Mid-Term time for Lent: Homily for Sunday, March 3, 2024

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We are about half way trough this season of Lent. How would you grade yourself in prayer, fasting and almsgiving? And what can you do to improve your grade?

Mid-Term time for Lent

Well, as I said at the beginning, we are about halfway through the season of Lent. And the purpose of Lent is change. It’s repentance. We should be qualitatively different at the end of the season of Lent than we were at the start. We should be more deeply in faith and in love with Jesus Christ, and we should more deeply be able to love God and to love our neighbor.

And the first reading, or the first prayer today, the opening prayer reminds us that the reason we need to think about all of this is sin. Sin has fallen out of fashion. To talk about it, we don’t like it. I would say that on some level we wish we never talked about it. But I think it might be helpful as we think about a little bit of evaluating where we’re at this Lent to think of the words of Cardinal George.

Cardinal George said this, “We live in a time where everything is permitted, but nothing is forgiven.” Think about that line for a minute. We live in an age where everything is permitted, but nothing is forgiven. Now, why do I think that that’s an important thing to think about?

At least in my own life, it’s a lot easier to point fingers at other people or situations in the world that are not faithful to the gospel. It’s easy for me, for example, to get angry and point fingers at suffering that’s occurring in places like Gaza and Ukraine. But harder to acknowledge that I contribute to that violence in the way in which I treat others.

It’s easy to point fingers at this politician or that politician for this policy or that policy, but harder to acknowledge my own sinfulness and complicitness in the sins that I condemn. It’s easy in our life, I think, to point fingers at others, but not always easy to acknowledge before Almighty God and the Church that I am a sinner.

But the first opening prayer gives us the remedy. So it is not just that God accuses us and then says, “Well, you’re on your own. Good luck.” God also gives us the remedy for sin. And what did we hear that was in the opening prayer? I won’t give a test. I’ll tell you. Prayer, fasting, almsgiving. We heard in the opening prayer that that’s the remedy for sin.

And so as we think about this particular moment in our lives, this stage where we’re at with Lent, maybe it’s a good opportunity for us to think about, how have we grown in prayer during this season of Lent? How are we more prayerful? What specifically can we point to to say, “Well, that’s the way I used to be with prayer, but here’s how God has changed my life, and this is how I am now more prayerful.”

Or perhaps I look at the sacrifices I make in my life, which is what fasting is all about, to remove from my life those areas where I’m selfish or I don’t think of others, I don’t consider the needs, to sacrifice so that I might clearly be more aware of the ways in which I don’t consider others, particularly those on the margins, those who don’t have even the most basic human needs.

And am I generous? So, for example, I used to say, because one of the popular sacrifices for Lent was giving up chocolate. And I used to say, particularly when I taught high school, “Well, what do you do with the money you save from the chocolate you don’t buy?” See, it’s not an exercise in willpower, it’s a changing of the heart.

So when we do something for Lent, we should also then find ourselves more generous by the way in which we help others. With each of these areas, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, the idea is to look and to be able to identify where have we grown closer to Jesus in each of these areas. Now, I’d like to offer one other thing.

In my previous life, before I got here, between the high school and the parishes I filled in at, I heard confessions every single day. I heard them every single day. Because increasingly when people celebrated the sacrament of confession, they found themselves healed. They found their lives changed.

They were able to recognize more clearly how much it was that God loved them. And I’ve got to be blunt, I miss that a lot. I miss hearing lots of confessions, not because I think people are terribly sinful, but because I’m aware of the brokenness of the human heart and the very few opportunities we really have to be assured that Jesus loves us.

You see, the purpose of the sacrament of confession is not to beat ourselves up. It is to ask God to heal our hearts and our souls. Now, I mention this because this week in particular, we have an opportunity to go to confession and to be healed. Our healing and reconciliation service will be this Tuesday at 11 a.m. I’ll be available also for confessions at 7 p.m.

It’s a life-giving and life-changing sacrament. Maybe your experience of it wasn’t very popular or very wonderful or very tremendous. My first confession was not a good experience for me. It took me a while to come around to it again.

But my regular practice of going to confession has changed my life. It has helped me to grow closer to Jesus. It has helped me to acknowledge my brokenness. And it’s helped me to understand a little bit better the brokenness that others feel. I just invite you to give it a chance. It can change your life. And if you can’t come on Tuesday, every Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m., I’m here for the sacrament of confession. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Half of Lent remains. Ask God to help you to grow in those areas.

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