March 20, 2018
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this for Lenten communal reconciliation service on March 19, 2018, at St. Austin Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on 2 Corinthians 5:16 – 6:2.
We gather tonight in this season of Lent to reflect on the sins we have committed and on the good we have failed to do. But let us remember that the word “Lent” has its roots in an old German word for “springtime.” May our time together tonight help us to reclaim our role in helping God to reconcile the entire created universe.
Tonight we gather to celebrate a sacrament, and sacraments confer grace. Let us take a moment in silence to ask God for the specific grace that we need at this moment on our journey of faith.
Let us pray:
God of mercy, we stand before you,
aware of our personal failings,
but also aware of your boundless grace.
Comfort our fears. Strengthen our resolve.
May we become ever more like Christ,
members of his Body,
ready to use our God-given talents to reconcile the world.
We ask this through your Son, Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one unifying God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Reconciliation is much more than a sacrament. It’s a spirituality. It’s a lifestyle. It can expand to encompass every aspect of our being.
Here at St. Austin, it informs how we answer the phone when someone asks to get married at the church. We say, “Congratulations!” instead of “Are you registered?” It’s how we teach adult faith formation classes. We emphasize our shared identity with other Christians, rather than focusing exclusively on what makes Catholics different from other Christians. It’s how we try to make everyone welcome, making room for those who feel hopeless or unwanted, for those who feel hurt by or alienated from the Church itself.
But because reconciliation encompasses everything, the word itself can become dangerously vague. Let’s take a moment. If someone asked you to explain what reconciliation is, what would you say?
Of Paul’s various letters, we know the least about the circumstances surrounding 2nd Corinthians. But it’s clear, from other parts of the letter, that Paul feels under attack by the Corinthians. But in the midst of his defense, he gives us this remarkable treatise that lies at the heart of our understanding of reconciliation, a passage we hear every year on Ash Wednesday.
Reconciliation must be understood in terms of God’s ongoing, deepening relationship with all of creation. Christ is the center of creation. Reconciliation is God’s initiative in bringing all creation to its purpose.
Reconciliation is God’s initiative, but we’re not off the hook. We are baptized into Christ, so we are ambassadors of Christ’s reconciliation. Our primary responsibility as reconcilers is to continually identify ourselves more fully with Christ. Instead of hearing these words as God’s orders of what to do, can we hear them as God’s invitation of who to be?
We are ambassadors for Christ, but we face two temptations in carrying out this ambassadorship.
First, we tend to think of reconciliation as something that we do, rather than primarily as something that we are. Reconciliation is about personal conversion. Do we see others with the eyes of Christ, or is our vision obscured? Yes, we must act in God’s reconciling of creation, but our actions must be rooted in Christ.
The second temptation is to blame other people for the divisions between us. Issues surrounding reconciliation often deal with perceptions of injustice: I can easily see how the other person needs to be more like Christ. But how do I ever know if I’m being truly Christ-like myself? Sometimes I catch myself thinking about how the Church could better accomplish its mission, rather than focusing on how I could better live out the truths taught by the Church! The great metaphor is trying to remove the speck from someone else’s eye when I have a plank in my own eye. How do I ever know for sure that I’ve removed all the obstructions from my own eye?
It’s been said that the word “reconciliation” can be broken down into three smaller parts: “re-“ is a prefix meaning again; “con” is Spanish for with; and “cilia” is the Latin word for eyelashes. So reconciliation can be translated as “again with eyelashes,” or, more loosely, “to see eye-to-eye again.”
To see eye-to-eye with our neighbor, we need to continually remove the planks from our eyes, to attend to our own conversion. And we must also continually ask our neighbors to help us remove the remaining specks in our own eyes.
Then, and only then, will we see with the eyes of Christ. We can’t force anyone else to engage in the conversion process. As ambassadors for Christ, all we can do is invite other people to deepen their identity with Christ and join us as fellow ambassadors.
Loving God, we attempt to become ever more like your Son. Give us the humility to prune what must be cut out of our lives. Give us the enthusiasm to grow in the ways you desire for us.
- When have we refused to take part in God’s plans for reconciling all creation?
- When have we listened to our selfish desires instead of the needs of the voiceless people around us?
- When have we failed to acknowledge personal responsibility for our actions?
- When have we chosen to dwell on past hurts rather than to accept new opportunities to do God’s will?
- When have we failed to acknowledge our dependence on God?
- When have we failed to acknowledge our dependence on one another?
Loving God, hear the prayers of those who call on you.
Forgive the sins of those who confess to you,
And in your merciful love, give us pardon and peace.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.