Wednesday in Holy Week
Tomorrow the Three Great Days begin. The Sacred Triduum is the heart of the Christian’s year. The Liturgies of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Even convey the whole of the Scriptures, the Creeds and the Sacraments, the whole of our Faith, in those Three Days. The Night of the Eucharist and the Lord’s Betrayal, the Day of His Sacrificial Death and Burial, the Saturday Preparation leading to the Night that bursts to Life with Fire and Light, these solemnities are rightly called celebrations and “remembrances.”
“This is My body, which is given for you,” the Lord Jesus said to His disciples on the night in which He was betrayed. “Do this in remembrance of Me. Likewise, after supper He took the cup…” He commanded His disciples then as He commands His disciples now: “Do this in remembrance of Me.” As the Prayer of Consecration continues during the Mass, the priest says: “having in remembrance His blessed passion and precious death, His mighty resurrection and glorious ascension…” Remembrances are being made. But there are some more than interesting things to consider about these “remembrances.” They point to the coming Three Days and why these Great Days matter in the lives you and I live.
In Greek, the word we translate as “remembrance” is ANAMNESIS. It was an old word before the writers of the New Testament used it. If you look at the word a minute, you’ll see a word you already know: AMNESIA—and that helps a bit to understand the word. Amnesia is to lose memory. It’s not just to forget something for a bit, but to lose something for good. “Anamnesia”—anamnesis—is to regain the memory which was lost. Plato used it that way repeatedly. In Plato’s theory, anamnesis described the process whereby something which had been lost (in his case, knowledge,”) is restored. The translators of the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, developed the word a bit further, giving it a specialized meaning. They used the word to describe the “memorial sacrifice” offered by the Priests and Levites in the Temple. When the four Gospel-writers recorded Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, they each chose this word; for them, it had a special meaning.
When you and I “remember” something, we're performing a mental exercise. We “stop and think.” Where did I put my keys? What was that fellow’s name? Why did I come into this room? Sometimes, we sit and “remember” with friends. We think back to things we share. Common memories strengthen common bonds. Is that what we’re doing at Mass? Are we collectively “remembering” Jesus? Is He present with us because we call Him to mind? If we remember harder or better is He more present? Did we lose Him (amnesis) and, by remembering, find Him again (anamnesis)?
When Jesus gave His disciples the Bread no longer bread and the cup now filled with His Blood, He obviously didn’t add, “Do this and please, try hard to remember Me.” His words mean something else. We are indeed remembering, but much more importantly, so is Someone Else.
I love the subtle differences between the Eastern Churches and our own. One I find most intriguing is their “remembering.” We pray, “having in remembrance His blessed Passion and precious Death, His mighty Resurrection and glorious Ascension, …” At the same place in the Eastern Mass the priest prays: “Remembering… all that came to pass for our sake, the Cross, the Tomb, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the Enthronement at the right hand of the Father, and the second, glorious Coming, we offer unto Thee these Gifts…” They “remember” something that hasn’t yet happened! The Liturgy sees “the second, glorious coming” of our Lord, an event in the future, as part of that which “came to pass for our sake.” How is this? The answer hinges on who’s doing the remembering.
The most important “rememberer” at the Mass isn’t the priest (or even the MC who usually remembers a lot of things for the priest!) but God. The Mass doesn’t depend on how well we remember, but on God, Who never forgets. In Him, the past, present and future are one. The Mass isn’t a memory device for forgetful Christians, but the way God lifts us to Himself. In God, Christ’s Christmas Incarnation, His Good Friday Sacrifice, His Easter Day Resurrection, His Glorious Ascension and Second Coming are all one. Christ, the eternal Son, is forever offering Himself to His Father. This has been His gift—His eternal Self-Giving—since before creation. On earth, full of selfishness and all its subsequent sorrows, this Self-Giving took the form of death on the Cross. The Body broken on Golgotha is the Body now in Heaven, and present with us in the Sacrament of the Altar: each a sacrifice of Self-Giving Love. This is what God, the Three-in-One, “remembers” with us at Sunday Mass.
During these coming Three Days, He draws us into His “remembering” by making us participants. At the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Thursday, we don’t just recall the disciples at the Lord’s Table. We ARE the disciples with Him at His Table. When we “creep” to the sanctuary during the Friday Liturgy, shoes removed and bodies bowed, to kiss His Cross, we are with Him on Golgotha. Saturday night, as the New Fire is struck and the Paschal Proclamation is sung, the Night illumined with hundreds of candles is unlike any other night—for Christ is Risen, and so are we.
These are our High Days, Days of Remembrance. Yes, we remember the mighty acts that brought about our salvation. But it’s God’s Remembrance, always present with us to create, redeem, and sanctify, that IS the Feast.
God bless each of you with His Grace for this Triduum. May He lift us to Himself during these holy days and “remember” us at the coming Paschal Feast—the one that will never end.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
THE FRUITFUL CROSS
Tuesday in Holy Week
The struggle against sin, once genuinely entered into, is fierce. There’s no let-up, no “time-off,” for the soul turning from its own selfishness to the Lord Christ. It’s a contest which will engage us for the rest of our lives.
But the contest is neither dark nor tiring. “My yoke is easy,” coaxes the Lord, “and My burden is light.” After a good, vigorous Lent, we might fairly accuse the Lord of using His words loosely. Fasting till we can feel it; almsgiving that makes a dent in our bank balance; praying whether we feel like it or not—this is “easy?” Struggling with sin until have “shuffled off this mortal coil” admittedly sounds less enticing than a Caribbean cruise. There are no doubt many who never consider crossing the threshold of a church door because of the invisible sign over the door: “Abandon all joy, ye who enter here.”
They have cause for feeling the way they do. I have been in many churches where there is a “forced” sense of camaraderie, where people laugh about things not really very funny, where “joy” is almost force-fed. Hymns are catchy, with a little marimba beat, there’s a purposeful intention to make parish programs compete with activities in the secular world, where every sermon has to have at least two jokes (safely and blandly drawn from books like Jokes Every Minister Can Tell). Of course, I’ve been in many parishes of the other kind, too, where visitors are greeted by long faces from the pews silently warning “don’t expect a kind word till you’ve earned it,” dreary Victorian dirges that cause one to look for the door before reaching the end of the second verse, and homilies that don’t challenge but congratulate. Neither is fun, neither is joyful because both are fake. The Gospel has been left safely in the lectionary.
Joy isn’t something we can produce. It’s a gift. It’s not the gift of a witty rector or clever curate (those things are good); it’s the fruit of prayer and penitence. Joy runs deep and clear, an underground fountain that bubbles and gurgles up to refresh the souls of those who know to drink from it. God gives His gifts freely where they’re sought, but His grace isn’t cheap.
Our parishes are always looking for programs. “What can we do to bring them in?” There’s a whole industry built around “church-building,” with books full of every evangelistic idea imaginable: “Cooking Your Way to a Large Congregation,” “Tag-Team Evangelism!” “Church Growth in 49 Easy-To-Follow Steps!” I’ll tell you what I’ve never seen: a program suggesting that, before a parish resorts to “get-large-quick” schemes, it concentrates of prayer and repentance to pave the way for whatever pleases the Lord (the titled Owner of the Church Catholic).
Jesus told us to follow Him. He didn’t say what we’d pass along the Way, only that we’d be carrying a Cross and at the End of the journey we’d be with Him and made like Him. What if His Church dared pick up its Cross?
The current scandals of the Roman Church aren’t sounding her death knell; they’re the Cross Christ has given her to carry in this generation—one she should embrace to heal not only herself, but the sins and sorrows of those wounded all around. Cagey lawyers will save archdiocesan properties, but is the Lord of the Poor arraigned with the bar? The pathetic character of the Anglican Churches, of whatever sort, can be embraced as gift, a Cross to bring men and women together to trudge after Jesus, their gazes fixed on Him instead of reputation and place; or they can continue bickering and backstabbing until the sanctuary floor looks like the body-clogged stage in the last scene of Hamlet. What would happen if the Roman Church truly embraced poverty and followed after Jesus in the highways and hedges? What would happen if she freed itself of her stacked bullion and Swiss accounts? If Anglican bishops, priests and deacons insisted on practicing real humility and charity (as their Lord commands), what would become of the sickening stench of the church’s rancor? What would happen if people came to church and found Jesus Christ not only in the Sacrament of the Altar but truly alive in the hearts of His people? If God’s One Holy Catholic Church was united in prayer and penitence, would there be any empty spaces in our pews? The crowds would be such that people wouldn’t fit in the aisles.
As long as our faith is our hobby, what we do on Sundays because we’re “religious,” the world not only tolerates us but thinks we’re probably worthwhile. Cicero was personally an agnostic but he was all in favor of people being “religious” and filling the temples. “Keeps ‘em in their place; keeps crime levels low.”
“My yoke is easy,” the Lord insists. “My burden is light.” Light compared to what?
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere! That’s what the Lord has been waiting for us to ask.
If I don’t follow Jesus, I sleep in Sundays, do what I want when I want (as long as it doesn’t get me into trouble), answer to nobody but myself (except my boss, my spouse, the people I want to impress, the people I owe money to, the people who owe money to me, and any repair/delivery or installation people who tell me to be available from 8 AM till 5 PM on whatever day is convenient for them), I’m the Master of My Own Fate (as long as I don’t get sick/fired/arrested/bamboozled or flim-flammed/shown up by somebody else/robbed/beaten/hit by a train—or die) and Captain of My Own Soul (as long as it’s a single-person dingy on a very pleasant day). Left to ourselves, we can be selfish (“independent”), grasping (“looking out for #1”), self-absorbed (“glamorous”), vengeful (“standing up for my rights”), gluttonous (“connoisseur” or “pig,” as desired), libertine (“open”) and lazy (“comfortable”)—and we call this freedom instead of slavery. “I can be myself!” we boast, thinking we’re “being ourselves” when we do whatever the next thing is that drifts past our consciousness.
Jesus says—“Be who I made you to be. Put my easy yoke on and break yours intolerably heavy one. You don’t even know who you are. You’re more than a collection of whims and random interests. I created you to be My friend.”
“Whoever serves Me,” Jesus told His disciples, “must follow Me.” To follow Him is to carry a Cross and this week, His way goes up Golgotha, to die. But Sunday, in the midnight darkness, His Light will blind the world—and turn it upside down. If you’ve followed Him to Golgotha, He will keep you close for that “Great, Gettin’ Up Mornin’.”
The struggle against sin, once genuinely entered into, is fierce. There’s no let-up, no “time-off,” for the soul turning from its own selfishness to the Lord Christ. It’s a contest which will engage us for the rest of our lives.
But the contest is neither dark nor tiring. “My yoke is easy,” coaxes the Lord, “and My burden is light.” After a good, vigorous Lent, we might fairly accuse the Lord of using His words loosely. Fasting till we can feel it; almsgiving that makes a dent in our bank balance; praying whether we feel like it or not—this is “easy?” Struggling with sin until have “shuffled off this mortal coil” admittedly sounds less enticing than a Caribbean cruise. There are no doubt many who never consider crossing the threshold of a church door because of the invisible sign over the door: “Abandon all joy, ye who enter here.”
They have cause for feeling the way they do. I have been in many churches where there is a “forced” sense of camaraderie, where people laugh about things not really very funny, where “joy” is almost force-fed. Hymns are catchy, with a little marimba beat, there’s a purposeful intention to make parish programs compete with activities in the secular world, where every sermon has to have at least two jokes (safely and blandly drawn from books like Jokes Every Minister Can Tell). Of course, I’ve been in many parishes of the other kind, too, where visitors are greeted by long faces from the pews silently warning “don’t expect a kind word till you’ve earned it,” dreary Victorian dirges that cause one to look for the door before reaching the end of the second verse, and homilies that don’t challenge but congratulate. Neither is fun, neither is joyful because both are fake. The Gospel has been left safely in the lectionary.
Joy isn’t something we can produce. It’s a gift. It’s not the gift of a witty rector or clever curate (those things are good); it’s the fruit of prayer and penitence. Joy runs deep and clear, an underground fountain that bubbles and gurgles up to refresh the souls of those who know to drink from it. God gives His gifts freely where they’re sought, but His grace isn’t cheap.
Our parishes are always looking for programs. “What can we do to bring them in?” There’s a whole industry built around “church-building,” with books full of every evangelistic idea imaginable: “Cooking Your Way to a Large Congregation,” “Tag-Team Evangelism!” “Church Growth in 49 Easy-To-Follow Steps!” I’ll tell you what I’ve never seen: a program suggesting that, before a parish resorts to “get-large-quick” schemes, it concentrates of prayer and repentance to pave the way for whatever pleases the Lord (the titled Owner of the Church Catholic).
Jesus told us to follow Him. He didn’t say what we’d pass along the Way, only that we’d be carrying a Cross and at the End of the journey we’d be with Him and made like Him. What if His Church dared pick up its Cross?
The current scandals of the Roman Church aren’t sounding her death knell; they’re the Cross Christ has given her to carry in this generation—one she should embrace to heal not only herself, but the sins and sorrows of those wounded all around. Cagey lawyers will save archdiocesan properties, but is the Lord of the Poor arraigned with the bar? The pathetic character of the Anglican Churches, of whatever sort, can be embraced as gift, a Cross to bring men and women together to trudge after Jesus, their gazes fixed on Him instead of reputation and place; or they can continue bickering and backstabbing until the sanctuary floor looks like the body-clogged stage in the last scene of Hamlet. What would happen if the Roman Church truly embraced poverty and followed after Jesus in the highways and hedges? What would happen if she freed itself of her stacked bullion and Swiss accounts? If Anglican bishops, priests and deacons insisted on practicing real humility and charity (as their Lord commands), what would become of the sickening stench of the church’s rancor? What would happen if people came to church and found Jesus Christ not only in the Sacrament of the Altar but truly alive in the hearts of His people? If God’s One Holy Catholic Church was united in prayer and penitence, would there be any empty spaces in our pews? The crowds would be such that people wouldn’t fit in the aisles.
As long as our faith is our hobby, what we do on Sundays because we’re “religious,” the world not only tolerates us but thinks we’re probably worthwhile. Cicero was personally an agnostic but he was all in favor of people being “religious” and filling the temples. “Keeps ‘em in their place; keeps crime levels low.”
“My yoke is easy,” the Lord insists. “My burden is light.” Light compared to what?
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere! That’s what the Lord has been waiting for us to ask.
If I don’t follow Jesus, I sleep in Sundays, do what I want when I want (as long as it doesn’t get me into trouble), answer to nobody but myself (except my boss, my spouse, the people I want to impress, the people I owe money to, the people who owe money to me, and any repair/delivery or installation people who tell me to be available from 8 AM till 5 PM on whatever day is convenient for them), I’m the Master of My Own Fate (as long as I don’t get sick/fired/arrested/bamboozled or flim-flammed/shown up by somebody else/robbed/beaten/hit by a train—or die) and Captain of My Own Soul (as long as it’s a single-person dingy on a very pleasant day). Left to ourselves, we can be selfish (“independent”), grasping (“looking out for #1”), self-absorbed (“glamorous”), vengeful (“standing up for my rights”), gluttonous (“connoisseur” or “pig,” as desired), libertine (“open”) and lazy (“comfortable”)—and we call this freedom instead of slavery. “I can be myself!” we boast, thinking we’re “being ourselves” when we do whatever the next thing is that drifts past our consciousness.
Jesus says—“Be who I made you to be. Put my easy yoke on and break yours intolerably heavy one. You don’t even know who you are. You’re more than a collection of whims and random interests. I created you to be My friend.”
“Whoever serves Me,” Jesus told His disciples, “must follow Me.” To follow Him is to carry a Cross and this week, His way goes up Golgotha, to die. But Sunday, in the midnight darkness, His Light will blind the world—and turn it upside down. If you’ve followed Him to Golgotha, He will keep you close for that “Great, Gettin’ Up Mornin’.”
Monday, March 29, 2010
THE PERFECT MAN
Monday in Holy Week
Our Lord was, and will always be, the Perfect Man. He took our broken humanity and healed it, uniting it to His Divinity. At Mass, when the priest pours the wine and water into the chalice at the offertory, he prays a sublime prayer, written by Pope Gregory the Great fourteen hundred years ago:
“O God, Who didst wondrously create, and even more wondrously didst renew the dignity and nature of man, grant by the mystery of this water and wine, that He Who was partaker of our humanity, may make us partakers of His divinity.”
Not only, St Gregory wrote, did He create our humanity, He renewed it. He re-shaped what we damaged. He did this first in Himself, but the Lord Jesus continues “renewing the dignity and nature of man” in each one of us. This renewal comes at a cost. God took humanity into Himself. In Christ, God became one of us. Taking our broken humanity into Himself, He healed it, not by saying some magic words but by applying spiritual remedies.
The Cross is that remedy in its most stark form. Christ gave Himself to the Cross to confront all the worst in our nature and tear it from us. He didn’t want to die. He was the only one of us Who didn’t have to. When He prayed, as Perfect Man, that “this cup pass from Him,” He wasn’t simply praying not to die. He was, as Perfect Man, praying not to take the consequences of our sinfulness into His humanity.
When I sin, I turn from God. It may not feel like it. It may feel like I’ve just expressed my honest feelings or indulged myself a bit too much or taken what I should, by rights, have been given. Sin doesn’t “feel” like sin most of the time, it doesn’t seem serious, because we’re so used to it.
We see the truth of sin, its soul-searing cost, in Christ’s cry of agony from the Cross: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” It’s a quote from the Psalter—even in His pain at carrying the cost of sin, Christ sobs the words of Scripture—a cry of abandonment. “I cry day and night,” the Psalm goes on, “but Thou dost not answer.” A few words later it concludes, faithful even in despair, “Yet Thou, O Lord, art enthroned on the praises of Israel.” In Christ, the cost of sin is confronted head on. He gave His Heart to be the battleground, and there, its stranglehold on us is met and broken.
That battle continues in us. In every one of us the fight goes on, we just don’t know it most of the time. We’re used to losing the battles, because we think we’re fighting different ones! When somebody contradicts you, how do you feel? Irritated, resentful, maybe threatened. Who’s the enemy? The fool who doesn’t accept what you’ve said hook, line and sinker. What to do? Attack, passively if necessary, make them regret what they’ve done. The pseudo-psychological result? I’ve protected my turf and affirmed my self-worth. The spiritual result? I’ve turned a chance to follow Jesus (Who didn’t open His mouth to His accusers) into another tedious exercise of self-centeredness.
Through Holy Week, we hear in Scripture and see in the Liturgy the meaning of the Cross revealed. We can go for the cheap thrill and get worked up about how tragic this all was, how painful those nails must have been, and what rats those Pharisees were. We can shed wet tears that Jesus went through this for us and feel guilty that we’re such terrible sinners. Then Easter comes and we can gorge ourselves with chocolate until whatever the next holiday is (Cinco de Mayo, I think).
