A SERMON FOR THE 5TH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY
Last week, we made the
observation that when faced with danger, we human beings have the strange
tendency of falling asleep. We pointed out that it was not God who was asleep
in the boat in the storm, but rather the disciples. Even though they were scurrying around
panicking and trying to avoid drowning, they were asleep to the fact that with
them, they had the Creator of the Winds and Seas, and that they had nothing to
fear. “O ye of little faith,” was our
Lord’s stern reprimand. Today, we turn
from sleeping through danger to the danger of sleeping. “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man
which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came
and sowed cockle among the wheat, and went his way.”
Here we are, each of us plodding through
life as best we can, avoiding the occasions of sin, fighting temptation, trying
to live a godly life of virtue and righteousness. But now and again we let down our guard, we allow
ourselves to get a bit too near those occasions of sin, we relax our resolutions
not to sin and to acquire more virtues, we become dissipated, turning “just for
a short while” from God and giving in to the vanities that the world so
temptingly puts in our path. In short,
we flirt with the devil. No harm in that,
surely?! Just flirting? Well, of course, there is, and we’d do well on
this 5th Sunday after Epiphany to think about what can happen to all
the good work we’ve done if we let our guard down even for a moment. Because along comes the devil, who’s always
watching for a way in, and he plants the bad seed in amongst all the good seed
we’ve planted. When we wake up to
reality, it’s to the realization that bad and good fruit is growing, all
intertwined together, and we have no way no extract the bad and get ourselves
back to the pristine state we were in before we slept. We’re all a bit of a mix, with wheat and
cockle vying for dominance within our souls, and unfortunately, it will take
God to sort it all out at the time of the harvest.
Meanwhile, we must follow the
advice of St. Peter, who warns us: “Brethren, be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary
the devil goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, whom resist
ye, stedfast in the faith.” Again, the faith!
For it is our faith in God that is our weapon against the devil, against
the world, and against our own concupiscence.
If we hold fast to that faith, we have everything we need to know the
difference between right and wrong, to know when we’re veering off course, to
know, in short, when we’re falling asleep.
There are two kinds of sleep, one
literal and the other figurative, one good and one bad. It’s the latter, sleep of the figurative kind,
that we’re warned against today. There’s
nothing wrong with literal sleep.
On the contrary, this kind of sleep is a gift from God, from him who “giveth
his beloved sleep,” and our last prayer of the day should be to commit
ourselves into the hands of God to take care of us while we sleep: “Into thy
hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit,” as we pray every night at the Office of
Compline. “I will lay me down in peace
and take my rest, for it is thou, Lord, only, that makest me dwell in safety.” Sleep refreshes the body so that we may wake
up the next morning ready to do God’s will and to stedfastly resist any temptations
to go against that divine will. But the
figurative kind of sleep, that in which we close our eyes to those temptations
and, as I mentioned, flirt with the devil by yielding slightly to our own
desires and whims—that kind of sleep is a great peril to our soul and must be
avoided at all cost.
One of the best methods to stay
awake in this figurative sense is to make a nightly examination of
conscience. We’ve all heard about this,
but how many of us actually take the trouble to do it every night before we go
to bed? The examination of conscience is
of enormous benefit, forcing us to remember all the faults of the day, the
imperfections, the omissions, the failures in our duties of life, not to
mention the sins we committed. So many
times, people come to confession: “Bless me father, for I have sinned, it’s
been six months since my last confession.
I’ve missed Mass on Sunday twice.
That’s all I can remember.” Oh
really? The priest doesn’t believe you,
and neither does God. And if we actually
cared about the state of our immortal soul, we wouldn’t believe ourselves
either! The great saints have always
pointed out that we sin dozens of times a day, maybe more, at least
venially. And the number of
imperfections are probably in the hundreds.
When we fail to answer God’s call to prayer, when we omit our rosary, when
we have those momentary thoughts of violence towards an annoying neighbor or
politician, a little road rage here and there, a bit of sloth when it comes to
our responsibilities, procrastination, attachment to material pleasures and “things”—the
list is endless, and the examination of conscience will at least allow us to
recall some of these imperfections and failures, and give us that little nudge
to be sorry for them and resolve to do better the next day. Don’t leave it till it’s time to go to
confession and then realize you can’t remember anything and you’ve nothing to
tell the priest—when, in reality, if you were to make a good confession, it
would take you the whole morning to rattle off the list of things in which you’ve
offended Almighty God in thought, word, deed—and let’s not forget omission.
Let’s make the resolution right
now, that every night we’ll make that examination of conscience. That every night we won’t be spiritually asleep
before we actually fall physically asleep.
Let’s put our head on the pillow only after we make sure we are
vigilant in our battle against spiritual lethargy and the seven deadly
sins. Before you go to sleep tonight,
wake up!
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