Second Sunday of Lent

Lectionary: 25

Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him.”

Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them.

For a moment there were four personages: three appearing before the disciples, and another speaking. And then there was, "Jesus alone with them." 

By now we have settled into the patterns of Lent; we have chosen and begun appropriate penitential practices to suit our stations, particular needs, and responsibilities. On this Second Sunday of Lent, every year, the Church invites us to ponder the moment when Jesus was transfigured before his disciples. 

Up to this point they have seen him as a most unusual man. He seems to be a prophet announcing the approach of God's kingdom, and of "that day" which was anticipated and feared with equal measures of hope and dread. His compassionate healing of ailing human beings is an indisputable demonstration of his divine authority. His championing the lowly has won friends and antagonized both religious and civil authorities, even as he aroused the pious curiosity of everyone. They asks, "Who is this man?" 

By this time, his disciples are convinced -- and Peter has declared even before they arrived at this mountaintop -- that Jesus is the Messiah. But the Lord's immediate reply to Peter explained very little: 

He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.

If they thought they knew what the Messiah would do; if they thought they should recognize, follow, and obey the Messiah when he appeared: this prediction of suffering and death and resurrection confused them greatly. Such talk was, as Saint Paul would later write to the Corinthians, nonsense to the wise and blasphemy to the pious. 

But still they followed Jesus. They could not fathom his mission, his teaching, or his authority, and still they followed. Caught up in the Spirit which has its own hidden wisdom, they followed him as sheep follow their shepherd. They followed from revelation to revelation, and on Mount Tabor the Father spoke to them and to us, "This is my Beloved Son." 

In today's first reading, the LORD called Abraham and spoke of a beloved son: 

Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, 

and go to the land of Moriah.

There you shall offer him up as a holocaust 

on a height that I will point out to you.”

We can only imagine the agony Abraham suffered as he and the boy climbed the mountain. He'd waited a century for the gift of a son by his ancient wife, Sarah. And now the same God who'd made the promise and kept it, demanded the sacrifice -- a holocaust -- of his beloved son. 

Perhaps he'd tried to barter with the Lord as he had when the child was conceived. Although he'd lost the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, he'd saved Lot and his daughters. The patriarch would readily have offered his own life rather than the boy but God wanted more than that. God wanted wanted the man and his memory; there would be no legitimate descendant -- no heirs or heritage -- when Isaac died. It would be as if he'd never lived. 

And Abraham obeyed. 

In the Crucifixion, Christians see the death of God's only begotten son. The killing cancelled the Man who was Mary's son; his works, teachings, and principles annulled. It erased the hope that God rewards the just and punishes the wicked, for the wicked triumphed in the death of this just man. 

The promise to Abraham might remain to haunt human history but after Calvary it was little more than an empty shell, the detritus of something which should have been but wasn't. God's promises are forgotten; God's beloved people would disperse and disappear. The world's melting pots would bleach out every distinctive trait of a people: their beliefs, custom, ethos, and language. 

God was dead. 

In the death of Jesus we see that God, like Abraham, gave more than he could afford. As the blood, water, and life flowed from his body, there was nothing more to give. He did so in love for us, for no one can be saved unless God has surrendered his only begotten son, whom he loved, to death. 

As we leave the readings of Genesis and Saint Mark and continue our celebration of the Mass, and as we resume our lives following the Mass, we realize that we too, each one of us, must give far more than we want to give, more than we can afford, more than we ever dreamed of giving, for our personal salvation, and that of our loved ones. 

Saturday of the First Week of Lent

Lectionary: 229

And today the LORD is making this agreement with you: you are to be a people peculiarly his own, as he promised you; and provided you keep all his commandments, he will then raise you high in praise and renown and glory above all other nations he has made, and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God, as he promised.”

I have been greatly impressed by Walter Brueggemann's book about Deuteronomy He describes with unblinkered historical realism the "Yahwist" religion of our spiritual ancestors, the Jews. 

This fifth book of the Torah was finally edited and redacted after the Babylonian Exile, as survivors returned to their native Judea. They would never again govern themselves as a free, independent nation. Their Law of Moses would not be the law of the land, although they felt it should be. Some of their most savage -- frankly merciless -- laws could not be enforced, and were retained for the sake of remembering the Lord's intention: "...you are to be a people peculiarly his own." 

