26th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2011
September 25, 2011 Father Pilon Homily
Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory;
rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves,
each looking out not for his own interests,
but also for those of others.
How did Jesus Christ redeem us, the human race, from our sins and save us from Eternal damnation? The Catechism teaches us the faith of the Church when it says that Jesus redeemed us by his self-sacrifice on the Cross. St. Paul describes that sacrifice as essentially an act of perfect obedience: “he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” This is the sacrifice that redeemed the world by reversing the whole course of human history, reversing the disobedience of man from the beginning, the perfect sacrifice of Jesus that infinitely compensated for the Original Sin of the human race and for all man’s disobedience by which man alienates Himself from God. The external bloody immolation of Christ on the Cross is the final act of his perfect obedience to the will of the Father, who willed that He should not defend himself by His power as God, but should allow himself to be subjected to man’s cruelty and evil that knew no bounds, to suffer with the human race and for the human race, and conquer that evil by love alone.
It is not within our power to understand this decision of the Father, but we believe that it is part of the mystery of God’s love that surpasses all human comprehension. We do not understand God’s ways, and above all the way of love that led Jesus to the Cross for our sake. The mystery is present from the beginning for God created the universe and man not our of any necessity, but purely our of love. It is the same divine love that originated the creation, that guides everything in creation, and that redeemed creation by redeeming man in the supreme act of Jesus’ love on the Cross.
But that redemptive love is simultaneously an act of obedience which reverses the disobedience of our first parents and which infinitely satisfies Divine Justice for that Sin and for all the sins of man which are essentially acts of disobedience and failures to love God as we must. Man’s disobedience, his countless rejections of the divine law and the divine love that stands behind that law is now repaired, satisfied for, reversed in the glory of Christ’s perfect obedience which is the heart of the sacrifice of the Cross.
But how can we then continue that mystery of evil by our sins, by our disobedience and failure to love God sufficiently to obey him. We see how deep this rebelliousness is in man fright from the earliest years of our life when we disobey God in disobeying our parents, and who taught us to rebel? Who teaches your children to rebel against you? It is Original Sin that implants this spirit of rebellion in us from the beginning, and that spirit of rebellion grows if not checked by God’s grace, and we see this in the rebellion of youthful adolescence against authority, parental authority, other forms of human authority and even against God’s authority.
If Original Sin accounts for the spirit of disobedience in us, what was the root cause of the Original Sin itself, which will be the root of our sins as well? What, then, is the ultimate root of sin and the rebellion which we experience in our souls even after the grace of Baptism purifies us from sin and reestablishes our filial relationship with God? Again St. Paul teaches us the truth about this ultimate root; it is pride, the self-centeredness that leads us to rebel against authority including the authority of God. Listen for the truth about that ultimate root of sin found in the description of Jesus’ self-sacrifice, which reversed it, the self-immolation which began at His conception and ended on the Cross: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave … He humbled Himself becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Pride was the root of man’s Original rebellion, and pride is thus at the root of every sin thereafter in the human heart: Satan’s I will not serve; Our I will not obey, just like the two sons in the Gospel. Even the one who eventually obeys says first I will not serve. The other says he will, but in his heart he refuses. That’s us. Our pride says no to God when God’s will is contrary to ours. Jesus showed us the way back from this pride to the love that always does the will of the Father. He emptied himself. We are so full of ourselves that we cannot love as we ought to. He humbled himself. We are anything but truly humble. We are creatures who act as if we are God, placing our will, our self above the will of God our Creator. Unless we learn to empty ourselves, to humble our selves, we will never really know how to love God as God loves us.
The way of love, God’s way of love can be seen in Jesus’ life and death: In Hebrews he says simply, I come to do your will, and in the Garden of Gethsemane He says, while sweating blood, thy will be done, not mine. Obedience is the path back to divine love, the path of humility, of self-emptying. Obedience is the creatures act of humility, the pre-condition of perfect love. Every time I deny my self, my self-will, to obey God’s Will, even in the smallest things, I grow in humility and in the power to love. There is no other way back for us sinners. Jesus has shown us the sacrificial way to the Father’s Love. There is no other way but His.