Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Lent

  • Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Just as the saraph serpent was lifted up on a pole in the desert for the people to see, and thus live, so the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, was lifted up on the cross for the salvation of the world.  In these late Lenten days, the Church is looking to the Cross, looking toward Jerusalem, knowing that the hour of the Lord, in which he would pay the dear price of our salvation, is near at hand.

    With hearts filled with gratitude, we come to this Eucharist, with our eyes fixed on our Lord lifted up for us, who pours himself out for us again and still.  When we see him lifted up, we remember that he is “I AM,” our crucified and risen Lord, and whenever we look to him, we are saved from all that ails us, from our sins and brokenness, and we ourselves are lifted up to eternal life.

    Our challenge in these late Lenten days is to be that icon of the Cross, like the saraph serpent, to whom people can look and find healing and salvation. We have to be the image of Christ crucified so that the world can become whole.

  • The Fifth Sunday of Lent

    The Fifth Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings

    “Lord, by now there will be a stench.”

    That’s one of my favorite lines in scripture.  It begs the question I want you to pray about this week, which is, “What in your life really stinks?”  Because we have to have that stench washed away in order to really live.

    If you know my preaching, you’re not going to be at all surprised about this, but I have to tell you honestly, our Gospel reading isn’t about Lazarus.  Yes, he got raised from the dead, so good for him, but he isn’t the center of action in the story.  In fact, he’s dead for most of the reading, so he doesn’t play a major part.   Our Gospel today is about Jesus, who through baptism and grace is the remedy for all that stinks in our life.

    So Jesus hears that his friend Lazarus is ill.  He knows that Lazarus will die, and he knows that he will raise Lazarus up, so very much like the rest of John’s Gospel, Jesus is in full control.  He delays going to see Lazarus because it will give him the opportunity that will increase faith in the other players in the story.  So when he arrives, Lazarus has been dead four days.  That’s an important detail because it tells us that Lazarus is really, really dead.  The Jews believed that the soul of a person hung around for about three days, but after that, well, he or she was gone forever.  So if Jesus had raised Lazarus on the second day, no big deal.  If on the third day, that would have been a foreshadowing of himself.  But on the fourth day, he raises up someone who is really, really dead: you know, someone just like us.

    So just like the man who was born blind last week, we are born dead, in a way.  I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but stay with me.  We are born dead in our sins, and there is nothing we can do to raise ourselves up out of it except for the grace of God.  So the movement in our Gospel today is from life that is so mired in sin that it stinks, to life that is so free of death that burial bands and tombs cannot contain it.

    During Lent, we have been journeying with our catechumens, who are now called the Elect, as they prepare to be baptized, confirmed, and receive first Holy Communion at the Easter Vigil.  Much like them, there are three groups of catechumens in today’s Gospel.  The first group is Mary and Martha, those friends of Jesus that are part of John’s Gospel a few times.  Here, the rubber meets the road in their faith.  Here, like so many of us, they have something tragic happen in their lives, and now they have to grapple with whether their faith helps them with that or not.  Mary is so troubled that she doesn’t even go out to meet the Lord until her sister tells her a white lie that Jesus was asking for her.  Both she and Martha, when they first see Jesus, complain that he should have come sooner so that he could have saved Lazarus.  But Martha has a little faith.  She says very importantly that “Even now, I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”  That’s the beginning profession of faith.  She knows that Jesus has power over life and death.  So then they have a little catechetical dialogue about life and death and eternity, and at the end of it, Martha professes that Jesus is the Son of God who was coming into the world.  The sisters move from their grief, to faith in Jesus, even before he accomplishes the miracle.

    The second group of catechumens is the Apostles.  God bless them, they’re still trying to make sense of Jesus.  We can’t be too hard on them, because they’re a lot like many of us who are trying to be men and women of faith, but don’t really have all the facts right now.  “Let us also go to die with him,” Thomas says.  And they will, of course: they have to go through the cross before they see and understand Jesus fully.  We too will have to take up our own crosses before we can fully understand the salvation that Christ has won for us.

    The third group of catechumens is the Jews.  A bunch of them are weeping with Mary, and they go with her to see Jesus.  Along the way, they complain that if he could heal the man born blind like he did in last week’s Gospel, why couldn’t he have healed Lazarus?  But seeing the miracle, they come to believe, in the very last verse of this long reading.  They are a lot like those of us who are skeptical for a long time, but see something wonderful materialize in the life of another and finally decide there’s something to this Jesus that’s worth believing in.

