Homily, 6-9-24; Sunday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle B:
God asked Adam: “Who told you that you were naked?”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Adam knew that he was naked because he disobeyed the one commandment that God had given him. He didn’t need anyone to tell him. He had sinned, was naked before God, and he tried to hide from God. God questions Adam asking: “Where are you?” and “Who told you that you were naked?” But He already knows the answers. God knows where Adam and Eve are, that they have been disobedient. But he comes looking for their repentance. Instead of admitting their failure, however, Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent. I can only wonder if their punishment, and ours, would have been less severe if they had admitted their guilt and asked forgiveness instead of making excuses.
Adam and Eve ate of the tree of good and evil because they fell prey to the prince of darkness who prowls through the world. And God punished both man and Satan and states that we and Satan will be enemies. After eating the forbidden fruit, Adam knew right from wrong, that he sinned. He didn’t need anyone to tell him. We know right from wrong as well, we have the law written on our hearts as Jeremiah prophesied about the new covenant that Jesus would make. He wrote: “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” We have the law within is us, but still we fall; we sin because of concupiscence, a desire for the things of the world, of Satan’s world. Jesus gives us His Spirit to enable us to resist the temptations of Satan. He came to tie up Satan and steal us back away from him.
Satan is the strong man that Jesus refers to in our gospel passage when he says: “But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man.” Jesus came to free us from Satan’s house so that we can enter His, to snatch away from Satan’s grasp. St. Bede writes: “The Lord has also bound the strong man, that is, the devil: which means, He has restrained him from seducing the elect, and entering into his house, the world; He has spoiled his house, and his goods, that is men, because He has snatched them from the snares of the devil, and has united them to His Church. Or, He has spoiled his house, because the four parts of the world, over which the old enemy had sway, He has distributed to the Apostles and their successors, that they may convert the people to the way of life.”
God was very good to Adam and Eve. He bestowed upon them a beautiful carefree life in the garden. And still they disobeyed Him. God has been very good to us too. He sent His only begotten Son to die for us, out of love for us, to win victory over Satan, to tie him up and plunder his house, the world. And still we disobey him. We disobey by our actions and by our inactions, by what we do and by what we fail to do, our sins of commission and our sins of omission. Because of our pride and shame we try to hide our sins from the world. We don’t want to admit our spiritual nakedness.
But just like Adam and Eve, God knows where we are and everything we do. We might try, but we cannot hide our sins from God. He knows that we sin and wants us to repent, not to make excuses and try to rationalize our behavior. When we do admit our guilt and stop making excuses for our behavior, He offers us forgiveness. Jesus has plundered the strong man’s house. He knows where we are and what we do physically and spiritually. He knows our faults, our sins, our failings. He wants us to confess them and repent, and then forgiveness will be ours. There is only one sin that cannot be forgiven and that is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit; that is saying that Jesus casts out demons by the power of Satan rather than by His own Spirit. Basically, it is a denial of Jesus’ power, including His power to forgive our sins. If we deny who Jesus is, if we do not believe that Jesus has power to forgive our sins, then we will not ask for forgiveness and will not obtain it. And thus, this denial of the Holy Spirit’s power cannot be forgiven because we do not ask that it be forgiven. The Catechism puts it this way about the unforgiveable sin: “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss” (CCC #1864).
St. Paul write in his Second Letter to Timothy: “But if we deny him he will deny us. If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:12-13). If we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, He remains faithful to us even when we are unfaithful through sin. But if we deny who Jesus is, that He is God and has the power to cast out our demons, then He will deny us before His Father.
So let us be strong in our belief that Jesus is God, a God who sees and knows everything we do and think. Let us remember that when we consider cheating on our taxes because we don’t think we will be audited, when we our tempted to view pornography in the privacy of our room, when we talk about other behind their back. And let us remember it when we fail to help those in need, when we are selfish or greedy, when we don’t do our part to protect innocent lives, especially those of the unborn, and defend the sanctity of marriage. Through our concupiscence, we have the tendency to follow the desires of this world in so many ways that conflict with law of God. And often we fail. God knows and sees it all. And we know in our hearts when we fail as well. We don’t need to be told we are naked. But we do need admit our sinfulness and not make excuses. Jesus is waiting for us to confess and repent, and then forgiveness will be ours.