Homily Lent 5B: Covenant love versus contractual obligations

 Homily for 5^th Sunday of Lent Year B 2021

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33

Introduction

What kind of relationship do you and I have with God?  Or rather, what kind of relationship does God want to have with you and me?

One of my favourite TV shows is the sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. On this show, the eccentric Sheldon Cooper regulates relationships with his friends by means of written contracts.

·        He has a roommate agreement with Leonard that stipulates all kinds of things including the bathroom schedule down to the minute.

·        He has a 31-page relationship agreement with his girlfriend Amy, which regulates things like the frequency and duration of date night.

·        And as for his other friends, their status depends on how many strikes they have accumulated or how many Cooper coupons they have earned.

Is that the kind of relationship a Christian should have with God?  Apparently not.

Scripture and Theology

In today's reading from the Prophet Jeremiah, we heard: “The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”  In other words he defines the kind of relationship he wants to have with his people, one characterized by these three things:

·        He wants to have a covenant with them, not a contract.

·        He wants a new covenant, not the old ones.

·        And this is going to happen in the days to come, when the Messiah comes.

While they are similar, a covenant and contract are very different.  A contract is signed by the buyer and seller of a house, or an employer and employee, but a covenant is more about a relationship between two people.  Yes, both contracts and covenants stipulate rights and responsibilities of each side, but a covenant is permanent, even if one side fails to meet its obligations.  Our relationships in the family, in marriage are covenants not contracts.  Because of his covenant with Israel, the Lord says: “Can a mother forget her baby, or a woman the child within her womb? Yes, even if these forget, yet even if these forget, I will never forget you” (Isaiah 49:1).  God’s relationship with his people is personal and intimate.

But just because it is a covenant and not an unfeeling contract is no guarantee that it will work.  Several times God made a series of covenants with his people, promising to be their God and they his people.  But time and again they failed to live up to their end of the agreement.

1.    The first covenant God made was with Adam and Eve (Gen 1-2).  He gave them everything they needed, a garden, animals, each other and all he asked was one teeny, tiny thing: do not eat of the tree of knowledge.  As we know they disobeyed him and broke that covenant.

2.    The second covenant was with Noah (Gen 6-9) in which God promised that he would not destroy the earth again with a flood; and he gave the rainbow as a sign of his promise.  But the people still sinned.

3.    The third covenant was with Abraham (Gen 17), and God promised him many things: numerous descendants, a great nation, a land flowing with milk and honey.  Abraham and his children for their part had to obey God.

4.    The fourth covenant was with Moses (Ex. 20-34) and this was the big one.  God promised to deliver on the promises he made to Abraham as long as the people for their part kept the Ten Commandments, which were etched on two stone tablets.  Almost immediately they went back on their word.

5.    And then God made a covenant with King David (2 Sam 7), promising to establish the house of David as an everlasting kingdom.  But again, as we know, starting with Solomon, David's son who brought in idolatry, and then his sons who split the Kingdom into two, this covenant was soon broken.

But because this was a covenant, and not merely a contract, God never gave up on his people. And that is why now through Jeremiah, he promises: "The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah."  And then he goes on to say: "It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt."  In other words, the new covenant cannot be "same old, same old" covenants, since that has been tried and failed.

The first five covenants of the Old Testament worked like Sheldon’s agreements, with rights and obligations clearly stated up to the smallest details.  They were enforced by external conditions and laws like the tree of knowledge, the rainbow, circumcision, the stone tablets and the monarchy. But the new covenant, which Jeremiah promises is going to be different.  “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts,” God says.  In other words, the stipulations of the new covenant will be interior, within the people’s hearts.  And he goes on: “No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives how to know the LORD. All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD.”

Jeremiah's prophecy would be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who announced this new covenant at the Last Supper.  Holding the cup of wine, he told his disciples, the same words the priest repeats at Mass: “The blood of the new and everlasting covenant.”  And on the next day, on the cross, Jesus shed his blood and sealed the new covenant.  That is why when the foreign Greeks come to see Jesus in today’s gospel, he did not start by giving them a set of rules and obligations.  Instead, he told them that there was a new sheriff in town: "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified."  And he is going to be glorified on the cross, like a grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies so as to produce fruit.  A little later after they had heard the voice of God confirm the mission of Jesus, he said: "Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world [meaning Satan] will be driven out.  And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself."  Through the death and resurrection of Jesus we have a new way of relating with God, one based on a law written in the heart, in love.