    Key to all of these catechumens is that, in order to move to belief, they had to have some kind of stench in their lives washed away.  For Martha and Mary, they had to see past their grief.  For the Apostles, they had to get over themselves and realize that Jesus was in charge.  For the Jews, they had to get past their skepticism and let him perform miracles among them.  For all of us, on the journey of faith, some kind of stench has to be washed away, in order to come to full faith in Jesus.  And that stench, of course, is sin.  The way it gets washed away is in baptism.

    So if you take away anything from today’s Liturgy, let it be this: this reading is really all about baptism, brothers and sisters in Christ.  Is it a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death and resurrection?  Sure.  But it is more about baptism.  Because baptism is a kind of death.  As Saint Paul says in our second reading today, baptism is the kind of death that gives life to our mortal bodies.  It’s hard for us to imagine that kind of thing when the baptisms we’ve seen are just a mere pouring of water over a baby’s head.  But baptism in the early church was full submerging in water while the formula was pronounced, after which they came up out of the water gasping for air.  Believe me, they got the connection of baptism with death and resurrection!

    Baptism is what washes away the stench in our lives.  It does that with original sin, and if we live our baptism by participating in the sacraments, it does that with the sins of our daily life.  The sacrament of Penance is an extension in a way of the sacrament of Baptism, in which the sins of our lives are completely washed away, leaving us made new and alive in ways we couldn’t imagine.

    So today, Jesus sees us dead in the flesh, stinking of our sins.  But he calls us forth in baptism, rolling away the stone of sin that keeps us from relationship with him, releasing us from the burial-bands that bind us, and calling us to new life.

    So maybe in these closing days of Lent, we still have to respond to our Lord’s call to live.  Maybe you haven’t yet been to confession before Easter.  We have confessions (tomorrow/today) at 1:30pm, with thirteen priests to hear your confession.  We invite you to come and have the stone rolled away and to be untied from your burial cloths.  Wherever you find yourself at this point of Lent, I urge you, don’t let Easter pass with you all bound up and sealed in the grave.  Lent ends just before Evening Prayer on Holy Thursday.  That gives us around ten and a half days to take up our Lenten resolutions anew, or even make new ones, so that we can receive new life in Christ.  Don’t spend these days in the grave.  Come out, be untied, and be let go.

  • Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    It’s annoying when people call us on something and they’re right, isn’t it? But the Christian disciple knows that it is the job of our brothers and sisters to correct us when we stray as an act of charity.  And the Christian disciple should receive that correction in the spirit in which it is offered, as a grace.

    But that’s clearly not how the hearers of the Wisdom reading received it, and it is certainly not how the religious authorities in Jesus’ day received it. But it cannot be so for us. If our witness is to be authentic, we must always pray for the grace to receive loving correction in the spirit in which it is offered, so that we may grow in our faith and our discipleship. We must pray, too, for those who offer it to us. And we must pray for the strength of character to offer it to our brothers and sisters when we are called upon to do so.

  • Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    The waters that flowed from the temple in the first reading are the same waters that were stirred up in the pool at Bethesda, and those are the same waters that if you’re real quiet, you can hear flowing over in the baptistry. These are the waters of baptism that freshen all of the world and refresh those who live in it. Those waters of baptism provide healing for our sins and hurts and addictions, and all the things that we find so difficult to let go of.

    But we have to have courage to wade into them as our Lord invites us in, and perhaps we may need some help to get in there.  But it’s not impossible. We, at least have been in them before and have been washed clean. Our joy is now to look back at our baptism, renew our baptismal promises, and recommit ourselves to the healing waters that wash away our sins and bring us, pure and joyful, to our God.

  • The Fourth Sunday of Lent

    The Fourth Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings

    I don’t know about you, but I feel like today’s Liturgy of the Word starts off by giving us all a slap in the face.  And it’s needed.  How many of us judge others without even getting to know them?  How often do we decide who people are and what they’re like just by a first glance, or where they live, or even who they know?  It’s a habit we learned in junior high school, or maybe even earlier, and we never seem to outgrow it.  Shame on us for that, because God is clear with Samuel: “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.”  So we have to stop judging others before we get to know them; we have to learn to see them as God sees them.  We need to see with the eyes of God.

