Many people who have been away from the Sacrament of Penance for a long time have said that they were afraid to come back to the Church because they felt like their sins defined them. That they walked around with a scarlet letter on their persons. I think this is the experience that Isaiah is getting at when he says, “Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow; Though they be crimson red, they may become white as wool.” Our sins do not define us, but our repentance does. And that repentance has to a commitment to justice for those marginalized: “redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.” Our penance and our righteousness has to be approached in humility, remembering that those who humble themselves will be exalted. Our repentance has its reward, as the Psalmist tells us: “To the upright I will show the saving power of God.”
Category: The Church Year
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Second Sunday of Lent
You know, that last line of today’s Gospel reading always gets me thinking “well what did they think ‘rising from the dead’ meant?” Of course that’s easy for us to say, with the eyes of people who know how the story ends, but Peter, James and John didn’t have that vision quite yet. When you think about it, up to this point, they’ve been basking in the glory of Jesus’ fame. They too have been excited to see what Jesus will do next: what miracles he will work, what healings he will affect, what wonderful words he will speak. They have kind of been caught up in the excitement of the crowds who have been following Jesus, at times not understanding things any better than anybody else. Until now.
The Transfiguration is kind of a defining moment for Jesus and his closest disciples. They see Jesus and with him Elijah and Moses … symbols of the Law and the prophets. This gives them a little light, a glimpse of the real Jesus, an insight into who he was that they didn’t have before. And, honestly, it’s an unsettling glimpse. Things had just gotten started and were going well. They weren’t ready to talk about how it was going to end. Jesus had just started speaking to them about his passion and death, and they weren’t ready to hear it.
And now here they are, on the mountain, and they get to see how things were going to be after Jesus’ death and resurrection, only they weren’t ready to see that just yet. But just because they’re not ready doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen, sooner rather than later. The Gospel story is at a turning point now. God is revealing to Jesus’ closest followers the exact nature of Jesus’ mission in the world. He hasn’t come just to work miracles, say wonderful things, and make people feel good about themselves. He has come to turn the world upside down and make of it a place … well a place that it was always supposed to be in the first place.
And the way that would happen is by his passion and death … there is no getting around that. And as difficult as that may be for his closest friends to hear, they have to hear it and come to terms with it. This experience of the Transfiguration was supposed to give them hope that Jesus’ passion and death wasn’t the end, that God still had wonderful things in store for Jesus, for them, and for the world.
This is where that first reading comes in. Abraham and Sarah, as you might remember, were childless until God intervened in their lives at a very old age. Finally, they receive Isaac, a real gift from God, a sign that the promise that God made to Abraham – that he would be the father of many nations – would be fulfilled. And now, God asks him, – no, tells him – “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.” So now Abraham has to weigh his trust in God’s promises against the loss of his only beloved son. And we heard how the story ended, God did not allow Abraham to harm Isaac, but instead provided a lamb for the sacrifice himself.
What we miss in this reading is the conversation between Abraham and Isaac on the way. At one point, Isaac asks, “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the holocaust?” I can’t imagine how heartbroken Abraham was in that moment. His answer might have been misdirection, or maybe it was faith: “Son, God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust.”
There’s a wonderful song by Michael Card which makes the symbolism very clear here today:
God will provide a Lamb
To be offered up in your place
A sacrifice so spotless and clean
To take all your sin awayAnd Abraham was absolutely right – God himself will provide the lamb for the sacrifice – the perfect lamb, Jesus Christ. He came to suffer and die for our sins, and that’s significance of today’s Gospel event. The world never looked so bright as it did on that Transfiguration day on top of the mountain. But that’s not the last glimpse of that kind of light. That light was just a tiny sample of the glory of the Resurrection. And the Resurrection was just a sample of the Glory of God’s heavenly kingdom, for which we all yearn with eager anticipation as we muddle through here on the other side.
This is a chance for us all to see in Christ what Peter, James and John did. It’s a chance to see what Abraham did up on that mountain. God did what he asked Abraham to do – he offered his only son. To take all your sin away.
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Friday of the First Week of Lent
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.”
