The Second Sunday in Lent
Twelve days ago—does it seem longer?—we stepped into this year’s Lenten desert. Most of the Lenten road is still in front of us, but you’ve gone far enough along to get a sense of Your Lent, 2010. Is it worth finishing? Are you stretching—perhaps discovering—any spiritual muscles?
Until five months ago, I spent the past several years laid up in bed or in a wheelchair, unable to walk. With the help of what Steve Mitchell calls the “exoskeleton”now on my leg, I can walk again, if ungracefully. I’ll never be a contestant on "Dancing with the Stars," but that was an unlikely possibility before my accident.
Now that I can walk (that’s what I like to call it, regardless of how it looks), I spend a couple of hours every day working on the grounds of my little ranchito. I can only stand for about 10-15 minutes before I have to stop and rest, but those little periods of work have made a difference. A lot of the ground has been cleared, I built a fire pit of which I am almost sinfully proud, did some minor repairs to these old buildings and begun began to prepare the ground on which I plan to build a chapel. Not much by most people's standards, but not bad for an old crippled guy (“handi-capable” I’m told is the politically correct term these days).
It’s come at a cost. I wake up in the middle of almost every night with leg or back cramps. I don’t enjoy them and if they someday go away, I don’t think I’ll spend any time hoping for their return. That said, when I get the first pangs of them every night, there is something in me that rejoices. I get the cramps because I can walk. The back pain comes because I’m chopping with my hoe or digging with my pick. Vale la pena, as the Spanish saying goes.
I think about how happily Lenten my work is as I push my wheelbarrow full of black dirt around, trying to level this most unlevel ground. I need to have a plan, or nothing that I do will make any sense, and I need to persevere, or nothing will get done.
You and I can “endure” Lent—live through it—like the visit of an unwelcome guest. We can set a couple of rules and then see if we keep them, and then Easter will come and we can be happy Lent’s passed. Or, we can plan our Lent and use it to grow. How would you like your spiritual life to be different (has it occurred to you it could be?) than it is? The reason your spiritual life isn’t all you’d like is because you’ve decided otherwise. It’s understandable. Other things take precedence. Perhaps of necessity, perhaps because of circumstances, perhaps because you don’t have a clue as to what you’d like your spiritual life to be. Take two minutes to ask yourself what things do take precedence over your spiritual life; you might be surprised at the answers. Whatever they are, this Lent can change that.
Do you pray regularly? Do you feed your spiritual life by reading books to nurture your faith? The Bible is a Good Book, but it’s long and parts of it are a bit strange. Find yourself a decent little commentary (if you don’t know of one, ask your priest) and read one of the books of the Book this season. I’m reading St. Mark’s Gospel. Do you have secret or painful sins you hide or hide from? Scary as it may seem, go to confession. Sometimes it’s like plunging yourself into an acid bath, but the freedom it gives will touch your spirit in ways nothing else can. If you have the courage to pursue it, remember one thing: nowadays people will say something like “I know I should go to confession,” or “I’m gonna go to confession someday.” But a long time ago, a much happier phrase was “offering” our confession. It puts it in the right perspective.
However grand and well-thought out our Lenten plan, it’s meaningless if we don’t keep it. When you go to Mass today, listen to the Gospel. The Canaanite Woman drove the Lord’s disciples crazy with her constant pestering. “Send her away,” they begged Jesus. “She crieth after us!” The Gospel is about perseverance, and perfectly chosen for this time of Lent. A simple Lenten plan, regularly kept, benefits us much more than an elaborate scheme we observe now and again. Most of us fail at some point. That’s okay. It’s what we do after we stumble that determines the value of our Lent. As I’ve mentioned, a Lenten rule you don’t stumble over occasionally isn’t challenging you enough.
All of us are crippled spiritually. But with a little planning and perseverance, we can still stretch ourselves and grow. The cost may be a few muscle cramps of the spirit, but my guess is you’ll find them strangely welcome.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
REDEEMING THE TIME
Ember Saturday in Lent
Bill is a dentist in New Braunfels, Texas. He is the quintessential “decent” man (I use the word in its oldest—and best—sense): devoted to his family and respected by his community. He was surrounded by his wife, son and grandchildren, but even so, I was lucky enough to spend a few minutes with him last night at a big Texas Barbeque—on a Friday night in Lent—eating thick slices of beef brisket (nothing in Texas is quite like anywhere else—while almost every Knight of Columbus Hall in the area serves Friday night fish frys, the big Protestant church in town has “wild game” dinners on Friday nights, just to show the Pope can’t tell them what to eat!).
Bill and I didn’t get together to defy the Pope, but as part of a large gathering to raise money for an ongoing charity he’s devoted to. Hundreds of people came to the Coliseum in Seguin to eat brisket and donate towards the St. Andrew's Episcopal Church Honduras and World Missions BBQ and Auction. It’s one of Seguin's largest annual fundraisers; throughout the year its monies help sponsor trips to Honduras—Bill goes and provides free dental care for a week or two each year, but so do doctors, veterinarians, teachers, horticulturalists, college kids from the local Lutheran University, “all sorts and conditions of men”—and women—come together to make life better for those suffering and in need. Like many a Texan, Bill doesn’t talk about himself much, or too easily, but he told me when he learned about the mission work, he couldn’t help but throw in with it. “I’ve been given so much, and the need there is so great,” he said. “I just sort of thought it was my duty.” He obviously still does. He’s been involved since the early 1990’s.
This scene, with local variations, happened in hundreds, more likely, thousands of places yesterday, as people came together to support relief or charity works. Some come for the brisket or catfish or bean soup, but there’s a more fundamental reason, so fundamental that sometimes we can’t put it into words. We come because of suffering.
Deserved or not, we’ve all suffered. Despite the many and great differences between us, every human being shares this: we’ve suffered pain and tragedy and loss. When we do, regardless of our faith (or lack of it), our wealth (or lack…), our intelligence (or…), in any of the myriad ways we're different, at some point we each cry “Why?” “Why me? It’s not fair.”
There's no answer that will satisfy that cry. We can tell ourselves suffering is meant to “teach” us something—patience, compassion, tolerance—some quality we need to “learn,” but as good as those things are, the answer doesn’t address the anguished cry of the suffering soul. It can’t. We haven’t come up against an intellectual conundrum. We’ve come up against evil.
God didn’t make us to suffer, He doesn’t take pleasure in it, He doesn’t want us to. More than you or I ever can, God hates it. He created us to take pleasure in His creation, to share it with Him. Whether you take the Genesis story of Adam and Eve’s fall from Grace as a literal fact or a profound parable, the effect is the same: we consented to evil and that changed everything. We can talk about original sin and Adam’s guilt (as Adam tried, from the beginning, to shift the blame to Eve—“the woman”—and even, ultimately, to God—“whom Thou gavest to be with me”), but none of us need to trace our ancestry to find the blame for evil and sin. “My own heart teacheth me,” the Psalmist says, speaking for us all, “the wickedness of the ungodly.” Scripture doesn’t explain sin or suffering, but it leaves no doubt we are intimately involved in its cause.
We can’t make evil go away. Social scientists at the beginning of the 20th century confidently prophesied in an article in the Scientific American that the future would be one of unlimited prosperity across the globe. Poverty and war would cease. Evil was not socialized or educated out of existence. It’s here for the duration.
So are we. We can’t do away with evil, but we can do something even better. We can transform it. We can redeem it. You and I may not be able to explain why there is suffering, but we can assure that suffering has meaning—that it’s transfigured into redemption.
How?
We can keep Lent with Jesus. We can fast and pray and give alms. We can struggle to combat sin in our lives—the sin we commit, don’t worry about anybody else’s. Examine your life; uncover the evils you cherish, and expose them to God. Go to confession and receive forgiveness, and enter spiritual combat renewed. Then, think of Bill, the Texas dentist. He hasn’t given all his money away, but he has given some of it. He hasn’t abandoned his family, but he has left them for a time to help others. He’s kept his responsibilities—but added to them. He is redeeming not only his time, but the time in which he lives. He’s not going to Honduras until June, but his sacrifice—and that of his family as he goes—is a Lenten one.
How will you redeem the time? Ask the Lord and see where He leads. It may be to a brisket supper on a Friday in Lent.
Bill is a dentist in New Braunfels, Texas. He is the quintessential “decent” man (I use the word in its oldest—and best—sense): devoted to his family and respected by his community. He was surrounded by his wife, son and grandchildren, but even so, I was lucky enough to spend a few minutes with him last night at a big Texas Barbeque—on a Friday night in Lent—eating thick slices of beef brisket (nothing in Texas is quite like anywhere else—while almost every Knight of Columbus Hall in the area serves Friday night fish frys, the big Protestant church in town has “wild game” dinners on Friday nights, just to show the Pope can’t tell them what to eat!).
