A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday)

+ Our Lord often asks the impossible. He does so in this morning’s Gospel when he asks St Philip (of whom, as well as St Andrew, a relic is present on the altar today): “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” Let us bear in mind that we are talking about five thousand people. Feeding such a number was no simple matter.

St Andrew’s response is honest and straightforward: we cannot feed them. He explains: “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?” It is impossible.

How many times do we say the same thing: “It’s impossible!”? How often do we retreat behind the words “I cannot”? How many good initiatives are never put to the test because I simply do not have the resources to hand to begin them, let alone to sustain them? “I am not rich,” “I do not have the energy,” “I don’t even know where to begin,” we sigh as we retreat back into the security of mediocre inactivity.

But of course, we are right. Often we do not have the means or strength or expertise to see initiatives through. We all have our limits and these are real, not imaginary. It could be grossly imprudent to launch out into the deep without the wherewithal to navigate the seas—which can be utterly tranquil at one moment and can then become utterly treacherous. Far better that we leave their navigation to experienced seafarers in vessels capable of withstanding the storms that will buffet them at one time or another. How are we to navigate such waters in but a small boat? Its impossible. And so we stay on the shore.

Yet, when Our Lord asks us to set out into the deep, we should learn from St Peter who responded to this very instruction with a protest, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!”—and with faith: “But at your word I will let down the nets.” (Lk 5:5) A verse from this morning’s Gospel is equally applicable to the instruction Our Lord gave to St Peter in his boat as it is to the questions put to St Philip: “This He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.”

My brothers and sisters, here we find ourselves at the very heart of the reality that, on this fourth Sunday of Lent, our Holy Mother the Church wishes us to not only to understand, but from which to live and depend. That reality is nothing less than the fact that Our Lord asks much of us, very much indeed—sometimes even the impossible—but He does so in order to test us, “for gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation,” as the book of Sirach/Wisdom teaches us (2:5). And He does so all the while knowing what He Himself will do.

Let us put this another way. We are utterly inadequate. Deep waters scare us. We rightly recoil from tackling impossible situations. We cannot do much that that we would like to do: we do not have the personal, moral or material resources. Confronted by the Lord’s demands with St Peter we plead the honest excuse: “Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” And yet, we ought to attend to the response St Paul received when he pleaded his inadequacy: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” the Lord told him. For in calling both St Peter and St Paul to become the greatest of the Apostles, the Lord knew what He Himself would do in and through them.

They, however, did not: they were frightened by their limitations and sins, which they knew well enough. But here, again, we touch the heart of the message of the Gospel. It is not about us and what we can or cannot do. “I” do not matter. God does. Whether it is a sinful Peter or a weak Paul, whether it is five barley loaves and two fish—whether it is you or I or anyone else similarly or worse damaged and bruised and fatigued by the vicissitudes of the world, the flesh and the devil, or by persecution from within or without—God can and does and will work in and through us unto His own Providential ends. But He can only do so if we allow Him. He can only do so if we offer Him all that we have, inadequate as it is, and allow Him to take us, to bless us, to break us as necessary and to give us to others for their nourishment in a manner we cannot presently imagine.

It is for this reason—for what the Lord can do and wills to do—that we rightly sing Laetare Jerusalem in the Introit of this Holy Mass. For whilst we correctly pursue our Lenten regime of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, we do so not out of a Pelagian determination to make ourselves better people, but in order all the more purely to offer our five barley loaves and two fish to the Lord, in faith, trusting that He Himself knows what He will do with them if only we shall allow Him. It is in this reality that we can rejoice, even as its implications may astound us—just as they astounded St Philip and St Andrew, and St Peter and St Paul.

As we place all that we have before the Altar in this Holy Mass, let us ask their intercession that we too may come truly to rejoice in the accomplishment of what the Lord already knows He will do with that which we have to offer. +