4th Sunday of Lent
9-10 March 2024 – St. Lambert Parish
2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23
Eph 2:4-10
Jn
3:14-21
Laetare! Today is Laetare Sunday. Laetare is
a Latin word which means rejoice! Rejoice why? Among other things because we
are over half, nearly 2/3 of the way through our Lenten Penance. This Sunday’s message
would be, that if these first weeks of Lent have gotten away from you, don’t
give in to discouragement. Just jump right in today with the traditional Lenten
disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It is not too late to make a
good Lent. By way of a reminder, this would be the time for you to prepare
yourself and to make a good confession now before Easter.
Doing penance, the whole prayer,
fasting, and almsgiving business is very Catholic. Why do penance, why take on
a special Lenten discipline you may ask? Well, it certainly has something to do
with the Church’s teaching on Purgatory and unloading the burden of temporal
punishment we have incurred because of our sins. The Lord wants us perfect in
love, not only no sin on our souls but none of the residue left behind by what
we have done wrong or have failed to do. God wants us, His Church wants us squeaky
clean, if you will. The Church teaches that there are two types of punishment
due to sin: eternal and temporal. Eternal punishment, the consequence of grave or
mortal sin which has not been forgiven in the Sacrament of Penance, is what
breaks off our communion with God, leading to the incapacity to enjoy heaven and
hence for seeing God. Not seeing God in the world to come and for all eternity
is hell; that is eternal damnation.
Temporal punishment, on the other
hand, is the consequence of every sin, even venial sins, and that must be
purified from our souls, scrubbed away either during our lifetime here on earth
or after our death in Purgatory. The Sacrament of Penance remits the eternal
punishment due to sin but may not always remit all temporal punishment, as God
requires satisfaction for sins. Temporal punishment serves as a means of
healing and conversion for sinners, challenging them to undertake a journey of
profound conversion towards the fullness of life and love with God. Prayer,
good works, indulgences, and the sufferings of purgatory are ways to remit the temporal
punishment, to clean up the stains or scars which remain despite reconciliation
or forgiveness. God's mercy aids the sinner in this process, using traditional
forms of penance or self-renunciation to facilitate the sinner's conversion and
healing. The goal is complete purification through our growth in fervent
charity. Our Lenten penance helps achieve that, helps stir up love within our
hearts, love for God and love for our neighbor.
I think the key concept to understanding
penance is that of satisfaction. We can understand satisfaction as a sort of payback.
Even humanly speaking, we can understand satisfaction which completes or
perfects our sentiments and words of sorrow expressed for having offended someone
we love. We see it at work already in our OT reading for today from the Book of
2nd Chronicles explaining why the Babylonian Captivity came about. At
the hands of the Chaldeans, the enemies of God’s People, came all the death and
destruction back then in Jerusalem. After killing and plundering, destroying
the temple and the city, they carried off the remaining people into the
Babylonian Captivity. God let them return home only after the Holy Land had rested
long enough to recover the sabbaths lost to the people’s wickedness. God claimed
back the 70 years of sabbath rest owed by His People to Him. Before their
punishment the Chosen People had gone about their own affairs and as a result
of their many offences against God, in justice, they had to pay for this: “But
they mocked the messengers of God, despised his warnings, and scoffed at his
prophets, until the anger of the Lord against his people was so inflamed that
there was no remedy.”
Today’s Gospel tells the same story,
but without using the imagery of a reckoning. St. John’s Gospel notes God’s
love for the world and the people’s condemnation for preferring the darkness to
the light Who is Christ. This is God’s judgement on the world, on that people who
rejected their Redeemer and chose darkness over light. In the Book of
Chronicles the princes of Judah, the priests and people are condemned for
infidelity, for practicing the abominations of the nations and polluting the
Lord’s temple. When Cyrus of the Persians sent the people back to Jerusalem, he
sent them back to rebuild the Lord’s temple destroyed by the Chaldeans. God
decreed through Cyrus that it was time to reestablish proper worship of the one
true God.
It is never too late to take up the
mantle of Lenten penance. We are called to do so in a truly Catholic sense as
we heard on Ash Wednesday: Rend your hearts and not your garments! We do
our fasting; we perform acts of charity not for the world to see but hidden
such that the God Who is hidden and sees in secret will see and reward our
penance.
St. Paul writes to the Ephesians: “For
by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the
gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast.”
Dating from the year 600, St. John
Climacus, writing in a book entitled The Ladder of Divine Ascent, describes
for his monk brethren the discipline and attitude needed to climb from the
darkness of this world into God’s light. Already at rung 5 of that ladder we
get a frightening description of a monastic prison, where monks remain filled
with remorse for their shortcomings and failings. It all seems very foreign to
us, but perhaps so only because we are not conscious enough of the greatness,
of the heights of our baptismal calling, and of how determined Satan is to
knock us off of that ladder which leads to heaven.
Laetare, rejoice! God would have us
climb up to Him. Take up the challenge and seek the light Who is Christ! Now is
the hour, now is the time, now is the day of salvation!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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