Bill and I didn’t get together to defy the Pope, but as part of a large gathering to raise money for an ongoing charity he’s devoted to. Hundreds of people came to the Coliseum in Seguin to eat brisket and donate towards the St. Andrew's Episcopal Church Honduras and World Missions BBQ and Auction. It’s one of Seguin's largest annual fundraisers; throughout the year its monies help sponsor trips to Honduras—Bill goes and provides free dental care for a week or two each year, but so do doctors, veterinarians, teachers, horticulturalists, college kids from the local Lutheran University, “all sorts and conditions of men”—and women—come together to make life better for those suffering and in need. Like many a Texan, Bill doesn’t talk about himself much, or too easily, but he told me when he learned about the mission work, he couldn’t help but throw in with it. “I’ve been given so much, and the need there is so great,” he said. “I just sort of thought it was my duty.” He obviously still does. He’s been involved since the early 1990’s.
This scene, with local variations, happened in hundreds, more likely, thousands of places yesterday, as people came together to support relief or charity works. Some come for the brisket or catfish or bean soup, but there’s a more fundamental reason, so fundamental that sometimes we can’t put it into words. We come because of suffering.
Deserved or not, we’ve all suffered. Despite the many and great differences between us, every human being shares this: we’ve suffered pain and tragedy and loss. When we do, regardless of our faith (or lack of it), our wealth (or lack…), our intelligence (or…), in any of the myriad ways we're different, at some point we each cry “Why?” “Why me? It’s not fair.”
There's no answer that will satisfy that cry. We can tell ourselves suffering is meant to “teach” us something—patience, compassion, tolerance—some quality we need to “learn,” but as good as those things are, the answer doesn’t address the anguished cry of the suffering soul. It can’t. We haven’t come up against an intellectual conundrum. We’ve come up against evil.
God didn’t make us to suffer, He doesn’t take pleasure in it, He doesn’t want us to. More than you or I ever can, God hates it. He created us to take pleasure in His creation, to share it with Him. Whether you take the Genesis story of Adam and Eve’s fall from Grace as a literal fact or a profound parable, the effect is the same: we consented to evil and that changed everything. We can talk about original sin and Adam’s guilt (as Adam tried, from the beginning, to shift the blame to Eve—“the woman”—and even, ultimately, to God—“whom Thou gavest to be with me”), but none of us need to trace our ancestry to find the blame for evil and sin. “My own heart teacheth me,” the Psalmist says, speaking for us all, “the wickedness of the ungodly.” Scripture doesn’t explain sin or suffering, but it leaves no doubt we are intimately involved in its cause.
We can’t make evil go away. Social scientists at the beginning of the 20th century confidently prophesied in an article in the Scientific American that the future would be one of unlimited prosperity across the globe. Poverty and war would cease. Evil was not socialized or educated out of existence. It’s here for the duration.
So are we. We can’t do away with evil, but we can do something even better. We can transform it. We can redeem it. You and I may not be able to explain why there is suffering, but we can assure that suffering has meaning—that it’s transfigured into redemption.
How?
We can keep Lent with Jesus. We can fast and pray and give alms. We can struggle to combat sin in our lives—the sin we commit, don’t worry about anybody else’s. Examine your life; uncover the evils you cherish, and expose them to God. Go to confession and receive forgiveness, and enter spiritual combat renewed. Then, think of Bill, the Texas dentist. He hasn’t given all his money away, but he has given some of it. He hasn’t abandoned his family, but he has left them for a time to help others. He’s kept his responsibilities—but added to them. He is redeeming not only his time, but the time in which he lives. He’s not going to Honduras until June, but his sacrifice—and that of his family as he goes—is a Lenten one.
How will you redeem the time? Ask the Lord and see where He leads. It may be to a brisket supper on a Friday in Lent.
Friday, February 26, 2010
FASTING WITH GUSTO
Ember Friday in Lent
Some people aren’t happy unless things are complicated. Rationalized. Over-explained. (Some of you are looking at the sidebar to see who’s really writing this, 'cause that sounds like a perfect description of Wilcox—but read on.)
Dull rationalism is a symptom of our time. I’m inclined to call it “rationalism, so-called,” because it’s more appearance than reality. We do not live in rational times, and it's apparent in almost every aspect of our lives. Not too long ago, a California mother and father sued the Glendale Independent School District because their son was judged “functionally illiterate” after he graduated from high school (I followed the trial in the newspaper). They proved their case in court, but lost anyway. The Judge ruled that the School district’s job wasn’t to “educate” its “clients” but “socialize” them. I wrote a letter to the Glendale News Press on reading the court’s decision suggesting, if that was the case, every parent in Glendale ought to file suit.
In religion, this tendency shows itself in a desire to “de-mythologize” faith. One of the most wonderful of human actions, the stately celebration of the Mass, with its antique language, ancient chants, and incense-hidden rituals, had to be “modernized.” It needed to be made “relevant.” The elevated language of the Book of Common Prayer and the mysterious syllables of the medieval Latin Mass had to go—people needed to “understand.” Modern, rationalized worship, with its street-language liturgy and fast-food ritual, is dull, forgettable and—worst of all—uninspiring. As my friend and old curate Father Davis used to say, “Jesus is Present in the modern Mass, but He’s there as reluctantly as everybody else.”
In the spiritual life, this has led to therapy-room confessionals, best-selling books of cheap spiritual-sounding platitudes, and a loss of the Mystery of Faith (when I was in the hospital a few years back, a well-meaning woman, a "Eucharistic Minister" of her parish, breezed into my room and asked if I wanted Communion. Before I could demur, she plopped her purse on my bed and proceeded to rummage through it. "I know I've got It in here somewhere," she muttered.) We've lost the ability to distinguish between sentimentality and profundity. The great and hidden struggles of the soul are “explained” in pedestrian terms to recast their meaning. We don’t fast because we’re sorry for sin, but because it “unites us with the struggles of the poor.” We don’t give alms to fight our love of money but to enable us to “find solidarity with the oppressed.” We pray, not to lift our hearts and minds to God, but to allow us to “connect with the wider truths in the Universe.” All those phrases I just quoted are from a modern pamphlet “explaining” the meaning and importance of Lent.
No wonder churches are emptying.
We don’t fast as a religious colonic. We fast because we like to eat, and eating less makes us hungry. Being hungry reminds me there are things more important than eating, and that being sorry for my sins is one of them. I don’t eat. I get hungry. I’m sorry I’m hungry. I tell that to God, and offer Him my fasting. It’s not complex.
We don’t abstain from certain things for Lent because we’re better off without them, as true as that may be. A lot of people don’t eat meat. I do. I like it; in fact, I love it. That’s the problem. I don’t eat meat during Lent because I think it’s bad but so I can tell God that I love Him more than a 16-ounce, thick-cut, marbled chunk o’ rib eye (how much more is a question I have to face every Lent).
Over the coming weeks, I’ll talk more fasting (and I will touch on some of the points a few of you have raised with me about it). But for now, while it’s still early, all you need to do is eat a little less, and when you get used to it, eat a little less than that. Fast with gusto. Don’t let Old Nick turn your stomach’s growl into a whine of the soul.
Here’s the fun part: when we fast without making it unpleasant on everybody around us, when we fast with joy (and we can!), Lent doesn’t become more understandable, but more mysterious. The inner eyes of our souls, which we’re not used to using, open for a few seconds every now and then and we catch a glimpse into the world of the Spirit. Fasting with our bellies opens the eyes of our souls.
Some people aren’t happy unless things are complicated. Rationalized. Over-explained. (Some of you are looking at the sidebar to see who’s really writing this, 'cause that sounds like a perfect description of Wilcox—but read on.)
Dull rationalism is a symptom of our time. I’m inclined to call it “rationalism, so-called,” because it’s more appearance than reality. We do not live in rational times, and it's apparent in almost every aspect of our lives. Not too long ago, a California mother and father sued the Glendale Independent School District because their son was judged “functionally illiterate” after he graduated from high school (I followed the trial in the newspaper). They proved their case in court, but lost anyway. The Judge ruled that the School district’s job wasn’t to “educate” its “clients” but “socialize” them. I wrote a letter to the Glendale News Press on reading the court’s decision suggesting, if that was the case, every parent in Glendale ought to file suit.
In religion, this tendency shows itself in a desire to “de-mythologize” faith. One of the most wonderful of human actions, the stately celebration of the Mass, with its antique language, ancient chants, and incense-hidden rituals, had to be “modernized.” It needed to be made “relevant.” The elevated language of the Book of Common Prayer and the mysterious syllables of the medieval Latin Mass had to go—people needed to “understand.” Modern, rationalized worship, with its street-language liturgy and fast-food ritual, is dull, forgettable and—worst of all—uninspiring. As my friend and old curate Father Davis used to say, “Jesus is Present in the modern Mass, but He’s there as reluctantly as everybody else.”
In the spiritual life, this has led to therapy-room confessionals, best-selling books of cheap spiritual-sounding platitudes, and a loss of the Mystery of Faith (when I was in the hospital a few years back, a well-meaning woman, a "Eucharistic Minister" of her parish, breezed into my room and asked if I wanted Communion. Before I could demur, she plopped her purse on my bed and proceeded to rummage through it. "I know I've got It in here somewhere," she muttered.) We've lost the ability to distinguish between sentimentality and profundity. The great and hidden struggles of the soul are “explained” in pedestrian terms to recast their meaning. We don’t fast because we’re sorry for sin, but because it “unites us with the struggles of the poor.” We don’t give alms to fight our love of money but to enable us to “find solidarity with the oppressed.” We pray, not to lift our hearts and minds to God, but to allow us to “connect with the wider truths in the Universe.” All those phrases I just quoted are from a modern pamphlet “explaining” the meaning and importance of Lent.
