23 February 2024 - homily for Friday of the first week of Lent - Ezekiel 18:21-28

     Yesterday, we celebrated the Feast of the Chair of Peter, the Apostle, honoring Peter and the first Pope and the Chair that has been occupied by the successor Bishops of Rome. Today, our saint is another great leader from the Early Church, St Polycarp. He was Bishop of Smyrna in modern-day Turkey. Tradition has it that Polycarp was converted to Christianity by St John the Evangelist. He  was also a good friend of St Ignatius of Antioch, another Father of the Early Church. Both Polycarp and Ignatius of Lyons were important links between the Apostles and the patristic era of the Early Church. Polycarp was a great defender of the faith against heresies. He was burned at the stake with 12 of his companions after he was arrested by the Roman authorities in the middle of the 2nd century. Today, in our modern American Church, we have Church leaders like Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron who give us practical advice on how to live out our lives of discipleship in the modern world.  Polycarp offered advice to the followers in the Early Church as well. Here is one of his quotes:  “Let us therefore forsake the vanity of the crowd and their false teachings, and turn back to the word delivered to us from the beginning.”

     As we honor St Polycarp today, the prophet Ezekiel brings us a message in the midst of our Lenten journey, telling us that the Lord does not delight when a wicked man stays in his wickedness, but instead he delights when the wicked man changes his heart. There are many in our world today who turn their backs on God’s law and man’s law, who want to stay on those evil paths and do not want to hear the voice of the Lord. We may say that the laws of God and the laws of man are unfair, but what about the ways that we break those laws, the ways we give way to temptation and go down the wrong path? Our Lenten journey calls out to us to change our ways and to turn back to God. We know that it is hard to break old habits and to reform our lives. It is hard to break out of addictions, laziness, and complacency. But that is what the Lord is calling us to do. And the Lord will rejoice when we are able to do so.