Homily L4-B Lent, Fourth Week, cycle B

Imagine for a moment, that this church is closed. Some of our brothers and sisters in this diocese could imagine that very easily as their churches were closed in the last decade . But imagine with me some more, every church is closed, plundered, torn down and we were all  moved 500 miles away. That is the plight of the Israelites in today’s first reading and the psalm.

Israel had many gathering places to hear the Word of God, but only one Temple and altar to offer sacrifice. All this was taken away from them when they lost the war with Babylon. As a result of that loss, the temple was destroyed and the people forcibly marched to Babylon as slaves. In this new land, there was no Temple and the Israelites found it difficult to worship.  Perhaps the words of the psalmist mean a bit more now: “How could we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land?”

For 50 years, the Israelites were once again slaves, wandering in a spiritual desert. How wonderful the news that we heard in the first reading must have been. Persia defeated Babylon and released the enslaved Israelites to return to Jerusalem. The king of Persia even provided help in rebuilding the Temple. Surprisingly enough, after only 50 years removed from their religious practices, many Israelites did not want to return to Jerusalem.  Many did return and for the next 500 years or so, Israel would worship at the Temple in Jerusalem and there would be some semblance of the norm in their worship of God.

What does this history lesson from 2500 years ago mean to us today? Nobody is plundering and burning our churches. We are free to worship here. I believe the war, this time, is much more subtle. In the last 50 years, the attack on the values that our Church has taught for 2000 years have increased. We must remember that those values were handed down by the unchanging God. We have changed and see things differently, but God has not changed and His laws and values have not changed.


In many of our lifetimes, we have seen changes in abortion law, assisted suicide law, contraception law and practice of religion in public spaces law. We have taken step after step to remove ourselves from the Ten Commandments and replace them with the will of the majority. We’ve removed Christ from Christmas. Outside of the Church they don’t even acknowledge that the 12 days of Christmas are AFTER Christmas day. God forbid that we put up a public display of the nativity on anything other than Church property. We’ve removed God from schools. Public prayer is banned unless it is just a moment of silence. We’ve had battle after battle about removing God from our Pledge of Allegiance and our dollar bill. Atheism is growing in leaps and bounds. The enemies of God would have us worship God in our own little private spaces for one hour a week and never utter a peep about God outside that hour. If we don't see the hand of Satan in this, then we're just not paying attention.  We are more like the Israelites in Babylonian captivity than we might care to admit. Our worship is hollow if we cannot live it fully in our lives.  We need to ask God for His strength, His courage and His wisdom to combat this trend in our increasingly godless society.

In our Gospel today, we heard: “And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.” Living in the darkness is not a new problem in our world; it has been with us for millennia. The question we must ask ourselves is: “Are we going to sit by idly and live in the darkness?” If we just accept the changes in the world that move the world away from God, we are part of the darkness. God has been calling humanity for millennia to turn to Him and follow His ways. Now is the time to turn and follow Him into the light as we heed the words of the Gospel: “Whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”