No wonder churches are emptying.
We don’t fast as a religious colonic. We fast because we like to eat, and eating less makes us hungry. Being hungry reminds me there are things more important than eating, and that being sorry for my sins is one of them. I don’t eat. I get hungry. I’m sorry I’m hungry. I tell that to God, and offer Him my fasting. It’s not complex.
We don’t abstain from certain things for Lent because we’re better off without them, as true as that may be. A lot of people don’t eat meat. I do. I like it; in fact, I love it. That’s the problem. I don’t eat meat during Lent because I think it’s bad but so I can tell God that I love Him more than a 16-ounce, thick-cut, marbled chunk o’ rib eye (how much more is a question I have to face every Lent).
Over the coming weeks, I’ll talk more fasting (and I will touch on some of the points a few of you have raised with me about it). But for now, while it’s still early, all you need to do is eat a little less, and when you get used to it, eat a little less than that. Fast with gusto. Don’t let Old Nick turn your stomach’s growl into a whine of the soul.
Here’s the fun part: when we fast without making it unpleasant on everybody around us, when we fast with joy (and we can!), Lent doesn’t become more understandable, but more mysterious. The inner eyes of our souls, which we’re not used to using, open for a few seconds every now and then and we catch a glimpse into the world of the Spirit. Fasting with our bellies opens the eyes of our souls.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
HOW WE PRAY
Thursday after the First Sunday in Lent
“If you want God to give you what you want,” the eight-year-old instructed two younger children standing with him on the patio outside St Mary’s, “you have to hold your hands like this.” He placed his palms together and crossed his right thumb over his left, in perfect imitation of the way those serving the altar, acolytes to archbishops, were taught when they were no older than the children before me. Nathaniel scrunched his nose and looked at me. “Right, Father?”
“Well, it’s…” I began tentatively, not wanting to participate in the spawning of a new heresy. All Nathaniel needed (and it was enough, for those of you who knew him) was that I not contradict him. He could go from there.
His hands still folded liturgically, he frowned a bit and warned his catechumens: “Don’t do this.” He pointed his joined hands towards the ground, “or you’ll get the opposite of what you want.”
Sometimes you just have to admit defeat. Before he could entangle me further in error, I got up from the bench and fled to the safety of the church.
St John of Damascus has given us the most sublime definition of prayer. Writing 1,200 years ago, he said, “Prayer is the lifting of the heart and mind to God.”
St John wrote from the depths of the desert encounter with God, drawn from the stark monastic tradition of the Christian East. The soul, stripped of every distraction, ventures into isolation to encounter the One Who Is. Freed from the daily cares of life, keeping body and soul together on rations of dried peas and water, the desert fathers hammered out St John’s definition of prayer in the blast furnaces of their souls. They rose above the world—its beauties and temptations—to find God. Purifying the heart of its love of self and the mind of its fleeting attractions, those who pray in this tradition lift earth to Heaven.
I’m fairly certain if you hold your hands facing the ground (“where the devil lives” I can hear Nathaniel warning) while you pray, you won’t get the opposite of what you intend. That being said, Nathaniel is an unlikely but useful spokesman for another tradition of prayer. It is, we might crudely say, “the Prayer of Asking.” When we turn to God with an anxious or anguished heart and say “O God, help me!” we’re within our rights as creatures. We can pray selfishly, just as we can act selfishly, but asking God to help us, those we know and love or simply those we’ve been asked to remember is not an unworthy or unacceptable prayer. It can be of great benefit to us spiritually if it opens our hearts and minds to how utterly dependent we are on God—it then becomes a prayer of humility—one of the highest virtues.
Nathaniel wasn’t wrong to think he should ask God for stuff when he prayed. The Lord Himself taught us to pray for our daily bread. This approach to God doesn’t turn from the world, but sees the beauty and goodness, the mysteries of creation, as signs of God‘s Presence with us. If St John Damascene speaks for the fiery tradition of the East, St Francis of Assisi is a fair spokesman for the Christian West. Finding God present in all creation and intoxicated with His praise, St Francis said that everything, even death, joins in an unending hymn to God. This tradition sees Heaven here, amongst us, on earth.
One of these approaches is not right and the other wrong. Both emphasize true and necessary things about prayer, God and the world. God has placed us in a world of wonder and we are right to praise Him for it and delight in the gifts it has to offer. There is a time for feasting, a time to ask, a time to rejoice in God’s gifts.
But God is not His creation. He is Uncreated, distinct from everything that exists. Some of the greatest teachers of prayer in the Eastern Christian tradition insist that God doesn’t exist. What they mean is that “existing” is something that only created things “do,” and since God is not created, since He is above His creation, He doesn’t “exist” in the same way everything else does. To approach God the Uncreated One, they say, requires us to “lay aside all earthly cares.” Even beauty and goodness can distract us from God. There is a time to fast, a time to surrender oneself, a time to turn from earthly joys.
Lent is a special time for prayer. We don’t have to say more prayers, or longer ones, but we can mature in prayer. We need to “lift our hearts and minds to God,” to glimpse—even if for a second—something of the Lord as He Is, not as we imagine Him to be. We are creatures, though, subject to earthly cares and fears and hopes and the joys which come and quickly go. It is meet and right to lay our burdens at His feet and hold our hopes and fears up to Him.
This Lent, deepen your practice of prayer. If you usually pray ten prayers, pray one instead and savor each word—hold each word in your heart and offer it to the Lord. See how He speaks to you. If you only pray with a book, drop it. Spend this Lent speaking to God simply, heart to heart. If you never rely on a book, pick one up. The Prayer Book or an old manual of prayers have enshrined some of the highest aspirations of the human spirit. You’ll find there things you’ve long wanted to say to God but couldn’t find the words.
Lift your heart and mind to God—and while there, ask for the good things He has prepared for those who love Him.
PS--Don't worry about your hands.
“If you want God to give you what you want,” the eight-year-old instructed two younger children standing with him on the patio outside St Mary’s, “you have to hold your hands like this.” He placed his palms together and crossed his right thumb over his left, in perfect imitation of the way those serving the altar, acolytes to archbishops, were taught when they were no older than the children before me. Nathaniel scrunched his nose and looked at me. “Right, Father?”
“Well, it’s…” I began tentatively, not wanting to participate in the spawning of a new heresy. All Nathaniel needed (and it was enough, for those of you who knew him) was that I not contradict him. He could go from there.
His hands still folded liturgically, he frowned a bit and warned his catechumens: “Don’t do this.” He pointed his joined hands towards the ground, “or you’ll get the opposite of what you want.”
Sometimes you just have to admit defeat. Before he could entangle me further in error, I got up from the bench and fled to the safety of the church.
St John of Damascus has given us the most sublime definition of prayer. Writing 1,200 years ago, he said, “Prayer is the lifting of the heart and mind to God.”
St John wrote from the depths of the desert encounter with God, drawn from the stark monastic tradition of the Christian East. The soul, stripped of every distraction, ventures into isolation to encounter the One Who Is. Freed from the daily cares of life, keeping body and soul together on rations of dried peas and water, the desert fathers hammered out St John’s definition of prayer in the blast furnaces of their souls. They rose above the world—its beauties and temptations—to find God. Purifying the heart of its love of self and the mind of its fleeting attractions, those who pray in this tradition lift earth to Heaven.
I’m fairly certain if you hold your hands facing the ground (“where the devil lives” I can hear Nathaniel warning) while you pray, you won’t get the opposite of what you intend. That being said, Nathaniel is an unlikely but useful spokesman for another tradition of prayer. It is, we might crudely say, “the Prayer of Asking.” When we turn to God with an anxious or anguished heart and say “O God, help me!” we’re within our rights as creatures. We can pray selfishly, just as we can act selfishly, but asking God to help us, those we know and love or simply those we’ve been asked to remember is not an unworthy or unacceptable prayer. It can be of great benefit to us spiritually if it opens our hearts and minds to how utterly dependent we are on God—it then becomes a prayer of humility—one of the highest virtues.
Nathaniel wasn’t wrong to think he should ask God for stuff when he prayed. The Lord Himself taught us to pray for our daily bread. This approach to God doesn’t turn from the world, but sees the beauty and goodness, the mysteries of creation, as signs of God‘s Presence with us. If St John Damascene speaks for the fiery tradition of the East, St Francis of Assisi is a fair spokesman for the Christian West. Finding God present in all creation and intoxicated with His praise, St Francis said that everything, even death, joins in an unending hymn to God. This tradition sees Heaven here, amongst us, on earth.
One of these approaches is not right and the other wrong. Both emphasize true and necessary things about prayer, God and the world. God has placed us in a world of wonder and we are right to praise Him for it and delight in the gifts it has to offer. There is a time for feasting, a time to ask, a time to rejoice in God’s gifts.
