Tag: Isaiah

Master of Destiny

Tuesday of Holy Week: Isaiah 49:1-6, John 13:21-33, 36-38.

Today, we hear part of John’s account of the Last Supper when Jesus offers himself to and through Judas, always giving himself even in his own betrayal. As we contemplate the Word of God recorded by St. John, let us be drawn into the mystery of the Spirit that is “agitated” and the mind that understands all prophecy and all revelation.

First, some short thoughts about the first reading from Isaiah. This is a lovely prophecy of Jesus Christ: “The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me.” Indeed, Christ was “called” into being upon the first word God ever uttered, as he is the very Word of God, and his name was shared with Mary and Joseph before his birth. His mouth was like a “sharp sword” in the truth and perfection of the Law that flowed from it. And for 30 years he was hidden “in the shadow” of God’s hand before his ministry started.

Further, Isaiah prophesies, “Though I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength, Yet my reward is with the LORD, my recompense is with my God.” As shown by Jesus’s constant arguments with the chief priests, Pharisees, and other Jews, there were plenty of times when his teachings fell on deaf ears, but as we approach his Passion, the divine relationship becomes more and more evident. It must, since his time with his disciples is coming to an end and his time of reunification with the Father in Heaven approaches.

Finally, in today’s first reading Isaiah gives us the genesis of the Church, the mystical Body of Christ as a deliberate act by God through Christ: “I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD, and my God is now my strength! It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” This is a great reminder in Holy Week that Christ’s mission was not only to teach and convert but to unify humanity in God by establishing the Church so that his “salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” The purpose of his great sacrifice of self was always simultaneously for God and for us.

Mandylion, contemporary, Emilia Jankowska-Ciełuczecka | image from ikonypisane.pl. A mandylion is the reproduction of the Image of Edessa, a holy relic of the Eastern Church. The original Image of Edessa was an imprint of Jesus’s face on a cloth used by St. Vernoica to wipe his face when he carried the Cross to Golgotha. As we contemplate the mandylion, consider this simple prayer from Pope St. John Paul II: “In Your luminous Face, we learn to love and to be loved, to find freedom and reconciliation, to promote peace, which radiates from you and leads to you.”

John’s gospel reading delves into the mechanics of how Christ is “given up” for us, and down to the last detail, we see the integrity of his message, of the unification of his will with God’s will. Prior to today’s verses, this chapter opens with, “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. … The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him.” Two pieces of Jesus’s foreknowledge are established: the time for his Passion, Death and Resurrection had arrived, and Judas was under Satan’s influence and ready to betray him.

His first action after this acknowledgment that the “clock had started” is to wash the feet of his apostles, taking the role of a servant. He performs this act with all of them and asks them to do the same in their ministries. Yet Jesus notes that not everyone is receptive to his example, quoting scripture with, “The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.” He speaks in a veiled way about Judas, but the apostles will understand the message clearly later that evening.

At this point, today’s reading picks up. We hear, “Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.’” The Greek phrase used for “deeply troubled” is ἐταράχθη τῷ πνεύματι (etarachthē tō pneumati), which means “agitated in spirit.” This is nearly identical to the phrase used to describe the state of his spirit when he encounters an emotional Mary just before raising Lazarus from the dead.

In my reflection See the Glory of God, I argue that this agitation of spirit is due to the gut-like passion of God rejecting the force of death in his midst. I feel that we are experiencing the same agitation of spirit and the same underlying cause here in today’s gospel. Just as “Amen, Amen, I say to you” is a common phrase used by Jesus throughout the New Testament, and one that we can take to mean “The truth is here, I am teaching it to you,” I feel that this phrase “agitated in spirit” signals a fundamental surge of the spirit in opposition to death’s enthralling grip on someone. Here, it is Judas, and Christ’s agitation is not tied to the fact that his own death is implicated, but that this apostle he loved, someone whose feet he just washed, had given himself over to death. This is a lament from Jesus, the Good Shepherd who goes to every length to rescue one of his sheep, over the loss of Judas’s soul.

The betrayal is even more symbolically devastating than we might think at first glance. The beloved one (John himself, the writer of the gospel) leans back on Jesus’s chest and asks who he’s talking about. Jesus replies, “It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it.” What morsel is he describing? Remember, this is the Last Supper, when Jesus institutes the sacrament of the Eucharist and provides his instructions to the Apostles: “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19). John, for his part, doesn’t describe the Last Supper with these same words of institution as the synoptic gospels, but simply tells us, “So he dipped the morsel and took it and handed it to Judas.”

Could this be a different, more simple morsel of bread? Perhaps, but is any morsel of bread “simple” at this sacred meal? They are all handed to the Apostles personally by the Lord on the eve of his Passion, with his sanctifying grace and the intention of instituting the sacrament of Eucharist. It is all the Body of Christ, meant to spark the mystical Body of Christ that is the Church.

And what happens with Judas when this holy morsel is given freely to him by Christ? John writes, “After Judas took the morsel, Satan entered him. So Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’” It seems that Satan recoils and constricts his victim as the presence of God is placed upon him. Jesus, in turn, realizes that Judas is firmly in the devil’s grip and releases him from his presence.

The Last Supper (1786), Benjamin West | Creative Commons, courtesy the Detroit Institute of Arts. I think West captures a great range of humanity in the faces of the apostles and Jesus. We see the incredulous, questioning, uncomprehending, and earnest faces of most of the apostles, the divine relationship of Christ and God the Father as he institutes the sacrament of the Eucharist, and Satan darkly inhabiting the face and form of Judas.

The apostles aren’t sure what’s going on, but Judas, Satan, and Christ are clear. John writes, “So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.” Judas takes Christ’s life, his sanctified body, and leaves with it. He doesn’t eat the morsel, he doesn’t allow it to nourish him and bring the love of God into his being. Instead, he takes the gift like a greedy child, hoarding it away. And John gives us a poetic little sentence that signals the true darkness of this moment: “And it was night.”