    Whenever I hear this reading, I think of my dad.  He was the typical Irish guy who never met a stranger, and it was frankly a little irritating to go grocery shopping with him.  He’d bump in to a couple of people he knew while we were shopping, one or two more in the checkout line, and probably at least one more while the rest of us were loading the groceries in the car! But that was because dad was a man who always seemed to see the best in people.  At his wake, we were all overwhelmed by the incredible number of people who came and shared with us how they were inspired by him and encouraged by him, all because Dad saw something special in them.  I think dad had some inkling of the vision God wants us to have in this first reading.

    So the theme for this week’s liturgy is vision and light.  The gospel gets at that pretty quickly, healing the man born blind in the first couple of minutes of what is admittedly a pretty long reading.  But what’s the point?  How does that affect us?  I’ll tell you how it affects us: the man born blind is us.  We all have affected vision: that’s why the first reading is such a slap in our faces.  So we have to decide today if we are the man born blind who is easily and quickly healed, or if we want to be the Pharisees who, at the end of the day, never regain their sight because they just don’t want to.

    So maybe you’re asking the same question those Pharisees asked, “surely we are not also blind, are we?”  Of course we are.  That’s why we have Lent: to realize our brokenness and to accept the healing power of Christ.  Lent calls us to remember that we are dust, that we are broken people fallen into sin, but that none of that is any match for the power of Christ risen from the dead, if we just let him put a little clay on our eyes.

    Today’s Gospel then is a kind of journey to clearer vision. We are all born blind, in a sense, and it takes the presence of Jesus to clear our vision. Just as the man born blind was sent to the pool of Siloam, we too are sent to the waters of baptism, which clears our eyes and helps us to really see. In baptism, the darkness of life is transformed by the presence of Christ, the Light of the World. During the course of all the questionings that follow, the man’s vision becomes clearer and clearer. At first he doesn’t know who Jesus is or where to find him. Later on he testifies that Jesus is a prophet and finally, with the help of Jesus’ instruction, that Jesus is the Son of Man and worthy of worship. We make this same journey ourselves. From the waters of baptism, we need to continue the conversation and return to Christ again and again to grow in our faith.  We grow in the way that we see Jesus through our lives.  Our faith when we were young is not the same faith that works for us later in life.  At one point Jesus is a friend walking with us on life’s path; later on he might be a rock that helps us in a particularly stormy time of life.  Still later, he might be the one calling us to become something new, something better than we think we can attain.  Jesus is always the same, but we are different, and Jesus is with us at every point of life’s journey, if we open our eyes to see him.

    Traditionally, today is Laetare Sunday – laetare being Latin for “rejoice.”  That’s why we’re wearing these rose-colored vestments today.  We are now pretty much half way through Lent, and with eyes recreated by our own trips to the pool of Siloam – the waters of baptism – we can begin to catch a glimpse of Easter joy.  Laetare Sunday reminds us that even in the penance of Lent, that it’s not penance for penance’s own sake: there is reason for rejoicing.  It might be good, then, to ask ourselves, what in the world gives us cause to rejoice today, here and now, in our own lives?

    That’s the “homework” I’m giving you for this fourth week of Lent.  In your quiet times of reflection – even if it’s only two minutes – I invite you to take time to ask God to open your eyes and help you see your blessings.  Whether it’s your health, or your family or friends, your community, your work or your recreation – whatever it is, take the time to name it, and then offer a brief prayer of thanks in your own words to God who gives you everything.  If this isn’t something you’ve ever or often done, maybe do that as much as you can this week.  You might find yourself discovering blessings that you didn’t realize how much you loved.

    Today’s Liturgy is a call for all of us to attend to our vision.  Do we see others as God sees them?  Do we even see ourselves as God sees us?  How do we see Christ at work in our lives and in our world?  Where we encounter obstacles to the clear vision that we must have in this darkened world, we should set them aside and allow Christ to anoint our eyes so that we can see as God sees, this God who sees into the heart.  Then as the darkness that exists in our own lives is transformed to light, maybe our little corner of the world can know compassion amidst sorrow, comfort amidst mourning, mercy against intolerance, love against hatred, and the peace that passes all of our understanding in every place we walk.  May we carry the flame of God’s love into our world to brighten every darkness and bring joy to every sorrow.  May the Morning Star which never sets find this flame still burning: Christ that Morning Star, who came back from the dead, and shed his peaceful light on all humankind, [the Son of God] who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

  • Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

    Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    How many times have you told someone in your life how to do something, and they chose another way, and you wanted more than anything to say, “I told you so!”? Maybe you’ve even gone so far as to actually say it. The whole thing about saying “I told you so!” is that it’s kind of a writing off of the other person, sort of washing your hands of the outcome of their decisions.