But God is not His creation. He is Uncreated, distinct from everything that exists. Some of the greatest teachers of prayer in the Eastern Christian tradition insist that God doesn’t exist. What they mean is that “existing” is something that only created things “do,” and since God is not created, since He is above His creation, He doesn’t “exist” in the same way everything else does. To approach God the Uncreated One, they say, requires us to “lay aside all earthly cares.” Even beauty and goodness can distract us from God. There is a time to fast, a time to surrender oneself, a time to turn from earthly joys.
Lent is a special time for prayer. We don’t have to say more prayers, or longer ones, but we can mature in prayer. We need to “lift our hearts and minds to God,” to glimpse—even if for a second—something of the Lord as He Is, not as we imagine Him to be. We are creatures, though, subject to earthly cares and fears and hopes and the joys which come and quickly go. It is meet and right to lay our burdens at His feet and hold our hopes and fears up to Him.
This Lent, deepen your practice of prayer. If you usually pray ten prayers, pray one instead and savor each word—hold each word in your heart and offer it to the Lord. See how He speaks to you. If you only pray with a book, drop it. Spend this Lent speaking to God simply, heart to heart. If you never rely on a book, pick one up. The Prayer Book or an old manual of prayers have enshrined some of the highest aspirations of the human spirit. You’ll find there things you’ve long wanted to say to God but couldn’t find the words.
Lift your heart and mind to God—and while there, ask for the good things He has prepared for those who love Him.
PS--Don't worry about your hands.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
THANK GOD I'M NOT LIKE THE PHARISEES
Ember Wednesday in Lent
The Pharisees are the bad guys of the Gospels. Whenever they show up, a fight’s about to happen. “Show us a sign,” they ask of Jesus. “Prove to us You are Who You say. Then we’ll believe.” If we know the Pharisees are itching for a fight, we also know that the Lord Jesus gave ‘em one, time and again. “No, you pack of snakes,” He answered, “you won’t believe regardless of what you see. You’re already convinced—go crawl back into your pit.”
I used to wonder sometimes, when I paid attention in church and wasn’t thinking about girls or imagining I was one of Stonewall Jackson’s boys chasing the Yankees across the Shenandoah Valley, why Jesus always seemed mad at the Pharisees. He called them hypocrites, vipers, “whited sepulchres”—all kinds of names. “Show us a sign.” What’s so bad about that? I wouldn’t mind one every now and then myself.
Unlike teen-age boys, the Lord sees beneath the surface. He knows the hearts and minds of His questioners before they even formulate their questions, and He knows the difference between a real question and a baited one. His harsh words to the Pharisees are meant to crack the hard shells of their self-satisfied certainty, their spiritual arrogance and their blindness of heart. He doesn’t hate them. He speaks sharply because He loves them. He doesn’t care about winning arguments but healing souls.
The Pharisees had truth on their side. They knew the Jewish Creed perfectly, many could recite all 613 Commandments (most of us have trouble remembering just ten), they assiduously kept every "jot and tittle" of the Law. They were right and they knew it. They had no need of Jesus to come around and ask if they kept the Law in their hearts. They wore it on their arms and foreheads in phylacteries.
Jesus didn’t just confront the Pharisees of His day. He looks across the centuries and speaks to the Pharisees still with us. Don’t look around the room. He’s talking to you and me. When we, in the secret place of our heart, condemn the prostitute and the addict, the homosexual and the member of our family who’s an embarrassment at Thanksgiving, knowing we’re better and quietly relishing the fact, we’re fanning our own pharisaical fires. When we ignore the dirty kids from the house down the street but donate money for charitable work in exotic places, we’re straining after our own gnats. When we smirk at the faltering faith of others, knowing our own is correct, we’ve strapped on invisible phylacteries of gigantic proportions.
We’re not called to approve the behavior of prostitutes and addicts and homosexuals and weird Uncle Willie or pretend that Mormonism and the odd, New Age beliefs spouted off by the lady we see at the store now and then (who still wears burlap skirts from the 60’s) are the equivalent of the Nicene Creed. Where the Pharisees failed was not in knowledge, but in love. They didn’t love those who needed it most because their religion got in the way. Their religion blinded their faith. Jesus snapped at them to wake them up, to open their eyes. He fixes his loving but stern gaze at us, two thousand years later, and warns us of the same. Our faith is meant to set us free, but if it becomes a wall to separate us from others, even members of our own family, we aren’t free, we’re enclosed. Our religion has put love to flight.
The Creed isn’t a checklist to tell us who’s right (us!) and wrong (them), it’s the Church’s affirmation that God is love. It says God has revealed Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and we believe Him. “If you are My disciples,” the Lord Jesus says, “love one another.” I may not be able to explain the doctrine of Trinitarian perichoresis, but I know whether I love my neighbor or not.
When Jesus, after His Resurrection, walked along the shores of the Sea of Galilee with Peter the Denier He didn’t say, “Peter, do you grasp the intellectual importance of what has transpired?” He said, “Peter, do you love Me?” His question cut straight to Peter's heart, through his failures and rehearsed excuses and enabled him to see.
Someday you will come face to face with the One Who walked with Peter, and He won’t give you a quiz on how many sacraments there are or what homoousion means. He will ask you the same question He put to him: “Do you love Me?”
The exercises of Lent, our almsgiving, fasting and prayers, can be acts of sacrificial love or forms of pharisaic correctness. Our faith can be a wall to keep people out, or a door to let them in. Let this Lent form your answer to His question.
The Pharisees are the bad guys of the Gospels. Whenever they show up, a fight’s about to happen. “Show us a sign,” they ask of Jesus. “Prove to us You are Who You say. Then we’ll believe.” If we know the Pharisees are itching for a fight, we also know that the Lord Jesus gave ‘em one, time and again. “No, you pack of snakes,” He answered, “you won’t believe regardless of what you see. You’re already convinced—go crawl back into your pit.”
I used to wonder sometimes, when I paid attention in church and wasn’t thinking about girls or imagining I was one of Stonewall Jackson’s boys chasing the Yankees across the Shenandoah Valley, why Jesus always seemed mad at the Pharisees. He called them hypocrites, vipers, “whited sepulchres”—all kinds of names. “Show us a sign.” What’s so bad about that? I wouldn’t mind one every now and then myself.
Unlike teen-age boys, the Lord sees beneath the surface. He knows the hearts and minds of His questioners before they even formulate their questions, and He knows the difference between a real question and a baited one. His harsh words to the Pharisees are meant to crack the hard shells of their self-satisfied certainty, their spiritual arrogance and their blindness of heart. He doesn’t hate them. He speaks sharply because He loves them. He doesn’t care about winning arguments but healing souls.
The Pharisees had truth on their side. They knew the Jewish Creed perfectly, many could recite all 613 Commandments (most of us have trouble remembering just ten), they assiduously kept every "jot and tittle" of the Law. They were right and they knew it. They had no need of Jesus to come around and ask if they kept the Law in their hearts. They wore it on their arms and foreheads in phylacteries.
Jesus didn’t just confront the Pharisees of His day. He looks across the centuries and speaks to the Pharisees still with us. Don’t look around the room. He’s talking to you and me. When we, in the secret place of our heart, condemn the prostitute and the addict, the homosexual and the member of our family who’s an embarrassment at Thanksgiving, knowing we’re better and quietly relishing the fact, we’re fanning our own pharisaical fires. When we ignore the dirty kids from the house down the street but donate money for charitable work in exotic places, we’re straining after our own gnats. When we smirk at the faltering faith of others, knowing our own is correct, we’ve strapped on invisible phylacteries of gigantic proportions.
We’re not called to approve the behavior of prostitutes and addicts and homosexuals and weird Uncle Willie or pretend that Mormonism and the odd, New Age beliefs spouted off by the lady we see at the store now and then (who still wears burlap skirts from the 60’s) are the equivalent of the Nicene Creed. Where the Pharisees failed was not in knowledge, but in love. They didn’t love those who needed it most because their religion got in the way. Their religion blinded their faith. Jesus snapped at them to wake them up, to open their eyes. He fixes his loving but stern gaze at us, two thousand years later, and warns us of the same. Our faith is meant to set us free, but if it becomes a wall to separate us from others, even members of our own family, we aren’t free, we’re enclosed. Our religion has put love to flight.
The Creed isn’t a checklist to tell us who’s right (us!) and wrong (them), it’s the Church’s affirmation that God is love. It says God has revealed Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and we believe Him. “If you are My disciples,” the Lord Jesus says, “love one another.” I may not be able to explain the doctrine of Trinitarian perichoresis, but I know whether I love my neighbor or not.
When Jesus, after His Resurrection, walked along the shores of the Sea of Galilee with Peter the Denier He didn’t say, “Peter, do you grasp the intellectual importance of what has transpired?” He said, “Peter, do you love Me?” His question cut straight to Peter's heart, through his failures and rehearsed excuses and enabled him to see.
Someday you will come face to face with the One Who walked with Peter, and He won’t give you a quiz on how many sacraments there are or what homoousion means. He will ask you the same question He put to him: “Do you love Me?”
