I heard a story recently about a little boy who got in a lot of trouble.  It seems the boy was throwing a football indoors.  His mother had told him to stop throwing the ball indoors, three different times.  He didn’t.  He threw the ball into his mother’s china cabinet, smashing the cabinet door and several dishes inside.  The mother was so angry at her son, that she decided the best thing to do was to let his father punish him, when he got home from his business trip.  Now, the father wasn’t coming home for five days.  They cleaned up the mess.  They threw away all the broken pieces.  And with each passing day, a funny thing happened, it became easier and easier to forget all about the broken dishes and the not listening to mom about throwing the football in the house.  Dad finally got home on Friday night, and he sat his son down to talk about what had happened and what the punishment was going to be.  But by then, the boy had forgotten.  He had lived five days “off the hook” so to speak.  He was even somewhat surprised when his father gave him a harsh punishment to teach him a lesson.  The boy had made the mistake of forgetting that there were consequences to his actions.  When his day got home, he had to face the consequences.

      Unfortunately, we are all somewhat like that little boy.  It is way too easy to forget that there are consequences to our actions.  And this always gets us into trouble.  Look at our current economic problems that we face in this country.  We forget what it was like just a couple of years ago when they were pushing sub-prime loans on houses and construction.  It’s caught up with us.  We are facing the consequences.  Our borrowing money is such an easy thing in this country.  A sixth grader can get a credit card.  We have so many people who are debt up to their ears.  We spend and spend, and eventually, everybody has to face the consequences.  Even with this whole gas thing.  We buy bigger and bigger cars, with bigger engines, and we drive everywhere we go.  Is it really a surprise that gasoline is so expensive and that we are using so much of it.  There are consequences to our actions.  Unfortunately, just like that young boy, we forget many times that we’re going to have to pay.  And when the bill comes due, everybody suffers.   There are always consequences.  And just because we don’t have to face the consequences right away, doesn’t mean that they aren’t coming down the road.  We’ve got to think ahead.  We’ve got to be smart.  We’ve got to know what we are doing.

        Today, in our Gospel, John the Baptist points to Jesus and calls Him the “Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world.”  We quote John the Baptist, every time we come to Mass, when we pray the “Agnus Dei”, or “The Lamb of God”.  Those words should sound very familiar to us.  What is not familiar, is animal sacrifices.  We don’t do that.  Couldn’t you just imagine what PETA would do, if a church started doing animal sacrifice again?  Mass sure would be a whole lot different if we brought lambs, and goats, and bulls, and turtledoves to sacrifice.  You know, that used to be what you had to do when you sinned.  You told a lie.  You’d go buy a lamb.  You cheated somebody, you’d buy a goat.  You burnt somebody’s barn down, you’d buy a bull.  A sacrifice for your sin was demanded.  Something had to die.  And something had to bleed.  We are so far away from these things that we forget.  Jesus took care of all that sacrifices stuff on the Cross, and now we want to conveniently and deliberately forget about it.  We like our expiation cleaned up.  Our Altar has a beautiful white clothe on it.  We bring bread and wine.  The priest even washes his hands before our sacrifice.  It’s all cleaned up.  It’s all so easy.  And we put it all behind us.

         My brothers and sisters, this IS the Lamb of God that is coming to us in just a few minutes on this altar.  We can never forget that.  Jesus did take care of our sins on that Cross, but what Jesus did on that Cross was a consequence for our sins.  He paid our price!  We don’t have to kill lambs, or goats, or bulls, because Jesus paid the price.  He took our punishment on Himself.  We can never forget that.  With God there is an accountability.  There are consequences to our all our sins, our sins in the past and our most recent sins.  We must never forget what Jesus has done.  If we had even an inkling of just what He did for us, we would never sin again.  It’s time we woke up and saw the reality of the way that we have been living.  We’ve got to stop living in denial.  We can’t pretend.  We can’t forget.  Jesus paid the price.  Isn’t that at least worth our loving Him, and following Him, to our salvation?

May God bless us today,  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti…Pray for us !!!