Summary: We make today a profound and important declaration. It is one that goes contrary to much that this world would profess and hold to be important. Everything in our western world and in the pagan culture in which we find ourselves insists that we are different, individuals, unique, special, and can only find our true identity by doing something no one has ever done before. It proposes that this is greatness. The consequence of this is killing us and driving us further and further apart. The more we believe this, the more we begin to think that no one knows what we’re going through; no one has ever felt what we feel before or faced the challenges we face. The growing individualism in which we find ourselves pushes us further and further apart, contributes to the ideological conflicts that divide us, and make us more and conscious and competitive demanding our rights without a thought of how those so called “rights” might diminish the rights of another. This condition is just cultural and outside of us. It is an interior experience as well. Spiritual Individualism is just as great a danger. It is exactly the thinking Jesus confronts with the warning about doing things in order to be seen. This is the hypocrisy Jesus condemns: the doing of things in order to be judged by what is seen. It sets us apart. It suggests that we should be judged by externals, and that what we do for others to see is really the measure of our goodness. Today we say “no” to that. Today we shall all look alike because we are all alike. What we say today is not: “Look how different I am” but rather, “Look how we’re all in this together.” We all shall have to answer the same fundamental question: “Is your life meaningful given that fact that it will eventually end?” By showing the mark of death, we proclaim the possibility of life. Unlike those who want to be judge by the external things that they do, we seek to be judged by what is in our heart and how that is revealed by what we say and do. In all the ages of Christian tradition and Catholic custom, no one has yet come up with a better way of purifying the human heart and revealing the best that is in one’s heart than by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Together these three challenge every bit of individuality and individualism that might creep into us. They lead us to experience our utter dependence upon God challenging forever the idea that we are somehow on our own and able to do anything we desire. They turn us toward each other and everyone else’s needs, and we are reminded in a radical way that we are our brother’s keeper, and we are not in this world alone. In a world that whines and complains, hoards and hides, tempting us to believe that we are number one; God says: “I am number one.” We have nothing to whine and complain about if we would just look around. We have no right or reason to hoard and hide unless we think that God has finished providing what we need. We have it all to provide for others. Recognizing that we are not alone is what we must remember today. So we shall make ourselves look like because we are. We must heed the warning and hope to be judged by what is in our hearts, not by what we do; but we must use these days to purify our hearts so that what is in them is good, noble, and worthy of children of God, and then what we do will match what is in our hearts. Then we shall have found the Truth and we shall be living in the Truth. Let us begin to purify our hearts, to turn toward one another in sincerity and in love, and help one another through difficult, uncertain, and frightening days by standing together as one in prayer, in service, and in sacrifice.
