Homily For The Third Sunday of Lent [YEAR A and B] March 3, 2024.

NB: If you have RCIA Scrutiny during the Mass, use Year A readings and Homily otherwise Use Year B third Sunday of Lent

“The modern world, which denies personal guilt and admits only social crimes, which has no place for personal repentance but only public reforms, has divorced Christ from His Cross” — Fulton J Sheen

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My Dearest Friends in Christ,

Today is the Third Sunday of Lent. Today is the First Scrutiny, which is the examination of the catechumens or those under instruction in the Faith. They are taught the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer examined therein and exorcised before Baptism. We too need to examine (scrutinize) how we are in the areas of our lives where we are tempted or seriously sin in what we do and what we fail to do. We need healing and the strength that can come from the Word of God and the support of our Christian community. We all are still undergoing daily instruction in the Faith and today is another opportunity to listen to the Word of God and repent.

One God But Many Beliefs About Him. Do You Know Who You Worship?

The theme of our reflection today is drawn from Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman in the Gospel, “You people worship what you do not understand…“ This statement from Christ is not just an indictment but a statement of fact that truly captures the reality of the faith of the Samaritan woman and especially our Christian Faith which is in deep slumber in the modern world. The Samaritans did not “know” God as the Israelites did. However, this did not leave them incapable of knowing anything about God, but it did mean there was a limit to what they could understand. Jesus was in the process of correcting this woman’s notion of the worship of God (religion). Today, we profess faith in one God, but many hold different beliefs about Him. We claim to worship the One True God, but even within Christianity, many worship Him in questionable ways that deny the very essence of He Whom they worship. We build up temples and not the faith of the people. We dedicate churches, but worshippers are not dedicated to God. Child of God, you can ask again: Do I know what I worship? How do I manifest this belief in my daily relationship with God and my neighbor? Looking at Christian Faith and practice in the 21st century one is left in doubt as to whether those who call themselves Christians still know what they worship. The idolatry of modern life and the admixture of paganism with Christian practices has created a deep longing to understand what true faith in God entails. The inspiration and the life of the Apostles, the early Christians, the Fathers of the Church, and the saints leave in every true child of God a deep longing for the true meaning of the Faith in modern Christian life and practice. Fulton Sheen expressed a similar view when he said: “The modern world, which denies personal guilt and admits only social crimes, which has no place for personal repentance but only public reforms, has divorced Christ from His Cross.” So today many worship no longer a God Who saved the world through suffering but a God who promises wealth and salvation without suffering.

Why Complain For What You Lack? Be thankful For What You Have Received!

In the first reading, it was very clear that the Jews, even though they understood the concept of God, didn’t know Him or truly believe in Him. Amid their suffering and thirst in the desert, they suddenly grew lukewarm and questioned the presence of the same God who delivered them from the bondage of Pharaoh and made a dry land in the ocean to set them free. Amid their suffering, the Jews preferred to have been left in Egypt to die rather than acknowledge the graciousness of God who had been with them and had provided for them all along their journey in the desert. They not only forgot what God had done for them in the past but also lost focus on where He was leading them, which was the promised land. When Christ came to dwell among men, His Words were accompanied by miracles, yet the Jews never believed in Him but sought greater signs. (cf. John 6:30) The complaint of the Jews reflects our attitude to the worship of God today. We complain of what we lack and fail to be thankful for what we have received, nor are we hopeful of what is yet to come. We question God’s Presence when in reality He is ever present. We do not believe, because we have lost hope and faith.

