Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Lent

  • First Sunday of Lent

    First Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings

    We’ve gathered here on the first Sunday of Lent, and as we might expect, our readings give us the motivation for how to spend these days of Lent. I’m not always sure that we get the idea of Lent as straight as we should. If we think Lent is just about giving things that we like up for forty days so that we can remember how awful we are, then we’re certainly on the wrong track. Is Lent about repentance, about changing, about becoming better Christians? Well, yes, but even that’s not primarily it.

    Lent means “springtime” which is a little hard to appreciate on days that are still in the twenties and thirties, and when there’s precious little spring-like growth in nature. Spring conjures up images of new growth, flowers and leaves budding, the return of singing birds, that kind of thing, and certainly we’re not seeing any of that yet. The newness of spring is yet to come for us. But I think the “springtime” that Lent calls to mind is a springtime in ourselves. It’s another chance to get it right, another chance to grow, another chance to remember what we are about.

    And I think it’s the flood that gives us the biggest clue here. It’s mentioned in both the first and second readings, which is kind of unusual for our Liturgy, so that kind of highlights its importance. And the story is familiar enough for us, isn’t it? We know about the ark, we know about the animals two by two, we know about Noah and his family, about the destruction of the wicked and the saving of the good, we know about the forty days and forty nights of rain, and we know about what we see in today’s first reading: the rainbow.

    So I’d like to focus on two things today: the water, and the rainbow. First, the water. I remember a time many years ago now when I was leaving my job in Naperville to go work at another company. I had to go one day for my pre-employment physical and drug test, and when I was leaving to go home, it started to rain pretty hard. Overnight, the rain just continued to pour down, and when I was leaving to go to my job in Naperville the next morning, it was nearly impossible to get there. Somehow I found a few dry back roads and made it to the office, but I was certainly one of the few. My boss was even shocked I tried to make it there, considering I had already given notice that I was leaving.

    We watched out the window as some people tried to make it down flooded Jefferson Avenue and of course got stuck in the water, which I fear was higher than some of their cars. The electricity was out, and the damage was huge. It took a long time for the water to recede, and even longer for everything to get cleaned up. It was a nasty picture of how devastating the power of water can be. Many of us have experienced floods in our lives, maybe some of you remember the one I am speaking of. But we know that all of this is but a small sample of the flood that happened in today’s first reading.

    So what was the point of this flood? Was it so that God could take delight in punishing the wicked? Was this a vignette of sinners in the hands of an angry God? Was this the only way God could rid the world of its evil and make a way for goodness? Hardly. I think the flood meant something more, here. St. Peter tells us the reason for the flood in today’s second reading: “This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.” Whenever we see that much water being spoken of in Scripture, we should always think baptism. Baptism is, essentially, a washing away of the bad and cleansing the person so that goodness can take root and grow. Baptism is the precursor to a springtime of new life in all of us.

    The second symbol is the rainbow. When our family was on vacation last year, we had kind of a stormy day one day. In the evening, just as the sun was setting, there was a beautiful, double rainbow over Lake Michigan. We all watched it for a while, and took some pictures … it was a really peaceful end to a rainy day. In today’s first reading, the rainbow is established as a sign of God’s covenant with us. The author has God saying it will be a reminder for him “so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings.” But I think the reminder is more for us.

    When we see a rainbow, we should make ourselves aware once again of the great blessing and grace that is our relationship with God. Because it wasn’t Noah – or any other person – who initiated the covenant, it was God. God was the more powerful party and he didn’t have to forge a covenant at all. He could have wiped everyone out and been done with it, but that’s not who God is. God is all about our salvation, all about bringing us to eternal life, and it is God alone who can make that agreement, and he does it without even being asked.

    This too is a sign of our own baptism. In baptism, we enter that covenant with God in which he extends the great offer of everlasting life. It’s a pledge of a really eternal springtime, with us as his chosen people, called and given grace to become completely his own, with all the many blessings that brings with it.

