Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Lent

  • Friday of the First Week of Lent

    Friday of the First Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    It would be so much easier if we could define our own righteousness. If we could choose who to reach out to and who to ignore, life would be good, wouldn’t it? If we could hold grudges against some people and only have to forgive some people, we would easily consider ourselves justified. But the Christian life of discipleship doesn’t work that way. Instead, our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees or we have no part in the Kingdom of heaven. It’s that simple.

    So when we bear grudges, we murder. When we label people and then write them off, we are liable to judgment. Because justice and righteousness in the Kingdom of God isn’t about looking squeaky clean, it’s about being clean inside and out, changing our attitudes, changing our hearts, renewing our lives.

    If Lent purifies us in this way, we can truly pray with the Psalmist, “with the LORD is kindness and with him is plenteous redemption.”

  • Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

    Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    The prophet Isaiah and Jesus speak today about the great power of words. Isaiah speaks specifically of the power of God’s word, a word that will not return empty but will go out and accomplish the purpose for which God sent it.  We see the word that the prophet speaks of here, of course as the Word – “Word” with a capital “W.”  That Word is Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who comes to accomplish the salvation of the world, the purpose of God ever since the world’s creation.  Indeed, that Word would never return to the Father empty or void, but instead filled with the richness of God’s beloved children – you and me, the ones he came to save.

    The prayer that Jesus gives us today, the classic prayer that echoes in our hearts in good times and in bad, is a prayer with a specific purpose in mind.  That prayer, if we pray it rightly, recognizes that God’s holiness will bring about a Kingdom where his divine will would be done in all of creation.  It begs God’s forgiveness and begs also that we too would become a forgiving and merciful people, just as God is merciful to us.  Finally, it asks for help with temptation and evil, something with which we struggle every day.  It is the prayer above all other prayers, the prayer that unites us to the Father’s will for us, the prayer that contains every prayerful attitude or thought.

    Today’s readings are a plea that God’s will would finally be done.  That his Word would go forth and accomplish God’s purpose.  That his will would be done on earth as in heaven.  As we pray those familiar words, they can often go past us without catching our attention.  But today, maybe we can slow down just a little, and pray them more reflectively, that God’s will would be accomplished in every place, starting in our very own lives.

    Because to God belongs the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

  • Monday of the First Week of Lent

    Monday of the First Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.

    People often recoil at the mere suggestion of being called to personal holiness.  Oftentimes, this is wrapped up in what is really a misplaced and false humility, that kind of humility that says that since I’m good for nothing, and so there is no way I can even come close to being like God.  Yet the fact of the matter is that we are made good by our Creator God who designed us to be like himself, perfect in holiness.

    And if that seems too lofty to attain, Moses and Jesus spell out the steps to getting there today.  Clearly, personal holiness is not simply a matter of saying the right prayers, fasting at the right times, going to Church every Sunday and reading one’s Bible.  Those things are a good start and are key activities on the journey to holiness, but using them as a façade betrays a lack of real holiness.  Because for both Moses and Jesus, personal holiness, being holy as God is holy, consists of engaging in justice so that hesed – the Hebrew word meaning right relationship and right order – can be restored in the world.

    Every single command we receive from Moses and Jesus today turns us outward in our pursuit of holiness.  Our neighbor is to be treated justly, and that neighbor is every person in our path.  Robbery, false words, grudges, withholding charity, rendering judgment without justice, not granting forgiveness and bearing grudges are all stumbling blocks to personal holiness.  All of these keep us from being like God who is holy.  And worse yet, all of these things keep us from God, period.

    The law of the Lord is perfect, as the Psalmist says, and the essence of that law consists of love and justice to every person.  If we would strive for holiness this Lent – and we certainly ought to do so! –  we need to look to the one God puts in our path, and restore right relationship with that person.

