Category: Prayer

Today's readings

[display_podcast]

"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."

Today's readings

[display_podcast]

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.

Today's readings [display_podcast]

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.

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.

Today's readings [display_podcast]

Sometimes, what looks like freedom, is in fact the most hideous form of bondage and servitude. For Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, freedom seemed like it would only happen if they bowed down and worshipped the false idol-god of King Nebuchadnezzar. But they knew that was not the case; if they gave into idol worship, they would lose their heritage and never be free from the harsh slavery they faced at Nebuchadnezzar's hands. They found freedom in the fire, and came forth from it rejoicing and vindicated.

The Jews in Jesus' day felt that they could only find freedom in the Law, but it was in fact the law that bound them tighter and kept them from true worship. They were offered the Truth, and it was only in the truth that they could ever hope to be free.

We too receive the gift of freedom through Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Our way to freedom is to turn from whatever has bound us up in this world's lies, and come to know more fully the Truth that sets us free.

Today’s readings

So often we don’t recognize the salvation that God brings us – the salvation that is right there in front of our faces. This goes all the way back to the ancient Israelites, wandering in the desert, frightened to death that God would not feed them. When they began dying from the fruits of their despair, they finally decided to cry out to God who healed them by lifting up the seraph in the desert.

The same was true of the Jews of Jesus’ day. The religious leaders, especially the Pharisees, would not see that Jesus was the one God sent into the world to bring the world to salvation. It is only when Jesus is lifted up on the cross, that people began to see that he was the great I AM, the Messiah, the Son of God, the one sent to save us.

We can’t be blind like that. We have our salvation in front of us day in and day out. Christ on the Crucifix, the Eucharist lifted up before us. We know that our Redeemer lives, we know the source of our salvation. We know the way, the truth and the life.

Today's readings

[display_podcast]

Susanna's story is one of the most eloquent in the Old Testament Scriptures, in it we see the wisdom of the prophet Daniel, as well as the mercy and justice of God. The story serves as a beautiful support to the acquittal of the adulterous woman, in which we are treated to the wisdom of Jesus, brought about as it is with the mercy and justice of God. But sadly, we see in both stories also the fickleness of the human heart and the evil and treachery that makes up some of our darker moments.

To those of us who seek to pervert justice and to collude with others against some other person, these readings expose our evil thoughts and flood the darkness of our hearts with the piercing light of God's justice. We ourselves have no right to judge others when our own intentions are not pure. Only God can give real justice, just as only God brings ultimate mercy.

To those who are the victims of oppression, these readings give us the hope that God in his mercy will always hear the cry of the poor and give to the downtrodden the salvation which they seek. God is ultimately very interested in the kind of justice that is characterized by right relationships with one another and with Him. It is the desire of God's heart that this kind of justice would be tempered with mercy and would go out and lighten all the dark places of the earth.

Today we are called upon to right wrongs, to be completely honest and forthright in our dealings with others, to seek to purify our hearts of any wicked intent, and most of all to seek to restore right relationships with any person who has something against us, or against whom we have something. Our prayer this day is that God's mercy and justice would reign, and that God's kingdom would come about in all its fullness.

Today's readings

[display_podcast] 

Okay, those of you who heard my homily last week know that the healing of the man born blind wasn't about the man born blind at all. So you might not be all that shocked to hear me say that the raising of Lazarus isn't about Lazarus at all. I mean, look at the story: Lazarus is easily the least significant character in the whole episode. Even though he would seem to be the center of attention, he is dead for most of the story, never says anything himself, and Jesus only says three words to him in a five-minute reading. All of these are big red flags that the Gospel writer has been playing a little joke on us and the real story is somewhere else.

And it might be easy to accept that. Okay, the story isn't about Lazarus, but it is about how Jesus can raise people from the dead, right? Well, yes and no – it depends on what you mean by dead, I guess. Certainly, Jesus has the power to raise people from any kind of death, we know that, but I absolutely don't think that simply resuscitating people from physical death is what the story is about. Actually, even thought the story talks about eternal life some day, I'm not even sure the story is even about that kind of death and life. After all, Jesus doesn't wait until some future resurrection to bring Lazarus back to life; he does it now, right before our eyes.

I think maybe today's first reading can shed some light on what Jesus was talking about by death. Here the people of Israel are, for all intents and purposes, alive. But they are in captivity in Babylon, so as a people, they are pretty much dead. They have no place to worship, they are subject to the harsh cruelty of their captors, and their whole way of life is being systematically exterminated. That's a kind of death that's hard to miss. But even now, the prophet tells them, God will open their graves and have the people rise out of them. God will heal their affliction and give them life in spirit. The kind of life God will give to the Israelites is, as the Psalmist says, "mercy and fullness of redemption."