    So as we enter this Lenten springtime, we have the opportunity to renew among us the dignity of our baptism. We do that in two ways. First, we see during this time of Lent increased activity among those who would join us at the Table of the Lord. This weekend, we have in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults the Rite of Sending of the catechumens to the cathedral for election. [Today] Tomorrow, Bishop Sartain will choose them on behalf of the Church for baptism, and they will no longer be known as catechumens, but instead as the Elect. Today [Yesterday] we have [had] the opportunity to approve these men for presentation to the bishop.

    In the weeks ahead, they will participate in the scrutinies, during which their former life outside the church will be cast off, we will pray for the forgiveness of their sins, and we will perform a minor exorcism which allows them to receive the sacraments of initiation. Then, on the Easter Vigil of Holy Saturday night, among the retelling of our stories of salvation, we will welcome them in to our Church, baptizing them, Confirming them in the Holy Spirit, and sharing the Eucharist with them for the very first time.

    But none of that, as you might suspect, is for the Elect alone. And so the second way we renew our baptism is by reflecting on our own experience once again. We too are Elect of God, having been called to the Sacraments, whenever we received them, not by our own power, but by the awesome grace of our God who always seeks us out, who runs to us wherever we are, who welcomes us back no matter how many times we have walked away, who catches us no matter how far we have fallen. We are not sinners in the hands of an angry God, we are the saved in the hands of a God of mercy and grace.

    These forty days, then, are an opportunity for a new springtime in us. A new growth of grace in our lives, washed clean in the waters of baptism, renewed in the power of the Holy Spirit, and fed by the Bread of Life. Praise God for the gift of Lent.

  • Thursday after Ash Wednesday

    Thursday after Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings

    When it comes right down to it, we have a choice. We can choose life or death, blessing or curse, the way of the Cross or the way of the world. The choice that we make has huge consequences, eternal consequences. The stakes are big ones, and we must choose wisely.

    Many of us can probably recall some point in our lives where we had to make that choice of what we were going to do with our lives, what we wanted to be when we grew up. That choice can be so confusing, so painful, so difficult to make. When it finally worked for me was when I finally gave it over to God and asked that he challenge me in a big way. That’s when I felt the call to go to seminary, which really surprised me, and I really resisted that at first. But when I finally gave in, when I finally decided to do what God asked me to do, the choice was much easier. We all need that kind of guidance from the Holy Spirit, and that’s what gets us through those difficult choices in our lives.

    The command from Deuteronomy is clear: “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 way of the Lord is life-giving, the way of the world is death. The way of the Lord is blessing, the way of the world is curse. The passing pleasures of the world are nothing compared to the eternal pleasures of God’s way. The trials we may experience in this life when we choose to follow God are passing things, and give way to great grace and peace.

    Jesus asks us today to make a choice to take up our crosses and follow him. That’s not always so appealing on a day-to-day basis. There is great suffering in the cross. But, as he says, what profit is there for us if we gain the whole world but lose our very selves? Blessed, the Psalmist tells us, is the one who walks in the way of the Lord and follows not the counsel of the wicked. May we all this day choose life, that we and our descendents might live.

  • Ash Wednesday

    Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings [from the Ash Wednesday Service of the Word]

    Behold: now is the acceptable time!
    Behold: now is the day of salvation!

    We have come here today for all sorts of reasons. Lots of us may still have the remnants of old and bad teaching that you have to come to Church on Ash Wednesday and receive these “magic” ashes or something horrible will happen to you. When you don’t come to Church on a regular basis, you lose contact with God and the community, and yes, that is pretty horrible, but not in a superstitious kind of way – nothing that we celebrate here is magic. The real reason we come to Church on this the first day of Lent is for what we celebrate on the day after Lent: the resurrection of the Lord on Easter Sunday. Through the Cross and Resurrection, Jesus has won for us salvation, and we are the grateful beneficiaries of that great gift. All of our Lenten observance, then, is a preparation for the joy of Easter.

