Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Lent

  • Fifth Sunday of Lent

    Fifth Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings

    He had worked for the company for twenty-seven years, and the beginning of his association there was great. The job was energizing, he worked with great people, he worked for great people. It was a family business, and they treated the people who worked for them like family. They were paid well, had good benefits, and they all worked hard – it was an ideal situation. But, over the years, the brothers who ran the company retired, and sold the company to another in the same business. They were taken over a few years ago by still another company, and they started to joke that they should replace the sign out front with a dry-erase board so they could change the company name more easily.

    So he found his job satisfaction decreasing day by day. The job was more hectic and drained him of his energy every single day. The people he worked with were in the same boat as he was – they were all so stressed that they hardly had time for each other. The great people he worked for were all retired. It wasn’t family any more – it was dog eat dog, profits were most important, and the quality of work and product wasn’t so important as was the next big presentation for the stockholders. Everyone was trying to get ahead, and they were cutting corners to do so.

    Eventually he became aware that something was really off. What they were billing their biggest clients for, and what they were providing, were two different things. He’d seen the invoices and the sales orders and they didn’t match. And these were government contracts. He checked and re-checked, and there was no getting around it, the disparity was clear. As time went on, he knew he couldn’t live with what was going on. But if he blew the whistle, who was going to have his back? He had a family and needed the job and its benefits. Who was going to hire him at his age? Even when he found a job, he wouldn’t make what he was getting now. But his faith had informed his conscience and he knew he couldn’t just look the other way.

    His hour had come.

    Many of us have to face our own “hours.” A teenager says his friends are constantly getting drunk and he does not want to join them. As a result he loses those friends. A parent objects to athletic practices for her children on Sunday morning. As a result, her child does not make the team. Our hour comes whenever our identity is on the line, when we are called on to make sacrifice, when we must make a decision that will cost us. The “hour” often puts our choices at odds with others and we must decide if we will live out and, in a way, die for what we believe.

    And so, maybe we can relate a bit to Jesus today. His hour had come, the hour for him to be glorified, sure, but it was also an hour that would lead first to his death. He knew this very well. In John’s Gospel, none of this is a surprise for Jesus – he is not arrested and dragged to his death, there is no Garden of Gethsemane moment where he begs for the cup to be taken from him. Instead, John’s Gospel has Jesus in full control. He knows why he came, he knows that the hour is at hand, and he freely lays down his life for all of us. But, even so, that hour does not come without some pause, even some dread – John’s Jesus is still fully human in that way.

    We are in the “homestretch” of Lent right now. As Jesus approaches his defining hour, we are entering into the final full week of Lent, this wonderful season of grace and blessing. Lent itself ends on Holy Thursday just before Evening Prayer or Vespers. So we have about ten and a half days left. And the preparations are in full swing. The maintenance staff has been repairing and refinishing the pews so that the Church will look good for Easter. We’ve been stocking up on the candles and hosts and supplies that we will need for these incredible days. Liturgies are being prepared, readings are being practiced, music is being rehearsed. The Elect have taken part in all the Scrutinies and are eager for the Easter Vigil when they will receive what they have been longing for – new life in Christ.

    So I think this is a good time for us to pause and see where we are and where we’ve been. Where has this Lent taken us? Did you participate in Forty Hours, in the Mission; have you come to the Stations of the Cross, did you eat at the Fish Fry? Have you found time for additional prayer in your life? Have you come to daily Mass? Have you fasted from those things which distract you from a full relationship with God? Have you given of your own time, talent and treasure to reach out to those who are not as fortunate as you are? Have you taken the time to confess your sins?

    If Lent has not been as stellar as you’d hoped; if you’ve intended to do some things that haven’t actually taken shape, if you’ve been lax in some of your practices, well you have these ten and a half days to make it right. If you’ve failed in your resolutions, they are not dead; now is the time to revive them and make a ten-day effort to let them change your hearts, to let God change your hearts. We even have one final opportunity for the Sacrament of Penance, next Saturday, from 3:30 to 5pm, and all three of us priests will be available: me, Fr. Ted and Fr. Jude.

    How wonderful it would be for all of us to enter into Holy Week with minds and hearts renewed, open to the grace of the Paschal Triduum. How wonderful it would be to pack this church on all three days of the Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil; all of us open to the celebration of our salvation through the cross and resurrection of Christ. The hour is nearly here, and our entering in to this hour enables us to face those other “hours” of our lives with more grace. So that when our identity is tested and our faith is on the line, we will know that we can take up the cross, confident in the resurrection.