  • The First Sunday of Lent: Remembering Who We Are

    The First Sunday of Lent: Remembering Who We Are

    Today’s readings

    Perhaps the greatest sin of modern times, maybe of all time, is that we sometimes forget who we are. Politicians forget that they are elected officials, given the trust of the people they serve, and so they become embroiled in scandal or sell themselves to special interest groups. Church leaders forget that they are ordained by God for holiness and so they give in to keeping up appearances, and bring scandal to the Church. But it’s not just these people; all of us fall to this temptation at one time or another – maybe several times – in our lives. Young people forget that they have been raised in good Christian, loving homes, and in their quest to define themselves, turn away from the values they have been taught. Adults forget that they are vocationally called to love their spouse and their children and so get caught up in their careers to the detriment of their family. Think of any problem we have or any scandal that has been endured and deep at the core of it, I think it stems from forgetting who we are.

    Forgetting who we are changes everything for the worse. It makes solving problems or ending scandal seem insurmountable: we constantly have to cook up new solutions to new problems, because we’ve gone in a new direction on a road that never should have been traveled. That was the scandal of Eden, and the scandal of the Tower of Babel, among others. Once we’ve forgotten who we are and acted impetuously, it’s hard to un-ring the bell.

    One of the consequences of forgetting who we are is that we forget who God is too. We no longer look to God to be our Savior, because we instead would like to solve things on our own. Perhaps we are embarrassed to come to God because we are deep in a problem of our own making. We see this all the time in our lives: who of us wants to go to a parent or teacher or boss or authority figure – or anyone, really – and tell them that we thought we had all the answers but now we’ve messed up and we can’t fix it and we desperately need their help? If that’s true then we’re all the more reluctant to go to God, aren’t we?

    This forgetting who we are, and forgetting who God is, is the spiritual problem that our readings are trying to address today. Moses meets the people on the occasion of the harvest sacrifice, and challenges them not to make the sacrifice an empty, rote repetition of a familiar ritual. They are to remember that their ancestors were wandering people who ended up in slavery in Egypt, only to be delivered by God and brought to a land flowing with milk and honey. And it is for that reason that they are to joyfully offer the sacrifice.

    St. Paul exhorts the Romans to remember who Jesus was and to remember his saving sacrifice and glorious resurrection. They are to remember that this faith in Christ gives them hope of eternity and that, calling on the Lord, they can find salvation.

    But it is the familiar story of Christ being tempted in the desert that speaks to us most clearly of the temptation to forget who we are and who God is. The devil would like nothing more than for Jesus to forget who he was and why he was here. He would have Jesus forget that real hunger is not satisfied by mere bread, but must be satisfied by God’s word. He would have Jesus forget that there is only one God and that real glory comes from obedience to God’s command and from living according to God’s call. He would have Jesus forget that life itself is God’s gift and that we must cherish it as much as God does.

    But Jesus won’t forget. He refuses to turn stones into bread, remembering that God will take care of all his real hunger. He refuses to worship Satan and gain every kingdom of the world, remembering that he belongs to God’s kingdom. He refuses to throw away his life in a pathetic attempt to test God, remembering that God is trustworthy and that he doesn’t need to prove it.

    The way that we remember who we are as a Church is through the Sacred Liturgy. In the Liturgy of the Word, we hear the stories of faith handed down from generation to generation. These are the stories of our ancestors, from the Old Testament and the New. In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we engage in anamnesis, a remembering, or re-presentation of Christ’s Passion and death, and as we do that, it becomes new for us once again; it brings us to Calvary and the empty tomb and the Upper Room. There is no better way for us to remember who we are as a people than to faithfully participate in the Sacred Liturgy.

    And so we come to this holy place on this holy day to remember that we are a holy people, made holy by our God. We remember who we are and who God is. We rely on the Spirit’s help to reject the temptations of Satan that would call us to forget who we are and instead become a people of our own making. We have come again to another Lent. Lent is a time of conversion and springtime and re-creation. For the people in our Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults – RCIA – it is a time of conversion from one way of life to another as they approach the Easter Sacraments. For the rest of us, Lent is a time of continued re-conversion and re-commitment to our sacramental life. Our Church teaches us that conversion is a life-long process. In conversion, we see who our God is more clearly and we see ourselves in a new, and truer light – indeed we see who we really are before God.

