Homilies

February 9, 2008
Saturday After Ash Wednesday
Is 58:9-14; Lk 5:27-32
Fr. Marcellus Earl, OCSO 

At the very end of today's Gospel, my dear brothers and sisters, Jesus tells us what he is expecting of us during this Lent. Listen to his words: "I did not come to call the just, but sinners to a change of heart." Jesus has come from the Father into the world to call sinners into the kingdom. He did not come to call the just to a banquet and hobnob with them. No. And why? because there simply weren't any just people around to call, except his mother and he had been sharing her intimate company since his birth. The Scriptures teach us that all are sinners, there is not a just person left and if people say they are without sin, they are liars and the truth is not in them.

Now Jesus does not simply call sinners into the kingdom as if they could walk in the door of the place without shedding the garments of sin. No indeed, for the man who tried to enter without a wedding garment, that is sanctifying grace, was a once chucked out into he exterior darkness where there was the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Many are called but few are chosen.

Why are some received into the kingdom while others are rejected? Because Jesus calls us all to repentance for our sins, to a change of heart. This is the necessary condition for entering the kingdom, and even after we have entered, it is a never ending struggle to keep trying to purify our hearts more and more.

Lent then is not so much the performing of one or more practices of mortification. It is the persevering effort to overcome our selfishness, to bring all our desires into conformity with the will of God.
St. Catherine of Siena has some words that bear on the spirit in which we should observe Lent. God the Father is speaking to her: "In this life guilt is not atoned for by any suffering simply as suffering, but rather by suffering borne with desire, love, and contrition of heart.

The value is not in the suffering, but in the soul's desire. Likewise, neither desire nor any other virtue has value or life except through my only-begotten Son, Christ crucified, since the soul has drawn love from him and in virtue follows his footsteps. In this way and in no other is suffering of value. It satisfies for sin, then, with gentle unitive love born from the sweet knowledge of my goodness and from the bitterness and contrition the heart finds in the knowledge of itself and its own sins. Such knowledge gives birth to hatred and contempt for sin and for the soul's selfish sensuality whence she considers herself worthy of punishment and unworthy of reward." (St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, Paulist Press, New York, 1980, p. 29)

Let us ask the Father to enlighten our hearts, to help us see our sins, our selfishness, so that our Lenten observance may be a true response to Jesus calling us to repentance and true life as worshipers in spirit and in truth.