2nd Sunday of Lent. This ain't no cheap love.

One of the more difficult aspects of priestly ministry, at least for me, is when people are confronted with suffering and tragedy, and they want to know “why?”
Why did my teenage daughter die in the car accident?
Why does my parent have alzheimer's?
Why do kids get massacred in schools?
Why do people hate each other?
Why does this bad person have it so easy?
Is this God’s will?   Is this God punishing me?  Is this God testing us?
There is real pain behind these words, and the man in me wants to fix the hurt right away...but...it is not that easy.
Yet, we have hope.  
It is the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ, of which we are in the process of preparing to celebrate.
We have the suffering, death and resurrection of the Son of God, and therein lies the mystery of suffering, and the freedom from being controlled by the badness and evil in the world.
There is that concise statement from St. Paul who clearly states that God is for us.  God did NOT punish us for killing his Son, rather the Father forgave us, as shown by the Resurrection.
God has not interest in punishing us and making us suffer; as revealed in our subtly brilliant first reading.
Jesus Christ reveals to us the dignity of being human.  
Jesus Christ reveals that every human person is a child of God, worthy of life, dignity and respect.
Jesus Christ reveals the glory of humanity.




And, he will also reveal the ugliness that comes when we choose to ignore that dignity, that glory.

The crucifixion was not the Father’s command, but the command of people who refused to see in Jesus his own dignity, value and worth.
It was the command of people threatened by mercy, compassion, equality; threatened by treating people justly, scared that they would lose their so called authority… their so called power.

Jesus suffered and died because human sinfulness killed him.


The Father forgave us.
The Father continues to forgive us.
The Father loves us; with a purpose though.

The Father’s love is not cheap grace, so that we can excuse our bad behavior and the behavior of others.
This love beckons us onward, forward, to grow and change.
We are offered a pathway through this life so that the bad things that happen, which we cannot avoid, do not have to control us.
We are offered a pathway through which we see that God is with us, always, guiding us, directing us, helping us to find that inner dignity and glory.

We are given a way to reduce the suffering in this world for all people.
It begins with the personal encounter with the Person of Christ; not in some abstract, theological, apologetic manner, but in a real way in which we come to grasp the humanity and divinity of the Jesus, and the potential for us to share in this.

It continues with an encounter with other people, and witnessing their own dignity.
I love the stories of the conversion of racists who stop hating others after they actually get to know a person of another race, of another county; when he or she hears the other’s story and realize they too are scared, they too want to care for their own families.  They come to know the human.
I love too the stories of sheltered entitled people who encounter people living in poverty, and get to know them, and begin to understand just how unjust our system is.
I love meeting with people in recovery; working to be free of drugs, alcohol and other addictions; it just brings new insights into the human dysfunction and why we need the way of Jesus Christ and why we need to treat others with dignity.
It is much easier to forgive when we talk with each other.

It is much easier to be generous when we know each other.
True Freedom begins, not with money, guns, or personal individual rights to abort, die, marry or do whatever the heck I want...
but through that encounter with Jesus Christ.
It grows through an encounter with other people, a community.
It grows through an encounter of love; of experiencing goodness.
It is walking with each other, in good time and in bad, for sickness and health...

This is why we Church...because it is all supposed to be happening right here.



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