We don’t have to be chocolate Christians. We can embrace our own Cross in Holy Week, pick it up and follow the Lord. No need to work up some safely-distanced guilt, sorry for what He went through a long time ago, something we can pick up and drop off each year during Holy Week. How about if we each accept guilt for just the sins we commit? Accept it and get rid of it—confess it, have it forgiven—and then be men and women of faith and live with its consequences without whining. If we follow the Lord with our Cross, it means not so much feeling bad for what we’ve done as being willing to accept that you don’t admire me as much as I do; to accept that when I give my money to charity, I don’t get some unexpected reward in return, I just have less money, and that’s good because I love money too much. A faithful plodding after Jesus will eventually allow us to see many of the things we love aren’t lovable; the things we want aren’t desirable; the glamorous people we admire aren’t admirable. Following Jesus sets us free—not just from the tinny noises of the world, but from our slavery to ourselves. It doesn’t matter, that much, what I think. What I want really isn’t very important. This isn’t because we don’t matter: just the opposite. It’s because you and I are much more than our shifting opinions and occasional wants. We’re the sons and daughters of God, created in His image and intended for His fellowship.
The cost of that fellowship is the Cross—His and ours. But what does that fellowship promise? St Gregory’s prayer reminds us: “grant that He Who was partaker of our humanity, may make us partakers of His divinity.” Easter without end. It’s worth the plod.
Our Lord was, and will always be, the Perfect Man. He took our broken humanity and healed it, uniting it to His Divinity. At Mass, when the priest pours the wine and water into the chalice at the offertory, he prays a sublime prayer, written by Pope Gregory the Great fourteen hundred years ago:
“O God, Who didst wondrously create, and even more wondrously didst renew the dignity and nature of man, grant by the mystery of this water and wine, that He Who was partaker of our humanity, may make us partakers of His divinity.”
Not only, St Gregory wrote, did He create our humanity, He renewed it. He re-shaped what we damaged. He did this first in Himself, but the Lord Jesus continues “renewing the dignity and nature of man” in each one of us. This renewal comes at a cost. God took humanity into Himself. In Christ, God became one of us. Taking our broken humanity into Himself, He healed it, not by saying some magic words but by applying spiritual remedies.
The Cross is that remedy in its most stark form. Christ gave Himself to the Cross to confront all the worst in our nature and tear it from us. He didn’t want to die. He was the only one of us Who didn’t have to. When He prayed, as Perfect Man, that “this cup pass from Him,” He wasn’t simply praying not to die. He was, as Perfect Man, praying not to take the consequences of our sinfulness into His humanity.
When I sin, I turn from God. It may not feel like it. It may feel like I’ve just expressed my honest feelings or indulged myself a bit too much or taken what I should, by rights, have been given. Sin doesn’t “feel” like sin most of the time, it doesn’t seem serious, because we’re so used to it.
We see the truth of sin, its soul-searing cost, in Christ’s cry of agony from the Cross: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” It’s a quote from the Psalter—even in His pain at carrying the cost of sin, Christ sobs the words of Scripture—a cry of abandonment. “I cry day and night,” the Psalm goes on, “but Thou dost not answer.” A few words later it concludes, faithful even in despair, “Yet Thou, O Lord, art enthroned on the praises of Israel.” In Christ, the cost of sin is confronted head on. He gave His Heart to be the battleground, and there, its stranglehold on us is met and broken.
That battle continues in us. In every one of us the fight goes on, we just don’t know it most of the time. We’re used to losing the battles, because we think we’re fighting different ones! When somebody contradicts you, how do you feel? Irritated, resentful, maybe threatened. Who’s the enemy? The fool who doesn’t accept what you’ve said hook, line and sinker. What to do? Attack, passively if necessary, make them regret what they’ve done. The pseudo-psychological result? I’ve protected my turf and affirmed my self-worth. The spiritual result? I’ve turned a chance to follow Jesus (Who didn’t open His mouth to His accusers) into another tedious exercise of self-centeredness.
Through Holy Week, we hear in Scripture and see in the Liturgy the meaning of the Cross revealed. We can go for the cheap thrill and get worked up about how tragic this all was, how painful those nails must have been, and what rats those Pharisees were. We can shed wet tears that Jesus went through this for us and feel guilty that we’re such terrible sinners. Then Easter comes and we can gorge ourselves with chocolate until whatever the next holiday is (Cinco de Mayo, I think).
We don’t have to be chocolate Christians. We can embrace our own Cross in Holy Week, pick it up and follow the Lord. No need to work up some safely-distanced guilt, sorry for what He went through a long time ago, something we can pick up and drop off each year during Holy Week. How about if we each accept guilt for just the sins we commit? Accept it and get rid of it—confess it, have it forgiven—and then be men and women of faith and live with its consequences without whining. If we follow the Lord with our Cross, it means not so much feeling bad for what we’ve done as being willing to accept that you don’t admire me as much as I do; to accept that when I give my money to charity, I don’t get some unexpected reward in return, I just have less money, and that’s good because I love money too much. A faithful plodding after Jesus will eventually allow us to see many of the things we love aren’t lovable; the things we want aren’t desirable; the glamorous people we admire aren’t admirable. Following Jesus sets us free—not just from the tinny noises of the world, but from our slavery to ourselves. It doesn’t matter, that much, what I think. What I want really isn’t very important. This isn’t because we don’t matter: just the opposite. It’s because you and I are much more than our shifting opinions and occasional wants. We’re the sons and daughters of God, created in His image and intended for His fellowship.
The cost of that fellowship is the Cross—His and ours. But what does that fellowship promise? St Gregory’s prayer reminds us: “grant that He Who was partaker of our humanity, may make us partakers of His divinity.” Easter without end. It’s worth the plod.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
NOT ENOUGH TIME
Palm Sunday
Prayer, lifting our hearts and minds to God, is our soul’s highest calling and greatest difficulty. It’s not hard to say words to God, and to converse with Him is easy—and good. To lift our hearts and minds to Him, though, is to wait on Him. It’s not something we decide we’re going to do right now, since our favorite TV show doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes.
A conversation with the Lord can take place anytime, anyplace. We can turn our attention to Him and offer Him our words of praise and petition Him for our needs. When we see something in the world around which moves us to wonder or strikes us with beauty, it’s meet and right to immediately turn to God and praise Him for His creation; it’s pointing out something to a Friend. When we learn of someone’s need, it’s meet to say something about it to God. When I don’t know what to do (even more, when I think I do know what to do), it’s right to “bring the Lord in” and ask for His guidance. When the sudden veering of a car jolts my mind to how close death can be, I may be quick, if not eloquent, to call on God!
But God is more than “our very present help in time of trouble.” He is more than a friend. Because He spoke, the Universe came into existence. You exist, second by second, because He wants you to. St Augustine said, “God still creates! He still redeems! He still sanctifies!” Things may look grim to us at any given time—our national economy may be in trouble, the Chinese may be poised to make a move into the Middle East, the Cowboys may be eliminated from the play-offs—but for no second is anything removed from God’s hands. As Christians it may be a good meditation to consider that no matter how bad things seem, the Lord is present, His purposes unthwarted. We can’t see what God is doing—truth is, we never have seen, or at least understood. We’re as clueless as the Lord’s Apostles were when He spoke in parables.
God has given us minds and look at the many great things we’ve accomplished with them. But they—we—I—have limitations. We can and should wrestle with questions ranging from the inner secrets of the tiniest piece of an atom to the circumference of the boundaries of the Universe, but none of those discoveries will bring us any closer grasping the Mind of our Creator. Remember that odd exchange between Moses and God in the Book of Exodus? Moses asks God “show me Thy glory. And God said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee…but thou canst not see My face: for no man see Me, and live. I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with My hand while I pass by: And I will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My back: but My face shall not be seen.” We can see the signs of God’s presence and activity in His creation, in where He directs our lives: the unfolding affairs of men, which we imagine are all set in motion by the irresistible forces of history, can never undo what God intends. The Creator of Worlds, Who continually creates and sustains us, the Redeemer of souls, Who became forever one of us so we could one day be like Him, the Sanctifier of all things, Whose power binds all things, this is the One Who invites us to pray.
Our prayer is so anemic because our grasp on the things of the Spirit is so weak.
To lift our hearts and minds to God is not just to “talk to” Him, much less to “think about” Him, as if He were a math problem. We lift our hearts and minds to Him by asking Him to bring us there—and then, waiting patiently, patiently, patiently, patiently for Him to do it—when He decides to. To pray is to put ourselves as His disposal, not vice versa. It’s a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, lifetime decision to pray. Each day’s waiting, each day’s prayer, is built on the waiting and prayer of the day previous.
Sound boring? Better, more important stuff to do? It would certainly seem so. We’ve got stuff to buy, people to impress, business to transact, worlds to build. And someday, before you’ve finished doing all the things you think you have to, you die—and somebody else takes your stuff and puts it in a thrift shop.
Holy Week has a lot of church services attached. The Three Great Days could conceivably use up 4 or 5 hours each, especially if you go to Tenebrae. That’s a lot of time to be in church.
The Apocalypse, the Book of the Revelation, describes the cherubim: “…each of them wrapped in six wings about him; and they are full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, LORD God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.’ ” They forever, with all those eyes, look at God. And their response is to shout, “Holy” over and over and over again, without stopping to take a breath or checking the clock for their break time. They don’t want a break. Every “holy” that they shout is as “fresh” as the first. They’re praying.
You and I aren’t the cherubim, with their powers of sight or concentration. We live day-to-day in our artificial world of garish billboards and cars that are little more than large “boom-boxes” and 24 hour cable news. But do something different this Holy Week. Come out from all the distractions for more than an hour. Go to sing the chants and see the Old Rites made new, where Jesus comes again. Take two and a half-hours and go to your favorite park and don’t bring whatever your customary electronic stuff is. Be quiet. Be alone. Ask God to lift your heart and mind to Him. And wait.
A Blessed Holy Week.
Prayer, lifting our hearts and minds to God, is our soul’s highest calling and greatest difficulty. It’s not hard to say words to God, and to converse with Him is easy—and good. To lift our hearts and minds to Him, though, is to wait on Him. It’s not something we decide we’re going to do right now, since our favorite TV show doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes.
A conversation with the Lord can take place anytime, anyplace. We can turn our attention to Him and offer Him our words of praise and petition Him for our needs. When we see something in the world around which moves us to wonder or strikes us with beauty, it’s meet and right to immediately turn to God and praise Him for His creation; it’s pointing out something to a Friend. When we learn of someone’s need, it’s meet to say something about it to God. When I don’t know what to do (even more, when I think I do know what to do), it’s right to “bring the Lord in” and ask for His guidance. When the sudden veering of a car jolts my mind to how close death can be, I may be quick, if not eloquent, to call on God!
But God is more than “our very present help in time of trouble.” He is more than a friend. Because He spoke, the Universe came into existence. You exist, second by second, because He wants you to. St Augustine said, “God still creates! He still redeems! He still sanctifies!” Things may look grim to us at any given time—our national economy may be in trouble, the Chinese may be poised to make a move into the Middle East, the Cowboys may be eliminated from the play-offs—but for no second is anything removed from God’s hands. As Christians it may be a good meditation to consider that no matter how bad things seem, the Lord is present, His purposes unthwarted. We can’t see what God is doing—truth is, we never have seen, or at least understood. We’re as clueless as the Lord’s Apostles were when He spoke in parables.
God has given us minds and look at the many great things we’ve accomplished with them. But they—we—I—have limitations. We can and should wrestle with questions ranging from the inner secrets of the tiniest piece of an atom to the circumference of the boundaries of the Universe, but none of those discoveries will bring us any closer grasping the Mind of our Creator. Remember that odd exchange between Moses and God in the Book of Exodus? Moses asks God “show me Thy glory. And God said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee…but thou canst not see My face: for no man see Me, and live. I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with My hand while I pass by: And I will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My back: but My face shall not be seen.” We can see the signs of God’s presence and activity in His creation, in where He directs our lives: the unfolding affairs of men, which we imagine are all set in motion by the irresistible forces of history, can never undo what God intends. The Creator of Worlds, Who continually creates and sustains us, the Redeemer of souls, Who became forever one of us so we could one day be like Him, the Sanctifier of all things, Whose power binds all things, this is the One Who invites us to pray.
Our prayer is so anemic because our grasp on the things of the Spirit is so weak.
To lift our hearts and minds to God is not just to “talk to” Him, much less to “think about” Him, as if He were a math problem. We lift our hearts and minds to Him by asking Him to bring us there—and then, waiting patiently, patiently, patiently, patiently for Him to do it—when He decides to. To pray is to put ourselves as His disposal, not vice versa. It’s a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, lifetime decision to pray. Each day’s waiting, each day’s prayer, is built on the waiting and prayer of the day previous.
Sound boring? Better, more important stuff to do? It would certainly seem so. We’ve got stuff to buy, people to impress, business to transact, worlds to build. And someday, before you’ve finished doing all the things you think you have to, you die—and somebody else takes your stuff and puts it in a thrift shop.
Holy Week has a lot of church services attached. The Three Great Days could conceivably use up 4 or 5 hours each, especially if you go to Tenebrae. That’s a lot of time to be in church.
The Apocalypse, the Book of the Revelation, describes the cherubim: “…each of them wrapped in six wings about him; and they are full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, LORD God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.’ ” They forever, with all those eyes, look at God. And their response is to shout, “Holy” over and over and over again, without stopping to take a breath or checking the clock for their break time. They don’t want a break. Every “holy” that they shout is as “fresh” as the first. They’re praying.
You and I aren’t the cherubim, with their powers of sight or concentration. We live day-to-day in our artificial world of garish billboards and cars that are little more than large “boom-boxes” and 24 hour cable news. But do something different this Holy Week. Come out from all the distractions for more than an hour. Go to sing the chants and see the Old Rites made new, where Jesus comes again. Take two and a half-hours and go to your favorite park and don’t bring whatever your customary electronic stuff is. Be quiet. Be alone. Ask God to lift your heart and mind to Him. And wait.
A Blessed Holy Week.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
"CONTINUE THINE FOREVER"
Saturday after Passion Sunday
For forty days and forty nights the Lord Jesus was in the desert. He went there, following His baptism, led by the Spirit. The Spirit was with Him as He fasted and prayed, when He encountered temptation and when He trounced the devil. Our forty days with Him will soon end. The same Spirit that led the Lord leads us, too. Because of our spiritual dullness, we usually aren’t “aware” of it, and few of us do much of anything about it, but the Spirit was specially gifted to you—do you remember?
Some time back, maybe so long you can’t remember much of it, the Bishop pressed his hands on your head and prayed: “Defend, O Lord, this Thy Child with Thy heavenly grace; that (s)he may continue Thine for ever; and daily increase in Thy Holy Spirit more and more, until (s)he come unto Thy everlasting kingdom.” Your confirmation may have been when you were given presents and had your pictures made with a lot of overdressed relatives, but it was also when the Lord gave you what you need to mature as a Christian.
That prayer the bishop said, like so many other good things, is simple. But it’s packed full as a good knapsack. The bishop asked God to protect you; not from bug-bites or broken toes but from falling prey to the devil. He doesn’t pray you won’t be tempted—he doesn’t even pray you won’t sin—but that whatever comes, you’ll “continue God’s forever”: nothing will snatch you from His hand. At the core of the prayer lies the heart of our Christian life. He asks that God’s Spirit—His life lived in us—“will daily increase more and more.” This is what Lent has been all about.
Our Evangelical friends talk about “being saved.” By that, they mean (best I’ve been able to deduce after many years of being asked whether or not I “was”), “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?” If you answer “yes” in a way that meets their satisfaction, you’re saved. Even among Evangelicals, though, there are disagreements about this their basic concern. Some believe once you’re saved, you’re in. You’ve made it forever. Others disagree and warn of the possibility of “backsliding.” Christians in the Catholic tradition, though, following the teaching enshrined in the bishop’s confirmation prayer, hold otherwise.
The prayer asks that we will “daily increase” in the life of the Spirit “more and more, until we come” into God’s “heavenly Kingdom.” When the concerned Evangelical asks if we’re “saved,” it’s fair to ask, “from what?” You know the answer as well as I do. Hellfire, brimstone, dancing devils and all those tedious people you thought you’d never have to see again. Is this why God became incarnate, to free us from burning to a crisp?
“Continue Thine forever” leads us away from fretting over hell’s terrors to the contemplation of Heaven’s joys.
The Church doesn’t turn our gaze to our sins every Lent to scare us, but so we’ll recognize who our enemies are. I’ll risk the trite possibilities of the phrase and say “sin is not good for us” as much as it tries to look like it is. Sin masquerades as attractive, interesting, sophisticated or pleasurable until it entangles us. Then, when we’re in their nets, the devils (who we don’t even know are there) slowly pull us in. They’ve got us so well-trained the only thing we really notice is that we’re not enjoying all this so much anymore. Listen to an alcoholic’s tale. A lot of “seasoned” alcoholics tell you how much they hate drinking. Yet, even among AA members, recidivism rates are more than 90%. There are no groups for those of us who suffer from chronic arrogance, but as one of that number, I’ve got to guess it’s even higher.
Sin isn’t generically dangerous. I’m not a sinner because I exist, but because I commit sins; real ones, in my daily life. I lie and scheme and get jealous and try to get the people I don’t like at work fired. And because sins are real acts, they can be addressed. We can not sin, if we’re willing to call on God for help. He’ll give us His Spirit—His Grace—if we ask. But think back to the last time you sinned (I hope you have to think for a minute, but since I’m a practiced sinner, it’s not hard). Chances are, you didn’t put up much of a fight (I’m imagining that your sin wasn’t embezzling $29 million but more along the lines of spreading a bit of irresistible gossip). It might not have even occurred to you what you were doing was sinful—not really sinful—until later. That’s not because it wasn’t; it’s because you’re as well-trained as I am. Even if you later thought something like “I shouldn’t have said that about her,” we pretty much know our sins are a lot less serious than other people’s.
So ask God to show you your sins. St Teresa of Avila tells us how gentle God is with us. “The Lord will only show us as much of our sins as we can bear to see,” she says. “He doesn’t want to drive us to despair, but repentance.” As you become aware of your sins, ask the Lord to help you fight them. “Help me not to gossip, Lord.” Give something up, now and then, undramatically (like the bowl of banana cream pie you were going to have for desert) to help your fight. If you ask the Lord, He’ll be present and the next time the tempter pulls your string, you’ll remember Jesus. Now you’ve got the ball. Which team are you playing for?
If we accustom ourselves to making the choice of Grace, we’re “daily” increasing in the Holy Spirit, and on our way to “continuing” His forever. Holiness, trite but true, is a habit. It’s something we learn.
When we “come to the everlasting Kingdom,” we will be endlessly delighted but not surprised. We learn to speak the language of Heaven, St Bernard of Clairvaux tells us, here on earth. This Lent, I hope you’ve broadened your vocabulary.
