homily - Lent 1

 You may have heard something similar to this: “The Gospel is comfort for the afflicted, and affliction for the comforted”

God doesn’t want you to be comfortable all the time.

LENT IS A TIME OF “DISCOMFORT” – FOR THE SAKE OF SOMETHING BETTER.

Spe Salvi - Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched…

Christianity is not focused on comfort. In fact, sometimes comfort really gets in the way of Christianity.

It is uncomfortable for me to treat that other person as equal or even more important than myself.

Culture of comfort.

Athletes understand this. If I was only comfortable, I could never succeed or improve.

THE COMFORT IS ULTIMATELY NOT BEING ALONE.

The people who followed Him, the disciples who followed Him, were poor wretches like you and me. All the newness of hope. The absolutely new certainty and the new reality that they were, was that Presence. The contemporaneousness of that Presence with me, with my children, with those who will come after us in a hundred million years: this is the  victory that conquers the world. This is the absolute newness. This is the divine in history. I remain the same poor beggar, but with Christ, I am certain, I am rich. The attractiveness of my person, that is, what makes it possible to love my person, is the existence of this Presence. Indeed it is only in a companionship with Him that a person loves himself. Only a person who carries this message can claim an affection for himself, can love himself and therefore love others.

Don’t hide from your faith but fleeing to the comfortable all the time. Stay in the desert and know the presence of the one who frees you to love.