The dreadful curses of Deuteronomy 28 had already befallen the people, as they remembered with bitter grief. And yet, despite all their suffering, or because of it, they clung to their religion. They refused to be assimilated into the dominant culture of their rulers, be the Persian, Greek, or Roman. Occasionally, in their passion for cultic purity, angry mobs enacted the savage penalties of the Law as they stoned offenders. They took their religion seriously, and heeded the Voice they heard in Deuteronomy. The governors, in the interest of keeping peace and soothing the populace, usually looked the other way. 

Jesus evokes the Spirit of Deuteronomy when he teaches his new law with the words: "...that you may be children of your heavenly Father." Although we don't stone heretics, or marry the widows of deceased siblings, we nonetheless cling to our peculiar religion that insists, you shall, 

"love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you." 

That teaching is no more familiar to our elected, post-modern legislators than it was to the Roman Empire or the returning exiles. It is a law so demanding, it can only come from God. 

But it is, and must be, "who we are." 

...and provided you keep all his commandments, he will then raise you high in praise and renown and glory above all other nations he has made, and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God, as he promised.”

Friday of the First Week of Lent

Lectionary: 228

You say, “The LORD’s way is not fair!” 
Hear now, house of Israel: Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?

For the past several years I have engaged with Veterans in the substance abuse recovery program, and we often speak of freedom. I ask, "Freedom from...? and "Freedom for...?" 

Very often, these red-blooded American men and women have only the vaguest notion of "freedom for...." They have been indoctrinated in the belief that "Freedom is to do what I want to do." But that freedom has led them to the worse kind of bondage, because they wanted to use alcohol and drugs. 

Most had experience in their families and among their friends of addiction and its consequences, but they nonetheless chose to pursue that reckless path of freedom. The more they used, they more they wanted to use! That kind of "freedom" led them directly -- remorselessly -- toward addiction and death. 

Should they experience freedom from the craving for their drug of choice, they will still suffer the belief that they should -- indeed they must -- do what they want to do. Doesn't the dominant culture continually urge them to do what you want to do and be what you want to be? There is shame on the very notion that you might want to do what others expect of you. 

Inevitably they run smack into a wall of limits. Their bodies break down; the law pursues them; their families reject them; employers fire them; friends avoid them; and acquaintances use them. 

And they complain, "The Lord's way is not fair!" And they're not wrong for their lord insisted upon their freedom, and their freedom is a train wreck. But they never doubt their notion of freedom. And they're equally sure that the American way of freedom is absolutely the best. Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, Germans, British: their freedom is so limited! They have no freedom! They can't even own as many guns as they want! (And guns are the most blessed sacrament of American freedom.)

Saint Paul, in his Letter to the Galatians, teaches a more reliable definition of freedom:

"For you were called for freedom, brothers [and sisters]. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Anyone familiar with the Gospels will instantly recognize this second of the Great Commandments; the first being, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." 

These commandments balance and complement each other. To follow one without regard to the other is to lose one's way. We must not enslave ourselves to the needs and wishes of our neighbors, nor should we abjectly serve our notions of an all consuming God. Neither God nor the neighbor can be known so well that we should surrender to their apparent demands. Rather, we spend our lives in the safe/anxious zone between them, with only the clue, "as yourself" to suggest where to go. I need not love God with relentless mortifications that lead to death. 

Saint Francis put it well, 

Holy obedience confounds all bodily and fleshly desires and keeps the body mortified to the obedience of the spirit and to the obedience of one’s brother and makes a man subject to all the men of this world and not to men alone, but also to all beasts and wild animals, so that they may do with him whatsoever they will, in so far as it may be granted to them from above by the Lord.

The last clause is important. The obedient saint followed the promptings of the Holy Spirit which would not permit him to feed wolves or sharks with his own body, or some other nonsense. In that ambiguous space between God's absolute prerogatives and the earth's urgent desires, the Man of God found his freedom. 

The Lord's ways are fair, we discover, as we search more deeply into the Spirit of Lent. 

Freedom is a jealous God who wants nothing less than our freedom in obedience. 

Thursday of the First Week of Lent

Lectionary: 227

“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.

This is the law and the prophets.”

