Homily for Quinquagesima Sunday, 2022

The Empty Mana Pua

St. Paul’s “If Love isn’t at the center…” (with examples)

So what? A secret (with examples)

What now? Talk to God

A few years ago, our family went out to Hawaii to visit Mrs. Melton’s family there. She grew up on the Big Island. While we were on the big island, we stopped at a store and bought some Mana Pua. Mana Pua is a doughy roll, kind of like this one, but in the middle is a ton of meat, really good meat. Mana Pua. Well, everyone got their Mana Pua and we started to dig in. It was all very silent. All you could hear was the ocean wind and [chewing sounds]. I ate mine, and I discovered that mine was not Mana Pua. It was just a big piece of bread! There was no meat in the middle! Just a plain ol’ dinner roll.

That dinner roll is a good metaphor for something that St. Paul talks about today. He says that every deed, if it doesn’t have Love at the center, they are worth nothing. He says, “Even if I gave all my money to the poor, if I didn’t have love at the center of it, it is worth…[nothing].” Well, if giving all your money to the poor can be worth nothing if it doesn’t have [Love] at the [center], then that’s the way it is for everything else.

If you sing the loudest in Church, but don’t have [Love] at the [center], it is worth [nothing]. If you keep your room very clean, but don’t have [Love] at the [center], it is worth [nothing]. If you refrain from saying something nasty when your brother or sister annoys you, but don’t have [Love] at the [center], it is worth [nothing].

Now you might be thinking, “So what? It doesn’t have Love at the center. It is worth nothing. Why does that matter?” And it is here that I need to let you in on a little secret. Love must be at the center of all things, because Love is the purpose for all things. Love is the ultimate purpose for all things. Most people don’t know that, but those who figure it out are filled with Joy always.

Let me give you an example. Raise your hand if you go to school. Okay, you, what’s your favorite subject? [subject] Why do you think you study that subject in school? [some practical answer] Yes, but its ultimate purpose is to teach you love of God…3X. And because it is the ultimate point of all things, then we must have Love in our hearts when we do them, or else it is worth [nothing].

You might be thinking, “Geeze, Fr. Tony. I don’t know what to do about that. It is hard enough just to obey my parents and do my homework and not punch the daylights out of my brother. Now I have to have Love at the center of every action and of my very soul? How do I do that?” You won’t be able to do it perfectly, but God has been filling your heart with Love ever since you were baptized. The most powerful thing you can do in trying to fill your heart with Love is to talk to God. Talk to God. Ask Him to fill your heart with Love for Him, for your parents, for your schoolwork, for your stinky ol’ brother.

You can have secret conversations in your head with God all day and at night when you go to bed. You can say, “God, I’m really angry right now. I feel like a Mana Pua with no meat in the middle. Will you help me?” Or you can say, “Jesus, I love you.” Sometimes children complain that God doesn’t talk back. But that’s malarkey. He always answers, it just might not be in the way that you are used to hearing. He answers in small whispers, in your heart. He always answers. What does the Bible promise? “Ask, and it will be given to you. Knock, and the door will be opened. Seek, and you will find Me.” So tonight when you lay in your bed, talk to God and ask Him to fill your heart with Love so that you won’t be like this dinner roll. Amen.

The theme for the Propers this Quinquagesima Sunday is Blindness. In our Gospel, Jesus told the disciples explicitly about the Crucifixion, and they did not understand. They couldn’t see it. This story is intentionally placed next to the story of the blind man. The disciples were blind to the great mystery of the Universe—that Love is the center and purpose for all things. Because they were blind to the mystery, then couldn’t comprehend the Crucifixion, which is pinnacle of Love, even when it was spelled out for them.

This is why St. Paul says in the Epistle today that we “see through a glass darkly”. Love never ends. Prophecy? it will pass away. Tongues? they will cease; Knowledge? We will soon understand that it was always there to lead to something else. Right now it is like looking through dark glass. We can see the shapes of things but not their ultimate purpose. But soon we will see things face to face because we will see God face to face, and we’ll realize the master of the Universe, that everything exists to lead us into Communion with the God who made us. Everything exists for Love. “Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

There is, in this, a grave warning to the Church. “Don’t be blind. If you can’t see the mystery, that Love is the center and purpose for all things, then nothing that you do will have any value. Your life won’t matter, and you might even fall under judgment for it.” We like to say that we see, but most do not. Not even the disciples could comprehend the Cross.