Newcomers to Christianity are more incredulous over this moment than many lifelong Catholics. Why would Jesus just let Judas go if he knew he would betray him? He has it in his power to stop the whole, horrible ordeal before it starts. Yes, he’s always had this in his power, and that’s really the point. Jesus is the master of his destiny at all times. He can feed thousands and raise the dead with nothing but a word of thanks to the Father. But Jesus isn’t just the master of his destiny — he is the Master of Destiny, that is, of all destiny for all of humanity. As such, His responsibility has always been more than his human life; his responsibility is to provide salvation for all humans — life everlasting.

The only way to do this is to take our sin and nail it to the Cross as a sacrifice to the Father, then to descend into death in a humanity he deliberately shares with us, but raise that human form with a divinity that is solely his. His choices are divine, they always exist within the love of the Trinity that is a pouring out of the self (kenosis) to a degree that we can’t quite comprehend. So he knows that he must let this sheep Judas escape with Satan in order to start the saving action he destines for us.

The rest of today’s reading shows us how Jesus tells his beloved apostles about his ordering of destiny. I am struck with how patient he has been throughout the gospels to this point, gradually revealing the mystery of his being and mission of salvation, trying to give them enough time to grow in understanding, and always pointing back to the glory of the Father. Now, things accelerate, as they must.

He begins by saying, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” I believe that we must again remember the importance of the Last Supper here and the seed of Christian ritual that Jesus gives the Church, one that will begin to make sense as his Body and Blood are literally poured out and then when he resurrects. But, at the same time, “glorification” refers to the necessary divine reaction to the fleeing Judas. How is Judas’s betrayal the thing that causes Jesus to say “Now is the Son of Man glorified”? I believe that this act enables Christ to display the overflowing, undeserved, and totally out-of-proportion love of God that the pours out in response to our infidelity. This is beyond turning the other cheek; this is the wellspring of love.

Christ in Glory (14th c. Crete, Greece), Hand-painted (written) icon by Plamen Kazakov | image from blessedmart.com.

Judas is the first in a cascade of sin and evil that will be rained down on Jesus during his suffering and death. His glorification and the glorification of God resides not in the smiting of the offenders but in the patient acceptance of this evil. This ability to love in the face of all the hate and injustice that can be mustered, well, it’s supernatural. It’s so paradoxical to how humans would respond that in it is the proof and the glory of God. The plea to forgive those “who know not what they do” as he hangs on the Cross! This looking out for his sheep in the darkest of night, this is the glorification.

So when Jesus says, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, though you will follow later,” we can take a double meaning. The apostles can’t follow him into never-ending love in the face of torture and hate because of the supernatural divine love it requires, and this has not yet been poured out upon humanity. Secondly, they can’t follow him into death and the underworld, where he must go so that his divine essence, which can never die, can raise up again. But, as he notes, their paths to sainthood will require them to follow in both senses.

Our reading today ends with Jesus explaining to Peter that although he claims he will lay down his life for Jesus, he will actually deny him three times that night, before the crow signals morning. When I was younger, I imagined that a certain degree of understandable bitterness may have marked Christ’s statement, but now I see things differently. I think the emotion that overwhelms Jesus on this fateful evening that will take them to the Garden of Gethsemane is sadness.

Not anger toward God or the people who will betray him. Not fear of the impending torturous death. Not anguish over losing his family and friends. He may have experienced some measure of these things but I think it’s been in vogue since Vatican II to emphasize these aspects his humanity, perhaps to the detriment of remembering that the Good News is about the divinity that comes to earth.

For me, I think that if we accept the reality of the love that defines the Trinity, which is the operative force brought into the world through the man Jesus Christ, agape must define for us who he ultimately is, especially in his final hours. That love is purely selfless, only wanting to draw others to unity with God. I think he grieves for humanity in the display of evil, the enthrallment of death, all of the cowardly and wicked acts. He knows that the cup the Father wants him to drink will entail humanity digging itself even further down into the depths of evil by torturing and crucifying the Word of God, an unspeakable sin. This is the Good Shepherd, this is the Son of Man who has devoted his life to preaching the New Covenant of love, this is the Anointed One who cares more deeply than we can imagine for all of us.

So, no, I don’t think he was bitter with Peter, but instead sad. I can even imagine a tear on the cheek of our Savior when he gently tells Peter with some irony that the Rock who pledges to lay down his life is destined to deny any connection with Jesus three times that night. A tear of sadness, not for himself, but for Peter.

April 7, 2020
Every Knee Should Bend

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord: (Procession with Palms: Mt 21:1-11), Isaiah 50: 4-7, Philippians 2:6-11, Matthew 26:14 – 17:66.

In the space of a blog post, how can we take in, much less reflect upon the events we celebrate on Palm Sunday? As disciples, we go from the highest of highs, seeing our Lord’s triumphant entrance to Jerusalem to the lowest of lows in betrayal, denial, and his death. Since I will reflect on the different aspects of the Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection throughout Holy Week, I will use the space here to focus primarily on the readings that happen before the gospel.

We celebrate his triumphant entrance of Jerusalem by once again waving blessed palm branches, reading the passage from the gospel of St. Matthew, and singing “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Let’s peer into these two important symbols: the palm branches and the cry, “Hosanna!”

Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem (1846), Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin | Creative Commons, image from iconsandimagery.blogspot.com.

Matthew tells us, “The very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and strewed them on the road.” The use of the palm branches — both in the original procession and in our continual processions each Palm Sunday — was first planted in the mouth of the psalmist by the Word of God. It comes from Psalm 118, A Song of Victory. Here are some important verses from that psalm:

With the Lord on my side I do not fear.
    What can mortals do to me?
The Lord is on my side to help me;
    I shall look in triumph on those who hate me. …
Open to me the gates of righteousness,
    that I may enter through them
    and give thanks to the Lord. …
The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the chief cornerstone. …
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
    We bless you from the house of the Lord.
The Lord is God,
    and he has given us light.
Bind the festal procession with branches,
    up to the horns of the altar.