    That is life in God as it was always meant to be. Remembering our God, remembering who we are, we have promise of being set on high, as the Psalmist proclaims today. This Lent can lead us to new heights in our relationship with God. Praise God for the joy of remembering, praise God for the joy of Lent.

  • Friday after Ash Wednesday

    Friday after Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes people say they aren’t giving up something for Lent, they’re just going to try to do something positive. I think that can be a little permissively vague, to be honest. I usually tell people it doesn’t just have to be one or the other.  In fact, the Church teaches that it shouldn’t be one or the other.  Today’s Liturgy of the Word makes it clear that it very definitely should be both.

    Fasting is important because it helps us to see how blessed we are. It is important because it helps us to realize that there is nothing that we hunger for that God can’t provide. Fasting teaches us, once again, that God is God and we are not. This is important for all of us independent-minded modern-day Americans. We like to be in charge, in control, and the fact is that whatever control we do have is an illusion. God is in control of all things, even when it seems like we are in chaos. Fasting teaches us that we can do without the things we’ve given up, and that God can provide for us in much richer ways. Fasting is absolutely essential to having an inspiring, life-changing Lent, and I absolutely think that people should give things up for Lent.

    But giving something up for Lent does not excuse us from the obligation to love our neighbor. This falls under the general heading of almsgiving, and along with fasting and prayer, it is one of the traditional ways of preparing our hearts for Easter during Lent. We might be more mindful of the poor, contributing to the food pantry or a homeless shelter or relief organization. We might reach out by serving in some capacity, like volunteering for the mobile pantry, or helping out at the Daybreak shelter. We also might give the people closest to us in our lives a larger portion of the love that has been God’s gift to us, in some tangible way. Today’s first reading reminds us that fasting to put on a big show is a sham. Fasting to bring ourselves closer to God includes the obligation of almsgiving and prayer. Together, these three facets of discipleship make us stronger Christians and give us a greater share of the grace that is promised to the sons and daughters of God.

  • 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.

    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. 

    Jesus asks us today to make a choice to take up our crosses and follow him.  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?  May we all this day renounce the hold the world has on us, and choose life, that we and our descendants might live.

  • Ash Wednesday

    Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings

    Rend your hearts, not your garments,
    and return to the LORD, your God.

    Today we begin something really important.  And I don’t mean just the smudging of our foreheads with the ashes of burnt palms.  That’s just an outward sign.  What I mean is the inward activity those ashes represent, what our collect prayer today calls “this campaign of Christian service.”  This time of Lent is so important to us because it calls us to newness in our relationship with God, that relationship that brings us to the eternal reward for which we were created.  That’s why we call it “Lent.” Lent means “springtime,” a time of rebirth and renewal and new creation.

    We have come here today for all sorts of reasons. But the most important 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 have been blessed to be 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.  Traditionally, our Church offers us three ways to do that: fasting, prayer and almsgiving.  Giving things up, spending more time in prayer and devotion, dedicating ourselves to works of charity, all of these help us to deeply experience the love of Christ as we enter into deeper relationship with him.  That is Lent, and the time to begin it, as we are told, is now: Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!

    Today, you can take our Lenten handout with you as you leave Mass.  It has information about all of the spiritual events that are taking place here at Saint Mary’s during Lent, including our parish Mission with Father Ed O’Shea, a program for men on Saturday mornings led by our Fishers of Men group, and online mission allowing us to Encounter Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, and a Bible Study called “Witness at the Cross” which will prepare us for Good Friday.  There is also a list of events for our parish Year of the Eucharist.  I invite you to take one, look it over, sign up for what jumps out at you, and save the handout for future reference.  I’m pleased that we have an array of spiritual offerings to help all of us make the most out of Lent.

    The handout also lists our Holy Week, Easter, and Divine Mercy Sunday schedule, and lists times for confessions during Lent.  It’s important to make a good confession some time during Lent, taking that step of repentance which is the first step toward newness, re-creation, and springtime in our lives. 

