Delay Not Your Conversion to the
Lord
Reading (Sirach 5:1-8) Gospel (St. Mark 9:41-50)
In the Gospel
reading today, Our Lord lays out for us two different points. One, if someone
does something even as small as to give a cup of water to someone because they
belong to Christ, they will not lack a reward. We see the justice of God: that
He will repay the kindness of people when it is done for the right reason, that
our actions done for the right reason – done, that is, for salvific reasons to
move us closer to Heaven – are meritorious. It is not just a matter of doing
something nice for someone in order to get a reward from that person, because
the Lord tells us if we do that then we have already received our reward. But
if we are doing it for the love of God and for the love of neighbor then even
something as simple as giving a cup of water to someone will have its reward.
At the same time,
we see several times in Sirach in the first reading, and we see again in the
Gospel reading, that sin also is going to need to be accounted for. Sirach is
very clear in warning us not to heap sin upon sin, thinking, “Because God is
merciful, it’s no big deal; I can just be forgiven.” That is not going to necessary
follow. We all know well enough that if we live our lives just giving in to sin
that what is going to happen eventually is we are going to die that way as
well. If we spend our lives saying “no” to God, it is going to be very
difficult to say “yes” one day because we have trained ourselves to say “no”.
If we continue to sin thinking that it is no big problem, that we can just go
ahead and sin and then go to Confession, first of all, that, of course, is a
sin in itself, the sin of presumption: “Because God’s going to forgive me, I
can just go ahead and sin,” so once again, heaping sin upon sin.
And he tells us to
be very cautious not to delay our conversion to the Lord. Now we can all look
at things and say, “But I’ve already turned myself over to the Lord,” but most
of us have probably turned ourselves partially
over to the Lord. We have turned to the Lord. We do receive the sacraments and
we are trying to live a good life. But I suspect that if we really take
inventory of ourselves, we are going to find that there is a part of ourselves
– and, in most of us, probably a rather major part of ourselves – that we have
not given over to the Lord. It is true that we are maybe not out committing
huge sins and that we have gotten our act cleaned up and so we are in the state
of grace. But how much of ourselves are we still not turning over? How much is
still wanting for conversion?
We need to be very
cautious about this. Remember, Jesus said, “Not everyone who cries out, ‘Lord,
Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven.” They recognized that He was Lord;
they believed in Him on one level – but not entirely. We need to give ourselves
completely to the Lord. And when we recognize that there is something that is
in the way, we need to get rid of it. That is what Our Lord is telling us in
the Gospel: Better to go into Heaven maimed than with two hands to go into
Gehenna. If there is some area of sin, if there is an area of attachment, if
there is an area of selfishness, whatever it might be, cut if off, get rid of
it. If it stands between us and the Lord, it needs to go. Sirach says, “Delay
not your conversion to the Lord.” When the Lord makes clear that there is
something in the way then we need to take action. We need to get rid of it
quickly, otherwise we delay and we fall into the presumption. Or at the very
least what happens is that we fall back, straying from the Lord, and thereby
delaying our growth in holiness because we put a roadblock in the way and we do
not remove it.
So we need to be
very, very careful not to fool ourselves into thinking that because we are
basically doing what is right and we are going through all the various motions
that we do not become presumptuous with that, but rather that we are really
putting our heart into it and we are trying to grow in holiness, that we are
really going deeper into our own souls and in union with Christ. That is what
it needs to be. Otherwise, what happens is the pride will creep in, we will
become lackadaisical, and we will begin to slip away from the Lord. So we need
to stay on top of things, to continue to move forward, because God is just and
if we know what we are supposed to do and we refuse to do it, we will have to
answer for that. At the same time, if in even the smallest things we know what
we are supposed to do and we do it for the right reason, it will not lack its
reward. God is just: He will punish our sinfulness and He will reward our
goodness. And so it is up to us to make the choice, as always, which way we are
going to be. We know what we are supposed to do – now we need to make the
choice to do it.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.