Monday February 21, 2005 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Second Week of Lent
Reading (Daniel 9:4b-10) Gospel (St. Luke 6:36-38)
In the first
reading today, the prophet Daniel speaks on behalf of all the people of Israel,
and certainly speaks exactly what any one of us can say: We have sinned, been wicked and done what is evil; we
have rebelled and departed from Your commandments and laws. We have not obeyed
Your servants the prophets…and on he goes. Can any one of us suggest
that we have actually done anything different? We have chosen sin; we have
chosen rebellion. The real tragedy is that in our society people do not even
realize that that is what is happening. Our Holy Father, a number of years ago,
said, “One of the greatest problems in our world is the loss of the sense of
sin.” People do not even know what a sin is anymore. They are offending God
left and right and do not even realize it.
Of course, part of
that is they do not even recognize God. So it is important that we look at how
Daniel began his prayer: Lord, great and awesome
God… We need to recognize the glory of God. We need to understand
Who He is. Not just in our minds to be able to acknowledge that He is
omnipotent and He is infinite and so on, but we need to know it in our hearts
in a relational way, because it is when we get down into the heart that we are
going to be able to understand why these things are so offensive, not just
understand theoretically but practically, because we have a greater insight
into Who He is; and because we have a greater insight into Who He is, we
therefore have a greater understanding of what it is that He expects of us,
what it is that is offensive to Him and why.
It is the same
thing with any relationship. For those who are married, you understand very
well that there are some things that are offensive to your spouse. And because
your spouse finds some of these things offensive, even though you might not
have thought at one time in your life that it was the least bit offensive, you
have now come to understand that this offends this person and therefore you do
not do it because you do not want to offend somebody whom you love.
That is the same
way it is, except even more, in our relationship with God. It is not just a
matter of recognizing objectively that this thing is wrong and therefore
thinking, “Because it’s on a list of sins I guess I’d better not do it,” but
rather it has to do with the reason. It is wrong because it offends God and we
would not want to do it because we do not want to offend somebody that we love,
not merely because there is a rule that says “This is what you do not do” or
“This is what you should do” because when that is the case then when we decide
that we want to do it our way anyhow we are going to rebel and we are going to
sin. Whereas when we truly love somebody, then we are going to be much more apt
to do what we know to be right and pleasing to that other person. In this case,
the person is God.
Now if we are going
to do what is pleasing to God, what is it going to look like? Jesus tells us
exactly in the Gospel: Stop judging, stop
condemning, forgive, give. These are the things that He is looking
for. We, on the one hand, are saying, “We have rebelled, we have sinned, we
have been disobedient,” and Jesus is saying what we need to do is quit judging
other people, stop condemning other people, that we need to forgive other
people, and we need to give to other people. These are not things that come
easily or naturally to anyone in our society. It is a human problem in the
first place, but in a society that is as selfish and sinful as ours these
things do not come naturally. We have to work at it. But again, if we are in a
close relationship with the Lord, then these things will come more naturally
because we will recognize that these are the things that are pleasing to Him
and therefore we are going to do them, not simply because He commanded us to do
them (because He commanded us a long time ago and we still do not do them) but
rather because out of love we are going to want to do what is pleasing and good
and right.
That is what Our
Lord is asking of us: to be like God. Well, the only way you are going to be
like God is to get close to Him, to love Him, to enter deeply into that
relationship with Him. It is the only possible way that you are going to be
like God. It is not just making your external actions look good; it is a matter
of changing the whole interior disposition so that we truly are good in the way
that we are dealing with things. It is very clearly laid out what it is that we
are directed to do by Our Lord and what it is that we know that we do on our
own. And so we need to pray; we need to enter into the depths of our hearts and
seek union with Christ there. That union with Christ will make us more
Christ-like, and when we are more Christ-like then we will stop sinning, we
will stop rebelling, and we will be obedient. Not obedient because we are
forced to do something, but obedient because of love – and because we love Him,
we will do whatever we can to please Him.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.