Homily for the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In 1964 the Romanian government released a number of political prisoners. One was Richard Wurmbrand, a pastor who spent 14 years in prison, 3 of them in solitary confinement.

His cell was a basement room with no windows. A bare bulb illuminated it at all times. His bed was a rough straw mattress on top of three planks.

One night, Wurmbrand was startled by the faint sound of tapping on the wall next to his bed. A new prisoner had arrived in the next cell and was signaling to him. Wurmbrand signaled back. After a while, he realized that the other prisoner was trying to teach him Morse code. Over time, it worked and the prisoner, who was a radio operator, was able to teach him the entire alphabet.

Once he learned the code, Wurmbrand told the radio operator that he was a pastor and asked if he was a Christian. The response was tapped back saying, “I cannot say so.”

Every night the two prisoners communicated through the wall, getting better acquainted.  One night, the radio operator tapped out an unexpected message, saying, “I would like to confess my sins.”

The confession took a long time; no detail was left out; nothing was glossed over. It was sincere and from the heart. When the radio operator finished, the pastor tapped back the words of absolution. The radio operator tapped back, saying: “I am happier at this moment than I have been in many years.”

There are two similarities between this story and the account in today’s Gospel. First, in both stories, a man with an “unclean spirit” meets Jesus. In the Gospel, the man meets Jesus in person. In the story of the prisoners, the radio operator meets Jesus through the pastor and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Recall that Jesus said to those he sent forth in His name, “Whoever receives you receives me,” and “Whoever listens to you listens to me.”

The two stories are also similar in that, in both, Jesus drives out an unclean spirit. In the Gospel, He does this directly saying, “Come out of the man!” In the story of the two prisoners, He does this through the words of absolution: “Your sins are forgiven.” Recall that Jesus told those that he sent forth, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.”

Each one of us, by virtue of our human nature, has some degree of an unclean spirit within us; we have something in us that keeps us from really being the kind of people God made us to be.

Just as Jesus drove out the unclean spirit from the man in our Gospel, and from the prisoner, so does Jesus desire to drive out any unclean spirit that dwells in us.

Jesus wants to free us from that which keeps us from being all that we can be. He wants to free us from whatever is keeping us from being as prayerful, as loving, or as generous as we want to be. But He can do this only if we truly open our hearts to Him; if we are truly repentant in seeking transformation in our lives and in our souls. This we are offered in the Sacrament of Reconciliation: a sacrament in which we experience the forgiveness of God and are given opportunity after opportunity to live the kind of lives we were meant to live; to be the kind of people God made us to be and that we want to be.[1]

If we accept Jesus’ invitation given to us so freely in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, then He will do for us what He did for the man in the Gospel and for the radio prisoner: He will take from our hearts any unclean spirit and replace it with the Holy Spirit.

And so, we pray: "Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth."

 

[1] Link, Mark, Illustrated Sunday Homilies, Tabor Publishing, 1990.