HOMILY WEEK 02 06 – Year I
Living in the Freedom of the Children of God:
Memorial of St. Agnes
(Heb 9:2-14; Ps 47; Mk 3:20-21)
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Amanda wrapped up an emotional talk at a Search weekend for youth by turning to towards me sitting close by, tears in her eyes, and asked a plaintive question, “I wonder if God will ever forgive me?”
The readings today invite us to trust totally in our God’s love, revealed by Jesus to be forgiveness and healing.
It seems to me that many people, for some reason, struggle to believe they are truly forgiven, and then to forgive themselves. One eighty-year-old man shared with me his feelings of guilt about a sexual sin he had committed forty years earlier. I mentioned to him the passages in the bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New, that God not only will put our sins as far from us as the East is to the West, but God will also “deal with our iniquity and not even remember it” (Hebrews 8:12). So, when God forgives, God forgives. If God forgets our sins, they don’t exist anymore, so why do we cling to our guilt over them?
According to The Word Among Us, the writer of the Hebrews understood that it’s not only about what we do; it’s about what Jesus has already done. By shedding his blood, Jesus has already won our forgiveness. Even more, he has already cleansed our consciences of that nagging sense of guilt that says, “I must be better. I must try harder.” We don’t have to convince him to forgive us or to welcome us back. Our good deeds are meant to be a response of gratitude for what Jesus has done, not an attempt to muster up enough goodness to please God.
By shedding his blood, Jesus has made us a new creation. His blood, his very life, changes everything it touches, even us! We can walk in freedom because we have already been made children of God, forgiven of every sin and washed clean by the power of Jesus’ blood.
This outpouring of God’s mercy, forgiveness and healing was so extravagant, and so out of the ordinary for the country people of Galilee, and even Jesus’ family and friends, that they thought he had lost it and set out to restrain him, as we hear in the gospel.
Ron Rolheiser OMI, who writes an article on suicide each year, often describing it as a moral cancer, receives more reaction to that article than anything else he writes. Many of the comments basically resist that message, claiming it is too good to be true! Yet on the cross, Jesus revealed to the whole world who our God truly is – humility, mercy, compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness and total non-violence.
What a loving God we have! What a merciful Saviour too! How can we help but worship him with all our hearts?
We are given someone to emulate today, who at a very young age, grasped this mystery of radical discipleship and redemptive suffering. The feast of St. Agnes has been celebrated on this day since the 4th century. Little is known about her. She was likely born in the early years of the 4th century, and was martyred at the age of 12 during a Roman persecution. She is a symbol of virginal innocence and has been pictured with a lamb as a symbol of this innocence since the Middle Ages. She can also teach us a lot about the values of purity and chastity, so overshadowed by unbridled lust and rampant sexuality in our present-day society.
One of the 6th century legends is that Agnes was a beautiful girl with many rivals for marriage. When she rejected the proposals, she was denounced to the governor as a Christian and sent to a house of prostitution. Those who came to visit her were struck with awe. One man apparently lost his sight while looking at her, but later regained it through her prayers. She was eventually brought before a judge, condemned and executed. She stands as a patron saint for many people, including girls, gardeners and engaged couples.
Here is what the Office of Readings writes about her: “A new kind of martyrdom! Too young to be punished, yet old enough for a martyr’s crown; unfitted for the contest, yet effortless in victory, she shows herself a master in valour despite the handicap of youth. As a bride she would not be hastening to join a husband with the same joy she shows as a virgin on her way to punishment, crowned not with flowers but with holiness of life, adorned not with braided hair but with Christ himself. What menaces there were from the executioner, to frighten her; what promises made, to win her over; what influential people desired her in marriage! She answered: ‘To hope that any other will please me does wrong to my Spouse. I will be his who first chose me for himself. Executioner, why do you delay? If eyes that I do not want can desire this body, then let it perish.’ She stood still, she prayed, she offered her neck.” Truly, she was that new wineskin of obedience to Christ and now fully enjoys the new wine of eternal salvation.
The Eucharist makes present that unconditional love of God Jesus offers us on the cross, and is itself an experience of forgiveness and healing. May our celebration today strengthen our faith in Jesus and God’s love incarnate, and empower us to out our lives in the freedom of the children of God.
