Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Homilies

  • Sunday of the Fourth Week in Lent (Cycle A / Scrutiny II)

    Sunday of the Fourth Week in Lent (Cycle A / Scrutiny II)

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Liturgy is all about vision and sight and light and darkness. All of these, dear friends, are things that many of us certainly take for granted. Think about it: we don’t appreciate the gift of light until that dark and stormy night when the electricity goes out and we’re fumbling around in the darkness trying to remember where it is we put that new package of batteries for the flashlight. We likewise take for granted our own ability to see. I think of my Aunt Mia, who several years before she passed away lost her sight and had to learn how to see things and how to function in a whole new way.

    When I hear today’s first reading, it always makes me think of my dad. He was the kind of Irishman who never knew a stranger. We couldn’t go anywhere without running into at least one person he knew. But he didn’t just know them, he knew their story. And so if someone were to complain about someone he knew, he would always be able to tell them something good about that person, because Dad saw the best in them. That’s the kind of vision we are all called to have for one another: we need to see the best in them, we need to see Jesus in them.

    So what about this miracle story in the Gospel today. Here’s a question I always like to throw out there: who cares? I mean, it’s nice for that man born blind who can now see, but I mean, he lived two thousand years ago, so what business is it of ours if he can see or not? Why take up so much time with this reading? Well I’ll tell you why we should care: we should care because the man born blind is us, friends. We all have affected vision: none of us sees others or even sees ourselves as God does. So we have to decide today if we are the man born blind who is easily and quickly healed, or if we want to be the Pharisees who, at the end of the day, never regain their sight because, well, they just don’t want to.

    So maybe you’re asking the same question those Pharisees asked, “surely we are not also blind, are we?” Well, of course we are. We are, first of all, born blind. We don’t have a way of seeing the Truth that is in front of us; we can’t acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ and the King of our lives. It takes holy Baptism to cure that born blindness in us. Secondly, we have a kind of blindness that affects us all through our lives. We often lose our vision and wander off the path to life. We are affected by temptation, by cyclical sin and by the darkness of our world. That’s why we have Lent: to realize our brokenness and to accept the healing power of Christ. Lent calls us to remember that we are dust, that we are broken people fallen into sin, but it also proclaims that none of that is any match for the power of Christ risen from the dead, if we just let him put a little mud on our eyes.

    Today’s Gospel then is a kind of journey to clearer vision. We are all born blind, in a sense, and it takes the presence of Jesus to clear our vision. Just as the man born blind was sent to the pool of Siloam, we too are sent to a pool: the waters of baptism, which clears our eyes and helps us to really see. Our Elect, who are here with us today, will experience that in a very literal way this coming Easter Vigil. In baptism, our inherited sin and evil is washed away; the darkness of life is transformed by the presence of Christ, the Light of the World.

    We see that light shine brighter and brighter in today’s Gospel. During the course of all the questionings that follow, the man’s vision becomes clearer and clearer. At first he doesn’t know who Jesus is or where to find him. Later on he testifies that Jesus is a prophet and finally, with the help of Jesus’ instruction, after he has been unceremoniously thrown out of the synagogue, he meets Jesus again and testifies that Jesus is the Son of Man and worthy of worship. As he sees more clearly, his faith becomes bolder.

    We make this same journey ourselves. From the waters of baptism, we need to continue the conversation and return to Christ again and again to grow in our faith. We grow in the way that we see Jesus through our lives. Think about it: our faith when we were young is not the same faith that works for us later in life. At one point Jesus is a friend walking with us on life’s path; later on he might be an anchor that helps us in a particularly stormy time of life. Still later, he might be the one calling us to become something new, something better than we think we can attain. Jesus is always the same, but we are different, and Jesus is with us at every point of life’s journey, if we open our eyes to see him.

    Traditionally, today is Laetare Sunday – laetare being Latin for “rejoice.” That’s why we’re wearing these rose-colored vestments today. We are now pretty much half way through Lent, and with eyes recreated by our own trips to the pool of Siloam – the waters of baptism – we can begin to catch a glimpse of Easter joy. It kind of reminds me of the last section of the Exsultet that we will hear proclaimed on the Holy Night of the Easter Vigil. That last section tells us:

    May this flame be found still burning
    by the Morning Star:
    the one Morning Star who never sets,
    Christ your Son,
    who, coming back from death’s domain,
    has shed his peaceful light on humanity,
    and lives and reigns for ever and ever.