    Jesus tells us today, “Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” We confidently approach this hour of judgment with the prayer of the Psalmist today, “Create a clean heart in me, O God.”

  • Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    There are two things happening in the readings these later days of Lent. In the first readings, we have had the prophets complaining about the evil that is plotted against them and also them calling on the Lord God to be their help. In this they foreshadow what will happen to the Christ during his life: he too will be a prophet who is not welcome, who is not understood, who is treated with evil intent. He too will find his only trust in the Lord God, his Father.

    The second thing that is happening is that, as we read through the later part of John’s Gospel, it’s starting to get a little dangerous for Jesus. The authorities aren’t sure what to make of him, and most of them would like his troublesomeness taken from them. They wish to arrest him and put an end to his prophecies and words of challenge. They begin to plot against him more and more in earnest. But, they are unable to lay hands on him because “his time has not yet come.” In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ life is not taken from him; instead, he freely lays it down, and he does it in the Father’s time, not his, not the Jews’, not anyone else’s.

    So in our readings we are beginning to hear a sense of urgency. Our days of Lent are quickly coming to a close. Holy Week will be here before we know it. And so if we’ve had Lenten plans that have not quite taken hold or have been put off, now is the time to revive them in earnest. We need to confess our sins, to fast, pray and give alms, to ready our hearts and our spirits for the wonderful days of grace that lie ahead.

  • Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Knowing where a person is from is a Scriptural way of labeling that person. So maybe we too have ways of “knowing where people are from” and we label them according to race, or parentage, or upbringing, or whatever. We are especially quick to label and write off those who would challenge us, just like the just one was “beset” in today’s first reading. We have to be very careful not to write people off – regardless if they are different from us, or are troublesome, or are challenging to us, because in doing so we write off Jesus himself, and turn our back once again on the words he would speak to us.

  • Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading, Moses stood before God to turn away his wrath from his people. Jesus, of course, perfects that by paying the price for our sins. Where Moses stops God’s anger for a time, Jesus’ sacrifice reconciles God and humanity forever. Jesus is telling the Jews, particularly the religious leaders of the time, that they had missed the real message of Moses; if they hadn’t, they would have accepted him. Jesus rebukes them for not accepting praise from God alone, which is really rebuking them for idolatry. It’s a caution we can accept also today, a caution to focus on God’s action in our lives and accept his grace for what we need.

  • Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    There’s a lot of talk about water in these readings today, and when that happens, we know that it means the talk is really about baptism. We ourselves are the sick and lame man who needed Jesus’ help to get into the waters of Bethesda. The name “Bethesda” means “house of mercy” in Hebrew, and that, of course, would be the Church. We see the Church too in the temple in the first reading, from which waters flow which refresh and nourish the surrounding countryside. These, of course, again are the waters of baptism. Lent calls us to renew ourselves in baptism. We are called to enter, once again, those waters that heal our bodies and our souls. We are called to drink deep of the grace of God so that we can go forth and refresh the world.

  • Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    One of the best reasons for us to make the most of Lent is that God is doing something new, as he tells us in today’s first reading. He wants of us an increase in faith. He wants us to have a faith that accepts the gift of miracles, but does not rely on miracles to sustain it. The royal official and his household came to believe when his child was cured, and that’s a good first step. Whatever it takes to bring us to faith is okay. But we are called to go beyond that, and to nurture a faith in Jesus that trusts even when trusting seems foolish. God is doing something new in us this Lent; may our Eucharist strengthen us to receive it.

  • Fourth Sunday of Lent

    Fourth Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings
    [These readings were used for the Mass of the Second Scrutiny.]

    When Dad was alive, we pretty much couldn’t go anywhere with him and not have him find someone there that he knew. He’d been a softball coach for over 25 years, had been a catechist at church, and helped with the youth retreat for many years. So it often seemed like he knew everyone everywhere we went. Sometimes it was kind of annoying, to be honest. We had a schedule, but he had to stop and catch up with whoever it was he recognized. To us, they were all strangers, but to Dad, they were so-and-so’s brother, or the girl he coached fifteen years ago, or the son or daughter of someone he knew from church. Not only that, but Dad was able to see in them talents or gifts that they sometimes didn’t know they had. He brought out the best in those he coached, and after he died, many people told us how he encouraged and challenged them to do wonderful things. We knew he did those things for us, of course, but to know how he saw great things in others was a real blessing.

