advent is meant to awaken us again to this truth. In the midst of our busy lives, Advent calls us to slow down, to recognize God’s presence, His continuous comings among us.

Jesus’ words are so needed today: “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.” Yes, rushing from one thing to another, when and where do we find the time to welcome the Lord into our lives? This is to what Advent calls us to do — to watch, to be alert, to wait with God, growing into His habitual presence. It calls us to recognize God’s presence in all that we do. Our time should be less and less our possession and more and more God’s time, so that when He needs us, when He calls us, we shall be ready.

Advent calls us to use God’s gift of time wisely, to simply be: to be with God — to sit with God and to look at our lives through His eyes. When we allow God to be who He is within us, we can learn to know Him, not just know about Him. Learn from the experience of Mary who each day pondered who Jesus was, what He was about.

This Advent may we consciously choose to live as if God’s presence invades each of us, invades all men and women, invades all human experience, invades every part of God’s creation. When we jump out of bed in the morning (or perhaps crawl or groan out of bed) may we drink in God as we drink that first cup of coffee.

May we bring God with us into all we do each day.

May we truly live in God’s time, ever alert, ever watchful for His saving presence.

Come Lord Jesus!