HOMILY – 2^ND SUNDAY OF LENT

ST. ANTHONY CATHOLIC CHURCH

MARCH 12, 2006 - GREENVILLE, SC  8 & 11AM MASSES

May the Lord turn our hearts and give us His peace.

Firewood, the ultimate defense attorney, the Clorox experience.

Firewood.  Imagine carrying on your back the wood that will be used to set you on fire.  Imagine a dad or mom that centered on God’s will.  Imagine the altar, with the firewood neatly arranged.  Look for the lamb of sacrifice.  See the knife. (have someone call out “Abraham!”) Here I am.  (have someone speak “I know now how devoted you are to God.”)

Do you and I carry the firewood of our own sacrifice?  By that I mean do you and I say and do things that make our lives an offering to God?  I think of the parent who has many children, a woman who regrets an abortion and decides to dedicate her life to child care, a person who thinks they are in a meaningless job but chooses to make it meaningful by good cheer and generosity, knowing it provides for a living.  I think of those enduring chronic pain, job loss, or the death of a loved one with grace.

You can be sure that when the knife of strife is lifted into the air that God will protect us like He did Isaac.  Nothing is ever lost with God.

Nothing.  You bring the firewood. God does the rest.

The ultimate defense attorney.  A defense attorney is the person who makes sure you get a fair trial.  After you have been accused, they look for every way for you to get another chance at life.  They defend you.

Listen to Paul speak to the people in Rome.  They are looking for help, God seems distant, non-existent.  Paul delivers.  Can the One who did not spare His own Son in loving you, bring a charge against you?

If people bring charges against you, can they reverse a decision made in a higher court?  God has decided our sentence on the cross.  Aquittal.

I remember feeling like the Romans.  Alcoholic mother, divorce, bad grades, playing at a frog pond a friend threw a big rock trying splash me and hit me in the head.  When was I going to get a break?  Life seemed ridiculous.  Where are you God?  Then by Grace I heard this same reading in church.  If God is for us, who can be against.  I have gone with His judgment of me ever since.  The Father is the ultimate defense attorney.

The Clorox experience.  This Lent we are called to prepare for the 2^nd coming of Jesus.  Like Jesus was in one, we have our own wilderness, complete with beasts all around us, sometimes even in us.  We are asked to come clean and remain true, not easy.  We observe the mountain where Jesus was changed. His clothes became dazzlingly white.  God was revealing to Peter, James and John their future.  If they follow Him they will come clean.  There is to be a dazzling Peter, James, John, a dazzling Nakema, Jacary, Patrick and David, a dazzling Kelsy, Emma, Cleon and Ruby a dazzling you.  A Clorox experience.

Up on the mountain we hear the Father say, “This is my beloved Son”.  This Son has adopted you and me when He offered His life for us.  We are heirs to the Kingdom, and can live from that identity.  Say it.  If you are a man say, “I am an heir.”  If a woman say it, “I am an heiress.”

Our lives are the offering of Issac and the faith of Abraham, we bring the firewood of our life being offered.  We have the ultimate defense attorney at our side, and hear of our being aquitted even though we are guilty.  We come clean and stay clean because the holiness of God offering Himself is effecting us - we are being so faithfully loved

We do service to the city responding to it because of the intense love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit toward us.

Imagine the flame that our wood makes, the wonder of the acquittal, and the change that comes as darkness becomes light and night is made as midday when we love.