    Lent calls us to repent, to break our ties with the sinfulness and the entanglements that are keeping us tethered to the world instead of free to live with our God and receive his gift of salvation. Our Church offers us three ways to do that during Lent. First, we can fast. We can give up snacks, or a favorite food, or eat one less meal perhaps one day a week, or we can give up a favorite television program or activity. Fasting helps us to be aware of the ways God works to sustain us when we’re hungry. The lack of television provides us with a silence that can be filled by God’s presence. The whole idea of fasting is that we need to come to realize that there is nothing that we hunger for that God can’t provide, and to cut our ties with anything that keeps us from God.

    Second, we can pray. We already must pray every day and attend Mass every Sunday, not to do so is seriously sinful. But maybe Lent can be the opportunity to intensify our prayer life, to make it better, to make it more, to draw more life from it. Maybe we are not people who read Scripture every day, and we can work through one of the books of the Bible during Lent. Maybe we can learn a new prayer or take on a new devotion. Maybe we can spend time before the Lord in the Tabernacle or in adoration, especially during our 40 hours devotion we’ll have next week. Maybe we can just carve out some quiet time at the end of the day to give thanks for our blessings, and to ask pardon for our failings. Intensifying our prayer life this Lent can help us to be aware of God’s presence at every moment of our day and in every place we are.

    Third, we can give alms or do works of charity. We can save money for Operation Rice Bowl, or perhaps help to provide a meal at Hesed House, or join the St. Vincent dePaul Society. Maybe we can devote some time to mentoring a child who needs help with their studies, or volunteer to help in our school or religious education program. Works of charity might be a family project, perhaps volunteering at a soup kitchen together, or shopping together for items to donate to Loaves and Fishes. When we do works of charity, we can learn to see others as God does, and love them the way God loves them and us.

    And none of this, as the Gospel reminds us today, is to be done begrudgingly or half-heartedly. None of it is to be done with the express purpose of letting the world see how great we are. It is always to be done with great humility, but also with great joy. Our acts of fasting, prayer, and charity should be a celebration of who God is in our lives, and a beautiful effort to strengthen our relationship with him.

    It is my prayer that this Lent can be a forty day retreat that will bring us all closer to God. May we all hear the voice of the prophet Joel from today’s first reading: “Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart!”

  • Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    One of the graces that I have here at the parish is that whenever I go to parish meetings, we always pray through the Gospel for the coming Sunday and discuss it. The Spirit works through the community, and more often than not, I’ll start thinking about the readings in a different light than I might have all by myself. This week I met on Monday with the finance committee, and so as we prayed through this Gospel, I had my finance committee thinking cap on. So my first thought was, well, the place where Jesus is meeting is too small by far, so we’re going to have to initiate a building campaign, and that’s going to be a lot of work. The second thought was, great, they’ve cut a hole in the roof and now we have to pay to have that fixed! I did not share those thoughts out loud and, thankfully, the Spirit was working in the folks on the committee, who expressed much more pious thoughts!

    There’s a lot of paralysis going on in these readings. In the first reading, it’s the whole nation of Israel that is paralyzed. They are in captivity in Babylon, and their oppression is pretty cruel. They longed for God to come and rid them of their exile, as he had when they were slaves in Egypt. Where are God’s mercies of the past? When will their exile come to an end? Isaiah speaks to them words of consolation today. God will not just lead them back to their land, making a way through the desert and a river through the wasteland. But he is also doing something new: he will deal with the root cause of their paralysis: sin. It was sin that led them into slavery in Egypt, it was sin that led them to captivity in Babylon. So if they are to be truly freed, truly healed of their paralysis, they need to be forgiven of their sins. And it is only God who can do that, so he takes the initiative to do that new thing among them. Praise God!

    The paralysis in the Gospel is more literal, but also works on the figurative level here too. The center of attention might seem to be the paralytic, but really it’s Jesus. Jesus has the crowds captivated, preaching words that have them spellbound. So much so, that he can hardly move, for all the crowds around him! Seeing this, the paralytic’s friends take bold action: they haul him up onto the roof, make a hole in it, and lower him down, right in the midst of Jesus and his hearers. You have to imagine that the crowds are on the edge of their seats – except there probably wasn’t room for any chairs – and they were just waiting with eager anticipation to see what Jesus would do now. Who could heal a paralytic? Jesus speaks curious words: “Child, your sins are forgiven.” – What on earth can that mean? Who has the audacity to say he can forgive sins? Why doesn’t he just heal the man as the man had hoped for?

