HOMILY LENT WEEK 02 02 – Year II
The Making of a Lenten Stew
(Is 1:10-31; Ps 50; Mt 23:1-12)
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The readings today make a good stew. A stew includes some main ingredients, such as meat, potatoes, carrots, peas, garlic, and onion, and lots of spices. Then it is slow cooked to perfection.
The ingredients for our scriptural stew today are humility, repentance, justice, willingness, obedience and gratitude. Isaiah calls us to repentance. That is one of the main ingredients – the meat. Jesus on the other hand teaches us to be humble – another main ingredient, the potatoes.
Isaiah then speaks of repentance (Teshuva in Hebrew, Metanoia in Greek). Both mean a radical turning around, a complete about face, going in a different direction. Metanoia has the additional meaning of putting on our highest mind, or being the very best person God has created us to be.
Isaiah puts repentance into terms of justice: justice all over the place, just like carrots and peas – the vegetables: seek justice; rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan and plead for the widow. For Isaiah, repentance is far from being a sweet feeling of being sorry and saying a few prayers; it is a major shift to a practical taking on the plight of the marginalized, poor, voiceless and dispossessed – those without power in our society. He would agree very strongly with the approach of Pope Francis, which is live simply and reach out to the margins, the periphery, to take on the smell of the sheep.
Isaiah goes so far as to suggest we will be redeemed, forgiven, receive salvation, through acts of justice. That is strong language and a powerful stance. Along that same line, Jesus uses Semitic Hyperbole to underline the importance of his teaching about humility and genuine faith – we are to call no one rabbi, father or instructor, because he is all of those as the Messiah. That is not meant to be taken literally – we all have fathers and instructors, and many would follow a rabbi. Jesus is just underlining he must come first and be central in our lives, and that his teaching about humility is both critical and crucial for us if we are to follow him.
Now it is time for the spices – willingness, obedience and gratitude. Humility, repentance and seeking justice involve a willingness to learn God’s will, the obedience to do it, and above all, to do it all with gratitude. A grateful person is a happy person.
All in all – it amounts to a beautiful, Lenten stew, full of aroma and nourishment for the soul seeking to follow Christ into new life – to rid one’s self of all one’s sins, and to make a new heart and a new spirit, as the gospel acclamation puts it.
The Eucharist takes all these ingredients and makes it a divine stew fit for a heavenly banquet. So today, let us strive to live out our Lenten stew of humility, repentance, seeking for justice, willingness, obedience and gratitude. Amen.
I
It is a beautiful homily and reflection about making this Lenten stew . It is pretty much well written what are the main ingredients or requirements in making the divine stew . For us to strengthen our faith and to receive God’s unconditional love and mercy. We need to follow the steps and instructions provided by God or the chef. We need to be humble , powerless and selfless by sacrificing something dear to us in order to help the poor and unfortunate . We understand the pain and sufferings of these people by offering ourselves to help them. We feel sorry for these people. Next, we should go through repentance by admitting out faults and asking forgiveness and God will heal us. We should change our behavior and having a highest mind. Also , we should seek justice by making the right decision and sometimes we have to reach out to the margins just like the Covid – 19 out break . Lastly, we will be redeemed and sanctified when we have follow these steps and God has blessed us to be obedience and gratitude. We agreed to follow Jesus’ word with love and gratitude. We are to eat this divine stew as a heavenly banquet. Which is asking us to live out this Lenten Stew of humility, repentance , seeking justice, willingness, obedience and gratitude. Amen. Praise to you Lord Jesus Chridt.
It sounds delicious how you make the stew. We should be tempted to try it so we can live out the kingdom of God on this earth. It is beautiful how you use a recipe of making a stew to get your point across. I feel hungry seeing that beef stew. It is lovely. Gracias! Thanks Bishop Sylvain Lavoie . 😍😍😍😊😊🙏🏻🙏🏻🍲🍲