Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, Year B

Lent: Season Of Returning To The Basics 

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, Year B

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, March 3, 2024

When a football (soccer) club isn’t playing well, if week after week they lose their matches, analysts usually say something like, “the manager should see that his players get back to the basics of the sport we all love.” What are those basics, those fundamentals? Passing and moving the ball around with their feet while maintaining control and possession; dribbling when necessary without losing the ball to your opponent, shooting with accuracy, tackling and heading. The season of Lent is the period when the Church enjoins her children, who are like a soccer team that is playing badly, to go back to the fundamentals. What are our fundamentals? The Ten Commandments! Why the Ten Commandments? Because they function as the bedrock of moral and spiritual life. Before you can make progress in your faith journey, you must be grounded in them. Glory be to God, our first reading (Exodus 20:1-17) for this Sunday is the Ten Commandments.Let’s briefly look at each of the Ten Commandments. Obviously, we cannot possibly exhaust them in a Sunday homily. If you are interested in knowing more of them, consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church and you will find a thorough treatment of each of the Commandments. 

The first commandment says, “I am the Lord your God, You shall not have other gods besides me.” The first commandment is the most important. God alone should be at the center of our life and there should be no competition at all. Love is hierarchical. Authentic Christian charity is friendship with God first and with the people of God for the sake of God. The point is that we cannot worship anything else. What’s the highest love of my life? What is my greatest treasure? If it is power, pleasure, honor, wealth, then my spiritual life is off-kilter. If I am willing to commit crime for someone, my religious and spiritual life is in a mess. Second commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.” How do we often read this? Avoid swearing! Avoid using the name of the Lord in an irreverent way. That’s okay. But within the ancient context, it means we should not use God’s name in incantation (abracadabra) or to cast a spell on someone. It means don’t use God’s name in a manipulative manner. I tell you, there are a lot of preachers out there who break this very commandment often when they say, “God told me…” when it wasn’t God that told them and they know it. For one thing, it is lying, but more so, they are using God’s name in a manipulative way. You can include fake speaking in tongues here as well. The third commandment, which is derived from the first two is, “Remember to keep holy the sabbath day.” If God is the Lord of your life, if God is the highest love of your life, if you exist for God alone, you will most certainly set aside Sunday as a day you will worship God with your sisters and brothers in the faith. Faith or religion will not be a private matter. It will not be an abstraction, rather something concrete you do by setting aside all other priorities of yours, in order to assemble with others where the singular priority is the worship of God. In the good old days, on Sunday, we brought all commercial and economic activities to a close so as to devote that very day to the worship of God in church. The reason for suspending all other activities is because you are meant to go to church. Today, this very commandment is not being honored as it was honored several years ago. Years ago, 97% of Americans claimed belief in God and some affiliation with religion. Today, it is 47%, and the fastest growing congregation is the “Nones,” people who claim they have no religion. Some people think it is “cool” or smart to not have religion. Others blame religion and religious people as the reason why they got disconnected from religion. I accept, we deserve some blame. We have done some terrible things. But so also every institution out there. There are some others who won’t come to church unless the church accepts everything they believe, every social, cultural and political view they hold. Well, that won’t be the church of Jesus Christ. Moreover, even if the Catholic Church adopts every crazy view out there, a lot of these people won’t come. As for those of us who still believe, who still come to church, bear this in mind, not honoring this commandment means we are not concretizing our commitment to God. 

The first three commandments belong to the First Table of the Law. When Moses came down from the mountain, he had two tablets in his hands. The first tablet has the three commandments that deal with God, and appropriately they come first. They are the most important. But on the second tablet, we have the seven commandments that deal with our relationship with each other. Let’s now look at the first of the second tablet, that is, the fourth commandment: “Honor your father and mother.” Why should I honor my father and mother? Because they gave me life. They brought me into existence. In a way, I owe them everything. However, the Church has always taken a broader look at the fourth commandment to include the honor we owe to any authority figure in our life— think of the honor that a student owes to his teacher, the honor that a player owes to a coach, the honor that a citizen owe to a judge or a political figure, and also the honor we owe to the great traditions that gave rise to us. What do you think will happen if suddenly the honoring of authority and traditions evaporate? I tell you, our society will collapse. If we continue to insist on this extreme claim to “my rights, my prerogatives, I decide what is true, and don’t tell me what to do” we will continue to move into very dangerous waters. We are to honor our fathers and mothers, and also to honor those in authority and honor the great tradition that gave rise to our life. By this I don’t mean, “worship them.” It’s idolatry to do so. Do not worship any of them no matter how great they have been to you. Today, we see people in our country who are willing to commit crime, who are willing to go to jail in order to protect the interest of their beloved politician. Again, this is taking us on dangerous waters.  