And that is why when we sin, we are not merely breaking laws and precepts; we are breaking a relationship with someone we should love, our Loving God.

Christian Life and Conclusion

And so, during this Lenten season, what kind of relationship are we cultivating with Jesus, with God the Father?  Is it the Sheldon Cooper kind, or is it mother and child kind?  For example, why and how do we undertake the three special practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving?  Are we doing them and indeed other Christian responsibilities the way of the Old Covenants, out of sheer obligation, or we can do them the way of the New Covenant, out of love, from the heart?

At the seminary I am known to be a strict professor, because I don’t tolerate tardiness for class or assignments, tolerate shoddy papers or exams.  And so, some students doubt that I have a heart.  But I do assure them I do have a heart, from the ultra sound of my doctor.  I have a heart for God’s people whom they will serve.  For if they don’t do their work now in seminary, learning theology and prayer, learning how to preach and to celebrate Mass worthily, learning how to relate with people, how will they serve their people?  And so, while keeping the bar high, I also work with them to gradually arrive at the passing mark.  That is what God asks of us, to grow our relationship with him in what we do.

In the new covenant of Jesus Christ, God has given each of us a new heart.  Let us use our hearts, like the Baltimore Catechism said, “to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.”

ST. PETER'S BASILICA: Privilege of Private Masses withdrawn

VATICAN II FINALLY COMES TO THE VATICAN BASILICA

The following document recently released from the Vatican has caused no little disquiet in some Catholic quarters.

For the document introduces new measures for the celebration of Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, in particular, suppressing private Masses and promoting more communal celebrations.

Besides the document’s stated aim of ensuring “that the holy Masses in the Basilica of St. Peter’s are conducted in a climate of recollection and liturgical decorum”, I think that the document also seems to be putting into practice, albeit nearly 60 years later, some of the provisions of the Second Vatican Council.  Vatican II has finally arrived at the Vatican Basilica.

Communal nature of the Mass

Until now, it has been possible for individual priests, with valid celebrets or other such documentation, to show up at the Basilica before 7:30am or 8:00am, and celebrate a private Mass at one of the 45 side altars or 11 chapels.  I myself have had the privilege of celebrating such Masses with my guests, when I was a student in Rome and even more recently when I visited Rome.  It is like Grand Central or Termini Train Station in the Basilica at this time with priests coming and going from the sacristy to the side altars.  The document suppresses such Masses. 

The suppression seems to give priority to communal celebrations of the Mass rather than private celebrations, thus implementing Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) 27 that clearly states:

"It is to be stressed that whenever rites, according to their specific nature, make provision for communal celebration involving the presence and active participation of the faithful, this way of celebrating them is to be preferred, so far as possible, to a celebration that is individual and quasi-private.

This applies with special force to the celebration of Mass and the administration of the sacraments, even though every Mass has of itself a public and social nature."

That is why the invitation has been made to individual priests to concelebrate and the faithful to attend the already scheduled Masses.  At the same time, groups of pilgrims who have a bishop or priest to celebrate a Mass for them, will still have the opportunity to celebrate Mass in one of the chapels in the Vatican grottoes, prior planning and reservation being presumed.  Thus, the only Masses still allowed are those of a more communal nature.

That is not to say that private Masses are not efficacious; of course, they are. The privation or loss in private Masses is not of grace (res), but a privation of the sign (sacramentum).  For private Masses have the bare minimum of signs for a valid celebration of the Mass, for the reception of grace from the Eucharist.  And yet the same council, teaching about the value of the sign says, “In the liturgy the sanctification of the man is signified by signs perceptible to the senses, and is effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs” (SC 7).  These signs, which are listed throughout the Vatican II document on the liturgy, include the communal dimension, ministers, music, and other signs (or what some call the bells, yells and smells) of Catholic liturgy.  A private Mass is deprived of these signs in varying degrees.  That is probably why this document explicitly states that the concelebrations are to be animated by lectors and cantors.  These signs are important for the fruitfulness of grace.  The use of these signs avoids the minimalism of what has been called a "low Mass" mentality.

