Disordered Love

Homily for Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

I usually use the longer penitential rite on Friday to acknowledge that it was on a Friday that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. However, I chose it for today’s Mass because in doing some research for this homily, I found the prayer used by Lutherans to confess their sins. I was surprised to find that it was remarkably similar to our “Confiteor.” It reads: “Lord, I confess that I am in slavery to sin and cannot free myself. I have sinned against you in thought, word and deed by what I have done and what I have left undone. I have not loved my neighbors as myself.”

In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus gives us a rather long list of human faults and failings. The list is not exhaustive, but it does include some of the most grievous sins committed by humanity. At the root of sin is disordered love, a greater love of our ways and our desires than of God’s will for us. We attempt to take for ourselves what is only God’s to give.

It is interesting to consider today’s first reading from the Book of Genesis in light of what Jesus preaches in the Gospel. We often think of the original sin as eating the fruit from the tree as if the fruit itself were tainted. However, as Jesus takes great pains to point out, nothing that we eat defiles us. The sin is in what led to the eating – that is, pride and disobedience. Sin entered the world through this original sin.

As both our prayer of repentance and the Lutheran prayer of confession make very clear, we sin by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have failed to love God and to love our neighbor. The list of vices that Jesus enumerates comes from within the human heart.

To love God means purifying the desires of our hearts and accepting that God knows what is best for our lives. It also means loving our neighbors as God first loved us. As we prepare to receive Christ’s body and blood, let us first surrender our desires to him, so that we might welcome his presence with undefiled hearts.