Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle B)

The readings today are very direct. It would be difficult to sugar coat them at all. In fact they are not meant to make us comfortable. They should make us squirm a little bit. We should at least take stock of where we are at and see what we need to change or adjust in our lives.

Mark gives his version of Jesus calling his disciples. It is different from the version we heard last week from the Gospel of John. Mark is an in your face kind of Gospel. He just puts the point out there and leaves you to make a choice. In Mark the very first words of Jesus come already in chapter one. They are, "This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel."

"Repent, and believe in the gospel." These words are an echo of what we hear Jonah saying in the streets of Ninevah. Jonah tells the people of Ninevah that their city will be destroyed in 40 days. Only their sincere repentance saves them from the wrath of God. St. Paul sounds just as urgent in the second reading. His basic message is that we are running out of time. It is time to change our ways now. We have to look at the way we live our lives in a whole new way if we want to survive. We are not to be attached to the things and the ways of this world but we must have our sights set on our goal... on heaven and eternal life.

This past week the theme of these readings was presented in living vivid color for me when I was out in Washington, D.C. As you know a group of youth and their chaperones from our parish joined a group from our diocese in Washington for the March for Life. We spent a few days out there and I have to say I was nothing short of proud of our youth and the witness they gave for our faith on this trip. I would be proud to take them anywhere to represent our parish and our faith.

One of the first days of the trip we visited several of the national monuments and memorials. They were inspiring and sobering all at the same time. My mother was also on this trip and joined us at the Vietnam war memorial. Thirty six years after my uncle was killed in that war, she still had tears in her eyes as I gave her a rub I made of her brother's name on the wall. I wondered there, and at the Korean war memorial, when we would build the last memorial for the last war. I have seen in Mom the pain of the waste of human life that war always is.

We also visited the Jefferson memorial. The architecture and the feel of the monument strengthens my pride in being American. It also reminds me of the great desire of this nation for liberty and freedom. There is a quote from Jefferson on the wall that struck all of us who read it. Jefferson said, "God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice can not sleep forever."

Jefferson also once said, "The care and protection of human life is the first and only legitimate function of government." As I reflected on these quotes I trembled a bit myself. Our country was built on the desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We were also guaranteed freedom of religion. However, this freedom has been distorted into a privatization of our faith. As Catholics we know that our faith must live in every fiber of our being. Relegating it to our private lives, taking it out of our public activities, effectively cuts it off at the knees and leaves it to bleed to death in the privacy of our own homes.

We also toured the holocaust museum. It told of how the Jews and their faith were systematically attacked in Nazi Germany. It is in fact a chilling parallel to some events in our own country. In a few short years, people were convinced that Jews were the source of the problems of Germany. A whole race became the scapegoat for their woes. Laws were enacted against the Jews to try to stop the "problem." In our country pregnancy has become a "problem" to be cured.

It was then decided that Jews must be stopped and sterilization was forced on the Jewish people. The museum said that Catholics were the only group to consistently oppose forced sterilization. In our country we decided to cure the "problem" of pregnancy with contraceptives. Again, the Catholic Church opposes contraceptives.

It was then a short step to the chilling resolve of Hitler to exterminate the Jews and the Polish people, who by the way, were predominantly Catholic. In our country we now exterminate the unwanted unborn in the holocaust of abortion.
Today we face a war against terrorism. We face a possible war with Iraq. But the biggest war we face is the one fought within our own borders right now. It's the war on the unborn, the elderly, the defenseless, the helpless, and the innocent. It is a war against the dignity of life. This is the war with the greatest casualties. The casualty is humanity itself. It is no wonder there is so much violence and talk of war when we can't even respect the most innocent among us.

The last stop in the Holocaust museum was a memorial to those who lost there lives in that infamous tragedy. On the wall was written a quote from the book of Deuteronomy 30:19. "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him."

This is all kind of dark. However, there is a bright ray of hope from the past week. In the March for Life, it was as if the 100,000 plus youth and others were so many Jonahs marching through the streets of our country. They were holding the hope of our future in their voices. The hope is in our response as a nation to the message so boldly proclaimed. Change your ways! "Repent, and believe in the gospel."

It is up to us. To paraphrase a quote I read in the Holocaust Museum, "They came for the Jews, and I said nothing. They came for the unborn and the helpless, and I said nothing. They came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."