So the kind of death we're talking about here is a death that comes about as a result of our daily living. It's a death brought on by situations in which we find ourselves. We experience death in too many forms to name. For example: wars have left scars for generations; poverty sucks the life out of families, neighborhoods and nations; conflicts divide Christians and set religions against one another; rivalries and ambition among church people give scandal to outsiders; rancor rips apart families; the innocent are abused, political corruption in poor countries further deplete resources, and so much more. Jesus comes to bring life to people dead in those situations.

And there's also a kind of spiritual death that St. Paul talks about in our second reading today. "But if Christ is in you," he says, "although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you." And we experience spiritual death in our lives all the time, don't we? Patterns of sin drag us down from our relationship with God. Addictions tear us apart from our loved ones and from our Lord. Indifference, apathy, and even scandal divorce us from the human family and from the Church. Jesus comes to bring life to all of us who struggle with sin and experience the kind of spiritual death that plagues us often in our lives.

And he brings life to us in these situations right now, if we will let him. He doesn't wait until some far-off resurrection time to make it happen. In another place in the Gospel, Jesus makes it clear that life is his primary mission. "I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly," he tells us. Even so, Jesus is not put off by our death. As embarrassed as we may be about our own brokenness, as dejected and frustrated as we might be about our failure to drag ourselves out of the sin in which we find ourselves, Jesus still comes to us. Martha makes a big point about how Lazarus has been dead four days, as if there were nothing Jesus could do about it. That's because the Jews believed the soul of a person hung around for three days, and after that he or she was really dead. But Jesus was able to raise Lazarus anyway. So it doesn't matter how dead we are, because our death and our sin are never, never, never more powerful than the mercy of God. Never.

And the Tempter would try to convince us that we are not worthy of this kind of mercy and love and forgiveness and resurrection. He may convince us that, like Lazarus, we have a big heavy stone sealing us off from God. Our sins might seem that big sometimes. But Jesus will have none of that: "Roll away the stone," he says. The Tempter might want us to be so embarrassed about our sin that we become convinced we actually stink of death. But Jesus assures us that if we believe, we will still see the glory of God and our stench will be dispelled by the breath of God's Spirit. The Tempter might even make us think that our sins have bound us up so much – like Lazarus in his burial cloths – that we can't even take a step forward to come out of our graves. But to all of that, Jesus says, "untie him and let him go!"

The readings these past three Sundays have all been about our baptism experience, brothers and sisters. And it's that way on purpose, because Lent has always been for the Church a time of preparation for baptism. Catechumens work their way toward baptism and wrap up their pre-baptismal formation in RCIA programs during these days. But we too have these days to look back at our own baptism and unpack the experience, so that we can recommit our lives to Christ in the renewal of baptismal promises at the Easter celebration.

Two weeks ago, the woman at the well found Jesus to be the source of living water, a water that gave relief to the dryness of her faith. Last week, the man born blind washed in the pool at Siloam and came out able not only to physically see, but also to come to see Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. Today, I think, the catechumen is Martha. She experiences death in the grieving of her brother. But she comes to new life as Jesus attends to her faith and raises not just her brother, but her too, to new life. At the end of it, she goes to her sister Mary – this Mary who in a previous story sat at Jesus' feet rather than help Martha cook for their guest but now refuses to even come out to see him. Martha has to go and tell the little white lie that Jesus is asking for her before Mary will leave the house. But this is how Martha witnesses to her faith, a faith which is made new and given new life with the raising of her beloved brother.

We're all on different places of the journey in these closing days of Lent. Maybe, like Lazarus, we are all bound up, stinking of our sins, and sealed up in the tomb. Maybe, like Mary, we are hurt by all our resentments and refuse to even come out of the house. Maybe, like Martha, we have a fledgling faith and throw ourselves to Jesus asking to be made whole. Maybe, like the apostles, we don't really get it, but are willing to go and die for Jesus anyway. Wherever we are, whatever our brokenness, whatever our sin, however long we have been dead and buried, Jesus comes to us today and beckons us to rise up and come out and be untied and to live anew. To live more abundantly.

And so, maybe in these closing days of Lent, we still have to respond to our
Lord's call to live. Maybe you haven't yet been to confession before Easter. Next Saturday, Fr. Ted and I will both be here from 3:30 until the 5:00 Mass and we invite you to come and have the stone rolled away and to be untied from your burial cloths. Or maybe you have relationships you have to renew with the new life that Christ gives you. Wherever you find yourself, I urge you, don't let Easter pass with you all bound up and sealed in the grave. Come out, be untied, and be let go.

Today's readings [display_podcast]

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 have to be very careful not to write people off because in doing so we write off Jesus himself, and turn our back once again on the words he would speak to us.

Today's readings [display_podcast]

In Lent, we are called above all to repent of our stiff-neckedness. If we are people who are set in our ways, and bristle when we hear that the Church or the Scriptures call on us to change our ways, then we have set up an impregnable obstacle to the mercy of God. We have to hear the Lord and follow in his ways, turning away from the molten calves that we have fashioned for ourselves and turn anew to the mercy and love of God.