Laetare Sunday
Evening, 5 March / Church of
St John the Evangelist / Agawam
Rejoice with
Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her;
rejoice with
her in joy”
(Is 66:10).
Today, of course, is Laetare Sunday;
the Church bids us rejoice. (Your first cause for rejoicing is because this
homily is going to be shorter than usual.) However, please take today’s Mass
texts as proof: in both the introit and collect the word consolatio is used. Our violet of penance has softened to the rose
of rejoicing.
But how can we rejoice? This world
(we needn’t look far) is filled with so much evil and disorder. Or forget the
world around us, we ourselves sin and struggle and suffer. We are in the midst
of Lent, doing penance and desperately trying to bring about some kind of
spiritual betterment in our lives. Sometimes the way of conversion and growth
in holiness is rugged and steep—I should say oftentimes. It is not always easy
to live the Catholic life deeply. No, it is never easy to live the Catholic life deeply. In fact, this path we
call the spiritual life is the hardest thing we shall ever do. Some consolation
that is. Rejoice, then?—Madness.
And yet, one spiritual writer put it
this way:
His love for those who serve Him is always ready to supply them with the
necessities for their spiritual life, and for gaining complete victory over
themselves. All that he demands is that they return to Him with complete
confidence. Can anything be more reasonable? The amiable Shepherd for
thirty-three years or more sought after the lost sheep through thorn-roughened
ways, with so much pain that it cost Him the last drop of His sacred blood.
When this devoted Shepherd sees His strayed sheep finally returning to Him with
the desire of being guided in the future by Him alone, and with a sincere,
though perhaps weak intention of obeying Him, is it possible that He would not
look upon it with pity, listen to its cries, and bear it upon His shoulders to
the sheepfold?[1]
Friends, the enemies of the Church
often accuse us of being intolerant and rigorous. But could that really be
true, given what he just heard? The world knows nothing about it: there is such
mercy stored up in the Sacred Heart of Jesus; in the Immaculate Heart of
Mary.
And yet what of us, we who roam and falter
through the spiritual life? Have we grown lax and spiritually lazy? Do we
doubt? Are we caught in some shameful sin of the present or carrying one from
the past? Are we indifferent?—What of it? Is our Master not mighty enough to
take care of all that? Why else has he given us his priests? What does Christ
do when he sees one of us, his sheep, returning to him with even a shred of
sincerity? To quote our spiritual author again—“Doubtless He is greatly pleased
to see it united again to the flock, and invites the Angels to rejoice with Him on the occasion.”[2]
The indomitable mercy of Christ is
the source of our rejoicing.
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