    Today’s ashes are just the beginning of our “campaign of Christian service.”  Ashes have traditionally been a symbol of an interior disposition.  In scripture, you’ll hear of people sprinkling ashes on their person as they ask pardon for their sins.  Then they fasted and prayed for renewal, and changed their lives.  That’s what the repentance of Lent is all about: literally turning around and going in a new direction.  Getting back on the path and following our Lord who calls us to take up our crosses and follow him.  So ashes can’t be the last time you’re here in church, it can’t be the only discipline of Lent.  It’s the beginning, and certainly a good one.

    Finally, a word about receiving ashes today.  You’ll recall that last year, due to the pandemic, the Vatican directed that instead of etching a cross on foreheads, we return to the more ancient practice of sprinkling ashes on the top of a person’s head.  This is reminiscent of the practice I mentioned a minute ago, in which people sprinkled themselves with ashes as a sign of repentance.  This year, you have both options.  If you come forward with your head bowed, we will sprinkle ashes on your head.  If you don’t, we will trace a cross on your forehead.  Either is fine.

    So here we go.  Our Lenten fasting, almsgiving, and prayer begin today with the sprinkling of ashes.  It’s a wonderful gift to have this opportunity to make our relationships with God and others right.  It’s a great time to get out of our own heads and show our love for others as God has loved 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!”

  • Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord

    Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord

    Today’s readings

    I think if we had to sum up the Liturgy today with a contemporary quip, it might be, “Well, that escalated quickly!”  In the first Gospel we heard, during the blessing of the palms, Jesus triumphantly enters into Jerusalem for the festival.  He enters in humility, on a colt, not a horse signifying a warrior king.  And yet the crowds sense the Messiah of their longing and cry out in joy, “Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”  This sure seems to be the hour for which Jesus came, and it looked like he had won them over.  But two chapters forward into our second Gospel for today, in the reading of the Passion, and those same crowds cry out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!  Give us Barabbas!”  This, friends, really is the hour for which Jesus came.  The hour for him to lay down his life.

    It seems like things have escalated quickly, but really we know they didn’t.  All through the Gospel, Jesus has been getting under the skin of the religious establishment, calling out their weak and self-serving adherence to the Law, taking care of the real needs of people as they should have been, and showing people a way of life based not on legalism, but on caritas, love poured out in service to others.  That he will punctuate that caritas love at the end of the Gospel today is quite instructive.  The whole of the Gospel centers around laying down our lives for others.

    And, really, if we take a big picture view of the history of salvation, things haven’t escalated that quickly at all.  All through the scriptures, Old and New Testaments alike, people – we – have been missing the point.  The cycle of sin that spirals all through the scriptures has seen God send messages, through signs and prophets, of how things had gone wrong and what needed to be done.  And all through the scriptures, people have heeded the message only in lip service, or have outright destroyed the prophets who brought the message.  And yet again, God sent new messages, and yet again, the people sinned.  We know that the sacrifice of Christ, God made man, was always God’s plan for salvation.  It has been incubating for generations, and now, finally, the hour has come.

    Honestly, though, we know things have continued to escalate.  A pandemic has highlighted selfishness in many instances, scourging Christ yet again.  Injustice to people of color has continued and grown, causing Christ to fall a fourth time, crushed under the weight of the cross.  With all that the past year has taken away from us, with all the anxiety we have felt, with all the love we haven’t been able to show or receive, we need Simon of Cyrene to help us shoulder the burden of it all, and Veronica to wipe the blood and sweat from Christ’s face once again.  People walk the Way of the Cross over and over, and the hour of Christ’s Passion seems to always be present.

    Who are we going to blame for this?  Whose fault is it that they crucified my Lord?  Is it the Jews, as many centuries of anti-Semitism would assert?  Was it the Romans, those foreign occupiers who sought only the advancement of their empire?  Was it the fickle crowds, content enough to marvel at Jesus when he fed the thousands, but abandoning him once his message was made clear?  Was it Peter, who couldn’t even keep his promise of standing by his friend for a few hours?  Was it the rest of the apostles, who scattered lest they be tacked up on a cross next to Jesus?  Was it Judas, who gave in to despair thinking he had it all wrong?  Was it the cowardly Herod and Pilate who were both manipulating the event in order to maintain their pathetic fiefdoms?  Who was it who put Jesus on that cross?  Even now, who do we blame for the death of our Lord?