    Christ’s peaceful light changes everything. It clears up the darkness of sin and evil, and allows all of us blind ones to see the glory of God’s presence. All of us have, indeed been born spiritually blind. But you know what? We’re not supposed to stay that way, and we don’t have to. Jesus is yearning to enlighten us all that we might go out and be light for others too.

    In these final days of Lent, may we hear the Lord calling to us:

     “Awake, O sleeper,
        and arise from the dead,
        and Christ will give you light.”

  • The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C Readings

    The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C Readings

    Today’s readings

    Today we have in our Gospel reading one of my very favorite parables; maybe it’s your favorite too. It’s one that we have heard so often, and I think it’s one that we can see with the eyes of our imaginations. Three main characters: a forgiving father, a prodigal son, and a loyal, but perhaps cranky, son. It’s the kind of family situation I think we can all wrap our minds around; maybe it sits a little uncomfortably close to home.

    So it says right at the beginning that “a man had two sons.” And I think we need to keep that in mind, and I’ll say more about that in a bit. But the one son is dissatisfied with his life so much so that he feels the need to change it: he asks for his share of the inheritance right now, before his father is even dead. And that is a request is so presumptuous that it feels hurtful. Kind of like saying, “Hey dad, I wish you were dead, give me my inheritance now, please – I just can’t wait.” But the Father gives him the inheritance immediately and without ill-will. And you better believe that would have ruffled the feathers of Jesus’ hearers: there were strict rules of propriety in families and this absolutely flies in the face of that.

    But the other son is almost as guilty of that as the younger son. When the story runs its course, and the younger son returns to the father with his little memorized speech, the father, who has been waiting for his return, is moved with compassion and runs out to meet him. They throw a big party, but apparently they didn’t send someone out to invite the older son. On his return from the fields, he is indignant, partially, I think because he was overlooked, but also and importantly because He feels the injustice of the younger son being rewarded after tearing apart the family. His refusal to come in to join the feast and his making the father come out to him could also be seen as sinful.

    What amazes me is that the Father comes out of the house to meet both sons. That’s significant because a good Jewish father in those days wouldn’t come out to meet anyone – they would come to him. Probably on their hands and knees, begging for forgiveness. But the Father meets them where they are and desperately, lovingly, pleads with them to join the feast. It’s an image of our loving, forgiving Father God who won’t let anything – not past hurts, not resentments, not social propriety, not even our darkest sins – get in the way of his mercy, and love, and forgiveness, and grace. That’s the God we worship; that’s the Father we have.

    I love to call this the parable of the Forgiving Father, because I don’t think the point of this is to look at the son. I think the point of this is to look at the father, whose mercy and forgiveness are prodigious and even a little outlandish! The point of this is that, if we prodigal ones would just return, God will meet us more than half way. That’s a great message for Lent, and it gives us the action item of admitting our sins and returning to the Father.

    But there’s another way to look at this parable too. Again, the emphasis is going to be on the father, but this time the father is us. Bear with me on this. Amy Jill Levine, a Jewish scripture scholar, reads the parables with the eyes of one who has grown up with the Old Testament, much as Jesus and his hearers did. And so she sheds a little light on this parable that made me look at this anew this week and say, “Hmm…”

    So the father is us. A man had two sons, but he forgot to count. Let’s face it, the older son does get the rotten end of the stick here – I’ve always felt that when I read the parable growing up. But it was selfish of me because I saw myself as the loyal, hard working son, which, seen at age sixty, I can see is far from true. But that son does get the rotten end of the stick. Look at what happens: the younger son is rewarded for his initial disrespect in asking for the inheritance, and then when he comes back poorer and broken, he is rewarded with a feast. And not only that, apparently they had time to call the caterer, and time to shop for a ring and sandals, but they didn’t have time to tell the older son, who is out working hard for his father in the fields? What kind of craziness is that? Any one of us would be indignant.

    A man had two sons, but he forgot to count. That father, who is us, is all about taking care of the child who is most needy, to the detriment of the other son. Professor Levine says that it reminds her of her students: it’s easy to cater to the A-students and reward their accomplishments; it’s even easy to journey with the students who are having difficulty, offering them tutoring or answering questions. But the ones who are the B+ students, who can’t seem to cross the line to the A, do they count too? Think about that in our lives. The people who are good to us and doing good things are easy to walk with, they even support us. And we have the ones who are challenging, and we do everything we can to help them, out of love. But are there people in our lives that we forget to count? Who do we need to notice more, to think of more, to love more, this week? Perhaps that’s our action item this week.

