+ J. M. J. +
Homily Outline for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Today we celebrate the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time… the second-to-last Sunday before we begin Advent. Next Sunday is the high and solemn feast of Christ the King. As the liturgical year ends, our Mother the Church wants to use this moment to remind us that our lives and this world will come to an end. Jesus tells us graphically and powerfully in our Gospel that this world will indeed come to an end, and we will each one of us stand before the awesome judgment seat of God. Our decisions in this life have eternal consequences for ourselves and for all those around us. It is SO easy to lose track of this, and many voices encourage us in that confusion. Praying with these readings in my deer blind, this has brought to my mind a deer hunting story that involves my dad!
Our camp is on a migration route, so the hunting during the muzzleloader season is often very good. My dad was in his blind several winters ago on a very cold snowy December day. A fat doe walked in, giving every appearance of being a wary and careful animal, looking around, sniffing. As she began to eat some of the bait, my dad decided it was time to fill his tag. He stealthily raised up his smokepole, but when he pulled the trigger, the cap snapped, but the gun didn’t go off! A misfire, and at the worst possible moment. To my dad’s astonishment, though, the deer, after looking up startled, continued eating. With great care, he silently and slowly placed a fresh cap on the nozzle, and then took aim. Snap… a second misfire! Well, to make a long story short, after 7 misfires, on the 8th cap the gun went off, and my dad bagged the deer! We’ve ever since referred to her as ol’ 7-Cap! She gave every pretense of being wary and alert, but despite a bunch of noise and commotion, she kept eating the bait, and ended up in our freezer!
Do you see the connection? Jesus wants us to be alert and awake in a world where there are many distractions and much confusion, a lot of bait, so to speak. The tradition has tended to summarize these attacks as the World, the Flesh, and the Devil… the allure of power and wealth, our personal weaknesses and temptations, and our Enemy who seeks to lure us to our destruction. The modern world seems to want to forget that we have an enemy, and that there are any consequences to sin and lies. But there are eternal consequences to our daily decisions.
The solution is certainly not to see a demon behind every bush, and it has nothing to do with the occult or with zombies or horror movies. However, we do need to develop a spiritual alertness that leads us to recognize temptations, distractions, and lies both around us and in our own hearts. If we merely give a pretense of alertness, an occasional prayer, a superficial examination of our conscience from time to time, we’re just like a deer that hasn’t noticed that it’s deer season… we’re an easy target.
In offering His life once for all on the Cross, Jesus made sacrifice for ALL our sins. Our journey in this life, then, is the process of accepting and integrating that sacrifice and grace into our lives, a decision we make many times, and even many times each day. Jesus even invites us to participate in His High-Priestly sacrifice, out of our baptismal priesthood, our participation at the Eucharist, and in the other sacraments. One of the most powerful tools in the battle of this life is frequent confession. The most recent edition of the UP Catholic has some beautiful reflections on the sacrament of penance by our bishop, and the testimony of several people who’ve come back, or come back more frequently to the sacrament. The sacrament works on three levels:
1) it is the ONLY ordinary means to be forgiven of mortal sin, a sin that is serious that we have committed with full knowledge and consent. This is why the Church speaks of the “Easter Duty,” the precept of the Church by which every Catholic conscious of mortal sin MUST go to confession at least once a year during the Easter Season.
2) Second of all, perhaps by God’s grace many of us avoid mortal sins even for weeks and months at a time. A prayerful and devout communion at Mass does heal us from our daily brushes with venial sin. However, it is highly recommended and very helpful to make a devotional confession, that is, one where one does not have mortal sin to confess. This is the context in which most people would make of the sacrament monthly more or less. I try to go every couple weeks or so myself. At each confession not only are sins wiped away, but we are given power and strength to go forward, and we become more alert to the battles of this life, to temptations, and also to the Lord’s gentle promptings.
3) Finally, the third level on which confession works is that it is the primary place most Catholics have to access some basic spiritual direction or counsel. This is not the primary purpose for the sacrament, and very often the best thing would be to schedule an appointment with a priest, but oftentimes that conversation can at least begin in confession, where the priest can encourage you on the path to deeper prayer, or give you some concrete advice on how to fight a particular temptation. This is why the Church invites us to more frequent confessions, because it is one of the best possible ways to be more equipped for the battle of this life.
In confession, in the Eucharist, and in our prayer we have infinite grace offered to us moment by moment! We are in the midst of spiritual warfare, and the forces of evil are real and powerful. However, the primary reality of this world is not the scarcity of good things, but the great and overwhelming abundance of God’s grace. The prophet Daniel sees St. Michael the Archangel, one of the many angelic warriors who fight on our behalf. Our own stained glass depicts the guardian angel each of us is given by God. The saints give us good example and intercede for us, and we are strengthened by the friendship and help of our brothers and sisters in Christ. There are so many ways to be strengthened and to grow, there is no need to stand dumbly at the bait pile of sin and falsehood, waiting to be nailed!
So, we ask the Lord today to prepare our hearts by His grace for eternal life. We ask Him to lead us back to confession, or into a more profound reception of the sacrament. We ask Him to fill our hearts and lives now with the infinite gift of His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, offered to us once again at this altar.
+ A. M. D. G. +
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