The exercises of Lent, our almsgiving, fasting and prayers, can be acts of sacrificial love or forms of pharisaic correctness. Our faith can be a wall to keep people out, or a door to let them in. Let this Lent form your answer to His question.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
CHRISTIANS AND THEIR MONEY
Tuesday after the First Sunday in Lent
If there is any money realized from the sale of my estate when I shuffle off to purgatory, I want it to go towards a stained-glass window. Not one of those drippy Victorian windows with the Lord looking heavenward in pained resignation, no. I want one in the best medieval style, showing an angry Jesus kicking over a money-laden table, brandishing a many-corded whip at a terrified money-changer. To the best of my knowledge, no such window exists in all Christendom.
At one time, not that long ago, when you went into church before Mass, it was quiet. People entered, went to their pews, knelt and prayed. We entered into the Presence with reverence and waited in holy silence for the Holy Mysteries. Now, go into almost any church before Divine Service and you’ll hear chatter, jokes and laughter. People wander around as if it were a train station. “Times are different now,” many will say. That’s true. “We’re not as formal as we used to be.” Ah—now, that’s NOT so true. You can still see people enter with reverence and wait in holy silence. Not in church, but at the bank. There people still know to whisper and observe an holy fear. We are in the Presence of Money.
We are sacramental. All of us: Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Buddhists, atheists, Druids and Zoroastrians. Some of us may not believe in sacraments, but it doesn’t matter. You might as well disbelieve in gravity. God made us such that outward signs carry inward realities. “A kiss is just a kiss,” in Hollywood, but in the real world the gentle kiss of a mother, the frenzied kisses of lovers, the final kiss of a dying spouse, the Judas kiss of a false friend all convey realities. Our world is full of sacramentals—holy water, flags, school songs, handshakes—because we are sacramental. Outward things have inward realities.
Money is one of those outward things. That’s why people behave the way they do in banks. We may not all be able to agree about the divinity of Christ, but most of us accept the divinity of Money. Money isn’t evil, it’s an outward sign. But what’s the inward reality? What is money a sacrament of?
“Where your treasure is,” the Lord instructs us, “there will your heart be also.” Is your treasure in the bank? Is it in your home, with your family? Is it in a bar or a restaurant—or library (this is getting a little too personal!). Money has become the ultimate criterion of our society; our chiefest Sacrament. It decides the fates of presidents, determines what diseases find cures, judges who will live and who will die. It’s the greatest idol the world has ever known. At times it has eclipsed Jesus in His own Church.
When He saw Mammon squatting brazenly in God’s House, Jesus made a whip of cords and drove its devotees out. The Lord Jesus never said money was bad (He never said it was good, either). He knows its power and its potential to corrode souls. To some of us, Jesus says “If you would be perfect, go and sell all you have, and give it to the poor. Then come, follow Me.” For men and women with families and responsibilities, that’s not possible. Those He warns “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.” If you don’t consider yourself rich, look around you, then look at a picture of a family living in the Sudan today. He was warning you and me, not Warren Buffett. We’ve all known people who are poor who believe that if only they had enough money, THEN they’d be happy. The worship of Money is not just for the wealthy.
And so we give alms—not out of our abundance, but out of our need to give—a need to have less—to focus on the things that are eternal, where Jesus sits at the right hand of His Father. Your Lenten almsgiving—if it hurts enough—can set you free from the worship of Money—a freedom that will allow you to truly enthrone Jesus as the Lord of your life.
The next time you’re in a bank, tell the person in line next to you your best joke. Laugh. Speak loudly and be irreverent. You worship elsewhere.
If there is any money realized from the sale of my estate when I shuffle off to purgatory, I want it to go towards a stained-glass window. Not one of those drippy Victorian windows with the Lord looking heavenward in pained resignation, no. I want one in the best medieval style, showing an angry Jesus kicking over a money-laden table, brandishing a many-corded whip at a terrified money-changer. To the best of my knowledge, no such window exists in all Christendom.
At one time, not that long ago, when you went into church before Mass, it was quiet. People entered, went to their pews, knelt and prayed. We entered into the Presence with reverence and waited in holy silence for the Holy Mysteries. Now, go into almost any church before Divine Service and you’ll hear chatter, jokes and laughter. People wander around as if it were a train station. “Times are different now,” many will say. That’s true. “We’re not as formal as we used to be.” Ah—now, that’s NOT so true. You can still see people enter with reverence and wait in holy silence. Not in church, but at the bank. There people still know to whisper and observe an holy fear. We are in the Presence of Money.
We are sacramental. All of us: Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Buddhists, atheists, Druids and Zoroastrians. Some of us may not believe in sacraments, but it doesn’t matter. You might as well disbelieve in gravity. God made us such that outward signs carry inward realities. “A kiss is just a kiss,” in Hollywood, but in the real world the gentle kiss of a mother, the frenzied kisses of lovers, the final kiss of a dying spouse, the Judas kiss of a false friend all convey realities. Our world is full of sacramentals—holy water, flags, school songs, handshakes—because we are sacramental. Outward things have inward realities.
Money is one of those outward things. That’s why people behave the way they do in banks. We may not all be able to agree about the divinity of Christ, but most of us accept the divinity of Money. Money isn’t evil, it’s an outward sign. But what’s the inward reality? What is money a sacrament of?
“Where your treasure is,” the Lord instructs us, “there will your heart be also.” Is your treasure in the bank? Is it in your home, with your family? Is it in a bar or a restaurant—or library (this is getting a little too personal!). Money has become the ultimate criterion of our society; our chiefest Sacrament. It decides the fates of presidents, determines what diseases find cures, judges who will live and who will die. It’s the greatest idol the world has ever known. At times it has eclipsed Jesus in His own Church.
When He saw Mammon squatting brazenly in God’s House, Jesus made a whip of cords and drove its devotees out. The Lord Jesus never said money was bad (He never said it was good, either). He knows its power and its potential to corrode souls. To some of us, Jesus says “If you would be perfect, go and sell all you have, and give it to the poor. Then come, follow Me.” For men and women with families and responsibilities, that’s not possible. Those He warns “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.” If you don’t consider yourself rich, look around you, then look at a picture of a family living in the Sudan today. He was warning you and me, not Warren Buffett. We’ve all known people who are poor who believe that if only they had enough money, THEN they’d be happy. The worship of Money is not just for the wealthy.
And so we give alms—not out of our abundance, but out of our need to give—a need to have less—to focus on the things that are eternal, where Jesus sits at the right hand of His Father. Your Lenten almsgiving—if it hurts enough—can set you free from the worship of Money—a freedom that will allow you to truly enthrone Jesus as the Lord of your life.
The next time you’re in a bank, tell the person in line next to you your best joke. Laugh. Speak loudly and be irreverent. You worship elsewhere.
Monday, February 22, 2010
THE HIDDEN CHRIST
Monday after the First Sunday in Lent
Most people who don’t know anything about Christianity know something about Jesus’ parables. The Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan are stories almost everybody knows and loves. The Dalai Lama has said the Lord’s parables are “the insights of one enlightened.” I’ve heard more than one clergyman preach about the “moral” of the Good Samaritan, turning the parable into a Christian “Aesop’s Fable,” a story told to make a moral point. It’s understandable. Many of Jesus’ parables speak directly to us, without explanation, delighting heart and mind.
But when Jesus Himself “explained” to His disciples why He spoke in parables, He said, (quoting Isaiah) “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.” A dark sort of thing to say for One so enlightened. What does He mean?
St Augustine gives us a clue. He insists that while Jesus’ parables have an obvious meaning, there is a “hidden” one as well. If the old African bishop is right, the Lord was speaking on two levels. There is the obvious meaning: the Prodigal Son returns to his Loving Father, the sinner returns to a welcoming God. But Augustine says there is a deeper meaning. God is not Santa. Sin comes at a price. Christ Himself, Augustine says, is “hidden” in the parable. His death heals the breach. And where is the death in the story? It seems an aside, an afterthought. When the Prodigal returns, the jubilant Father calls out “bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry…” The slaughtered Lamb, the fatted calf, Augustine says, is the Feast of Forgiveness.
We needn’t accept St Augustine’s interpretation. The Lord Himself tells us He hides, not only in the Gospel parables, but in the encounters of our daily lives. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ ” Jesus is present with us in our lives, but we don’t see Him. In the Eucharistic Bread, in the innocent face of a child, in the furtive glance of the hungry and homeless: He is hidden, but Present. Where there is suffering—deserved or not—He is always there.
If you use your Lenten exercises—Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving—you can uncover Him, if you want to. There's the rub! Do I really want to discover the Lord Jesus hiding in the unexplored corners of my life? Just in the past day, an opportunity presented itself to me to see Jesus where I didn’t expect and, in helping one of His own, help Him. I’m so blind to Him it took me a while to see and such a sinner that when I saw my first reaction was to be irritated. Lucky for me, Lent’s just starting.
To us, His people, “it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.” Through this Lent pray, that when you encounter the Hidden Christ, you will have eyes to see, and ears to hear-and a heart to follow.