 

The “Golden Rule,” as found in the Gospel of Matthew, follows immediately after Jesus’s reassurance of God’s ready, superabundant generosity:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

The scriptures from ancient times insist upon God’s boundless kindness to his Chosen People. Without their asking, God befriended Abraham; protected Isaac; and guided Jacob’s tribe from Canaan to Egypt. Long after the people had forgotten to expect anything of the Lord, he sent Moses and Aaron to lead them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, which was:

...a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, with houses full of goods of all sorts that you did not garner, with cisterns that you did not dig, with vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.

In return the Lord asks only complete obedience to his Spirit and Law, which includes the challenging, “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.”

This “rule” is not unfamiliar to anyone. We were told as children, “Don’t do to others what you would not have them do to you!” Millions of mothers have said to their aggressive children, “You don’t like it when other kids hit you or take your toys! So don’t hit them and take their toys!” 

The teaching is enshrined in the Book of Tobit (4:15), “Do to no one what you yourself hate.” And it’s found in the sacred texts of many world religions.

 

But Jesus’s teaching does more than restrain our selfish impulses; it guides our freedom. If you would be free as God is free, this is what you do. As Jesus says, “This is the law and the prophets.” Everything that God has been saying to us these many centuries; the freedom God would give us; the joy and satisfaction for which we were made: it’s there in this simple formula.

“Do to others…” is remarkable for it places the initiative of freedom in our hands. By acting we set ourselves free, which is the only way it can happen. When we do to others, we’re not reacting but responding out of our own initiative to God’s mercy. We see what must be done and act accordingly.

The only proviso I might add is, “When I consider how I would have others do to me, I realize I want them to consider my real needs and real desires. I don’t want a gift that someone else thinks I should want. We all get free junk from people who are discarding theirs! No thanks!

And so, when I do to others, I will consider what they might actually want. I might even ask them! And act accordingly, out of the freedom of God’s gracious benevolence.

This Golden Rule invites us to put ourselves at the service of others. With the Lord’s curiosity we ask, “What do you want?” We ask, “How might I help you?” and “What can I do for you?” The Golden Rule teaches us to act with the courtesy that we naturally expect of others.  It is as simple and as familiar as that, and as beautiful as the Resurrection.

Wednesday of the First Week of Lent

Lectionary: 226

“This generation is an evil generation;

it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,

except the sign of Jonah.

Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,

so will the Son of Man be to this generation.

 

The Prophet Jesus, like all the prophets before him, labored to dissuade God’s holy people from their sense of entitlement. His attack is frontal and brutal; they are “an evil generation.” 

Marketers and publicists might cringe at his prophetic technique. They might say that this direct approach must instantly arouse both defensiveness and dismissiveness. The target audience doesn’t want to hear it, and they won’t hear it. If anything, it will arouse hostility leading to rejection and, in the case of Jesus, crucifixion. His sage advisors might go on to say, “Now, you don’t want that, do you?”

But we could not be saved unless he were crucified. And so, we hear Jesus’s harsh words toward his contemporaries, we see their reaction, we know what must come, and we pray that he continues in that manner. And we pray that we might recognize our own sense of entitlement and repent of this grievous sin.

 

I visited the home of a classmate many years ago and a bunch of us played the board game Risk. I won handily and was very pleased with myself. Only the next day did my classmate tell me his younger brothers and sisters were cowed by my presence and let me win. No one would fight against the priest!

 

Entitlement is like that. We have it and it feels as natural as the rain in spring and the heat of summer. Why would I not feel perfectly comfortable when I get what I want? Isn’t it right that I should? Isn’t it wrong when I don’t?

 

The saints urge us to welcome disappointment. It’s inevitable and necessary and we should prepare for its coming. Rather than getting all hot and bothered and upset, we might welcome setbacks, failures, refusals, and denials. The emotions they arouse demonstrate the size – perhaps the enormity – of our sense of entitlement.

 

If we cannot exactly welcome the experience we can decide not to feed our fury with agitated, resentful thoughts and – so much worse – vengeful actions. We need not chew the resentful cud like ruminant cows. Rather, learning to practice calm and peace of mind, we allow the emotions to pass as they always do.

Refusals, denials, snubs, and disappointments should remind us of the everyday experience of many "minorities." Women, African-Americans, Native Americans, and so forth feels the same outrage but the dominant culture supposes, "They're used to it. They can handle it better." 

