HOMILY PRONOUNCED  BY  MONS. DIEGO  MONROY PONCE; GENERAL AND EPISCOPAL VICAR OF GUADALUPE, RECTOR OF THE SANCTUARY.
SUNDAY 3TH.  OF  LENT.

 Sunday, march  11th. of 2007

A GOD ALWAYS PRESENT

Dear brothers: God always speaks, he convokes us. God waits, leads, forgives us, he is love. We can list many characteristics  of our God, but we can never understand the depth of his mistery. He is always present in our lifes. God knows the personal situation of everyone. Because he is the Lord of the history, he knows the beginning  and the development  of  everything that makes us happy or unhappy.

Our God, the one who was revealed by Jesus Christ, is the same God of the history of Israel. He has been present through that history and his presence has taken different ways, many of them unexpected to the human being.

That´s why the father of Jesus Christ, our father, has mercy for us. The biggest expression of his sweetness for us, it is his mercy as the first reading says:  I have heard...... seen,  and I know.....   I have gone down to liberate my people.... to take it out  and to lead it... These expressions show a present God, very close to his children.

The biggest expression of his nearness is that we experienced, who believed in Jesus Christ. For that reason one of his names is “Emmanuel”, it means: God- with- us.

God is always in favor of us, and the sign  is that his son always intercedes for us. In the gospel from today, the son asked his father a respite: leave it until this year; I am going to move the land around it and I will put manure on it to see if  it is fecund. In the context of the Lent, the fig tree  represents  everyone from whom God expects the fruits of an authentic conversion.

Generally the adversities are interpreted  as a divine punishment. But for us who believe in God, these are like announcements of his mercy. We also can say  that these are like a warning from his love, because he doesn´t treat us as our faults deserve. He forgives all our sins and heals all our illness as we sang in the psalm 102, this Sunday.

Beloved brothers, the Lent invites us to realize that God our father convokes us to be children in his son. That´s our destiny. The name that was revealed to Moises, has been totally revealed in the mysterious person  of his son. So his name doesn´t mean only  “the one that is”, it means more: “the one that is, and doing – be”; the one who convokes to the life and keeps into the existence. That´s the thing that Jesus does when he intercedes for us in the presence of his father to become completed in  his sons.

The Exodus says God liberates too, not only  liberates us from  slavery, but also he makes us free to live into the dignity of his children . God realized all of this with plenitude when he sent us to his son like he sent to Moises to the Jews in one moment in history.

But God saves us counting on our answer. Saint Augustine (the bishop of Hipona (s. IV) ) said: “God who created you without you, he won´t save you without you”. It means God respects the human freedom to save us. He feeds the desire of salvation on us,  but it has to be a responsible and free choice from everyone. This option requires dedication, constancy and for that, fatigue and effort.

My brothers, to achieve all of that, we have the aids that God offers in the church: the sacraments, specially the penitence and the Eucharist for those who have been baptized. In general the prayer is a condition, without it, it is not possible to keep ourselves on the proposal of the personal and community conversion. We have to understand that the conversion it is not  a narcissistic  perfection that we can achieve without God, for that reason the prayer is important. God is patient with us but we have to take the initiative to give the first fruits of  the talents with which God has saved us. Never it is late, but we can´t  close ourselves to the loving call of  the father who constantly calls us to the conversion. It is important that we make efforts to make our own the interests of God. Even though it seems to us imposible, something changes in our life, because with Christ everything is posible.

Our darling, the “morenita” of the Tepeyac, our lady and mother, she intercedes for us and accompanies us in this holy way of the Lent.

AMEN