    But Jesus is doing something new too. These last several weeks, we have been hearing about Jesus healing all sorts of people, including a leper just last week. And through it all, he’s been telling them to keep it quiet – not that they did! – because he wasn’t healing people just be known as a wonder worker. He’s trying to get at the root cause of the people’s paralysis, the real disease and not just the symptom. And that disease is, of course, sin. “Child, your sins are forgiven.” Those are the words he speaks to the paralytic, because he insists on healing the man from the inside out. The physical paralysis was nothing, the really paralyzing thing was sin. Sin paralyzes us all from time to time. It affects our prayer life, our vocation, our relationships. It holds us back, it keeps us from moving on to what God intends for us. When we are paralyzed by sin, nothing good can come to us, nothing good can even be seen in us or by us. Sin is quite literally deadly. And so, yeah, Jesus can heal a man’s paralysis, but whoa, he can even heal the sinfulness of the whole human family. Now that’s a wonder worker! Healing the world of sin was the whole reason for Jesus being here in the first place. Praise God!

    We are here today on the precipice of a new season of the Church year. This Wednesday is the beginning of our Lent, the beginning of that time of year when we all have the opportunity to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel. It’s a forty-ish day retreat for us; we can take stock of those sins that have held us back, and bring them to our Jesus who came that they might be blotted out. And we know that, as good as our lives tend to be, as faithful as we try to be, we have, on occasion, blown it, both individually and as a human family. We have missed opportunities to be of service. We have held on to grudges and past hurts. We have broken relationships through the distractions of lust in its many forms. We have taken what belongs to others, maybe not giving an honest day’s work for our pay, or taking credit for work that was not ours. We have stolen from the poor, either by not making an effort to reach out to them, or by wasting resources. We have deprived God of the worship due to him, either by missing Mass for yet another soccer game, or by being inattentive at Mass or forgetting our prayers. We have taken the lives of others by allowing abortion to continue its pandemic spread through the world, or by not caring for the sick, or by allowing racial bigotry to go unchallenged. We have dishonored our parents and ancestors by allowing the elderly to die alone, or by allowing the cost of health care to be beyond what people can pay. You get the idea – our personal and communal sins have been myriad, and they have paralyzed us for far too long.

    But our Lent is a gift to us. Our ashes remind us that we will not live forever, so the time to open ourselves up to change is now. We will have these days to concentrate on fasting, almsgiving and prayer. This is a gift, but also a responsibility; it is likewise sinful to ignore the opportunity completely. Our fasting might be food, or it might be something else that consumes us, like television or the internet. Our almsgiving can consist of any or all of the traditional ways of time, talent, and treasure. Our prayer can be communal or personal, devotional or reflective, whatever it is that is going to lead us face-to-face with Christ. This is also a time to rid ourselves of the sin that binds us, to hear those wonderful words spoken to us as well: “Child, your sins are forgiven.” We have so many opportunities planned for the Sacrament of Penance, that if you cannot find a time to go to Confession, you’re just not looking hard enough!

    But if it’s the length of time since you last received that sacrament that is paralyzing you, then you need to hear what I always tell people about the Sacrament of Penance: Don’t let anything stop you. When you go into the confessional, tell the priest: “Father it’s been years since my last confession, and I might need some help to do this right.” If he doesn’t welcome you back and fall all over himself trying to help you make a good confession, you have my permission to get up and leave and go find a priest who is more welcoming. Because it is my job to help you make a good confession, it is my job to make sure the experience is meaningful for you, it is my job to make you want to come back, and I take that very seriously. I know that Fr. Ted does too.

