Homily 3rd Sunday of Lent - March 3, 2024

 Today's readings can be found here.

            We’re about halfway through Lent.  How is your Lenten journey going so far?  During Lent, we should reflect on Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem and the Cross.  By using the three pillars of Lent, fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, we can draw closer to God.  They help us to be open to hearing God’s message to us this Lent.  In today’s readings, God has a very hopeful message.  Our psalm tells us: Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.  Just what are these words that lead us to life?

To begin, there’s the verse before the Gospel.  It’s the famous John 3:16: God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.  In the Gospel, when asked to give a sign for His actions, Jesus says if they destroy this temple, He will raise it up in three days.  His disciples remembered this after His resurrection and came to believe in Jesus’ words.  Believing in God’s love for us are words of eternal life.

The Gospel is not the only source of words for everlasting life today.  Fr. Joe, in his homily on the first Sunday of Lent, challenged us to be more than just Catholics who believe.  We should be Catholics that do.  That take action.  Our first reading tells us how we can do so.  The Ten Commandments are action oriented.  Have no other gods besides God the Father.  Keep holy the Sabbath day.  Do not kill, steal, or covet.  They can be summarized with the two greatest commandments, love God with all our hearts and minds.  Love our neighbor as we would ourselves.

Love is woven throughout the Scriptures for today.  It’s also woven into our Lenten journey.  If we look closely at Jesus’ journey to the Cross and then to Easter, we’ll see that everything He does is out of love.  He washes the disciple’s feet because He loves them and us.  He gives them His Body and Blood at the last supper because he loves them and us.  He dies on the cross because He loves them and us.  Additionally, Jesus does these things to show us how to love.

While I was studying for my MBA, I learned about a leadership style called servant leadership.  Sounds like an oxymoron, right?  How can you be a leader if you’re a servant?  But our Catholic faith is all about paradoxes.  Opposites that are a both/and proposition instead of an either/or.  The concept is pretty simple: a true leader is one that serves others.  As Christians, we lead others to Jesus by placing their needs before our own.

That’s the example that Jesus gave us.  In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus says He did not come to be served, but to serve.  Jesus gives us many examples in the Gospels on how to serve others.  He spent His ministry serving those who were considered outsiders and outcasts.  He also taught us to seek God’s will and place that above our own.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked that the cup might pass from Him but that God’s will, not His own, be done.  As disciples, we’re called to follow Jesus’ example.

Who are the outsiders or outcasts in our lives that we can serve?  What can we do to be servant leaders to our family, friends, co-workers, or classmates?  We don’t need to do big things to serve them.  St. Therese of Lisieux spoke in her autobiography of the “little way”.  She said, “Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”  Do small things with great love for others.  Who in our lives can we do small things for lovingly?

Our Scriptures today tell us to believe in God and to love God and our neighbor.  Whether we do large or small things, we can do them with great love.  In doing so, we can lead others to Jesus by serving them.  Jesus not only has the words of everlasting life, He gave us the WORD of everlasting life: love.