Homily for 4th Sunday of Lent

Homily for the
4th Sunday of Lent
John 3: 14-21
NYLT, Putnam Valley, N.Y.
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Harrison, N.Y.
March 18, 2012

“The light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil” (John 3:19).

Have you ever gone into a kitchen or pantry, turned on the light, and seen a couple dozen cockroaches scurry into a dark corner and under the baseboards? (If you haven’t, you’re not from New York!) They don’t like the light at all. They do whatever icky things cockroaches do in the darkness.

Jesus uses a similar image. It’s one we’re all familiar with. More criminal activity takes place at nite, in the dark, than in broad daylight. In the Middle Ages, and in our own colonial period, no one went out at nite without real necessity, because they believed that evil spirits roamed about in the darkness, perhaps like the Dark Lord and his Death Eater friends. Moviemakers know how to use darkness and shadows to give us the creeps.

Not only criminals and movie monsters love the dark. So do all of us sinners. When we do something wrong, something evil—lying, cheating, stealing, bullying, premarital sexual activity, acts of cruelty, and a long list of other sins—we try to do it secretly and keep it secret. When we admit to ourselves that we’ve sinned, we’re ashamed and don’t want anyone to know about it. It’s even hard for us to go to confession.

St. John Bosco sometimes had the gift from God of reading consciences. His biography has a dozen pages of testimonies about that (Giovanni Battista Lemoyne, SDB, The Biographical Memoirs of Saint John Bosco, trans. Diego Borgatello, SDB, vol. 6 [New Rochelle, 1971], pp. 257-267). On the positive side, this enabled him to help boys confess their sins—he could just name a sin, and they could nod or say “yes.” His biographer tells us: “So deeply convinced were the boys that Don Bosco could see in their consciences not only external sins but even innermost thoughts, that nearly all wanted to go to confession to him. ‘With him we are surer to make good confessions and Communions,’ they claimed. ‘If we forget any sin, he will surely recall it to us.’ It is a fact that his confessional was always crowded with boys.” (p. 258).
Photo (posed, in fact) of DB hearing confessions at the Oratory, ca. 1860

But those still “living in the darkness” didn’t like that. The biographer also tells us: “Some boys kept their distance from him. If they had to go near him for some reason or other, while respectfully doffing their caps, they still tried to shield their foreheads with them or with their hair, as if that were enough to hide their consciences…. ‘Don Bosco reads our sins on our foreheads,’ they said.” (p. 265).
But “the light came into the world”—Jesus Christ—in order to bring life, to bring joy, not fear, not punishment. There are a very few creatures living in the very deepest, darkest parts of the oceans and in the deepest, darkest caves in the earth who never see light or feel the sun’s warmth. But just about every living creature needs light, and the warmth associated with light, in order to live and to grow: flowers and crops and even people. Think of how hard it is for you to get going on a gloomy day; not even 16 cups of coffee helps. And how alive you feel when the sun’s shining brightly, like today. And now that the days are getting longer and warmer, you can look around and see the daffodils and the crocuses are starting to pop out, the forsythia and the magnolias to bud, and the trees to leaf out.

That’s an image of what God wants for us. In his 1st chapter St. John writes, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. To those who accepted him, he gave the power to become children of God” (1:9,12). In the passage we heard a few minutes ago, he says further, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (3:16); and “God sent his Son into the world that it might be saved thru him” (3:17).

The Collect or opening prayer of today’s Mass observed that God “reconciles the human race” to himself “in a wonderful way.” That wonderful way is the gift of his Son. It’s the call for us to bask in the light of the Son—turning away from the darkness in our hearts and letting God’s love, God’s forgiveness, envelop us and fill us with light. When God so envelops us and fills us with light, we become luminous. In the words of the book of Daniel, “The wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever” (12:3). You always wanted to be a star, didn’t you? That’s why when you were baptized you were given a baptismal candle, lit from the Easter candle: you share in the light of Christ, Christ who is the light of the world, and you are to enlighten the world with his light.

You have perhaps heard the little story of a boy being shown the wonders of the parish church by his mom. When she pointed out to him the stained glass windows, filled with images of the saints, she asked him whether he knew who the saints were. “Yes,” he assured her. “They’re the people the light shines thru.” That’s who God calls all of us to be: “the light came into the world…. Whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God” (John 3:19,21). No running for a dark corner like a cockroach; no pulling hair over our foreheads to hide our consciences!
Stained-glass window of St. Ann with her daughter, the Virgin Mary (Holy Rosary Church, Port Chester)
“God is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us” and has “brought us to life with Christ,” St. Paul reminds us (Eph 2:4-5). God wants so much to give us this grace, this undeserved gift (cf. 2:5-9)! Nothing on earth and no power of darkness “can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” Paul says elsewhere (Rom 8:38-39).
So in this sacred season of Lent, this season of conversion and re-conversion, of recommitment to Jesus, light of the world, we need have no fear of examining our consciences, of admitting our faults, our sins, our guilt, and bringing them to Jesus—in the person of his priestly minister—and letting Jesus’ love warm us up and keep us growing into that “handiwork” that God created us to be, “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph 2:10) and for eternal life (John 3:16).