Daily Homily 3-28-2020

Fourth Saturday of Lent (Jeremiah 11:18-20)

The Prophet Jeremiah was the Old Testament figure that was most like Jesus.  He brought a message of repentance to the people.  He was trying to save Jerusalem from destruction. He spoke the truth that needed to be heard, but he was hated for it.  He often endured humiliation and rejection.  He was a good man.  We don’t know that he had many moral flaws, yet he was physically punished and thrown into prison many times.   He was also sent into exile.

St. Therese of Lisieux entered the convent when she was a teenager.  She immediately was treated harshly by the prioress who did not take Therese’s vocation seriously.  The superior would go out of her way to humiliate Therese in front of the other sisters.

One day the sisters were cleaning the cloister. Therese overlooked a cobweb in the corner of the area where she was cleaning.  The prioress said loud enough for all the other sisters to hear, “It is easy to see that the cloister was swept by a mere child.”  At other times the prioress would say in front of others, “The child does nothing right and is lazy.”

St. Therese, at first despaired, but then she realized she had to look at things a different way.  Therese began to see that she could not let what her detractors said cause her to doubt God’s love for her.  She had to look within to find her value as a person.  She began to see that the one she had to please was God alone and God was fond of her.  In this she found joy.

St. Therese quietly went about her work.  She learned to esteem herself and rely on the love that God had for her.

We see Jesus operating in the same way in the Gospel of John.  In the readings we have during the latter stages of Lent we see how Jesus is constantly attacked even when he heals people and consoles them.  It would have been easy for our Lord to lose heart, but he pushed through. 

Jesus believed that the Father loved him no matter what others said.  He had an inner strength that we all can aspire to. Sometimes we do nothing wrong, we might even do good things, but there still will be people who attack us.  We must be realistic.  If a saint can be ridiculed and our savior can be mocked, then we can expect moments of rejection in this world.  But our God wants to reassure us in every adversity.

Dear Parishioners,

I remind you, once again, that we will livestream the Sunday Mass this afternoon at 4 p.m.  You can look at yesterday’s homily for instructions on how to see this Mass.  We will post it on our WEB page by Sunday morning.  I would like to thank Kate Schaefer and Mike Maynard for helping to put this together.  Please spread the word so that others can view Sacred Heart’s Mass.

I hope that all of you are following the protocols and are staying home.  Fr. Matthew and I are having a lot of good conversations.  So far there have been no arguments, mostly because of his great charity. Pray for him.

May the angels watch over you today,

Fr. Mark