There is a huge difference between how natural man sees the World, and how the World that God made really is. This is because of the Fall. Every atom in the Universe is pulsing with God’s Love. It is all a sign for how much He far He’ll go to have Communion with us. But men live their lives trying to protect what’s theirs. Their pride. “It wasn’t me, it was the Woman that You gave me!” Their honor. “And Cain rose up and slew his brother, Abel.” Their life. Abraham said to Sarah, “Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared.”

We are no better. We wake up every day and go to work, we take our kids to the sports games, we wait for our vacations…for what? Is it for the love of God? We might think that we know what it means that Love is at the center and purpose of all things, but we shouldn’t be so sure of ourselves. The way the disciples looked at the world had no place for True Love, even when it was spelled out for them. What are we missing? How are we blind?

If Adam saw that Love still rippled through every part of Creation, then he would have run to find God, and thrown himself down in sacrifice for Eve. He would have given his life for hers. If Cain knew that the only thing that will matter in the end is how much we love God, then he would have rejoiced in God’s pleasure over his brother, and would have repented of his hard heart. Abraham finally learned the mystery. By the end of his life, he no longer used his family to achieve his own ends. No, he was willing to sacrifice his own son to the mystery.

And what is the Mystery? The Mystery at the heart of the Universe is Love, but we are blind to it. We are blind to it because Love runs counter to the World that sinful man has made. Love is Self-Sacrifice. Love is preferring that face-to-face Communion that Paul talks about to everything else. Love will cost you. As much as the world talks about “Love”, they actually despise it. Love means you’ll have to sacrifice your personal kingdom. You’ll have to deny yourself daily so that you can begin to be mindful of the needs of others. Love is the Cross. It is the Passion. And if the King of the Whole Universe had to choose a path that made confused his friends, made little sense to Himself, and was scorned by the World, then how can we suppose that our lives will flow comfortably along with the wider culture, or the great sweep of human history, or even with our own vision for what our lives should be?

We get this warning of our own blindness to Love on Quinquagesima Sunday for a reason. In three days, we begin our journey with Jesus up to Golgotha. The disciples followed Jesus to Jerusalem, too. But they did not understand what death, suffering, sacrifice, and self-denial had to do with Love. If we carry that same confusion into our Lent, then St. Paul warns that all our deeds will be worth nothing.

So what are we to do now? We’ve been warned that blindness is pervasive. Most do not comprehend the mystery, and therefore they do not understand the Cross. What are we to do? We can take our cues from the Blind Beggar and from St. Paul. The Blind Beggar begged God to make him see, and he found himself standing face to face with God. St. Paul, too, takes us to the ultimate ending of all things so that we might see the purpose for all things. He speaks of a time, coming soon, when we will stand before God face to face and know His infinite love for us. We will be like Moses in the Tent of Meeting, sitting with God face to face, and our soul will be eternally radiant. Everything else will pass away. All our accomplishments, knowledge, sorrows, fears, shame, feats of spiritual discipline, our notoriety, our victories.

If we keep Communion as our end point, then the Cross makes sense. Whatever leads our soul and the souls of our neighbors toward that moment when they “know, even as they are truly known”, that is Love. Whatever detracts from that face-to-face communion with God in our own lives, in the lives of our families, in our communities, is not Love. Those things must be offered up to God, like Isaac on Mt. Moriah, or like the eye plucked out, or the bronze serpent destroyed, or like food denied in the desert. That is called Repentance.

As we walk through this Lent, as we take up Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving, Penance, let us not be blind to the true center and purpose of all things. But let the most consistent thing about this Lent be a continual breaking open of our loaf, asking God, “Fill me, Lord, with your Love. Help me to see you in all things. Take away my blindness, so that I can know how much I am known, so that all my deeds would flow from your Love for me.”

Amen.