A SERMON FOR THE 4th SUNDAY IN LENT
Nestled among the dark days of
the Lenten season, there lies a day of rejoicing. Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Lent,
marks roughly the midway point in our fasting, and so our Holy Mother Church,
in her loving-kindness, provides us with a day when we can mitigate a little
the penitential aspect of the season, and rejoice with flowers and
organ-playing and rose vestments.
It is not enough reason though,
surely, to drop some of our Lenten penance today for no other reason than that
we’re tired of fasting, and need a little break so we can return to it tomorrow
with renewed vigor and fortitude. The
key to our rejoicing lies rather in today’s Epistle, at the end of which St.
Paul proclaims in the name of us all: “We are not children of the
bondwoman, but of the free.”
Who is this bondwoman, and
who is this woman that is free? The
bondwoman is Eve, and St. Paul rejoices today that we are no longer children of
Eve in the sense that we are the offspring of her original sin. The Blessed Virgin Mary has replaced Eve as
our Mother, a woman who is free, a woman who was conceived free from the
original sin of Eve, immaculate in her conception, and equally free of the
stain of sin in her life.
Last week I mentioned to you
that today is Mothering Sunday, the Catholic
Mothers’ Day, and now you know why. As
Catholics, we do not bow to the arbitrary dates set aside by the corporate
powers of Hallmark and the big restaurant chains. As Catholics, we immerse ourselves in the
spirit of our Church, following instinctively the essence of the liturgy, which
is to worship God in the way he
desires to be worshipped. Today, the liturgy
points infallibly towards his Blessed Mother, rejoicing in the role she played
in our redemption.
We rejoice that by her
Immaculate Conception she crushed the head of the serpent. What serpent?
The one who tempted Eve and caused the downfall of mankind, the serpent
who is none other than the devil himself.
And who is she, this new
Mother of those children of Eve? It is
she who acquiesced to the request by God to be the Mother of his own incarnate
Son. Without him, we would still be
doomed to an eternity without heaven, without God. And without that agreement by the Blessed
Virgin Mary, without that Fiat, that
it be done unto her according to God’s will, there would have been no
incarnation of the Son of God, no nativity in Bethlehem, no crucifixion, no
redemption, and no heaven. And so we
rejoice today that we have such a Mother.
We rejoice that she remained
sinless throughout her life, that she cared for her Son like no other Mother
has ever raised a child. We rejoice that
she died as sinless as the moment she was first conceived, meriting to be assumed,
body and soul, into heaven, thus paving the way for our own souls to follow,
and for the resurrection of our own bodies at the end of time. We rejoice that she is rightfully crowned as
Queen of Heaven, and that she is for us the Gate
of Heaven, a gate that is always open to those who honor and love her, and her
divine Son.
And finally, we rejoice for
our own mothers. Those good and blessed
women who took care of us from our very conception in their womb, who suffered
the pains of labor for us, and the many other pains we’ve caused them in the
years since then. May God bless them
today on this Mothering Sunday, may he keep them safe in this life, and take
them quickly to his side when they pass from us.
My remarks this week are a
little shorter than usual, and I hope you will be able to use the extra time
after Mass to do something special, for, or with your mothers. Let’s show them our gratitude today for being
such good mothers, remembering to thank God also, for lending them to us.
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