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Thursday of the First Week of Lent
Have you noticed that the readings for these early days of Lent have been teaching us how to accomplish the various disciplines of Lent, which really are the various disciplines of the spiritual life? Today’s discipline then, I think, would be persistence in prayer. In the first reading, we have Queen Esther, who is really between a rock and a hard place. The king does not know she is Hebrew, and worse than that, if she goes to the king without being summoned, she could well lose her life. But, Mordecai, the man who was her guardian and raised her as his own daughter, revealed to her that the king’s advisor had planned genocide against the Jews, and she was the only person in a position to beg the king to change his mind. So today, she prays that her life, as well as those of her people would be spared. Esther prayed for three days and nights that her prayer would be answered, and her persistence was rewarded. She received the reward that Jesus promised when he said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Then again, how many of us have prayed persistently to God that he would answer our prayer and have yet to be answered? I think most of us at some point or another have experience the exasperation of prayer unanswered, or at least seemingly so. We can be so frustrated when a loved one is ill or unemployed, or whatever, and God seemingly does not hear.
But the discipline of prayerful persistence is not like wishing on a star or anything like that. There’s no magic to our words. We may or may not be rewarded with the exact gift we pray for. But we will always be rewarded with the loving presence of our God in our lives. In fact, maybe God’s answer to our prayer is “no” – for whatever reason – but even in that “no” we have the grace of a relationship that has been strengthened by our prayerful persistence.
The Psalmist prays, “Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.” This Lent, may the discipline of persistence in prayer lead us to a renewed and enlivened sense of the Lord’s will in our lives.
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Forty Hours Devotion: Opening Mass of the Holy Eucharist
Readings: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:1-15
My Aunt Mia was an outstanding cook. And like all the outstanding cooks on my mom’s side of the family, she took pride in making people feel welcome and providing an incredible meal, a meal bigger than twice the number of people invited could ever manage to digest in one sitting. There was a time we were at her house for a meal, and I was pretty young at the time so I barely remember this, although the story is told often in our family, that the leftovers on the table amounted to just one piece of meatloaf. My uncle offered to split it with my father, not wanting to waste any food. Dad agreed. Aunt Mia, however, was mortified that she had “run out” of food for her guests and was instantly on her feet and in the fridge looking for what else she could fix. Nobody needed more food, they just enjoyed the meal and didn’t want to waste the small amount of leftovers that were there. Well, let me tell you, that was the last time anyone in the family got that close to running out of food!
This kind of reminds me of the meal we have in this evening’s Gospel reading. This was obviously an important event in the life of the early Church, because we have this story in all four Gospel accounts in one form or another. The version we have tonight serves as the “Institution narrative” for John’s Gospel. The Institution narratives in the Gospels tell about the institution of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. For Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Institution narrative is the Last Supper. For John, it’s the feeding of the multitudes. A deliberate, and interesting choice on John’s part.
Jesus is headed to Jerusalem – the site of his upcoming passion and death – and he notices that a large crowd is following him. He takes the opportunity here to do a “teacher thing” with his disciples. He asks where they can buy food enough to feed all these people. Philip states the obvious: “not even two hundred days wages would buy enough for each of them to have a little.” Andrew does what he can, finding a boy with five barley loaves and two fish, saying, “but what good are these for so many?” It might as well have been just one piece of meatloaf!
Well, we know the rest of the story: not only is there enough for the five thousand men and presumably their families, but also enough to fill twelve baskets with leftovers. That’s more than even my dad and my uncle could manage to polish off! Now many will tell you that this story is one of holy sharing, that people who had come with sandwiches for the journey saw what was going on and shared what they had, and by spreading it around they all had enough and then some. I flatly reject that theory, because if we accept that explanation that means that it was about us – or at least about the people in the story – and not about Jesus’ power to fill us with what we need. Whenever you see someone explaining Gospel miracles in a way that gives human beings the credit, you may assume that it’s wrong, because, brothers and sisters in Christ, the Gospels are not about us!
All the action that is important in the story is the action the evangelist describes: “Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining…” This was, in John’s Gospel, the first Holy Communion. Jesus took what was offered, just as we offer gifts at every Mass. He says the blessing, much as the priest says the Eucharistic Prayer, and then the food was distributed, just as we all approach the Table of the Lord for Communion. And, as in most things in life, the results are important. It was enough, and not only that: it was more than enough!