Promotion of Concelebration

Another little-used prescription of the Second Vatican Council is concelebration. Sacrosanctum Concilium 57 extended the use of concelebration, which up to that point was rather limited.  Following the Council, among the occasions indicated for concelebration, always within the competence and discretion of the ordinary, are “at the conventual Mass, and at the principal Mass in churches when the needs of the faithful do not require that all priests available should celebrate individually.”  That is why this document seems to put this prescription into practice by providing for concelebration at the scheduled Masses in the Basilica.

The Council, however, goes on to say that “Nevertheless, each priest shall always retain his right to celebrate Mass individually, though not at the same time in the same church as a concelebrated Mass, nor on Thursday of the Lord's Supper.”  Thus, every priest always has the right to celebrate Mass individually.  But what this paragraph does is only to give priests the right to celebrate individually, not the right to celebrate individually anywhere.  So, priests in Rome, retain to celebrate Mass individually wherever they have permission to celebrate Mass, such as in their churches, residences or colleges.  Just like a priest does not have the right to show up at any Church or Cathedral in the world and demand access to an altar, the same thing will now apply at St. Peter’s Basilica.  Celebrating individually is a right; doing so at St. Peter’s Basilica is a privilege.

Extraordinary Form of the Mass

And since the Extraordinary Form of the Mass (according to the 1962 Missal) virtually does not admit of concelebration, provision has been made for such celebration by authorized priests, probably for groups of the faithful who have a predilection for that Mass.  The irony is that now priests cannot celebrate the Vatican II Mass individually, but they can celebrate the older Mass individually.  Once again priests who wish to celebrate in that form have not been denied the right to celebrate Mass in that form; they just don’t have the permission to celebrate it at the Basilica.  And recognizing the extraordinary nature of this usage (even according to Pope Benedict’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum), these Masses have been limited to the Clementine Chapel.

Privilege vs Right

While I will miss the privilege of celebrating Mass with a few friends at the Basilica, I fully understand the rationale for these Basilica.  The loss of this privilege might lead to a loss of an exotic spiritual experience of celebrating in that beautiful Basilica and perhaps even some bragging rights; but it is not a loss of Eucharistic spiritual experience per se, since the Mass celebrated in that Basilica is no more efficacious that the Masses I have celebrated on a coffee table under a tree in Uganda and the Masses celebrated by 99.99 % of Catholics in the world.

Homily Lent 4B: God loves us with carrot and stick

 Homily for 4^th Sunday of Lent Year B 2021

2 Chronicles 36:14-16,19-23; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21

Introduction

John 3:16. This is the verse you will often see displayed on billboards, on hand-made signs held up in stadiums and on pendants worn especially by evangelical Christians. And what does John 3:16 say?  As we just heard in today’s gospel, it says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

You can perhaps see the reason why this verse is famous, because it describes the core message of the gospel, the message of God’s love for us.  We human beings show love for others using words, like “I love you”; or by doing things like cooking a really nice meal; or by our presence, by spending time with someone, especially when they are sick or down in the dumps.  And yet our love as human beings, even the love of parents for their children, spouses for each other, pales in comparison to the love of God.

Scripture and Theology

But first, what is love?  What does it really mean to love someone?  Does it mean all sunshine and roses?  Not really.  That is the superficial kind of love we hear in musical lyrics, read in tabloid magazines and see in the movies.  Love is not about how we feel; love is willing or desiring the good of another person.  And that is how God loves us.  He desires good for us.  In fact, this verse which we heard in our gospel today, is only the culmination of a long history of God showering love upon love on his people.  Sometimes he loved with the carrot, sometimes he loved with the stick. But in both ways he desires our good.

In the first reading we heard how the people of Israel sinned, adding infidelity upon infidelity.  Think of any sin against the Lord and they did it.  The most serious sin was that they practiced "all the abominations of the nations" and polluted "the LORD’s temple which he had consecrated in Jerusalem."  They turned away from their God and turned to other gods, even bringing their statues into the temple, God's holy house.  What does the Lord do in this situation?