    But how much more could God say, “I told you so!” to us? How many ways have we been warned about doing the wrong thing, or been shown the path to the right thing, and have gone astray anyway? We have the Scriptures to show us the way – do we immerse ourselves in them? We have the Church to show us the way – do we look for her direction? We have prayer and Sacrament to show us the way – do we live in that? So how much more would God be justified in saying, “I told you so!” Yet, he doesn’t. Instead he keeps speaking to our hearts, through Scripture, the Church, prayer and Sacrament – he keeps on inviting us back.

    We are going to hear that invitation today, and when we do, may we listen to it with all our attention. May we let it guide the thoughts of our minds, the words of our lips, and the affections of our hearts. If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts.

  • Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent

    Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever felt like you were certainly in the fire? Things in life may have gone from bad to worse. When we’re in those times of life, sometimes we know that the reason for it is that we have sinned. Now I’m not talking about when people in your life are sick or anything like that, God doesn’t punish sin by unleashing evil on us.  Maybe it’s more like when relationships have gone bad, or things have gone wrong at work, or there’s financial hardship. You know the feeling, things are just piling up and you have no idea how to get out, it’s getting hotter all the time and it seems there is no salvation. But deep at the heart of it, you feel the weight of your own sin. I can testify to being in that place myself in my life on occasion. To that, the young man Azariah speaks:

    For we are reduced, O Lord, beyond any other nation,
    brought low everywhere in the world this day
    because of our sins.
    But with contrite heart and humble spirit
    let us be received;
    As though it were burnt offerings of rams and bullocks,
    or thousands of fat lambs,
    So let our sacrifice be in your presence today
    as we follow you unreservedly;
    for those who trust in you cannot be put to shame.

    We have to be a forgiven and forgiving people. When life crashes in on us, we have to confess our sins, and cry out for God’s pardon and mercy. And when it is given us – and it will be given us – we must become a merciful people who extend forgiveness to every single person in our lives without hesitation. We have to be a people who throw mercy around freely, because that’s how it’s been given to each of us.

  • The Third Sunday of Lent

    The Third Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings

    There’s a lot of water in today’s Liturgy of the Word. The Israelites, near the beginning of their forty year journey through the desert, are beginning to miss some of the comforts of home, like water! So when they complain to the Lord, he gives them water in the desert. Which is pretty amazing – they had water in the desert! And in our Gospel today, our Lord stops along his own journey to get a drink of water from the Samaritan woman – and this whole interaction is less about Jesus’ physical thirst than it is about other kinds of thirst in the story – but more on that in a bit.

    We always have to think about why the Church is giving us these particular readings on this particular day. Why is it that we have part of the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert and the rather strange story of the interaction with the woman at the well today? Well, (no pun intended) whenever there’s this much water being mentioned in the readings, we need to think of a particular sacrament, and that sacrament of course is Baptism.

    Now maybe it makes a little sense. At our 9:30 Mass, we will have eight young people with us to experience the First Scrutiny of the Rite of Christian Initiation.  They are preparing to receive baptism at the Easter Vigil. But even that’s not the whole story, because this reading is for all of us. Lent itself is about baptism, and even if we’ve already been baptized, there’s still work to do. We are still being converted to become more like our Lord every day of our life. That’s what Lent is all about – getting back on the path and going a little farther forward. Lent points out for all of us that we’re still thirsty.

    For the Israelites, it’s hard to know what was going to help them. They’re just at the beginning of their journey and already they’re complaining. They get thirsty and the first thing they do is complain – not pray – and tell Moses that they’d rather be back in Egypt in slavery than out wandering around in the desert with nothing to quench their thirst. And it’s not like the slavery they experienced in Egypt was a minor inconvenience – it was pretty horrible and if they missed their quota even by a little bit, they were severely beaten. But sometimes it’s better the devil you know: sometimes we get stuck on what we’ve become used to and have given up yearning for something more.

