Sunday, , February 19, 2023

 SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

(Leviticus 19:1-2.17-18; I Corinthians 3:16-23; Matthew 6:38-48)

We are about to begin a forty-day journey. It is not an individual, family, or even a local community trip. The journey will include all members of the Church throughout the world. It is the annual Lenten retreat that will take us to our Savior in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. As a gesture of wayfarer solidarity we have been told not to eat meat on Fridays during the forty days. Also, we should support one another in our individual acts of self-denial. Some will be abstaining from chocolates for Lent. Others, perhaps more rigorous types, will give up their daily allotment of coffee.

We make the Lenten retreat with the whole Church because God has called us to form his reconstituted people. We will be resembling the Israelites in the first reading. They travel through the desert for forty years so that God can form them as his special people. They have to learn how to be holy like Him; that is, just and truthful, prudent and, above all, merciful.  The motive of this enterprise is more than the edification of individuals.  Rather, God wants to use them, and now us, to instruct the world in His ways.

It is quite a difficult order to fill, particularly when considering the human tendency to sin. We need God's help without which we would be as lost as walkers in a desert storm. Help will come to us precisely as a result of the Lenten journey. As Paul says in the second reading, God forms us as the "temple of the Holy Spirit."

This title implies tasks for us both inside and outside the community. First, outside, it is specifically the laity’s responsibility to transform the world according to the gospel. They do it by living their lives in ways demonstrative of the Holy Spirit. A kindergarten teacher comes to class prepared and excited about her work. A coffee kiosk owner gives the homeless man his breakfast. These small acts sow seeds of the Kingdom. Although not required, many lay people have ministries within the church. Instructing catechism, which they have done for centuries, as well reading the Word of God and distributing Holy Communion at mass can be counted as ministries.

Christ puts us on the Lenten journey today with the part of the Sermon on the Mount that most anticipates our destiny. In the Kingdom of God we will not experience enmities. Rather everyone will treat one another with love. We disciples of Christ have to practice this universal love today. Lent serves us as training. First, we must condition ourselves not to react defensively when other people mistreat us. This is not a matter of allowing a bully to brutalize us, but of not worrying about how we appear to other people. Instead of returning insult for insult and blow for blow, we leave the other person marveling at how the Holy Spirit has rendered us peaceful and kind in the midst of threats and insults.

As for the love of the enemy, let us recall Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian leader of the last century. In the movie telling of his life, a Hindu comes to him saying that he is going to hell. Asked why, he says that after the Muslims killed his son, he killed a Muslim boy. Gandhi told him that he could be saved from hell by adopting a Muslim orphan and raising him as his own child but as a Muslim. Gandhi was never baptized. However, in his autobiography he wrote that he gained a lot of affection for Jesus after reading the Sermon on the Mount.

It seems that many Catholics think that it is enough to go to church on Ash Wednesday to fulfill their Lenten obligation. But the ashes serve only like sneakers for the Lenten journey. On the road we are going to face various types of challenges.  With our eyes fixed on Christ crucified we will not give up. Rather, we will end up more conformed to him. We will be made, as strange as it may sound, holy.  We will be made holy so that we might show the world the wonder of God.