Today’s Gospel follows the scripture where Jesus healed a man and said, “take up your mat and walk.” Instead of celebrating what God had done, the people were even angrier with Jesus. It says today that they tried all the more to kill him. That statement comes directly after He says, “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.” That’s an important statement.
It reminds us that God did not just disappear after He made the world. He didn’t just turn mankind loose and go to some cosmic retreat until the end of time. Rather, God is intimately involved with our lives. He wants to walk with us face to face as Adam did with Him in the garden. God is actively working, doing what is necessary for every person to receive Salvation. He knows what’s best, and through His Church, He reveals to us the way our lives should look when we are in a relationship with Him.
It also says that Jesus is at work. Not just in first-century Jerusalem, but He is at work right now in our lives. But we have free will. Love is never forceful. It never compels us to do things. Jesus offers us grace and mercy, healing and hope. All we have to do to receive them is repent and change our ways. To find out what God’s will is, and as best as we can, make ours align with His.
That’s not very popular in the world right now. People tend to see the ideas of the Church are as old-fashioned, outdated. They think we should change them to fit the current times and current political climate. Recently a media personality said this, though: “A relativist sees ideas as either old-fashioned or fashionable, as being of the past or on the cutting edge, but none of these characterizations describe the Church. [The Church] is not a creature of the age, but of the ageless. She is not of any one time, but of the one Truth.” (1)
The Church doesn’t just change with the times. Jesus is at work in it, through the Sacraments, and His judgments are just. The Church does not define truth; it simply safeguards it and makes it present to the people. Just as Saint Patrick did to the druids of Ireland in the 5th century, confronting their false beliefs and bringing them the hope and freedom of the Gospel, we too must go into the world with the truths of our faith. It’s not easy. People will react with anger, disliking the truth. But it’s not ours to change. We are to be like Jesus, little Christs, sent into the world to bring Him to others. To remind them that He is still at work in the world, and in us, giving us the ability to say with Jesus: “I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.”
A Homily for Thursday of the Fourth Week in Lent (Optional Memorial of Saint Patrick, Bishop): March 17th, 2021