Only those willing to take up their assigned crosses daily and follow in His steps can readily accept insults to their sense of entitlement, and only with much prayer, fasting, and practice. 

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

Lectionary: 225

“This is how you are to pray:

Our Father who art in heaven,
        hallowed be thy name,
        thy Kingdom come,

 

Preparing to obey the Lord’s command, we should consider what happens when we pray. Prayer begins in the heart as we respond to God’s presence. It flows to the mind and the lungs. In the mind it collects the words of prayer; in the lungs it amasses the wind. The separated rivulets meet again in the vocal cords and mouth with its tongue, teeth and cheeks to sound audible words. There they meet another powerful stream of emotion from the heart.

I said the mind contributed words to the flow of prayer but where did the mind get them? Ah, there is another deep consideration. For many Catholics their source is memory; we learned the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, Act of Contrition, and many other prayers as children. We also learned to sign ourselves with the Cross, strike our chests, and genuflect as children. These prayers and gestures have a history which began a long ago.

The words and phrases of prayer, of course, have their own historical roots. Some like Amen and Halleluiah came to us from Hebrew; and Christ, a translation of the Hebrew Messiah from Greek. When we turn to The Lord’s Prayer, we realize that Jesus wanted his gentile disciples to know and embrace the Jewish tradition of prayer. He received that tradition from his mother Mary, Joseph, and his ancestors; he modified it with his own genius; and passed it along to us. As  Saint Paul would later write to the Corinthians, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,” and “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received….” 

As an heir of two thousand years of prayers composed by so many saints of holiness and genius, I feel no particular need to create my own original prayer every time I turn to the Lord. 

When we decide to pray, we wade into an ancient river of grace and are swept along in its life-giving stream. That river is God the Holy Spirit who breathes and sounds in us, appealing to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ for our salvation.

Saint Francis described our life of prayer with a wonderful antiphon of the Blessed Mother. She is daughter of the most high Heavenly Father, mother of our Savior Jesus Christ, and spouse of the Holy Spirit. As we breathe the sacred words of Jesus, we are enfolded in the Holy Trinity with the Virgin and animated by the life of God.

Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, Apostle

Lectionary: 535

 Simon Peter said in reply, 

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 

 

On this feast of the Chair of Saint Peter I still like the essay I wrote last year concerning relics. I pointed to the fascination of relics. A year later, however, I am not convinced a relic should outrank a Lenten weekday, but, as they say in Minnesota, “whatever.” 

Catholics must pause occasionally to ponder the price and privilege of being Catholic, and the gift of the papacy.

Saint John Henry Newman pondered deeply the authority of the Catholic Church and its papacy as he journeyed from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. Despite the claims of his English coreligionists, he recognized they were more Protestant than Catholic, and he had serious issues with the whole concept of Protestantism. Can one build a religion around protesting? Can they define themselves by what they’re not, by what they don’t believe, and how they don’t pray?

Personally, I have tried to stop using the expression non-Catholic; it seems derogatory and disrespectful. I would prefer to know my neighbor as Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Evangelical, or whatever denomination they prefer. But the military and the VA still regards all non-Catholics except Jews and Muslims as non-Catholics. Christian chaplains are either Catholic or Protestant.

And I have noticed Protestant laity may switch denominations simply by entering the building while converts to Catholicism must go through RCIA before receiving Baptism, Eucharist, or Confirmation. We take our identity and our beliefs seriously. (Protestant ministers, however, often undergo a rigorous scrutiny before they are accepted into another group; and might not be accepted.)

When Saint John Paul II invited religious leaders from the world to join him in prayer for peace, he recognized that the assembled could not exactly pray together. Jews, Muslims, and Christians supposedly worship the same God of Abraham, but many other religions address a different deity, if any. Jews and Muslims do not pray to the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. And Protestants, for the most part, do not pray in union with the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints and angels.

Given the violence each might do to their own identity if they prayed to an alien god, they agreed that every group should pray in their own traditional way while the others listened in respectful silence. This, the Saint hoped, would demonstrate a universal desire for peace among all religions while respecting their differences. (By the way, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, was pointedly absent from the assembly.)

The feast of the Chair of Saint Peter reminds Catholics of our distinctiveness, and that it does make a difference which church you attend. When people tell me. “It doesn’t matter which church you attend;” I add,” “… if you attend no church.”