This entire psalm is a prophecy of this moment of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem. The final verse quoted above prophesies that the branches will line the procession “up to the horns of the altar,” for this is the entrance of a king and priest, coming to make a sacrifice to God at the altar. And, indeed, Christ, our high priest and king, does this, but not in the way imagined by the Jews. His altar is Golgatha, his sacrifice is his own Body and Blood. The Song of Victory exists both in triumph and in the pain and sorrow of his sacrifice. The Christian power is always surprising, always focused on God, always revealing the truth of transcending this world through self-sacrifice.

Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem (late 1800s), Gustave Doré | Wikimedia Commons. I quite like the impressionistic strokes in this painting, not to mention the darkness of Jesus on the donkey compared to the lightness of the surrounding elements, the reverse of what’s normally depicted. For me, this speaks to the sin that Jesus will take on, a foreboding darkness present even at this time of triumph.

Next, Matthew tells us, “The crowds preceding him and those following kept crying out and saying: ‘Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is the he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest.’” What is this Hosanna? Many of us might equate this with a triumphant shout, much like how we use “Alleluia!” It translates to something quite different, however.

This phrase also comes from Psalm 118, verse 25: “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!” In Hebrew, this is “Anna, Yahweh, hoshi’a na! Anna, Yahweh, hasliah na!” So the Hebrew אנ העישוה (hoshi’a na), means “save us now, please!” It was originally a desperate plea to be saved.

It is immediately followed in the psalm with “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” so we hear this plea of concern changing into one of joy. When the apostles tell us that the crowd shouted “Hosanna in the highest” and “Hosanna to the Son of David,” we should hear the urgent, Messianic cry applied to a specific person: Jesus Christ. We can also see how the belief in a Messiah and the sight of this wonder-worker Son of God in the flesh would inflect the desperate plea for saving with a hopeful joyousness.

“Hosanna” in the Christian context is a cry that contains both that plea for help as well as the confidence and joy of the Resurrection that has burst upon the world.

Palm Sunday seems to resound with this double, somewhat contradictory knowledge. We need saving, we have been saved. Jesus rides in triumph, Jesus is condemned and killed in a shameful way. We wave palms in triumph, we kneel in sorrow. This important feast day, the bell tolling for the celebration of Holy Week, bursts at the seams with the mystery of the Christ Event. “The veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened.” The world, and our feast day, cannot contain the mystery, nor can it break it into intelligible bits as if we can just celebrate the triumph without the sorrow. Or the sorrow without the triumph. They come together. This is Christianity.

The Veil of the Temple (c.1700), Gilliam van der Gouwen, after Ottmar Elliger | Creative Commons, image from institutopoimenica.com. This engraving was used in the Mortier Bible, published in 1700.

St. Paul was graced with such incisive insight into the mystery of Christ and the Church. He tells us in today’s reading from the letter to the Philippians that Jesus did not attempt to “grasp” the equality he held with God, “Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” This is what we commemorate during Holy Week, the “emptying” of Himself from the praise he receives on his palm-lined entry into Jerusalem. This is a deliberate act — we have to see the praises being shouted in order to comprehend the true action of Christ.

What kind of glory is this, to empty yourself of the praise, hopes, and adoration of your people? That’s not what a king does! And what does Jesus fill himself with after becoming the slave? Sin that is not his. He descends into all of the sins in the Passion: betrayal by Judas, denial by Peter, hatred of the chief priests and Pharisees, the indifference of Pilate, torture of the soldiers, the mockery of the crowd. These, we are amply shown, are what he takes on instead of the triumph and earthly glory we associate with kings. He takes the fullness of sin of humanity and nails it, sacrifices it on the Cross with his own Body.

Here, in the depths of this never-before-imagined degradation and sacrifice, St. Paul shows us what he gains:

Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,

He gains God’s exaltation. This thing that humans only briefly experience at the oddest of times in our history, usually only when God chooses us and we somewhat stupidly and awkwardly do His will. Yet Jesus shows us how to do this intentionally, meaningfully and perfectly. It’s against all of our worldly instincts of raising ourselves above others. But Jesus gains the name “above every name,” that is, “Christ” and “Lord.”

With his impossible and incredible acts of humility and carrying the burden of sin for humanity, “every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” I love this image and this word choice. Every knee should bend! We, all of us who truly heed the reality of Christ’s entry into the world, simply cannot help but worship, adore, and pledge ourselves to Jesus Christ the Lord. Not just us! It’s beyond just us. It’s angels, demons, the dead, the “thrones and dominions.”

Against all of our notions of triumph, it turns out that this is glory. This is a king.

Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (c.1320), Pietro Lorenzetti | Flickr, Frans Vandewalle.

April 5, 2020
Living in the Promise

Monday in the Fourth Week of Lent: Isaiah 65:17-21, John 4:43-54.

Compared to some of the well-structured parables we’ve been hearing this Lent, today’s readings are a bit vague. Perhaps “transitional” is a better way to describe them. But maybe that’s the point. We are waiting for Easter in our liturgical season and perhaps waiting for many other things in our personal lives. Waiting is an unavoidable human pastime.

Early Spring (1892), Isaac Levitan | Creative Commons, courtesy Wikiart.org. This is how I’m feeling this morning, as I imagine many others are: hunkered down in our homes, the early spring around us silently thawing and a tinge of blue expressing the existential angst of waiting.

Yet the tenor of the readings is hopeful, even triumphant. Through Isaiah, the Word of God speaks about the “new heavens and new earth” he will build: “I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight; I will rejoice in Jerusalem and exult in my people. No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there, or the sound of crying.” Forget earth, this sounds like Heaven. But he is speaking of earth, too. What else could this be but the end times in which we are living? The time after Christ, when Heaven truly does come down to earth and establishes a firm foothold in the Church. Can we accept this new reality?

