Let me begin today by asking you
to use your imagination.
Imagine a coin—a coin that has
two words written on it. On one side, you
find the word “Repent;” on the other side you find the word “Believe.”
I begin with that image this
morning, because it will help you to remember the message of my homily today, which
is that repentance and belief are two sides of the same coin.
That is to say, these two
ideas—belief and repentance—go together.
Or at least they should go
together in our minds and in the minds of all Christians, because we know from today’s gospel reading that they definitely went
together in the mind of Jesus!
In this text from Mark 1, we
heard about the opening days of our Lord’s earthly ministry. St. Mark doesn’t tell us everything Jesus
preached on those occasions (to do that would have taken him several chapters,
at least); but he does give us a clear and concise summary of Jesus’ message.
He tells us, in other words, the most important ideas contained in the early
preaching of our Lord. These are ideas
that Jesus would share in one way or another with almost everyone he ministered
to during the next three years.
The summary is recorded for us in
three short sentences and two key commands: “This
is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom
of God is at hand. Repent and believe in
the gospel.”
The two key commands, of course,
are there in the very last sentence: repent
and believe. For Jesus, these two realities were
inseparable. And that’s also the way it
is for the Church today, especially during the season of Lent. This explains why the priest or deacon or
extraordinary minister who gave you ashes a few days ago probably put them on
your forehead while saying these very words: “Repent and believe in the
gospel.” You’ll remember that we used to
say, “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel,” but now we use the
exact words of Jesus as recorded in Sacred Scripture—which is really the way it
should be.
I mention all this because many
people in the modern world—including, sad to say, many Catholics—treat
repentance and belief as if they were two
separate and distinct coins (to use the image of this homily) rather than
two sides of the same one. This is
something that Pope John Paul II alluded to in the encyclical he wrote back in
1993, Veritatis Splendor (the Splendor
of Truth) when he talked about “the intrinsic and unbreakable bond between
faith and morality,” and the tendency many people have to separate those two
things.
Notice that St. Peter implicitly connects
belief and repentance in today’s second reading. There he says, “Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the
unrighteous, that he might lead you to God.”
The fact that Jesus suffered and died for our sins is something we believe; but the only way to be saved by
the death of Jesus (or, as Peter puts it here, the only way for a person to be
led to God by Jesus) is through repentance. So, in that one sentence, we see both sides
of the coin implied.
Let me share with you now one
real life example to make clear how important it is to keep these two
ideas—belief and repentance—together ALWAYS.
The difference between treating
belief and repentance as two separate coins and treating them as two sides of
the same coin, is the difference between Judas Iscariot and Simon Peter.
Judas despaired and hung himself
precisely because of the fact that he separated his repentance from his faith
in Jesus (which, unfortunately, was pretty weak to begin with). You know, it’s clear from Scripture that
Judas did repent after he betrayed
our Lord on Holy Thursday night. Here’s how
St. Matthew puts it in chapter 27 of his gospel: “Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that Jesus had been condemned, deeply
regretted what he had done. [Sounds
like repentance to me.] He returned the thirty pieces of silver to the
chief priests and elders saying, ‘I have sinned in betraying innocent
blood.’ They said, ‘What is that to
us? Look to it yourself.’ Flinging the money into the temple, he
departed and went off and hanged himself.”
Judas repented, in the sense that
he deeply regretted his actions, but he definitely did not believe! His “coin” had “Repent” written on one side,
but absolutely nothing written on the other.
He didn’t believe that Jesus still loved him; he didn’t believe that
Jesus would forgive him. And he
certainly didn’t believe that Jesus was dying for him and wanted to save him
from his sins. He probably didn’t even believe
that he could be saved—or that he was
worth saving.
And that lack of belief made all
the difference in how he responded to the situation he found himself in.
This reminds me of the people who
come into the confessional and confess the same sin over and over again—not
because they’ve committed the sin over and over again (because they
haven’t). They confess it again and
again because they don’t believe God has forgiven them for it! Even though they’ve repented; even though
they’ve done the right thing and brought their sin to the sacrament—they don’t
believe that Jesus has taken it away (even though he has!).
Like Judas, these men and women
repent, but they don’t believe.
And so they have no peace.
How different Simon Peter
was—even though his denials of Jesus were every bit as bad as Judas’ betrayal!
The Bible tells us that after he
denied our Lord for the third time and heard the cock crow, Peter went out and
wept bitterly.
So, like Judas, he repented.
But unlike Judas, he never ever stopped
believing. He never stopped believing
that Jesus loved him; he never stopped believing that Jesus could and would
forgive him if he sincerely repented.
So he never gave up. Consequently, when he had the opportunity
after the resurrection, he went back to Jesus and professed his love. He did it three times, in reparation for his
three denials.
“Simon, son of John, do you love
me?”
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love
you.”
“Simon, son of John, do you love
me?”
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love
you.”
“Simon, son of John, do you love
me?”
“Lord, you know everything; you
know that I love you.”
Peter’s coin had “Repent” on one
side and “Believe” on the other—always.
If we want to be like Peter
during this season of Lent, I think we should plan to do two things:
First of all, we should plan to
attend the parish mission, beginning on March 12. Doing that will help to strengthen us in our belief (side 1 of the coin).
And secondly, we should repent by getting to confession at some
point before Easter (side 2 of the coin).
Belief and repentance—TOGETHER—helped
to make Simon Peter a saint.
May they help us to attain the
very same goal in our lives.
