Actions & Consequences and A Freely-Given Gift

 Fourth Sunday of Lent

    When I was growing up, if we were flirting with trouble (mostly my sisters, because I was a perfect angel, of course!), my parents would say things like: if I have to pull this car over…; don’t you even think about it…; or other such tried and true methods.  They were not cruel, it was just a very direct form of discipline.  As all of us kids turned our pretty well, I’d say it worked.  But my sister Amanda, the only one with kids right now, often uses the phrase, “Make good choices.”  I’d call that the softer approach, but my nieces are also pretty well-behaved (at least, as far as I know), so that approach apparently can work, too!
    One major aspect of raising children is to help them to understand the consequences of their actions.  If you draw on the wall with crayons, you get time-out.  If you touch the hot stove, you get burned.  If you don’t do your homework, you don’t get to play outside (nowadays it’s more likely play video games or play on your phone).  If you break curfew, you’re grounded.  These small lessons about actions and consequences are meant to help young people understand that if we make good choices, there are, generally, good consequences.  If we make bad choices, there are, generally, bad consequences.
    We see that in the first reading today, and even, to an extent, in our Gospel.  The Books of Chronicles of the Old Testament are the abridged versions of the Books of Kings, explaining the actions of the kings of Judah and Israel.  The lesson at the end of the Second Book of Kings, our first reading today, is that the people made bad choices.  They worshipped foreign gods, they mistreated the poor, they trusted earthly riches and powers more than God, they did not live as God’s Chosen People.  God sent them messengers to tell them to make better choices, but they never listened.  And what was the consequence?  The Temple, the great house of God, was destroyed, and the people were exiled into Babylon.  To echo Bishop Barron, there’s a sort of spiritual mathematics going on.  If you add sin upon sin, you get death, like 2 + 2 = 4.  Notice, that death doesn’t only come because of sin (we see that in other books of the Old Testament), just like 4 can be added to with a few different combinations.  But certain actions have certain consequences, or, to put it in St. Paul’s words, “The wages of sin is death.”  
    Jesus, too, and John the Evangelist, give us this same idea in the Gospel.  “Whoever believes in [Jesus] will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned.”  Again, the spiritual mathematics of the importance of believing in Jesus.  Or, later on, John continues that evil means darkness, whereas God means light.  If we do evil things, we envelope ourselves in darkness.  If we do good things, we are surrounded by light.  This is part of the push to the New Evangelization.  We who have received the light (which will be powerfully demonstrated at the Easter Vigil, as we enter into a dark church, at first only illumined by the Paschal Candle which represents Christ), have a responsibility to share it with others.  And we should not prefer darkness to light, because otherwise we’ll find condemnation.
    But this can tend us to the idea that, if we just check off the right boxes, then we’ll be good.  It makes us the author of our salvation, rather than God.  It pretends that we have what it takes to save ourselves.  If that were so, certainly Abraham, or Moses, or Isaiah would have been in heaven as soon as they died.  But they couldn’t be in heaven without Jesus' saving Death and Resurrection.  Even those just men and women of the Old Testament couldn’t get to heaven on their own.  They, and we, are saved by grace, by the gift of God; it is not earned.
    But Fr. Anthony, you may be saying, you just got done saying that good choices lead to good consequences.  Yes, I did.  But all the good choices in the world couldn’t open up heaven.  It was the consequence of the death of Jesus on the cross that allowed us to enter heaven.  His good choice led to our good consequences.  “God, who is rich in mercy,…” says St. Paul, “brought us to life with Christ….For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God.”  Try getting to heaven without Jesus; it’s impossible.  You might be able to get halfway there every day, but you’ll never get all the way there.  Jesus is the only one who makes salvation possible.  And He’s the only one who gives us what we need to accept that gift of salvation.  If those in other religions are saved, the Church says, it’s still only because of Jesus.  Moses does not save people (nor did he claim to).  Mohammed does not save people.  Buddha does not save people.  Only Jesus does.  And anyone who is saved, is saved only through the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus.  
    God invites us to salvation.  He invites us to open the gift that He has prepared for us.  But, as with any gift, we can choose whether or not to accept it.  In that way, we’re back to actions and consequences.  If we accept God’s free gift of salvation, heaven is for us.  How do we know that we have accepted that gift?  By the way we live our life; by the good choices we make in response to that gift, because of our love for God.  We can’t earn it, but neither can we receive it without responding to it.  God did not come to condemn us; He sent Jesus to save us.  But the way that we can grab ahold of that salvation is to respond to the gift, to live as Jesus invites us; to make good choices when presented with the free gift of salvation.