    So whether our action item is admitting our sins and returning to the Father, or remembering to count and love the ones in our lives who we tend to forget, we have work to do. We have to return to God for forgiveness and mercy, and we have to love everyone in our lives as if they were the only ones there. The stakes of letting this parable fly past us and not engaging it are too high: we would be missing out on the banquet of eternal life to which Jesus Christ came to bring us. Taste and see that the Lord is good!

  • Friday of the Third Week in Lent

    Friday of the Third Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    “You are not far from the Kingdom of God!”

    I had a teacher in seminary who used to say that to people whenever they had a really insightful comment or answer in class. And it is this insight that we are all being called to in today’s readings. In the reading from Hosea, God tells the people that they need to understand that he is their salvation. Salvation for them is not going to come through alliances with Assyria or any other fickle foreign power, nor will that salvation come through the worship of pagan idols. Who then will help them? “I will heal their defection, says the LORD, I will love them freely.”

    The value here is that God alone is all we need to provide us with all we need. Our response to that has to be complete, loving devotion to God. The scribe figured this out in today’s Gospel reading. Listen to him again: “God is One and there is no other than he. And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

    Perhaps during these Lenten days, we too can come to an understanding that loving God and neighbor is what should consume our every thought. When we get there, we can hear the same words of encouragement as did the scribe: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God!”

  • The Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord

    The Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
    May it be done to me according to your word.”

    Today, we celebrate one of the most important feasts on the Church calendar. This is when we remember the time when the Angel Gabriel came to visit Mary, and to let her know God’s plan for the world, that would involve her in a very special way. She was to have a baby, whose name would be Jesus, and he would save the world from sin and bring forth the Kingdom of God. Mary’s cooperation was necessary to bring mercy in the way God wanted it to come to us.

    Without this feast of the Annunciation, there would never have been a Christmas. Without the Annunciation, there never would have been a Good Friday or an Easter. So this feast is so very important. Mary’s cooperation meant that Jesus could be born in her, and through her, come to save us. The faithfulness of Mary, especially as a very young girl, has to be an inspiration for all of us. Mary had no roadmap or big-picture view of how this would come about, yet she is full of grace and so she is very firm in her fiat, her “yes” – her decision to exercise her faith: She says, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Mary says yes to God’s plan for her, and because of that, God is able to say yes to us, to invite us into the Kingdom.

    We too are called to have the kind of faith that Mary had. And that’s because surely the glory of God is aching to be born in all of us; God wants to do important things for the world through all of us. We are called to bring Christ’s presence to every corner of our world, every place where we are. Sometimes, that can be scary, because we too don’t know what God’s work will call us to do or experience. We may be called upon to feed the hungry, or clothe the naked, or visit the sick, or shelter the homeless, or any of the works of mercy. But do we have the strength and ability to do that? Maybe not, but we are called to be Christ in those situations anyway. We might respond as Mary did at first: “How can this be?” But ultimately, we are called to respond that we are the Lord’s handmaids and accept the call with great faith.

    Mary is our patron whenever we feel overwhelmed by what we are called to do. May we rely on her intercession to guide us through the dark pathways of the unknown. May we look to her for an example of faith. May we follow her great example and let the Lord be born in us too, so that our Incarnate Lord can be made manifest in our world yet again. May we, like Mary, cry out in faith, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”

    Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
    that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

  • The Third Sunday in Lent, Cycle C Readings

    The Third Sunday in Lent, Cycle C Readings

    Today’s readings

    God is extremely patient when it comes to extending mercy. That’s what Jesus is talking about in this rather odd parable. I have to admit that I’m no gardener: I’m just not patient enough for that! So I needed to do a little digging (no pun intended) to get a real sense of where this parable is going. I discovered that there are a couple of things we should all know before we get into this little story. First of all, fig trees actually did take three years to bear fruit. During those three years, of course, they would need to be nourished and watered and pruned and tended. It was a lot of work, so when those three years of hard work were up, you better believe the farmer certainly wanted fig newtons on his table! And the second piece of background is that, since the days of the prophet Micah, the fig tree has been a symbol for the nation of Israel, and Jesus’ hearers would have known that. So when they hear of a fruitless fig tree, it was a little bit of an accusation. Maybe more than a little bit.

