(Third Sunday of Lent (C): This homily was given on March 15, 1998 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Exodus 3: 1-15; Luke 13: 1-9.)

"Madonna and her ‘easy’ religion."

Have you heard the big news—the big news from the world of popular music? Madonna has turned "religious"! --well, sort of. What’s causing the stir is her newly-released album, entitled "Ray of Light." As one reviewer put it: "On her first album of new material in four years, the Material Girl is living in the spiritual world, putting aside the leering pop that made her famous, and adopting a somber, introspective outlook brought on by maturity and motherhood. It's a striking and compelling new direction, delivered with Madonna's best vocal performance yet . . ."

What brought on this apparent change, you ask? Well, according to a newspaper article I read last week, after her daughter was born two years ago, Madonna began to take yoga lessons. Her original purpose was merely to get some exercise. But she soon found that she was learning other lessons in the process—lessons about, as she puts it, "desire and detachment." And that’s not surprising, because yoga is not just about stretching and getting in shape; yoga is about achieving an altered state of consciousness, Hindu-style. Make no mistake about it, my brothers and sisters: in yoga, there’s a very definite philosophy behind the practice. Madonna, unfortunately, has bought the philosophy--and the "easy religion" that this type of philosophy gives birth to. This is religion without objective truth; it’s religion without a fixed morality; it’s religion without a personal God who has some definite thoughts on right and wrong. (And, just to confirm this about Madonna, I did some investigating and I got hold of the lyrics to the songs on this album. Sure enough, this is precisely the kind of "spirituality" that the Material Girl has embraced. So the bottom line is this: in her new religion, she can call herself "spiritual" and still live a hedonistic lifestyle, if she chooses. It’s called "trying to have the best of both worlds.")

Of course, she’s not alone. This, unfortunately, is one of the many "easy religions" which have become quite common in the late 20^th century. And easy religions like this are bad religions—not because they’re easy, but because they’re false! Easy religions ultimately try to tell God who he is; in the true religion God tells us who he is. In today’s first reading, for example, from Exodus 3, God defines himself to Moses: "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." God talked; Moses listened.

In easy religions, God is simply a force or a feeling; in the true religion, God is a personal, all-perfect being who is untouched by sin. That’s why God tells Moses to take off his shoes on Mount Horeb. Moses was in the presence of the all-holy one, and he needed to act accordingly!

In easy religions, people write their own rules (that’s one of the biggest reasons why they’re so appealing); in the true religion, God, and God alone, makes the rules--they’re called commandments. Remember the "New Age" movie "Ghost" that came out a couple of years ago? I thought it was interesting that the writers of the script conveniently did away with the sixth commandment. At the end of the movie, the man who had murdered Patrick Swayze’s character was taken by little demons (presumably) to hell; but Swayze’s character gets taken up to heaven. And yet, he had been violating the sixth commandment with Demi Moore’s character before he’d been killed earlier in the movie. So, in the "easy religion" of the makers of "Ghost", murder still can send you to hell, but fornication without repentance gets you to heaven.

Which brings us to a key point about easy religions: ultimately they are religions without reform. And that means they are very dangerous, because they put our eternal salvation in jeopardy! In today’s gospel text from Luke 13, Jesus gives us an implicit but strong warning against such religions. Our Lord is told about some Galileans who were killed by Pontius Pilate as they were offering sacrifice—a gruesome event to say the least. He responds by saying, "Do you think that these Galileans were the greatest sinners in Galilee just because they suffered this? By no means! But you will all come to the same end unless you reform. Or take those eighteen who were killed by a falling tower in Siloam. Do you think they were more guilty than anyone else who lived in Jerusalem? Certainly not! But I tell you, you will all come to the same end unless you begin to reform." Was Jesus predicting that everybody in that crowd who didn’t repent of their sins would be killed either by Pontius Pilate or by a falling building? No. He was talking, remember, to religious people; and he was reminding them that their religious observance needed to include sincere repentance for their sins. Because if it didn’t, then what happened physically to the Galileans and the people at Siloam would happen to them spiritually on Judgment Day.

The very first command that Jesus gives us in the Gospel of Mark is this one: "Reform your lives, and believe in the good news." He gives us the command to reform because he wants us all to go to heaven; and the only way to enter heaven is to be purified of our sins. In the Book of Revelation it says that "nothing profane shall enter [God’s eternal kingdom]." Nothing! (This is why most people who end up in heaven probably pass through purgatory--they need a final bit of purification.) And so the Letter to the Hebrews urges us to "strive for that holiness without which no one can see the Lord."