The story of Naaman the Syrian, which we read this week, is filled with interesting lessons. A little Jewish slave girl brings the great general with leprosy to Israel. She’s a wonderful apostle. Israel’s king terrified about the political consequences of the visit is a good example of how a political viewpoint can blind you to everything else. Good story for these days, immersed as we are in politics.

God works in sacraments that appear so small. Naaman was told to go and wash seven times in the Jordan. He didn’t think much of the waters of the Jordan, but they cured him.

Our lectionary reading omitted part of the story I like. Returning to the Prophet Elisha after he’s cured, Naaman wants to shower the prophet with gifts. The prophet won’t take anything. “Naaman said: “If you will not accept, please let me, your servant, have two mule-loads of earth, for your servant will no longer make burnt offerings or sacrifices to any other god except the LORD.”

“Two mule-loads of earth.” The Empress Helena brought earth from the site of Calvary to the church of the Holy Cross in Rome in the 4th century when she brought relics of the cross to be honored there. The earth is still there.

We’ve placed rocks from many countries of the world in our Mary Garden at the foot of the statue of Mary and her Child. (Above)

Earth itself is holy. So simple it can be ignored. Yet all life depends on 6 inches of soil. Of all the memorabilia Naaman could have taken from Israel, he took two mule-loads of earth. He learned to appreciate the gifts of God that appear so small. He got it right.

For this week’s homily, please watch the video below.

The story of the prodigal son is one of the longest in the gospel, but it’s also one of the most important. It’s not just about one boy who goes astray, of course, it’s about the whole human race. All of us are the subject of this story.

“Give me what’s mine,” the son says boldly to his father. We all tend to say that. And the boy takes off for a faraway country, a permissive paradise that promises power and pleasure, in fact, it promises him everything;  he can do anything he wants.

But they’re empty promises, and so the boy who had so much ends up with nothing, in a pigsty feeding pigs, and they eat better than he does.

Then, he takes his first step back. He “comes to himself,” our story says; he realizes what he has done. “I have sinned.” 

How straightforward that reaction! Not blaming anybody else for the mess he is in: not his father, or the prostitutes he spent so much of his money on, or the society that fooled him. No, he takes responsibility. That “coming to himself” was the first gift of God’s mercy.

He doesn’t wallow in his disappointment and his sins and his failures and what they’ve brought him. They don’t trap him. He looks beyond them to the place where he belongs, his father’s house. It wont be an easy road, but he starts back home.

There he’s surprised by the welcome he receives. More than he ever expected. The father takes into his arms and calls for feast.

This is our story too. The story of God’s mercy. Let’s ask for the gift to know ourselves. Let ask for the gift to keep going to our father’s house. Let’s ask for the gift to know God’s embrace, God’s warm embrace. The embrace of his love.

Our first reading from the Prophet Micah reminds us that nations stray as well as individuals. Let’s not forget God’s mercy falls on the world as well as each person.  We pray too for a world that can wander far from God.

How easily we leave your side, Lord God, for a place far away. Send light into our darkness, and open our eyes to our sins. Unless you give us new hearts and strong spirits, we cannot make the journey home, to your welcoming arms and the music and the dancing. Father of mercies and giver of all gifts, guide us home and lead us back to you.

Joseph’s story from the Book of Genesis–our first reading today– leads to the story of Jesus. Joseph, his father’s favorite, was rejected by his jealous brothers and sold for twenty pieces of silver. Left for dead or to be enlaved, Joseph became a ruler in Egypt. Eventually, he saved his brothers and all their families from starvation.

Joseph felt a special kind of suffering – rejection by his brothers .Yet afterwards, merciful and forgiving, he embraced them and saved them.

In today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel, a large crowd welcomes “the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee”. They spread their cloaks and cast branches before him. Then, Jesus is rejected by the chief priests and elders of the people.  (Matthew 21:1-18)  

You’re rejecting the Son of the Landowner, Jesus says in a parable directed to them. Their answer was death for the One proclaiming the coming of Kingdom of God.

Rejection by enemies, then by his own friends, was a large part of the suffering of Jesus in his Passion. Physical pain was not the only pain Jesus endured.  

Is he rejected by us? As we follow his Passion we’re not distant observers with no part in the story. “Were you there?” the spiritual asks. Yes, we were there when they crucified my Lord. We share in his rejection, but also the mercy and forgiveness Jesus showed.