For forty days and forty nights the Lord Jesus was in the desert. He went there, following His baptism, led by the Spirit. The Spirit was with Him as He fasted and prayed, when He encountered temptation and when He trounced the devil. Our forty days with Him will soon end. The same Spirit that led the Lord leads us, too. Because of our spiritual dullness, we usually aren’t “aware” of it, and few of us do much of anything about it, but the Spirit was specially gifted to you—do you remember?
Some time back, maybe so long you can’t remember much of it, the Bishop pressed his hands on your head and prayed: “Defend, O Lord, this Thy Child with Thy heavenly grace; that (s)he may continue Thine for ever; and daily increase in Thy Holy Spirit more and more, until (s)he come unto Thy everlasting kingdom.” Your confirmation may have been when you were given presents and had your pictures made with a lot of overdressed relatives, but it was also when the Lord gave you what you need to mature as a Christian.
That prayer the bishop said, like so many other good things, is simple. But it’s packed full as a good knapsack. The bishop asked God to protect you; not from bug-bites or broken toes but from falling prey to the devil. He doesn’t pray you won’t be tempted—he doesn’t even pray you won’t sin—but that whatever comes, you’ll “continue God’s forever”: nothing will snatch you from His hand. At the core of the prayer lies the heart of our Christian life. He asks that God’s Spirit—His life lived in us—“will daily increase more and more.” This is what Lent has been all about.
Our Evangelical friends talk about “being saved.” By that, they mean (best I’ve been able to deduce after many years of being asked whether or not I “was”), “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?” If you answer “yes” in a way that meets their satisfaction, you’re saved. Even among Evangelicals, though, there are disagreements about this their basic concern. Some believe once you’re saved, you’re in. You’ve made it forever. Others disagree and warn of the possibility of “backsliding.” Christians in the Catholic tradition, though, following the teaching enshrined in the bishop’s confirmation prayer, hold otherwise.
The prayer asks that we will “daily increase” in the life of the Spirit “more and more, until we come” into God’s “heavenly Kingdom.” When the concerned Evangelical asks if we’re “saved,” it’s fair to ask, “from what?” You know the answer as well as I do. Hellfire, brimstone, dancing devils and all those tedious people you thought you’d never have to see again. Is this why God became incarnate, to free us from burning to a crisp?
“Continue Thine forever” leads us away from fretting over hell’s terrors to the contemplation of Heaven’s joys.
The Church doesn’t turn our gaze to our sins every Lent to scare us, but so we’ll recognize who our enemies are. I’ll risk the trite possibilities of the phrase and say “sin is not good for us” as much as it tries to look like it is. Sin masquerades as attractive, interesting, sophisticated or pleasurable until it entangles us. Then, when we’re in their nets, the devils (who we don’t even know are there) slowly pull us in. They’ve got us so well-trained the only thing we really notice is that we’re not enjoying all this so much anymore. Listen to an alcoholic’s tale. A lot of “seasoned” alcoholics tell you how much they hate drinking. Yet, even among AA members, recidivism rates are more than 90%. There are no groups for those of us who suffer from chronic arrogance, but as one of that number, I’ve got to guess it’s even higher.
Sin isn’t generically dangerous. I’m not a sinner because I exist, but because I commit sins; real ones, in my daily life. I lie and scheme and get jealous and try to get the people I don’t like at work fired. And because sins are real acts, they can be addressed. We can not sin, if we’re willing to call on God for help. He’ll give us His Spirit—His Grace—if we ask. But think back to the last time you sinned (I hope you have to think for a minute, but since I’m a practiced sinner, it’s not hard). Chances are, you didn’t put up much of a fight (I’m imagining that your sin wasn’t embezzling $29 million but more along the lines of spreading a bit of irresistible gossip). It might not have even occurred to you what you were doing was sinful—not really sinful—until later. That’s not because it wasn’t; it’s because you’re as well-trained as I am. Even if you later thought something like “I shouldn’t have said that about her,” we pretty much know our sins are a lot less serious than other people’s.
So ask God to show you your sins. St Teresa of Avila tells us how gentle God is with us. “The Lord will only show us as much of our sins as we can bear to see,” she says. “He doesn’t want to drive us to despair, but repentance.” As you become aware of your sins, ask the Lord to help you fight them. “Help me not to gossip, Lord.” Give something up, now and then, undramatically (like the bowl of banana cream pie you were going to have for desert) to help your fight. If you ask the Lord, He’ll be present and the next time the tempter pulls your string, you’ll remember Jesus. Now you’ve got the ball. Which team are you playing for?
If we accustom ourselves to making the choice of Grace, we’re “daily” increasing in the Holy Spirit, and on our way to “continuing” His forever. Holiness, trite but true, is a habit. It’s something we learn.
When we “come to the everlasting Kingdom,” we will be endlessly delighted but not surprised. We learn to speak the language of Heaven, St Bernard of Clairvaux tells us, here on earth. This Lent, I hope you’ve broadened your vocabulary.
Friday, March 26, 2010
A SPIRITUAL SUPERMAN
Friday after Passion Sunday
Few people would believe it, but I like to fast. Unfortunately, I like it for the wrong reasons. I feel more healthy when I fast and—even more important to me—when I don’t think about food for a few days, I turn those “hunter-gatherer” instincts to more interesting uses—writing or reading or book-buying!
Lent has been hard for me the past several years, since my accident, because I’ve been forbidden to fast at all. I have to eat and am supposed to do it several times a day. That makes Lent more of a struggle for me.
I’m gonna tell you a secret, something not many people know. Twice, in 1979 and 1980, I kept an almost complete Lenten fast. Except for water and juice, I didn’t eat anything from the Shrove Tuesday Pancakes until the Easter Day ham. It was exhilarating. After about four days of thinking “this isn’t going to work for this and that reason,” my hunger pangs—and their attendant stomach noises—almost completely disappeared. I felt a “freedom” from “material things” it was hard for me to define. All I knew was that it was very spiritual. How many other people could do this?
I didn’t tell anybody, not even my confessor. The Forty Days sped by: I prayed more and felt great. I was some kind of spiritual dynamo, I tell you. Then, on Wednesday evening of Holy Week, while I was reciting the Tenebrae Psalms, it hit me. Easter’s coming. The Fast is ending. I’d have to eat again. I’d have to break my fast (I, I, I, me, me, my—is there a pattern here you see? I didn’t), I didn’t want to. I didn’t want Lent to end.
It did anyway, and a few hours after the Easter Vigil I broke my fast.
After Whitsunday, when the cycle of Friday abstinence was restored, I found it all a bit banal. Where’s the challenge in not eating meat once a week? Gradually, though, I got back into the cycle of Feasts and Fasts, while harboring the notion in the back of my mind that I’d really have to come up with something special next Lent to top my ascetic feats of the year previous.
But as the next Lent approached, I couldn’t think of anything. Well, okay, I did pretty darn well last year. This year should be a breeze.
But it wasn’t. I remembered the temptations of the first few days and thought I’d steeled myself against them, but they came on particularly strong. They weren’t just food oriented, either. Sexual thoughts also presented themselves with a distressing frequency—last year I’d been almost completely free of them. What was going on? By the middle of the second week, every day was a struggle. Food seemed everywhere, offered by attractive women. My prayers, so easy the year before, were little more than grunts, whines and my quickly rattled off daily prayers. “My words flew up, but my thoughts remained below.” How many days longer? I didn’t mark off the days on my Ordo Kalendar with a pencil, but Lord knows I looked at the thing a dozen times a day, recalculating when Easter would arrive.
When Passion Week arrived, I went to offer my confession. I was one confused and disappointed fellow as I knelt in the box. God wasn’t giving me the rewards I’d earned.
The Lord has always been especially gracious to me in my confessors. From the first one, they’ve been men of discernment, wisdom and wit, with just a touch of the Egyptian taskmaster thrown in. As I went through my Lenten list of woes, I heard a gentle chuckle. He cut in softly “Will you make it through your first Lent, you think?”
“What?”
“Last Lent wasn’t one you shared with Jesus or anybody else. It was your little spiritual fantasy. Your Lents before have been focused on your keeping rules, your getting through the season unblemished, Lent has been another thing you’ve accomplished. This year, the Lord is giving you a chance to be with Him for Lent: to be hungry and tired and feel the temptations He felt. You haven’t figured that out yet, but I hope you can see it now.”
This year, as for the past several, I still miss sharing the rigors of the Lenten Fast—yes, there are other ways I keep it so I don’t pass out dramatically in public—but I’ve found this great consolation. The Lord has had to soften—lighten—lessen—the rules for me, because I’m not up to it. I’m not a spiritual superman. I’m one of many, trudging imperfectly along the road to Calvary. I’m happy of the companionship.
Few people would believe it, but I like to fast. Unfortunately, I like it for the wrong reasons. I feel more healthy when I fast and—even more important to me—when I don’t think about food for a few days, I turn those “hunter-gatherer” instincts to more interesting uses—writing or reading or book-buying!
Lent has been hard for me the past several years, since my accident, because I’ve been forbidden to fast at all. I have to eat and am supposed to do it several times a day. That makes Lent more of a struggle for me.
I’m gonna tell you a secret, something not many people know. Twice, in 1979 and 1980, I kept an almost complete Lenten fast. Except for water and juice, I didn’t eat anything from the Shrove Tuesday Pancakes until the Easter Day ham. It was exhilarating. After about four days of thinking “this isn’t going to work for this and that reason,” my hunger pangs—and their attendant stomach noises—almost completely disappeared. I felt a “freedom” from “material things” it was hard for me to define. All I knew was that it was very spiritual. How many other people could do this?
I didn’t tell anybody, not even my confessor. The Forty Days sped by: I prayed more and felt great. I was some kind of spiritual dynamo, I tell you. Then, on Wednesday evening of Holy Week, while I was reciting the Tenebrae Psalms, it hit me. Easter’s coming. The Fast is ending. I’d have to eat again. I’d have to break my fast (I, I, I, me, me, my—is there a pattern here you see? I didn’t), I didn’t want to. I didn’t want Lent to end.
It did anyway, and a few hours after the Easter Vigil I broke my fast.
After Whitsunday, when the cycle of Friday abstinence was restored, I found it all a bit banal. Where’s the challenge in not eating meat once a week? Gradually, though, I got back into the cycle of Feasts and Fasts, while harboring the notion in the back of my mind that I’d really have to come up with something special next Lent to top my ascetic feats of the year previous.
But as the next Lent approached, I couldn’t think of anything. Well, okay, I did pretty darn well last year. This year should be a breeze.
But it wasn’t. I remembered the temptations of the first few days and thought I’d steeled myself against them, but they came on particularly strong. They weren’t just food oriented, either. Sexual thoughts also presented themselves with a distressing frequency—last year I’d been almost completely free of them. What was going on? By the middle of the second week, every day was a struggle. Food seemed everywhere, offered by attractive women. My prayers, so easy the year before, were little more than grunts, whines and my quickly rattled off daily prayers. “My words flew up, but my thoughts remained below.” How many days longer? I didn’t mark off the days on my Ordo Kalendar with a pencil, but Lord knows I looked at the thing a dozen times a day, recalculating when Easter would arrive.
When Passion Week arrived, I went to offer my confession. I was one confused and disappointed fellow as I knelt in the box. God wasn’t giving me the rewards I’d earned.
The Lord has always been especially gracious to me in my confessors. From the first one, they’ve been men of discernment, wisdom and wit, with just a touch of the Egyptian taskmaster thrown in. As I went through my Lenten list of woes, I heard a gentle chuckle. He cut in softly “Will you make it through your first Lent, you think?”
“What?”
“Last Lent wasn’t one you shared with Jesus or anybody else. It was your little spiritual fantasy. Your Lents before have been focused on your keeping rules, your getting through the season unblemished, Lent has been another thing you’ve accomplished. This year, the Lord is giving you a chance to be with Him for Lent: to be hungry and tired and feel the temptations He felt. You haven’t figured that out yet, but I hope you can see it now.”
This year, as for the past several, I still miss sharing the rigors of the Lenten Fast—yes, there are other ways I keep it so I don’t pass out dramatically in public—but I’ve found this great consolation. The Lord has had to soften—lighten—lessen—the rules for me, because I’m not up to it. I’m not a spiritual superman. I’m one of many, trudging imperfectly along the road to Calvary. I’m happy of the companionship.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
"I AM GOD'S SLAVE"
Thursday in Passion Week (The Feast of the Annunciation)
The Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel came to the Blessed Virgin and asked her consent to be the Mother of God, always falls during Lent. That seems most fitting. Mary is the ideal Christian, the perfect keeper of Lent.
Like many Jewish girls of her day, Mary grew up on the lore that one day, some young woman would be the mother of the Messiah. Like so many expectations, it’s safe to say the reality and fantasy weren’t too closely linked. When Gabriel told Mary of the great things God had in store, she replied “How can this be? I’m still a virgin.” When the angel told her what God had already set in motion, Mary embraced his words. The beautiful King James translation records her words: “Behold, the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” The original Greek text is more blunt: “I am God’s slave,” she answered. Did she know what those words entailed?
She was a young girl in a small, overcrowded village. Everybody knows everybody else, and in a village there’s no such thing as a secret. Did she think, as she contemplated the angel’s words, what might happen? The surreptitiously pointed fingers, the cloaked whispers and false smiles she’d endure through the coming months would become her daily realities as the unearthly visitation of the angel faded into the background. Her fiancée, a decent man, didn’t insist on his rights—by the Law she was subject to stoning. “He was minded to put her away privately,” the Evangelist tells us.
Still, she clung to God’s promise, in spite of all the difficulties she hadn’t foreseen. What better describes us when we try to be faithful? When we do the thing which is right, when many around us think the worst, our temptation is to give in and try to make people understand. We want sympathy in our times of testing. Our Lord, standing on trial before the Sanhedrin, was exhorted: “Prove to us You are Who You say! Do something spectacular! Don’t just stand there!” But His Heart was fixed on the ancient prophecy of Isaiah about His hour: “He was brought as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before His shearers…He opened not his mouth.” Mary’s young heart must have been torn and confused by the false assurances of friendship and stark accusing glares. She must have repeated her words, “Behold, I am God’s slave,” over and over again—it was her Lenten prayer.
She proved faithful for nine months. Joseph, himself visited by angels, overcame his doubts and married her. What a life he had as a result of this girl! Oriental potentates bearing exotic gifts came to call, the young family was chased to Egypt by spies and soldiers in hot pursuit, he lived in lands he’d only heard of in stories, then returned home to try and provide some hint of a normal life for his wife and Son.
For Mary, there was the Jewish mother’s pride in her Son as He grew in Grace and took His place in the community. As He carried on His ministry, she watched and listened. No doubt her heart shuddered at His words when He foretold His death, and the many depictions of the Pieta all unite in showing us her grief. She held the dead body of her Son, the Son of God, and somewhere, in her spotless heart, those words echoed: “Behold, I am God’s slave.”
Sin is bad, not because we break some arbitrary rules God made up, thinking “Now I can’t let them have too much fun. Let’s see…ten’s a good number of rules to start with…” Sin is bad because God made us a certain way. Some things are good for us, let’s say, a good laugh and friendship, and some things, like ingesting arsenic or breathing in carbon monoxide, aren’t. Some things are so bad they’ll kill us outright. We are made, as St Thomas Aquinas says, to be “friends of God” (he means that in the old classical sense of “intimates,” not just “nodding acquaintances”). He has made us for communion with Himself, and a fellowship of charity with one another. Sin rips and shreds at His intention for us. It turns us from Him and from unpretended charity with each other. It makes us false. And part of us loves it. We’re so well-trained we drink from the arsenic bottle and think “Now that’s a liqueur!”
Annunciation comes in Lent. It makes it hard for liturgical specialists, whose ultimate conundrum used to be “What happens when the Annunciation falls on Good Friday?” Figuring out those ritual rules requires one of those old-fashioned slide rules. But what could be better for us? “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord,” may spring naturally to one’s lips in the ecstasy of an angelic visitation. “Behold, I am God’s slave,” those are words we need to hold in our hearts every day, as we follow the Lord to Calvary.
The Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel came to the Blessed Virgin and asked her consent to be the Mother of God, always falls during Lent. That seems most fitting. Mary is the ideal Christian, the perfect keeper of Lent.
Like many Jewish girls of her day, Mary grew up on the lore that one day, some young woman would be the mother of the Messiah. Like so many expectations, it’s safe to say the reality and fantasy weren’t too closely linked. When Gabriel told Mary of the great things God had in store, she replied “How can this be? I’m still a virgin.” When the angel told her what God had already set in motion, Mary embraced his words. The beautiful King James translation records her words: “Behold, the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” The original Greek text is more blunt: “I am God’s slave,” she answered. Did she know what those words entailed?
She was a young girl in a small, overcrowded village. Everybody knows everybody else, and in a village there’s no such thing as a secret. Did she think, as she contemplated the angel’s words, what might happen? The surreptitiously pointed fingers, the cloaked whispers and false smiles she’d endure through the coming months would become her daily realities as the unearthly visitation of the angel faded into the background. Her fiancée, a decent man, didn’t insist on his rights—by the Law she was subject to stoning. “He was minded to put her away privately,” the Evangelist tells us.
Still, she clung to God’s promise, in spite of all the difficulties she hadn’t foreseen. What better describes us when we try to be faithful? When we do the thing which is right, when many around us think the worst, our temptation is to give in and try to make people understand. We want sympathy in our times of testing. Our Lord, standing on trial before the Sanhedrin, was exhorted: “Prove to us You are Who You say! Do something spectacular! Don’t just stand there!” But His Heart was fixed on the ancient prophecy of Isaiah about His hour: “He was brought as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before His shearers…He opened not his mouth.” Mary’s young heart must have been torn and confused by the false assurances of friendship and stark accusing glares. She must have repeated her words, “Behold, I am God’s slave,” over and over again—it was her Lenten prayer.
She proved faithful for nine months. Joseph, himself visited by angels, overcame his doubts and married her. What a life he had as a result of this girl! Oriental potentates bearing exotic gifts came to call, the young family was chased to Egypt by spies and soldiers in hot pursuit, he lived in lands he’d only heard of in stories, then returned home to try and provide some hint of a normal life for his wife and Son.
For Mary, there was the Jewish mother’s pride in her Son as He grew in Grace and took His place in the community. As He carried on His ministry, she watched and listened. No doubt her heart shuddered at His words when He foretold His death, and the many depictions of the Pieta all unite in showing us her grief. She held the dead body of her Son, the Son of God, and somewhere, in her spotless heart, those words echoed: “Behold, I am God’s slave.”
Sin is bad, not because we break some arbitrary rules God made up, thinking “Now I can’t let them have too much fun. Let’s see…ten’s a good number of rules to start with…” Sin is bad because God made us a certain way. Some things are good for us, let’s say, a good laugh and friendship, and some things, like ingesting arsenic or breathing in carbon monoxide, aren’t. Some things are so bad they’ll kill us outright. We are made, as St Thomas Aquinas says, to be “friends of God” (he means that in the old classical sense of “intimates,” not just “nodding acquaintances”). He has made us for communion with Himself, and a fellowship of charity with one another. Sin rips and shreds at His intention for us. It turns us from Him and from unpretended charity with each other. It makes us false. And part of us loves it. We’re so well-trained we drink from the arsenic bottle and think “Now that’s a liqueur!”
