Why do we need a Savior? Homily for Sunday, March 17, 2024

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How often to we talk to or about Jesus? Especially compared to the other things we might talk about?

Why do we need a Savior?

One description of Saint Dominic is that he was known to speak to God or about God. And that was the description of his life. It wasn’t an occasional thing. It wasn’t something he did some of the time. His focus was always on speaking to God or about God.

And I think there’s an interesting question that might arise as we think about our own lives. Do we spend most of our time speaking to God or about God? Or do we speak about other things? Here are some things we might speak about, because I will tell you I speak far too often about things that probably aren’t worthwhile speaking about at all.

If we were to keep track of the times we talked about politics or Jesus, what would the score be? If we were to keep track of the times that we spent talking about the latest episode of something on Netflix or Jesus, what would the score be? If we were to keep track of the time we spent talking about others, either good or bad, or talking about Jesus, what would the score be?

You see my point. I know in my life I spend too much time in conversations that I would suggest are frivolous, and sometimes even harmful. But I think the answer is the same.

Today we get an encounter from foreigners, or at least diaspora Jews, those spread out, they’re Greeks, because of the exile, who want to see Jesus. And they clearly have some indication that Andrew and Philip are connected with Jesus, because they go to Philip and they say, “We’d like to see Jesus.” Philip tells Andrew, “Andrew is always one who seems to be telling.”

It was Andrew who went out and found his brother to introduce him to Jesus, and his brother happened to be the Apostle Peter. The question I think for us is, does the quality of our lives, do the conversations we have, do the ways in which we act, cause people to want to know the Jesus that we know and love and serve?

Why does this matter? Because we’re a Catholic Church. We’re not a political action group. We’re not simply a social club. We’re more. We are those things.

It’s not that we should never talk about fundamental values or principles or the way we should interact in society. But primarily we come here because we know Jesus and we love Him, and we want to serve Him and we want to follow Him.

And over and over and over again, throughout the history of the Church, for centuries of the Church, there’s been a focus on what is necessary for growth in the spiritual life. It’s contemplation. It’s silence. I know I say that a lot, but I think we live in a time where we have to be silent in the presence of God.

A few weeks ago I shared an update from our Dominican friars in Ukraine. They had war there for a couple of years now. It’s interesting in listening to them describe the interactions of the people who have suffered so dramatically in this war. What is their biggest miss? What is the thing that they find the greatest loss, the hardest difficulty?

Not being able to go to Mass and to go to confession. That should get our attention. Is that our greatest concern? Is our greatest concern, as we look at the Church in the United States, will we be able to go to Mass? Will we be able to go to confession? Will we be able to celebrate the sacraments?

We say in this country we have a priest shortage. I am absolutely of the opposite opinion. There is no shortage of priests in the United States. We can get to Mass. We can celebrate the sacraments.

If we were to live in Brazil, we might get to church two or three times a year. If we were to look at many places in Africa where the practice of the faith is exploding, we might not get to Mass any more often. A priest who was at the fish dinner on Friday, we got talking about Nigeria. The practice of the faith, 90% of Catholics in Nigeria go to Mass on a regular basis when they can, when it’s available.

The question is, do we help people to recognize that there is something that’s fundamentally powerful in this relationship with Jesus, or are we talking about other things first? There’s a deep connection. I’ve mentioned it before. It starts with the love of God.

But it has to then spill over into the way that we love our neighbor as ourselves. But it starts with the love of God. It starts with our relationship with Jesus. And today’s readings take a very dramatic change.

Because we need a Savior, and that’s what Jesus is pointing out. It’s the time of judgment. And He’s saying if we don’t pay attention to this relationship with Him and to this covenant, it could end badly. But He doesn’t want that. He wants us to be saved. He loves us. He wants to forgive our sins. He wants to heal our brokenness.

Look at the world in which we live. We cannot focus only on this world, because quite frankly, this world is a mess. It’s the next world that’s always our focus. We do what we can for this world, yes. But in order that we might live forever with Jesus in the next.

I know that some people react with a funny face when the Baltimore Catechism is mentioned. But there was a great answer to this question. Why did God make us? And those of you of a certain generation will remember the answer. God made us to know, love, and serve Him in this life so we could live forever with Him in the next.

Okay, there’s a lot in the know, live, and serve. I won’t get into all of that. But it’s the connection between this love of God and love of neighbor. And we are this week, we have two weeks left of Lent. And our focus is to say in a more intense way, how is prayer, fasting, and almsgiving going to enable us to so cooperate with God’s grace that we can change the world?

St. Dominic is often pictured with a torch and a dog, because his mother had a dream that she gave birth to a dog with a torch that would set the world on fire. St. Catherine of Siena said, “If you were who you were made to be, you would set the world ablaze.”

This is the time we focus on who it is we were made to be. And if we do that, we will be so bothered by people wanting to meet Jesus that we will be overwhelmed.

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