It requires a change in us. As he says, “The things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind.” For the nation of Israel, this refers to both their historical struggles as well as the former covenants established by God. The New Covenant supersedes them — it does not reduce them in the slightest but intensifies God’s connection with his people.

However, there is something scary in not remembering the past.

Is Isaiah talking about the abolishment of history? I do not think God suggests ahistoricity for humanity, but a new and transformed historicity. In other words, the Christ event and what it reveals about God’s fullness throughout history enables us to forget our tiny lens of human nation-building and power relationships. We now have insight into God’s saving plan for us and this presents a new way to look at everything. The earth is transformed.

This requires willing participation on our part. We have to live up to our end of the covenant and love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is constant work for us to live in the light, to accept God’s agape, allow it to transform us, and then give that agape to those around us. So, we are in constant transition, sometimes living in the New Covenant, but then falling into sin. The sacraments — Confession, Eucharist, Marriage, etc. — and the never-ending liturgy are our ways to re-unite with God, to re-commit to the covenant with Him. Lent itself is a season of waiting, transition, and re-commitment.

In today’s gospel, we find Christ in transition, going from Samaria to Galilee. And a royal official travels from Capernaum to Galilee to ask Jesus to return to his home with him to heal his son. Rather than travel with the man, Jesus tells him to go home where he will find that his son is healed. We are told that the man “believed” and left. Yet this is a two-day journey, and we can imagine that the man had a twinge of doubt as well as hope in his heart.

On the way home the next day, the man encounters his slaves who share the good news that his son is recovering (starting exactly at the time he met with Jesus). With this, “he and his whole household came to believe.”

In other scenes from the gospels, we see Jesus teaching specific lessons with each healing. For example, yesterday’s parable of curing the blind man by making clay from his own saliva was a sign that he, the Christ, is the method for curing our spiritual blindness. So what do we find when we dig into this abbreviated miracle? All Jesus says is, “You may go; your son will live.”

The Road to Emmaus (Der Gang nach Emmaus), 1891, Fritz von Uhde | Wikimedia Commons.

I believe the lesson here lies in the travel and the transitions of spirit that are marked along the way. First, Jesus travels to us from “his native place,” where he was not recognized as the Messiah. This was a historical event for the man as he left Nazareth for Galilee, but also symbolic of overall salvation history, where God travels from the nation of Israel where he is rejected to the rest of the world. Next, the man from Capernaum travels to him, just as we are to travel to him, to leave the comfort of our homes, especially urgent in times of distress.

Here, at the encounter with Christ, the man petitions him in earnest, with belief in his power to save. God comforts him and pours out his mercy upon the man. Refreshed in spirit thanks to the life-giving water, the man returns home, renewed in faith. This is the model for our own encounter with Christ in the sacraments, in the Church, in our hearts. He is our hope and our wellspring.

And in looking at the overall arc of the gospel, most of the time is spent in transition, in travel. Is this not the case for us, too? Our faith shows us the broad strokes: we are in transition between this world and the next, where we shall be united with God face-to-face. As we’ve noted before, the earliest Christians referred to themselves as followers “of the Way” (cf. Acts 9:1-2), letting this great eschatological fact define them.

On the micro level, too, we are constantly traveling, in transition. We get to experience the Mass infrequently and ecstatic moments of union with God even less frequently. What happens outside of those moments? Well, we call it life. It’s hard to keep up a sustained outpouring of God’s love and will. We are members of the Church in part to support us in that effort to maintain our spiritual focus. But let’s be honest about the reality of this life: it exists largely in transition between moments of sin, fear, and isolation and moments of peace within God’s light.

How are we living this life? What do we look like as we walk in this life of transition? The answer and expectation given to us is frustratingly simple; Jesus tells us, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). We must happily embrace what the earliest Christians did and be followers “of the Way,” because the travel, the path, and the moments of transition are in union with Christ Himself.

He resided in our flesh, he knows us intimately, he is here with us. The great Life-Bringer, the source of Truth and Wisdom traveled just like us. With his Resurrection, he lives spiritually, personally, and mystically with each of us while we walk in this life of transition. We are not alone here. As baptized Christians, we are surrounded by and infused with the Spirit of the Lord. This must make our journey joyful and hopeful, despite all of its hardships and pain.

This is the “new earth” of which Isaiah speaks. The Lord has promised us salvation and a place in his house. This is why he says, “No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there, or the sound of crying.” Let us live in the promise of the Kingdom, knowing that every step we take on the Way is one step closer to him.

Spring in Italy (1890), Isaac Levitan | Creative Commons, courtesy Wikiart.org. Perhaps this is how we can feel today, regarding the world with the promise of blossoms being fed by a running stream. Regarding the spiritual promise of the mountain, that is, of the Kingdom, ahead.

March 23, 2020
Led by the Master

Tuesday in the Second Week of Lent: Isaiah 1:10, 16-20, Matthew 23:1-12.

Today’s readings reveal much about the Master, that is, Christ, as well as how He wants His people to live in his Spirit. The Word of God spoken by Isaiah makes clear that religious customs won’t save the Jews, instead they must cleanse their souls and perform acts of mercy. Jesus repeats this refrain in the flesh when contrasting his teachings with the Pharisees.

The “Vision of Isaiah” concerning Judah and Jerusalem was taken down in the early 700s BC, during a low point for Judah. King Ahaz (r. 732-715 BC) had cozied up to the Assyrians and brought their tastes and religious idolatry not just into the country but into the Temple itself. Just how wicked was he? Well, he also offered his son by fire to Moloch, the Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice. His wickedness did not stop despite many trials, and he even closed schools and houses of worship so religious instruction had to go underground.

