Homily for 2d Sunday of Lent

Homily for the
2d Sunday of Lent

Feb. 25, 2024
Gen 22: 1-2, 9-13, 15-18
Rom 8: 31-34
The Fountains, Tuckahoe, N.Y.
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

“Abraham took the ram and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son” (Gen 22: 13).

(Caravaggio)

During Lent we’re preparing to celebrate the central mystery of our faith, which we call the paschal mystery or the passover mystery:  the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus by which he passed from our mortal existence to eternal life, and by which he redeemed us so that we might make the same passover.

Theologians have proposed various theories of how Christ’s paschal mystery has effected our redemption.  The 1st principal always is that we are sinners—whether our sins are grave, or “just” the little daily ones that we regularly flop into, like harsh words, gossip, laziness, fibs, ignoring our neighbor.  And death is the penalty that sinners merit.  A few verses earlier than what we heard in the 2d reading from Romans 8, St. Paul reminds us that if we live according to the flesh, according to unrestrained human nature, we’ll die (8:13).  Two chapters before that, he tells us, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).  That’s the destiny of all of us.

ut—sinners can be saved and come to eternal life by God’s grace, by unmerited forgiveness.  Christ atones for our sins by substitution, by taking our place.  He suffered the death penalty and went down to the underworld, the place of the dead (which the Apostles Creed calls “hell”), with us and for us, so that he might grab us and lead us upward to eternal life alongside him.

In the story of Abraham and Isaac we find an example of substitution.  God intervenes to prevent the death of Isaac and provides a substitute.  Our 1st reading, from Genesis 22, omits a lot of verses.  In verses omitted, we see how strong was Abraham’s faith.  When little Isaac asked his father, “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the holocaust?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust” (22:7-8).  So God does, and Isaac lives.  The ram caught in the thicket takes Isaac’s place on the altar.

It’s no mystery why Jesus is called the Lamb of God.  He has taken our place as a sacrifice; his cross was the altar where he was offered to God.  He offered himself, freely, to God the Father.  He did that out of love, undeserved love, for us.  As he begins to tells us about the Last Supper, St. John states, “Having loved his own in the world, he loved them to the end” (13:1).  It’s not that God the Father wished Jesus’ death; rather, he permitted wicked people—the chief priests and the Roman rulers—to put Jesus to death because they opposed the truth of his teaching and the miracles he worked.

St. Paul tells us, “God did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all” (Rom 8:32).  Thus God acquits us of our sins (8:33), throwing his grace into the face of the Devil, who, as the Book of Revelation says, “night and day accuses us before God” (12:10) and indicts us—but without effect because the Lamb of God has been sacrificed for us, and the blood he shed in our stead has washed us clean (cf. 12:11).