4th Sunday of Lent 2018 - Mourning Sin, Mercy, and Lenten Joy

Happiness. The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle both taught that the motive behind all of our actions, is happiness.  We do the things we do because we want to be happy.  Even though there are so many things that divide the human family, the desire for happiness unites us. Why do we build cities, practice music, devote years of our life to athletic training? Why do we watch the Cleveland Browns week after week, hoping that maybe, just maybe, they will overcome past losses and bring home victory? Happiness.  Following Cleveland football is a perfect of example of how we even undergo great sufferings in order to achieve greater happiness.

Why do we desire happiness? Why do we desire joy? We are built for it. The Creator designed us with this deep longing. God made us to discover our soul’s deepest longing, in Him.

However, because of the Fall, because of the sin of Adam and Eve, our moral compass is defective. We look for happiness, we look for joy in all the wrong places. We do too much of what we don’t need and too little of what we do need. We eat too much, and fast too little; we gossip too much, and listen to actual wisdom too little; we train our bodies, while neglecting our souls; we are selfish too often, and selfless too seldom; these days, we spend too much time on social media, while neglecting healthy communication with the people we should love most. We settle for the superficial, and then complain when our lives seem meaningless.

Theologians call this broken happiness compass “concupiscence”—this tendency to look for joy, look for happiness in all the wrong places, even violating natural law and the commandments of God. St. Paul even writes about concupiscence to the Romans, when he says, “Sin…produced in me, every kind of covetous desire (Rom 7:8)”...every kind of concupiscence.

So what do we do about this broken happiness compass? Well, we have a choice don’t we? Either seek to fix it or let the broken compass continue to lead us away from joy, into sin, sadness, and separation from God.

During Lent, we seek the Lord’s wisdom to identify our concupiscent habits and the fortitude to overcome them. As we pray in the Eucharistic Preface: God has given us this sacred time for the renewing and purifying of our hearts, that freedom from disordered affections *concupiscence*, we may so deal with the things of this passing world, as to hold rather to the things that eternally endure.
The 4th Sunday of lent is known as Laetare Sunday, whose name is taken from the ancient latin entrance antiphon: Laetare, Ierusalem, et conventum facite, omnes qui diligitis eam…Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her. Be joyful, all who were in mourning; exult and be satisfied at her consoling breast.

It seems kind of strange that the penitential season is interrupted by this command to rejoice. How do you rejoice in the desert? Well, there is something deeply joyful about doing penance, knowing that are doing something to please the Lord, to humble to one’s pride.

Laetare Sunday is also a reminder that it is through repentance, that our mourning is transformed into rejoicing. The very structure of our scripture readings takes us on this journey from mourning and sin, to joy and truth and life.

In the old testament reading from Second Chronicles we read of the deplorable state of the people of Israel. “In those days, all the princes of Judah, the priests, and the people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the LORD’s temple.” A people who should know better practicing infidelity after infidelity to God’s laws, abominations like child sacrifice, unnatural relations between men and women, worship of false gods, involvement in occult practices like visiting spirit mediums and fortune tellers. And when God sends his prophets to warn the people, they scoff and mocked and killed them.

It took exile, the destruction of their city, families being ripped apart by a foreign enemy, to get these people to begin to wake up to the consequences of their sins.

Sinful Israel here represents all of sinful humanity, the sad state of our exile from God, our rejection of God’s commandments, and the biblical warning that families and civilizations crumble when they become distanced from God.

Beautiful Psalm 137 is the song of the soul, lamenting his sins, weeping over paradise lost, remembering how good he had it when he lived under the grace and protection of God.

And then our second reading, Paul writes to the Ephesians of how the soul dead in his transgressions is STILL loved by God; that God is rich in mercy, and that grace CAN be restored through Jesus Christ when the soul sincerely repents of his sins.

The Gospel repeats this truth: that Jesus Christ lifted up on the cross is the source of our spiritual healing. That because of Him we can turn away from our wickedness, and we can begin to live in the truth. What a tremendous message.

That same pattern of “sin, repentance, mercy, and life” is evident in the life of every Christian. Every Christian begins life “dead in his transgressions” as St. Paul says, and through baptism comes to new life, the life of grace.

And, we are to follow this same pattern every Lent. Every Lent we are to identify those parts of our life that have yet to be converted, those parts of us in which we allow death, and wickedness, and selfishness, and lust to reign.

We are to bring our fallen affections, our disordered desires and unenlightened intellects to be restored by God primarily in the Sacraments of Confession and Holy Eucharist. Again, if you haven’t gone to Confession yet this Lent, you still have a few more opportunities. The angels rejoice when a sinner repents, and something in us changes when we go to confession as well. We experience the elation, the joy of forgiveness. Our Lenten penances too, even though they bring some suffering, bring a Lenten joy that far outweighs the suffering.

If you haven’t experienced some joy this Lent, it’s likely not because you fasted, prayed, and gave too much, but likely because you’ve done these things too little, with half-hearted devotion, and lukewarmness.

Now that we are passed the half-way mark of Lent, we recommit to the penances some of us have already given up on, and perhaps discern how we might even unite ourselves all the more to Jesus who goes to the cross for us.

May we respond generously to the call to do penance, for it is through penance and repentance, that we reject the things that deprive us of life and joy, and open ourselves all the more to the life and joy of Easter grace, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.