Isaiah (1838), Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier | Creative Commons, courtesy The Wallace Collection/ArtUK.

Given the king’s significant turning away from God, we can start to understand the dire warnings in Isaiah. For me, one of the signs that the Word of God is truly speaking through Isaiah is that he did not focus on the form of worship, which constitutes the core of Jewish priestly concerns and to this day characterizes the ultra-Orthodox strain of Judaism. In verses 11-14 (omitted from today’s reading), he is clear that these are no longer pleasing to the Lord:

I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
    and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
    or of lambs, or of goats. …

  Trample my courts no more;
bringing offerings is futile;
    incense is an abomination to me. …

Your new moons and your appointed festivals
    my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
    I am weary of bearing them.

You could imagine that the priestly class would be calling for more sacrifices, more incense, more religious festivals. But Isaiah points out that the problem is the people themselves. His encouragement is for them to “Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil; learn to do good.” And in a verse that could come from the mouth of Jesus some 700 years later, he urges them to establish their goodness through works of mercy: “Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.”

What strikes me in this reading is the eternal patience of God and his refusal to abandon those with whom he has made his covenant, even after they abandon him: “Come now, let us set things right, says the LORD: Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow.” These are sweet words, like a parent cajoling a naughty child to make up with them after some misbehavior. Even the imagery is soothing — taking a blood-red sin and making it “white as snow.” Who would not want this Master? He gives us the opportunity to make amends where so many other masters would not.

In the reading from Matthew, Jesus has some harsh words for the Pharisees and scribes. He enjoins the crowds to listen to their words because they have law-giving authority in their society (they sit on “the chair of Moses”). But he tells them flat-out not to ” follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice.” Ouch! To be called out by Christ!

Their problem, Jesus says, is that they glory in their power, they have too much pride in their station. “All their works are performed to be seen,” he says, “They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’” Jesus tells them they have only one teacher (and I think it rhymes with “the level”).

He adds two more equivalent sayings, one for God the Father and one for himself. There is only one Father, who is our Creator … this seems obvious. But note who the master is: “Do not be called ‘Master’; you have but one master, the Christ.” And here we get to see for ourselves the most exceptional aspect of our Master: he leads by the ultimate example. He is the opposite of the Pharisees who don’t practice what they preach. He leads us with love and dies on the Cross himself, as an example and encouragement for us all to not fear death, but retain absolute devotion to our Father in all circumstances.

To solidify his message about subduing pride and, instead, serving others, he ends today’s reading with: “The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” We must note his authority over the abstract moral terms “greatest” and “exalted.” He, the Lord, is the definition and the definer of what is known as “great” and what will be “exalted.” There is no debate or wiggle room where we could somehow insert our own understanding of what it means to be great.

This is precisely his point: we keep getting ourselves in this pickle, this distancing ourselves from God, because we try to be the definer of moral terms. We think that we have mastered life (or ethics, or morality) and can teach others. We have the audacity to feel “exalted” above others if we do something our earthly jobs/politics/society feels is “great.” These terms are not for us to play with; they have very definite meanings established by the source of the universe: God. This is why humility is his example and is so important to our lives as Christians.

Vendimian of Bithynia, a miniature painting found in the Menologion of Basil II, an illuminated “lives of the saints,” 985 AD | Wikimedia Commons.

It’s fascinating to see how the Desert Fathers lived out Christ’s instructions from today’s gospel. The Desert Fathers (and Desert Mothers) were Christians who moved to the desert to live the life of seclusion and asceticism. The area especially known for this was the Scetes Desert south of Alexandria, Egypt (to get your bearings, this would be a 24-hour walk from Alexandria, or a 2-hour drive for us moderns), and the most well-known Desert Father, St. Anthony the Great, moved there about 270 AD. The Desert Fathers sought to be humble to the utmost. This meant always recognizing their own sinfulness, being gentle and subservient to others, and not judging others. It seems they fashioned their lives directly on Mt 23:11-12 from today’s reading: “The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

For instance, Abba Matoes says “Be always mindful of your sins and do not judge others; rather become inferior to all … If somebody speaks to you about any matter whatsoever, do not argue with him; but [if he speaks well] say ‘yes’ and if he speaks badly, say: ‘You know what you are talking about’ and do not contend with him about how he spoke” (Matoes 11).

Over time the sayings from the great abbas (elders) of these monastic groups were written down and became the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (the Apophthegmata Patrum, originally written in Greek). These sayings contain wonderful anecdotes that display the depths of the humility these Christians took upon themselves. Lest we think they just preached humility, there are many examples of practice. “

Someone once brought abba Hor and abba Athre a bit of fish, and Athre had already picked up the knife and started cutting it up when Hor called him. He left the knife in the fish and came at once. Sisoes was impressed and asked where the old man had learned such submission. Athre said he had learned it from Hor, and to prove it he took a bit of the fish and cooked it and deliberately spoiled it. Then he took it to abba Hor and said, ‘Isn’t it good, father?’ Hor said, ‘Yes, it’s excellent.’ Then he cooked another bit without spoiling it, and took it to Hor, saying, ‘I’ve spoiled it, father.’ And Hor replied, ‘Yes, you have spoiled it a bit’” (from Ways of Imperfection by Simon Tugwell, OP, p.19).

This type of humility was good for the soul of the one humbling himself and also a type of fraternal charity to uplift one’s brothers. There are countless stories of how humility and fraternal charity was lived by these Christians. Here’s another noteworthy one:

Now there was a tone statue there in the temple; Abba Anoub would get up early in the morning and throw stones at the face of the statue; in the evening he would say to it, “Forgive me,” and he spent the whole week behaving like that. On Saturday they met up with each other, and Abba Poemen said to Abba Anoub, “I saw you throwing stones at the face of the statue during the whole week, Abba, then making an apology to it too. Does a man of faith act like that?” “I did this deed on your account,” the elder replied. “When you saw me stoning the face of the statue, was it angry, or did it speak?” “No,” said Abba Poemen. “And then again, when I prostrated myself to it, was it troubled, and did it say, ‘I do not forgive you’?” “No,” said Abba Poemen. Abba Anoub said, “And here we are, seven brothers. If you want us to live with each other, let us become like this statue that is not troubled even if it is insulted. If you do not want to become like that, here there are four gates in this temple; let each one go where he will.” But they threw themselves to the ground saying to Abba Anoub, “We will do as you wish, father, and attend to what you say to us” (number 12 in the Humility section of the systematic collection of the Book of Elders).

