March 7, 2021: 3rd Sunday Lent B
Click to hear Audio Homily
I came across a video the other day entitled, “I deseeeerve it,” in which three young ladies were having their pedicure done. As they were sipping cucumber infused water with a zest of lemon, their topic of conversation was self-care. One lady said, “Practicing self-care is so important. Sometimes, I feel guilty about it. But, I just feel so much more productive when I take a little bit of time to make me feel better.” How many times have we justified some action because it made us feel better?
What do you consider as self-care? Someone said, self-care is an activity that strengthens, nourishes, or develops who we are at our core. If we ponder for a while, we may come to see that God gave the Ten Commandments as a guide to self-care. The Ten Commandments strengthens our relationship with God--“You shall not have other gods besides me; You shall not carve idols for yourselves.” The commandments also guide our desires so that our relationship with our neighbor is aimed at what is true, beautiful, and good. There are consequences, however, when our desires are disordered such that we worship idols above our God. We become as big or as small as the object of our love. One priest wisely observed, “When the horizon out of which I am living is God, there is room to breathe. When it is less than God, the world becomes suffocating.”
“Who or what do we enthrone in our heart as Lord of lords?” Have we placed ‘my’ leisure, ‘my’ friends, ‘my’ fame, ‘my’ possessions, ‘my’ finances, or ‘my’ desires as our idols? I was a bit taken aback when I heard a Catholic speaker say that what we consider as self-care is really self-indulgence. Think about all the things and habits that we consider, ‘self-care.’ If something makes us feel better, and if we need it to feel better, then we consider it as ‘self-care’ as long as it makes us happy, calm, or relaxed. The speaker said, real ‘self-care’ is what we do during Lent--denying our self-indulgent behaviors, praying, fasting, and almsgiving. These spiritual disciplines are true self-care because they drive out pride, gluttony, lust, envy, laziness, and greed from our souls. In place of these Seven-Deadly Sins, Lenten spiritual disciplines invite us to live chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Yet, even as we have inklings to change, we are also bound by desires that keep us from actually making the change because we long for those feelings that old attachments gave us. While we struggle with letting go with our will power, we need the help of Jesus to sever these attachments. In a sense, we need our inner temple to be cleansed by Jesus just as he cleansed the Jerusalem Temple of money changers and vendors.
When Jesus stepped into the Holy Temple of Jerusalem, he was enraged to see a thriving marketplace within the courtyard of the temple. As he drove out the money changers and vendors, he cried out, “My house will be called a house of prayer.” (Mt 21:13) The Temple was a holy place, a place set apart exclusively for prayer, worship, and sacrifice. It was the place where a soul dead to sin encountered Living God, cleansed of its sins, brought back to life again. Our soul, too, is a beautiful temple dedicated to God since our baptism. St. Teresa of Avila wrote that at the very center of our soul resides Jesus. However, when we ignore his presence within us with our lack of commitment to prayer, worship on Sundays, regular confession, quickly the busyness and distractions of life overtake our beautiful inner temple.
The decision to choose God over other lesser “gods” can be as significant as life and death. In the desert, Moses set the choice before the Israelites, “If you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, loving the Lord and keeping his commandments... you will live and grow... If, however, your heart turns away and you do not obey, but are led astray and bow down to other gods and serve them, I tell you today that you will certainly perish… I have set before you life and death… Choose life… by loving the Lord, your God” (Deuteronomy 30:15-20). God gave Ten Commandments to the Israelites so that they can live in fidelity to their call to love God with their whole body, mind, and soul, and to love their neighbor. These commandments are an invitation to take the first step to formation of virtuous character and to stay on course.
During Lent we are invited to meditate on the Passion of Christ, particularly the Stations of the Cross. Let us ponder, “The First Station: Jesus Is Condemned to Death.” The following meditation was written by a priest from the perspective of Jesus. “Before Pontius Pilate, the crowd had to choose: Me, or Barabbas? You must now also choose: Me, or the world? Who or what do you enthrone in your heart as Lord of lords? As you ponder this choice, remember I love you more than you love yourself, and I want more for you than you want for yourself. I want your whole heart, not simply part of it. And to help you, I give you all that I am: my Body, Blood, soul, and divinity, in the sacrament of love, the Holy Eucharist. Choose me, for I have chosen you. That is the message of my cross.” Let us pray with sincerity, “My Lord and Savior, I do choose you, this day and every day. Many things vie to occupy the throne of my heart, but I know deep down that you alone can satisfy the longings of human heart.”
