Laudet Dominum

If you’re like me, you probably forget a lot of things. It seems like the more important something is, the easier it is to forget. Sadly, however, it seems to be nearly impossible to forget past mistakes that we’ve made: bad decisions, poor choices of words, errors of judgment and so on. Sometimes we might forget some of our past, but remember very clearly a grievance or grudge against someone else for a mistake which they committed.

One theme we see in today’s readings is a call by both the prophet Isaiah and St. Paul to forget the past. Both encourage us to look to the future, seeing that God is “doing something new” and “straining forward to what lies ahead.” St. Paul takes this further, telling us, “I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.”

What is this goal, this prize of which St. Paul speaks? He is speaking of the righteousness of Christ, through which we receive the mercy of God. We see this when St. Paul tells us that he does “not [have] any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God”.

In speaking of the “righteousness from God”, St. Paul is saying that what has brought him into right relationship with God is not following the Mosaic Law of the Jewish Covenant, but entering into and following his faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ. In effect, St. Paul is describing for us the difference between how the scribes and Pharisees approached the woman caught in adultery, and how Jesus approached her.

When the woman was brought before Our Lord, the scribes and Pharisees wanted to put Him in an impossible trap. In response to their statement “Moses commanded us to stone such women,” they wanted to force Him to break either the Law given by God the Father to Moses, or the Roman secular law that reserved the death penalty to the Roman authorities. Either way they could denounce Him as either a false prophet and Roman sympathizer or as a revolutionary who sought to overturn Roman rule in the Jewish Promised Land.

Our Lord obviously saw through the test, and showed them a better way. Instead of condemning the woman, as the scribes and Pharisees wished, He offered her mercy and forgiveness of sins. By doing so, He showed us that the path to salvation no longer comes through strict observance of the Law, but through the mercy of God.

It’s important to remember that God’s mercy is not something we need only once in our lives, but needs to be sought and received constantly throughout our lives. St. Paul speaks of the resurrection from the dead, which we receive through God’s mercy and love, saying, “It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it.” If St. Paul, who had been called by Christ personally after Our Lord’s resurrection was still in need of God’s mercy, how much more are we in need of that mercy.

The problem with human nature is that we still have the desire to test God’s mercy. Now, it’s not like we’re trying to trap Jesus as the scribes and Pharisees did. No, we test Him when we put off seeking His mercy, as St. Augustine did in his famous quote, “Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.” We test Him when we allow ourselves to sink deeper and deeper into sin without seeking His mercy.

Instead of avoiding God’s mercy, we need to seek it and desire it with all our hearts. One theme that kept coming up throughout the conference this weekend in Billings was the power of the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Through this prayer, which can be prayed very quickly and is easily memorized, God’s mercy floods the world, filling the souls of those who pray it and those for whom the Chaplet has been prayed. It is a simple prayer, but one of the most powerful for asking God to “have mercy on us and on the whole world.” I would encourage all of you to learn this prayer, if you don’t know it already, and to pray it daily, especially with your families.

As this Lenten season quickly approaches its conclusion and we prepare for Holy Week, may we seek God’s mercy in abundance instead of testing Him as the scribes and Pharisees did.

Do we have an awareness of how sin affects us and others? Do we even know what sin is? When we look around us at our culture and nation, sometimes it’s easy to wonder if anyone actually believes in sinful actions any more. About the only things that seem to be considered “sinful” are polluting the environment, not recycling your trash, and speaking against a politically-correct world view. Sinful actions that were considered unthinkable even 30 years ago are now considered accepted and some are even considered a normal part of life.

While our culture has developed a distorted view of sin, we as Christians are still called to a higher morality, where sin is a fact of our daily lives. During this season of Lent, we need to remind ourselves once again that we are sinful beings in need of reconciliation with God. Every sin we commit is like placing a barrier between us and God, preventing us from receiving the gift of His grace that He wishes to bestow upon us. Like a dam in a river, sin prevents those graces from flowing freely into our souls.

We can see this in the actions of the Prodigal Son in today’s Gospel. The younger son, wishing to living a life of sinful excess, cut himself off from his father, squandering his share of the father’s estate in another country. Of course, the only time we worry about someone’s estate is after their death, so requesting half of the estate is like the son telling the father, “As far as I’m concerned, you’re dead.”