John’s Gospel is filled with all these images of superabundance. Jesus is the light that darkness cannot overcome. The crocks of water at the wedding banquet were filled to the brim and became the best wine ever. And now five loaves and a couple of fish feed more than five thousand people and provide twelve baskets full of leftovers. The message is clear: Jesus is enough, and more than enough, to fill us with what we need. The issue for us, is as it was for the disciples – trust. Do we trust that Jesus can provide for our needs? Do we trust that he even wants to do so? Do we trust that just five loaves and a couple of fish can provide such superabundant grace and mercy?
We know in our heads that it’s enough. But to really trust, it has to spread to our hearts too. That, I think, is the journey of Lent for us in some ways. We have to take the time with Jesus so that we can come to know of his superabundant mercy for us. And so, we’re gathered here to do just that. At the beginning of Lent, this is an opportunity for some quiet time with our Lord. This doesn’t need to be a time when we “do” a lot or say a lot of words in prayer, but a time for quiet and reflection, knowing that our God longs to reach out to us and touch our hearts. This is the time in prayer when we can let God do the talking, speaking to us in the stillness of our hearts. It’s a time when, as one of my seminary professors put it, we can look at God and let him look at us.
This is a time, above all, when we can come to know our Lord in ways we may not have before. A time when we can accept the superabundant graces that he wants to give us. A time when we can come to know that he is enough, and more than enough, to make us whole, to heal our brokenness, to forgive our sins, to strengthen our works of faith, hope and love, to answer our prayers in ways we don’t expect or could never imagine, to feed us beyond our deepest hungers. “Give us this day our daily bread,” we pray. In these wonderful forty hours, we can come to know that the daily bread God provides is better than we could ever imagine, a bread that will never let us be hungry again.
What are the superabundant graces that God has in store for you in these forty hours? What is in store for our parish in these forty hours? I don’t know, but won’t it be exciting to find out?
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Tuesday of the First Week of Lent
Ancient sources say that we are to pray the Lord’s prayer at least seven times daily. Why? Because the Lord’s prayer in all its wonderful simplicity reminds us that we can turn to our heavenly Father who knows our needs and cares for our welfare. It reminds us that the best opportunities we have to live the Gospel come when we turn to God who is bigger than our sins, more than generous enough to cover our deepest needs and longings, more than holy enough to sanctify our poorer efforts at discipleship and charity. It reminds us that God is God and we are not.
To those of us who are concerned with our own prestige and dwell on our own ego, the Lord’s prayer says “hallowed be God’s name.” When we would like all of our problems solved on our own terms and everyone to do things our own way, the Lord’s prayer says, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…” For those times when we over-consume the goods of the earth, or want more than we can afford, or covet things we don’t need, the Lord’s prayer says, “give us this day our daily bread” – because that’s all we need. For us sinners who prefer to hold grudges against others, the Lord’s prayer says, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And when we stray into all sorts of temptations and give in to all the wrong things, the Lord’s prayer says “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
The Lord’s prayer is powerful in all its simplicity. Whether we say it seven times a day or even just once, we need to say it with full thought of what we are asking of our God. And God will hear and answer that holy prayer. For his is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Monday of the First Week of Lent
Today’s readings are a celebration of God’s law. The Psalmist says that the Words of the Lord are spirit and life – these are the words that sustain us, make our society possible, and in the process bring joy to the heart. There are three characteristics of God’s law that really shine in these readings.
First, God’s law is the epitome of fairness. The first reading decries stealing from a neighbor, bearing false witness, making life more difficult for the disabled, bearing hatred, or rendering justice that is either unfairly biased toward the weak or against the strong. What’s right is right, and the chosen ones of the Lord are called upon to be an example of fairness which glorifies the Lord.
Second, God’s law brings peace. The frustrations we have, the disagreements that erupt, the wars that break out, all of these have their roots in going it on our own, inventing our own justice, and turning away from the Law of God. The precepts of the Lord are just, the Psalmist tells us, but not only that, they also gladden the heart. God’s laws are reasonable and following them can be the joy of our hearts.
And finally, we’re not supposed to get caught up in the minutiae of the Law without actually living it. It’s one thing to sing the praises of God’s law, but quite another to live them in our daily lives. We will be judged on how we have treated others, not on how many facts we know about God’s law.
“Your words, Lord, are spirit and life,” says the Psalmist. Living according to God’s teachings can bring us peace and eternal life.
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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.
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Thursday after Ash Wednesday
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.
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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!”
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