Most people who don’t know anything about Christianity know something about Jesus’ parables. The Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan are stories almost everybody knows and loves. The Dalai Lama has said the Lord’s parables are “the insights of one enlightened.” I’ve heard more than one clergyman preach about the “moral” of the Good Samaritan, turning the parable into a Christian “Aesop’s Fable,” a story told to make a moral point. It’s understandable. Many of Jesus’ parables speak directly to us, without explanation, delighting heart and mind.
But when Jesus Himself “explained” to His disciples why He spoke in parables, He said, (quoting Isaiah) “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.” A dark sort of thing to say for One so enlightened. What does He mean?
St Augustine gives us a clue. He insists that while Jesus’ parables have an obvious meaning, there is a “hidden” one as well. If the old African bishop is right, the Lord was speaking on two levels. There is the obvious meaning: the Prodigal Son returns to his Loving Father, the sinner returns to a welcoming God. But Augustine says there is a deeper meaning. God is not Santa. Sin comes at a price. Christ Himself, Augustine says, is “hidden” in the parable. His death heals the breach. And where is the death in the story? It seems an aside, an afterthought. When the Prodigal returns, the jubilant Father calls out “bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry…” The slaughtered Lamb, the fatted calf, Augustine says, is the Feast of Forgiveness.
We needn’t accept St Augustine’s interpretation. The Lord Himself tells us He hides, not only in the Gospel parables, but in the encounters of our daily lives. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ ” Jesus is present with us in our lives, but we don’t see Him. In the Eucharistic Bread, in the innocent face of a child, in the furtive glance of the hungry and homeless: He is hidden, but Present. Where there is suffering—deserved or not—He is always there.
If you use your Lenten exercises—Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving—you can uncover Him, if you want to. There's the rub! Do I really want to discover the Lord Jesus hiding in the unexplored corners of my life? Just in the past day, an opportunity presented itself to me to see Jesus where I didn’t expect and, in helping one of His own, help Him. I’m so blind to Him it took me a while to see and such a sinner that when I saw my first reaction was to be irritated. Lucky for me, Lent’s just starting.
To us, His people, “it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.” Through this Lent pray, that when you encounter the Hidden Christ, you will have eyes to see, and ears to hear-and a heart to follow.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
THE LENTEN SECRET
The First Sunday in Lent
We’re five days into Lent (I know Sundays don’t count as part of the Forty Days, but you’re still keeping your Lenten Rule and disciplines, even if you relax things a bit on Sundays…if your response to this is “Lenten Rule? What? What’s that?”...go back five squares). If you’re keeping a Lenten Rule, even a simple one, you’ve already been tempted to break it. That’s actually the point. If your Lenten exercises don’t challenge you (if you're playing it safe with things like not operating heavy machinery till Easter and avoiding Japanese puffer-fish), they’re worthless. If you don’t like chocolate, even if everybody else does, giving it up has no meaning. So as we stop at our first Lenten marker, consider for a moment what it is we’re doing.
You’ve been tempted to break your Rule already. Most likely you’ve been able to resist—after all, we just started. Right now, you can probably turn aside temptation with a brusque mental refusal. Good for you. Remember that as the season progresses: your resolution may not always be so strong. Remember, too, what you’re refusing. We don’t give up sinful stuff for Lent, intending to take it up again come the Resurrection (“I’ve given up stealing from Wal-mart till after Easter!”). We give up something good, legitimate and beneficial, like Prime Rib or our favorite magazine or the Simpsons (well, not all things are equally beneficial). Why are we “giving something up?” If you think it’s to show you can do it, go back five more squares; if it’s to boost your will-power, go back ten. Lent is not a Christian weight-loss program or a religious self-improvement course.
If, at the end of Lent, you say to yourself—or worse, tell others—“I didn’t touch a piece of USDA prime meat nor darken the door of a theater for the last forty days” your Lenten observance has been a waste. Far better to have failed every day in an on-going struggle not to give in to gossip than to be able to say “I did it.” If “you did it,” then Lent has been about you, not Jesus.
Lent isn’t about developing your “will-power,” building a strong character or becoming a better, more socially-conscious person. Those may be desirable goals, but they’re not why your forehead was smudged with a cross a few days back. We followed Jesus into Lent to be with Him, to make our struggles His. Do you tell lies thoughtlessly? Delight in the failure of others? Have a relative you can’t abide? The well-spent Lent is not the one we’re strong enough to keep, but the one we’re weak enough to surrender.
When you and I accept our weakness, Grace can flow. Giving up television? When the temptation comes to turn it on, don’t resist with all your might. Instead, turn to the Lord and say “I really want to watch 'Texas Farm Journal.' I love that show.” The Lover of Mankind knows what it is to love, even if some of our loves baffle Him. When you tell Him, “This week, I’m giving it to You,” Grace flows like a fresh spring; the secret of Lent has been found.
The Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted. Though we may not have known it, that’s why we followed Him here. His Humanity grew in Grace because He laid Himself before His Father in the furnace of those Forty Days. When we stumble onto the realization that the Spirit is leading us to do the same, to offer ourselves as a “holy and living sacrifice”—(THAT is what Jesus was doing in the desert sun)—then our Lenten exercises, self-denials and temptations suddenly have found their meaning. Through them, through our struggle and our weakness, God enfolds us in His loving embrace.
We’re five days into Lent (I know Sundays don’t count as part of the Forty Days, but you’re still keeping your Lenten Rule and disciplines, even if you relax things a bit on Sundays…if your response to this is “Lenten Rule? What? What’s that?”...go back five squares). If you’re keeping a Lenten Rule, even a simple one, you’ve already been tempted to break it. That’s actually the point. If your Lenten exercises don’t challenge you (if you're playing it safe with things like not operating heavy machinery till Easter and avoiding Japanese puffer-fish), they’re worthless. If you don’t like chocolate, even if everybody else does, giving it up has no meaning. So as we stop at our first Lenten marker, consider for a moment what it is we’re doing.
You’ve been tempted to break your Rule already. Most likely you’ve been able to resist—after all, we just started. Right now, you can probably turn aside temptation with a brusque mental refusal. Good for you. Remember that as the season progresses: your resolution may not always be so strong. Remember, too, what you’re refusing. We don’t give up sinful stuff for Lent, intending to take it up again come the Resurrection (“I’ve given up stealing from Wal-mart till after Easter!”). We give up something good, legitimate and beneficial, like Prime Rib or our favorite magazine or the Simpsons (well, not all things are equally beneficial). Why are we “giving something up?” If you think it’s to show you can do it, go back five more squares; if it’s to boost your will-power, go back ten. Lent is not a Christian weight-loss program or a religious self-improvement course.
If, at the end of Lent, you say to yourself—or worse, tell others—“I didn’t touch a piece of USDA prime meat nor darken the door of a theater for the last forty days” your Lenten observance has been a waste. Far better to have failed every day in an on-going struggle not to give in to gossip than to be able to say “I did it.” If “you did it,” then Lent has been about you, not Jesus.
Lent isn’t about developing your “will-power,” building a strong character or becoming a better, more socially-conscious person. Those may be desirable goals, but they’re not why your forehead was smudged with a cross a few days back. We followed Jesus into Lent to be with Him, to make our struggles His. Do you tell lies thoughtlessly? Delight in the failure of others? Have a relative you can’t abide? The well-spent Lent is not the one we’re strong enough to keep, but the one we’re weak enough to surrender.
When you and I accept our weakness, Grace can flow. Giving up television? When the temptation comes to turn it on, don’t resist with all your might. Instead, turn to the Lord and say “I really want to watch 'Texas Farm Journal.' I love that show.” The Lover of Mankind knows what it is to love, even if some of our loves baffle Him. When you tell Him, “This week, I’m giving it to You,” Grace flows like a fresh spring; the secret of Lent has been found.
The Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted. Though we may not have known it, that’s why we followed Him here. His Humanity grew in Grace because He laid Himself before His Father in the furnace of those Forty Days. When we stumble onto the realization that the Spirit is leading us to do the same, to offer ourselves as a “holy and living sacrifice”—(THAT is what Jesus was doing in the desert sun)—then our Lenten exercises, self-denials and temptations suddenly have found their meaning. Through them, through our struggle and our weakness, God enfolds us in His loving embrace.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
ALMS, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE-AND OURS
The First Saturday in Lent
I don’t remember when I discovered the difference between “tithing” and “almsgiving.” I do remember my reaction—I was shocked and irritated. I also remember how I found out—my saintly confessor of many (many) years ago, Fr Homer Rogers, chided me about it—during confession! Not too long before, I had begun tithing, giving ten percent of my income to the church. I was proud of it—i.e., pleased that I had taken up the challenge, pleased because I knew it made me better than those who didn’t. As I say, I don’t remember all the particulars, but I do remember the most damning one. While making my confession, laying out my sins before God, I’d managed to work in that I tithed. Surely Fr Rogers would admire me almost as much as I admired myself.
Fr Rogers was a skillful surgeon of the soul, a master of the art. After I ended my confession, as part of his “penance, counsel and absolution,” he asked (with no tone of admiration), “Do you give alms, Greg?”