Hope In God Never Disapoints

Paul alludes to this Hope in the second reading when he says, “…and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Those who know what they worship, hang onto this Hope that never disappoints. Dear Child of God, do you still have this hope, this optimism that the God you worship is always with you through the desert of misery and ocean of peacefulness? There is never a reason to lose hope. Jesus says, “I am with you until the end of the world.” (cf. Mathew 28:20)

Empty That Vessel of Sinfulness and Be Filled with The Wellspring of Salvation-Christ

Like the Samaritan woman in the Gospel, many Christians are carrying around their buckets of emptiness trying to fetch from the empty well of sin. No one draws Grace from sin but rather is being emptied of the Sanctifying Grace with which God nourishes us. Like this woman who had the privilege of drawing from Christ, but held on to her age-long belief in the water in Jacob’s well, many of us have held onto material things and beliefs that blind us from seeing the True Gift of God and what faith and hope in Him holds for us.

Don’t Let False Notions Of God or Traditions Blind You From Seeing The Light of True Faith In Christ

Those who know what they worship draw from Jesus, the Fountain of Life Who quenches the thirst of our souls. The Samaritan woman’s prejudice due to the long-established enmity between the Jews and Samaritans almost blinded her from experiencing the True Person of Christ. Thanks to Christ’s missionary spirit and His nondiscriminatory Love, His Loving, Warming Interaction brought new life to this woman. He came to save sinners and bring them back to God. ( cf. Like 19:10) Fast from prejudices this Lent and open up your heart to receive the Gift of God Who came to save us. It was obvious this woman never knew whom she was worshipping and that’s why Jesus said to her, “If you knew who is asking you for water…..you would have asked Him to give you living water.” Her encounter with Christ Jesus led her to self-discovery and faith. Jesus opened up her history of failed relationships and brought her to conversion. God knows you are a sinner. All He needs is for you to believe in the Gospel and repent. When we worship God in Spirit and Truth, we not only come to the full knowledge of God but a deeper awareness of our lives as sinners. This strange public encounter brought new life to this woman and made her a disciple of Christ. Many were drawn to Jesus through her testimony of this encounter.

May This Season Be Another Opportunity Of Encountering God IN the Eucharist

This Lenten Season is another opportunity to encounter God, no longer beside the well but in the Eucharistic Sacrifice celebrated daily in our churches and our daily encounters with others. It is another opportunity for us to self-examine our lives, our relationships, our attitudes, and our habits. This is the time to run to God and allow Him to empty us and quench our thirst for prejudices, hatred, anger, gluttony, and immoral lifestyle, and everything in us that is not of God and fill us with this Living Water welling up to Eternal Life. May you be filled with God Who is this Living Spring and may the Fountain of Living Water that flows from His Sacred Side as He hung upon the Cross sanctify you. Sin makes us deny whom we worship and discounts us, but faith, hope, and love connect us intimately with Him.

May you experience a true life transformation and a sincere conviction of your faith in Christ. Keep fasting, keep praying, and don’t fail to help those in need. Amen.

HOMILY FOR YEAR B

HOMILY FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY OF LENT. MARCH 3 2024. GOSPEL JOHN 2:13-25.

“Take these things out of here! Don’t make my father’s house a place for buying and selling!.” John 2:16

The above quotation from the gospel of John underscores LENT is a time of Interior Cleansing and renewal. A time to rediscover the face of God within us in his temple which is our body. My dearest brothers and sisters let’s reflect on this 3rd Sunday of Lent on cleansing God’s temple which is our bodies.

Meanwhile, I hope you have not wavered in the Lenten observances. Remain positive, don’t be discouraged you can do it.

The first reading of today reminds us of the Ten Commandments, with which God made a covenant with us. On the first Sunday of Lent, we reflected on God’s covenant with the world through Noah, and today, we see God entering into another covenant relationship with His chosen people through Moses at Mount Sinai. The Ten Commandments form a list of directives or instructions for living out our covenant relationship with God, based on two fundamental principles of respect and reverence, and summarized by the law of love. These divinely revealed precepts of divine law regulate our relationship with God and our neighbor. Adherence to the commandments enables us to love God and our neighbor better. We cannot please God if we don’t obey His rulings. Funny as it may sound, many don’t believe in the commandments; for them, it’s an old law that does not address the circumstances of the modern world. But the reality remains that God’s law is perennially true and valid for every generation and age, and it is not subject to amendment. The moment we overlook them, the world becomes uninhabitable, for these commadments check mate our excesses and ensure order in creation. You can imagine what our roads would be without traffic lights, that is how life would be without the commandments of God.