"Let your words teach and your actions speak"

Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I think we have all been on one side or another of the following situation: a mother or father says to a child, “I need you to take out the trash, dear,” and the child says, “Ok,” and then some time passes, and the trash is not taken out because the child is playing a game, or watching tv, or doing something that he or she considers a little more important (and definitely more enjoyable) than taking out the trash.  That’s basically the same parable that Jesus gives today in the Gospel, and this parable is one to which we easily relate.

Talk, as is said, is cheap.  What really counts is actions.  We all know this.  If we loan someone money, and they keep telling us, “Oh yeah, I’ll get that to you by the end of the week,” but the weeks pass, and there is no reimbursement, we learn not to loan that person money.  Kids can sometimes get in trouble for not doing the chores they say they will but never seem to accomplish.  We can sometimes find out who our true friends are when we are in need and someone does or doesn’t stand by us.  What we say has exponentially more force when we follow it up by what we do.  St. Anthony of Padua said it this way: “Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak.  We are full of words but empty of action, and therefore are cursed by the Lord, since he himself cursed the fig tree when he found no fruit but only leaves.”  People say lots of things, but if they really want to make a difference, then those words need to be followed up by action.  The son in the Gospel who was praised was the one who originally said no, but did what the father wanted.

We have, in our life as Christians, said yes to the Lord on numerous occasions.  The minister of baptism says to parents,

You have asked to have your children baptized.  In doing so you are accepting the responsibility of training them in the practice of the faith.  It will be your duty to bring them up to keep God’s commandments as Christ taught us, by loving God and our neighbor.  Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?

Parents say to God that they will raise their child or children in the faith.  And yet, how many times do we never see those parents again at Mass?  How many times do children, especially as they approach First Holy Communion, not know how to pray, either conversationally with God, or even our simple memorized prayers like the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be?  It is not uncommon, even for parents who send their children to a Catholic School, to think that they no longer have to worry about raising their children in the faith, and yet, my personal experience and so many studies have shown that when the faith is not lived out at home, even if the child attends a Catholic school, that child will abandon the practice of the faith.

Or if we look at another sacrament, the Sacrament of Confirmation.  In that sacrament, we are given more grace and power of the Holy Spirit to share our faith with others, and to live as witnesses to the faith that was, for most, professed for them in baptism.  But out of those who have been confirmed, who said to God that they want to accept the grace of the Holy Spirit, how many show that faith in their words and actions?  How many simply leave the majority of the practice of their faith at the doors of this church, so that their worship of God at Mass has no effect on the choices they make in their daily lives?  And that’s if people even continue to practice their faith after Confirmation.  The old cheesy joke about a pastor with a bat problem comes to mind: a young pastor has bats in the church.  He tries to kill them with a tennis racquet, but no luck; he tries an exterminator, but the bats keep coming back.  So he asks a neighboring, older pastor who previously had bats what to do.  The older pastor says, “I just confirmed my bats, and I never saw them in church again.”

The other temptation for us, as children of God, is to do what we probably all have done as kids.  When it came to our life at home, we have all probably said to ourselves ‘I’ll do my chores later when it’s more convenient.’  We have all also probably said to ourselves, ‘I’ll grow in my faith when I’m older.’  Whether it’s saying a rosary more frequently, saying daily prayers, going to an extra Mass or two during the week, or any other religious practice that we know is good, it can be very easy to say, “I’ll do that when I’m older or retired.”  And certainly sometimes our Mass time is not conducive to working people, since we start at 8:15 a.m.  But, I know we have more retired people in our parish than come to daily Mass.  It’s not a requirement, so I’m not saying you have to come, but how many of you have thought about daily Mass, and maybe even told God you would go more, but then don’t follow through?  It’s very easy for all of us, myself including, whether we’re in school, working, or retired, to promise God that we’re going to grow in our faith, and then not follow through, and so we keep saying that we’ll do it later.  But in reality, we never have later.  The future is never ours to own.  All we ever know is that we have today, and how we can live our faith in the present.

Today the Lord invites us to let our actions speak; to follow what we say by what we do.  May we all take seriously the admonition by St. John in his first letter, “let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.”