Catholics take seriously the authority of the pope, the bishops, and priests. The VA honors our Catholic belief in its willingness to provide priest chaplains because Catholics cannot exercise their First Amendment right to worship without a priest. We must have our sacraments of Eucharist, Reconciliation, and Anointing of the Sick. Catholic military personnel or VA patients deprived of the ministry of a priest are denied their constitutional right to worship.

During this pandemic many Catholics might have forgotten that. They might have learned to prefer the virtual presence of a priest and congregation over the real presence of breathing, perspiring crowds of human beings. They might suppose they can absent themselves from the assembly despite the express warning of the Bible in Hebrews 10:25. 

Our devotion to the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist should remind us how seriously we take our Catholic faith and identity. When we emerge from pandemic isolation and return to the world of social nearness let us embrace the pope, the bishops, the priests, deacons, and one another with bear hugs of happiness.

 

First Sunday of Lent

Lectionary: 23

The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, 
and he remained in the desert for forty days,
tempted by Satan.
He was among wild beasts,
and the angels ministered to him.

 

Scholars believe that Saint Mark’s gospel was the first of the four in the New Testament. He gave the word gospel a whole new meaning when he converted the story of Jesus, the “good news,” into a written document. Saints Mathew and Luke received his text and added more stories and teachings from their own resources.

The difference appears especially in the story of Jesus in the wilderness. Matthew and Luke added the story of Satan’s tempting Jesus with three challenges. But that story is quite different from Mark’s original version.

First, we should notice that the Holy Spirit had just appeared. Jesus was in the baptismal water of the Jordan River as the Hebrews had been in the liberating water of the Red Sea. The same Spirit who drove the Hebrews out of Egypt and into the wilderness now drove Jesus out of the river and into the wilderness. 

As they were in the desert for forty years and Moses had stood before God without eating or drinking for forty days, so now Jesus remained in the desert for forty days.

Unlike the accounts of Matthew and Luke, Jesus’s sojourn in the desert is not entirely unpleasant. Mark’s statement that he “was among wild beasts” might describe the experience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Though tempted like Adam and Eve, he blew off the Satan. And who would quarrel with angels ministering to them? 

That forty-day pleasant experience recalls the forty-year honeymoon which the Hebrews enjoyed with the Lord. As Deuteronomy recalls,

He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your ancestors, so you might know that it is not by bread alone that people live, but by all that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD. The clothing did not fall from you in tatters, nor did your feet swell these forty years.

Jesus’s trip to the wilderness fulfills Hosea’s prophecy of a second honeymoon for the Holy People:

Therefore, I will allure her now;

I will lead her into the wilderness

and speak persuasively to her.

Then I will give her the vineyards she had,

and the valley of Achor (i.e. the “valley of trouble”) as a door of hope.

There she will respond as in the days of her youth,

as on the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.

 

As we begin our forty-day preparation for Easter, the Church invites us to accompany Jesus into the wilderness of penance and prayer. It is unpleasant only as we let go of the unnecessary, extraneous luxuries we afford ourselves. We might encounter the wild beasts of our irritability and anxieties as we act differently from those around us. The Lord has called us to be a holy people; we should expect a certain discomfort that accompanies that vocation. But we'll have the angels to assure us and the great privilege and pleasure of attending the God who is with us, our Emmanuel.

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Lectionary: 222


If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday; then the LORD will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land.

The appearance of QAnon in our national discussion, and its widespread acceptance among many Americans, should cause alarm among those who love and believe in the American experiment. Democracy is never assured; we cannot promise our children they will enjoy that particular type of freedom. 

History is rife with upheaval, violence, and the emergence of demagogues who speak for the maddened populace. There is no particular reason that Reason should prevail. Anger, greed, ideology, avarice, fear, resentment: any of these forces may control a nation. 

The Founding Fathers of the American experiment believed in Reason. Thomas Jefferson, arguably the greatest philosopher among them, dismissed all religious stories that struck him as unreasonable, especially the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. There was no proof that they had happened, and they sounded implausible to him. He was not an atheist but he believed the Creator God would not and should not interfere in human affairs. 