    The important thing to remember in all of this is that you cannot let anything stop you from being healed of what paralyzes you. If need be, make a hole in the roof so that you can end up right at the feet of Jesus. Lent is our gift from God, that opportunity that he initiates to do something new among us. Let’s not ever turn away from that gift. Our staff had a retreat day this week, and in it we heard these words from the Rule of St. Benedict which I think tell us everything we should learn from today’s Liturgy of the Word: “Let no one follow what he thinks profitable to himself, but rather that which is profitable to another; let them show unto each other all … charity with a chaste love. Let them fear God, … and prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may He bring us all together to life everlasting. Amen.”

  • Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

    Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

    Today’s readings

    goodfridayToday is a hard day for us Christians because this is the day that highlights our weaknesses and underscores our brokenness. In today’s readings, we hear about the Suffering Servant, the one who was despised and rejected, who bore our infirmities, who went silently to his death. The writer of our second reading speaks of our great High Priest who has known our weakness and who obediently suffered everything that we do, including our own death. And our Passion reading reminds us how humiliating and gruesome that death really was. Today we remember the death of Jesus Christ, perhaps the darkest hour on the face of the earth.

    And it’s a dark hour that a lot of people can relate to. Many have known the hopelessness of a land scarred by war or terrorism, communities marred by crime and neglect, families damaged by poverty. Still more can remember the emotional turmoil caused by the illness or death of a loved one, or the uncertainty of losing a job or changing a career, or the constant upheaval of a marriage or family in crisis. Even closer to home, so many of us suffer the loneliness of unconfessed sin, or the constant battle of addiction. From time to time, all of us have an hour, or hours, of darkness. We all suffer the pain which afflicted our Great High Priest, the Suffering Servant.

    There are very few guarantees in this world, but one of them is that we will know at some point the gut-wrenching agony of physical, emotional, or spiritual pain. And often we may know all of them all at once. That is why even though this is a hard day for us Christians to celebrate, it is a necessary one. On this day, we remember that our High Priest did not ignore our pain, nor was he ever embarrassed by it. Instead, he embraced the same pain that we suffer, enduring it all the way to the Cross. On this day, Christ unites himself perfectly with our human nature, and sanctifies it entirely, blessing it as part of God’s plan for salvation.

    We are a people who eagerly yearn for the Resurrection. And that is as it should be. We must certainly hope for the great salvation that is ours, and the light and peace of God’s Kingdom. But today we remember that that salvation was bought at a very dear price, the price of the death of our Savior, our great High Priest. Today we look back on all of our sufferings of the past or the present, we even look ahead to those that may yet be. And as we sit here in God’s presence we know that we are never ever alone in those dark hours, that Christ has united himself to us in his suffering and death. May we too unite ourselves to him in our own suffering, and walk confidently through it with him, pass the gates of salvation and enter into God’s heavenly kingdom.

  • Wednesday of Holy Week

    Wednesday of Holy Week

    Today's readings

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    "The Son of Man indeed goes, as it is written of him…" The gospels tell us in many places that Jesus willingly laid down his life. This was the mission the Father gave him, and this was the mission he had taken up on this earth. In these final days of Holy Week, Jesus lives up to the mission he has freely taken up. Isaiah says of him: "And I have not rebelled, have not turned back. I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; My face I did not shield from buffets and spitting." There would have been precious little grace had it happened any other way. "For your sake I bear insult," the Psalmist says, "and shame covers my face." In what way are we being called to willingly take up our cross today?

  • Tuesday of Holy Week

    Tuesday of Holy Week

    Today's readings

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    "And it was night." These are the three most chilling words in the Gospel of John. John's Gospel is all about the light. In the first verses of the first chapter of the Gospel, John speaks of the light that is Christ, "through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." And now that Judas has taken up his task, the light is overcome by darkness. Jesus had been the light of which Isaiah speaks, but now is the hour of darkness. "And it was night."

