St. Dominic Catholic Church

Homilies

3/11/2018 Fourth Sunday of Lent - year B

Last week our parish secretary received a phone call allegedly from a former parishioner whose elderly mother had won a lottery in Spain.

He promised that she would give the parish $10,000 from her prize money if only we would help her claim her prize.

I told her to say, “no, thank you.”

I am very suspicious of “something for nothing” promises.

If it is “too good to be true”, then it cannot possibly be true.

 

So what do we make of St. Paul’s claim that we are saved through God’s mercy?

He says that salvation is a gift!

It’s like the unexpected decree of King Cyrus of Persia in our first reading telling the exiled Jews that they were free to return to their homeland.

He even gave them gifts to rebuild the temple the Babylonians had destroyed.

God’s mercy and our salvation is something unexpected, and like the Incarnation, it’s a “bolt from the blue”.

 

Salvation is not something we deserve.

“God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our sins,  brought us to life with Christ — by grace you have been saved.

Salvation is a something-for-nothing gift.

It is not earned, so no one may boast.

I know this makes us uneasy.

It should make us joyful.

Midway through our Lenten observances, we hear St. Paul remind us, in effect, “You are not being saved because of your fasting, prayer, or almsgiving.

You are not being saved because you are such a good person and deserve eternal life.

You are being saved through your faith in Jesus; through faith in his sinless obedience to the Father in all things; through his being lifted up on the cross as a sacrifice for sin.”

And this faith is not simply an intellectual assent to God’s existence.

Even the demons believe God exists; they know He is love; they know He is good – and they flee from the light.

This “faith” is devoid of love.  It cannot save.

And the guilty verdict against the demons and the damned is not made by God, but by the condemned themselves by the simple fact that they do not want to be near the Light.

 

The faith that saves us also transforms us.

It draws us to Jesus who re-orders and re-prioritizes our life so that we do not think primarily of ourselves, but of Him and our neighbor.

A living faith also makes determines the effects of sacraments in our lives.

According to Catholic theology, sacraments work “ex opere operato”.

It’s a Latin phrase meaning "from the work worked".

Sometimes people think this means that sacraments work automatically if the priest says the right words.

That’s not true.

The complete phrase is “ex opere operato Christi,” and means that the sacraments derive their power from Christ's work on the cross, rather than anything we do.

However, in order to receive sacraments fruitfully, we have to have faith.

Otherwise, the sacraments are beautifully wrapped gifts left unopened.

If we receive sacraments with a living faith, they will transform us.

We will begin to see spiritual fruit in our lives – the good works God has prepared for us in advance: patience, joy, peace, love, generosity.

I don’t often see these fruits in my life.

 

The good news is I can’t effect God’s love for me by what I do or don’t do.

His love is a gift – unmerited, unearned, completely free.

Let us simply rejoice because God so loved us he gave us his only Son.

 

But let’s be clear – God’s love for us does not mean protection from violence, persecution, or any kind of evil that people do in the freedom God gives us.

So often we lose faith when evil touches our lives, when true faith allows us to be peaceful even in the midst of evil.

This is the peace the world does not give, and it is a peace that comes from knowing that God has already conquered evil through enduring it on the cross for our sake.

To come toward the light, to come toward Jesus, is to approach his cross confessing our sins so he can nail them to it and they can be forgotten.

This is reason enough to rejoice in the face of trial and in the middle of Lent.