He acts like any good and loving parent, who has someone speak to their wayward child, perhaps the school counsellor or the priest or a relative, someone who can speak to them and help them see the right path.  And so, God showed his love for the people by sending them prophets: the major prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the twelve minor ones including Hosea, Joel and Amos.  These prophets taught the people the way of righteousness.

But as we heard in the reading, the leaders rejected the prophets that God sent to help them, even killing some of them.  In this way they compounded the situation, by not only sinning, but also by refusing the help of those who came to heal them of their sinfulness, like a patient who rejects the doctor's advice.

How did God react to this further provocation?  He had had enough.  He sent the people into exile.  Back in the 8^th century B.C., he had sent the people of the northern Kingdom of Israel into the Assyria. Our reading today describes the situation in the 6th century B.C., when God also sent the people of the southern Kingdom of Judah into exile, this time into Babylon.

By this action of sending them into exile God was not giving up on the people, but was continuing to show them love.  Yes, God punished them severely, by allowing them to be enslaved like their forefathers had been enslaved in Egypt.  The exile was a time for the people to learn from their pain and suffering, that they must be faithful to God.  Think of the punishment of detention that you give your children.  As a parent or teacher, I would hope that you do not punish your children out of hate or vengeance, but out of love for them, out of a desire to see them grow and become better people.  And so, because he had used the carrot before, now with the exile God had to use the stick to help the people.

That is why the punishment was not to last forever.  After 70 years, God sent the exiles a saviour, a very unlikely saviour, the pagan Persian King Cyrus.  He freed the Jewish people from captivity in Babylon to return Jerusalem, to rebuild their temple and their community.  And on returning home, that is what they did.

And now when they had been back home for quite some time, God then showed them his utmost love.  If he sent King Cyrus to help the people return to their national homeland, in Jesus his Son, God sent them a Messiah to restore them to their heavenly homeland.  That is why John's Gospel of today proclaims loud and clear: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

This is wonderful news; this is God showing his love once again for his people.  For now, in Jesus Christ, final salvation has come not only to the people of Israel but indeed to the whole world.  Jesus is the new Moses telling, not Pharaoh this time, but the Evil one: "let my people go!"  That is why in John's First Letter he describes God's love in another way saying: "See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. . .. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 Jn. 3:1-2).  For those who know Jesus, fall in love with him, do his will, God has opened the gates of heaven.

Christian Life

But this love of God came at a cost, the suffering and death of God’s Son on the Cross.  That is why the verse about God so loving the world that he sent his son is immediately preceded by Jesus saying: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  In other words, just like the Hebrew people were healed from the snake bites by looking to the serpent Moses lifted up for them, God's people will find healing by turning to Jesus who is lifted up on the cross.  By his Cross we are saved!  By his Cross we are loved.

How do we respond to this love, to this great love of Jesus on the Cross?  There is a scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan that might give us an answer.

You might remember, this movie is about a group of soldiers sent to save private James Ryan, who has already lost two of his brothers to the war; the army wanted his parents to remain with one son.  Anyway, many of these men die in the process of saving James, including their leader Captain Miller who just before he dies tells the now rescued Ryan, “James.  Earn this . . . earn it.”

Ryan seems to take these last words of the captain very seriously.  In a scene set with Ryan as an old man, he returns to Europe to the cemetery where Captain Miller is buried.  Staring at the grave marker he mumbles to his dead commander that every day of his life he has thought of Miller’s dying words.  He has tried to live a good life, at least he hopes he has.  He hopes he has earned the sacrifice that Captain Miller and his men made in giving up their lives for his.

But he is not really sure.  He wonders how any life, however well lived, could be worth the sacrifice of all those men.  The old Ryan stands up, but does not feel released.  Trembling and filled with anxiety he turns to his wife and pleads to her, “Tell me I’ve led a good life.”  Confused by his request, she asks: “What?”  He has to know the answer, so he asks her again: “Tell me I’m a good man.”  Finally, she responds to him and says: “Yes you are.”

Conclusion

Of course, we cannot earn God’s love, but we respond in a way commensurate with the very price paid by God to show us this love.  Are we using this Lenten season to respond to such wondrous love with equally wondrous lives?