While I think most parents would be offended if their children said to them, “Give me my inheritance now, because you’re dead to me,” and rightly so, we are in effect saying that God is dead to us every time we commit a sin in words or deeds. Even the smallest venial sin can restrict our openness to God’s grace, and can eventually completely block us from God. Every mortal sin we commit cuts us off from the flow of God’s grace as completely as turning off the kitchen faucet. This is not a state that we want our souls to be in when we die, as it will have eternal consequences.

We are not without hope, however, that sin will have a hold on us forever. According to St. Paul, God “has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation.” Like the father in the Gospel who forgave without even allowing the younger son to finish his confession of guilt, God is ready and willing to offer His forgiveness if we but approach Him and ask for it.

Our Heavenly Father wants to reconcile us with him, removing the blocks of sin and restoring the flow of graces into our souls. God created us to spend eternity with Him in Heaven, and He wants to give us every opportunity in this life to receive the inheritance that He promised us. This is so important to God that, as St. Paul says, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who did not know sin,” that is Jesus, the Son of God, “so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Through His Death and Resurrection, Jesus took on the punishment for our sins so that we can enter into the Kingdom of God when our lives on Earth are over.

Notice, however, that the father in the parable did not go out seeking the younger son, but waited for the son to come to him. In the same way, we need to have true sorrow for our sins, as the younger son did during his time tending the swine. The younger son then returned to the father and asked for forgiveness. We too need to turn to God in our remorse and ask forgiveness for our sins.

We need to be careful that we don’t fall into the erroneous mindset that all we have to do is be “really sorry,” ask God to forgive our sins, and we’re good to go. I’ve heard many non-Catholics and even some Catholics state this idea or something similar. Jesus established the Church to be the normal means that God uses for our salvation. For that reason, He has given us the Sacrament of Confession as the normal way by which God provides his forgiveness and reconciliation, hence “Sacrament of Reconciliation” as an alternate name for this sacrament.

I know I’ve talked about the Sacrament of Confession before, but it needs to be said again and again. Our Heavenly Father really is waiting for us to return to Him with contrite hearts, but we have to be the ones to take that first step. Through the Sacrament of Confession, we can return to God, and hear Him say, to paraphrase the father of the Prodigal Son, “You were lost, and have been found.”

Our Scripture passages today seem to be a continuance of last week’s readings. If you remember from last week, we saw the Transfiguration of the Lord, during which Our Lord’s Passion was seen as His “exodus”. This theme is continued in our first reading today, with the calling of Moses, but the second reading from St. Paul and today’s Gospel provide some warnings for those of us who follow Our Lord on His exodus.

As I said last week, Israel’s Exodus which freed them from the slavery of Egypt is a foreshadowing of Our Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection which frees us from the slavery to sin. The first reading from the Book of Exodus today shows the promise of God that He will fulfill the covenant He made with the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If the Israelites are willing to follow Moses, whom God has sent, they will enter into “a land flowing with milk and honey.”

While all the Israelites received the gifts of food and drink from God to sustain them during the Exodus, St. Paul reminds us that many of the Israelites were not faithful to God. These unfaithful Israelites were not allowed to enter into the Promised Land, perishing in the desert. Even Moses himself was only allowed to view the Promised Land from afar, dying before the Israelites set foot within the land.

For those of us who profess to follow Christ, we also have been given the promise of “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Unlike the Israelites’ Promised Land, ours is an eternal reward for being faithful to the New Covenant that Jesus established here on Earth. When we were baptized, we entered into that covenant, following Christ through His new exodus.

Just as the Israelites had to remain faithful to God throughout their Exodus to enter into the Promised Land, we too have to remain faithful throughout our exodus. St. Paul tells us that what happened to the Israelites “happened as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil things, as they did,” and “have been written down as a warning to us.” We need to look at the example of those Israelites who were unfaithful to God’s commands to understand what will happen to those who are unfaithful to His commands today.

Those of us who are faithful do not have reason to gloat over those who may have fallen from following God’s path. St. Paul reminds us, “whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.” We need to be constantly aware of our own sinfulness and not think of our salvation as a one-time-good thing. Even if we are regularly doing the “right” things, we need to make sure that we don’t become prideful, but allow the graces of God to work through us to change our sinful desires.

There was an idea running throughout the history of the Jewish Covenant that God will curse in this life those who are unfaithful to His covenant. This is most clear in the Book of Job when his friends were sure that his sorrows had to be caused by sins Job had committed. We also see this idea in how people at the time of Jesus reacted to the deaths in Galilee and Siloam, thinking them as punishment for their sins.