    For the woman at the well, there’s a lot stacked against her and there is no reason Jesus should have been talking to her. In fact, the disciples, when they return and witness it, aren’t really sure what they should make of it. Because in that culture, nobody talked to Samaritans – it would be like striking up a casual conversation with an Isis member. And for a man to speak to an unaccompanied woman was unthinkable. But Jesus knew she was thirsty – see it wasn’t about his thirst at all, except, as Saint Augustine tells us, Jesus was thirsting for her faith.

    It’s a pretty weird conversation, to be honest. But in talking about her five previous husbands and the Samaritans’ practice of worshipping on the mountain, Jesus was pointing out how her own search for something to quench her thirst was so far pretty futile. She was looking for love in all the wrong places. The five men she was married to represented a history of failed attempts at finding love. And the guy she was shacked up with now represented the fact that she’d pretty much given up. But on some level, the fact that Jesus knew all this without her saying it woke her up a bit. And so then they talk about how the Samaritans worshiped. They were looking for God on the mountain, but the thing is, the God they were looking for is the same one that she had been searching for in her relationships, and he was standing right in front of her now.

    So what is it that is finally going to quench the thirst you have right now?

    Are you going to stay in the slavery of your former way of life, or do you want to journey on to the Promised Land? Are you going to continue to be content with failed or broken relationships, or are you going to refresh them with Living Water? Are you going to continue to leave God up on that mountaintop where he doesn’t get in the way of your daily life, until you need something? Or are you going to look him in the eye and ask him to give you what you really need so you’ll never thirst again?

    We’re all on a journey. All of us together are journeying on to the Promised Land of eternal life. And the only way we’re going to get there is by drinking deeply of the Living Water and allowing the One who gives it to us to lead us. It does mean, however, that we’ll have to leave Egypt, and our buckets, behind.

  • Friday of the Second Week of Lent

    Friday of the Second Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Jesus tells us today a parable about himself – he is the son whose inheritance the tenants wanted to steal. And that’s how the leaders of Judaism saw it in those days. If Jesus were out of the way, they’d still be able to “corner the market” on religious leadership, unchallenged by his Gospel. They’d have all the blessings of religious leadership all to themselves, without having to be bothered about the authentic prophetic message. No one likes a challenging messenger, the religious leaders no more than the parable tenants, no more than Joseph’s brothers. But for those who stop to hear what they have to say, the blessing is more than we can imagine. Yes, they challenge us, but we never grow if we are not challenged. So the question is, who is the challenging messenger in our own lives, what is their message, and are we ready to hear it?

  • Thursday of the Second Week of Lent

    Thursday of the Second Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    This may shock you, but I don’t think the great sin of the rich man was the sin of neglecting poor Lazarus. Sure, that was certainly bad, but his greatest sin, I think, was that he trusted in himself instead of in God. That’s the deadly sin of pride, and the Fathers of the Church often tell us of the devastating effects of it. So the rich man thought he had everything he needed in life, and he trusted in himself and in his own means to get it. But he never had a relationship with God; he didn’t see that as something he needed. Would that he had heeded the prophecy of Jeremiah from today’s first reading.  You don’t see him praying in the story or even giving thanks to God for his riches. All you see is him doing is enjoying what he has amassed, to the neglect of the poor.

    So later on in the story, in death, he wants the good things God will provide for those who trust in him; people like Lazarus for example.   Lazarus has suffered much, and as the Old Testament Prophets proclaim, God is especially close to the poor and needy, so now he is exalted. But the rich man isn’t. He has already made his choice, and unfortunately now, trusting in himself doesn’t really help him at all.

    So the loud warning this morning is that we are all too often the rich man and not so often Lazarus. We have a lot of stuff, we are blessed on earth more than most of the people in the world today. But sadly that often puts us at odds with the things of heaven. We can’t reach out for those when we’re holding on to the passing things of this world. We can’t take the hand of Jesus when we’re grasping tightly the stuff life in this culture gives us.

    That’s why fasting is so important during Lent, as well as almsgiving: both bid us let go of passing things so that we can have, like Lazarus, things eternal. Both bid us trust in God, not in ourselves and other human beings. Jeremiah says it plainly today: “Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the LORD.” But, conversely, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD.”

    So the question is, in whom do we trust? In ourselves? In other people? Or in God? “Blessed are they,” the Psalmist says today, “who hope in the Lord.”