Homily for 4th Sun Lent, Year B March 11, 2018
Fr. Albert St. Peter’s, New Iberia
We’ve all seen it, when you turn on the lights in a room and cockroaches scatter to every dark corner they can find. They flee the light because they are afraid that we will find and destroy them. And they’re right; Most of us, if we’re not too afraid of them ourselves, will step on or spray any cockroach that stays put long enough to let us. To them, we are predators, destroyers, enemies with a vengeance.
And why not? Those things are pests that can bring disease and filth into our orderly homes, not to mention the huge creepiness factor. So, when we turn the lights on to see them, they are right to run.
Well, is that what’s going on with when Jesus says this? “And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.” Are we the cockroaches of God’s home, mucking up the world we live in with the disease of sin, the filth of evil?
Certainly no one of us can say that we have never done evil, that we have never sinned. All of us can relate to that uncomfortable feeling when God shines a light on our sins through Scripture, Church Teaching, or that friend who says “hey, you know that’s not right, don’t you?” There’s some dark voice in our heads that says “don’t go into the light, God’s foot is hovering just above us ready to crush us in our sins.”
Maybe you think it’s obvious that that is not true, but so many people feel that way, even if they won’t say it. We have this instinctive fear of God’s piercing, all-revealing light of His truth. Those who do wicked things hate the light and prefer darkness. Be honest, you’ve done wicked things, big and small. If I were to “shine the light” on your sins by announcing right now every sin you’ve ever committed, what would your reaction be? Don’t worry, I won’t ever do such a thing.
But, one day, God will. At the last judgment, all of creation – everyone that has ever lived – will know what we’ve done, good and bad. And that is why we have to deal with the light; there is no escaping it. Sooner or later the light everyone will know. But, when that finally happens, what other people think won’t matter. Your reaction to that final light will determine everything.
When we all stand in the light of the final judgment, we will either hate it or love it. If we hate it, we will be allowed to hide from it forever in a place of eternal darkness. But if we love it, then we will be taken into light unending. So, how do we learn to love the light that exposes our most shameful secrets and our darkest sins?
Well, it starts with this immeasurably important fact: You are not a cockroach. You are not a vermin, an insect, or a nuisance to God. He does not hate you. He does not want to destroy you and his goal is not to just to catch you sinning so that he can crush you under his almighty foot. It impossible to overstate this: you are a child of God, a unique and beloved expression of his love, his image in the world. God loves you. God loves you. God loves you.
Which is why “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” When God flips on the light in our souls, he is not the homeowner hunting down pests, he is the Father searching for his lost child. But we run from him. Ever since Adam and Eve hid in the garden, we have run from the Father and his gleaming searchlight of love.
Why do we run? Because everyone who does wicked things hates the light. And we have all done wicked things. So, it seems like a vicious cycle. We do evil without the light. But then we avoid the light because we have already done evil things. So we continue to do evil in darkness, fleeing every flicker of light that challenges the comfortable peace we’ve made with our darkness. And the eternal darkness of death and damnation seems inevitable.
But do not be afraid! Because “even when we were dead in our [sins],” God has so loved us that He still chose to bring “us to life with Christ.” That is why he shines the light. But what exactly is this light I keep talking about? It is Faith. Faith, the supernatural ability to trust, believe, and understand things that we cannot prove by reason alone. We are saved by faith, not by our own abilities and works.
You cannot earn faith, it is gift. You cannot earn salvation, it is a gift. But you do have to learn to love those gifts. You have to trust that you are not a cockroach to God and be willing to stay in the light. It is tough, because staying in the light of faith keeps revealing our sins. That makes us start to fear and hate the light, to dislike our own faith. I’ve been there… in a place where I wished I didn’t believe so that the light would go away and leave me with my favorite sins.
So, that’s why we do have to do good works to go to heaven. Not because we earn heaven, but because we’ll either do good works or we will lose our faith. If we have faith, but do not act like it, then we will hate the light and run from it in the end. But if we do good works, then we will be prepared to embrace the eternal light of truth, even the ugly truth of our sins and need for mercy.
But it all starts with staying in the light, the burning truth. And the more you force yourself to stay in the light, to let faith convict you of your sins, the more you will be able to stop sinning! The cure for our fetish of darkness is not to hide, but to stand in the light and let it burn and burn and burn until we learn to love it. All of your lust, your greed, your lies and hatred, let it smolder under the heat of God’s burning love. Keep going to the adoration chapel even if you think you’re not worthy to sit there. Read Scripture even if you hate what it says… especially if you hate what is says. Study what the Church teaches… especially those teachings you hate the most. God doesn’t want us to just get by by avoiding conflict, he wants us to run madly into the furnace.
God loves you so much that it sometimes causes me to tremble in my prayers for you. He is desperately searching for his lost children, but we have to be willing to stay into the light, to little-by-little suffer through it until our eyes adjust to see that it is not God’s foot that hovers above us, but his heart laid open before us. This is Laetare Sunday, the day of joy because Lent is coming to an end soon. And that is joy not because you can eat chocolate again, but because the fiery purgation of Lent is faith transforming your works from evil into good. So that, when the light of eternal Easter finally breaks forth at last, you will run, not walk, but sprint into the light into the eternal embrace of the Father who “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”