    Dad had the kind of vision that God wanted from Samuel in today’s first reading. It’s easy to get caught up in seeing people from the outside, but God’s vision goes way beyond that – to the heart, to what makes the person whole and holy. Eliab was the logical choice for king of Israel. He was strong, mature, and good-looking; he would be charismatic enough to lead the people. But that’s not what God was looking for. He was looking for a man with a good heart, and David was that man. He too made a “splendid appearance” but that appearance went through to the core of who he was, and that was the vision God had for Israel.

    Today’s readings are filled with images of vision – blindness and sight, light and darkness. And it’s our second reading today that points to the problem: “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” Notice how it does not say “You were once in darkness” – no, it says, “You were once darkness.” We were once darkness itself, plagued by the darkness this world can so often bring upon us, engaging in the darkness that keeps us from seeing the heart of others but instead keeps us focused on their outward appearance or first impression. But, as that line also points out, we have the antidote – we have the Lord who makes us light – and not just people in the light, but people who are light itself. This is the crux of what the scriptures are getting at today.

    The vision theme is really played out in today’s Gospel reading. We have here the man born blind, and his healing. So I imagine you’ll all be surprised to know that this story is not about the healing of the blind man. Sure, that’s how it looks on the surface, but just like Samuel, we are being called to look a little bit deeper. Yes, Jesus heals a blind man. He does that rather quickly, actually, like in the first minute of the story. Then we spend all the rest of that story standing there listening to something else. And that something else is the real story here – that something else is the healing of the formerly-blind man’s darkness from the inside out.

    Notice the progression. He is sent to Siloam to wash and on coming out, he can see. He then is questioned by the people who knew him as a blind man about whether he was in fact the man who was blind. He replies “I am.” Then he has this to say about Jesus: this man called Jesus restored my sight, but I don’t know where he is now. Simple as that. Later he is questioned by the Pharisees, and when they suggest Jesus is a sinner because he does not respect the Sabbath, the blind man rejects this and says “he is a prophet.” He is questioned a second time by the Pharisees, and this time he goes a little further, he suggests that he is a disciple of Jesus, and when he meets Jesus after being thrown out of the synagogue, makes a beautiful confession of faith and says, “I do believe, Lord.” His faith has grown from being in total darkness, to recognizing Jesus as a man who healed him, to seeing him as a prophet, to acknowledging him as Lord and God. He has grown in his faith.

    So that, I would suggest, is the real story here. We have a story of a man who has grown in his faith. Just like last week, if you came to the nine o’clock Mass, we had the story of the woman at the well. It wasn’t just a story about a woman who gave Jesus a drink of water. It was a story of a woman who came to know Jesus more deeply, and realized that she was really thirsting for that living water that only Jesus can give.

    There are a couple of details in the story of the healing of the blind man that are worth noticing. First, he is sent to the pool of Siloam to wash the clay off of his eyes. So the detail here is that there is water involved. Whenever we see water mentioned in the Scriptures, it usually reminds us of a certain sacrament – what sacrament is that? Right, baptism. So what’s involved here is a baptismal moment, in which a man who was formerly plagued by darkness is now redeemed and re-created and comes to new life and light through the sacramental remedy of baptism. The name of the pool – “Siloam” – is significant. We are told that it means “sent.” So by washing in the pool of Siloam, the man receives baptism and is then sent forth into his true vocation. This is a mirror of our own baptisms in which the blindness that we are born with is washed away in the pool of baptism and we are sent forth to be people of light.

    The second little detail is the answer the man gives when he is first questioned by those who used to know him as the blind man. He is asked whether he is indeed the man who was born blind, and he says, “I am.” That probably is a familiar Scriptural phrase for you. Because whenever you hear it, it’s always in reference to God. When Moses asks God who he should say sent him to deliver the Israelites from Egypt, God says, “tell them I Am sent you.” In the Gospel of John, the phrase “I am” is used many times, but only by Jesus and in relation to himself. Except for this one time. Here it is used by the man re-created from darkness to light. Why would that be? Well, nothing in the Gospels is ever an accident, so we can dismiss that thought – it’s certainly no mere coincidence.

    What I think it means is that this man is presented now as another Christ, who has been healed and forgiven and converted from darkness to light and now sent into the world to witness to his faith and draw others to faith in God. And here, then is the real story, finally. The story is about all of us. We are the “other Christs” who are washed clean and recreated from darkness to light in baptism, and are called on to deepen our faith throughout our lives, and to spread the light to every corner of the dark places in which we live. We have to be people who reject the devil’s darkness: we have to reject seeing and labeling people in negative ways, reject racism and hatred, reject violence, terrorism, war and crime, reject the idea that life is expendable, we have to simply reject the darkness this world calls us to in all its forms. We have to go to the pool of baptism and allow God to recreate us as people of light.

