topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
25 January 09


 

“Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15)…
“the world in its present form is passing away”
(1 Corinthians 7:31)

 

All that any of us has to do is to watch television for a couple of hours before we realize just how many commercials are telling us that we need to go on a diet.  Peeling those commercials back just a little bit, however, what’s really going on is that most diets work and many people do lose weight, at least after the first week.  But, most people stop dieting before long and within one year of terminating their diet plans, most return to or even surpass their pre-diet plan weight.  So, crafty marketers keep pummeling these people with commercials advertising diet plans that make losing weight look like a snap.  Drink this shake and you won’t be hungry,” they’re toldTake these pills which depress hunger pangs.  Buy this super-dooper exercise machine and you’ll look like this in no time flat.  “Purchase our great tasting meals, just like these, for one month and we’ll send you an extra week’s worth of meals (which, I bet, most people eat during that month).

Youve seen those and many other commercials advertising diet programs, I’m sure.

The simple fact is that the most successful weight loss plan around and that has been around since the 1970’s is Weight Watchers.  This diet program is based upon the philosophy that getting to a certain weight and maintaining it requires an honest and dedicated commitment to a change of lifestyle…that of healthy eating and in portions which provide everything we need to eat, not everything we want to eat.  People who commit themselves to the Weight Watchers program live in the real world and eat real food—practically any food they like—but they must discipline themselves continuously to eat healthy, nutritious, and balanced meals.  Success requires making the decision to devote oneself to this particular lifestyle.

The good news?  It works.  The bad news?  It requires dedication.

This philosophy captures well the call to repentance we heard in today’s first reading from the Book of Jonah and today’s gospel from the evangelist, Mark.  For most people, the word “repentance” means looking back and then having to apologize for past misdeeds.  For Catholics, that almost immediately conjures up the terrifying specter of having to go to confession, something most Catholics―like Lutherans and most other Protestants―believe is completely unnecessary and unrelated to growth in holiness of life.

The good news?  Repentance doesnt mean going to confession.  The bad news?  That doesn’t mean Catholics don’t have to go to confession.

Repentance is a personal recognition where I come to the clear realization and say, “I have to change.  I cannot go on living this way.”  Examining our present state, repentance is not about looking backwards at how we got to be in the awful place we find ourselves.  That may not promote achieving the goal we seek.  For example, if we are overweight, all of the looking back at how we got to be overweight may be of no help whatsoever in changing our behavior.  In fact, looking back may only cause us to feel guilty, to get depressed, and to start eating all of the stuff that got us to become overweight in the first place.  Likewise with sin.  Looking back at what we have done previously is likely to cause us to feel guilty, to get depressed, and to convince us that it’s near to impossible for us to achieve holiness of life.  So, we don’t change and the same old laundry list of past misdeeds continues to be written in the present and into the future representing a failure of spiritual proportions.

In contrast, repentance requires taking a sober and accurate look at the present in which we find ourselves and making the determination that, moving forward, we cannot and will not continue to live as we are living today.  When Jonah and Jesus called for repentance, there was no requirement to apologize for past transgressions.  But, there was a command for a change of attitude, namely, the attitude about the place of God in our lives and how we are going to change our lifestyles to give first place to God.  However, it’s one thing to say, “I believe in the gospel.”  It’s an entirely different thing to make that belief evident in a consistent and dependable lifestyle.  It’s all about character and, in particular, the character of a holy person.

All of this raises the question, “What have we built our lifestyles around?”  Is it “all about me?  Is it all about pleasure?  Is it all about work?  Is it all about a spouse or children?  Or, is it all about love of God from which flows love of neighbor as we love ourselves?  All Jesus said to his disciples was “Follow me.”  Is that what we base our decisions upon, following the Lord wherever he intends to lead us?  Or, is our hope that God will follow us in whatever direction we decide to lead God?

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul wrote that the world in its present form is passing away.  The good news?  God is actively at work seeking to restore what we have defiled through sin by calling us to follow his only begotten Son.  The bad news? Jesus isn’t asking for mere cosmetic change.  No, Jesus is calling for us to repent by making a total commitment to alter the path we have chosen, just as Simon, Andrew, James, and John had to abandon the path they had chosen when Jesus called them.

All of us know that the first commandment forbids idol worship. It states: “I am the Lord, your God.  You shall place no strange gods before me.”  Yet, we oftentimes don’t realize that when we make something more important in our lives than our relationship with God, we are creating idols that we worship.  To this end, we need to remember:

·       Neither family nor personal security takes precedence to our relationship with God.

·       Neither work nor popularity takes precedence to our relationship with God.

·       Neither possessions nor pleasure takes precedence to our relationship with God.

·       Neither spouse nor children takes precedence to our relationship with God.
 

Why?  In the end, our relationship with God is all that counts in this life if our goal is eternal life.  This world as we know it is passing away,” St. Paul reminds us just as he reminded the Corinthians.  While each day brings change and we all need to deal with change, the only thing that ultimately matters in the midst of all this change is our relationship with God.

Repentance is like Weight Watchers in that repentance requires making a change in lifestyle, not whacking away at our bad habits, finding ourselves falling short of our goals after a bit of time, and then trying yet another approach to achieve holiness of life.  When we repent, we make the firm decision to change, to engage in the behaviors that this change requires, and to let the rest fall into place—as it will—if we truly commit ourselves to repent.  That’s the good news.

So, what’s the bad news?  When we discover the more holy person we have grown to become through our dedicated efforts and the assistance of God’s grace, we will not fear confessing who we no longer are.  Instead, we will give thanks to God in Jesus Christ for the gift of repentance.  And that, my friends, is how to prepare for a good confession!

 

 

A brief commercial break...
 

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