    Conventional wisdom is that if the tree doesn’t bear fruit after three years of labor and throwing resources at it, you cut it down and plant a new one; why exhaust the nutrients of the soil? And if you’re an impatient gardener like me, why exhaust the gardener?! But this gardener is a patient one; he plans to give it another year and some extra TLC in hopes that it will bear fruit.

    So here’s the important take-away: God is not like Father Pat; he’s the patient gardener! And we, the heirs to the promise to Israel, if we are found unfruitful, our Lord gives us extra time and TLC in order that we might have time to repent, take up the Gospel, and bear fruit for the kingdom of God. That’s kind of what Lent is all about.

    But we have to remember: we don’t get forever; if we still don’t bear fruit when the end comes, then we will have lost the opportunity to be friends of God, and once cut down in death, we don’t have time to get serious about it. The time for repentance is now. As Saint Paul told the Corinthians, and us, on Ash Wednesday: “Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” The time for us to receive and share God’s grace is now. The time for us to live justly and work for the kingdom is now. The time for us to stop bickering and be kind to one another is now. The time to work on our prayer life is now. Because we don’t know that there will be tomorrow; we can never be presumptuous of God’s mercy and grace.

    The consolation, though is this: we don’t have to do it alone. The Psalmist today sings that our God is kind and merciful: We get the TLC that our Gardener offers; the grace of God and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We can trust in the Lord God, our great “I AM,” to come to us and lead us out of captivity to sin just as he was preparing to do for the Israelites in the first reading today. We can put our trust in God’s mercy. We are always offered the grace of exodus, all we have to do is get started on the journey and begin once again to bear the fruit of our relationship with Christ.

  • The Third Sunday in Lent, Cycle A Readings (for the OCIA Scrutiny)

    The Third Sunday in Lent, Cycle A Readings (for the OCIA Scrutiny)

    Today’s readings

    There’s a lot of water in today’s Liturgy of the Word. The Israelites, near the beginning of their forty year journey through the desert, are beginning to miss some of the comforts of home, like water! So when they complain to the Lord, he gives them water in the desert. And let’s not downplay this: it’s pretty amazing – they had water in the desert! And in our Gospel today, our Lord stops along his own journey to get a drink of water from the Samaritan woman – and this whole interaction is less about Jesus’ physical thirst than it is about other kinds of thirst in the story – but more on that in a bit.

    We always have to think about why the Church is giving us these particular readings on this particular day. Why is it that we have part of the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert in our first reading, and the rather strange story of the interaction with the woman at the well in the Gospel today? Well, (no pun intended) whenever there’s this much water being mentioned in the readings, we need to think of a particular sacrament, and that sacrament of course is Baptism.

    Now maybe it makes a little sense. We have our Elect with us today, and they are preparing to receive baptism, as well as Confirmation and Eucharist, the Sacraments of Initiation, at the Easter Vigil. But even that’s not the whole story. Because this reading is for all of us. Lent itself is about baptism, and even if we’ve already been baptized, there’s still work to do. We are still being converted to become more like our Lord every day of our life. That’s what Lent is all about – getting back on the path and going a little farther forward. Lent points out for all of us that we’re still thirsty.

    So what is it going to take to quench the thirst you have right now?

    For the Israelites, it’s hard to know what was going to help them. They’re just at the beginning of their journey and already they’re complaining. They get thirsty and the first thing they do is complain – notice carefully, they complained, not prayed – and tell Moses that they’d rather be back in Egypt in slavery than out wandering around in the desert with nothing to quench their thirst. And it’s not like the slavery they experienced in Egypt was a minor inconvenience – it was pretty horrible and if they missed their quota even by a little bit, they were severely beaten. But sometimes it’s better the devil you know: sometimes we get stuck on what we’ve become used to and have given up yearning for something more.

    For the woman at the well, there’s a lot stacked against her and there is no reason Jesus should have been talking to her. In fact, the disciples, when they return and witness it, aren’t really sure what they should make of it. Because in that culture, nobody talked to Samaritans – they were outsiders and considered the scum of the earth. And for a man to speak to an unaccompanied woman was unthinkable. But Jesus knew she was thirsty – see it wasn’t about his thirst at all: rather, as Saint Augustine tells us, Jesus was thirsting for her faith.