“Huh?” Alms, of course I do, I thought. Didn’t I mention I was a tither? Didn’t he hear that part? “Yes, father.”
“I know you tithe: you just told me so. But do you give alms? What do you do to combat your greed and stimulate charity?”
I didn’t say anything, as I recall. I was embarrassed: I didn't know what he was talking about. Further, I realized I’d been boasting during confession, which turns out not to be a very good idea. Fr Rogers then began his surgery on me—and that part I’ll keep to myself.
To tithe is to give to God a just portion of what He gives us. I’ve tithed on my income since before I was ordained. I don’t think a priest can call on his people to tithe if he’s not doing so himself. It’s part of our duty, like going to Mass on Sundays and helping old ladies across the street. It should be just as habitual. But almsgiving—that’s what separates the men from the boys. That’s where I so often fail.
If you listen to television clergymen, their mouths are full of promises, mostly the same ones. If you give them some of your money, God will reward you tenfold, twentyfold or an hundredfold. “Gimme some and you’ll get a lot more, beloved! It says so in the Bible! It’s the Divine Plan of Prosperity!”
They already have their reward.
Here’s the truth: if you give your money away, you’ll have less money than you did before you gave it. When the Lord promises your bread-basket will be filled to running over when you give, He’s not saying “Give the clergy $10 and you’ll get back $100!” God is not Santa Claus, nor is He a slot machine. You will receive, but not in “miracle dollars.” You’ll receive in the gradual, steady, abundant maturing of soul that comes from a disciple of Jesus, Who, you may recall, became poor for our sake.
One of the three “pillars” of Lent is almsgiving. Not tithing, not doing your duty, but giving of what you have left after that. The Lenten combat we’re called to is a struggle with greed and selfishness. Lent calls us to some unwelcome facts about ourselves: in the funeral service (there’s death again!), as we’re carried to the grave, the priest says “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out….Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”
Despite what you may have heard, God doesn’t care about your bank account. He doesn’t care if you are prosperous, unless, like old Marley’s Ghost, that blinds you to the need of others. Lent comes along and puts that to the test. Then, remember the words of the Lord Jesus: “the measuring-cup you use to give, is the same one that will be used to decide what you get.”
I don’t remember when I discovered the difference between “tithing” and “almsgiving.” I do remember my reaction—I was shocked and irritated. I also remember how I found out—my saintly confessor of many (many) years ago, Fr Homer Rogers, chided me about it—during confession! Not too long before, I had begun tithing, giving ten percent of my income to the church. I was proud of it—i.e., pleased that I had taken up the challenge, pleased because I knew it made me better than those who didn’t. As I say, I don’t remember all the particulars, but I do remember the most damning one. While making my confession, laying out my sins before God, I’d managed to work in that I tithed. Surely Fr Rogers would admire me almost as much as I admired myself.
Fr Rogers was a skillful surgeon of the soul, a master of the art. After I ended my confession, as part of his “penance, counsel and absolution,” he asked (with no tone of admiration), “Do you give alms, Greg?”
“Huh?” Alms, of course I do, I thought. Didn’t I mention I was a tither? Didn’t he hear that part? “Yes, father.”
“I know you tithe: you just told me so. But do you give alms? What do you do to combat your greed and stimulate charity?”
I didn’t say anything, as I recall. I was embarrassed: I didn't know what he was talking about. Further, I realized I’d been boasting during confession, which turns out not to be a very good idea. Fr Rogers then began his surgery on me—and that part I’ll keep to myself.
To tithe is to give to God a just portion of what He gives us. I’ve tithed on my income since before I was ordained. I don’t think a priest can call on his people to tithe if he’s not doing so himself. It’s part of our duty, like going to Mass on Sundays and helping old ladies across the street. It should be just as habitual. But almsgiving—that’s what separates the men from the boys. That’s where I so often fail.
If you listen to television clergymen, their mouths are full of promises, mostly the same ones. If you give them some of your money, God will reward you tenfold, twentyfold or an hundredfold. “Gimme some and you’ll get a lot more, beloved! It says so in the Bible! It’s the Divine Plan of Prosperity!”
They already have their reward.
Here’s the truth: if you give your money away, you’ll have less money than you did before you gave it. When the Lord promises your bread-basket will be filled to running over when you give, He’s not saying “Give the clergy $10 and you’ll get back $100!” God is not Santa Claus, nor is He a slot machine. You will receive, but not in “miracle dollars.” You’ll receive in the gradual, steady, abundant maturing of soul that comes from a disciple of Jesus, Who, you may recall, became poor for our sake.
One of the three “pillars” of Lent is almsgiving. Not tithing, not doing your duty, but giving of what you have left after that. The Lenten combat we’re called to is a struggle with greed and selfishness. Lent calls us to some unwelcome facts about ourselves: in the funeral service (there’s death again!), as we’re carried to the grave, the priest says “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out….Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”
Despite what you may have heard, God doesn’t care about your bank account. He doesn’t care if you are prosperous, unless, like old Marley’s Ghost, that blinds you to the need of others. Lent comes along and puts that to the test. Then, remember the words of the Lord Jesus: “the measuring-cup you use to give, is the same one that will be used to decide what you get.”
Friday, February 19, 2010
REMEMBER LENT
The First Friday of Lent
The sooty cross is probably gone from your forehead by now, the day of strict fast and abstinence has passed. Lent is here with its rich altar frontals and stately hymns. We’re supposed to fast every day and not eat meat—when—on Fridays? Wednesdays and Fridays? The Prayer Book, I think I was once told, says something about it…
So we settle into Lent. A few liturgical rules to remember, an occasional pleasure laid aside: it’ll be Easter before you know it. So before you have a chance this year to say “Is it Palm Sunday already?” let me suggest that you make a habit of Lent. Remember Lent in your daily life.
Years ago, Shirley Weissmuller, Brother Michael Priebe and I went to Costco one afternoon. We were buying some supplies for a parish “feeding program” we ran for the homeless. When got there, Brother Michael went to the food counter and bought himself one of those fat, foot-long hot dogs and, as we made our way through the store, he idly chewed at it. He was almost finished when Shirley, with a big smile, asked “Does that taste any better on Friday?” He almost chocked on the bite already in his mouth (my mind immediately sprang to that verse in the Psalter “But while the meat was yet in their mouths, the heavy wrath of God came upon them, and…He slew them.” Fortunately, the Lord was more forgiving of Brother Michael than he was the grumbly Jews in the desert). “I forgot it was Friday,” he apologized. It’s easy to do. To benefit as best we can, we have to “remember Lent.” To remember, to keep it in heart and mind, we need to do something. This may help:
The Common Prayer Book has a Daily Collect for Lent, on page 124 . It’s to be said at every service, Matins, Vespers, and the Mass, every day of the season:
Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that Thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
It’s a good prayer, easy to memorize. If you add it to your other daily prayers (if you don’t say prayers every day, consider this and the Lord’s Prayer twice a day through Lent), you’ll learn it in no time.
Now, if you want a rubber-hits-the-road Lenten Prayer consider this one. It’s called the Lenten Prayer of St Ephrem the Syrian (usually I’d go off explaining fascinating facts about the saint, but I’ve given up Excessively Irritating Erudition for Lent). His prayer is said at the beginning and ending of each service in the Orthodox Churches throughout the Great Fast:
O Lord and Master of my life,
take from me the spirit of sloth, despondency,
lust of power, and idle talk;
But grant rather
the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love
to thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King,
grant me to see my own transgressions,
and not to judge my brother;
for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages.
It you add the Prayer of St Ephrem to the Lord’s Prayer twice a day, you won’t be able to forget it’s Lent. And whatever I have to say in these meditations, the thoughts you’ll have as a result of saying these words regularly, as the prayer moves from your lips to your heart and mind, will be far more profound.
Remember Lent. Pray it. You won’t then fail to keep it.
The sooty cross is probably gone from your forehead by now, the day of strict fast and abstinence has passed. Lent is here with its rich altar frontals and stately hymns. We’re supposed to fast every day and not eat meat—when—on Fridays? Wednesdays and Fridays? The Prayer Book, I think I was once told, says something about it…
So we settle into Lent. A few liturgical rules to remember, an occasional pleasure laid aside: it’ll be Easter before you know it. So before you have a chance this year to say “Is it Palm Sunday already?” let me suggest that you make a habit of Lent. Remember Lent in your daily life.
Years ago, Shirley Weissmuller, Brother Michael Priebe and I went to Costco one afternoon. We were buying some supplies for a parish “feeding program” we ran for the homeless. When got there, Brother Michael went to the food counter and bought himself one of those fat, foot-long hot dogs and, as we made our way through the store, he idly chewed at it. He was almost finished when Shirley, with a big smile, asked “Does that taste any better on Friday?” He almost chocked on the bite already in his mouth (my mind immediately sprang to that verse in the Psalter “But while the meat was yet in their mouths, the heavy wrath of God came upon them, and…He slew them.” Fortunately, the Lord was more forgiving of Brother Michael than he was the grumbly Jews in the desert). “I forgot it was Friday,” he apologized. It’s easy to do. To benefit as best we can, we have to “remember Lent.” To remember, to keep it in heart and mind, we need to do something. This may help:
The Common Prayer Book has a Daily Collect for Lent, on page 124 . It’s to be said at every service, Matins, Vespers, and the Mass, every day of the season:
Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that Thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
It’s a good prayer, easy to memorize. If you add it to your other daily prayers (if you don’t say prayers every day, consider this and the Lord’s Prayer twice a day through Lent), you’ll learn it in no time.
