Have any of you seen the movie “Liar, Liar”? It’s the Jim Carrey movie that I think came out in the 90s. The premise of the movie is about this man who just lies constantly, and this lying really gets to his son. For one of his son’s birthdays the father doesn’t show up because he’s lying and so at his birthday when he makes a wish before he blows after he says to himself, “I wish that for 24 hours my dad wouldn’t lie.” Then he blows out the candle and his wish comes true. The premise of the movie now is Jim Carrey cannot lie.
The movie starts off with the scene in the boy’s classroom and the teacher is asking everyone, “What do your parents do for work?” He gets to this boy and she says, “What does your father do for work?” He says, “Well, he’s a liar.” The teacher said, “Well surely that’s not what he does for work.” He says, “I don’t know. He goes to the judge and he defends people.” She says, “Oh, he’s a lawyer.” Well, it turns out he’s a liar too.
There are some funny moments in the movie where he cannot lie. He’s walking to the courthouse and as he walks by there’s a homeless person there and the homeless person says to him, “Do you have any money?” He says, “I do have money and I don’t want to give it to you because I’m cheap.” Then he goes into his office and one of the ladies there who has crazy hair says, “How do you like my dress today? He says, “It’s good because it’s taken away from your ugly hair.” He gets caught in these lie after lie and he’s finally in court one day and he’s talking to the judge and he realizes he can’t lie and so he says to the judge, “I need an extension on this case.” The judge asked, “Why?” He says “I cannot lie.” The judge says, “Well isn’t that a good thing.”
He cannot lie, cannot tell the truth, he’s realizing all these things that he’s lying about in his life but the one thing that he says when he disappoints his son is he tells him how much he loves him and he realizes that he’s not lying at that moment and he really does love his son. That love begins a transformation in him. He’s a transformation of wanting to be there for his son but also wanting to tell the truth.
Jesus deals with these three grave sins in our lives. We heard in the Gospel that He’s talking about not only fulfilling the Commandments but fulfilling the heart of the Commandments. He talks about lying, talks about anger, and he talks about love.
Anger is an interesting one because anger is something that can run deep in us and it can fester in us. I usually, you’ve heard this many times from me before, but there’s usually two types of people that come to Confession. One person says, “Father, I haven’t broken any Commandments, I’m not doing that bad.” Then other people come in and they say, “I have probably broken every Commandments.” Which of those people do you think is closer to Jesus? The second one because they realized that we probably have broken every Commandment. What does that mean?
Jesus saying not only do we need to keep the Commandments and certainly Thou shalt not kill, but He says, “Whoever is angry with his brother and his heart, and whoever comes to Mass without first reconciling with his brother should leave those gifts at the altar, go reconcile with his brother and then come back.”
I wonder what if we actually did that every week before Mass? I know couples that said before you go to bed at night, if you’re angry at each other, try to come to some kind of resolution before you go to sleep. What if before we came to Mass every Sunday, we just examined ourselves and thought, “Is there anyone that I need to reconcile with?” Anger is an interesting thing because it festers within us.
I remember, this was some months after the pandemic, and I was working out at a gym and everything else had loosened some of the restrictions except this gym. It was the mask thing. I was wearing a mask working out and there was nobody in the upper part of the gym, so I thought I was safe. I couldn’t breathe so I was just going to pull my mask down a little bit so I could breathe as I was vigorously running on this treadmill. This lady came upstairs and saw me, and she just came straight across the gym, all the way in front of me and said, “Lift your mask up.” I realized why did she come up to me, so I said, “I’m working out here. I’m having difficulty breathing.” She says, “Lift your mask up.” I didn’t. Then the manager comes and so the manager comes and sure enough I do it.
Then it’s festering in me and I start thinking I’m going to do this again and what am I going to say to her when this happens again? It was three days later right and I finally thought about what I was going to do. Same scenario. No one else is upstairs, lift my mask down a little bit while I’m working out and she comes right up to me, right in my face, “Put your mask on.” I screamed at her pointing my finger and said, “Stay six feet away from me, stay six feet away from me.” The look on her face . . . I thought, I had let that anger fester in me for three days. Then the manager came up and I had to put my mask on.
Anger sometimes that does fester in us and Jesus is telling us if the anger is even festering in you before you do something or say something allow that anger to release. Forgive your brother and sister, reconcile with your brother and sister because anger is such a powerful motivating sin in our lives. If there’s any anger in our hearts to bring that to the Lord and to allow ourselves to be forgiven.
The second is lust. He talks about the depth of lust, and He gives us the teaching on divorce. He says however if you have even looked at a woman with adultery you have already committed that adultery. Where? In your heart. He’s getting to the depth of this as well. We know that lust is a struggle. It is a constant struggle.
I was trying to look up some statistics online, I won’t even tell you what they are but it’s pretty bad, it’s an epidemic in our culture and in our world. Perhaps people that find themselves first even tempted to scroll by something or to rewatch something or to begin clicking through wouldn’t believe how bad that can get. Jesus is telling us if you have any lust in your hearts, pluck your eye from your socket, cut your right hand off, and do not lust anymore.
Now this is one of the times, thankfully, that we’re not supposed to take Him literally or there’ll be a lot of people in patches and missing arms today. We are supposed to take it to heart and I think what He’s getting at is that if we even begin to go down that path, if we begin to even dwell on that temptation that Satan may plant into us, it becomes like a snowball and may go further than we ever expected and the further it goes the harder it is to stop. He’s warning us, He’s telling us to take this to heart that the minute, the moment those temptations come that’s the moment that we have the most freedom.
In the First Reading the prophet says, “I set before you life and death; choose life that you may live.” I like that he’s saying choose because that means that we have a choice and that choice is most free at that first moment of temptation.
The third is lying. Jesus is saying let your yes mean yes, and you’re no mean no. What if we couldn’t lie for 24 hours? I was thinking that that might be a great Lent resolution to only say yes and no when you actually mean it.
There are times when we struggle with this. We struggle with saying yes to things or saying no to things that we feel we want to do. Everybody knows what it’s like when you say yes to something you really don’t want to be doing and then you’re resentful about it the whole time. Then you make it a miserable time for you and a miserable time for the people all around you. Just say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no and everything else is from the evil one.
Jesus is telling us not only to keep the Commandments but to keep the Commandments at the very depth of our hearts. He’s also letting us know that we do have freedom, we do have the choice, we do have the ability to live out these Commandments fully.
As we prepare ourselves for Lent, which is coming this Ash Wednesday less than a week away, I think it might be good just to reflect in our own hearts. Is there any deep seated anger, any deep seated lust any deep seated deception? Maybe that’s the area that God wants us to work on during Lent. See that’s the resolution that he wants each one of us to make.
We often hear and or see in the courtroom before a witness comes forward to testify what do they say raise your left hand put your right hand on the Bible (is it the other way around) raise your right hand put your left hand on the Bible and you say, “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.” Why do we need a Bible to live like that? Why do we need to swear on a Bible to live like that? Jesus is telling to always live like this.
We come together and we celebrate this Eucharist with that desire that we can not only fulfill that the commandments but live them in the depth of our hearts.