    We do this together with our Elect, those who will receive the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist at Easter. As they come before us for the second scrutiny today, we reflect on the darkness in our own lives and we set it before the One who is light itself, the source of the light that we receive at baptism, and we renew our pledge to be the “other Christs” who will spread the light in our world – in our workplaces, our schools, our communities, wherever it is that God puts us. Because God intends to recreate those places, and all the people who are in them, with his wonderful light as well.

    Physical blindness isn’t nearly as destructive as the blindness that comes from stubbornly resisting the light. There is no sin in physical blindness. But we cannot – indeed we must not – remain as the Pharisees, saying “we see just fine, thank you.” That is the way sin remains. Just like the man born blind, we have to acknowledge our own darkness in order that it would be exposed to Christ’s wonderful light.

  • Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent

    Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Do you ever wonder if it could be said of our nation, “This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people?” The scriptures today make it clear that it is by following the commandments of the Lord that a nation will be judged as wise and intelligent. Part of that is because great laws are common sense: they are part of the social contract by which we must live if our society is to continue. So we can’t condone murder, theft, or anarchy, or there won’t be a society to live in, much less a society to be judged as wise and intelligent.

    But today’s scriptures seem to require more than just mere observance of the social contract. Following the Lord’s laws requires that we care for the most vulnerable among us, including the unborn, the poor, the marginalized, the stranger, the widowed, and all those who are forgotten. We must care for them, because God certainly cares for them, and he will judge us as a nation on how we have observed these commandments.

    Even laws do not free the faithful from observance of the commandments. One cannot break a commandment to avoid breaking a law. And one clearly cannot teach others to break the commandments for any reason. The Divine Law is the foundation for all other law, and is the basis of our judgment. Today’s readings are clear: if we are to be judged wise and intelligent, if we are to inherit everlasting life, we must live the Lord’s commandments and teach others to do the same.

  • Third Sunday of Lent

    Third Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings
    [N.B. This homily was given for just the Mass where the Scrutiny was done with the RCIA Elect; readings for other Masses were different.]

    The flu has been making its rounds in our area, as you probably know. We’ve had dozens of school kids out, and plenty of staff members too. This week was my turn, and I hope it doesn’t return any time soon – I’m still feeling the effects of it. But when it was at its worst, I was trying to drink a lot of fluids, which is pretty much the only thing you really can do when you have the flu. So I drank a lot of water, but as time went on, I got sick of drinking a lot of water. I know it doesn’t taste like anything, but I got sick of the taste of water! So I supplemented it with tea, of course, but I even gave myself permission to do something I don’t do very often, and that was to drink some soda – 7up mostly. And that tasted good, the 7up, but because it’s sugary, sooner rather than later I’d be thirsty again, and the only thing that really helped was – water. I drank a lot of water this week!

    I thought about that experience as I was preparing today’s homily, because this set of readings, which are being used just for this Mass because of the Scrutiny we will pray in a few minutes with our RCIA Elect, these readings are all about water. Whenever we see this much discussed about water in the Sunday readings, we should always think of a certain sacrament. Guess which one? Right, baptism. And so we’ll talk about that in just a minute, but before we go there, let’s take a minute to get at the subject of thirst. That, after all, is what gets us to water in the first place.

    6a00fad68ab80d00040109d0f54710000f-500piThe Israelites were sure thirsty in today’s first reading. After all, they had been wandering around the desert for a while now, and would continue to do so for forty years. At that point, they were thinking about how nice it would be if they had just remained slaves in Egypt so that they wouldn’t have to come all the way out here to the desert just to die of thirst. Better slaves than dead, they thought. The issue was that they didn’t have what they thirsted for, and had not yet learned to trust God to quench that thirst. So Moses takes all the complaining of the people and complains to God, who provides water for them in the desert. Think about that – they had water in the desert! And they had that water for as long as they continued to make that desert journey. They never ran out, they didn’t die of thirst, God proves himself trustworthy in a miraculous way. The end of the reading says they named the place Massah and Meribah because they wondered, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?” Obviously, the answer was “yes.”

    Which brings us to the rather curious story we have in the Gospel reading. If we think the story was all about a woman coming to get a bucket of water, then we’ve really missed the boat. This story asks us what we’re thirsting for, but at a much deeper level. Did Jesus really need a drink of water? Well, maybe, but he clearly thirsted much more for the Samaritan woman’s faith. Did she leave her bucket behind because she would never need to drink water again? No, she probably just forgot it in the excitement, but clearly she had found the source of living water and wanted to share it with everyone.