Annunciation comes in Lent. It makes it hard for liturgical specialists, whose ultimate conundrum used to be “What happens when the Annunciation falls on Good Friday?” Figuring out those ritual rules requires one of those old-fashioned slide rules. But what could be better for us? “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord,” may spring naturally to one’s lips in the ecstasy of an angelic visitation. “Behold, I am God’s slave,” those are words we need to hold in our hearts every day, as we follow the Lord to Calvary.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
QUO VADIS?
Wednesday in Passion Week
There is a very good friend of mine whose wife is slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s. What’s more, she knows it. She struggles every day to combat its pernicious impact on their lives and has learned a lot of coping mechanisms, but every time I speak to my friend, she has just a little more trouble than the time before.
She’s his boon companion and a delightfully gentle woman—the love of his life. He’s a retired marine colonel, tough as nails, but her influence on him over the decades has—not softened him, but—enabled him to view life and the world with kindness. He goes to daily Mass and makes regular retreats with the Benedictines in Gethsemani, Kentucky. I am lucky to have him as my friend.
I’ve prayed daily for and about the both of them for years. I don’t ask the Lord anymore for answers to my questions. Why this terrible thing came to them is beyond my understanding. What I can do is pray for them and ask the Lord to make their burden bearable and to give me some small share of their load. That’s easy, since they’re 1,500 miles away.
The other night I was saying my prayers and remembered the two of them before God. I prayed as I usually do, asking the Lord to help the two of them to bear it and still be assured of the certainty of His love. I asked Him to allow me to bear some small part of their burden. I was immediately struck: “Is that what you really want? How far will you go to share their heartache?”
I was shocked—and scared. What would God ask of me? What would I really be willing to do for my good friends?
Those who know me know I have a stony heart, but I pride myself (in the worst way) on my intellect. I can think of nothing worse than Alzheimer’s which robs you of the mind. Until the other night I never seriously considered the possibility that I would come down with it. For me, surrounded with a lifetime’s collection of books, many as dear to me as the closest of friends, with my cherished memories and intellectual joys, what would it be to have it all slip into oblivion? Could I ever be as brave and noble as my good friend’s wife? What does it mean to have the companion of a lifetime slowly slip away—not to die, but to seem to disappear? The two of them are walking a dreadful road to Calvary. They walk it with the Lord Jesus, but it’s hard for me to imagine a Way of the Cross more painful.
When I compare all my sufferings and sorrows to theirs, I’m ashamed to call anything that has ever happened to me “suffering.” The Lord said “To whom much is given, of him much is required.” When we say to Jesus that we want to follow Him, to be His disciples, He tells us unequivocally to pick up our Cross and start after Him. We don’t know what our Cross will look like, but it will be heavy and costly. It will also be full of Grace.
As I look at my friends, I am full of admiration for the love and patience they show each other. I’ve never seen a more unselfish picture of Love—not just the love a married couple has for each other; through this terrible trial, this Cross they both carry, their love has transcended the natural affections. It’s the Love of Jesus you see alive in them. Their hard, daily struggles are unvarnished signs of Grace.
During Passiontide we consider what it means for us to follow the Lord Christ on the Way of the Cross. Hidden around us are those who are actually doing it. They lovingly pick it up every day and continue on the Way to Calvary. The pain and suffering of our lives can be stuff to whine about; we can think of going to Friday night Stations as walking the Way of the Cross, but if we ask the Lord, not for suffering but for Grace to follow Him, we’ll each discover our own Cross. It’s been custom-made, just for you. It’s probably been laying around and you’ve averted your gaze for years. I don’t blame you one bit.
“But to as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.”
There is a very good friend of mine whose wife is slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s. What’s more, she knows it. She struggles every day to combat its pernicious impact on their lives and has learned a lot of coping mechanisms, but every time I speak to my friend, she has just a little more trouble than the time before.
She’s his boon companion and a delightfully gentle woman—the love of his life. He’s a retired marine colonel, tough as nails, but her influence on him over the decades has—not softened him, but—enabled him to view life and the world with kindness. He goes to daily Mass and makes regular retreats with the Benedictines in Gethsemani, Kentucky. I am lucky to have him as my friend.
I’ve prayed daily for and about the both of them for years. I don’t ask the Lord anymore for answers to my questions. Why this terrible thing came to them is beyond my understanding. What I can do is pray for them and ask the Lord to make their burden bearable and to give me some small share of their load. That’s easy, since they’re 1,500 miles away.
The other night I was saying my prayers and remembered the two of them before God. I prayed as I usually do, asking the Lord to help the two of them to bear it and still be assured of the certainty of His love. I asked Him to allow me to bear some small part of their burden. I was immediately struck: “Is that what you really want? How far will you go to share their heartache?”
I was shocked—and scared. What would God ask of me? What would I really be willing to do for my good friends?
Those who know me know I have a stony heart, but I pride myself (in the worst way) on my intellect. I can think of nothing worse than Alzheimer’s which robs you of the mind. Until the other night I never seriously considered the possibility that I would come down with it. For me, surrounded with a lifetime’s collection of books, many as dear to me as the closest of friends, with my cherished memories and intellectual joys, what would it be to have it all slip into oblivion? Could I ever be as brave and noble as my good friend’s wife? What does it mean to have the companion of a lifetime slowly slip away—not to die, but to seem to disappear? The two of them are walking a dreadful road to Calvary. They walk it with the Lord Jesus, but it’s hard for me to imagine a Way of the Cross more painful.
When I compare all my sufferings and sorrows to theirs, I’m ashamed to call anything that has ever happened to me “suffering.” The Lord said “To whom much is given, of him much is required.” When we say to Jesus that we want to follow Him, to be His disciples, He tells us unequivocally to pick up our Cross and start after Him. We don’t know what our Cross will look like, but it will be heavy and costly. It will also be full of Grace.
As I look at my friends, I am full of admiration for the love and patience they show each other. I’ve never seen a more unselfish picture of Love—not just the love a married couple has for each other; through this terrible trial, this Cross they both carry, their love has transcended the natural affections. It’s the Love of Jesus you see alive in them. Their hard, daily struggles are unvarnished signs of Grace.
During Passiontide we consider what it means for us to follow the Lord Christ on the Way of the Cross. Hidden around us are those who are actually doing it. They lovingly pick it up every day and continue on the Way to Calvary. The pain and suffering of our lives can be stuff to whine about; we can think of going to Friday night Stations as walking the Way of the Cross, but if we ask the Lord, not for suffering but for Grace to follow Him, we’ll each discover our own Cross. It’s been custom-made, just for you. It’s probably been laying around and you’ve averted your gaze for years. I don’t blame you one bit.
“But to as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.”
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
INOPPORTUNITIES OF SIN
Tuesday in Passion Week
For fifteen years I served on the staff of the National Youth Camp outside of Denver, at Camp Santa Maria—first as Chaplain, then for the last five years or so as Director. One of the chaplain’s jobs was to hear the confessions of all the children at camp on the final Saturday. While I can’t remember the age brackets at Camp, I think the kids ranged in age from twelve to eighteen. One of you who went through this annual pilgrimage to purgatory with me will, I’m sure, correct my memory.
Sin is—or was—different for a twelve-year-old than a budding young person of eighteen. Opportunities are different; I hesitate to say an eighteen-year-old is more subtle than a child of twelve, but they are certainly more practiced in cunning (I remember my years at church camp as a teenager and how we put Fr Petersen and the nuns through the wringer with our late-night escapades). Opportunities and “inopportunities” of sin vary at different times in our lives. The other end of the spectrum is older people—in their late sixties on (that doesn’t sound so old to me now!)—whose confessions I’ve heard. Many times I’ve had an older person say to me, “Since I’ve got older, I just don’t sin as much. I’m not as interested.” A little questioning shows that’s not exactly so.
We don’t outgrow sin. In different times in our lives, though, it shows itself differently. The sexual temptations of a precocious sixteen year-old boy are not the same as a mature man of thirty-five. The more refined temptations of the flesh are different in a fifty-year old than for a man of seventy. But make no mistake, the tempter who so played us at sixteen and thirty-five doesn’t pack up his fiddle and slink off because we get too old. He simply alters his tune and keeps us dancing. The boisterous libido of a teenager becomes the “sophisticated” sexual connoisseur of late middle age, but the same devil is playing the melody. The man of seventy-five who has spent a life engrossed in sexual pursuits doesn’t lose interest, but his sophisticated sexual life now is reduced to grubby, secret pursuits.
It’s not just sexual sins that we think we outgrow. Whatever your “favorites,” your besetting sins, they don’t go away just because of your age. The obvious selfishness of a five-year old becomes the manipulative stinginess of a girl of thirteen. By the time she’s in her twenties, she’s learned to mask her greed and put it across with a practiced indifference, but it’s there, nonetheless. She’s learned to hide her greediness while still feeding it.
Since I was hospitalized five years back, my appetite for food has decreased. I can’t eat as much; I don’t want as much. But it’s no virtue. I haven’t become more abstemious. Now, rather than wanting a piece of steak, I want only a rib-eye or especially good T-bone. I’ll eat nothing rather than chose something not just to my liking. The demon of gluttony didn’t give up on me. “The subject Wilcox doesn’t eat as much, and I’m about out of a job!” his report might read; but my gluttonous tempter knows better. “Subject Wilcox doesn’t eat as much, but I’ve convinced him his palate is too refined for the foods of the hoi polloi. I’ve got him snared by concentrating, not on more, but better food! And what’s more, now and then he praises himself for being less gluttonous than in the past!”
Our temptations change as we do, but their goal is still the same. The intention is to drag us—unaware if possible—to hell. The Seven Deadly Sins are called that because they have the potential to destroy us.
So what are we to do? We keep watch over our souls. We examine ourselves regularly—preferably every day, for just a brief minute or two. You may not know how deeply your love of your favorite sins—we all have them—is ingrained in you, but you should know what they are. They’re ones you’re well- acquainted with—self-centeredness, self-pity, envy, anger, whatever they are, you have more than a passing acquaintance with them. We defeat them—and that’s God’s intention—that we face out sins in daily combat—by knowing what they are, seeing them in action (and our weaknesses in addressing them), and turning to Jesus for help.
When you’ve said something particularly nasty about a co-worker, face up to it. Go to the person you said the thing to and tell them you were wrong—then don’t accept their attempt to say the person deserved it; they’re simply embedding you more in your sin, justifying what you did because they, too, are guilty. Don’t simply tell God, I shouldn’t have taken that extra change from the cashier—give it back. Many people say they don’t need to confess their sins to a priest because they “confess directly to God.” What that really means is they don’t want to have to face up to what they’ve done in the presence of another. I’ve never heard a repentant politician confess to a scandal when he didn’t assure his hearers “God has forgiven me. I hope you can, too.” The implication (actually, implications—there are several in this type of cant) is that you can’t reasonably deny him your absolution if God already has.
But before we throw stones at politicians, let’s remember that they’re typical of us. Everybody wants easy, cheap forgiveness. But for those following the Lord Christ on the road to Calvary, it’s the last thing we need.
For fifteen years I served on the staff of the National Youth Camp outside of Denver, at Camp Santa Maria—first as Chaplain, then for the last five years or so as Director. One of the chaplain’s jobs was to hear the confessions of all the children at camp on the final Saturday. While I can’t remember the age brackets at Camp, I think the kids ranged in age from twelve to eighteen. One of you who went through this annual pilgrimage to purgatory with me will, I’m sure, correct my memory.
Sin is—or was—different for a twelve-year-old than a budding young person of eighteen. Opportunities are different; I hesitate to say an eighteen-year-old is more subtle than a child of twelve, but they are certainly more practiced in cunning (I remember my years at church camp as a teenager and how we put Fr Petersen and the nuns through the wringer with our late-night escapades). Opportunities and “inopportunities” of sin vary at different times in our lives. The other end of the spectrum is older people—in their late sixties on (that doesn’t sound so old to me now!)—whose confessions I’ve heard. Many times I’ve had an older person say to me, “Since I’ve got older, I just don’t sin as much. I’m not as interested.” A little questioning shows that’s not exactly so.
We don’t outgrow sin. In different times in our lives, though, it shows itself differently. The sexual temptations of a precocious sixteen year-old boy are not the same as a mature man of thirty-five. The more refined temptations of the flesh are different in a fifty-year old than for a man of seventy. But make no mistake, the tempter who so played us at sixteen and thirty-five doesn’t pack up his fiddle and slink off because we get too old. He simply alters his tune and keeps us dancing. The boisterous libido of a teenager becomes the “sophisticated” sexual connoisseur of late middle age, but the same devil is playing the melody. The man of seventy-five who has spent a life engrossed in sexual pursuits doesn’t lose interest, but his sophisticated sexual life now is reduced to grubby, secret pursuits.
It’s not just sexual sins that we think we outgrow. Whatever your “favorites,” your besetting sins, they don’t go away just because of your age. The obvious selfishness of a five-year old becomes the manipulative stinginess of a girl of thirteen. By the time she’s in her twenties, she’s learned to mask her greed and put it across with a practiced indifference, but it’s there, nonetheless. She’s learned to hide her greediness while still feeding it.
Since I was hospitalized five years back, my appetite for food has decreased. I can’t eat as much; I don’t want as much. But it’s no virtue. I haven’t become more abstemious. Now, rather than wanting a piece of steak, I want only a rib-eye or especially good T-bone. I’ll eat nothing rather than chose something not just to my liking. The demon of gluttony didn’t give up on me. “The subject Wilcox doesn’t eat as much, and I’m about out of a job!” his report might read; but my gluttonous tempter knows better. “Subject Wilcox doesn’t eat as much, but I’ve convinced him his palate is too refined for the foods of the hoi polloi. I’ve got him snared by concentrating, not on more, but better food! And what’s more, now and then he praises himself for being less gluttonous than in the past!”
Our temptations change as we do, but their goal is still the same. The intention is to drag us—unaware if possible—to hell. The Seven Deadly Sins are called that because they have the potential to destroy us.
So what are we to do? We keep watch over our souls. We examine ourselves regularly—preferably every day, for just a brief minute or two. You may not know how deeply your love of your favorite sins—we all have them—is ingrained in you, but you should know what they are. They’re ones you’re well- acquainted with—self-centeredness, self-pity, envy, anger, whatever they are, you have more than a passing acquaintance with them. We defeat them—and that’s God’s intention—that we face out sins in daily combat—by knowing what they are, seeing them in action (and our weaknesses in addressing them), and turning to Jesus for help.
When you’ve said something particularly nasty about a co-worker, face up to it. Go to the person you said the thing to and tell them you were wrong—then don’t accept their attempt to say the person deserved it; they’re simply embedding you more in your sin, justifying what you did because they, too, are guilty. Don’t simply tell God, I shouldn’t have taken that extra change from the cashier—give it back. Many people say they don’t need to confess their sins to a priest because they “confess directly to God.” What that really means is they don’t want to have to face up to what they’ve done in the presence of another. I’ve never heard a repentant politician confess to a scandal when he didn’t assure his hearers “God has forgiven me. I hope you can, too.” The implication (actually, implications—there are several in this type of cant) is that you can’t reasonably deny him your absolution if God already has.
But before we throw stones at politicians, let’s remember that they’re typical of us. Everybody wants easy, cheap forgiveness. But for those following the Lord Christ on the road to Calvary, it’s the last thing we need.
Monday, March 22, 2010
PICKING AND CHOOSING
Monday in Passion Week
There’s an internet site for those who have given up chocolate for Lent. Among other things, it has pictures of chocolate candy—stacks of chocolates, chocolate Easter bunnies, and people admiring chocolate bars—the site provides a “support group” for those who are keeping the letter of the law (not putting chocolate in your mouth) but missing its spirit (are you giving up chocolate if you’re writing and reading about it—and fantasizing about it—a few times a week?). A friend sent me a cartoon last week that showed a teen-age girl standing in front of a candy machine, contemplating her choices. The caption read: “I’m growing spiritually by giving up M&Ms for forty days.”
There’s nothing wrong with giving up chocolates—even if only a specialized brand of chocolates—for forty days and forty nights. At the very least, even a minimal abstinence serves as a reminder that we are in a special time of potential spiritual growth.
During my long sojourn in California, I met many “spiritual” people. Almost without exception, my conversations with them began “I’m not really a ‘religious’ person, but I am very spiritual…” Inevitably this introduction was followed by a set of the most banal statements, proving to me that not only were they not “religious” but they weren’t profoundly “spiritual” either. Most of their convictions center around expressions like “I really like nature and being alone in the outdoors,” “I freed myself from dogma and creeds and am able to explore my own truth,” or “Leaving religion has allowed me to discover my inner self.”
Let’s be clear among ourselves, anyway. Everybody is “spiritual,” and all of us—atheists, Episcopalians and Zen Buddhists, all have “spiritual lives.” Monks do and so do mass murderers. There’s nothing special about having a “spiritual life”—it’s like boasting that you have nostrils. What matters isn’t that you are “spiritual,” but what your spiritual life is about. The hedonist hopes to raise sensual indulgence to a spiritual art. The Buddhist seeks to transcend everything—to find perfect oblivion—and so escape the pain of existence. Atheists dogmatically deny the existence of God and look for meaning—or embrace the notion of a lack of meaning—in themselves and the society around them. Each of these are real “spiritualities” (it doesn’t hurt to remember that devils—yes they exist regardless of whether we’re too smart to believe in them or not—are “purely” spiritual).
Our spiritual lives, as Christians, are grounded in the facts of the Creeds, not the way we feel or even what we think. The Creeds don’t go into a lot of detail, but they’re bluntly factual about what those details are: God, the Three-in-One, is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. He exists and so do we. And, in the wonderful phrase of St Bonaventure, “He has come to us, so we can come to Him.” All Christian spiritual thought is based on these few, essential truths. Though the greatest minds the world has known have struggled over the centuries with the meaning of those profound truths, the facts are unchanging and plain.
For those of us who are Catholic Christians (as we insist we are in the Creeds), we believe God’s claim on our lives isn’t because we “believe” in Him, but because He has marked us as His own. “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ,” St Paul tells us, “have put on Christ.” We may choose to live as Christians, but God chose us first. The most basic fact about your spiritual life is not whether or not you’re “spiritual,” but that you are baptized.
God, through that fact, has made you (remember your catechism) “a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.” You no longer belong to yourself. You can live as a hedonist, follow a Buddhist path or deny the reality of the invisible; He still has marked you as His own. Being baptized doesn’t “accomplish” your salvation, but it does begin it. It also teaches us something important: our salvation, and how God accomplishes it, is in His hands. He acts in our lives to bring us to Him, and He’ll do whatever it takes. He really and truly is unconcerned about whether you are rich or poor, pretty or ugly, smart or dull, as long as none of those things gets in the way of your growth in His Spirit. If He allows you to win the lottery, it’s because He loves you and knows you need it. If He doesn’t, it’s because He loves you and knows you don’t need it.