Homily Lent 3B: Setting apart ourselves for God

 Homily for 3rd Sunday of Lent Year B 2021

Exodus 20:1-17; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

Introduction

"Is nothing sacred anymore?" We use that expression when a person says or does something outrageous, something unbecoming, something that crosses the line.  When Jesus entered the temple, as we just heard, and saw the chaos and mess going on there, he too thought, “is nothing sacred anymore?”

Growing up in Uganda, I learnt about sacredness from a young age in different ways.  At home, like in most African homes, there were spaces considered sacred.  The graveyard in the back yard where members of our family were buried; that is not a place we kids played.  Our parents’ bedroom – that was completely out of bounds.  And you did not put your little behind on dad’s chair, unless you were looking for a spanking on that same behind. That was sacred ground, dad’s chair, not the little behind.

And when I became an altar server, the priests at my parish continued to teach me to respect God's house.  I remember Father Fred, this tall and burly no-nonsense priest pulling me aside one morning and giving me a stern talking-to.  And what was my big crime?  Well, instead of walking to the sacristy via the longer route, I marched right across the sanctuary like I owned the place.  I have taken many theological classes since; but Fr. Fred’s words were for me, the first true lesson in respecting the sacred.

Scripture and Theology

That is why I can understand why Jesus was pretty mad on entering the temple and finding money changers and people selling "oxen, sheep, and doves," basically a meat market.  Picture in our own Church here, perhaps at the back there in the foyer, an ATM machine on one side, a coffee dispenser on the other and a slot machine in the middle.  And then picture lots of traffic back there, people getting money, gambling and buying coffee.  That is still nothing compared to the spectacle Jesus must have seen in the Temple.

Now you might ask, what was wrong with having money=changers and merchants at the Temple?  What is wrong with having an ATM machine at the bank?  Perhaps it might even help in increasing the amount of the collection!  Well, thank you for asking.  These are good questions.

We know that many Jews travelled from very far to come to offer sacrifice in Jerusalem.  Think about Joseph and Mary who had to travel from Nazareth to Jerusalem, a three-day journey.  Surely, you wouldn’t expect them to drag along a sheep or an ox for sacrifice for 100 miles.  And even if they could, they might arrive at the temple with their sacrificial animal, only for it to be rejected as being unfit for sacrifice, perhaps because it had some teeny, tiny blemish.  So, the safe thing to do was to buy the animal from the temple precincts, from the “approved” merchants whose stock was certainly "kosher" and acceptable for sacrifice.

As for the money changers, they too served those pilgrims who brought money for alms and donations for the temple.  Again, pilgrims came from the whole world with foreign currency, especially Roman currency.  But this money usually had an icon of their pagan rulers, just like our dollar bills do.  So, since this currency bore those pagan images, it was not acceptable in the temple.  The money changers exchanged this unacceptable money for acceptable Jewish coins, again providing an important service for worshippers.

And yet, Jesus still asked: “Is nothing sacred anymore?”  And he went further.  He was so angry that "He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables . . ."?  And as for "those who sold doves he said, 'Take these out of here, and stop making my Father's house a marketplace.'"  In fact, this is one of the very rare occasions when Jesus is visibly angry in the gospels.  But why is he angry?  Why does he want these merchants out of his father’s house?

Some might think that what ticked Jesus off was the mess of a meat market and the chaos a stock exchange.

·        You can imagine the annoying bellowing of the oxen, the bleating of the sheep and the aggravating tedious bird noises, to say nothing about the awful smell that the animal waste must have left behind.

·        You can also imagine the mess caused by large numbers of people trying to get change from the bankers.  If you have ever gone shopping on Black Friday, you can certainly imagine the spectacle.

But it is not this disorder and pandemonium that upsets Jesus.

Some might think that what ticked Jesus off was corruption and cheating.  These money-changers and these merchants were not always on the up-and-up, and probably fleeced naïve and pious pilgrims to the Temple.

But still, that is not what really ticks Jesus off.  What upsets Jesus is much more profound. The temple, a sacred place, had been turned into an ordinary place. The house of God, had become a house of man. Yes, these activities of trade and money-changing were good things, that even served to enhance worship in the temple; but they are not sacred activities.  They must be done outside the temple of the Lord.  They must not rob the temple of its status as a place set apart for worshipping God.  Jesus rightly asks: "Is nothing sacred anymore?"  Jesus rightly acts to make the temple sacred again.

