And in Mark’s Gospel story of Jesus
healing the paralytic, the very last line of that last reading, is the cry of
amazement from the crowd: “We have never seen anything like this!”
“I am doing something new … We have
never seen anything like this!” These
opening and closing lines, which highlight the marvelous novelty of the life of
faith, serve almost as a set of brackets holding together today's
readings.
And between these brackets, at the
very heart of the middle reading, St. Paul writes to the Corinthians: “As God is faithful, our word to you is
not ‘yes and no.’ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ … was not ‘yes and no;’ but
‘yes’ has been in Him. For however
many are the promises of God, their Yes is in Him.”
Dear brothers, that is the core
message of today’s readings: God’s word to us is yes. 'Yes' has been in Him, the Word of God whom the Father sent as
one like ourselves to do something entirely new and amazing: to free us from
sin and death and to offer us an abundance of life and joy!
As of early this morning, my
hometown of New York has a new Cardinal.
And throughout the past few weeks, with media crews following him around
New York and Rome, now Cardinal Timothy Dolan has been using the attention he’s
getting as an opportunity to speak about, and to do the work of, the New
Evangelization.
He’s admitted to reporters that too
many people today perceive the Church, and therefore the life of faith, and the
Gospel itself, primarily as a list of negative prescriptions – a set of no’s
that keep us from becoming our true selves, from achieving greatness as the
world defines it, and most importantly, keep us from being truly happy. To many people the faith is old and
tired, boring and stale, lifeless and needlessly restrictive.
But in the spirit of our Holy
Father Pope Benedict, and before him of Blessed John Paul II, Cardinal Dolan
has been telling people – both in his words and also in his way of being with
people – that the life of faith, the life of the Church, and the Gospel it
proclaims, is fundamentally a yes!
It is the yes that is in Christ Jesus!
It is the yes we give, opening
ourselves to a dynamic and life-giving friendship with Jesus Christ. But even more importantly, the life of
faith and the life of the Church is our reception of the yes that is in Jesus –
the yes God gives us, to all the promises He has made to His people …
“Yes, I have made you, and I love
you, and you are mine. Yes, your sins are forgiven, your faith has saved
you. Yes, I have come that you
might have life and have it to the full. Yes, I have put my seal on you and placed my Spirit within
you.”
Friends, the life of faith is
therefore novel and exciting, joyful and life-giving. And as faithful followers of Jesus Christ, called to take up
our own role in the New Evangelization, we must live our life of faith in such
a compellingly joyful way that others are drawn to Jesus Christ through our
witness.
We will however, have to admit, both
to ourselves, and to those who question us about the Gospel, that it is
sometimes the case that we feel as if no is actually the answer we receive from
God.
We sometimes feel that we have
heard no when we pray for the health of a loved one who passes from this life
instead. We feel we have been told
no when we ask for the healing of some relationship that remains broken
instead. We feel we have been told
no when we do not receive some success, some recognition or reward that we had
been hoping for or working toward.
And finally, we sometimes feel that
we are being told no when we would prefer to choose for ourselves what is
right, and true, and moral – and instead we are asked to yield to the teachings
of Scripture and Apostolic Tradition, the authority of the Commandments and the
Magisterium.
These are undeniably experiences of
the Cross – little moments of loss and death that are inevitable in all human
life. In prayer, we will have to
wrestle from time to time with the shock or anger, anxiety or sorrow that comes
from feeling as if we have somehow been denied.
But precisely in such prayer we
will discover that even in such situations, we are in reality being told a
fundamental yes – because “the Son of God, Jesus Christ… was not ‘yes and no,’
but ‘yes’ has been in Him!” At the
deepest level of our being, which we access through prayer, God is always
saying yes to us: “Yes, you are my beloved son. Yes, I know the plans I have for you, plans for your joy not
woe.”
Brothers, we are, in the end, like
children whose parents cannot – and should not! – give us everything for which
we ask. We’re like children who
must be told no when what we think we want is actually harmful to us.
But as any parent knows, such no’s
mask a much more fundamental and essential yes – a yes that envelopes us with a
parental love that desires only our complete health, our complete fulfillment,
and our total joy.
Dear brothers, in just a few days we
are about to enter into our Lenten journey of prayer, fasting, and
almsgiving. We will practice these disciplines so that every sin, and even every good gift that otherwise
distracts us from God, might be put aside.
We will strive to tame our senses, and silence our pride, so that we
might better hear and respond to the yes that God speaks to us in Christ.
May God open our ears, touch our minds
and hearts, that we might hear evermore clearly, in every circumstance of life,
that life-giving yes God speaks to us in Christ Jesus.
And may we have the wisdom,
courage, and joy necessary to emulate the four men in today's Gospel by helping to bring our brothers and sisters to Christ so that they can hear that yes in
their lives as well.
Homily for The Catholic University of America Knights of Columbus Council.