    In the midst of their interaction, Jesus uncovers that the woman has been thirsting for something her whole life long. She was married so many times, and the one she was with now was not her husband. She was worshipping, as the Samaritans did, on the mountain and not in Jerusalem as the Jews did. And every single day, she came to this well to draw water, because her life didn’t mean much more than that. She was constantly looking for water that would quench her, and yet she was thirsty all the time. Kind of reminds me of having the flu.

    And all of this would be very sad if she hadn’t just found the answer to her prayers, the source of living water. There is a hymn written by Horatio Bonar in 1846 called “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” that speaks to this wonderful Gospel story:

    I heard the voice of Jesus say,
    “Behold, I freely give
    the living water; thirsty one,
    stoop down and drink, and live.”
    I came to Jesus, and I drank
    of that life-giving stream;
    my thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
    and now I live in him.

    Which is exactly what happened to the Samaritan woman. She drank of the stream of Jesus’ life-giving water, and she now lived in him. She couldn’t even contain herself and ran right off to town, leaving the bucket of her past life behind, and told everyone about Jesus. They were moved to check this Jesus out, initially because of her testimony. But once they came to know him as the source of life-giving water, they didn’t even need her testimony to convince them; they too lived in him now.

    But remember that I said earlier that, whenever you see this much about water in the readings, the point is always baptism. And that’s what brings us here today. Lent, if we give ourselves to it, is totally about our baptism. For those among the Elect, that’s quite literally true. Our elect have been walking the desert journey to come to God’s promise just as the Israelites did. And they, like the Samaritan woman, have come to know the source of life-giving water. Just four weeks from yesterday, they will stand in that font outside in the narthex, and receive what they have been thirsting for all this time.

    But the rest of us, too, find baptism in our Lenten journey. Lent, as is often pointed out, means “springtime” and during Lent we await a new springtime in our faith. We await new growth, we look for renewed faith, we recommit ourselves to the baptism that is our source of life-giving water. We have what we are thirsting for, and Lent is a time to drink of it more deeply, so that we will be refreshed and renewed to live with vigor the life of faith and the call of the Gospel. These Lenten days take us to Easter and beyond with water that we can pour out in every time and place where God takes us. The life we receive in baptism can revive a world grown listless and droopy and make it alive with springs of refreshment that can only come from the one who gives us water beyond our thirsting, that follows us in our desert journeys, that springs up within those who believe.

    The Israelites wondered, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?” As we see the waters of baptism refreshing our Elect, and as we ourselves are renewed in our own baptism, we can only answer that question with a resounding “YES!”

  • Saturday of the Second Week of Lent

    Saturday of the Second Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    That Jesus would welcome sinners and eat with them is obviously a big deal in his day. The audacity of such an action was sinful in and of itself, at least as far as the religious leadership was concerned. But as an act of mercy, it’s grace unlike anything else. And the significance for us is understandable. Jesus still welcomes sinners and eats with them. If that were not true, none of us would be here for the Eucharist today, would we?

    Something that often gets overlooked in this very familiar parable is that both of the sons are sinful. We take it on faith that the youngest is sinful: taking half of his inheritance before his father is even in the grave, living a life of dissipation and sexual excess, using up all that money in a short time, content to eat among the swine which no good Jew would even think about touching, and finding himself very, very broken. But the so-called good son is sinful too. On his brother’s return, he refuses to go into the house to welcome him back, and takes his father to task for showing mercy and love. Failure to forgive is itself sinful.

    Both sons are sinful in their own way. Both need the father’s love and mercy and forgiveness. And both receive it. Far from the way a proper Jewish father would act, he runs out to meet both sons where they are. Protocol would have them come to him, and not he to them. He comes out twice, once to meet the younger son who is on the way back to him, and once to meet his older son who refuses to come in.

    Much is often made on where we find ourselves in this very familiar parable. Are we the sinful son? Are we the good son? Are we the father? It probably depends on the day – we might be like all of them at one time or another. I don’t think that’s what matters here. What matters is that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them, in our case, feeding us with the finest bread and wine which are of course his very own body and blood. Without this grace, we would have no life – salvation would only be a pipe dream. But because this grace is very real, we have the opportunity to gather here at the Table of the Lord, and one day at the great heavenly banquet.

    Praise God today for his forgiveness, mercy and grace. Praise God that he welcomes sinners and eats with them.