Obedience. Obedience is a word that many people do not want to hear in the modern world. Yesterday, as my brothers and I were being ordained as Deacons, we knelt down before the Bishop and made a promise of obedience. Many people would balk at that. Being a Deacon though means being configured to Christ the servant. It means growing to be more like Him and less like ourselves. That’s why we prostrate ourselves on the floor in the liturgy, to remind us of that death to ourselves and the humility to place our lives at the foot of the cross. The example Christ gave us to emulate was this: He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
The problem with our fallen human nature is that we are fickle and struggle with being obedient. We want to do things that feel good or give us immediate satisfaction, and sometimes those things aren’t good for us at all. The other problem is that once we’ve fallen into sin, we fear God. Venerable Fulton Sheen once explained this spiritual condition by saying: “Before the sin, Satan assures us that it is of no consequence; after the sin, he persuades us that it is unforgivable.” So we often avoid the need for confession out of fear that God will not forgive us. Or more often, that the Priest hearing our confession will judge us as horrible people.
The thing to remember is that confession is a Sacrament. That means it’s an encounter with Jesus Christ Himself. It is God who you confess to, and God who forgives you through the priest. The Gospel today reminds us that He is a God of second chances. He wants to forgive you and is rushing to do so the moment you repent. The two sons represent the two different states we find ourselves in the most. Sometimes we just go through the motions, and we just don’t really mean it. We say we are going to be holy and we fail. We feel the spirit prompting us to pray or to say something, and we promise to do so later, then we “forget.” Then other times we just go on living our lives, but at some point realize what we should be doing and we turn from the sin and toward God in trust.
That’s the mercy of God in action. He loves us whether we are the first or second type of son. All of the things the Church tries to teach us about prayer, about the Sacraments, about our faith, are simply to show us how much He loves us. Then, in turn, we who are but sinners can turn to God with faith and hope because He is waiting to forgive us. Love is a choice. When we choose to be obedient to Jesus at first it’s a struggle. We have to force ourselves to get up early to pray, or to go to Church when we are tired and cranky. The more we do it, the more desire for His affection and touch will fill our hearts and souls. His love isn’t something new, it’s existed from us from the moment that time began. It will never end. Now is the time for us to have true humility, and allow Him to teach us to love the way He loves.
So that one day we’ll wake up and not do anything out of just obedience, but everything out of pure love and desire to please Jesus Christ, because He means so much to us.
A homily for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time: September 27th, 2020