Finally, one of my favorite (number 87): “The devil appeared to a brother in the disguise of an angel of light, saying to him, ‘I am the archangel Gabriel, and I was sent to you.’ ‘Make sure you were not sent to somebody else,’ said the brother to him, ‘for I am not worthy to see an angel,’ and the demon immediately disappeared.”

So here we have centuries of examples of how humility and charity can be lived as the core part of what makes us Christian. May we all learn from these examples and seek to bring the spirit of this teaching into our daily modern existence.

March 10, 2020
The Life-Giving Word

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent: Isaiah 55:10-11, Matthew 6:7-15.

The Word of God: could there be a more exciting topic for those of us with English degrees? If your academic training is centered on how words create and describe culture, then the Word of God in scripture is the pinnacle of significance. In addition to literature and cultural studies, we moderns have scientific systems for analyzing words and languages: semiotics (thanks to Ferdinand de Saussure) and linguistics (looking at you, Noam Chomsky), to name some biggies. But humans have always been aware of the power of words. The Judeo-Christian understanding of the Word of God is that it is not just an utterance with theological significance, but the very mechanism of creation. From the beginning of scripture and Jewish consciousness, this has been the case. Imagine if every time you spoke of something, it came to be. That’s the Word of God.

We read an engaging set of verses about the Word from Isaiah in today’s readings. Suiting the beauty of his imagery, the living Word of God, Jesus, gives us the Lord’s Prayer in the gospel according to Matthew. What a day of readings!

Isaiah’s verses form a lovely piece of poetry. He says that just as rain and snow water the earth, “making it fertile and fruitful, Giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats,” so God’s Word “that goes forth from my mouth” will act in the world. We receive a promise from God that his will will, in fact, be done: “It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” For me, this is greatly comforting and reassuring. In a world that appears more godless by the minute, I begin to fear God’s will is completely betrayed and somehow lost. But God assures us that his Word is a generative, active force, as reliable and inexorable as the rain that makes the earth fertile. It’s not up to me to make sure God’s will is done (although I pray for it daily); his Word contains all of the power needed to complete his will. Thanks be to God!

Stained Glass Design, Moses (1900-1910), Frederick James Shields | Creative Commons, courtesy Bantock House and Park/ArtUK.

This Word is such an active force — and issues from such an inscrutable source — that Isaiah, just a few verses prior to today’s reading, prophesies to the Jews: “See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God” (Is 55:5). This “calling” of other nations happens 700 years after Isaiah in the form of the Word incarnate, Jesus Christ. Isaiah describes the remarkable spread of Christianity to this day.

Let us contemplate this amazing Word. The Word of God is evident in the time of promises, in his covenants with Abraham, Moses, David, and other figures in the Old Testament. His Word generates action in the Chosen People, who alternately live out his commands and are blessed or betray them and incur wrath and misfortune. It manifests itself throughout the history of the Jews, not just as words inscribed in stone tablets as if a dead text. In fact, Moses breaks the tablets — they’re not the point; the Word must live actively. The Word continues to flow forth from the mouth of the prophets; it spills into the dreams of men and women; it orients every action recorded about these people.

And we cast back further to find that the Word always existed. It was the very generative force that made the cosmos. It issues forth from God, both an integral part of him and somehow ontologically separate from him. St. John opens his gospel with perhaps the most complex and beautiful words in all of scripture: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (Jn 1:1-3). Indeed, we hear from Eve in Genesis that they are told about the garden and the forbidden tree from God, so we know that the Word was with them at this point. The Word of God is not made, like the other aspects of the cosmos, but is “with God” and “is God” from the beginning. Even deeper, here, the original Greek word is logos, which does mean word but also means an organizing principle, something that makes meaning.

And in the opening prologue to John’s gospel, we of course read that “the Logos became flesh and lived among us.” That is, the generative Word of God, the organizing principle of the universe that enables meaning to be made, well, it took on human flesh. Our ancestors in the faith would have recognized the incomprehensible power in this person Jesus Christ, the logos in the flesh, even if it comes to us 2,000 years later as a sort of ho-hum story. Something new happened that ended the time of promises and began the end times: the Word that existed from the beginning is made flesh, has a mother named Mary.

Is this really the same Word of God that we know has been active throughout the history of humanity? Our Church Father, Origen, verifies this in his Commentaries on John when contemplating the death of Jesus:

But while it is certainly a man who died, the Truth, Wisdom, Peace and Justice, of whom it is written, “The Word was God,” was not a man; and the God who is the Word, and the Truth, and Wisdom and Justice, is not dead. For the Image of the invisible God, the First-born of all creation, is incapable of death.

This insight sheds light on the resurrection. It does not diminish the sacrifice in the least, as if the Word of God knew he could not die so Jesus’s Passion and death was just a show. In fact, it elevates the Passion, death, and resurrection because God deigned to truly suffer and die for us instead of ruling the created world in power (simple!) or majestically exiting the scene as an untouchable deity might (like the Greek gods would in their mythology).

Consider that. The Word of God deliberately chose a specific way of becoming man, revealing the truth in Himself, submitting to human authority, suffering, and offering himself back to the Father in the greatest act of love. This life he led was not an accident and he certainly had as many other options available as you can imagine (and more we can’t imagine).