Sin occurs when we are negligent of God’s commandments. Every sinful action is traceable to a violation of one or more commandments of God. It was sin and impurities that filled and defiled the temple of God. Jesus, in the expulsion of buyers and sellers from the temple, reminds us how we have filled and defiled his temple, which our bodies are. Every activity of man has a rightful place of execution; to buy and sell in the temple is an anomaly. To use our God-given gifts and bodies for commercial purposes is equally sinful before God. Those buying and selling in the temple failed to perceive what the temple stands for and is meant for, so also, underlying every sinful action is our failure to put to good use what God has given us.

Lent is the time of interior cleansing and purification. Jesus came to cleanse and purify us from every attachment to sin through His passion, death, and resurrection. We have acquired and accumulated a lot that is gradually weighing us down spiritually. Our lives are filled with vanities that have occupied the space of God in our lives. Imagine how difficult it is to bring in a new set of furniture into a house already filled with old stuff. To bring in the new, the old must give way. The house must be emptied of useless properties to bring in the useful. So also, we must get rid of sinful habits, dispositions, and ways that have crippled the manifestation of divine grace in our lives, that have made us spiritually bankrupt and kept us stunted in growing in the spirit. It may be greed, adultery, fornication, idolatry, anger, impatience, pride, gluttony, avarice, lust, lack of self-control, sloth, etc., that have kept you down all these years and filled your life with so many impurities. Like Jesus, Lent is a time to declare war and express that anger over all that has no rightful place in our lives..

Let us begin the war by rejecting them at the sacrament of reconciliation. Identifying a problem is already a success towards solving it. Ask for God’s mercy and he will forgive you. When we go to confessions we not only obtain forgiveness of sins but also the grace to overcome future temptations. If you want to win the war, get yourself armed at the confessional.

Be prayerful. We cannot acquire and sustain any virtuous habit without prayer. You need to increase the tempo of your prayers. Make it a routine.

Keep fasting to acquire more discipline and self-control to overcome those sinful habits.

Keep giving to the poor and helping others to get rid of those attachments to things that have occupied your life.

Avoid every occasion/s of Sin. It’s better to avoid the occasion of sin than to fight sin while on the occasion. Don’t put yourself to the test, you are not an angel.

Jesus was a bit violent in driving those defiling the temple. Therefore this is not the time to pamper sinful habits. It takes serious discipline to get rid of a sinful habit. You must adjust and readapt to the new life set before you by God by embracing everything needed to achieve that goal. You must suffer yourself if you want to achieve success. No procrastination, no excuses.

Jesus is portrayed in the gospel as causing a scandal by his prophetic cleansing of the Temple. Paul says in the second reading that Jesus’ cross is a scandal, or a “stumbling block,” to the Jews and “foolishness” to Gentiles. A crucified Christ did not fit into the Jewish concept of a triumphant political Messiah. Jesus was completely misunderstood. Therefore, my dear, don’t give up or be afraid if you are misunderstood for taking up a way of life that is pleasing to God. Breaking away from a conventional pattern of behavior may seem absurd in the eyes of the world, so don’t expect people to understand you when you break away from a sin that has become conventional in your life. Not everyone will love you for doing things right, so don’t be afraid of hurting anyone. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”. God alone suffices. Someday, just as a disciple came to realize after the resurrection that Jesus is simply talking about the temple which is His body, many will come to appreciate your efforts.

With God’s grace, you can do all that. His grace is sufficient for you. May you be cleansed and purified of all that is not of God or godly in your life, so that you can offer God a sacrifice holy and acceptable to Him, and remain to receive His abundant blessings and favors.

I keep you and your family always in my prayers.