Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: Lent

  • Fifth Sunday of Lent

    Fifth Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings

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

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

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

    His hour had come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

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

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

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

  • 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.

  • 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!”