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| Stills from the Doritos Super Bowl Commercial |
(Second Sunday of Lent (C): This homily was given on February 21, 2016 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Luke 9:28-36.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Second Sunday of Lent 2016]
When
people take an oath in a court of law, they swear that they will tell “the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth.” They do not swear to
tell some of the truth, or half of the truth or even most of the truth. When it comes to giving testimony in a
courtroom setting, it’s either “tell the whole truth” or it’s “commit
perjury”. There’s no middle ground.
Nor
should there be!
It’s
like this because lawyers and judges understand that even ONE lie told in a
courtroom can completely alter the result of a trial! One lie—one little, itsy-bitsy, teeny-weenie
lie—can lead a jury to make the wrong decision in a given case, either by
convicting an innocent person or by allowing a guilty person to go free.
In
order to make a correct judgment in a court of law, a jury needs to know the
WHOLE truth.
And in
the spiritual and moral dimensions of life, my brothers and sisters, so do we! We need to know the FULL truth: the full
truth of who God is, and what he’s done for us in and through his Son, Jesus
Christ, and how he expects us to live, and what’s at stake in this mortal
existence. Because if we only know some of the truth—some of the truth
mixed in with a lie here and there—we will definitely make a lot of wrong
decisions in our lives.
And some
of those wrong decisions may have eternal
consequences.
Which
is precisely why Jesus gave Peter, James and John the experience we heard about
in today’s gospel passage from Luke 9.
At the
time of the Transfiguration event, Peter, James, John and the rest of the
Apostles knew Jesus as a man. They already
recognized, in other words, our Lord’s humanity. That much was clear to them. Jesus walked like a man and talked like a man
and ate like a man and slept like a man.
He had a human nature—and they could verify that fact with their own
eyes.
But
that was only HALF the story! That was
only HALF THE TRUTH! The FULL TRUTH was
that Jesus was also divine: a divine Person with both a human nature and a divine nature—the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who had taken on flesh
in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
That,
unfortunately, they did not yet understand.
But
Jesus knew they needed to—at least to some extent! Jesus knew that these three men—who were the
leaders among the Twelve Apostles—needed to understand that he was not just a
great prophet and rabbi and exorcist and miracle worker (although he was
definitely all those things). They also needed
to understand that he was GOD—the Lord—the eternal Word—the divine Son of the
heavenly Father.
That’s
because Jesus knew what was going to happen to him in the very near
future. He knew that he was going to be
rejected by his own people, and condemned to a shameful death, and crucified by
the Romans—and he knew that when those things happened these men would be
tempted to give in to fear and lose their faith in him.
And so
he gave them a little peek at his divinity on Mt. Tabor that day in the
Transfiguration. He did that so that they
would know the WHOLE TRUTH about him! He
took off the “veil” (so to speak) of his humanity and gave them a brief glimpse
at his divinity, so that, when the heat did get turned up on Holy Thursday and Good
Friday, they would remember the glorious, transfigured Jesus they had seen on
the mountain and make the right
decision—the decision to remain faithful to him.
Well,
as we all know, that’s not quite the way it worked out. In the midst of the chaos and confusion of
that first Holy Week, these three men forgot what they had seen, and ran away
when Jesus got arrested in the garden.
But
eventually they did remember—because
eventually they all repented and came back, as did the other Apostles, with the
exception (of course) of Judas.
The
Apostles initially made the wrong decision, because they forgot the whole truth about our Lord. Members of a jury will often make the wrong
decision when they don’t know the whole
truth about the court case they’re hearing.
And
that’s the way it is with many situations and circumstances in this life. If we don’t know—or if we choose to
ignore—the whole truth about
something, a wrong decision is very likely to follow.
Case
in point: the response of the people at NARAL (that’s the pro-abortion group)
to the Doritos Super Bowl commercial two weeks ago.
In my
view (and in the view of many other people) the Doritos ad was the very best commercial that aired during the
big game this year. But that’s not the
way the folks at NARAL saw it. For lack
of a better expression, the commercial caused them to have a corporate “hissy-fit”!
For
those who might not have seen it, the commercial shows a young mother in the
late stages of her pregnancy undergoing an ultrasound procedure. Her baby’s moving image is clearly visible on
the ultrasound machine that’s next to her.
The female technician looks at the image and says to the mother, “There
is your beautiful baby. Any day
now!” Mom smiles lovingly and then looks
over at dad, who, unfortunately, is more concerned with the Doritos that he’s
munching on than he is with his own child.
Mom says to dad, “Really? You’re
eating Doritos?” She then turns to the
technician and says, “He’s eating Doritos on my ultrasound. Do you see what I have to deal with?” The technician, who’s obviously seen this
kind of behavior before, wearily replies, “I know.”
Meanwhile
dad has made a discovery—his baby likes Doritos as much as he does! As he moves a Dorito back and forth in front
of him, he notices that his baby is following his movements and keeps reaching
out for the chip. (You see this on the
ultrasound screen.) Finally mom has had
enough. She says, “Give me that!” She then grabs the chip out of dad’s hand and
flings it across the room, whereupon the Dorito-loving baby proceeds to eject
himself (or herself) from the womb in pursuit of the chip—causing all three
adults to freak out and scream.
That’s
the commercial.
Most
people thought it was funny—or at least mildly amusing. But not the people at NARAL. They called the commercial “anti-choice” and
mocked it for—get this—“humanizing fetuses”.
To
which I say, “How can you possibly humanize what’s already human?!
Someone
needs to tell the people who work for NARAL—and Planned Parenthood—and every
other death-dealing, pro-abortion organization out there—that they are all
former “fetuses”! Every single one of
them is!
So are
you! And so am I!
We’re
also former zygotes and former embryos!
By
their response to that Doritos commercial the other day, the people of NARAL
have made it clear that they know the truth.
However it’s only part of the
truth.
They
know that the living entity inside a pregnant woman’s body is a fetus.
And
they’re right. That’s true.
But what
they don’t know (or don’t care to know, or don’t want to admit) is that the
fetus is human—as human as they are,
as human as all of us are.
And because
they only know (or are only willing to admit) part of the truth, they’ve made
the decision that it’s okay to destroy an innocent human being before he or she
is born into the world.
It’s a
perfect illustration of what I said a few moments ago: If we don’t know—or if
we choose to ignore—the whole truth
about something, a wrong decision is very likely to follow.
Dear Lord Jesus, help us to seek the truth; help us to seek
the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in ALL things, so that we
will know what’s right and then make the decision to do what’s right in every
situation. Amen.