  • Monday of Holy Week

    Monday of Holy Week

    Today's readings

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    The cost of Jesus' obedience to the Father is quickly becoming known at this point. In his life, he lived as the Suffering Servant of whom Isaiah speaks in today's first reading. He has been a covenant to all of us, has cured the sick, opened the eyes of the blind, and even raised the dead. Now he will embrace our own death, as Mary prophesies today with the anointing of his feet. The journey to his death has begun. His body is prepared. Come, in these holy days, and keep vigil with him.

  • Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

    Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

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    Today, and throughout this Holy Week, we have in our Liturgy a stark reminder that the hope that we have in the Resurrection was purchased at a great price. Life in our world today would prefer to ignore the Cross. And with good reason. Because the Cross is embarrassing. Until Christianity, no religion worth its salt would base itself on a god who suffered an ignoble death that was reserved for the most obstinate of criminals. And even now, you know, we’d rather not dwell on pain, would we? We live in an age where there is a pill for every minor pain and a treatment for every discomfort. In and of itself, this is not a bad thing, but then we can often take it farther and find ways to mask any pain, physical or psychological, that comes our way, and this is not healthy.

    The Cross is an in-your-face reminder that pain is part and parcel of our life of salvation. Jesus did not come to take away our pain, he came to redeem it. Not only that, he came to take it on himself. Far from being embarrassed by our sin and pain, Jesus took it to the cross, redeeming our brokenness, and leaving us an everlasting promise that there is no pain too great for our God to bear and there is no way we can ever fall so far that our God can’t reach us. We may think our pain and our sin is embarrassing, but Jesus left none of that behind on the way to the cross. He took our every hurt, our every pain, our every sin, our every shame, our every resentment, our every emptiness, and left them all there at the foot of the Cross.

    I know there are many among us now who are carrying pain with them each day. Maybe it’s unconfessed sin, or maybe it’s a broken relationship. Maybe it’s the sadness of the illness or death of a loved one. Maybe it’s the splintering of a family. Maybe it’s a hurt that goes back to childhood, or a frightening diagnosis about yourself. Maybe it’s difficulty with your job or career, or trouble in a marriage. Maybe it’s a loneliness you can’t seem to shake. For all of us who are hurting in any way, all we have to do is look at the Cross and realize that there is nothing our God won’t do for us. He may not take away our pain right away, but he will never ever leave us alone in it. And ultimately, he will raise us up out of it.

    That’s the message of these Holy days. This Thursday evening, we will celebrate the giving of the Eucharist and the priesthood, institutions that remind us Christ is always present to us in the Church. On Friday afternoon and evening, we will have a chance to embrace Christ’s suffering with a reflection on the Passion, veneration of the Cross, and reception of Holy Communion. Finally, on Saturday evening, we will gather here in a darkened church to hear stories of our salvation and to celebrate Christ’s victory over sin and death. We will welcome a new member into our community, and rejoice with her in our Risen Lord. I invite you to enter into all of it, embracing the suffering, and being caught up in the celebration.

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings [display_podcast]

    The covenant faithfulness of the Lord is a wonderful topic for Mass during our Forty Hours Devotion. One of the fruits of Eucharistic Adoration is that we can come before our Lord, with all of our problems or doubts or concerns, and know that in the Eucharist, God is always present to us in an immanent and real way. The God of the all the world, the One who created the heavens, the One who is over and above all things, this God humbles himself and comes to us in the Eucharist. All we have to do is spend some time before him, to look up at the monstrance, and we will realize that his covenant promise to be with us always has been fulfilled.

    The covenant God made with Abraham was just the beginning. Abraham was promised that he would have many descendants and would be the father of many nations. And God kept that covenant, and went one better. Or maybe a million better. That covenant was superseded by the covenant God made with his creatures in the person of Jesus Christ. In Christ, we have forgiveness of sins and the promise of life everlasting. In Christ, the Church becomes not merely the parent of many descendents here on earth, but the parent of all descendents in the heavenly kingdom.

    Many think of Jesus as the new Covenant, but as he points out to us today, “before Abraham came to be, I AM.” The Covenant that came about in Christ is the covenant God had in mind all along. Blessed are we who can adore the covenant faithfulness of our God.