26th Sunday Ordinary Time

After numerous comments after Mass this week, I thought I'd better post this homily.

What is our understanding of sin?  For some, it is defined as a breaking of a rule or commandment.  That's a very legalistic way of understanding sin, but one that many are used to.  If you remember the days before the Second Vatican Council, you might remember going to confession and saying the following, "Bless me father for I have sinned, I broke the 2nd Commandment 4 times, the 3rd Commandment 5 times and the 4th  Commandment 10 times."  It used to be that one would not even have to say what that commandment was, just number and kind as they used to say.

It's ok to view sin that way, but the danger is that we can distance ourselves from our actions if we con't take some personal accountability.  A better way of viewing sin is looking at it as a failure to love.  Specifically, failing to enter into loving relationship with God and others.

We all want to be happy, but what we often do is seek out that happiness in the things of the world, forgetting that true and authentic happiness is only going to be found in God, staying connected to the vine that is Christ.  Unfortunately, that happiness can seem so elusive to us while the enticing things of the world are right in front of us.  So we turn from our relationship with God in favor of those attachments.  We damage the divine intimacy that God wants to have with us, and sometimes even sever that relationship.

What happens then is we become centered on self.  We begin to  satisfy our own needs without giving consideration to others.  When we stay on that path and make bad choice after bad choice, our hearts can be filled with pride, envy, jealously, lust, greed and all those tools the devil uses to entice us to sin.   Our hearts become ugly and lonely and incapable of loving effectively.  We find ourselves eventually wondering what happened to us.  How did all this happen?  St. Augustine was in that place, asking those questions before he began his journey home.

To understand how this happens, look at St. Peter.  His downfall did not begin in the courtyard when he denied Jesus on that Holy Thursday night.  It began with his failure to do the one thing Jesus asked him to in the garden- stay awake and pray.  He turned from the spiritual need to pray for the material need to sleep and it began a series of bad choices that culminated in denying the Lord.  That's what happens to us.  We turn from our spiritual need to be close to God in favor of our corporeal needs, and we sin.

Luckily, the readings today don't dwell on sin as much as they speak of the return from sin.  Ezekiel talked about the wicked man who turns from his wickedness and does what is just and right.  He will save his soul.  The gospel today reminds me of last weeks a little.  Last week you had the parable of the workers in the vineyard.  Remember the point of that parable was not how long they had been in the vineyard working, but whether they were there and the end of the day when it counted.  This weekend, we have two brothers who represent two very different kinds of people.  One who says "yes" to God when he asks him to do something, but loses his soul through an act of disobedience, not following through.  The other says "no", but later saves his soul by an act of obedience.

We are all prodigal.. We, at times walk away from God.  Some of us walk away for great lengths of time, but we are called to return.  God loves us infinitely so and challenges us to turn back to him.  In the story of the Prodigal son, the young son squanders his father's money.  He finds himself at that same point of St. Augustine, alone, broken and lost.  How did I get here?  Sound familiar?  He recognized that the only real happiness he had know was when he was with his father and makes the choice to return home.

I know what many of you are thinking.  "Father, I know, but you don't understand, I've been away so long, done so many terrible things, I don't think I'm worthy of that journey home.  Or I'm not strong enough to let go of those attachments that have kept me from him."

Here's the great good news.  All we have to do is make the choice to return and the Father will make the rest of the journey for us.  He will run to us, pick us up if necessary, and bring us home.  We don't make that journey home alone, but we have to choose it for ourselves.

In the Hail Mary, we ask our Blessed Mother to pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.  When you think about it, those are the only two moments in our lives that really matter- now and the hour of our death.  What happened yesterday, last week, last month, last year doesn't matter.  It's what we do in the here and now moment that matters.  Having said that, at some point those two moments are going to coincide.  The moment of our death will be now and how we have lived our live will matter.

We are like moist clay, we can mold ourselves into any shape we can imagine by the choices we make in life.  It can be a beautiful vase or a misshapen blob, but once the moment of death comes what we have created by those choices gets thrown in the fire and what comes out is that way forever.

In this life we make ourselves to be the people we will be in eternity.  I pray that we all might have the courage to come home, reconnect ourselves to the vine that is Christ and allow him to fill us with the true happiness that satisfies so we can love as he loves.