HOMILY WEEK 28 04 – Year I
Justified by Faith or Works?
Optional Memorial of St. Callistus I
(Rm 3:21-30; Ps 130; Lk 11:47-54)
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Someone once said that if Christians wanted others to believe in their redeemer, they needed to act more redeemed.
The readings today invite us to live the fullness of our redemption.
St. Paul, in the first reading, becomes very much the theologian as he addresses the complex issues of redemption and justification by faith. But how do these issues apply to us? Put simply, faith in Jesus the redeemer justifies us by placing us within a right relationship with God.
What St. Paul is talking about centers on the two-fold mission of Jesus Christ – to redeem and to sanctify, to forgive and to heal.
Looking at redemption first, to be redeemed by Jesus is to come to him to receive his unconditional love as forgiveness of all our sins. The scriptures offer us insights that can help us appreciate being forgiven. In psalm 103:12, God tells us that “as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgression from us.” In Isaiah 43:25, God proclaims “I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” In Isaiah 65:17, God adds “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” And in the New Testament, in Hebrews 8:12, God affirms that teaching with the words, “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.”
This all means that God actually forgets our sins, and if God does not remember them, they no longer exist! Now that is forgiveness! We can’t seem to forget them, but God can. At least that knowledge can help us to believe in the depth of God’s forgiveness, even if we still remember what we have done.
An elderly gentleman, who was troubled by some sexual sins of his youth, and who found himself confessing them repeatedly, was helped to let go of them by this explanation that they no longer existed. And a person who did a genuine Step 5 of the AA program (Admit to God, ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs) was set free when her list of sins was burned in a ceremony and all that was left were the ashes that disappeared when she blew them away. That was when it really hit her that her sins, in God’s eyes, did not exist anymore – she was truly forgiven.
Turning to the second part of the two-fold mission of Jesus, to sanctify us, involves healing. There is a difference between sin and sinfulness. Sin is what we do; sinfulness is that which makes us sin – our painful emotions such as anger and resentment, our defects of character such as false pride and stubborn self-will, and our addictions. For that we need healing more than forgiveness, and that is what Jesus does – heals us by filling us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit that gently and eventually push out our sinfulness. This whole process – being redeemed and sanctified, forgiven and healed, is what St. Paul means by his claim that we are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
It is very interesting that the 12 Step program has at its core precisely that two-fold mission of Jesus – to redeem and sanctify. Steps 4 & 5, 8 & 9 are all about redemption, experiencing forgiveness for all our sins. Steps 6 & 7 are all about sanctification, experiencing healing of our painful emotions and defects of character (especially anger and false pride, respectively).
The psalm response continues the theme of redemption: “With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.” It also adds a critical element – waiting. This whole process of sanctification or healing happens best through contemplative prayer, or biblically, waiting. We can come to the Lord for forgiveness by confessing our sins and receiving that forgiveness, but it can’t stop there or we will simply sin again in the same way. We must humbly come to the Lord for healing of our sinfulness, and that is not something that can be forced. It is something that is done unto us. Our task is to live that last stanza of the psalm, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word, I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning.” That is contemplative prayer that allows God, who works best in silence, to transform our minds and heal our hearts.
St. Callistus
Today we honor St. Callistus. Most of what we know about Callistus, an early pope, was written by a hostile opponent, St. Hippolytus, and must be carefully interpreted. From his early years, Callistus was the slave of a Christian. Honest and intelligent, he was put in charge of a bank that eventually failed. For this and other incidents, he was arrested and sentenced to labor in Sardinian mines. About 199, Pope Zephyrinus made the enfranchised Callistus (freed earlier by his original master) his deacon and counsellor and put him in charge of the first official Christian cemetery in Rome, known today as San Callisto cemetery. In 217, Callistus was elected pope and, despite strong opposition, introduced humanitarian reforms. He met a violent death about 222, probably during an uprising against Christians, and was buried on the Via Aurelia.
The Eucharist brings faith, redemption, justification and contemplation all together into one harmonious whole. Certainly, it is an act of deep faith in the presence of the Risen Lord in Word and Sacrament. It is our greatest prayer that involves contemplation as a moment of intimate silent communing with the God we have just received in the Eucharist. We receive forgiveness or redemption through the penitential rite, and we are healed or justified by the whole celebration.
May our celebration of the Eucharist and this memorial today truly empower and justify us, through forgiveness and healing, to live the fullness of our redemption, as did St. Callistus.
