March 22, 2009: 4th Sunday of Lent (B)

Do you have a place in your house where you have placed an image or a statue of Our Lady? What does she look like? I have three different kinds. One is that of Immaculate Heart of Mary. She has neutral face expression, neither sad nor smiling. Another is that of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Again her expression is soft but neither sad nor smiling. I prefer the neutral expression because sometimes when I look at her and say, "How am I doing, Mother," I want her to say through her expression, "Not bad." On February 10th, in the morning of the departure from Jerusalem, I rushed to the Church of Holy Sepulchre 4:45 in the morning in order to celebrate a private mass. I asked the Franciscan priest in charge for a place to celebrate, and he said, "Oh, I guess you can celebrate mass at the Chapel of Calvary, if only you say a quick mass." On Calvary! How awesome is that!

In this chapel behind the altar, there is a mosaic of Our Lady standing as her Son is nailed on the cross. Our Lady is dressed in black with sorrowful expression. And left of this altar is a small shrine to Stabat Mater. It is a statue of a sorrowful, if not crying statue of Our Lady with a large sword piercing her heart. After I returned to Baton Rouge, I got the news that I was going to be assigned rather quickly to another parish. When I heard the name of the parish I was going to, I was immediately taken back to Jerusalem in the early morning when I celebrated my last mass on Calvary. In that Calvary chapel, I was with images of Sorrowful Mother or Mater Dolorosa. I was asking Our Lady, "Why are you sorrowful, Mother? Why are you crying?" How many of you mothers here have sorrows, because of what's happening to your children, your spouse, your health, and your friends? Can you identify with Mater Dolorosa, the Mother of Sorrows?

Our First Reading says, "In those days, all the princes of Judah, the priests, and the people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the LORD's temple which he had consecrated in Jerusalem." The phrase, "In those days," can easily be referring to today. Here is something for us to reflect on during this Lent. No matter how many times we said to ourselves, 'I haven't done anything serious,' or 'What I'm doing does not affect others,' we are only deluding ourselves like the princes, priests, and people of Judah. The First Reading continues, "Early and often did the LORD, the God of their fathers, send his messengers to them, for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets..." And how many times like the people of Judah, have we and even us priests, have ignored God speaking through our conscience and through others. This is why Our Mother is crying and is sorrowful. She knows that our sins involve relationships. Sin radically severs relationships. The fruits of our sins are disappointment, anger, separation, guilt, shame, and death of relationships. How is a mother to see this happening to her children and not moved to do something?

In 1994 something horrible did happen to her children in a remote country called Rwanda, a country which is compose of an ethnic majority and an ethnic minority. Through years of harboring distrust and hatred in their hearts, the ethnic majority decided it was time to "get rid of the cockcroaches" [i.e. the ethnic minority]. Through a well organized militia, in 100 days, over 800,000 people of ethnic minority were brutally murdered. Can Heavenly Mother stand and watch her children doing this to each other?

No. So 13 years earlier in 1981, Blessed Mother began to appear to young teenagers in a remote village called Kibeho. Through these teenagers, Blessed Mother began to exhort all her children of Rwanda. On August 15, 1982, with the crowd of 200,000 people dancing and singing in festive welcome, Blessed Mother appeared to the teenagers. But she said, "I am too sad to hear my children sing." Then she requested the teenager to sing the following song, "Peope are not grateful, They don't love me, I came from heaven for nothing, I left all the good things there for nothing...I opened the door, and you refused to come in... / My heart is full of sadness, My child, show me the love, You love me, Come closer to my heart." Then she showed the teenager a gastly vision of what was to happen in the country, as exactly as it would happen 13 years later in Rwanda. Our Lady said, "Do not forget that God is more powerful than all the evil in the world...the world is on the edge of catastrophe. Cleanse your hearts through prayer. The only way is God..." Blessed Mother urged the people of Rwanda from 1981 to 1989 to turn to her Son, to repent of their sins, to do penance, and to fast. For 8 years, Our Lady of Sorrows reminded the people of Rwanda to cleanse their heart. Why then did Rwandan Genocide still happen?

Our Gospel reminds us of our condition. "...the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light,because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed." What is this light of the world? Our Gospel states, "For God 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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." Our Lady is not asking other people's heart to turn to Jesus. She is asking my heart, our heart to turn to Jesus.

[To learn more about this Vatican approved Marian apparition of Our Lady of Kibeho, read Immaculee Ilibagiza's "Our Lady of Kibeho"--click the photo]