Homily for Thursday, 20 July 2017– Ferial

Thursday of the 15th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Exodus 3:13-20; Psalm 105:1, 5, 8-9, 24-25, 26-27; Matthew 11:28-30

Imagine somebody standing before us here now and saying, “God has sent me to you.” Would we not at least want to know the name of the person who would dare to stand before us and introduce him or herself to us in this way? Might we also want to know the name; the identity of this God who supposedly had sent this person to us?

In the reading we hear today from Exodus, Moses has a keen sense that this is exactly how the people of Israel will respond if he were to stand before them, as God asks him to do, and say, “The God of our ancestors has sent me to you.” Moses says to God that, if he stands before the Israelites and says this to them, they will ask what the name of this “God of [their] ancestors” is.

And God replies to Moses that, if they ask who this “God of our ancestors” is who has given Moses the authority to address them in this way; the authority to lead them eventually out of Egypt and back to their homeland, Moses is to reveal this as God’s name to the people of Israel: “I AM WHO I AM.”

What kind of name is this? I do not want to sift through the volumes and history of scholarly analysis of this and other divine names in our Scriptures. If I did this, we could be here all day and, as much as we enjoy the Mass, otherwise I do not think we would be here on this or any other ordinary weekday, many of us work or have lives to carry on outside this place. Besides, for some scholars of our Eucharistic celebration (and I think, in a way, they are right), the most important part of the Mass is its last: “Go, the Mass is ended.”

But what, in basic terms, do we make of this curious name God gives to Moses to give to the people of Israel; the name God reveals to us: “I AM WHO I AM”?

At the heart of God’s revelation of his identity to the people, to us, is “I AM.” Maybe we have heard this said: God is not “I was,” the God who set creation in motion and then left us to our own devices. God is not “I will be,” although we believe in the future fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation of the created universe at the end of time. No, God reveals himself to us as “I AM WHO I AM.” God reveals himself to us as always, eternally, present.

This is the name God asks us, as God asked Moses, to reveal to our world somehow by the way we live as Christians, with love above all, or what we call “charity” or what Scripture calls (loosely translated) “loving kindness.” This is how we make God present in our world now: “I AM WHO I AM,” from our worship here to our sending forth from here, “Go, the Mass is ended.” Go and live in such a way that reveals God eternally present among us as “I AM.”

Homily for Thursday, 7 August 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 18th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19; Matthew 16:13-23

Jesus asks his disciples in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, “Who do people say the Son of Man is”? And “who do you say that I am”? These are good questions for us. Who do we say Jesus is? Who do we say God is?

The prophet Jeremiah gives us a good idea of who God is in the last verse of our first reading. Jeremiah says to the people of Israel that God “will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.” In God’s mercy, God does not stop at forgiving our sins; God remembers our “sin no more.”

This distinction is crucial, and yet how many of us understand it? How many of us, when we ask forgiveness from somebody for a wrong action we have done, or even when we confess our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, think of God as able and willing to forgive our wrongdoing through these encounters? If we do think of God in this way, this is correct, because God is a forgiving God. No sin is too great to forgive, except perhaps the sin of not even asking for forgiveness. And yet God does not stop at forgiving our sin. God, as Jeremiah puts it, remembers our “sin no more.”

God, in the words of our Responsorial Psalm, does more than forgive our sin. We pray to God, “Create a new heart in me.” In similar words, the Colombian Blessed Laura Montoya Upegui, who worked with indigenous people deep in the jungles of Colombia, once prayed: “Lord, destroy me and, upon my ruins, build a monument to your glory.”

Lord, destroy what leads me away from you; destroy my sin; remember my sin no more. This is what absolution is about: “Create a new heart in me”; a heart after your glory; a heart after your own heart.

If we understand that God is more than forgiving; that God’s will is to destroy our sin and to re-create us fully in God’s image, does this not radically re-orient our understanding of God? Does it not radically re-orient how we identify Jesus Christ when he asks us, “Who do you say that I am”?

This might radically re-orient how we understand the effect of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or even our Penitential Rite during Mass. Reconciliation becomes more than just confessing a list of sins and being assigned a formula to pray as a penance.

Our sins are not just forgiven, but destroyed and their void filled with God’s own presence. This is not only radical; but may be (and perhaps should be) scary to us! I say scary because, when we are reconciled with one another and with God; when we not only “do” penance but live penitentially, we are invited to let something die within us; to let go of our sin; to let God destroy our sin so that God can fill its void. “Get behind me, Satan.” God, remember our sin no more. “Create a new heart in” us. Destroy what keeps us from you and build within us “a monument to your glory.”