Homily: Monday of the 3rd Week of Lent - Wash and be clean

The passage from the second book of Kings of Naaman the Syrian contains an incredibly pertinent lesson for us. Naaman had the worst disease imaginable, leprosy. And he and the King he served and loved were willing to sacrifice an enormous amount of wealth for him to be cured. He came all the way to Jerusalem, to Elisha the prophet. And Naaman felt that Elisha's remedy insulted his intelligence: wash seven times in the dirty Jordan river, when there were so many other rivers with cleaner water back home in Syria.   

Thanks be to God that Naaman had a servant who reasoned with him. “If the prophet would have instructed you to do something HARD, would you have done it?” “Of course,” said Naaman. Then why won't you do what the prophet asked? We know the rest of the story, Naaman went, and washed, and his leprosy turned to baby skin.

In the Gospel, Jesus had come to his home town, and began to teach. Yet, just as Naaman the Syrian rejected Elisha as a prophet, Jesus' fellow townsfolk rejected him as a prophet. They became so indignant that they wanted to drive him out of town and kill him. They rejected the message and the messenger.

Naaman had a notion that healing was supposed to come so other way. Jesus' townsfolk had a notion that God was supposed to come some other way.

During Lent, we might think the Church's call to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving is to simplistic, that our holiness is supposed to come some other way. Some folks, reject the invitation to the Sacrament of Confession, because they believe God brings the forgiveness of sins some other way.

At this point in Lent you may be starting to be disillusioned with your Lenten penances, you might be saying to yourself, they are becoming too hard, I'll find some other way to observe Lent. But I urge you to persevere, to allow God to work through those Lenten practices.

So many folks in our secular culture will consider any other way except Catholicism. They are unhappy, depressed, disconnected, escaping reality in every imaginable way. To some, the Christian faith is dismissed because it sounds so ordinary, even naive. Some, like the townsfolk of Jesus do everything in their power to run Jesus out of town.

But Souls are thirsting for God, and we are called, like Naaman's servants, to urge them to trust that God has made His Holy Will Known, that he Has made Himself available to all people through the Christian faith.

And yes, though going to Mass, praying the rosary, going to confession, serving the needy, sound ordinary and impressive, because God acts through them, they are anything but ordinary.

May we too learn to trust Him, and allow him to lead us in the enlightenment of our minds, and the purification of our hearts, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.