Bishop Larry Silva: The fire of God’s burning love

Witness to Jesus | Third Sunday of Lent

Here is the prepared text of the homily for the Third Sunday on Lent, delivered at St. Joseph Church, Hilo, at the Mass celebrating the centennial of the dedication of the church.

He was on fire! That is something we might say about a basketball player who is filled with spunk, energy and zeal to win the game. Yet, while that player is expending energy, his success on the court may actually give him more energy, more fire, so that he is like a bush that is on fire but does not burn.

The story of Moses encountering God in the burning bush teaches us that God was on fire with love for his people. He would do anything for them, and because he knew they were being oppressed as slaves in Egypt, he has a grand plan to set them free, and Moses was a part of that plan. Not only is God not consumed by the burning love he has for us, but just as he set Moses on fire to accomplish the mission he had entrusted to him, God sets us on fire so that we, too, can accomplish the same mission he has for all of us.

One hundred years ago the parishioners of St. Joseph Parish, Hilo, gathered here to mark a turning point. The huge gathering hall they had sacrificed so hard to plan for and build was now to become holy ground, not just an assembly hall, but a sacred place where the fire of God’s love could amaze and comfort, challenge and change God’s beloved people. Bishop Libert Boeynaems after consecrating the altar, set incense upon it so that the fire of God’s praise might forever rise from this place; and the candles were lit here for the first time to ignite the fire that would burn in this church without burning the church, so that those who would gather here for the years and decades to come might see the amazing sight of Christ the light present in his sacraments.

But you may have noticed that when Moses saw this amazing sight of God’s blazing love, he was tending sheep, leading them to good pasture and refreshing waters so that they could grow strong and ultimately give their lives to warm and nourish people. And the great fiery vision Moses experienced was not primarily for his own benefit, but it was rather an encounter that would lead to mission. He was sent from that place back to the dangers of Egypt to be God’s agent to lead another flock to better pastures, the flock that was God’s own beloved people.

God’s love was so fiery and passionate that he sent his only Son to give his life for us. And just when Satan thought the Son of God was burned out forever by his death on the tree of the cross, the tree ignited once again with a fire that can never consume it when Christ rose from the dead. For a century people have gathered in this sacred place so that they may experience the burning love of God shown not in an amazing fiery bush but in a physical encounter with the risen Lord Jesus in the Eucharist, where the sacrifice of the cross burns again without consuming. This is sacred ground we should only enter by symbolically purifying ourselves with the holy water that recalls our baptism. This is the place in which we hear God speaking to us in the Scriptures, no less than when he spoke to Moses upon the mountain. And here God not only speaks his mysterious and captivating name to us as he did to Moses, but he allows us to be soaked in that very name, now even more explicit in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three divine persons in one God.

But we must also recall that, like Moses, we are commissioned to lead others from slavery to freedom. We are given this awesome opportunity to be in the fiery, passionate presence of the God of love so that we can share that love with others, leading them as shepherds to the living Water and the Bread of Life.

Just as the encounter of Moses with the blazing fire of God’s love did not last forever, but sent him on a challenging and dangerous mission, so our encounter with the risen Lord Jesus is not meant to keep us here but to send us out on mission. Parents have gone out from here to engage in the hard work of making their homes the domestic church, guiding each other and their children along the paths of righteousness, even when they would sometimes prefer to go back to slavery of the world. People have gone out from here to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, so that God’s fiery love received here could clothe others in dignity and honor. Witnesses have gone out from here to speak up for the value of life in all its stages, from the womb to natural death. Many have taken the fire they experienced here and have shared it with the children and youth, so that they might be on fire with the same love of God manifested in Jesus Christ.

Now our great challenge is to go to a world that is enslaved by self-indulgence, where each individual often thinks him or herself a god, capable of deciding when life begins and when it ends, of what truth is and all other ultimate questions. And we who have the privilege of gathering in this sacred house of God to experience the fire of God’s love week after week and day after day, are sent forth from here to lead sheep that are not of this flock to know the name of the living and true God, to be warmed by his love and enlightened by his truth. We who are ourselves in need of repentance, but know where we can come to have our lukewarm lives rekindled, are sent out from this place of God’s burning love to be the sparks that set the whole world on fire with God, so that he may be all in all.

We thank God for all who have gone before us, and we pray that in the centuries to come, we may be the fruitful tree that burns with the fire of God’s love but is never consumed, but instead bears even more fruit for the love of God.