Somewhere during the twentieth century, especially with the madness of two world wars, the Enlightenment's confidence in Reason began to crumble. Nothing about the First World War made sense, and yet it happened. Historians to this day wonder why. What made it necessary? Why did millions of young men who had no animosity against one another eagerly march out to the slaughtering fields? Most of them were Christians and believed in the Prince of Peace! Why did their leaders call for war? How could wholesale slaughter make the world safe for democracy? Reason had failed.

QAnon knows that. There is nothing remotely plausible about their insane conspiracy theories. But they're entertaining, and people love entertainment more than rationality. Even their Christian religions must cater to their hunger for excitement and entertainment. If they're aroused by emotions of joy or anger or pathos, they feel alive and that must be the Holy Spirit!

Our Catholic tradition teaches us to love the Truth. Not excitement, not emotion, not desire, or reason. Those are not bad thing but they're not God. Our God is Truth. We anchor our faith, hope, and love in Truth and we must deliberately remove from our midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech.

When millions of Americans say an election was fraudulent simply because their preferred candidate didn't win, and declare it was legitimate when he did win (despite his not winning the majority of votes), we know they do not love the Truth. They worship their preferences only and dismiss the Founders' passion for Reason. 

Saint Augustine reminded us that it always takes courage to tell the Truth. Our Catholic faith reminds us that we know the Truth because it is revealed to us. What is revealed makes sense; it "stands to reason;" but we would not know it were it not revealed. No rational person would have predicted the the birth of God among us or the Resurrection of Jesus. We believe these truths because they have been revealed to us, and they make sense of what we saw in Jerusalem many centuries ago. 

Truth comes to us through the Holy Spirit, through docility in prayer, through a humble assessment of our own knowledge and experience; and in courageous conversations with one another. Pope Francis encourages us to discern the will of God without the presumption that we already know what God thinks and wants. He has gathered the bishops and other church leaders in synods with the hope of learning what God wants of the Church. 

Honest men and women listen to one another, allow themselves to be influenced and changed by their conversation, and discover ways forward they had not seen before. The process, though stressful and exhausting, is often miraculous. God is with us, and we have seen his glory. 

Historians tell us that the vast majority of Americans, in the 1850's, did not expect a civil war. Only extremists on both sides hoped for it. I don't want to believe it might happen here, but I do not worship my preferences. I cannot dismiss the possibility. 

I pray that my friars, friends, and family might survive the coming turmoil, if and when it comes. I pray that I will worship the Lord of Truth in any case. Finally, I pray: ...and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen

Friday after Ash Wednesday

Lectionary: 221

They ask me to declare what is due them,
    pleased to gain access to God.
“Why do we fast, and you do not see it?
    afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?”

Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits,
    and drive all your laborers.
Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting,
    striking with wicked claw.
Would that today you might fast
    so as to make your voice heard on high!

 

A year ago, I developed cellulitis on my right leg. I consulted with two doctors who gave me first an oral antibiotic, and then a stronger oral antibiotic. Neither helped. After the second prescription ran out, I decided I’d just let the illness run its course. It only got worse. Finally, I drove down to the hospital early one Monday morning and checked in. After three days of I-V antibiotics the infection was gone, but another month, more distress, and more consultations would pass before I had adjusted to the new normal of Aquaphor and compression socks.

A trip to the hospital often involves a personal crisis. A problem has finally become so troublesome, painful, and demanding that it cannot be dealt with in the usual ways. If we’re lucky the hospitalization gets us through the crisis, and we go home to learn a new way of life.

As a chaplain I often meet patients who don’t understand that principle. Some octogenarians, "found down" by family or friends in their homes, expect to return to their comfortable solitude and manage as they have for the past half-century. One fellow described his idyllic life of sitting on the veranda and smoking his pipe. “That’s all I ask!” he said, not realizing how many people and how much money it would take to maintain that fantasy. Another was ready to move to a care facility providing he can take his aging Basset hound, which also – by the way -- needs extensive medical attention.

Today’s first reading from the Prophet Isaiah describes that mindset. The people are ready to do penance on their own terms. And, having done that, they complain, “Why do we fast, and you do not see it; afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?”

A quarrel ensues as the Lord responds, “Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: that a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?”

You’re not listening! The first word of command throughout the Bible is “Hear!” Stop what you’re doing and listen to me. Stop what you’re thinking. Turn off your opinions. Silence your objections. Listen to me!

