A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

+ As we persevere in our Lenten disciplines in order further to conquer vice and grow in virtue, and perhaps as we recognise at times – more than frustratingly – our own inadequacies in respect even of simple efforts so to do, Our Holy Mother the Church insists, on this fourth Sunday of Lent, that, rather than losing heart, we must rejoice! This may seem facile, if not utterly inappropriate. I may not have become very much more virtuous in the past four weeks; I may even have fallen back into sinful ways. The world of today, absorbed by the adoration of itself, may give us little reason to be glad – indeed, exactly the opposite. That worldly agendas have invaded the Church and are promoted by some of her prelates, more concerned to exercise power than to promote prayer, is a reason to mourn and is a call to penance, not a motive for thanksgiving.
 
And yet, no matter what our sins, no matter how evil the world has become, no matter how corrupt or feeble the ministers of Christ’s Church may be – today or tomorrow – we, who know sadness in its many shapes and shades only too well, are called today by the Sacred Liturgy to rejoice. Indeed, we are called – as the Introit and Gradual of this Mass make clear – to rejoice “in the house of the Lord”; for the Jewish people, the Temple; for we who are baptised into the new Covenant of the Blood of Christ, before the altars of our churches in worship and adoration of the Lamb slain for our sins.
 
For in He Whom we worship, we cannot but rejoice. For what He has done for us we cannot but be thankful. Indeed, no matter how diseased with sin and evil we, the world or even the Church have become, His Triumph over sin, evil and everlasting death is greater. That is why we worship Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man. That is why St Paul can insist: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:35,38-39)
 
There is, however, one thing that can separate us from the love of God: our own free, willing choice of that which we know to be contrary to the law of God – mortal sin, which is nothing other than a repudiation of Christ, a turning our back on His love in the search of some seemingly alluring idol or ideology of our own or of others’ making. This temptation, in its manifold forms and diabolical disguises, is precisely what our Lenten disciplines should help us to see, and to resist, all the more clearly.
 
Somewhat startlingly St Benedict instructs his monks that Lent shall be well observed “if we refrain from all sin.” (Rule, ch. 49) Surely that is obvious! But no, we need to be reminded of this. We need to fast and do penance and give the alms of our charity in order to see its truth more clearly. We need to discipline ourselves, sometimes severely, so as to see the true state of our souls whilst there is still time to repent and to amend our lives.
 
We also need to see and to know the reality that, frail and sinful as we are – as the words of the collect of this Mass teach us - we can and shall be consoled by God’s grace and be able to breathe His life once again if only we convert our lives and turn again towards Him. If we do all that we can to detach ourselves from sin, He will do the rest.  
 
This is the purpose of Laetare Sunday. It is not a ‘day-off Lent school’ (every Sunday in Lent is that). No, it is a day given to us by the Church in her Tradition, in the midst of the ongoing hard work of Lent, to ensure that we do not lose sight of the power of Almighty God made available to us by the Victory of Christ upon the Cross. It is the feast, if one may call it thus, of the abundant consolations of God’s mercy and love that are ours for the asking if we simply do our part and wholeheartedly open ourselves to them.
 
Not only may we rejoice in this, in addition the miraculous feeding of the five thousand in the Holy Gospel calls us to rejoice in God’s miraculous Providence. Are we in a situation out of which we can find no route? Is the Church heading down paths that seem foreign to her nature and God-given role? Is the world headed towards further conflict and destruction? Even in the worst possible situation, the Providence of Almighty God can bring forth what we need, and more – as the lives of the great saints in history more than adequately demonstrate.
 
So, my brothers and sisters, we go to the altar this morning rejoicing – not in the fact that Lent is half-way over, nor even in the fact that (hopefully) we have made some progress by persevering in our Lenten disciplines. No—we rejoice because God is God and His mercy and grace are available to us, here, at this very altar, and that they shall perfect our own efforts, if we but do what is necessary worthily to receive them. +