    It’s a pretty weird conversation, to be honest. But in talking about her five previous husbands and the Samaritans’ practice of worshiping on the mountain, Jesus was pointing out how her own search for something to quench her thirst was so far pretty futile. She was looking for love in all the wrong places. The five men she was married to represented a history of failed attempts at finding love. And the guy she was living with now represented the fact that she’d pretty much given up any hope of ever finding true love. But the fact that Jesus knew all this without her saying a word about it woke her up a bit. And so then they go on to talk about how the Samaritans worshiped. They were looking for God on the mountain, but the thing is, the God they were looking for is the same Love that she had been searching for in her relationships, and he was standing right in front of her now.

    So what about you? What is it that is finally going to quench the thirst you have right now?

    Are you going to stay in the slavery of your former way of life, or do you want to journey on to the Promised Land? Are you going to continue to be content with failed or broken or impure relationships, or are you going to refresh them with Living Water? Are you going to continue to leave God up on that mountaintop where he doesn’t get in the way of your daily life, until you need something? Or are you going to look him in the eye and ask him to give you what you really need so you’ll never thirst again?

    Because for the Israelites, it wasn’t really water they needed. They needed a renewed relationship with God. And the woman at the well didn’t need those guys who weren’t leading her to right worship. She needed Living Water. In fact, she became so convinced of it that she left her bucket behind – that bucket that symbolized her former way of life.

    We’re all on a journey. The journeys of our Elect don’t end at the Easter Vigil when I pour water over their heads – it just starts there. All of us together are journeying on to the Promised Land of eternal life. And the only way we’re going to get there is by drinking deeply of the Living Water and allowing the One who gives it to us to lead us. And to get started on the journey, we’re going to have to leave Egypt, and our buckets, and our broken relationships, behind. No matter how hard it is to do that.

  • Saturday of the Second Week in Lent

    Saturday of the Second Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    That Jesus would welcome sinners and eat with them is obviously a huge deal. In those days, it was thought that associating with sinners made one complicit in the sin, or at least showed approval of the sin; so the audacity of such an action was sinful in and of itself, at least as far as the religious leadership was concerned. But as an act of mercy, it’s grace unlike anything else. And the significance for us is understandable. Jesus still welcomes sinners and eats with them. If that were not true, none of us would be here for the Eucharist today, would we?

    Something that often gets overlooked in this very familiar parable is that both of the sons are sinful. It’s obvious that the youngest is sinful: taking half of his inheritance before his father is even in the grave, living a life of dissipation and sexual excess, using up all that money in a short time, content to eat among the swine which no good Jew would even think about touching, and finding himself very, very broken. But the so-called good son is sinful too. On his brother’s return, he refuses to go into the house to welcome him back, and takes his father to task for showing mercy and love. In the Gospel, failure to forgive is itself sinful.

    Both sons are sinful in their own way. Both need the father’s love and mercy and forgiveness. And both receive it. Far from the way a proper Jewish father would act, he runs out to meet both sons where they are. Protocol would have them come to him, and not he to them. But he comes out twice: once to meet the younger son who is on the way back to him, and once to meet his older son who refuses to come in.

    There is often discussion on where we find ourselves in this very familiar parable. Are we the sinful son? Are we the good son? Are we the father? It probably depends on the day – we might be like all of them at one time or another. I don’t think that’s what matters here. What matters is that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them – in our case, feeding us with the finest bread and wine which are of course his very own Body and Blood. Without this grace, we would have no life – salvation would only be a pipe dream. But because this grace is very real, we have the opportunity to gather here at the Table of the Lord, and one day, please God, at the great heavenly banquet. Praise God today for his forgiveness, mercy and grace. Praise God that he welcomes sinners and eats with them.

  • Friday of the Second Week in Lent

    Friday of the Second Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    In the readings this week, I’ve been noticing a lot of foreshadowing. How many of you know what foreshadowing is? It’s a literary device that you seen in the early part of some stories, that gives us a hint at the end of the story. Usually you don’t notice the foreshadowing until you get to the end. I think we see foreshadowing in both of today’s readings. These readings remind us of what Lent is all about. During Lent, we remember that our Lord, who came down from heaven to earth to save us from our sins and re-connect us with the love of God, paid the price for our many sins by laying down his own life.

    Back when I was much younger, for my birthday my family took me to see the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Our drama club here at Saint Mary’s performed that musical several years ago. The story goes that Joseph’s jealous brothers ended up selling him into slavery in Egypt, but that in Egypt he became a powerful and talented government official who ended up saving many people, including his own brothers, from starvation during a famine.