Jesus said, “If anyone would be My disciple, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow Me.” Our spiritual lives and our struggles aren’t of our own choosing. We’re in God’s hands. When your pains and sorrows and the trials of your life come—even those which come because we made stupid decisions—Christ is there with you. When you’re sick, when you’re afraid, when you don’t know what to do, when you are hurt and betrayed, He’s with you, right then and there. Our usual response is to ignore Him or try to buy Him off.
You and I are like chocolate Christians. We want the struggles of our spiritual lives to be those we choose. “I’ll give up M&Ms for forty days.” “Lord, if only you’ll let me get by with it this one time, I’ll never do it again.” This is spiritual baby-talk.
“If anyone would be My disciple, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow Me.” We’re following Jesus’ Way of the Cross when we do. Where did that Way take Him? Outside Jerusalem to Golgotha, where they crucified Him. He didn’t want to be there. The night before He prayed that this could pass Him by. It’s okay if you and I pray His prayer. Remember, though, the words which concluded His prayer: “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.”
For these days of Passiontide, as you follow where He leads, make His prayer your own. This is the spirituality we’re called to: living and dying—and rising—with Jesus.
There’s an internet site for those who have given up chocolate for Lent. Among other things, it has pictures of chocolate candy—stacks of chocolates, chocolate Easter bunnies, and people admiring chocolate bars—the site provides a “support group” for those who are keeping the letter of the law (not putting chocolate in your mouth) but missing its spirit (are you giving up chocolate if you’re writing and reading about it—and fantasizing about it—a few times a week?). A friend sent me a cartoon last week that showed a teen-age girl standing in front of a candy machine, contemplating her choices. The caption read: “I’m growing spiritually by giving up M&Ms for forty days.”
There’s nothing wrong with giving up chocolates—even if only a specialized brand of chocolates—for forty days and forty nights. At the very least, even a minimal abstinence serves as a reminder that we are in a special time of potential spiritual growth.
During my long sojourn in California, I met many “spiritual” people. Almost without exception, my conversations with them began “I’m not really a ‘religious’ person, but I am very spiritual…” Inevitably this introduction was followed by a set of the most banal statements, proving to me that not only were they not “religious” but they weren’t profoundly “spiritual” either. Most of their convictions center around expressions like “I really like nature and being alone in the outdoors,” “I freed myself from dogma and creeds and am able to explore my own truth,” or “Leaving religion has allowed me to discover my inner self.”
Let’s be clear among ourselves, anyway. Everybody is “spiritual,” and all of us—atheists, Episcopalians and Zen Buddhists, all have “spiritual lives.” Monks do and so do mass murderers. There’s nothing special about having a “spiritual life”—it’s like boasting that you have nostrils. What matters isn’t that you are “spiritual,” but what your spiritual life is about. The hedonist hopes to raise sensual indulgence to a spiritual art. The Buddhist seeks to transcend everything—to find perfect oblivion—and so escape the pain of existence. Atheists dogmatically deny the existence of God and look for meaning—or embrace the notion of a lack of meaning—in themselves and the society around them. Each of these are real “spiritualities” (it doesn’t hurt to remember that devils—yes they exist regardless of whether we’re too smart to believe in them or not—are “purely” spiritual).
Our spiritual lives, as Christians, are grounded in the facts of the Creeds, not the way we feel or even what we think. The Creeds don’t go into a lot of detail, but they’re bluntly factual about what those details are: God, the Three-in-One, is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. He exists and so do we. And, in the wonderful phrase of St Bonaventure, “He has come to us, so we can come to Him.” All Christian spiritual thought is based on these few, essential truths. Though the greatest minds the world has known have struggled over the centuries with the meaning of those profound truths, the facts are unchanging and plain.
For those of us who are Catholic Christians (as we insist we are in the Creeds), we believe God’s claim on our lives isn’t because we “believe” in Him, but because He has marked us as His own. “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ,” St Paul tells us, “have put on Christ.” We may choose to live as Christians, but God chose us first. The most basic fact about your spiritual life is not whether or not you’re “spiritual,” but that you are baptized.
God, through that fact, has made you (remember your catechism) “a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.” You no longer belong to yourself. You can live as a hedonist, follow a Buddhist path or deny the reality of the invisible; He still has marked you as His own. Being baptized doesn’t “accomplish” your salvation, but it does begin it. It also teaches us something important: our salvation, and how God accomplishes it, is in His hands. He acts in our lives to bring us to Him, and He’ll do whatever it takes. He really and truly is unconcerned about whether you are rich or poor, pretty or ugly, smart or dull, as long as none of those things gets in the way of your growth in His Spirit. If He allows you to win the lottery, it’s because He loves you and knows you need it. If He doesn’t, it’s because He loves you and knows you don’t need it.
Jesus said, “If anyone would be My disciple, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow Me.” Our spiritual lives and our struggles aren’t of our own choosing. We’re in God’s hands. When your pains and sorrows and the trials of your life come—even those which come because we made stupid decisions—Christ is there with you. When you’re sick, when you’re afraid, when you don’t know what to do, when you are hurt and betrayed, He’s with you, right then and there. Our usual response is to ignore Him or try to buy Him off.
You and I are like chocolate Christians. We want the struggles of our spiritual lives to be those we choose. “I’ll give up M&Ms for forty days.” “Lord, if only you’ll let me get by with it this one time, I’ll never do it again.” This is spiritual baby-talk.
“If anyone would be My disciple, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow Me.” We’re following Jesus’ Way of the Cross when we do. Where did that Way take Him? Outside Jerusalem to Golgotha, where they crucified Him. He didn’t want to be there. The night before He prayed that this could pass Him by. It’s okay if you and I pray His prayer. Remember, though, the words which concluded His prayer: “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.”
For these days of Passiontide, as you follow where He leads, make His prayer your own. This is the spirituality we’re called to: living and dying—and rising—with Jesus.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
NATURAL LOVIN’
The Fifth Sunday of Lent, commonly called Passion Sunday
I’ve been reading the Gospel of St Mark this Lent. It’s the oldest of the four Gospels and the most stark. The Greek is often unsophisticated and inelegant, but there is power in its blunt, straightforward approach. A very early tradition about the Gospel claims it’s the work of John Mark, a disciple of St Peter the Apostle, and that the stories it enshrines are those St Mark heard from St Peter himself.
One of the striking characteristics of the Gospel of Mark is its depiction of the Apostles in general and of St Peter in particular. They all are shown as uncomprehending both the teaching of Jesus and of His ultimate mission. Three times—in the eighth, ninth and tenth chapters—the Lord tells His disciples that He is going to Jerusalem, where He will be betrayed to His enemies, handed over to the Romans who will kill Him and on the third day rise from the dead.
Each of these statements is met with confusion by the Apostles. The first time, St Mark tells us, Peter took Jesus to task. St Mark says “Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But turning and seeing His disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, “Get thee behind me, Satan! You have set your mind on the things of men, not of God.” Later, Jesus repeats His prophecy. The disciples, St Mark says, “did not understand His words, and were afraid to ask Him.” Shortly before they enter Jerusalem where Jesus’ words will be fulfilled, He tells them again what is to happen. Nobody says anything in response. They just don’t know what to make of it all.
If we recall St Mark’s Gospel is really the Gospel according to St Peter, the remarks are all the more telling. The tradition of Apostolic Ignorance and Incomprehension comes from the Leader of the Apostles. “We had no idea what He was talking about.” It’s Peter who first tells us the story of his three-fold denial of Jesus, while His Master is standing on trial.
If we put ourselves in the place of the Lord’s disciples, would we be as ignorant and slow—“setting our minds on the things of men, not of God?” Depend on it. We do it all the time. At our best, we usually fail to understand Jesus, much less live up to His words. Please understand I speak as one who sees this failure over and over in my life.
St Peter “rebuked” Jesus when He first announced His death and resurrection because he loved Him. He loved Him like a friend, with a friend’s natural affections. All His disciples did.
Our natural affections, our likings and lovings, are just that—based in our natures. Our love, our hate and our indifference spring from who we are. We love those who love us and ignore those who hate us. If somebody is kind to us, we usually reciprocate. Our normal response is to attack those who attack us. And so the world spins on, gracelessly, to oblivion.
Jesus said to St Peter—and to us—“you set your minds on the things of men.” He was calling them—and ultimately in each of their lives (except that of Judas) He brought them—to a love and affection beyond the natural. St Peter was able to “tell on himself,” reveal his blindness, because he finally came to see. There is a life—a love—beyond the natural one we most live. God calls us to live, not naturally, but supernaturally.
That doesn’t mean we can see ghosts and get a cable TV show. It means we are meant to live “above our natures,” live a life beyond that of the rank and file. St Thomas Aquinas, the greatest medieval theologian, said “Grace perfects nature.” God takes the best in us, our natural loves and affections, and refines them. He purifies them and transfigures natural affection to supernatural love.
Brother Lawrence, the seventeenth-century monk, gives us an insight into “setting our minds on the things of God” in his small but invaluable book, The Practice of the Presence of God. He says “God often permits us to suffer a little to purify our souls and oblige us to stay close to Him." He doesn’t extol suffering, but he sees it as an opportunity “to stay close to God.” "God has many ways of drawing us to Himself," Lawrence says. Following Jesus along the Way of the Cross can be a gift, if we have the eyes of faith, which St Peter finally came to see with.
None of us needs to seek out suffering. “Sufficient unto the day,” the Lord said, “is the evil thereof.” Suffering will come unbidden—to us and to those we love. The Way of the Cross, the way of pain and suffering, can be a way of torture and sorrow, or a way of Grace, a way that calls us “to stay close to Him.” Which way it ends up isn’t left to us alone. We don’t just “think good thoughts” or try to have a “positive mental attitude.” The Gospel isn’t a Do-It-Yourself panacea. It’s the way of prayer. The more we live with Christ, the more we seek Him in prayer and take His life into ours through the Sacraments, the more we “set our minds on the things of God.”
Through these brief days of Passiontide, when suffering comes, to you or to those you love, make yours the words of St Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
The Gospel sometimes seems stark and inelegant, but to those who follow it, it is full of unexpected power.
I’ve been reading the Gospel of St Mark this Lent. It’s the oldest of the four Gospels and the most stark. The Greek is often unsophisticated and inelegant, but there is power in its blunt, straightforward approach. A very early tradition about the Gospel claims it’s the work of John Mark, a disciple of St Peter the Apostle, and that the stories it enshrines are those St Mark heard from St Peter himself.
One of the striking characteristics of the Gospel of Mark is its depiction of the Apostles in general and of St Peter in particular. They all are shown as uncomprehending both the teaching of Jesus and of His ultimate mission. Three times—in the eighth, ninth and tenth chapters—the Lord tells His disciples that He is going to Jerusalem, where He will be betrayed to His enemies, handed over to the Romans who will kill Him and on the third day rise from the dead.
Each of these statements is met with confusion by the Apostles. The first time, St Mark tells us, Peter took Jesus to task. St Mark says “Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But turning and seeing His disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, “Get thee behind me, Satan! You have set your mind on the things of men, not of God.” Later, Jesus repeats His prophecy. The disciples, St Mark says, “did not understand His words, and were afraid to ask Him.” Shortly before they enter Jerusalem where Jesus’ words will be fulfilled, He tells them again what is to happen. Nobody says anything in response. They just don’t know what to make of it all.
If we recall St Mark’s Gospel is really the Gospel according to St Peter, the remarks are all the more telling. The tradition of Apostolic Ignorance and Incomprehension comes from the Leader of the Apostles. “We had no idea what He was talking about.” It’s Peter who first tells us the story of his three-fold denial of Jesus, while His Master is standing on trial.
If we put ourselves in the place of the Lord’s disciples, would we be as ignorant and slow—“setting our minds on the things of men, not of God?” Depend on it. We do it all the time. At our best, we usually fail to understand Jesus, much less live up to His words. Please understand I speak as one who sees this failure over and over in my life.
St Peter “rebuked” Jesus when He first announced His death and resurrection because he loved Him. He loved Him like a friend, with a friend’s natural affections. All His disciples did.
Our natural affections, our likings and lovings, are just that—based in our natures. Our love, our hate and our indifference spring from who we are. We love those who love us and ignore those who hate us. If somebody is kind to us, we usually reciprocate. Our normal response is to attack those who attack us. And so the world spins on, gracelessly, to oblivion.
Jesus said to St Peter—and to us—“you set your minds on the things of men.” He was calling them—and ultimately in each of their lives (except that of Judas) He brought them—to a love and affection beyond the natural. St Peter was able to “tell on himself,” reveal his blindness, because he finally came to see. There is a life—a love—beyond the natural one we most live. God calls us to live, not naturally, but supernaturally.
That doesn’t mean we can see ghosts and get a cable TV show. It means we are meant to live “above our natures,” live a life beyond that of the rank and file. St Thomas Aquinas, the greatest medieval theologian, said “Grace perfects nature.” God takes the best in us, our natural loves and affections, and refines them. He purifies them and transfigures natural affection to supernatural love.
Brother Lawrence, the seventeenth-century monk, gives us an insight into “setting our minds on the things of God” in his small but invaluable book, The Practice of the Presence of God. He says “God often permits us to suffer a little to purify our souls and oblige us to stay close to Him." He doesn’t extol suffering, but he sees it as an opportunity “to stay close to God.” "God has many ways of drawing us to Himself," Lawrence says. Following Jesus along the Way of the Cross can be a gift, if we have the eyes of faith, which St Peter finally came to see with.
None of us needs to seek out suffering. “Sufficient unto the day,” the Lord said, “is the evil thereof.” Suffering will come unbidden—to us and to those we love. The Way of the Cross, the way of pain and suffering, can be a way of torture and sorrow, or a way of Grace, a way that calls us “to stay close to Him.” Which way it ends up isn’t left to us alone. We don’t just “think good thoughts” or try to have a “positive mental attitude.” The Gospel isn’t a Do-It-Yourself panacea. It’s the way of prayer. The more we live with Christ, the more we seek Him in prayer and take His life into ours through the Sacraments, the more we “set our minds on the things of God.”
Through these brief days of Passiontide, when suffering comes, to you or to those you love, make yours the words of St Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
The Gospel sometimes seems stark and inelegant, but to those who follow it, it is full of unexpected power.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
MANUFACTURING GUILT
Saturday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent
Passiontide, the last two weeks of Lent, begins Sunday. In many churches, the statues, crosses and pictures throughout the church are veiled. The Gloria Patri is customarily laid aside until Easter Day. Our Lenten focus is changing. Up until Passiontide, Lent emphasizes those spiritual disciplines we’ve discussed—prayer, fasting and almsgiving—as they relate to our spiritual growth. Lent is a penitential time because when we think about our spiritual lives, we can’t escape the fact that we’re sinners. The lessons of Lent are lessons about our spiritual growth, our following Jesus in His desert discipline.
Passiontide shifts our attention. Now we look to Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith,” Who gave Himself “for us men and for our salvation.” During these two weeks the Church turns our gaze to the death of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Finally, we can trot out the real guilt, huh? Suffering and death—the morose fixation on How Much Jesus Suffered For Us—even people who have only a glancing knowledge of Christianity know about this part. We’re all supposed to feel sorry because Jesus suffered, and remember He suffered and died for me because I’m bad. Many Christian denominations build their message on little more: “You’re a sinner; Jesus suffered for you; repent and be saved. Now you’re on the Road to Heaven.” Dime-store Christianity.
The One Church, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic says something different: we are sinners; God became a man to reshape our humanity. He calls us to lives of grace-wherein He lives in us and we in Him-with the intention of making us perfect. Salvation is not simply escaping hell. That’s a pathetic notion. Salvation is you and me living Jesus’ life in our lives. Heaven isn’t where we finally escape to, it’s where what God has begun in each of us is fulfilled. When the Common Prayer Book considers our eternal life, it prays that we may “continue to grow in Thy love and service.” We don’t “make it” into Heaven—we continue there. Christianity isn’t about guilt or sorrow or resigned sighing, but joy.
Passiontide is penitential, but it’s the penitence of subdued joy. The point of Passiontide and Holy Week isn’t to make us “feel” guilty. It takes as a given (our feelings aside) that we are guilty. That said, Passiontide and Holy Week isn’t about us at all. It’s about how God in Christ not only cleaned up the mess our ancestors made in the Garden (and we’ve been adding to ever since), but transfigured everything and everybody in the process. Passiontide isn’t meant to make us think about how guilty and bad we are. It takes us to Easter—where the Resurrection of Christ makes all things new—including those of us who’ve been ineptly slogging through Lent.
Passiontide turns our gaze to the Cross, not to make us feel guilty, but to make us sing. One of the oldest hymns of the season is the Vexilla Regis, “The Royal Banners,” written by Bishop Venantius Fortunatus about 1500 years ago. This is what Passiontide is about:
The royal banners forward go,
The Cross shines forth in mystic glow;
Where He in flesh, our flesh Who made,
Our sentence bore, our ransom paid.
Fulfilled is all that David told
In true prophetic song of old,
Amidst the nations, God, saith he,
Hath reigned and triumphed from the Tree.
Blest Tree, whose chosen branches bore
The Wealth that did the world restore,
The price of humankind to pay,
And spoil the spoiler of his prey.
O Cross, our one reliance, hail!
Still may thy power with us avail
To give new virtue to the saint,
And pardon to the penitent.
To Thee, eternal Three in One,
Let homage meet by all be done:
As by the Cross Thou dost restore,
So rule and guide us evermore.
The Cross, as you know, was a gruesome instrument of Roman torture. When Christ “ascended the Tree,” God transformed it to the sign of New Life and unending Joy. The Lord Christ took you and me, our failures and guilt, to the Cross with Him—and transformed us.
Neither Lent nor Passiontide are designed to manufacture guilt. If you’re guilty of sins, by all means, feel guilty—as long as it moves you to face up to your sins, confess them, get them forgiven and get on with your business—rejoicing in God’s creation, following Jesus as best you can, being His light in the darkness around you. If it doesn’t move you to confession, guilt is just an excuse, something to hide behind. St Paul insists: “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into His death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” With its purple veils and subdued liturgies, we don't mourn our way through Passiontide: we celebrate it.
Passiontide, the last two weeks of Lent, begins Sunday. In many churches, the statues, crosses and pictures throughout the church are veiled. The Gloria Patri is customarily laid aside until Easter Day. Our Lenten focus is changing. Up until Passiontide, Lent emphasizes those spiritual disciplines we’ve discussed—prayer, fasting and almsgiving—as they relate to our spiritual growth. Lent is a penitential time because when we think about our spiritual lives, we can’t escape the fact that we’re sinners. The lessons of Lent are lessons about our spiritual growth, our following Jesus in His desert discipline.
