HOMILY PRONOUNCED  BY  MONS. DIEGO  MONROY PONCE; GENERAL AND EPISCOPAL VICAR OF GUADALUPE, RECTOR OF THE SANCTUARY.
SUNDAY 4TH.  OF  LENT.

Sunday, march 18th of 2007

PARABLES THAT ONLY REQUIRE OF CONTEMPLATION

Brothers, the mercy of God is revealed day to day in the way of the Lent. If we have been in an attentive attitude to his voice, it is for sure that his spirit made us to experience his nearness, patience, sweetness and his fidelity. He is always solicitous to open his arms and receive us in his paternal bosom to give us the life that only he can give. If it has been like this, we have to say thanks to God and be happy of being in the way of return to his goodnees and love.

My brother, But if it is not like this, surely we would have to ask the forgiveness to God and let that his spirit moves us to the conversion. If we request it to him, this desire will be already a demostration of his mysterious action which we don´t have to overlook.

Therefore, today, my dear brothers, the Spirit has expressed itself through the word that we have listened with devotion in the first part of the celebration. His word, as always, is a grace, it means a gift of his mercy and the interest that he has for us; as if he were crazy for us, as the Pope Benedict XVI says in his message of Lent.

Brothers, I invite you to center our attention in the readings from today to listen his message. Specially we will focus in the one of the gospel where the evangelist Luke gives us the third of the three parables of the mercy: the parables of the lost thing and found thing, of the sadness by the loss and the joy by the finding. These parables give us one of the most beautiful pages of  the Scripture, and I dare to say that also of the universal literature. This is that some people have called “the gospel of the mercy”. Its message is so simple and direct that practically it does not need an explanation, it just requires of contemplation. So, my brothers, I do not try to explain, I just emphasize some details that can facilitate this excercise of making our own the message.

We have to stop to contemplate how Jesus is surrounded by sinners with who he eats as a sign of a deep acceptance and communion with them in the mercy that he shows them from his Father. All of them feel him very close and friendly that they feel impelled to approach him. On the other hand, the scribes, the antagonists of the parable and of the reality in front of  Jesus and the sinners, they were scandalized by him and they just murmured and  disapproved (15, 1-2).

Jesus by showing the interest of God for the sinners, and at the same time by reproaching the obduracy and hardness of his opponents, He reveals (as a good pastor and good teacher) through the parables that the sweetness of God finds its best expression in the joy that  he experience as a merciful Father. This is the most beautiful and important aspect of the mystery of God that His Son has revealed to us. Not very often this mystery of the divine love has been  very valued as the last days when the Pope Benedicto XVI has spoken to us about the agape and the eros of God. It would seem that God has necessity of us.

The father of the parable never stopped loving his son to who he saw leaving against his volition and his plans. He respected the decision of his son and he gave everything that his son demanded to him, as if his father were dead; nevertheless, when the rebel son returned, he found everything as if he never would have lost nothing, even though  he had lost everything which he squandered  as an irresponsable person. He has not lost anything, even more, it seems  that he receives more. Even though the father always loved him, surely the son never knew how to value this love until the day of his return, and the father, who lived with the suffering by the  absence of his loved son, he found in the welcome a occasion to show his generous and faithful love.

This return reveals in a deep way, the love of  the father as a  joyful encounter, and it also reveals the arrogance and egoism of the oldest brother who thought that he had special rights, and he had them but he didn´t value them.

Brothers, this passage of  the Gospel describes in a beautiful but dramatic way the process  of the conversion, which is the central topic of the Lent. Our God Father is waiting for our return. May we let  that God with his spirit moves us to ask the purification of the heart, of the mind and of the memory; may with the light of God, we can see with clarity the things that we must change, and  may we achieve a deep transformation of the heart.

We must not forget that if God has approached us though his Son, we (the human being) can not arrive by other way, only by Jesus Christ. There is not other way of returning. We jus need that the prodigal son needed, a moment of decision that also has its origin in the mysterious action of God. We have to listen to start thouhg the conscience.

On the other hand, we have to ask the grace to recognize ourselves as sinners and that we need a permanent return. If we don´t do it, we will take similar attitudes as the oldest brother who thinks that he is good and has all the rights until the hardness of the heart. Instead of this,  we have to consider that the two brothers coexist in many of us, probably in all of us; the rebel one who leave the paternal house and the vain one who thinks that he deserves everything and he does not realize that he is also lost and very disoriented in his egoistic and miserable absorption in himself. As a comunity of saved people, we always have to be willing to look for and to receive to all people who have moved away. God grant that we have compassion for them. God grant that we can experience the joyness when they return to the house of  the God´s family. If it is necessary, we also have to ask the gift of knowing  how to forgive.

If we are lost like the prodigal son, we have to recognize that there is nothing more beautiful that living in the house of the father where we do not need anything. We don´t have to stay alone in the very deep and heavy loneliness. We have to listen the friendly voice of  Jesus that tells us that he has come to look for that was lost.

Finally, we don´t have to forget  that in the dominical Eucharist is where we experience more deeply the gifts of God, and also it is where we become stronger to face the adversities, because we have a house, a family where the brothers next to our communal Father are waiting for us.

AMEN.