Faith-Forgiveness-Healing

HOMILY ADVENT DECEMBER 23

An Infinite Horizon of Faith, Forgiveness and Healing

(Mal 3:1-4; 4:5-6; Ps 25; Lk 1:57-66)

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Bishop Olivier Tremblay, an Oblate who previously worked with university students in Eastern Canada, spoke at an Oblate symposium once. He noted that youth today lack hope, because they don’t have an infinite horizon of faith into which they can situate the events of their lives. They are at the mercy of what happens to them any particular day, and if that is too painful, like a break-up of a relationship, they may even take their own lives.

Today’s readings offer us an infinite horizon of the possibility of renewed relationships through faith, forgiveness and healing.

Our faith, according to Malachi, is in the one who “comes suddenly to his temple,” the “messenger of the covenant in whom we delight,” the one who will refine us. According to the psalm, it is in a “good and upright Lord” who redeems, teaches, guides and is steadfast love. And we know according to John the Baptist, our faith is in Jesus who is all these things, plus the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. As Archbishop Emeritus Adam Exner OMI teaches, our faith is in Jesus who came as the Messiah with a two-fold mission: to redeem and to sanctify; to forgive and to heal. That is our infinite horizon of faith filling us with hope for transformation.

That transformation involves relationships. Spirituality is all about relationships and connectedness. As human beings in this world, we operate on four levels of relationships: with God, others, ourselves and all of God’s creation.

It begins with a covenant relationship with God, who consistently desires an intimate covenant relationship with God’s people, beginning with a couple, Adam and Eve, then a family, Noah, then a tribe, Abraham, then a nation, Moses. With David, it became a covenant of unconditional love, and with Jesus, it culminates in a humble covenant of mercy, forgiveness, compassion, unconditional love and total non-violence, sealed in the sacrifice of his body and blood.

Malachi speaks of one who is like a refiner’s fire and fuller’s soap, who will purify and refine the Israelites into holiness and righteousness. This connects with the two-fold mission of the Messiah – to redeem and sanctify, to forgive our sins and heal us of our sinfulness, to “purify” and to “refine”. He refers to the return of Elijah, whom we know was John the Baptist, who would turn the hearts of parents to their children, and vice versa. And we know John the Baptist in turn spoke of Jesus who would baptize with power and the Holy Spirit, who would take away sin, unlike his baptism with water that could only point out sin and call to repentance.

It is only Jesus who can truly redeem and sanctify us. Redemption comes to us, as the psalmist proclaims, when we repent, confess and come to him to receive his forgiveness for our sinful actions. But there is more. Sanctification comes to us when we pray for healing of our sinfulness (that which made us sin). That healing is what truly transforms us into Christlikeness and helps us walk in God’s ways and paths.

As an example, Bob took seriously a retreat director’s suggestion to look at the pattern of his sins, and find the main one. What he found, after some painful prayerful reflection, was he did not really trust in the providence of God to be there and care for him in the end. As a result, he had accumulated and surrounded himself with material comforts and all the latest gadgets. Now he realized he had to start divesting himself of these items as a sign of his deeper awareness and growing faith in God.

To my mind, and in the light of steps 4 – 9 of the 12 Step Program, what Bob did was discover his core defect of character or sinfulness (that which makes us sin) – lack of trust, and his resultant sin or wrong-doing – spending money on superfluous material things. This was his Advent “going into the desert” of his shadow side, conversion and coming out a better person.

A related example is John, who was intrigued by Bob’s experience, and inspired to do the same examination of his own life. A very painful and costly incident suddenly became part of that process. He had purchased a bike worth thousands of dollars and was transporting it home when it fell off a trailer because he neglected to check how securely it was tied down before setting out on the second leg of the journey.

That incident became even more bitter when he learned the bike was damaged beyond repair, and his insurance did not cover the damage, so this would be a $6,500 hit to his wallet. After beating himself up for a while, he began to see this incident in the light of Bob’s process, and had to ask himself some hard questions – especially why he did not take the time to check the tie-downs on the bike. Then he remembered something his sister-in-law had shared with him forty years earlier: her impression that he acted like he was above the law, something he brushed off at that time and pushed to the back of his mind.

Now, as a much older person, that reality was coming home to roost, and he had to face and admit that his core defects of character (or sinfulness) were a sense of entitlement, that indeed he in many ways acted as if he was above the law, that normal rules did not apply to him, made worse by a persistent impatience and drivenness to his life. His sin or wrong-doing flowing out of that dark hidden inner side of him, was carelessness, taking unnecessary risks and chances, and sometimes cutting people off when driving, causing them to blow their horn at him. On top of that, he realized he had just blown thousands of dollars that could have been used to help the poor. He resolved to share this during his next confession, receive God’s forgiveness, and pray earnestly for healing. As painful as all this was, he actually began to feel some gratitude at this new awareness, hope that he would finally, finally heal of these life-long defects, and experience the serenity only Jesus the Messiah could give.

A final element Malachi brings out is the healing of relationships – hearts of parents and children turned to each other. There is as great a need for that now as ever, with so many families struggling with dysfunction and woundedness, and people finding it so challenging to get along in the workplace.

After both my parents passed away, I invited my siblings to the family farm house where we grew up, for a family healing retreat. We prayed together, shared our stories to catch up on each other’s history, did some family imaging, some forgiving, celebrated the Eucharist together and finished with a family supper. At that time some of us were also getting involved in Engaged Encounter and Marriage Encounter which, with its focus on feelings, helped us to communicate more deeply and effectively. We experienced some healing of hearts turning towards each other.

That experience has led me to conduct several other family retreats, some at the Star of the North. Most often, there is recovery from an addiction involved, and the need to heal the wounds of family members affected by that addiction. Humble faith and communicating with love, offering forgiveness and seeking forgiveness, is at the core of these retreats. And every time I am involved in such a retreat, I can’t help but think of that line from Malachi, “He will turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the hearts of children to their parents.”

The Eucharist we celebrated as part of our family retreat was the best way we could have ended our retreat – giving thanks to God for the gift of his Son Jesus by offering him back the same gift that he gave to us – the one who redeems and sanctifies, forgives and heals, who makes us whole.

May our celebration today strengthen our faith in Jesus as redeemer and healer, renew our relationships at all levels, and provide us with that infinite horizon of faith and hope that empowers us to love as he has loved us.