Passiontide shifts our attention. Now we look to Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith,” Who gave Himself “for us men and for our salvation.” During these two weeks the Church turns our gaze to the death of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Finally, we can trot out the real guilt, huh? Suffering and death—the morose fixation on How Much Jesus Suffered For Us—even people who have only a glancing knowledge of Christianity know about this part. We’re all supposed to feel sorry because Jesus suffered, and remember He suffered and died for me because I’m bad. Many Christian denominations build their message on little more: “You’re a sinner; Jesus suffered for you; repent and be saved. Now you’re on the Road to Heaven.” Dime-store Christianity.
The One Church, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic says something different: we are sinners; God became a man to reshape our humanity. He calls us to lives of grace-wherein He lives in us and we in Him-with the intention of making us perfect. Salvation is not simply escaping hell. That’s a pathetic notion. Salvation is you and me living Jesus’ life in our lives. Heaven isn’t where we finally escape to, it’s where what God has begun in each of us is fulfilled. When the Common Prayer Book considers our eternal life, it prays that we may “continue to grow in Thy love and service.” We don’t “make it” into Heaven—we continue there. Christianity isn’t about guilt or sorrow or resigned sighing, but joy.
Passiontide is penitential, but it’s the penitence of subdued joy. The point of Passiontide and Holy Week isn’t to make us “feel” guilty. It takes as a given (our feelings aside) that we are guilty. That said, Passiontide and Holy Week isn’t about us at all. It’s about how God in Christ not only cleaned up the mess our ancestors made in the Garden (and we’ve been adding to ever since), but transfigured everything and everybody in the process. Passiontide isn’t meant to make us think about how guilty and bad we are. It takes us to Easter—where the Resurrection of Christ makes all things new—including those of us who’ve been ineptly slogging through Lent.
Passiontide turns our gaze to the Cross, not to make us feel guilty, but to make us sing. One of the oldest hymns of the season is the Vexilla Regis, “The Royal Banners,” written by Bishop Venantius Fortunatus about 1500 years ago. This is what Passiontide is about:
The royal banners forward go,
The Cross shines forth in mystic glow;
Where He in flesh, our flesh Who made,
Our sentence bore, our ransom paid.
Fulfilled is all that David told
In true prophetic song of old,
Amidst the nations, God, saith he,
Hath reigned and triumphed from the Tree.
Blest Tree, whose chosen branches bore
The Wealth that did the world restore,
The price of humankind to pay,
And spoil the spoiler of his prey.
O Cross, our one reliance, hail!
Still may thy power with us avail
To give new virtue to the saint,
And pardon to the penitent.
To Thee, eternal Three in One,
Let homage meet by all be done:
As by the Cross Thou dost restore,
So rule and guide us evermore.
The Cross, as you know, was a gruesome instrument of Roman torture. When Christ “ascended the Tree,” God transformed it to the sign of New Life and unending Joy. The Lord Christ took you and me, our failures and guilt, to the Cross with Him—and transformed us.
Neither Lent nor Passiontide are designed to manufacture guilt. If you’re guilty of sins, by all means, feel guilty—as long as it moves you to face up to your sins, confess them, get them forgiven and get on with your business—rejoicing in God’s creation, following Jesus as best you can, being His light in the darkness around you. If it doesn’t move you to confession, guilt is just an excuse, something to hide behind. St Paul insists: “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into His death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” With its purple veils and subdued liturgies, we don't mourn our way through Passiontide: we celebrate it.
Friday, March 19, 2010
FASTING WITH THE PHARISEES
Friday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent
Many years ago, when I was a theological student (I said it was a long time ago), I was out at a Dallas restaurant a few days before the beginning of Lent. A couple of my friends had joined me, and we were enjoying one of our last fine meals before the season fell on us. We were having such a good time none of us saw Mr Super-Catholic until he presented himself at our table. We all knew him; none of us liked him. He had a tendency to flit from one parish to another, criticizing each for its failure to be sufficiently “Catholic” for his taste.
“Having a last steak dinner before Lent, huh?”
I don’t remember anybody responding, but he pulled up a chair.
“Giving up meat for Lent? Yeah, me too. That’s not the half of it, though. I can’t stand the way we keep such a pathetic fast. Ever since Pope Paul VI, the Western Church has forgotten how to fast. Now the Eastern Orthodox, they keep a real fast. Did you know they don’t eat meat or seafood or any kind of animal products at all during Lent? Not even cheese or eggs or any kind of animal derivatives. That’s serious fasting, I tell you! That’s what I’m doing this Lent.”
I don't remember any of the rest of the conversation. I probably wouldn’t even remember this much except for what followed.
About ten days later, not quite a week into Lent, the three of us went out to eat again. Still fresh and firm in our Lenten resolves, we each knew we could withstand the temptations of a good restaurant and find something—if not penitential, at least seasonally permissible—on the menu. While we waited to be seated, one of my pals nudged me. “Look over there,” he said sotto voce. “It’s the Uber-Catholic.”
And it was. Sitting by himself, he was carving himself a big bite from one of the most delicious-looking T-bones I’d ever seen. My concupiscent eyes lingered on the crisped fat along the meat’s edge, but even more, my concupiscent heart soared to see the Decider on All Things Catholic so obscenely violating the Fast—and not just the lilly-livered Western Fast, but the Great Orthodox Fast he’d embraced just a few short days before. A thick, juicy steak, a baked potato larded with mounds of butter, sour cream and bacon; was there any part of the fast he wasn’t breaking?
He saw us, too. Evidently we were all staring at him. He turned the color of a beet.
We were seated, and though none of us said anything about what we’d seen, we were each reaffirmed in our (self-righteous) fasting. The Super-Catholic was a hypocrite. Thank God we weren’t like him.
St John Chrysostom, the fifth-century Archbishop of Constantinople and one of the greatest preachers in the long history of preaching, preached a lot about fasting. “You fast from meat and chew up your brother?” he asks. “He who keeps the fast with his lips and judges and condemns his brother is keeping a sacrilegious fast. The Pharisee fasted and God turned away from him, but the Tax-collector, who didn’t fast but asked God for mercy, went away justified. Do not fast with the Pharisees…the virtue of fasting lies not in abstaining from food, but in fighting sin.” Mr Super-Catholic may have abandoned the Fast, but we kept it in the best tradition of the Scribes and Pharisees.
“Do you fast?” the Archbishop cries. “Prove it by what you do! If you see a poor man, take pity on him. Be reconciled to your enemy, be reconciled to him. If you see a friend gaining honor, lay envy aside. If you see someone attracted to you, turn your eyes elsewhere. Fast not only with your mouth, but also with your eyes, and ears, and feet, and hands, with your whole self. Keep the fast in your heart.”
It would make a good ending to say we invited the Uber-Catholic to share our table, but we didn’t. We went away feeling proved right. We each knew that guy was a big-mouthed fake. It took me a while to realize I was something much worse.
Many years ago, when I was a theological student (I said it was a long time ago), I was out at a Dallas restaurant a few days before the beginning of Lent. A couple of my friends had joined me, and we were enjoying one of our last fine meals before the season fell on us. We were having such a good time none of us saw Mr Super-Catholic until he presented himself at our table. We all knew him; none of us liked him. He had a tendency to flit from one parish to another, criticizing each for its failure to be sufficiently “Catholic” for his taste.
“Having a last steak dinner before Lent, huh?”
I don’t remember anybody responding, but he pulled up a chair.
“Giving up meat for Lent? Yeah, me too. That’s not the half of it, though. I can’t stand the way we keep such a pathetic fast. Ever since Pope Paul VI, the Western Church has forgotten how to fast. Now the Eastern Orthodox, they keep a real fast. Did you know they don’t eat meat or seafood or any kind of animal products at all during Lent? Not even cheese or eggs or any kind of animal derivatives. That’s serious fasting, I tell you! That’s what I’m doing this Lent.”
I don't remember any of the rest of the conversation. I probably wouldn’t even remember this much except for what followed.
About ten days later, not quite a week into Lent, the three of us went out to eat again. Still fresh and firm in our Lenten resolves, we each knew we could withstand the temptations of a good restaurant and find something—if not penitential, at least seasonally permissible—on the menu. While we waited to be seated, one of my pals nudged me. “Look over there,” he said sotto voce. “It’s the Uber-Catholic.”
And it was. Sitting by himself, he was carving himself a big bite from one of the most delicious-looking T-bones I’d ever seen. My concupiscent eyes lingered on the crisped fat along the meat’s edge, but even more, my concupiscent heart soared to see the Decider on All Things Catholic so obscenely violating the Fast—and not just the lilly-livered Western Fast, but the Great Orthodox Fast he’d embraced just a few short days before. A thick, juicy steak, a baked potato larded with mounds of butter, sour cream and bacon; was there any part of the fast he wasn’t breaking?
He saw us, too. Evidently we were all staring at him. He turned the color of a beet.
We were seated, and though none of us said anything about what we’d seen, we were each reaffirmed in our (self-righteous) fasting. The Super-Catholic was a hypocrite. Thank God we weren’t like him.
St John Chrysostom, the fifth-century Archbishop of Constantinople and one of the greatest preachers in the long history of preaching, preached a lot about fasting. “You fast from meat and chew up your brother?” he asks. “He who keeps the fast with his lips and judges and condemns his brother is keeping a sacrilegious fast. The Pharisee fasted and God turned away from him, but the Tax-collector, who didn’t fast but asked God for mercy, went away justified. Do not fast with the Pharisees…the virtue of fasting lies not in abstaining from food, but in fighting sin.” Mr Super-Catholic may have abandoned the Fast, but we kept it in the best tradition of the Scribes and Pharisees.
“Do you fast?” the Archbishop cries. “Prove it by what you do! If you see a poor man, take pity on him. Be reconciled to your enemy, be reconciled to him. If you see a friend gaining honor, lay envy aside. If you see someone attracted to you, turn your eyes elsewhere. Fast not only with your mouth, but also with your eyes, and ears, and feet, and hands, with your whole self. Keep the fast in your heart.”
It would make a good ending to say we invited the Uber-Catholic to share our table, but we didn’t. We went away feeling proved right. We each knew that guy was a big-mouthed fake. It took me a while to realize I was something much worse.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
WHY DOESN’T GOD GIVE ME WHAT I WANT?
Thursday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent
I was an atheist for about 45 minutes. I was eleven years old at the time (most people, I know, usually free themselves from the shackles of religion when they're sophomores in college, but I was a precocious Unbeliever); I had a friend named Kevin. His parents were atheists and had raised him in their faith.
One bright spring afternoon several of us were riding our bicycles and stopped in a field. The Texas sky, puffed with high clouds, stretched above us to the horizons; the field was green and yellow with flowers and tall grass; it was a day not too far removed from the First Day. One of my companions said to Kevin, “I don’t know how anybody can not believe in God when it’s like this.” It wasn’t a profound theological argument, but for eleven year-olds it wasn't bad.
“There isn’t a God,” Kevin said dogmatically. “No such thing.”
Even though we all knew Kevin was an atheist, to my knowledge, none of us had ever heard him actually assert his creed. His words shocked us into silence. Sensing our discombobulation, Kevin continued. “You want me to prove it?”
“Can you?” I remember asking hesitantly.
Standing astride his bike, Kevin looked up at the sky. “If there’s a God, strike me dead right now. I dare you!”
Our eyes went wide. We waited for Jehovah to reduce this young blasphemer to a pile of ashes. I think I really expected something like that to happen.
It didn’t. After waiting dramatically for a minute, Kevin smiled self-assuredly at us credulous yokels. “See? God didn’t kill me ‘cause He doesn’t exist.”
I was pretty disappointed in God. We all were. He had let us down. We felt like fools.
Our little band broke up and I rode home in profound and disturbed silence. Was he right? What if God didn’t exist? What about my grandfather and the other members of my family who were supposed to be with Him? If God didn’t exist, we’d been wasting our time going to Mass. If God didn’t exist, were there any Rules (the Big Ten) anymore? If He wasn’t real, could I do whatever I wanted?
By the time I got home, I’d pretty much decided I’d be sleeping in the next Sunday morning.
My grandmother was in the kitchen when I came in the back door. “Grammother,” I announced, “God isn’t real and I’m an atheist.”
She put down whatever it was she had in her hands, came over to me and slapped my face. “You are not an atheist,” she said, “you’re an Episcopalian. How did you come up with such a stupid idea?”
Tears welled in my eyes and I told her what happened—or what DIDN’T happen—to Kevin in the field.
My cheek still stung, but she hugged me into her bosom and laughed. “Don’t you think the Lord has better things to do than listen to a bunch of silly kids? Can you imagine what sort of strange world we’d live in if He answered prayers like wishes? I wouldn’t want to live in a world where the Lord did what you and your friends wanted. Sit down and have some pie.”
I don’t know whether it was the slap, the pie or her words (maybe it was everything combined), but my Atheist Phase passed before I got up from the table.
In the Mass appointed for today, Jesus talks to His disciples about prayer. “I say unto you: Ask and it will be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
The problem is, Jesus’ words don’t match our experience. Kevin was left alive—I hope he still is. He asked God—dared Him—is that the same?—to kill him. I’ve asked God time and again to hear and grant my prayers—“Let JoAnne live. Help Arthur find a job this week. Please allow Tim to walk again.” How many times have you and I placed ourselves or others at the foot of God’s throne and had no answer? “Ask and it will be given you. Seek and you shall find.” He didn’t say “sometimes” or “if you’re good enough” you’ll find if you seek: Jesus’ words are without condition. Was Kevin right after all?
My grandmother, it turns out, wasn’t a bad theologian. God isn’t our Stepin Fetchit, Who we can order around by using the magic words of prayer. I’ve remembered her words ever since. Imagine a world governed by the prayers of pre-teens! It’s too terrifying to contemplate for long.
Jesus isn't saying that God wants to play the Genie to our Aladdin, but that prayer is an on-going process—prayer is at the heart of our relationship with God. Ask, seek, knock—pursue God, pester Him by all means. Let Him know what you want, what matters to you, how important your concerns are. When you do that, you're spending time with Him. When that happens, even if our requests are selfish, Things Happen. Not miraculous things (usually), but things. We discover that prayer is more than just asking. It’s conversing. In truthful, frank prayer, we tell God what’s important to us. Eventually we get beyond the lottery tickets. We go beyond our backaches and even the backaches of those we love. Every now and then, we find that our prayer has transcended us and all our fears—and even our hopes. Sometimes, we lift our hearts and minds to God—and He Is There.
When that happens, for those rare moments, we find the answer to all our askings and seekings and knockings. When God shares Himself with us, everything else falls into place. The problems don’t go away and we won’t be left with Winning Numbers like the inside of a fortune cookie, but before we were blind and now we see. JoAnne and Arthur and Tim and even Kevin are in God’s Heart—where they’ve always been. You are there; so am I.
Ask—but be prepared to stick around for the answer. It’ll knock your socks off.
I was an atheist for about 45 minutes. I was eleven years old at the time (most people, I know, usually free themselves from the shackles of religion when they're sophomores in college, but I was a precocious Unbeliever); I had a friend named Kevin. His parents were atheists and had raised him in their faith.
One bright spring afternoon several of us were riding our bicycles and stopped in a field. The Texas sky, puffed with high clouds, stretched above us to the horizons; the field was green and yellow with flowers and tall grass; it was a day not too far removed from the First Day. One of my companions said to Kevin, “I don’t know how anybody can not believe in God when it’s like this.” It wasn’t a profound theological argument, but for eleven year-olds it wasn't bad.
“There isn’t a God,” Kevin said dogmatically. “No such thing.”
Even though we all knew Kevin was an atheist, to my knowledge, none of us had ever heard him actually assert his creed. His words shocked us into silence. Sensing our discombobulation, Kevin continued. “You want me to prove it?”
“Can you?” I remember asking hesitantly.
Standing astride his bike, Kevin looked up at the sky. “If there’s a God, strike me dead right now. I dare you!”
Our eyes went wide. We waited for Jehovah to reduce this young blasphemer to a pile of ashes. I think I really expected something like that to happen.
It didn’t. After waiting dramatically for a minute, Kevin smiled self-assuredly at us credulous yokels. “See? God didn’t kill me ‘cause He doesn’t exist.”
I was pretty disappointed in God. We all were. He had let us down. We felt like fools.
Our little band broke up and I rode home in profound and disturbed silence. Was he right? What if God didn’t exist? What about my grandfather and the other members of my family who were supposed to be with Him? If God didn’t exist, we’d been wasting our time going to Mass. If God didn’t exist, were there any Rules (the Big Ten) anymore? If He wasn’t real, could I do whatever I wanted?
By the time I got home, I’d pretty much decided I’d be sleeping in the next Sunday morning.
My grandmother was in the kitchen when I came in the back door. “Grammother,” I announced, “God isn’t real and I’m an atheist.”
She put down whatever it was she had in her hands, came over to me and slapped my face. “You are not an atheist,” she said, “you’re an Episcopalian. How did you come up with such a stupid idea?”
Tears welled in my eyes and I told her what happened—or what DIDN’T happen—to Kevin in the field.
My cheek still stung, but she hugged me into her bosom and laughed. “Don’t you think the Lord has better things to do than listen to a bunch of silly kids? Can you imagine what sort of strange world we’d live in if He answered prayers like wishes? I wouldn’t want to live in a world where the Lord did what you and your friends wanted. Sit down and have some pie.”
I don’t know whether it was the slap, the pie or her words (maybe it was everything combined), but my Atheist Phase passed before I got up from the table.
In the Mass appointed for today, Jesus talks to His disciples about prayer. “I say unto you: Ask and it will be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
The problem is, Jesus’ words don’t match our experience. Kevin was left alive—I hope he still is. He asked God—dared Him—is that the same?—to kill him. I’ve asked God time and again to hear and grant my prayers—“Let JoAnne live. Help Arthur find a job this week. Please allow Tim to walk again.” How many times have you and I placed ourselves or others at the foot of God’s throne and had no answer? “Ask and it will be given you. Seek and you shall find.” He didn’t say “sometimes” or “if you’re good enough” you’ll find if you seek: Jesus’ words are without condition. Was Kevin right after all?
My grandmother, it turns out, wasn’t a bad theologian. God isn’t our Stepin Fetchit, Who we can order around by using the magic words of prayer. I’ve remembered her words ever since. Imagine a world governed by the prayers of pre-teens! It’s too terrifying to contemplate for long.
Jesus isn't saying that God wants to play the Genie to our Aladdin, but that prayer is an on-going process—prayer is at the heart of our relationship with God. Ask, seek, knock—pursue God, pester Him by all means. Let Him know what you want, what matters to you, how important your concerns are. When you do that, you're spending time with Him. When that happens, even if our requests are selfish, Things Happen. Not miraculous things (usually), but things. We discover that prayer is more than just asking. It’s conversing. In truthful, frank prayer, we tell God what’s important to us. Eventually we get beyond the lottery tickets. We go beyond our backaches and even the backaches of those we love. Every now and then, we find that our prayer has transcended us and all our fears—and even our hopes. Sometimes, we lift our hearts and minds to God—and He Is There.