    In the story, you can see many parallels between Joseph and Jesus. Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt; Jesus came to take away our slavery to sin. Joseph’s own brothers plotted to kill him; Jesus was killed by us, his brothers and sisters, by our sins. Joseph fed the known world at that time by storing up grain for the day of famine; Jesus fed the multitudes, and us, with the bread that comes down from heaven. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver; Judas was given thirty pieces of silver to hand Jesus over to death. Joseph, in many ways, was a foreshadowing of Jesus.

    In our Gospel today, Jesus tells a parable which is a foreshadowing of what will soon happen to him. The vineyard owner, God the Father, is looking for the fruit of the harvest. That harvest should be our faith. Instead, the people of old beat and murdered the prophets who came to give God’s word, just as the messengers of the vineyard owner were beaten and murdered. And finally, when God, the vineyard owner, sends his own Son, he was killed too.

    The people of Jesus’ day missed the foreshadowing, they missed the parallels, they didn’t get that God was continually reaching out to them to gather them in faith. But we know the story, all of it, and we can’t be like them. We have to be ready to hear the truth and act on it, to see Jesus in other people and respond to him; to hear the Word he speaks to us and live that Word in faith each day.

    God loved us so much that he gave us his only begotten Son; we have to treasure that gift and let it make us new people. That’s what Lent is all about, friends. Lent means “springtime,” and it has to see new growth in us, so that we can be a vineyard of faith to give joy to the world.

  • Friday of the First Week in Lent

    Friday of the First Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    It would be so much easier if we could define our own righteousness. If we could choose who to reach out to and who to ignore, life would be good, wouldn’t it? If we could hold grudges against some people and only have to forgive some people, we would easily consider ourselves justified. But the Christian life of discipleship doesn’t work that way. Instead, our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees or we have no part in the Kingdom of heaven. It’s that simple.

    So when we bear grudges, we murder. When we label people and then write them off, we are liable to judgment. Because justice and righteousness in the Kingdom of God isn’t about looking squeaky clean, it’s about being clean inside and out, changing our attitudes, changing our hearts, renewing our lives.

    If Lent purifies us in this way, we can truly pray with the Psalmist, “with the LORD is kindness and with him is plenteous redemption.”

  • Thursday of the First Week in Lent

    Thursday of the First Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    During this first week of Lent, our Liturgies of the Word are teaching us about the Lenten disciplines: fasting, almsgiving and prayer. On Tuesday, we heard the Lord’s prayer, and today we hear the prayer of Esther and Jesus’ injunction to persistence in prayer.

    I love the story of Esther, and as I often tell people, you should read the entire book of Esther from the Bible (it’s not very long). It reminds us that we need a Savior. Esther’s adoptive father Mordecai was a deeply religious man. His devotion incurred the wrath of Haman the Agagite, who was a court official of King Ahasuerus of Persia. Mordecai refused to pay homage to Haman in the way prescribed by law, because it was idolatry. Because of this, Haman developed a deep hatred for Mordecai, and by extension, all of the Israelite people. He convinced King Ahasuerus to decree that all Israelites be put to death, and they cast lots to determine the date for this despicable event.

    Meanwhile, Esther, Mordecai’s adopted daughter, is chosen to fill a spot in the King’s harem, replacing Queen Vashti. Esther, however, never had revealed her own Israelite heritage to the King. She would, of course, be part of the extermination order. Mordecai came to Esther to inform her of the decree that Haman had proposed, and asked her to intercede on behalf of her own people to the King. She was terrified to do this because court rules forbade her to come to the king without an invitation. She asked Mordecai to have all of her people fast and pray, and she did the same. The prayer that she offered is beautifully rendered in today’s first reading.

    Esther knew that there was no one that could help her, and that it was totally on her shoulders to intercede for her people. Doing this was a risk to her own life, and the only one that she could rely on was God himself. Her prayer was heard, her people were spared, and Haman himself was hung from the same noose that had been prepared for Mordecai and all his fellow Israelites. This evening, in fact, is the beginning of the Jewish feast of Purim, which is a festive observance of this biblical story.

    God hears our own persistent prayers. We must constantly pray, and trust all of our needs to the one who knows them before we do. We must ask, seek and knock of the one who made us and cares for us deeply. Prayer changes things, and most of all, it changes us. It helps us to rely on God who gives us salvation through Jesus Christ, the One who shows us how to ask, seek, and knock.