Like the story of Joseph, the story of Jesus does not end in rejection and death. “The stone rejected by the builders will become the cornerstone.” Risen from the dead, Jesus promises forgiveness and life for all.

You went to Jerusalem, Lord, to announce a kingdom come, a promise of God fulfilled. a hope beyond any we could conceive. Teach us to keep the dream of your Kingdom alive, even when we see it denied.

STATIONS OF THE CROSS: Fridays in Lent are good days to follow Jesus in the Stations of the Cross, and ancient devotion. Here are some online resources:

Video  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waaMOBJ5e1Q&list=PLLUFZUgOPMFxkmfgBNS4Kfm8XxEwoAd6f&index=11

Stations of the Cross; Text    https://passionofchrist.us/stations-adults/ 

Stations of the Cross for Children: https://passionofchrist.us/stations-of-the-cross-children/

Prayers :  https://passionofchrist.us/prayers/

( A commentary on our gospel reading for today?}

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning and welcome!

Today, we will continue our exploration of the Conciliar Constitution Lumen gentium, a dogmatic Constitution on the Church.

In the first chapter, which is primarily intended to answer the question of what the Church is, she is described as a “complex reality” (no. 8). Now we ask ourselves: what does this complexity consist of? Some might answer that the Church is complex in that she is ‘complicated’ and therefore difficult to explain; others might think that her complexity derives from the fact that she is an institution steeped in two thousand years of history, with characteristics that differ from any other social or religious group. In Latin, however, the word ‘complex’ indicates rather the orderly union of different aspects or dimensions within the same reality. For this reason, Lumen gentium can affirm that the Church is a well-organized body, in which the human and divine dimensions coexist without separation and without confusion.

The first dimension is immediately perceptible, in that the Church is a community of men and women who share the joy and struggle of being Christians, with their strengths and weaknesses, proclaiming the Gospel and becoming a sign of the presence of Christ who accompanies us on our journey through life. Yet this aspect – which is also evident in its institutional organization – is not sufficient to describe the true nature of the Church, because it also has a divine dimension. The latter does not consist in an ideal perfection or spiritual superiority of its members, but in the fact that the Church is generated by God’s plan for humanity, realized in Christ.

Therefore, the Church is at the same time an earthly community and the mystical body of Christ, a visible assembly and a spiritual mystery, a reality present in history and a people journeying towards heaven (LG, 8; CCC, 771).

The human and divine dimensions integrate harmoniously, without one overshadowing the other; thus, the Church lives in this paradox. She is a reality that is both human and divine, which welcomes the sinful man and leads him to God.

To illuminate this ecclesial condition, Lumen gentium refers to the life of Christ. In fact, those who met Jesus along the roads of Palestine experienced his humanity, his eyes, his hands, the sound of his voice. Those who decided to follow him were moved precisely by the experience of his welcoming gaze, the touch of his blessing hands, his words of liberation and healing. At the same time, however, by following that Man, the disciples opened themselves to an encounter with God. Indeed, Christ’s flesh, his face, his gestures and his words visibly manifest the invisible God.

In the light of the reality of Jesus, we can now return to the Church: when we look at her closely, we discover a human dimension made up of real people, who sometimes manifest the beauty of the Gospel and other times struggle and make mistakes like everyone else. However, it is precisely through her members and her limited earthly aspects that Christ’s presence and his saving action are manifested. As Benedict XVI said, there is no opposition between the Gospel and the institution; on the contrary, the structures of the Church serve precisely for the “realization and concretization of the Gospel in our time” (Address to Swiss Bishops, 9 November 2006). An ideal and pure Church, separated from the earth, does not exist; only the one Church of Christ, embodied in history.

This is what constitutes the holiness of the Church: the fact that Christ dwells in her and continues to give himself through the smallness and fragility of her members. Contemplating this perennial miracle that takes place in her, we understand ‘God’s method’: He makes himself visible through the weakness of creatures, continuing to manifest himself and to act. For this reason, Pope Francis, in Evangelii gaudium, exhorts us all to learn “to remove our sandals before the sacred ground of the other (cf. Ex 3:5)” (no. 169). This enables us still today to build up the Church: not only by organizing its visible forms, but by building that spiritual edifice which is the body of Christ, through communion and charity among ourselves.

Indeed, charity constantly generates the presence of the Risen One. “If only we could all just let our thoughts dwell on the one thing, charity! It’s the only thing, you see, which both surpasses all things, and without which all things worth nothing, and which draws all things to itself, wherever it may be” (Sermon 354, 6, 6).