When that happens, for those rare moments, we find the answer to all our askings and seekings and knockings. When God shares Himself with us, everything else falls into place. The problems don’t go away and we won’t be left with Winning Numbers like the inside of a fortune cookie, but before we were blind and now we see. JoAnne and Arthur and Tim and even Kevin are in God’s Heart—where they’ve always been. You are there; so am I.
Ask—but be prepared to stick around for the answer. It’ll knock your socks off.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
AN EXPERIENCED LIAR
Wednesday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent
Concupiscence is a long word with a big promise. Whenever any human being sins—every time any one of us sins anywhere on the globe, sins past, present and all sins yet to come—concupiscence was, is and will be there, smiling. “The water’s great. Come on in. You’ll love it.”
Yesterday I quoted St James the Apostle. It’s one of those unpleasant Bible quotes nobody likes to hear: “When concupiscence has conceived, it gives birth to sin: and sin, when it is finished, delivers death.” Grim and somber, it reads like a threat: enjoy yourself and you’ll be sorry. If you have fun here on earth, just remember, young man, you’ll spend an eternity in hell. You can almost imagine St James rubbing his hands together and saying, “That’ll wipe the grins off their faces.”
St James, like St John the Baptist, isn’t one of the jolly figures of the Bible. His quote above wasn’t written to give us a chuckle, but to make us stop and think. There's a reason for that. When we sin, we’re not thinking straight.
Nobody commits any sin thinking “I want to do something that’ll make me sad and sorry—something I’ll regret for the next ten years.” If sin was straightforward, we’d all be saints. Sin starts with a lie—and concupiscence is its delivery system. Concupiscence promises us fun St James says just isn’t there.
When we sin, we do it because we think it’ll be good. St Augustine tells us that everything we do, holding up a bank or going on a date, we do because we believe it will benefit us somehow. Even if we’ve robbed a bank before and it proved to be an unfortunate experience, this time it’ll be different. That’s what concupiscence does—it promises the delight—it entices us by suggesting things we wouldn’t believe otherwise if our heads were on straight. What it’s really saying is this: “I know you got second degree burns the last couple of times you pressed you palm onto the burner of the stove, but don’t think about that. If you do it this time, it’ll be different. You’ll love it.”
If we got an electric jolt every time we sinned, as if we had on one of those dog collars, we’d quick sinning pretty quickly. So the tempter tempts us with pleasure. "It feels good. You look great. Nobody’s ever been quite like you. This will make you happy. Finally, you get what you deserve." He puts out the same old lines, using the same old bait year in and out, and reels us in by the bushel-basket.
Concupiscence is the delight we have in the pleasure sin promises it will give us. The pathetic part of it all is that concupiscence doesn’t deliver. It makes promises it can’t keep. Underneath his less-than-honest agenda to get us to sin, the Really Evil One has a hidden plan. What he wants to do is train us to sin without promising us anything. It’s called habitual sin. We sin not because there’s a promised payoff but because we’re used to it. We can become like the tempter’s trained seals, sinning because we’ve become efficient at it.
Hard to believe anybody could be so dumb? We’re habitual sinners, every one of us.
Sin is a choice. We don’t sin accidentally, ever. But that doesn’t mean it’s always a struggle. Not every temptation you have is dramatic. Most are so casual we’re not even aware we’re being tempted. Tell a lie? Sometimes a lie’s a lot easier than the truth. Keep the mistake the All-Powerful Phone Company made to your benefit on your bill? How many times have they cheated me? Tell a co-worker about the malicious gossip going on about her (and pretend not to enjoy her pain at hearing it?)? She needs to know. The besetting sins we talked about yesterday become habitual sins if we don’t put up a fight. The devil has us walking to hell via the direct route and we haven’t the faintest idea we’re even going anywhere.
Our warfare is spiritual and the battleground is inside us. How do we fight sin, besetting, real and habitual? Our Lenten weapons—prayer, fasting and almsgiving—are deadly ones against sin. Prayer—lifting our hearts and minds to God; fasting—laying aside legitimate pleasures with a specific intention we offer to God to fight a specific sin; almsgiving—turning our resources, whatever they are, to benefit others so we don’t become spiritually self-absorbed. These are powerful weapons. But in the fight against sin there are two others we must pick up and learn to use.
First is the Sacraments, especially the Grace which comes through Holy Communion, “He in us, and we in Him.” The Sacrament of Confession is one of the most personal and powerful weapons against the devil. You lay yourself open to God without reservation and receive His forgiveness. The Lying Serpent hates it when we are honest about our sins.
Second is self-examination. Take five minutes at the end of the day and ask yourself “how have I failed to live up to who I want to be today?” Mull it over, be honest, blunt and don’t accept your excuses. “She deserved what I said” or “He’s such a creep, anybody would have done the same thing” don’t cut it with God. “Love your neighbor as yourself” isn’t a bad guide and it comes Highly Recommended.
The devil has spent your lifetime learning how to play you. Spend what you have left of this Lent making his job a bit more difficult. Go ahead, you’ll enjoy it. St James, the old curmudgeon, will be cheering you on.
Concupiscence is a long word with a big promise. Whenever any human being sins—every time any one of us sins anywhere on the globe, sins past, present and all sins yet to come—concupiscence was, is and will be there, smiling. “The water’s great. Come on in. You’ll love it.”
Yesterday I quoted St James the Apostle. It’s one of those unpleasant Bible quotes nobody likes to hear: “When concupiscence has conceived, it gives birth to sin: and sin, when it is finished, delivers death.” Grim and somber, it reads like a threat: enjoy yourself and you’ll be sorry. If you have fun here on earth, just remember, young man, you’ll spend an eternity in hell. You can almost imagine St James rubbing his hands together and saying, “That’ll wipe the grins off their faces.”
St James, like St John the Baptist, isn’t one of the jolly figures of the Bible. His quote above wasn’t written to give us a chuckle, but to make us stop and think. There's a reason for that. When we sin, we’re not thinking straight.
Nobody commits any sin thinking “I want to do something that’ll make me sad and sorry—something I’ll regret for the next ten years.” If sin was straightforward, we’d all be saints. Sin starts with a lie—and concupiscence is its delivery system. Concupiscence promises us fun St James says just isn’t there.
When we sin, we do it because we think it’ll be good. St Augustine tells us that everything we do, holding up a bank or going on a date, we do because we believe it will benefit us somehow. Even if we’ve robbed a bank before and it proved to be an unfortunate experience, this time it’ll be different. That’s what concupiscence does—it promises the delight—it entices us by suggesting things we wouldn’t believe otherwise if our heads were on straight. What it’s really saying is this: “I know you got second degree burns the last couple of times you pressed you palm onto the burner of the stove, but don’t think about that. If you do it this time, it’ll be different. You’ll love it.”
If we got an electric jolt every time we sinned, as if we had on one of those dog collars, we’d quick sinning pretty quickly. So the tempter tempts us with pleasure. "It feels good. You look great. Nobody’s ever been quite like you. This will make you happy. Finally, you get what you deserve." He puts out the same old lines, using the same old bait year in and out, and reels us in by the bushel-basket.
Concupiscence is the delight we have in the pleasure sin promises it will give us. The pathetic part of it all is that concupiscence doesn’t deliver. It makes promises it can’t keep. Underneath his less-than-honest agenda to get us to sin, the Really Evil One has a hidden plan. What he wants to do is train us to sin without promising us anything. It’s called habitual sin. We sin not because there’s a promised payoff but because we’re used to it. We can become like the tempter’s trained seals, sinning because we’ve become efficient at it.
Hard to believe anybody could be so dumb? We’re habitual sinners, every one of us.
Sin is a choice. We don’t sin accidentally, ever. But that doesn’t mean it’s always a struggle. Not every temptation you have is dramatic. Most are so casual we’re not even aware we’re being tempted. Tell a lie? Sometimes a lie’s a lot easier than the truth. Keep the mistake the All-Powerful Phone Company made to your benefit on your bill? How many times have they cheated me? Tell a co-worker about the malicious gossip going on about her (and pretend not to enjoy her pain at hearing it?)? She needs to know. The besetting sins we talked about yesterday become habitual sins if we don’t put up a fight. The devil has us walking to hell via the direct route and we haven’t the faintest idea we’re even going anywhere.
Our warfare is spiritual and the battleground is inside us. How do we fight sin, besetting, real and habitual? Our Lenten weapons—prayer, fasting and almsgiving—are deadly ones against sin. Prayer—lifting our hearts and minds to God; fasting—laying aside legitimate pleasures with a specific intention we offer to God to fight a specific sin; almsgiving—turning our resources, whatever they are, to benefit others so we don’t become spiritually self-absorbed. These are powerful weapons. But in the fight against sin there are two others we must pick up and learn to use.
First is the Sacraments, especially the Grace which comes through Holy Communion, “He in us, and we in Him.” The Sacrament of Confession is one of the most personal and powerful weapons against the devil. You lay yourself open to God without reservation and receive His forgiveness. The Lying Serpent hates it when we are honest about our sins.
Second is self-examination. Take five minutes at the end of the day and ask yourself “how have I failed to live up to who I want to be today?” Mull it over, be honest, blunt and don’t accept your excuses. “She deserved what I said” or “He’s such a creep, anybody would have done the same thing” don’t cut it with God. “Love your neighbor as yourself” isn’t a bad guide and it comes Highly Recommended.
The devil has spent your lifetime learning how to play you. Spend what you have left of this Lent making his job a bit more difficult. Go ahead, you’ll enjoy it. St James, the old curmudgeon, will be cheering you on.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
WITH A GREAT DELIGHT
Tuesday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent
What we believe matters. The things we do, great and small, we do because we believe things. If I believe it’s possible for an individual to make a difference in our political system, I’ll vote. If I think the whole thing is rigged and my voice will never be heard, I’ll stay home on polling day. If I believe I’m the World’s Handsomest Man, I’ll save my money for a bus ticket to Hollywood and present myself at the main gate at Paramount Studios (where I can stand in line behind all the other men—they are legion—who believe the same thing). If I believe in God, I’ll act differently than if I don’t believe in Him. Of course, what I believe about the God I believe in matters, too.
So the Church has the Creeds; they tell us what Christians believe—and have believed—from the beginning. The Creeds are old—but that’s not why we believe ‘em—there are some creeds which most Christians have never heard of, which we DON’T believe. The Books of the Bible are old, too, but that’s not why we believe them. There are many, many old books that survive to us from ancient times—more than 40 books which claim to be Gospels!—that the Church has rejected. The Church long ago rejected those old creeds and gospels because She believes what they teach is untrue (you can still find some of those old books circulating under some title like “The Lost Books of the Bible Revealed!” They’re just collections of old stuff from the Church’s garbage can). She discarded them because they said things about God or Christ that are simply not true. Many books, for example, of the old Gnostic cult—one of Christianity’s oldest errors—teach that all created things, everything that has a material existence—is evil, created not by God but by His evil twin—to trick us. He (the God of the Bible) wants us to worship Him instead of the true Gnostic God; but if we memorize the right set of words and phrases, we can fool Him and go to the real Gnostic heaven when we die by knowing the Secret Words. If you are foolish enough to believe this mumjo-jumbo and spend a lot of your time memorizing secret words you will be in for a bit of an Eternal Shock when the times comes.
The Church enshrines her teaching in the Creeds and Scriptures because they are “for us men and for our salvation.” I want to discuss with you a word which isn’t secret—it is kind of fun—and it tells us something important about ourselves, God and Lent.
The word is concupiscence. Like a lot of words from Latin and Greek, it comes from mashing two words together. In this case, the word con—which means “with” (like “chili con carne”) and cupere—which means “desire” or “delight.” Concupiscence means “with a great delight”; it’s the Latin translation—used in the King James Bible—of the Greek word epithumia, which means “with a great and passionate longing.” St Paul, St John and St James repeatedly use this word to describe us—and how much we delight in sin.
Concupiscence isn’t the same as sin. Concupiscence is why we like—love—and delight in sin. It’s what makes sin so attractive. Each of us is concupiscent, each of us loves to sin, ever since Eve bit the apple and Adam said okay. You are and so am I. Here’s a way you can touch gently on your own concupiscence: picture somebody you really dislike. Once you have that person in mind, imagine that you’ve just learned the IRS is going to audit their taxes for the last seven years. That feeling you have now—that delight in what’s going to happen to them—that’s concupiscence.
It’s not sinful, but it takes us to the threshold of sin. Whenever you and I are tempted, we’re presented with a choice. The choice is hand-picked just for you. Like many men, I have no interest in how I look—it rarely occurs to me (that’s not to say I’m not vain, I am, but my vanity takes an intellectual form). A mirror holds little interest or temptation for me—but for some people, a mirror is a window of sensual delight; they fall into it entranced. We each have our favorite sins (teachers of the spiritual life call these our “besetting sins”). If you think you don’t have any, think again. If you actually intend to grow in your spiritual life with Christ, you need to know what they are, because they are the things which not only hinder your growth, they poison your life.
The tempter (who exists, regardless how smart or sophisticated we believe ourselves to be, and how “old-fashioned” we may think belief in the devil is) knows you better than you know yourself. He knows how to tempt you. He knows the bad stuff you love. So, when you’re primed, he presents something to you—something he knows you’ll be interested in. “Wilcox—hey—look over there. Is that—YES, IT IS—a beautifully bound set of Cicero’s Orations in Latin. Two hundred bucks. I know you’d set aside that two hundred fifty for charity—but hey—charity begins at home, huh? And look, even with taxes, you could buy those books—which you’ll own forever—and still have something to donate. Who’s ever to know?—and besides, buddy, you deserve it.” And so the door to hell is opened.
I haven’t yet sinned, but I’m sure wanting to. I ponder the books and the money. I’m in the middle of temptation. If I pull out my cash (which I’d already decided wasn’t my cash, but now my mind’s changed) and count it out, I’ve sinned. If I pull out my wallet, look at the money and remember I’ve already given it away and it’s no longer mine; if I realize I’m stealing, and put it back, I haven’t sinned. The sooner I get rid of that money and give it to charity, the better.
I delighted in the books, though, with a great delight. The problem isn’t the books, it’s me; the problem isn’t the delight in the books, either (how could such a thing be a sin?). The problem is that I put my desire and delight above what’s right. We do it all the time. Most of us don’t sin by holding up grandmothers on street corners or selling drugs to school kids, we sin by satisfying our desires at the expense of what is right and good.
St James the Apostle wrote: “When concupiscence has conceived, it gives birth to sin: and sin, when it is finished, delivers death.” This is at the heart of our Lenten combat. We’re fighting our concupiscence, our love and delight in sin. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how we do that.
For today, keep putting one foot after the other. The desert doesn’t go on forever-and when it's passed, you're going to find every step worthwhile.
What we believe matters. The things we do, great and small, we do because we believe things. If I believe it’s possible for an individual to make a difference in our political system, I’ll vote. If I think the whole thing is rigged and my voice will never be heard, I’ll stay home on polling day. If I believe I’m the World’s Handsomest Man, I’ll save my money for a bus ticket to Hollywood and present myself at the main gate at Paramount Studios (where I can stand in line behind all the other men—they are legion—who believe the same thing). If I believe in God, I’ll act differently than if I don’t believe in Him. Of course, what I believe about the God I believe in matters, too.
So the Church has the Creeds; they tell us what Christians believe—and have believed—from the beginning. The Creeds are old—but that’s not why we believe ‘em—there are some creeds which most Christians have never heard of, which we DON’T believe. The Books of the Bible are old, too, but that’s not why we believe them. There are many, many old books that survive to us from ancient times—more than 40 books which claim to be Gospels!—that the Church has rejected. The Church long ago rejected those old creeds and gospels because She believes what they teach is untrue (you can still find some of those old books circulating under some title like “The Lost Books of the Bible Revealed!” They’re just collections of old stuff from the Church’s garbage can). She discarded them because they said things about God or Christ that are simply not true. Many books, for example, of the old Gnostic cult—one of Christianity’s oldest errors—teach that all created things, everything that has a material existence—is evil, created not by God but by His evil twin—to trick us. He (the God of the Bible) wants us to worship Him instead of the true Gnostic God; but if we memorize the right set of words and phrases, we can fool Him and go to the real Gnostic heaven when we die by knowing the Secret Words. If you are foolish enough to believe this mumjo-jumbo and spend a lot of your time memorizing secret words you will be in for a bit of an Eternal Shock when the times comes.
The Church enshrines her teaching in the Creeds and Scriptures because they are “for us men and for our salvation.” I want to discuss with you a word which isn’t secret—it is kind of fun—and it tells us something important about ourselves, God and Lent.
The word is concupiscence. Like a lot of words from Latin and Greek, it comes from mashing two words together. In this case, the word con—which means “with” (like “chili con carne”) and cupere—which means “desire” or “delight.” Concupiscence means “with a great delight”; it’s the Latin translation—used in the King James Bible—of the Greek word epithumia, which means “with a great and passionate longing.” St Paul, St John and St James repeatedly use this word to describe us—and how much we delight in sin.
Concupiscence isn’t the same as sin. Concupiscence is why we like—love—and delight in sin. It’s what makes sin so attractive. Each of us is concupiscent, each of us loves to sin, ever since Eve bit the apple and Adam said okay. You are and so am I. Here’s a way you can touch gently on your own concupiscence: picture somebody you really dislike. Once you have that person in mind, imagine that you’ve just learned the IRS is going to audit their taxes for the last seven years. That feeling you have now—that delight in what’s going to happen to them—that’s concupiscence.
It’s not sinful, but it takes us to the threshold of sin. Whenever you and I are tempted, we’re presented with a choice. The choice is hand-picked just for you. Like many men, I have no interest in how I look—it rarely occurs to me (that’s not to say I’m not vain, I am, but my vanity takes an intellectual form). A mirror holds little interest or temptation for me—but for some people, a mirror is a window of sensual delight; they fall into it entranced. We each have our favorite sins (teachers of the spiritual life call these our “besetting sins”). If you think you don’t have any, think again. If you actually intend to grow in your spiritual life with Christ, you need to know what they are, because they are the things which not only hinder your growth, they poison your life.
The tempter (who exists, regardless how smart or sophisticated we believe ourselves to be, and how “old-fashioned” we may think belief in the devil is) knows you better than you know yourself. He knows how to tempt you. He knows the bad stuff you love. So, when you’re primed, he presents something to you—something he knows you’ll be interested in. “Wilcox—hey—look over there. Is that—YES, IT IS—a beautifully bound set of Cicero’s Orations in Latin. Two hundred bucks. I know you’d set aside that two hundred fifty for charity—but hey—charity begins at home, huh? And look, even with taxes, you could buy those books—which you’ll own forever—and still have something to donate. Who’s ever to know?—and besides, buddy, you deserve it.” And so the door to hell is opened.