His only Begotten Son and the Word of God (sketch for a fresco in the Cathedral of St. Vladimir in Kiev 1885-1896), Victor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov | Wikimedia Commons

Why? What causes the invincible Word of God that made all of creation choose such a torturous existence as a human? It might just be that it is the perfect way for Jesus to be the ultimate teacher as well as the very method of our salvation. As a simple man who bleeds and suffers, he is our brother, yet as the life-giving Word, he alone can accomplish our salvation. As a human like us, he demonstrates in his life how to have a relationship with the Father, but as God he brings the reality of the Father into the world to forever change it. He is both the role model and reality being modeled.

This brings us to the reading from Matthew where Jesus inhabits the role of teacher when he says, “This is how you are to pray.” And then we are given the Lord’s Prayer, the depths of which are too great to plumb in a simple blog post. If you want to better understand the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer, read Pope Benedict XVI’s book Jesus of Nazareth, which contains a great 40-page chapter devoted to the Lord’s Prayer.

But let us note just a few things. We hear echoes of Isaiah’s verses in “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Remember, God promises that his Word “shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” Thus, we signal our acceptance of how the Word acts in the world, and we give it our blessing, our hope for its speedy success.

The second thing that strikes me is the verbal equation, “and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I’ve always wondered why this isn’t stated the other way around, i.e., “as your father forgives you, you should forgive others.” I think my confusion stems from the use of the word “as,” which I typically take to mean “in the manner.” Thankfully, today’s reading includes the verses following the bestowal of the Lord’s Prayer, where Christ doubles down on the formulation and explains what He means: “If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.” Aha! I should be reading it in this way: “forgive us our trespasses if we are able to forgive those who trespass against us.” Even if we do everything according to His will (such as forgiving others), we must also pray for his grace and salvation, which is not guaranteed, but a gift.

As we return to Isaiah’s verses that God’s Word will make the earth fruitful and do his will, we are struck with just how true this is and in how many ways we can see it. God’s will that we are brought into perfect communion with him: the liturgy is established by the Word made Flesh; his will that men testify to his truth at the risk of their own lives: the saints and the martyrs; his will that we love our neighbors as ourselves: countless acts of true charity done in the name of the Lord. Christ the Word has made this possible on earth in a way it was never possible before his great sacrifice.

March 3, 2020
On Being Chosen

Saturday after Ash Wednesday: Isaiah 58:9b-14, Luke 5:27-32

Today, we hear Isaiah preaching the benefits of living a Godly life — that the Chosen People will “ride on the heights of the earth.” Then, in the gospel of St. Luke, we see the Word Incarnate choosing the lowest of the Jews, a tax collector, and even having dinner with a large crowd of tax collectors. Imagine the indignation of the upright Jews who saw this, who expected the Messiah to bless them, not the money-grubbing agents of the state. The lesson Jesus gives us is his great egalitarian message: all are offered the chance to be God’s chosen children.

Isaiah’s words, which are a continuation of yesterday’s Old Testament reading, sound an awful lot like St. Paul’s words 700 years later. That’s because they both speak of God’s precepts, which are unchanging. More generally, they speak of the greatest commandment that we should first love the Lord our God above all else and then our neighbors as we love ourselves. Let’s compare the two following passages:

(1) If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness

(2) As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Which comes from Isaiah and which from St. Paul? The first talks about good works of charity and images of light dispelling darkness. We’ve heard those things many times from St. Paul. Plus, the second one talks about God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, words that the Hebrew nation traditionally used to refer to itself. So, that’s Isaiah, right?

The Vision of Isaiah (1838), Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier, oil on oak panel | Creative Commons.

Nope.

The first one is Isaiah from today’s reading and the second is St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians (3:12-13). God’s message, the Word, is consistent and unchanging. It is the perfection of truth and wisdom. This is why our holy scripture contains both the Old and New Testaments. Christ didn’t change the fundamental message that God gives to humanity. What he clarified was the scope of the message (its universality). He also ruptured all of time with the life-giving spring of his resurrected Body and began the holy liturgy, which the Spirit pours out upon us daily.

Today’s readings speak specifically to the clarification in scope that Christ shares. The Hebrews in Isaiah’s time had lived through several thousand years of blessings and curses, each connected to the actions of its people, kings, priests, and judges. The prophets in the Old Testament are very consistent in their call to repentance and upholding God’s precepts. The master narrative could be summed up in Isaiah’s words we hear today: if they follow his commandments,

Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
He will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose water never fails.

The Jews who received this message very much took it to heart, establishing a very robust set of rules and laws to follow so as to stay in God’s grace. Rabbinic tradition tells us that there are 613 mitzvot (תרי״ג מצוות), or commandments, in the scriptures. These include 365 “negative commandments” (prescribe what not to do) and 248 “positive commandments.” Knowing all of these commandments, much less staying pure by following them all, became a specialized and serious business.

Central to the commandments is the concept of purity — of distinguishing between clean and unclean, pure and impure — in thought, action, inanimate, and animate things. And between people! The first distinction was Jews and non-Jews (or “Greeks” as we hear them described throughout the New Testament). But even among Jews there were definite distinctions between those considered holy and those who held lower stations by birth, situation, or behavior. Take the much-maligned Samaritans, who were just as Jewish as the Jews returning from Assyria, only they had stayed behind in their sacked towns and lived with (and intermarried with) the invaders.

Into this legalistic impurity minefield, Jesus was born. And we can start to understand why the Pharisees (a religious sect opposed to assimilation with non-Jews and expert in impurity laws) and their scribes “complained to his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’”

As inheritors of 2,000 years of Christian thought and practice, it’s easy for us to consider their words as prejudiced invective, but many Jews of the time probably wondered the same thing about Jesus. They had inherited several thousand years of purity laws that were built on making distinctions. And here was a man people called the Messiah seeming to disregard all of these distinctions.