    And the answer, as we well know, is that it was – is – me.  Because it’s my sins that led Jesus to the Way of the Cross.   I have been the selfish one.  I have been the one who has looked down on people who are different from me, using my privilege at their expense.  I have been the one that has withheld love and forgiveness and grace in so many different ways.  I have been comfortable with my sins and content to stay the way I am.  It’s my sins that betrayed my Jesus; it’s my sins that have kept me from friendship with God.  

    But as ugly as I have been, as much as I have nailed him to the cross, even so: he willingly came to this hour and gave his life that I might have life.  

    And you.

    He gave himself for us.

  • Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings
    Mass for the school children.

    Sometimes it seems like everyone is against us.  Maybe you’ve felt that way sometimes.  Maybe someone was telling lies about you and trying to get others to work against you, or maybe they were looking for any time you did the slightest thing wrong, or messed up in any way, so they could act all superior.  That happens sometimes, and it’s frustrating.  If that has every happened to you, or if it ever does, I think you might understand a little of how the prophet Jeremiah, King David, and Jesus may have felt in today’s readings and psalm.

    A prophet’s job is never easy; nobody wants to hear what they don’t want to hear.  The prophets had to tell the people what God wanted and how God wanted them to live, and lots of people just don’t like that.  And so it can be difficult to stand up for what’s right.  So for Jeremiah, things are getting dangerous: people disliked what he was saying so much that they wanted him dead.  The same is true for Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.  Jesus now is rapidly approaching the cross; it’s almost the hour for him to give his life.  King David in the psalm finds that his enemies are pursuing him to the point of death, like the waters of the deep overwhelming a drowning man.

    But all of them find their refuge in God: God never leaves us alone in our troubles.  Jeremiah writes, “For he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked!”  King David takes consolation in the fact that “From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.”  And for Jesus, well, his time was coming close, but it had not yet come.

    When we are provoked like they were, how do we respond?  Is our first thought to take refuge in God, or do we try to solve the problem on our own?  It’s probably the second thing, but honestly, that never ever works.  If we don’t turn to God, we will sooner or later find those waves overwhelming us, because there is always a limit to our own power, a limit to what we ourselves can do.  But God never expects us to do the right thing all by ourselves.  He knows that it’s hard for us to stand up for what’s right, to do the right thing when everyone seems to be doing something else, to speak up for those who are struggling when everyone else is making fun of them.  God always expects us to do the right thing, of course: that’s what he made us for.  But he doesn’t expect us to do the right thing on our own.  He will give us the power to stand strong in the midst of trouble.  If we do things on our own, we have no one to turn to when things go wrong or when things get tough.  But if we turn to God, even if things don’t improve on our own timetable, we will always find refuge and safety in our God: there will be strength to get through, and we will never be alone.

  • Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    “When you lift up the Son of Man,
    then you will realize that I AM…”

    Today’s Liturgy of the Word is an exposition of being lifted up.  In the first reading, Moses lifted up an image of a saraph serpent so that people could look to it and be healed.  In the Gospel, Jesus speaks of himself being lifted up, and of course we know he means lifted up on the cross, so that when we look to him lifted up, we could be healed, of our brokenness, of our sin, of our slavery to death.

    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 allow ourselves to be lifted up too, like the saraph serpent, so that people can look to us, and find healing and salvation in Jesus Christ. We have to be icons of the healing of Christ.  We do that by accepting the grace and healing he gives us in our lives, and then living as healed people, people who know the One who saves them, people who point the way to Christ.  That means that we have to be lifted up on the cross too, laying down our own lives, our own attachments to things that don’t matter, our own resentments, our own selfishness.  We have to be the image of Christ crucified so that the world can become whole.