Christian Life

That we must set apart some things as sacred, is something we value as human beings, even apart from religion.  In this country we honour the sacred sacrifice of men and women who give their lives for their country.  We set apart as sacred some days to commemorate special events in our history: Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Martin Luther King’s birthday.  We set apart some spaces as sacred monuments such as the Capitol building, the Lincoln Memorial.

And so, if a purely secular, worldly society understands that some things have to be set apart as special, as sacred, surely all the more reason that we Christians must follow our Lord and master in respecting sacredness some things for God; for some things must be sacred.  That is what God tells us in today’s first reading.  We heard him say: "I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God."  He wants some things just for himself.  That is not too much to ask, after all he has created a whole wide world and is asking only for a little bit.

Let us see how we can live out this sacredness in the Ten commandments given to Moses, the first three of which, are really asking us to set apart some things for God.  He says:

1.    "You shall not have other gods besides me."

2.    "You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain."

3.    "Remember to keep holy the sabbath day."

In these commandments God is asking that he is treated specially, that his name is honoured and that we set apart some time, in fact, a full day, just for him.

We honour these commandments first of all by the way we treat the house of God and by the way we celebrate the liturgy.

·        Consider our church buildings; they are adorned and decorated differently from our living rooms, from our offices, from conference halls; they have images of Jesus, Mary and the saints, rather than our worldly heroes, have altars and pews, instead of tables and chairs, have a tabernacle instead of a cabinet.  And we do this to remind us of God's presence.

·        Consider the solemnity and seriousness with which we carry out our liturgy: the silence, the sacred rituals, the sacred Word.  That is why, for example, we don't read anything other than the word of God at Mass; not even at funerals or weddings do we read our favourite poems or sing our favourite pop songs, because the liturgy is sacred, set apart for God.

But observing the sacredness of the Lord's House, the Lord's Day, the Lord's name, the Lord's Supper, is not an end in itself; it is a means to something greater.  Just like my parents’ lessons in sacredness were really a lesson in respect for elders, so our observing of sacredness is really a lesson in holiness, a symbol of setting ourselves apart from sin, setting ourselves apart for God.

And so, having observed the sacredness of the first three commandments at Mass, for example, the priest or deacon dismisses us saying: “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your Life.”  He is asking us to continue living out sacredness by obeying the other seven commandments.  And so, God says:

4.        "Honor your father and your mother," because motherhood and fatherhood are sacred roles given by God to raise up humanity.

5.        "You shall not kill," because all life is sacred, from natural conception to natural death.

6.        "You shall not commit adultery," because sexuality and the covenant of marriage are sacred gifts from God.

7.        "You shall not steal," because even private property is sacred.

8.        "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor," because speech is the sacred vessel of truth.

9.        "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, once again because the spousal relationship is sacred.

10.    "You shall not covet your neighbor's property, once again because what belongs to others is sacred.

And so, we live out sacredness even as we live out the Ten commandments.

Conclusion

This morning when you came to Church, when you crossed the threshold of that door, you entered sacred time, sacred space, sacred ground. But unlike Moses and the burning bush, in this sacred ground, we can see God, we can receive him, in the Eucharist, in his Word.

When we came here this morning, we were like those African boys and girls who went through initiation rituals.  When boys or girls were about thirteen years old, they were sent away for a special period, to a special place, to go through special rituals so that they could learn the important values of society.  And when they returned from that seclusion, from that sacred time, that sacred place, those sacred rituals, they were no longer boys, but men, no longer girls, but women.

Do we experience a similar transformation whenever we leave a sacred place, a sacred occasion?  Are we more mature Christians after hearing God’s Word at Mass, after receiving the Lord in the Eucharist?  Are we more committed Christians at the end of the Sacred Season of Lent?  Have we in some way become sacred, set apart for God, as a result of the experience?

If so, when the Lord looks down on us from heaven may he not say: "Is nothing sacred anymore?”  Rather may he see us giving due honour and glory to the Lord's Name, the Lord's House, the Lord's Day, and most of all to each other, the Lord's People, the Temple of the Lord, a people he has set apart as his own, so that we might be holy and God is Holy, we might be sacred and God is sacred.