Jesus very clearly rejects this idea, stating that those who died were no worse sinners than those who were listening to Him speak. He tells them, “If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” We need to listen to these words as well, and need to repent from our sins. We may not be punished in this life if we do not, but Jesus is clear that we will be punished in the next for failure to repent.

How do we repent from our sins and ensure that we are following God’s commands? Our Lord gave us the tool that we need: the Sacrament of Confession. When we confess our sins sacramentally, we will receive the forgiveness of God and make true repentance for our sins. In order to properly use this tool, we must daily examine our consciences, finding those sins which have the most effect on our lives. We also must make regular confession – at least once a month – a part of our routines, and ask God for the grace to dig the roots of sin out of our souls.

When we are faithful to repentance for our sins throughout our entire lives, we will enter into the eternal Promised Land at the end of our exodus on Earth just as the faithful Israelites entered into their Promised Land.

Today we are presented with the Transfiguration of the Lord, in which Jesus appears to His disciples in a foreshadowing of His glorified body, speaking to two of the greatest figures in the Old Covenant: Moses and Elijah. In this event, we see the divine nature of Our Lord, which is reinforced by the voice of God our Heavenly Father speaking from the cloud, but it also gives us a foreshadowing of what our glorified bodies will be like at our resurrection at the end of time.

Apart from the descriptions in Scripture of the Transfiguration and images of Heaven, we don’t have an understanding of what a glorified body looks like. A glorified body is one that has been freed from sin, and is filled with the grace of God. God’s glory and majesty is so powerful that it becomes visible as a bright light. The light is so bright that the Sun pales in comparison.

One day, when we have been freed from the shackles of death and our bodies have been raised up following the final judgment, those who died in the state of grace will have their bodies glorified as Our Lord’s was after His resurrection. We know this from St. Paul, who tells us that Our Lord “will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables Him also to bring all things into subjection to Himself.” We will share in the glory of God, and our bodies will be purified and raised up.

Sadly, however, that day is yet to come. We on Earth are still affected by sin, and our vision has been darkened by sin. We do not see the radiant glory of God, and would be stunned if we did experience that glory, as Peter, James and John were in the Gospel today. It’s been said that if an angel appeared before us in all it’s glory, we would not be able to tell that it was merely an angel and not God Himself. In fact, St. John in the Book of Revelation had to be told several times by the angel that appeared to him not to worship the angel, as St. John was awed by the glory of God shining through it.

As we look at the account of the Transfiguration given to us today, it’s interesting that St. Luke chose to describe Our Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection in Jerusalem as his “exodus”, while Our Lord was speaking to the one figure in the Old Testament who is most well known for Israel’s Exodus from Egypt. It’s striking that the Exodus that freed the Israelites from the slavery of Egypt parallels the suffering, death and resurrection of Our Lord that frees us from the slavery to sin.

In both cases, a difficult journey with great suffering had to be made in order to gain this freedom from slavery and enter into the Promised Land. Moses had to lead Israel out of Egypt and suffer through the desert for 40 years so that the people of Israel could enter into the Promised Land, which Abram (later known as Abraham) was given by God. Our Lord had to undergo the suffering of the Roman and Jewish authorities, be crucified, die, and rise again so that we might enter into our Promised Land of Heaven.

It’s important to point out that “our citizenship is in Heaven,” as St. Paul tells us. Just as the people of Israel were estranged from their homeland when living in Egypt, we are estranged from our Heavenly homeland during our lives on Earth. When you read the account of the Exodus, many in Israel were attached to the things of Egypt, making the Exodus difficult for the Israelites. Sadly, we too are attached to our land of exile, often caring more for the things of Earth over the things of Heaven. As St. Paul once again says, “Their minds are occupied with earthly things.”

To overcome this desire for earthly goods, we need to place our faith in God, as Abram did in the first reading, and as the people of Israel who entered the Promised Land did during the Exodus. When we put our faith in God instead of in the constant concern for earthly things, life won’t be without challenge, as the Exodus was not without difficulty, but it will be “credited” to us “as an act of righteousness,” just as it was for Abram. When we are “righteous”, which means that we are in the friendship and grace of God, we too will one day enter into our Promised Land: the eternal joys of God’s presence in Heaven.

As we go through our lives here on Earth, we join our exodus through the pain and sorrow that accompany this life to the pain and anguish that Our Lord suffered during his Passion and Death. May our exodus end at the Promised Land of Heaven, just as the Israelites’ Exodus ended in their Promised Land.