Forgiveness Sunday 2020 - Father John Schettig

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the

Holy Spirit, glory to Jesus Christ. is in crisis.

The world is in crisis. Just this week, we have

the big one everybody knows about. We have the

coronavirus. Then we have that crisis there.

Then we have the meltdown of the financial markets,

another crisis. We have wars and rumors of wars,

especially in the Middle East. We even have crisis

in the Orthodox Church. The Ukrainian crisis.

We have all these things. The world has no lack

of crisis. What we lack is the understanding

of crisis. The word itself in Greek means judgment.

It means judgment. And up until about, I'm going

to say probably about 150 years ago, when something

happened on a level that's pretty high, or even

maybe in a person's life, it would be a crisis,

but what they did, they'd call it judgment. They'd

say, it's God's judgment. We need to repent.

It's God's judgment because of our sins. Now,

of course, their view of that is entirely changed.

The view now is that it's what they call a black

swan. A crisis shows up. It sort of came out

of nowhere for no reason. And for sure, The idea

of God being somehow involved is completely gone.

Completely gone. When's the last time some crisis

event happened either to people at large or to

you individually that you heard somebody say,

it's God's judgment. We should repent. We should

repent. In older times, there was no lack of

crisis in the world. There's always been wars,

famines, plagues. It goes on and on. Earthquakes.

The list is huge. And the way people, like I

said, again, the people looked at it was that

it was God's judgment on us. Because we've sinned.

Russia is a particular example. When they would

get a bad czar. And the people were going to

like suffer under this person. They would go.

God's judgment for our sins. And then they would

pray. And they would repent. Last week. We. remembered,

it was a Sunday of the last judgment. We call

it the biggest crisis of all time. Hasn't happened

yet. The last judgment. Today, we celebrate or

remember, maybe not celebration, it's quite the

best idea, that we remember the casting of Adam

and Eve out of paradise. I would call that God's

first judgment. Such a crisis still affects us

to this day because we live in a fallen world,

we're fallen people. We have death and all the

things around it. But those aren't the only two

times that God's judgment is in the world. Look

up in the dome. When you get a chance later,

if you're in the back and you can't see who's

up there, Jesus Christ. The Pentecrotter, the

Lord of the Universe. It's to remind us that

everything is in God's providence and in God's

hands. Everything. We experience these crises

on a world level or even on a country level.

But we also experience them individually. Each

person has times in their life when they have

a crisis. As a priest, I hear this quite often.

People come and they'll go, Father, you know,

I'm having a crisis. And it can be a health crisis

or a financial crisis or somebody died. The list

is very large. It's the same thing. It's God

working in our life. And why does he do this?

Why does he allow? Why does his judgment come

in? It's to draw us back to him. He doesn't do

it because he's angry with us. God loves us.

And remember that beautiful quote from Scripture,

God chastens, or the Lord chastens those he loves.

God is loving us when he chastens us. Because

what he's trying to do is draw us back to him.

Back to him. Because we've forgotten. We've sort

of lost our way. That's why we need to repent.

For our sins for sure, but we've turned from

God. And we need to go back. I was... reading

a book this week. And in that book, it was about

the Puritans. And the Puritans that came out

of eastern England and then came and settled,

you know, around Massachusetts in New England.

And a very interesting book. I mean, their theology,

their dogmatics, their ecclesiology was sort

of off the wall. But the thing I really, really

admired about them was that God was very foremost

in their life. They didn't have a materialistic

view like we have today. You know, we get a crisis,

we immediately try to think who are we going

to blame and sort of that it just happened. It

just happened. No, for them, every single thing

that happened in their life was God was behind

it. If they had a crisis, if they had, you know,

it was God's judgment. If they had good things

happen, it was God's grace. If nothing much was

happening, glory to God, we have peace. God was

foremost always in their mind. Are we like this?

Do God foremost remind everything that's happening

in our life? It's God's providence? I think we

too easily forget. We too easily forget this.

So for ourselves, now that we're sort of on the

edge of Lent, the time of repentance, the time

of repentance, And when we go and we repent for

our individual sins, we should also repent for

the sins of humanity. Why does God visit these

crises upon us? Trying to get us to turn our

hearts back to Him. We should be very, not only

just repentant, but thankful. Thanking God. For

all things. As we move through Lent. We should

be. Repenting. Thanking God. Giving glory to

him. For everything in our life. The crisis.

The graces. And. The times when not much is happening.

The times of peace. The words that we should

keep on our lips all through Lent and beyond

is this. Glory to God for all things. Glory to

God for all things. Glory to God for all things.