Shed Your Surplus Baggage

Summary of a Fr. Gerry Creedon homily from February 25, 2007

"He ate nothing for 40 days, and when they were over he was hungry." Lk 4:2

Ireceived a birthday card from a child in our school last week.

"Dear Fr. Creedon, I hope you have a happy birthday! And you are not just special when it is your birthday. You are special every day and every night. And you are getting older now and when you die and you think you are forgotten but I will always remember you. When I am outside I will imagine your face in the clouds and I will pray until it is gone. Love.." She shall remain nameless.

What a delightful, yet sobering message!

We resist the thought of diminishment. Rage. Rage against the dying of the light, says the poet. I hear people saying, "I'm not giving up anything this Lent. I'll just do something positive." We resist the ancient disciplines of fast and abstinence. Yet lent is a season of mortification, making yourself unto death. It is a time of sacrifice and restraint.

What is wrong with cutting back on our consumption? As today's gospel indicates, "Man does not live by bread alone." We live in a culture that says bigger is better. We level cottages to create mansions. What makes SUVs so special? Our church proclaims the need to shed our surplus baggage and our extra pounds. As the ecologists say, "We leave too large a footprint." The earth cannot sustain our greed. Let us walk to church and save the fumes. It is no harm for us to be leaner. Let us eat a lesser meal.

Christ rejected the allure of materialism. He also resisted "the power and the glory". Why are we so preoccupied with upward mobility in our careers. What is at the top anyway? Put on a uniform and we get a rush of adrenaline. Control can be addictive. And what about climbing the ecclesiastical ladder to the pinnacle of the temple? "My son the Monsignor." Christ took off the mantle of patriarchy and put on the apron of service.

Let us walk with him into the desert, where we may be stripped of our idols. Yet the end is not Calvary.

In the Exodus story recalled in today's reading from Deuteronomy, we hear, "We cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression. He brought us out of Egypt. He gave us this land flowing with milk and honey." Deut 26:8

Lent is for Easter and new life.

We eat less that others may eat. We live simply that others may simply live. Our Rice Bowl Program translates our diminishment into hope for the hungry of the earth. The paradox of the Christian life proclaims, "What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?" Forgive the poetry and the chauvinism of the Douai version. Those who would save their life shall lose it. Those who spend their life shall save it forever in saecula saeculorum. Your face will be seen in the clouds by the little people.