A devolution of problems into crises sometimes persuades people to turn back to the Lord. Realizing they have brought these problems on themselves, and that life was better when they acted on their faith in God, they begin to pray.

 

Lent invites us to hear God's voice before the crises, even as the problems appear. 

Now is the acceptable time.

Now is the day of salvation. 

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Lectionary: 220

I have set before you life and death,
the blessing and the curse.
Choose life, then,
that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God,
heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.

 

The Catholic wing of the Right to Life movement has adopted Moses’ words in Deuteronomy as its rallying cry, “Choose Life!” More than clever marketing, these two words invite deep reflection.

Choose life may be a very brief summary of the Book of Deuteronomy and, hence, of the entire Bible with both testaments.

Choose life implies the alternative, death. And that is precisely how Deuteronomy describes the decision. We choose to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; or we die.

This is not a choice between Rice Krispies and Cheerios, the kind of “free” choice offered by a consumer economy. It is not a choice between urban, suburban, or rural; straight or gay; racist or inclusive. It is not a choice of smoking, drinking, and carousing versus clean, healthy living; although I’m sure some people see their disciplined lifestyle as choosing life.

Like the Gospel of John, Deuteronomy challenges us to choose the Lord as Our God. If there are other gods, we have nothing to do with them. Nor is this choice without its history. Rather, we must choose again what we have chosen before; and that is the choice our ancestors made for their descendants. Our faith, hope, and love of God did not begin when we were born, nor on the day we "came to the Lord." Our religion began many centuries ago when the Lord brought us out of Egypt, when the Lord delivered us from Babylon, and when the Lord gathered us to the Baptismal font and the Eucharistic altar.

But it is also a new choice in the sense that we must reinforce this habit daily. When it becomes just a habit without inspiration death creeps like the shadows of night over our hearts.

Our God is a jealous God; Deuteronomy insists upon that. But so is the culture in which we live. There is the slavery of addiction to various legal and illegal substances. There are the demands of a consumer culture that tells us we must own more and more stuff. There is the stupefaction of the entertainment industry and the insults of advertisers who regard us as stupid and gullible. There are insinuations of political parties who despise us but love our votes. No one should imagine they are not prey to these persistent, consuming deities. Like mobsters of the Prohibition Era, they find our weakness to exploit them with coercion and threats.

Nor should anyone suppose they are immune to those false gods. The idolatry of self, of doing what I want to do and believing what I want to believe, is the most dangerous of all idolatries. 

Our salvation is the One God who demands our wholehearted fidelity. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.

Ash Wednesday 2021

Lectionary: 219

Then the LORD was stirred to concern for his land and took pity on his people.

 

In today’s first reading, Isaiah concluded his invitation to “Return to me with your whole heart” with the good news that “the LORD was stirred to concern for his land and took pity on his people.” In the following verses, which we have not heard this morning, we learn:

In response the LORD said to his people:

I am sending you

grain, new wine, and oil,

and you will be satisfied by them;

Never again will I make you

a disgrace among the nations.

God’s blessing, we should notice, was on “his land and… his people.” There are no people without land, and no land without people. If you have heard the theme song of the movie Exodus, you’ll remember Pat Boone’s, “This land is mine; God gave this land to me.”

European settlers, coming to North American, brought the religious conviction that God had given them the wide-open spaces of the continent, regardless of its aboriginal occupants. But the inept farmers, transplanted city dwellers with little experience of farming, often wasted its potential. Irreplaceable topsoil was blown away by ferocious winds or washed away by heavy rains. Never mind! They just went west. The settlers learned to regard land as a fungible commodity; it could be wasted and replaced by the apparently unlimited resources of a vast frontier. But eventually the frontier closed and the Dust Bowl (1930-36) destroyed those illusions. American farmers learned to practice soil conservation and stewardship.

We have yet to appreciate the limits of other vast resources: atmosphere, rivers, and oceans. Unarable land is used for toxic wastes, plastics, and garbage with scant attention to the damage while precious arable land is exploited by developers for suburban sprawl. 

Pope Francis, in his second encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, has shown the close connection between wasting natural resources and wasting people. They are essentially the same thing. Justice demands that we change our habits or face catastrophic consequences. As we finally recognize the full impact of climate change and our part in it, the current pandemic will seem like nothing at all. Or rather, we’ll recognize the pandemic as a sign of something terribly wrong and of terrible things to come.