Now, if you want a rubber-hits-the-road Lenten Prayer consider this one. It’s called the Lenten Prayer of St Ephrem the Syrian (usually I’d go off explaining fascinating facts about the saint, but I’ve given up Excessively Irritating Erudition for Lent). His prayer is said at the beginning and ending of each service in the Orthodox Churches throughout the Great Fast:
O Lord and Master of my life,
take from me the spirit of sloth, despondency,
lust of power, and idle talk;
But grant rather
the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love
to thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King,
grant me to see my own transgressions,
and not to judge my brother;
for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages.
It you add the Prayer of St Ephrem to the Lord’s Prayer twice a day, you won’t be able to forget it’s Lent. And whatever I have to say in these meditations, the thoughts you’ll have as a result of saying these words regularly, as the prayer moves from your lips to your heart and mind, will be far more profound.
Remember Lent. Pray it. You won’t then fail to keep it.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
SPIRITUAL COMBAT
The First Thursday of Lent
“What are you giving up for Lent?” I’ve heard people who don’t even know what Lent is ask this question. Popularly, it’s a time you can lose a little weight, build up your will-power and prove you can live without: chocolates/television/credit cards or (your indulgence here) for a month and a half. If we’re socially conscious, we may even think to use the money we save not going to the movies, eating out or hang-gliding to give to people who can’t afford to do any of those things. Maybe we should volunteer for something…
Nothing wrong with any of this, except that none of it has anything to do with Lent. The Church has become so anemic in living and proclaiming its message that this is what Lent has degenerated into. But before we lay the blame at the feet of bad popes and self-absorbed bishops, remember that the Church is us. We have allowed our faith to become anemic.
Lent isn’t meant to be a time for a little “spiritual checkup,” or “spiritual spring-cleaning.” That’s a notion for children. “When I became a man, I put away childish things,” St Paul growls. Lent is a time for combat. It’s patterned after Jesus, Who went into the hot, dirty desert and fasted forty days and forty nights. He didn’t give up chocolates but food. Scripture says when He was starving, the devil tempted Him, not with a steaming platter of Beef Wellington: a few crusts of dried bread was temptation enough. The Lord didn’t go without any food for forty days because He wanted to lose weight. He was looking for a battlefield where He could wage war. He offered Himself as that battlefield.
To follow Jesus into the desert of Lent is to offer ourselves as places for combat, too. We needn’t be glum, or afraid of failure, or worry we have to go without food for the duration—nor do we need to inflict our Lent on those around us. Listen to Jesus: “when you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites who want everybody to know they’re fasting…comb your hair, wash your face…and fast quietly.” Lenten combat is the struggle with the real sins you and I commit: selfishness, harboring of hatred, cherishing of wrongs, jealousy of a friend’s success or just wanting the whole banana cream pie for myself. The Lenten struggle is fought where you and I do our day-to-day living. Only now, we become aware that something’s been going on— something we hadn’t noticed before and we don’t quite know what to do about it.
If you can put the devil to flight by giving up chocolate for a month and a half—great. Write a book. But if you take Lent to heart, be ready for a real contest, ‘cause that’s what you’re going to get. Don’t worry if you’re not up to it; you’re not. This is a war you can’t win. Happily, you don’t have to. You keep your eyes on Jesus, the finisher of our faith, and the devil’s in for yet another trouncing. Not from you or me, but from the One Who defeats him over and over and over again.
“What are you giving up for Lent?” I’ve heard people who don’t even know what Lent is ask this question. Popularly, it’s a time you can lose a little weight, build up your will-power and prove you can live without: chocolates/television/credit cards or (your indulgence here) for a month and a half. If we’re socially conscious, we may even think to use the money we save not going to the movies, eating out or hang-gliding to give to people who can’t afford to do any of those things. Maybe we should volunteer for something…
Nothing wrong with any of this, except that none of it has anything to do with Lent. The Church has become so anemic in living and proclaiming its message that this is what Lent has degenerated into. But before we lay the blame at the feet of bad popes and self-absorbed bishops, remember that the Church is us. We have allowed our faith to become anemic.
Lent isn’t meant to be a time for a little “spiritual checkup,” or “spiritual spring-cleaning.” That’s a notion for children. “When I became a man, I put away childish things,” St Paul growls. Lent is a time for combat. It’s patterned after Jesus, Who went into the hot, dirty desert and fasted forty days and forty nights. He didn’t give up chocolates but food. Scripture says when He was starving, the devil tempted Him, not with a steaming platter of Beef Wellington: a few crusts of dried bread was temptation enough. The Lord didn’t go without any food for forty days because He wanted to lose weight. He was looking for a battlefield where He could wage war. He offered Himself as that battlefield.
To follow Jesus into the desert of Lent is to offer ourselves as places for combat, too. We needn’t be glum, or afraid of failure, or worry we have to go without food for the duration—nor do we need to inflict our Lent on those around us. Listen to Jesus: “when you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites who want everybody to know they’re fasting…comb your hair, wash your face…and fast quietly.” Lenten combat is the struggle with the real sins you and I commit: selfishness, harboring of hatred, cherishing of wrongs, jealousy of a friend’s success or just wanting the whole banana cream pie for myself. The Lenten struggle is fought where you and I do our day-to-day living. Only now, we become aware that something’s been going on— something we hadn’t noticed before and we don’t quite know what to do about it.
If you can put the devil to flight by giving up chocolate for a month and a half—great. Write a book. But if you take Lent to heart, be ready for a real contest, ‘cause that’s what you’re going to get. Don’t worry if you’re not up to it; you’re not. This is a war you can’t win. Happily, you don’t have to. You keep your eyes on Jesus, the finisher of our faith, and the devil’s in for yet another trouncing. Not from you or me, but from the One Who defeats him over and over and over again.
THE SMUDGED CROSS
Ash Wednesday
The priest traces a cross of black ashes onto the forehead of each person who comes forward and says “Remember, O man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”
It’s a simple act, profoundly powerful. We begin Lent by remembering that we’re going to die. Pious and faithless, rich and poor, beautiful as well as homely, whatever our sort and condition, we all leave life in a casket. Our “Lenten exercises” (I love the phrase) begin with a reminder that we will end.
Sometimes Christianity is pilloried with the accusation that it seeks to shackle the spirit and enslave the mind. Is there any better proof than this? It wants us to think of death—again and again and again. The great irony is that when I remember—accept, embrace the fact—that I’m going to die, it’s precisely then that the fear and grip of death begins to loosen. When I understand with both mind and heart that my days here are numbered, how precious those days become. The force of a Bach toccata is more powerful, the caress of a breeze on the face more subtle, the embrace of a friend more endearing when we know that one day, all these will be no more. When we remember death, our lives here become infinitely richer.
The black-smudged cross, though, insists on something else. If you are going to die, you are also going to live. That cross is a sign, first marked on you at baptism, that you no longer belong just to yourself. “All things are yours,” cries St Paul, “and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” That black cross is a reminder of His death—and yours. More, it’s a sign that on the Third Day, He tossed death aside. That Ash Wednesday smudge is a promise that He’ll toss yours aside, too.
I hope your ashen cross is big, black and hard to get off. It is your pledge of eternity.
The priest traces a cross of black ashes onto the forehead of each person who comes forward and says “Remember, O man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”
It’s a simple act, profoundly powerful. We begin Lent by remembering that we’re going to die. Pious and faithless, rich and poor, beautiful as well as homely, whatever our sort and condition, we all leave life in a casket. Our “Lenten exercises” (I love the phrase) begin with a reminder that we will end.
Sometimes Christianity is pilloried with the accusation that it seeks to shackle the spirit and enslave the mind. Is there any better proof than this? It wants us to think of death—again and again and again. The great irony is that when I remember—accept, embrace the fact—that I’m going to die, it’s precisely then that the fear and grip of death begins to loosen. When I understand with both mind and heart that my days here are numbered, how precious those days become. The force of a Bach toccata is more powerful, the caress of a breeze on the face more subtle, the embrace of a friend more endearing when we know that one day, all these will be no more. When we remember death, our lives here become infinitely richer.
The black-smudged cross, though, insists on something else. If you are going to die, you are also going to live. That cross is a sign, first marked on you at baptism, that you no longer belong just to yourself. “All things are yours,” cries St Paul, “and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” That black cross is a reminder of His death—and yours. More, it’s a sign that on the Third Day, He tossed death aside. That Ash Wednesday smudge is a promise that He’ll toss yours aside, too.
I hope your ashen cross is big, black and hard to get off. It is your pledge of eternity.
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