Editor’s note: The following is Bishop’s homily for the March 9 Rite of Election Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
Sisters and brothers, we have now entered the great season of Lent. For some of us this may be a time of excitement, yet for many, me included, Lent has not always been viewed as a time to which we looked forward. Fasting and abstinence, not to mention other forms of penance, is serious business. Although Easter is looked forward to with real anticipation. One’s attitude towards Lent can tend to be on the gloomy and negative side. Perhaps nowadays we, too, have gone to the other extreme where Lent hardly means anything at all, saying: “You mean Lent has started already? Really, I had no idea! Easter will be on top of us before we know where we are and I haven’t bought a thing!”
Yet, brothers and sisters, Lent has always been one of the key periods of the Church year and it would be a great pity if you and I were to forget its real meaning. In fact, that is what we ask for in the Collect, that is, the Opening Prayer of today’s Mass:
Grant almighty God, through the observance of holy Lent, that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.
The whole purpose of Lent is beautifully summarized in that prayer — to better appreciate the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and its meaning and effect in our lives. Particularly, in this Year of Jubilee, we are being invited to focus on the “Hope” that is Jesus’ living, dying and rising — what is referred to as the Paschal Mystery.
For the next six weeks, the Lenten season and its invitation to prayer, fasting and charitable works are meant to help us do precisely that. The Church provides Lent almost like an annual retreat, a time for deepening the understanding of our Christian faith, a time for reflection and renewal and a time to make a fresh start.
As the Word of God reminds us on this First Sunday of the Lenten season, the Kingdom that Jesus came to build, has a different set of values altogether. And it is those values we will be considering all during Lent. I don’t think it would be a surprise, if I say, that as Christians, we can still find ourselves chasing the idols of wealth, status and power just as fanatically as those who have no religious affiliation. Even as God’s Word announces to you and me that they are not the way of Jesus, they are not the way of the Kingdom, nor indeed are they the way to a fully human, fully satisfying life for anyone.
This is what today’s Gospel is all about. This is what Lent means as a time of reflection and a time of reevaluating the quality and direction of our lives. It is a time for reconsidering our priorities both as Christians and human beings — a time to reaffirm our conviction of the sacred dignity of every single human person.
Dear Catechumens, God called you and now God chooses you this Lord’s Day for the Easter sacraments, in which you will be baptized and confirmed and share for the very first time in the Eucharist.
Along with the call to conversion, holy Mother Church invites you to enter more deeply into conversation. The two words are similar, for they are both about “a turning.” The first — conversion — is about turning around, about walking in a new direction. The other — conversation — means that we turn to others … we turn to the Lord, to those around us and, in a way, we turn to ourselves, we speak to our own hearts. For there, we will find the truth of our lives — the Lord who lives within each of us.
The coming weeks of Lent, a period of Enlightenment and Purification, is an exciting time as you come closer and closer to the plunging waters of Baptism and the new life they signify. Please know that all the members of the Church of Syracuse will be praying for you during these 40 days. We will try also to be for you, especially your sponsors and the faith communities you call home, the best examples of what it is to be a Christian. And we will rejoice with you when you enter the waters of life, are anointed and sealed with the Holy Spirit, and nourished by the Body and Blood of the Lord.
Our only success in life can be what we achieve in building not palaces or empires, but in building a society that is more loving and just, based on the message of Jesus, a message of truth and integrity, of love and compassion, of freedom and peace — as “Ambassadors of Hope” which is our diocesan theme for Lent 2025.
Brothers and sisters, that is why we need this purifying period of Lent every year. Even if, in past years, we let it go by largely unnoticed, let this year be a little different. Let it be a second spring in our lives, which is the origin of the word, “Lent.” Let it help our discipleship with Christ to mean something so that God’s word will not only be on our lips, but even more, the heart of all we say and do. Amen.
