I am a Sinner. I am a Hypocrite

Do not be like the hypocrites.

For they have received their reward…

These readings are quite a challenge

because we hear in the first reading

we are called to publicly pray together;

we are called to publicly fast together;

we are called to publicly do almsgiving together.

But in the gospel we are called to do it in secret.

Well, which is it?

Should we do it publicly or should we do it privately?

Should all see it as a witness to our belief in God?

Or should we do it in private?

And the key phrase here is to be seen in the gospel.

In other words, the key phrase is motivation.

If we are doing it to be seen,

then we are not doing it for the right causes.

What the Lord is asking us to do,

is asking us to turn back towards him and to be faithful.

In fact, when we put the ashes on our head,

we are going to say “repent”, which means turn back,

and then “believe in the gospel”, to renew our belief in Jesus.

Repent and believe in the gospel.

But here is the challenge, he gives us,

we have to be careful not to be hypocrites.

But the truth is that we are all hypocrites,

every single one of us.

And it is hard not to be!

It is not that we try to be hypocrites,

but when we profess the faith

that we do in Jesus Christ, it is such a high bar

that fundamentally, we are never going

to be able to meet it all the time.

In a sense, what we do today is

publicly acknowledge that we fail,

we publicly acknowledge that we are hypocrites

and that we are turning back to God.

Now, the challenge is that we do not want to say that.

It is really hard to say that I am the one who did it.

I am the one who failed.

Often, we go out of our way to blame others for doing things.

When we say, “You are the one who did it, not me.

You are the one who did it.”

And we want them to be wrong.

But when we say “Yes, it was me”,

we are admitting that we are part of the fault.

And in most times, we are part of it.

Let’s take an example, boys and girls.

Your parents love you very much, don’t they?

Do they love you? Yeah. Okay.

Do they think you are always perfect? No.

The truth, boys and girls, is that

they think the world of you and they love you,

and they also know that you are not perfect.

We know the same thing of ourselves, too.

That we are perfectly made by God  

and yet we make mistakes, we constantly make mistakes.

If I was to go up here and preach only when I have it all together,

there would be nobody to preach.

Because I equally am a hypocrite as much as you.

Not that I try to be, I do not.

I try to live the gospel.

I try to be faithful.

I try to be kind, try to be gentle, try all those things.

But there are always going to be moments

where I do not succeed in that.

But if that is what we hold each other to as our only weakness,

then we will never help each other

be the best version of ourselves.

But boys and girls, what we do today is very important.

What we do today is we put ashes on our forehead.

Not to have a badge of honor that says,

“Look at me. I am one of the Catholic ones.”

No, no. We put ashes on our forehead to remind us to say,

“I am a sinner. I am a hypocrite.”

That is what we do today.

We take the most humble stance

and we put ash publicly on our forehead to say,

“Yep, that is me. I am the one who has failed as well.”

But we do not stay there.

We do this at the beginning of this Lenten journey.

Then the rest of this Lenten journey,

we focus on turning back to the Lord,

repenting our lives, converting back

and admitting that we, in humility,

which we do at every mass, that we say we have sinned,

like the responsorial of the Psalm today,

“We have sinned, not somebody else.”

I am sure they have sinned as well, but we have sinned.

I have sinned. And that I am sorry.

I am going to turn back now as we do in the introductions,

we focus on three things for Lent:

Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving.

Let’s not overthink this.

I want you to do one tiny thing in each of those.

One tiny increase in prayer.

If you are not praying every day,

then we ask you to say your prayers every day.

If you are praying every day,

then add maybe one more minute to your prayer.

If you have have never fasted from something,

then let’s fast from one thing and let’s do it for the whole of Lent.

Now, it does not necessarily need to be giving up something big

but it can be something small like

giving up candy or in the case,

or in case of the adults, maybe alcohol or something else.

We might want to give up being unkind.

We might want to give up for the adults here,

always having the last word.

We might want to give up being difficult.

We might want to give up.

Boys and girls, if your mom and dad

are always struggling to get you up in the morning,

that we are going to give up being the last one up.

And then Almsgiving.

Can we just do one little thing?

Do something nice for somebody else each day?

It does not have to be the same person, but every day

look to do something kind for somebody.

I am hoping that once a week,

that is a big one for somebody

that is maybe not in your immediate facility,

but every day do one little act of kindness for somebody.

So boys and girls, today, we all gather around this table

and we all say the same thing:

“I am a hypocrite. I am a sinner.

I have not always succeeded in living the gospel.”

Every one of us, not just you, boys and girls,

but your teachers, your classroom aides,

your parents, your grandparents and myself,

every one of us are saying the same thing.

We receive ashes on my forehead just like you do

because I have to remind myself, too.

I am a hypocrite as well.

As much as we try, we will continue.

But today we begin 40 days of turning back towards God.

A little bit of prayer, little bit of fasting,

and a little bit of almsgiving, being kind to others.

Let us begin our Lenten journey.

Do not be like the hypocrites.

For they have received their reward…