I haven’t yet sinned, but I’m sure wanting to. I ponder the books and the money. I’m in the middle of temptation. If I pull out my cash (which I’d already decided wasn’t my cash, but now my mind’s changed) and count it out, I’ve sinned. If I pull out my wallet, look at the money and remember I’ve already given it away and it’s no longer mine; if I realize I’m stealing, and put it back, I haven’t sinned. The sooner I get rid of that money and give it to charity, the better.
I delighted in the books, though, with a great delight. The problem isn’t the books, it’s me; the problem isn’t the delight in the books, either (how could such a thing be a sin?). The problem is that I put my desire and delight above what’s right. We do it all the time. Most of us don’t sin by holding up grandmothers on street corners or selling drugs to school kids, we sin by satisfying our desires at the expense of what is right and good.
St James the Apostle wrote: “When concupiscence has conceived, it gives birth to sin: and sin, when it is finished, delivers death.” This is at the heart of our Lenten combat. We’re fighting our concupiscence, our love and delight in sin. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how we do that.
For today, keep putting one foot after the other. The desert doesn’t go on forever-and when it's passed, you're going to find every step worthwhile.
Monday, March 15, 2010
HOW MUCH LONGER?
The Monday after the Fourth Sunday of Lent
We’re half-way through Lent. By this time, if you’re still plugging along with your Lenten disciplines, you’ve learned a thing or two about yourself you didn’t know when you started. You may be surprised at your resiliency—you’ve handled your Lenten temptations better than you expected. That may be because you didn’t expect much—your Lenten rule (say, to give up skeet shooting when you’ve never shot a skeet) wasn’t really a challenge and you haven’t been tempted to break it at all. You may have discovered that not only can you live without television for a few weeks, but you’re enjoying not having it blaring in the background. You may even have found when you pray about real temptations, God actually will give “grace to help in time of need.”
Even if you’ve pretty much given up on Lent, you’ve learned something, too. Without a firm intention we won’t obtain a meaningful result. If we can’t see any benefit from Lent, why bother? If the whole focus becomes giving up ice cream, how does that help your spiritual life? It is possible to keep a Lenten rule and profit nothing from it. What do we want from Lent?
St John tells us in the Gospel appointed for today that the people crowding around Jesus were excited by His miracles, amazed at His healings and stirred by His words. They wanted Him to do something spectacular, like miraculously kick the Romans out of Palestine or evict the Jewish hierarchy from the Temple. “But Jesus did not commit Himself to them,” St John writes, “because He knew all men…and what was in man.” The Psalmist says the Lord “knows whereof we are made, He remembereth that we are but dust.”
Many times, Lent doesn’t fulfill our expectations. We start out with a bang and end up with a whimper. It doesn’t turn out as we’d hoped: our Lenten zeal becomes as stale as a piece of last year’s birthday cake in the back of the refrigerator. That’s okay. “He remembereth that we are but dust.” You should remember it, too. Jesus knows us, He knows how we are, how easily we promise and how quickly we forget. Lent is not about perfection—that’s for later—but growth. Growing our lives with Christ; that’s why we set out after Jesus and are following Him through the forty-day desert.
We’re half-way home. If your zeal has flagged, if Lent has been reduced to “ho-hum, how many more days left,” don’t be surprised. “We—you and I—are but dust.” The Lord didn’t dance His way through the desert. He did what you do when you travel through a desert—He sweated, got tired, hungry, thirty, lonely and His feet hurt. In a desert you either keep going or drop into the dust, shrivel up and blow away. Jesus knows all men, women, boys, girls, babies—He knows all of us and what’s in us; He knows we are but dust—that we get tired and discouraged and sometimes give up.
Knowing that, He calls us on. “If any man will come after Me,” He says, “let him deny himself, and pick up his cross every day, and follow me.” He concludes with another of those hard-to-accept statements: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” Lent is not our Victory Over Sweets. It’s our daily trudging after Jesus in the desert—because that’s where He is.
He won’t be coming to the Civic Center or stopping by the Mall. Jesus meets us in the tangle of our daily lives—where we often don’t expect Him, and sometimes don’t want Him. That’s one of the things we discover about Lent. There are parts of our lives we want to keep to ourselves—sins we cling to, animosities we cherish. Lent intrudes, challenging our beloved—or at least unacknowledged—sins. “You should be able to keep something to yourself,” the Tempter whispers consolingly. Just the words we want to hear.
If your Lent has lost its luster, polish it up over the next few days. Renew your struggle, pick up your cross. It’s three weeks till we sing the Easter Alleluia, and even if you only start in earnest today, there’s still plenty of time for a good fight in the desert. Yes, you are but dust—but you’re dust on a mission, and you know where you’re going.
We’re half-way through Lent. By this time, if you’re still plugging along with your Lenten disciplines, you’ve learned a thing or two about yourself you didn’t know when you started. You may be surprised at your resiliency—you’ve handled your Lenten temptations better than you expected. That may be because you didn’t expect much—your Lenten rule (say, to give up skeet shooting when you’ve never shot a skeet) wasn’t really a challenge and you haven’t been tempted to break it at all. You may have discovered that not only can you live without television for a few weeks, but you’re enjoying not having it blaring in the background. You may even have found when you pray about real temptations, God actually will give “grace to help in time of need.”
Even if you’ve pretty much given up on Lent, you’ve learned something, too. Without a firm intention we won’t obtain a meaningful result. If we can’t see any benefit from Lent, why bother? If the whole focus becomes giving up ice cream, how does that help your spiritual life? It is possible to keep a Lenten rule and profit nothing from it. What do we want from Lent?
St John tells us in the Gospel appointed for today that the people crowding around Jesus were excited by His miracles, amazed at His healings and stirred by His words. They wanted Him to do something spectacular, like miraculously kick the Romans out of Palestine or evict the Jewish hierarchy from the Temple. “But Jesus did not commit Himself to them,” St John writes, “because He knew all men…and what was in man.” The Psalmist says the Lord “knows whereof we are made, He remembereth that we are but dust.”
Many times, Lent doesn’t fulfill our expectations. We start out with a bang and end up with a whimper. It doesn’t turn out as we’d hoped: our Lenten zeal becomes as stale as a piece of last year’s birthday cake in the back of the refrigerator. That’s okay. “He remembereth that we are but dust.” You should remember it, too. Jesus knows us, He knows how we are, how easily we promise and how quickly we forget. Lent is not about perfection—that’s for later—but growth. Growing our lives with Christ; that’s why we set out after Jesus and are following Him through the forty-day desert.
We’re half-way home. If your zeal has flagged, if Lent has been reduced to “ho-hum, how many more days left,” don’t be surprised. “We—you and I—are but dust.” The Lord didn’t dance His way through the desert. He did what you do when you travel through a desert—He sweated, got tired, hungry, thirty, lonely and His feet hurt. In a desert you either keep going or drop into the dust, shrivel up and blow away. Jesus knows all men, women, boys, girls, babies—He knows all of us and what’s in us; He knows we are but dust—that we get tired and discouraged and sometimes give up.
Knowing that, He calls us on. “If any man will come after Me,” He says, “let him deny himself, and pick up his cross every day, and follow me.” He concludes with another of those hard-to-accept statements: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” Lent is not our Victory Over Sweets. It’s our daily trudging after Jesus in the desert—because that’s where He is.
He won’t be coming to the Civic Center or stopping by the Mall. Jesus meets us in the tangle of our daily lives—where we often don’t expect Him, and sometimes don’t want Him. That’s one of the things we discover about Lent. There are parts of our lives we want to keep to ourselves—sins we cling to, animosities we cherish. Lent intrudes, challenging our beloved—or at least unacknowledged—sins. “You should be able to keep something to yourself,” the Tempter whispers consolingly. Just the words we want to hear.
If your Lent has lost its luster, polish it up over the next few days. Renew your struggle, pick up your cross. It’s three weeks till we sing the Easter Alleluia, and even if you only start in earnest today, there’s still plenty of time for a good fight in the desert. Yes, you are but dust—but you’re dust on a mission, and you know where you’re going.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
LEFTOVER FRAGMENTS
The Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetere)
We’re at Lent’s mid-point. This Sunday goes under several names: Laetere Sunday, from the opening word of the Latin Introit for today’s Mass (laetere means “rejoice”); “Refreshment Sunday,” because of the Eucharistic emphasis of the day (from the appointed Gospel), and, in England, Mothering Sunday. That one I’ll leave to an Anglophile to explain. The purple color of the vestments today is changed to rose (hence this day is also called "Rose Sunday"—as is the Third Sunday in Advent). All these different things, though, point in the same direction. We are taking a “breather” today. We don’t set aside our Lenten disciplines, but we relax a bit today. Tomorrow, we start the last half of our race, for which the past days have prepared us. Today, listen to a Bach cantata while enjoying a bourbon—or Chet Atkins while having a beer. Go for a drive along PCH for the pleasure of having the wind blow in your face or write a good, long letter to an old friend. Put aside an hour today to enjoy.
One of my favorite verses in the Psalter is “the Lord hath pleasure in His people.” Even though we’re sinners, even though we fail, time and again, to live lives of grace, He delights in us. He loves us.
In the Gospel read at Mass today, Jesus is confronted with a problem. Five thousand people are following Him around, listening to Him teach, waiting for Him to heal the sick and wanting Him to solve their problems. The apostles approached Jesus and, pointing to the immense crowd, said “They’re hungry. All of them. And there’s nothing we can do about it. This could turn ugly.” Andrew, Peter’s brother, said to Him, “There’s a lad here, with five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” Jesus took those five loaves and two fish and fed the crowd with them, giving everybody “as much as they would.” There were even leftovers. This is where it gets interesting.
St John writes, “He said to his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.’ Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above…”
Up to this point, St John tells us about the miraculous feeding—but in these last lines, he tells us there was meaning in what Jesus did. They filled twelve baskets after everyone had eaten everything they could. Twelve baskets for the twelve apostles, twelve apostles for the twelve tribes of Israel, the complete number of God’s people. Jesus is concerned that “nothing be lost,” but the nothing He’s concerned about isn’t pieces of bread—even Miracle Bread. It’s God’s people He doesn’t want lost. It’s you and me. We're the fragments of His Body.
In the early Church, painted on the ceilings of the catacombs and on the walls of their churches, there is a frequently recurring picture—a basket of loaves surmounted by two fish. Our earlier ancestors in the Faith understood today’s Gospel story was a foreshadowing of the Eucharist—God’s on-going, still-miraculous feeding of His people.
In the Eucharist, God feeds us on Himself. It isn’t merely a help to our souls—for Christians it is our One Necessary Food. We’ll starve without it. Christ intends this Food to be the primary way in which He dwells in us and we in Him. That’s why the Church does this over and over and over and over and over again. Every Sunday, every holy day without exception. This is what He has commanded us to do.
What is it we’re doing?
We are feeding on the Body and Blood of Christ, “to our great and endless comfort,” as the Prayer Book says. But something much more is going on with this Bread no longer bread and this Wine now changed. The Eucharist is not just Jesus present with us for Holy Communion, as essential as that benefit is. The Mass is more than “praying Jesus down.” It is lifting Him up—and ourselves with Him.
In the Mass, we offer to God our gifts—our money, our Sunday prayers and weekday concerns, and with those, the Prayer Book says, “the Priest shall then offer, and place upon the Holy Table, the Bread and the Wine.” We offer these things-money, prayers, intentions, bread and wine-as tokens of ourselves. Then we pray over them. Standing in Christ's place, the priest says the Prayer of Consecration, speaking Jesus’ words, declaring this bread and wine to be His Body and Blood. That done, we continue to pray, offering “this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” (the Greek word for “thanksgiving” is eucharist). We offer to God that which He has just given to us. We place before Him on the Altar Christ’s Body and Blood as “our bounden duty and service.” This Gift, Christ come among us, He then returns to us in Holy Communion.
Nowadays, it's easy for Christians to lose sight of what the Mass is. For almost fifty years, Christians of every stripe have been taught that the Eucharist, Holy Communion, is a sacred meal for us to eat and remember. Ancient notions of Sacrifice and Presence have been laid aside so we can be comfortable and lounge in church (I remember going into the old Roman Catholic cathedral in Las Vegas in the late 80’s and seeing an elderly priest celebrate Mass in one of the small side chapels—his congregation was only one little old lady—while three construction workers on their lunch break sprawled across the back pew eating sandwiches and joking. For a moment I watched in disbelief and then confronted them. Their behavior, I told them, was unacceptable; even if they didn’t believe anything was going on at the Altar, they were not only insulting the people present but God Who was there, too, whether they knew it or not. They scuttled out of the church. After Mass, the priest thanked me but worried that I might have scared them away from church; I told him they should be scared—had they touched Moses’ Ark they’d have been killed!). The Altar is a place of Awe. We genuflect towards it, bow to it, kiss it when we approach it and touch it only with reverence, not because it’s expensive, but because of Who Comes to us on it. When Jesus is with us, it’s His throne. Fr Rogers used to tell me the church had a roof over it because it had an Altar under it.
Christ is with us, because He delights in His people. If we are indeed His people, the sheep of His pasture, we should delight in Him. In the Mass we do this as we can nowhere else.
“We, being many, are one Bread, and one Body: for we are all partakers of that one Bread,” St Paul says. We are the individual fragments of His one Body, and He wants none of us lost. When He draws us together for the Eucharist, He makes us one by feeding us on Himself. He gives Himself to us because He loves us, because He delights in us. “The Lord hath pleasure in His people.” He takes pleasure in you.
Enjoy Refreshment Sunday.
We’re at Lent’s mid-point. This Sunday goes under several names: Laetere Sunday, from the opening word of the Latin Introit for today’s Mass (laetere means “rejoice”); “Refreshment Sunday,” because of the Eucharistic emphasis of the day (from the appointed Gospel), and, in England, Mothering Sunday. That one I’ll leave to an Anglophile to explain. The purple color of the vestments today is changed to rose (hence this day is also called "Rose Sunday"—as is the Third Sunday in Advent). All these different things, though, point in the same direction. We are taking a “breather” today. We don’t set aside our Lenten disciplines, but we relax a bit today. Tomorrow, we start the last half of our race, for which the past days have prepared us. Today, listen to a Bach cantata while enjoying a bourbon—or Chet Atkins while having a beer. Go for a drive along PCH for the pleasure of having the wind blow in your face or write a good, long letter to an old friend. Put aside an hour today to enjoy.
One of my favorite verses in the Psalter is “the Lord hath pleasure in His people.” Even though we’re sinners, even though we fail, time and again, to live lives of grace, He delights in us. He loves us.
In the Gospel read at Mass today, Jesus is confronted with a problem. Five thousand people are following Him around, listening to Him teach, waiting for Him to heal the sick and wanting Him to solve their problems. The apostles approached Jesus and, pointing to the immense crowd, said “They’re hungry. All of them. And there’s nothing we can do about it. This could turn ugly.” Andrew, Peter’s brother, said to Him, “There’s a lad here, with five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?” Jesus took those five loaves and two fish and fed the crowd with them, giving everybody “as much as they would.” There were even leftovers. This is where it gets interesting.
St John writes, “He said to his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.’ Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above…”
Up to this point, St John tells us about the miraculous feeding—but in these last lines, he tells us there was meaning in what Jesus did. They filled twelve baskets after everyone had eaten everything they could. Twelve baskets for the twelve apostles, twelve apostles for the twelve tribes of Israel, the complete number of God’s people. Jesus is concerned that “nothing be lost,” but the nothing He’s concerned about isn’t pieces of bread—even Miracle Bread. It’s God’s people He doesn’t want lost. It’s you and me. We're the fragments of His Body.
In the early Church, painted on the ceilings of the catacombs and on the walls of their churches, there is a frequently recurring picture—a basket of loaves surmounted by two fish. Our earlier ancestors in the Faith understood today’s Gospel story was a foreshadowing of the Eucharist—God’s on-going, still-miraculous feeding of His people.
In the Eucharist, God feeds us on Himself. It isn’t merely a help to our souls—for Christians it is our One Necessary Food. We’ll starve without it. Christ intends this Food to be the primary way in which He dwells in us and we in Him. That’s why the Church does this over and over and over and over and over again. Every Sunday, every holy day without exception. This is what He has commanded us to do.
What is it we’re doing?
We are feeding on the Body and Blood of Christ, “to our great and endless comfort,” as the Prayer Book says. But something much more is going on with this Bread no longer bread and this Wine now changed. The Eucharist is not just Jesus present with us for Holy Communion, as essential as that benefit is. The Mass is more than “praying Jesus down.” It is lifting Him up—and ourselves with Him.
In the Mass, we offer to God our gifts—our money, our Sunday prayers and weekday concerns, and with those, the Prayer Book says, “the Priest shall then offer, and place upon the Holy Table, the Bread and the Wine.” We offer these things-money, prayers, intentions, bread and wine-as tokens of ourselves. Then we pray over them. Standing in Christ's place, the priest says the Prayer of Consecration, speaking Jesus’ words, declaring this bread and wine to be His Body and Blood. That done, we continue to pray, offering “this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” (the Greek word for “thanksgiving” is eucharist). We offer to God that which He has just given to us. We place before Him on the Altar Christ’s Body and Blood as “our bounden duty and service.” This Gift, Christ come among us, He then returns to us in Holy Communion.
Nowadays, it's easy for Christians to lose sight of what the Mass is. For almost fifty years, Christians of every stripe have been taught that the Eucharist, Holy Communion, is a sacred meal for us to eat and remember. Ancient notions of Sacrifice and Presence have been laid aside so we can be comfortable and lounge in church (I remember going into the old Roman Catholic cathedral in Las Vegas in the late 80’s and seeing an elderly priest celebrate Mass in one of the small side chapels—his congregation was only one little old lady—while three construction workers on their lunch break sprawled across the back pew eating sandwiches and joking. For a moment I watched in disbelief and then confronted them. Their behavior, I told them, was unacceptable; even if they didn’t believe anything was going on at the Altar, they were not only insulting the people present but God Who was there, too, whether they knew it or not. They scuttled out of the church. After Mass, the priest thanked me but worried that I might have scared them away from church; I told him they should be scared—had they touched Moses’ Ark they’d have been killed!). The Altar is a place of Awe. We genuflect towards it, bow to it, kiss it when we approach it and touch it only with reverence, not because it’s expensive, but because of Who Comes to us on it. When Jesus is with us, it’s His throne. Fr Rogers used to tell me the church had a roof over it because it had an Altar under it.
Christ is with us, because He delights in His people. If we are indeed His people, the sheep of His pasture, we should delight in Him. In the Mass we do this as we can nowhere else.
“We, being many, are one Bread, and one Body: for we are all partakers of that one Bread,” St Paul says. We are the individual fragments of His one Body, and He wants none of us lost. When He draws us together for the Eucharist, He makes us one by feeding us on Himself. He gives Himself to us because He loves us, because He delights in us. “The Lord hath pleasure in His people.” He takes pleasure in you.
Enjoy Refreshment Sunday.
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