"Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him..." (Revelation 3:20) A collection of my Sunday homilies for Holy Mass as well as some occasional talks and reflections. May my words enable you to hear the voice of Christ, who asks that you open the door to Him. Please share this podcast with others if you benefit from listening to it.
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Repentance is a key word and message from Our Lord in today's gospel. Repentance can be sudden and it is called conversion, like on the death bed. But far better is the conversion, or reversion to lost faith, that is lived out in good and holy living in this life and thereby honouring God who gives the gift of Faith and who, in Christ, has gained for us eternal salvation.
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I heard this really Catholic story recently. It's somewhat like a contemporary parable. There was once a brother and sister who were raised Catholic. The sister went off to be a nun and was sent to work with the poor in Africa. She had a hard life. The brother, whose name was John, fell away from the faith and lived an extremely sinful life, actually coming to despise the faith. This caused no end of sorrow for his sister, who offered up all her sufferings for his reversion to the faith. Eventually she received word that her brother had died, and then she inquired if he had received the last rites. She was told he had spat at the priest, yelled at him to leave the room, rolled his head over toward the wall, and died. His sister was spiritually crippled by the news, and mourned to our Lord how such a thing could happen after her life of sacrifice for his salvation. Owing to her great sorrow and especially her spiritual distress, our Lord appeared to her. He revealed to her what really happened that last moment of John's life. He showed her that after he had spat at the priest and turned towards the wall, a split second before John died, our Lord appeared to him, showing his sacred heart, and said John, will you spit on me now? John said to our Lord, Jesus have mercy on me, and died. Our blessed Lord revealed to the sister it was her sufferings and sacrifices that had merited John that final grace, that last chance, and that he had been saved, though probably with much time in purgatory. Deathbed conversions or reversions do happen. I've assisted quite a few people to come back to the church and to the faith in which they were baptized as they draw closer to death. I haven't experienced anything quite like John's story though. I tell that story today because of the stark words from the Lord Jesus in the gospel reading of today's Mass. His words are unsettling unless you repent you will all perish. Strong words, aren't they? As we are reminded in Hebrews chapter two verse three, to reject or even neglect Christ's call to repentance is to gamble with disaster. History demonstrates the truth of what the Lord says. He goes on to tell the parable about the fig tree that does not bear fruit. The owner wants to cut it down, but the one who cares for the vineyard cautions patience for another year, as he tends and fertilizes it. There's some biblical coded language here. The fig tree is biblical representation of Israel. While God found generally no repentance in Israel, he was patient and gave them three years to accept the Messiah he sent, his only son. The absence of repentance in Jerusalem would bring dire consequences and divine judgment upon the city, with its siege and wholesale destruction by the Romans in seventy AD.
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Paul in the second reading harks back to the exodus of Israel from Egypt, and demonstrates that the events of the Exodus are a warning. There was no guarantee that any who left Egypt would reach the promised land of salvation, just because they were among those God rescued from slavery. At any moment Jesus warns in today's gospel we could perish, not as God's punishment for being great sinners, though that is a real possibility, but because like the Israelites in the wilderness, we stumble into evil desires, we fall into grumbling against God, we backslide into bad habits, and forget all that God has done for us. Repentance is not a one time change of heart, but an ongoing daily transformation of our lives. It requires constant alertness and a regular spiritual life of prayer, fasting and penance. The rigors of Lent are meant to be present in our life always, not just now. Repentance is also an acknowledgement that we do not live a benign existence, where a person may do whatever he or she pleases, and God gives the ticket to heaven. Rather we are in a constant spiritual battle within ourselves and around us. Evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the evil one, the angel who opposes God. His name in Greek Diabolos means the one who throws himself across God's plan and God's work of salvation accomplished in Christ, so as to disrupt it at every turn. In the Our Father we pray to be delivered from evil. After the Our Father at Holy Mass the priest asks God that we might be delivered from every evil. Repentance with the mercy of God undoes all the harm that the devil and his fallen angels accomplish. That's why it's so important to go to the sacrament of confession often. Lent should be for us like the season of reprieve given to the fig tree, a graced period in which we let the gardener, who is Christ, cultivate our hearts, uprooting what chokes the divine life in us through confession, and strengthen us through many reverent holy communions, to bear fruits that will last into eternity. Laudator Jesus Christus