The Hebrew prophets described the consequences of sin. Neglecting poor widows and orphans and the shabby treatment of aliens causes cosmic disasters. They knew nothing of a god called Luck and would have scoffed at karma. The idea that God doesn’t manage the world is utter nonsense to the prophets. The Lord, they said, intentionally punished the sinful behavior of his elect with plagues, drought, infestations, floods, and war. We might dismiss their harangues today but it's hard to dismiss the facts in front of us. 

As we set out into the depths of Lent, we cannot take refuge in the old Jesus-and-me spirit of the past. My sins are our sins, and our sins are mine. Everyone is complicit in the waste of human and natural resources. 

Rather, we should heed Pope Francis invitation to See, Decide, and Act, which he spells out in his recent reflections on the pandemic, Let Us Dream. Lent is a season to see what is happening in the world we have created, to discern how God's spirit is leading us, and to act in obedience to that Spirit. 

If we act under that beautiful impulse now we might hear the Lord's reassuring word: 

"Never again will I make you a disgrace among the nations."

Tuesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 336

Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?

And do you not remember,

 

The scriptures often remind us to remember God’s presence and mighty deeds. The Book of Genesis gives us a few fascinating myths about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, and the Tower of Babel; but after the twelfth chapter of Genesis the myths are set aside. I can find no references to any of these stories in the rest of the Old Testament. They seemed not very important until Saint Paul cited Jesus as the “New Adam;” and the apostles, gathering in Jerusalem, recalled the story of Noah.

After the twelfth chapter of Genesis, the myths are set aside in favor of the memories. If they don’t always conform to our standards of history, these memories are nonetheless sacred and definitive. If we lose them, we are lost.

The Old Testament memories begin with Abraham and Sarah, and God’s calling them from the land of Ur with the promise of their own land. As we heard recently from the Letter to the Hebrews:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place
that he was to receive as an inheritance; 
he went out, not knowing where he was to go.

The story of God's mighty works from Abraham to this day must be taught and treasured. But, as Exodus tells us, four hundred years in Egypt took its toll on God’s people. When the young Moses rescued a Hebrew slave from an Egyptian assailant, he was taunted by a fellow Hebrew. The people had apparently lost the memory of their solidarity. And so began God’s rescue operation when he sent Moses to deliver them from Egypt.

Repeatedly, throughout the Old Testament the priests, prophets, and sages urge the people to remember God’s mighty, saving works. Moses warns us never to forget what we have seen in Deuteronomy 4, 9-10:

... be on your guard and be very careful not to forget the things your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your heart as long as you live, but make them known to your children and to your children’s children, that day you stood before the LORD, your God, at Horeb, when the LORD said to me:

Assemble the people for me, that I may let them hear my words, 

that they may learn to fear me as long as they live in the land 

and may so teach their children.

Jesus, the Evangelists and other New Testament authors anchor the Gospel in the ancient Law of Moses, the prophets, and psalms. Without those memories the events of Jesus’s life make no sense. Finally, as in today’s Gospel, Jesus insistently reminds his disciples of what they have already seen since they began to follow him. 

Among the later writings of the New Testament, Saint John insists that our faith is anchored in what we have seen, heard, and touched. He does not speak of good ideas, ideals, and ideology; ideas change with the weather. Rather he insists upon our shared and remembered experience. Without that, Jesus is nothing more than a ghostly apparition, a half-remembered dream that vanishes upon waking.

In this twenty-first century many self-described Christians suffer massive amnesia. Some insist they still believe but cannot describe anything more than a vague belief in “God.” They remember little of either testament of the Bible and know nothing of the twenty centuries since the end of the apostolic age. They cannot recite the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed. When I sometimes tell stories of Saint Francis, Anthony, or Theresa, people ask me, “Where is that in the Bible?”

I think of Jesus’s pained question, “Do you not remember?”

This widespread ignorance leaves God’s people sadly vulnerable to tsunamis of misinformation and outright lies. Why do millions today subscribe to QAnon except for their pathetic ignorance of the Truth which God speaks to us daily in our Church? Why would they want to believe utter nonsense if they had any love of Truth?

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Let us turn to the Lord and study our faith, lest we lose what little we have.