Homily – Page 49 – Laudet Dominum

Homily for the Second Sunday in Lent

By Fr. Cory Sticha | March 3, 2012 - 14:50 |March 3, 2012 Homily, Year B

Our Gospel today tells us that our Lord “was transfigured before them and his clothes became dazzling white”. This word ‘transfigured’ – from which we also get the Transfiguration, as in the Feast of the Transfiguration – is a change of appearance. It says Our Lord’s appearance changed. He showed to Peter, James and John His full glory. Scripture often talks about God’s glory shining in this world of darkness. We don’t often see that glory because our sight is darkened by sin. Well, Peter, James and John got to see that. It must’ve been a very powerful experience, because Peter wanted to set up tents. He want to stay there. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he knew they needed to remain there nonetheless.

Through the Transfiguration, we are offered a glimpse of the glory of God. It’s a glory that we hope to share in during our eternal reward when we enter into heaven. Because of this, we should seek to be changed, as Our Lord was during the Transfiguration, setting aside our wills and desires, and following Our Lord’s example. We should also follow Abraham’s example, because there’s always a sacrifice in change. We always have to give something up to change. Abraham thought he might have to sacrifice his son, but he trusted in the promise of God, and sought to fulfill God’s will.

We may have to give up things we hold dear. Of course, we always need to give up our sins, because sin keeps us from God. Maybe its activities or behaviors that aren’t sinful, but they get between us and God. For myself, a lot of that is video games. I love playing video games. If I start playing some of the more in-depth video games, I could spend all day. I could just completely waste an entire day playing these video games. Obviously, I can’t do that and devote my life to God. Maybe it’s other people. We may have relationships in our lives that are spiritually unhealthy, and we need to give those up. Whatever we need to give up to follow God is different for each of us. It’s whatever gets between us and God, so we have to decide what is more important: living for eternity in God’s glory, or the passing, Earthly things that can get between us and God.

Abraham was was blessed abundantly due to his faith in God, because Abraham did not withhold anything from Him. We will be blessed if we do not withhold anything that we have. As St. Paul says, “He who did not spare his own son, but handed him over to us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” So the question we should ask ourselves is: what’s holding us back from turning ourselves over to God so that we can receive far more in return? Lent is the time to ask this question. Lent is the time to let go, to trust in God, and to allow Him to change us that we might enter into His glory.

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Homily for the First Sunday of Lent

By Fr. Cory Sticha | February 25, 2012 - 15:52 |February 27, 2012 Homily, Year B

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In the Scriptures, we see the importance of 40 days. The rains that caused the great flood lasted for 40 days. Our Lord remained in the desert for 40 days, and we’ve begun once again our annual 40 days of Lent.

When we look at Our Lord’s time in the desert, it was a time of preparation and purification for his ministry. It was a time to prepare himself to undergo his preaching of the gospel. Lent is a purification and preparation for us to emulate Our Lord by taking these 40 days to prepare to dedicate our lives to Our Lord and to proclaim the Gospel as he did. This is the same as the flood, which was a purification and a preparation of the earth. As St. Peter says, “This prefigured baptism, which saves you now. It is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” The flood washed away all wickedness and evil on the Earth.

Lent, which we have just entered into, is a time to allow God’s grace to wash away the wickedness and evil in our lives. We do this by using the spiritual gifts such as fasting and abstinence. Fasting a couple of times throughout Lenten season from food and abstaining from certain kinds of food. We do this through spiritual growth by taking advantage of this season to grow spiritually; and of course, we use during this season the sacraments and the sacramentals. Sacraments such as Confession and Eucharist, sacramentals such as a crucifix – especially the beautiful prayer before a crucifix – and holy water. This is why we don’t remove holy water from our fonts. It’s such a powerful sacramental.

We do all this – we use all these gifts, all these tools – because we want to follow Our Lord who wants to lead us to the Father. That’s why He died for our sins: to lead us to the Father. This Lenten season is a time to put our focus back on Him, to refocus on Him, and to head his call. As Our Lord said, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.”

One thing we must not do if we are to follow Our Lord is allow spiritual complacency in our lives. It’s too easy to fall into that complacency. We all have to be “practicing” Catholics. Sadly, this phrase “practicing Catholic” has kind of become almost a joke politically, because it’s used by those who politically want to deny teachings – a politician or someone who is promoting an agenda that’s contrary to church teaching – and instead want to change the church in their image. They’ll say something like, “Well, I’m a practicing Catholic, and because of that I think the church needs to change this…”

Despite that, we truly do need to practice our faith. We must practice just as a basketball player does. Let me ask you this: it’s tournament time. Everything is going on with the tournaments. Would a coach allow a player to play in one of these tournament games if he skipped practices? If he said, “You know what coach? I don’t need any practice any more. I’m a good ballplayer. I don’t need to go to practice. I don’t need to do these drills. I’m just gonna only play during the game. That’s only time I’m going to touch the ball. Other than that, I don’t need to do it anymore.” Of course not. If the player is lucky, the coach is just going to say, “You’re going to dress out, but you’re not going to play.” More likely the coach is going to say, “Just don’t even bother to put on your uniform.” A good basketball player puts a full effort during practices – puts his full effort towards the drills, towards the shooting, towards the running. A great basketball player does even more practicing after practice, outside of practice. And, on top of that, a great player does exercising, such as hitting the weight room or doing extra running. This is all essential parts of being a great basketball player.

We should desire to be great Catholics. We should practice our faith daily by working out our spiritual life using these spiritual tools which the Church gives us, seeking to get deeper and stronger in our spiritual life. Of course this is all through the grace of God, but this should be our daily goal during the Lenten season. Now is the time to “pick up the ball,” to get deeper into this practice.

We should be seeking to overcome our spiritual complacency, because sadly we live in a culture which really doesn’t demand that we practice our faith. It allows us to drift through our spiritual life. We have no problem doing that, but the question I have for each person here individually – and I want you to think about this – when is the last time you did any spiritual practice? I mean other than coming to Saturday night or Sunday morning mass. When is the last time you came into a church – this church or any other church – and just sat in front of the tabernacle in prayer, silent prayer? When is the last time you prayed a Rosary or other devotion? When is the last time you gathered your family to pray the Our Father – a simple practice that I argue every Catholic family should do every day?

Just as a basketball player needs to practice, we need to practice in our spiritual life. While the high school basketball season is almost done – just a couple more weeks to go – the spiritual season lasts our whole life.