Next, we have the fifth commandment, which says, “You shall not kill.” In the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, we see over and over again that our God is the God of life. Life belongs to God. God is the giver of life, and it is his prerogative alone to take life too. He is the Lord of life. As such, we do not have the right or prerogative and it is not up to us to decide to end someone’s life or to end our own life. That means abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and even life sentences in prison are all a violation of this very commandment— You shall not kill. But this commandment is not absolute. Because from time immemorial, the Church recognizes the legitimacy of self-defense, which means that in defense of one’s own life, one can take the life of another. Aside from that, taking another’s life does not belong to us. The many ways in our culture and society that we have arrogated to ourselves a lordship over life is a violation of God’s commandment. The sixth commandment says, “You shall not commit adultery.” Adultery is a violation of marriage vows. However, in a broader sense, it includes any violation against the virtue of chastity. What is chastity? It means sexual uprightness, right ordering and right behavior in the sexual area. What’s sex for? Is it for your pleasure? The Church says no! It is for unity and procreation. Therefore it belongs  within the context of a committed marriage between a man and a woman.” In the seventh commandment, God says, “You shall not steal.” I think a lot of us, in small ways and great ways, have violated this very commandment. This commandment forbids taking things from others without their permission. But when considered in a broader sense, it also has to do with justice. One of the great ancient philosophers, Plato, centuries ago said, “Justice is rendering to each his due.” That is, giving to other people what is due to them. This means honoring their own identities, honoring their culture, honoring their property, honoring their religion, honoring their language, and honoring what truly belongs to them. Whoever violates any of this, commits injustice and violates this very commandment.

In the eight commandment, God says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” In an era of social media, content creation, fake news and the rise of social media influencers, the seventh commandment becomes very relevant today. People of God should care about truthful speech and what you say about other people. Even if you dislike someone’s attitude, behavior and idiosyncrasies, don’t spread and peddle false stories about them. When talking about others, don’t add what is not in their life and don’t subtract what is in their life, especially what is good and noble in their life. The legendary late South African reggae musician, Lucky Philip Dube, in one of his lyrics said, “if you can’t say something good about somebody, just shut up.” You are destroying the life of another when you bear false witness. You are destroying a great country, America, when you spread fake news. Think of so many Americans, young people who ended their lives due to what was said about them on social media. The commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” includes all of these.

Finally, the ninth and tenth commandments say, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.” “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” Sometimes we desire things not because they are great in themselves or that we really need them. We desire them simply because someone else desires them. I tell you, some adults behave like children. When I went to Nigeria on Christmas in 2022, as always, I acted as the chaperone of my nieces and nephews. Among the things I noticed while watching them play was that, something, a broken toy could be ignored by all of them. But the moment one of them picks up that very mangled toy and begins to play with it, the real owner and others will, all of a sudden be interested in that toy. But all along it has been lying on the ground with no one showing interest in it. The same goes with advertisements. You see an ad on television about some shoes, and you have never given a hoot about the shoe. But then, in the ad, you noticed that some famous person liked that shoe. Right away, you begin to desire it too. A lot of conflict comes from the fact that we desire the same thing even if we don’t really need them. The Commandment says, “Don’t covet your neighbor’s goods or wife.” If you want a wife or something for yourself, go and get yours. Do not desire that which someone already has. This bad desire has led so many people into serious trouble. To desire a wife or husband is good. To desire to own a car or something else is good. But don’t turn your attention towards the goods or wife or husband of your neighbor. And let’s not forget that the greatest and most satisfying desire is God alone. In him alone is our soul finally at rest. If you want to make a good examination of conscience, the Ten Commandments should be your guide. And once you realize you have violated any of them, don’t make excuses. Simply go to confession and have your sins forgiven. 

Veni Sancte Spiritus!