But Jesus’ masterful reply to the Pharisees acknowledges the distinctions: “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.” The Word of Truth here affirms that sin exists and some people live in it, but he displays for us a new way of relating to the sinful: to serve them, to call them to repentance. He also affirms that the Pharisees are “healthy” and “righteous.” But underlying these complements is a gentle reproach for how they look down upon the sinful instead of looking at them with eyes of love.

The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599-1600), Caravaggio | Wikimedia Commons. Matthew (Levi) sits counting money at the far left, while Christ on the far right, signified by the halo, points to him (the hand that of the Sistene Chapel), calling him as a disciple. The beautiful use of light and shading emphasizes the light of God breaking into the darkness. It is a remarkable study of the heavenly meeting the earthly and the light of God seeking us wherever we are.

The parable of the Prodigal Son is the clearest expansion of Jesus’ message here. The father welcomes the prodigal son, but much of the lesson is for the good son who stayed home and has a hard time understanding his father’s generosity towards the profligate son. The father’s reply is that the good son already has an honored place in his father’s house and the welcoming of the prodigal son in no way diminishes that place. The Pharisees and Jews living God’s commandments are the “good son,” while Christ’s mission is to gather as many prodigal sons as he can.

Christ’s message re-framed the Jewish inheritance of God’s commandments and extended it, in love, to those living in darkness. He opened up the true faith in the true God to all rather than keeping it hidden behind layers of commandments and concerns over purity.

And thus, Matthew, one of the great gospel writers, was saved from a sinful life. In responding to God’s call, St. Matthew has, in turn, brought light to millions of people throughout the world.

May we all hear Jesus as he calls us out personally to follow him. And may we each accomplish just a sliver of what St. Matthew accomplished after answering the call.

February 29, 2020
Fasting for What?

Friday after Ash Wednesday: Isaiah 58:1-9a, Matthew 9:14-15

In today’s readings, Isaiah takes on the custom of fasting head-on. Then, in the gospel reading, John the Baptist’s disciples challenge Christ on fasting, but he uses it as a chance to reveal his own nature and thereby reflect on the entire purpose of fasting. The question of sincerity is at stake in both readings.

Isaiah is an unrelenting prophet. He delivers vividly clear images of Christ who will come, but also pulls no punches when it comes to calling out the unfaithfulness of his people. In today’s reading, he points out the hypocritical self-righteousness of the Jews:

They seek me day after day,
and desire to know my ways,
Like a nation that has done what is just
and not abandoned the law of their God;
They ask me to declare what is due them
pleased to gain access to God

Jews Mourning in a Synagogue, 1906, William Rothenstein | Creative Commons, courtesy Tate Museum.

Yes, as if they had done what is just, they want what is due to them. Oh, the arrogance. The question they ask is “why do we fast and you take no notice of it?” Isaiah schools them. He points out that while they put on the appearance of fasting (sackcloth and ashes), their deeds display that they aren’t living the fast. Much like the Christ who will come, Isaiah wants to distinguish living the letter of the law from living the spirit of the law. Isaiah tells them what they should be doing while fasting (apart from abstaining from foods):

releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,

Jesus will emphasize these same points in his ministry. We can call them acts of charity. Many of us consider fasting mainly an act of deprivation, but Isaiah reminds us that the act of depriving ourselves of food is simply the first step — sharpening our senses, waking us up from the complacency of being well-fed — so that we can offer ourselves more fully to God by service to one another.

But if we’re too absorbed in ourselves when we fast, all we think about is our hunger and discomfort. Alternatively, if we’re too concerned with showing others that we abide by the law, we look mournful and disheveled in order to broadcast our efforts to humble ourselves in front of God. Both of these pitfalls miss the entire point of fasting, which is the spirit of fully offering ourselves to God.

Isaiah is essentially asking his people, “Are you sincere in your faith?” Following God’s precepts is a whole-person effort, and God knows if we are sincere. There’s an old saying, “Smith went to Mass every Sunday, but went to hell for what he did on Monday.” The idea, of course, is that simply going through the motions is not what God asks of us.

So what about duty? Where does our obligation lie? Isaiah (and later, Jesus) is clear that our obligation is not to the rituals but to the spirit that the rituals are meant to bring us into. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Our duty toward God is to believe in him and to bear witness to him” (2087). Belief, faith, bearing witness (through testimony and good acts).

An interesting acceleration of these questions occurs in Matthew’s gospel today. The disciples of John the Baptist, who were by all accounts faithful in spirit as well as in the letter of the law, ask Jesus why his disciples weren’t fasting. Jesus uses this opportunity to talk not about fasting, but about his own divine nature. Like Isaiah, he presses the people about their sincerity, only this time in a more immediate way.

Jesus says, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?” This image of Jesus as the groom and the Church as his mystical bride will be developed theologically in the years to come. More germane to our discussion, Jesus is gently telling John the Baptist’s disciples (who, we must remember, already heard from John that Jesus is the Messiah) that God is in their midst. If the goal of fasting is to attest to God in our bodies and our spirits, in a desire to be close to Him, then what place does it have when he’s already with you?

It’s like standing next to your father and shouting, “Oh, if my father was only here! I wish to be near my father!” It’s ridiculous. And here Jesus pushes on the sincerity of these questioners’ practice of fasting at that moment in time. If they sincerely desire unity with God, why are they fasting in front of him as if he was not present? Or is their fasting yet again simply a ritual that they stubbornly hold onto?

Our faith demands that we bring our entire beings, including our spirit and our intellect, to bear on this world and the next. If we fast without acting in God’s love, we are not living out our faith. If we prioritize the niggly details of our fast over the presence of God Himself, then we are blindly following ritual and not recognizing the Spirit at work.

By being sincere in our fast — focusing on being close to God, doing his will — we can avoid these mistakes and begin to recognize when and where He is with us.

February 28, 2020