Wednesday April 6, 2005 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Second Week of Easter
Reading (Acts 5:17-26) Gospel (St. John 3:16-21)
In the Gospel reading today, we hear the words: God did
not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might
be saved through Him,
and that whoever does not believe in the Name of the only Son of God already
has condemnation because they do not believe. Then Saint John goes on to make a
little bit more clear exactly what this means, lest someone again fall into the
trap of thinking that all you have to do is believe that Jesus is the Savior of
the world and therefore you can do anything you want and you are still going to
go to heaven. So Saint John tells us that Jesus came into the world, but people
preferred the darkness to the light because their deeds were evil and because
of this they live in fear. They live in fear of judgment.
Now we can look at our own lives, then, and
say, “All right, we all believe in the Name of Jesus.” Now, the question is: if
we knew that we were going to have to stand before the Lord on this very day,
would we have confidence or would we be afraid? Would we be concerned about
what it is that our judgment might be because of what we have done? because
there are things that we have not confessed? because there are things that we
try to do in the darkness, that is, to keep things hidden, to maybe make
ourselves look good on the outside but what happens on the inside or what
happens when no one is watching sometimes might not be so good?
The Lord says that we need to bring our works
into the light because if they are in the light there is nothing to be afraid
of. There are two ways that we can understand that. If there is something that
is hidden, we need to bring it to Confession, to bring it into the light so
that it can be forgiven, so that it can be removed, so that the Lord will take
away the sins that are there and we need no longer be afraid because of them.
Number two, it means the things that we do we would not be afraid to do if
there were all kinds of people watching because we are not doing anything
wrong. That is the way we need to be, to have total confidence because what we
are doing (or seeking, at least, to do) is the Will of God. And if we are doing
the Will of God, then we have nothing to fear.
You see
again in the first reading the way that the Lord is going to work with this. We
have Peter and John being arrested and thrown into prison. The angel opens up
the prison door, lets them out, and says, “Now go right back into the temple
and continue to preach.” He did not say, “Okay, now you’re free – hide! Stay
away from them so they don’t arrest you again. If you go to this place, you
won’t be noticed.” That is not what he did. He let them out of prison and told
them, “Now go right back and preach again. Tell them about Jesus.” So we see
the same pattern: We have to be in the light. It does not mean that we all have
to be out preaching and doing all kinds of public things; but it means that in
all of our lives there are people who are part of our lives, and the way that
we act needs to be in Christ. The way that we live needs to be truly upright.
We need to be living as children of the light.
If we are living in
darkness, whether that is the darkness of sin or the darkness of freely and
willfully chosen ignorance because we do not want to know the truth lest we
would have to live it, whatever the darkness might be, we need to let the light
of Christ into that darkness so that anybody and everybody can see that our
works are done in Christ. And when our works are done in Christ, then we have
absolutely nothing to fear because when we are living in the light then we are
living in love. As Saint John tells us, perfect love casts out all fear, because if you are doing everything out of
love for God and love for neighbor then there is no fear at all because you
will know that everything you are doing is being done for the right reason and
in the right manner, and that the light of Christ is shining in you and through
you. In that way, there is nothing at all to fear. When we are living the life
of Christ, then the words spoken in the Gospel today will be given to us, that
whoever believes in this way – in the Name of the only Son of God – has
salvation.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.