A homily for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C 3/3/19

Today’s scripture readings, or the first reading and the Gospel anyway, teach us that our words and actions reveal the truth about ourselves.  We might say that they invite to ask ourselves the question: What sort of person am I?

It’s a good question to ask ourselves right now, as we stand again on the threshold of the great season of Lent.  For Lent is about the purification of our hearts.  Originally, Lent grew out of the final weeks of preparation spent by adult converts to the Christian faith prior to their baptism at Easter. The word ‘Lent’ itself derives from the Old English ‘lencten’, which means ‘spring’.  In Middle English is derived the words ‘lenten’, ‘lente’ and ‘lent’.  The word appears to come from the same root as the word ‘long’, referring as it does to lengthening days as the earth moves from the winter solstice to the spring equinox.  So, as we are getting ready for the new life of the season of Spring, we are also preparing for the new life of Easter.  And just as those early converts prepared for their new life of faith, so we look to the Lord to renew us in faith as we open ourselves to his grace. During Lent, we seek to re-order our priorities again so that we can see the call of God afresh as the primary call of our lives.

This is why Lent is a penitential season.  It’s time to put in their proper place those things which so easily come to dominate us and enslave us.  It’s time to seek purification of heart and mind; to discipline ourselves so that we can be renewed in discipleship and address the sloppiness which affects us all and which diminishes the quality of our lives of faith.

So, today’s readings, although not set for Lent, are so apposite.  Our speech reveals the state of our hearts; as do the ways in which we relate to others. The authors of the book of Ecclesiastes and of St Luke’s Gospel convey the same message.  It’s not so much a time to watch what we say that bit more carefully, try to be less judgemental of others, or try by our own efforts to be better.  It’s time, rather, to seek interior renewal through prayer and through renewed discipline so that our hearts are changed.  Then, and only then, will our words, our dispositions towards others and our actions really change for the better.

Strangely, the ancient Greeks understood this, although they would have expressed it differently.  When we think of sin, for example, we tend to think of particular offences we and others commit, or might commit.  We address wrong action in a quite isolated way – ‘I did this, or I did that, and I shouldn’t have done’.  But the ancient Greeks and, implicitly, today’s scriptures, see the problem differently.  They seem to see it like this: that the reason I did this or that when I shouldn’t have done as being because my heart is not at rights – the individual wrong action is not so much something in itself, but a consequence of what’s inside me, the state of my heart.  The ancient Greeks thought of it as being to do with ‘character’ – the sort of person I am.  The biblical writers speak in terms of the heart.  In other words, if bad things are in my heart, or if I’m a certain sort of person with particular character defects or weaknesses, it is inevitable that I will say and do things I shouldn’t.

This means that the fundamental problem is an interior one, and not simply a matter of a particular wrong action, or word, or thought committed on a particular occasion.  This is not, of course, to argue that one shouldn’t confess particular sins – we should – but rather to say that, without a true conversion and purification of the heart, it is inevitable that we shall repeat that particular sin over and over again.  And, in fact, even when our hearts are purified, they need to be purified constantly through repentance – through turning again and again back to the Lord, seeking to begin to travel in a different direction.

So, as we stand on the threshold of Lent once again, let each of us commit ourselves to seeking a fruitful Lent.  There are lots of suggestions in the Parish Magazine for March to help.  Let our prayer be that during the holy season of Lent, our hearts be truly purified so that we can enter unencumbered by the baggage of sin that we all accrue, into the joy of Easter and the new life it brings.