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.