HOMILY WEEK 21 02 – Year II
Standing Firm and Holding Fast:
Optional Memorial of St. Rose of Lima
(2 Thes 2:1-3,14-17; Ps 96; Mt 23:23-26)
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There is a legend about St. Francis who when asked what he would do if Jesus was coming that day, replied that he would keep on hoeing in the garden.
In the readings today, St Paul invites us to do the same – to stand fast and hold firm in our faith.
Current doomsday and apocalyptic scenarios from time to time can be unsettling. How should we respond?
The first reading and the gospel combine to provide an answer. Jesus in the gospel chides the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy and focus on external things instead of practicing justice, mercy and faith. He then invites them to clean the inside of the cup – to look within, repent, and go on a healing journey of conversion.
The first thing we need do is to hold fast to faith in God’s mercy and justice. That is our anchor. We need to believe in how much God loves us, and how merciful our God is. Pope Francis dwells on this. Rick Warren talks about how he used to watch his children sleep – their breathing, little chests going up and down. He derived pleasure just from watching his children sleep. They didn’t have to do anything – just be there, breathing and sleeping.
It is the same with God and us. We are God’s children. Imagine if you as parents love your children that way, unconditionally, without them having to do anything, how much more God loves us the same way. So, we must hold fast to God’s love and mercy, and be on healing journeys ourselves. Conversion is both a moment and a lifetime process. Justice for St Paul is a right relationship with God, others, ourselves and all of God’s creation. So, to hold fast to justice is to be sure that we are in a right relationship with God, an intimate relationship of loving obedience.
Second, we need to stand firm, trying our best to live the life that God has given us, doing God’s will, and not worrying about the future. God’s kingdom is at hand whether we are scrubbing pots, writing reports, driving carpools or hauling trash.
We need to develop our ability to find God in the normality of our everyday lives, and to live in the present moment. We need to be practicing mercy and acting justly in our world, especially by loving others and working for justice, unlike the scribes and Pharisees.
Each day offers the opportunity to draw closer to God, to mend broken relationships, and to care for God’s people. If we are trying to do this each day, our fears and worries will dissolve. We will grow in confidence that we are living each day to its fullest, and we will be more peaceful.
In fact, we may even be able to live out the words of Psalm 96, and rejoice and exult for joy that Jesus is coming again to judge the peoples with equity, to judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with his truth.
The church today offers us an example of someone who lived this gospel fully – St. Rose of Lima. Rose was born in Peru in 1586 and died on August 15, 1617. While still a young girl, she embraced a selfless life of prayer, devotion and penance which she practiced to an extreme, subjecting her body to austerities as well as deprivation of food and sleep. Rose was confirmed in 1597 by the Archbishop of Lima, Toribio de Mogrovejo, who was also to be declared a saint. She refused to marry and became a Dominican tertiary at the age of 20. Rose lived in a small hut in her parents’ garden, working to help support them, and also cared for the sick, the poor, the Indigenous and slaves. Her asceticism and her intense spiritual experiences (periods of darkness and desolation as well as mystical experiences) aroused some criticism from her family and friends and the suspicion of Church authorities. Nevertheless, in 1671, she became the first person in the Americas to be canonized and is patron saint of South America.
The Eucharist is in its own way, an experience of holding fast to God’s love though Word and Sacrament, and standing firm in our commitment to be bread to the world.
May our celebration be truly an experience of holding fast to God’s love and mercy, and standing firm in our commitment to love one another and the world as did St. Rose of Lima.
