My brothers and sisters in Christ last Sunday the Church gave us the
Holy Gospel of the Prodigal son; the younger son who takes all of his possessions,
leaves the father behind and goes off to the excitement of the big city,
and the story of the old son who remains behind serving the father, but
all the while seeing it as slavery rather than freedom.
It is a tremendous sign of the times, it seems to me, that there is
a great boredom at the end of the twentieth century, it seems as the more
complicated our lives become and the more that there is in our lives, the
more bored we become. It seems as though the more noise there is, the more
difficult it is for us to find anything of interest.
C. S. Louis long ago said that the language of heaven is silence and
adoration, and the language of hell is noise. An infernal, eternal, never
ending noise in which nothing is important and we can think no thoughts
because all is noise. We find ourselves living in a time, my brothers and
sisters, when many, many people are bored by religion. The world is so
noisy that they find religion, with its silence and adoration to be boring.
They are bored by the holy things of God. Many people actually are bored
by God Himself.
Now, it’s OK to be bored by homilies, but it’s not OK to be bored by
God Himself.
There are so many people in this world that are caught up with the
things of this world but not God. The world fascinates us, but not God.
The concerns of this world occupy many people ninety-nine percent of the
time, and when at last return to God and return to the things of God, they
seem pretty unexciting. Many like the younger son would much rather look
to the things of this world for excitement than the things of God and the
things of our Holy Faith. Many of us would rather run off to the city rather
than like the older son remain with the Father, who begrudges all of this
time spent in service of the Father.
Now, the reading from Saint Paul is very different; and Saint Paul
is very different. He says: "I have come to raid all as lost in the light
of my Lord Jesus Christ." Doesn’t sound like he’s bored with the Lord Jesus.
He goes on: "For His sake I have forfeited everything, I have accounted
everything rubbish so that Christ may be my wealth, and I may be in Him."
Saint Paul is absolutely possessed by God, in the best sense of the word,
he is on fire for God. There is an ardent love within him for the things
of God and the things of religion, and he says: I want to be rid of anything
else that distracts me.
Why the difference between Saint Paul and our modern world? What is
the difference that leaves now many people bored but Saint Paul so passionate?
Well, there is a hint in the reading; it goes on and says: "I give no thought
to what lies behind but push on to what lies ahead. My entire attention
is on the finish line, as I run toward the prize to which God calls me,
life on-high in Christ Jesus." We are often fixed on the past; Saint Paul
says: I leave the past behind me. And what was the past that Saint Paul
left behind him? What was his past? Well take a look at the window, we
know a bit from that window. He is being knocked off his horse, he is being
blinded by the light which is Christ, and he is with companions on the
road to Damascus. And what was he going to do in Damascus? What was he
going to do when he got there? He was going to kill Christians. We do not
know how many hundreds of families Saint Paul destroyed; we do not know
how many hundreds of people Saint Paul had executed because they loved
the Lord Jesus, and he saw them as a threat to the order in Israel. We
do not know how many murders Saint Paul had on his hands. And there he
is on his horse getting ready to murder again, our Lord knocks him from
the horse, he sees the light which is Christ, he gives his entire heart,
soul, mind, will and strength to the One who reveals Himself and can save
him, and in the giving, his sins are forgiven.
That’s the past that he leaves behind him, the past of sin, the past
of ignoring the will of God; and now he looks at the finish line which
is Christ. God’s grace is not in the past and the sins that he committed,
just as it’s not in the past for us and the sins we have committed, but
it lies in the future in the finish line, in serving our Lord now and rejoicing
with Him at the finish line in heaven.
The woman caught in adultery in today’s Holy Gospel; the crowd wants
to take her out of the city and stone her to death because the law of Moses
said that when a man and a woman are caught in adultery they are to be
taken out of the city and killed, so that their sin leaves Israel. They
catch the woman, they bring her before our Lord Jesus, and as the woman
looks around her at the crowd she sees that every person to a man, despises
her and wants her death. Everyone despises her except one, and that’s the
One who is to judge her, and so her eyes are fixed on the face of the Judge
which is Jesus the Lord. And there instead of hatred she sees compassion
and she sees a profound love for her. And so she fixes all of her hope
on this face and on the eyes of the Judge who loves her. She fixes all
of her hope on Jesus, the only one who can possibly save her from the crowd,
who can possibly save her from the people who are filled with lust for
her blood. Like Saint Paul, standing there before the Lord Jesus accused
she certainly doesn’t find the things of religion boring, she certainly
doesn’t find the Lord Jesus boring. He is the only one that can save her,
He is the only one that can give her life. Her life depends upon Him, and
so her eyes, her heart, her mind, her will are riveted on the heart of
Jesus the Lord because He alone is her hope. And so our Lord says to her:
"Has no one condemned you?" "No one Sir." She replies, "nor do I condemn
you, you may go, but from now on sin no more." We can only imagine the
joy with which the woman left. She walked away from our Lord being profoundly
transformed, and I can only imagine her saying to herself: "I will never
sin again, I will do nothing with the rest of my life but give it to the
One who has given life to me. Sin no more He told me, of course I will
never sin, He saved me. Nothing is as important as He."
Tradition tells us that she was present at the tomb of our Lord Jesus
on Easter morning when He rose from the dead. Our lifts her up from being
and adulteress to being a witness of the resurrection on behalf of all
mankind. Jesus alone loved her, He alone had the power to forgive her and
to Him alone does she give from now on her first love and her first obedience.
She certainly never found again the things of religion to be boring; for
her they were a thing of life and death. And so they are for us.
If we find ourselves being bored by the things of God, and even by
the thought of prayer with God, or giving ourselves to God, we ask that
He show us how much we are sinners, how weak we are that like Saint Paul
on the horse and the woman before the crowd, we need God! And what we need
we never find boring. Let us ask God to convict us that you and I need
our Lord like we need breath itself and even more.
The key for us in our modern world is this: Saint Paul and this woman
are completely overwhelmed by the greatness of God’s forgiveness, and alongside
this, nothing else in the world matters a great deal. They abandoned everything
else as rubbish beside Christ Jesus our Lord.
And so you and I, by all means we approach the Sacrament of confession,
we approach the judgment seat of Jesus this Lent just like the woman caught
in adultery; our sins are different, but our guilt is the same. We come
before our Lord, and once forgiven we always look ahead and never behind.
We are heading toward Christ Jesus and any backward glance at the things
of this world, at our past sin can only hurt us, for our past sin is forgiven
and there is for us only Christ Jesus our Lord.
