Homily: Friday of the 3rd Week of Lent 2016 - With all your heart

Jesus forgives us

On Ash Wednesday, we heard God’s powerful invitation through the prophet Joel to all of us: “return to me, with all your heart.”  The heart, in biblical language, symbolizes the center of the person, the whole person.  During Lent, we are invited by God to return to Him fully, wholly, entirely.

Return from where? From our sins of course, from our wandering, from our cavorting with empty promises, with false Gods. 

From the prophet Hosea, we hear how Israel, who was called to cling to God with their whole heart, had been unfaithful, like an adulteress.  Israel was to be God’s bride, clinging to God her husband, yet, she had taken up with the false gods of the surrounding Canaanite culture.

So God said, “I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart.” In order to free Israel from her adulterous relationship, God would bring her into the desert.  Why the desert? In the desert, we are freed from our distractions and sinful attachments.  There are no tv’s, no iphones, no gossiping, no casinos, no bars out in the desert.  In the desert, we are nursed back to spiritual health by encountering God’s mercy.

This is why we speak of the Lenten desert. Lent is to be that time where we strip away those sinful and spiritually unhealthy behaviors, and encounter God’s mercy, so that we can be free to love Him again, with our whole heart.

For again, on Ash Wednesday, he didn’t just say “return to me”, but “return to me, with your whole heart.” In the Gospel, Jesus repeats that language, and takes it even further: “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength.”

To love God with everything, to love God with total self-abandonment, to love God utterly, completely, wholeheartedly: this is the point of Lent.  All of our Lenten penances, all of our prayer 

has the aim of freeing us from all that keeps us from the pure love of God.

So God has lead us out into the desert, what do you still have to let go of this Lent? What do you still have to repent of? What do you still have to commit to?

Jesus’ invitation is powerful and life-changing.  He says we shouldn’t be satisfied with Him simply being a part of our life, he wants to be our entire life, he wants to be the all-consuming center—the reason we get out of bed in the morning.

Let him into your mind: let him free you from thoughts of jealousy, envy, lust, unworthiness, pride, vengeance. Allow him to strengthen you to love as he does, to heal the sick, visit the lonely, counsel the doubtful, rebuke the sinner, to pray to God with an undivided heart. Allow him to heal you of your resentments, your past wounds, your grief, your guilt over past sins, your attachments to earthly pleasures for the glory of God and salvation of souls.