Homily

I had a very difficult week. And I’m not telling you that to get your sympathy (but if you want to give it, please feel free to do so). It was quite an unexpected lesson I started to learn as a pastor many years ago. And that is when Lent begins so does an unusual amount of trouble for the parishioners. Family troubles, personal problems, rough times, unhappy incidents and just a general all-around flurry of unfortunate situations. It took me a few years to make the connection but once I made it I have never forgotten it. This first week was not as bad as some other years—at least not for you, at least as far as I know. But this year it was worse for me and I wanted to talk about it a little today.

First these is fasting. If you’re not eating animal products the body rebels. It tells you that you’re dying of hunger which is clearly not the actual case. But I was thinking of food all the time, all the time. Nothing new there with Lenten fasting and I know it will soon go away, but it’s a big distraction in the beginning. What was much more of a problem was a general sense of dreariness, lack of desire to do anything, a lethargic disinterest in work and in life, and except for church services everything else seemed to be one joyless task after another. As I said I’m not looking for sympathy (but mother always taught me it was not polite to refuse what other people wanted to give you).

So what’s going on? Well, whether it’s me or whether it’s you, it tends to work in the same way. If you really want to do better in your life as a Christian, and you set out to try and improve your life in Christ, you can be pretty sure you are going to experience some trouble and hardship. And this is why I always see within the parish a bunch of troubles that come with the beginning of Lent, and this year a little bit more for me as well. How does it happen? From whence cometh these travails?

Well the first reason is just natural events. Sometimes a bunch of difficult things just happen to happen, and they just happen at the beginning of the great Fast. So you had a flat tire, you need a new water heater AND your dog has fleas. That is just the way life rolls some times.

But the second reason why life can be more difficult when we set ourselves to improve on our Christian vocation is because we rebel. We rebel against ourselves. “I wanna do good / I don’t wanna do good—I wanna be better / I don’t wanna be better—I wanna be holier / I don’t wanna be holier.” It’s not like it is just some type of conscious mental struggle, although it can be, but rather it is a rebellion that sits deeper within us, at the level of our soul. We have good intentions and good desires and we have no problem with them as long as they remain just good intentions and desires. But to actually put them into practice and struggle to change the course of our lives by giving up more sin and taking on more virtue, that’s when the rebellion rises. It is not necessarily a conscious fight although we can find ourselves clearly thinking about it sometimes. “I shouldn’t do that, but I think I will. I ought to be praying but I’m just so tired. It wasn’t right to snap at him, but he had it coming.” The rebellion may be conscious but it is more pervasive than that. It’s a whole personal spiritual struggle to more perfectly put on Christ and better conform our minds, our hearts and our souls to the great vocation that Jesus has called us to live. We may have solid and firm desires to do better, to live better, to be better but there is also a part of us that wants to keep us in the same old place where is seems so much easier and comfortable. This is what Jesus meant when He said, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”

The third reason the Lenten season can be tough for those who are working on it comes from Satan. If we are already struggling with ourselves to grow in Christ, it’s the perfect opportunity for the devil to jump in on the side of our weaker selves. “It’s too hard. It’s pointless. Why would you want to do more, you’re already doing so much, and look at other people who are so very terrible. You’re not like them. You are a very good person. You already have enough on your plate to deal with, why try to take on more? You don’t have to be a saint. Besides, you can try to be a better Christian tomorrow or somewhere down the road—you have too many good intentions that never end up in actual change because they are unrealistic. You don’t need to be that good. It’s impossible. You’re just an ordinary person not a martyr. Look around—you don’t see other people trying to be holy, do you? That’s because it’s not normal. Don’t you want to be normal and live like normal people? They’re not doing this, why should you?” And on and on. We can’t always know if our opposition to grace is from ourselves or from demonic temptation or from both. But it doesn’t really matter because we must struggle against it all, no matter what the source. We must struggle against it all even if, as we heard in the epistle, it’s not a matter of being stoned, or sawed in two, or put in chains, even if we are not wearing the skins of sheep and goats. We must struggle and persevere in our battle to be better and grow up more closely into the image and likeness of Christ our Lord. To persevere and not give up.

I was watching a program called “The Wheel” on TV. Six men and women signed up to do a 60-day survivalist challenge. They were sent to South America and each person had only a small amount of food, a tarp, a sleeping bag and a little bit of equipment. Each person was alone and set in a different type of environment—mountain, tropical, desert, wetland—and they had to survive there, on their own, all alone, for about two weeks, and then they would be switched to a different zone. The goal was to figure out how to survive for 60 days. One woman who had only been there for a couple of days decided to quit. I wondered why she even bothered in the first place. But what surprised me were her comments. “My family will be so proud of me for all I accomplished here. They will be proud to see how strong their mother is.” Lady! Two days!! False pride.

But only two men ended up lasting the whole 60 days. One was a young married man, the other was a 35-year-old father of five boys. Both of them were Christian and made it clear that faith was an important part of their lives. They talked to God, they talked about God, one was shown reading the Bible he had brought. How refreshing to see people who were not the creation of Hollywood script writers and who were not afraid to show their faith on TV. The young father was pretty good at fishing but he never caught any fish until he started singing hymns. If he had been singing Catholic hymns he probably would have caught a few chickens too. At the end of the 60 days and many, many hard and difficult days he made it clear the Lord had helped him to persevere through the hard times, and that his perseverance strengthened his faith in God and increased his love for his wife and children.

We too may suffer hardships if we work to grow in Christ this Lent. But no matter where the trouble may come from let us also persevere and stay strong in our good intentions and desires no matter how many times we may fail along the way. Like the heroic men and women in the letter to the Hebrews we look toward something so much better. As it says, “Let us put aside every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us. Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfection of our faith.”