Tag: Lent

  • People of the New Fruit

    People of the New Fruit

    Friday in the Second Week of Lent: Genesis 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17B-28a, Matthew: 21:33-43, 45-46.

    Today’s readings are truly riches in storytelling and spiritual teaching. The parallels between Jacob’s son Joseph and Jesus Christ abound in their details: both are the favored son, both are sent to help in the tending of the sheep, both are caught up in the drama of jealousy, misunderstanding, and persecution, both are put in a place of containment (Jacob in the cistern, Jesus in our attempts to limit and demarcate the presence of divinity in our lives), both find adoption by an alien people, and both end up being hugely transformative figures despite these challenges, reigning in peace and forgiveness.

    While Joseph is an early Biblical figure who prefigures the life of Jesus, what we encounter in the gospel is that Jesus is pointing beyond Himself to a Church that will grow with Him and help to unite Heaven and earth. We will see how the killed son becomes the cornerstone of an entirely new reality and the vineyard will be given over to new tenants to produce new fruit.

    Joseph, a favorite Son, Sold into Slavery (from an illustrated French manuscript, known as the Crusader Bible or the Morgan Bible, c.1244-1254) | Creative Commons, courtesy Pierpont Morgan Library. MS M.638.

    Before examining the gospel reading, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the huge role jealousy plays in the first reading. As we explored in Worm of the Soul two days ago, jealousy is a terrible, foundational sin that twists us into unrecognizable beings. Listen to the brothers: “Here comes that master dreamer! Come on, let us kill him and throw him into one of the cisterns here; we could say that a wild beast devoured him. … just throw him into that cistern there in the desert; but do not kill him outright. … What is to be gained by killing our brother and concealing his blood? Rather, let us sell him to these Ishmaelites.” This spiral of evil conspiracy starts with the seed of jealousy, planted in their hearts by the devil. It festers and manifests by calling him names, degrading him. This trick of twisting their minds against their very brother opens the door to seeing him as something other than fully human (much less their brother). Then we hear a sequence of plots and machinations. They have already given themselves over to sin and evil, and this sequence smacks of the guilty desperately trying to find a way not to be found out. We must recognize this tortured logic because we encounter it in ourselves in many ways. Whenever we find ourselves making certain calculations and rationalizations to avoid a certain end, it is a good time to sit up and examine what exactly we are doing. Are we living in the light or are we obscuring our actions because we’re heading down a path of darkness? This is not to say that all situations are easy and straightforward — indeed, many take careful thought and weighing of moral issues — but it is a good reminder in this Lenten season of what our more quiet soul-searching can do for us in a busy modern world.

    Turning to the gospel, Jesus is all-too-aware of the plots and machinations of the chief priests and elders of the temple who want to arrest him. They, too, are already guilty of having sinned in their hearts and turned away from the light. For them, he presents the Parable of the Wicked Tenants.

    Central to the parable is the setting: a vineyard. His listeners would immediately identify the vineyard with Israel since one of the more famous and eloquent passages in Isaiah is “The Song of the Vineyard”:

    Let me sing for my beloved
        my love-song concerning his vineyard:
    My beloved had a vineyard
        on a very fertile hill.
    He dug it and cleared it of stones,
        and planted it with choice vines;
    he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
        and hewed out a wine vat in it;
    he expected it to yield grapes,
        but it yielded wild grapes. …
    For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
        is the house of Israel,
    and the people of Judah
        are his pleasant planting;   (Is 5:1-2, 7a).

    Isaiah’s verses question why wild grapes have grown rather than choice grapes, and Jesus answers: it is the evil in the tenants who were entrusted to care for the vineyard.

    Against the important backdrop of a vineyard, Jesus weaves a parable that presents the scope of salvation history. First, we see creation: the landlord planted a vineyard, put a hedge, dug a wine press, and built a tower. Next, the election of the nation of Israel as a hope for the world: “Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.” Then, we see the long line of prophets who were sent to the people as well as their brutal rejection: “the tenants seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned.” Next, we see the time of Christ, when the son comes to “obtain the produce,” but he, too, is killed. Finally, we are given the question about the final judgment: “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?” Because it presents the history of God’s work of salvation in a concise allegory, this parable should be precious to us.

    The Wicked Husbandmen (1864), Artist: After Sir John Everett Millais, Engraver: Dalziel Brothers | Creative Commons, courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

    In his masterwork volumes on the gospel of St. Matthew, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis points out how central to the story (both the allegory and our reality) is the absence of the landowner. God’s physical absence is what makes the life of faith so important and what makes his return so anticipated. In Volume III, Leiva-Merikakis states, “The master’s physical absence is a kind of mystical vacuum that generates a tremendous moral crisis exposing the innermost heart of the tenants, revealing it in all its perversity” (468). Why, in fact, does God leave us to begin with? Leiva-Merikakis points out that the Hassidic answer “is that God must be absent for man’s sake, that is, if man is ever to grow fully into his divine vocation of becoming the eyes and hands and Heart of God in this word, the very dwelling place of God’s glory and truth” (468).

    God’s absence presents us with the choice: either trust in Him, His wishes, and His eventual return, or choose to forget that He was ever here and act like it’s all in our hands to do what we want. Clearly, the wicked tenants in the parable, who Jesus points out are the chief priests and Pharisees, have chosen the second option. 

    But let’s not forget that God cares deeply about his beloved vineyard, the tenants, and the precious fruit he waits for it to bear. That’s why he sends his servants (the prophets) time and again, as well as his son. When Jesus asks the priests and elders what the landlord will do to the tenants, they rightly answer, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.” But God is not focused on the retribution for the wrongdoing. Instead, Jesus replies to their answer unexpectedly. In a gentle redirection, he asks, “Did you never read in the Scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes.” His Good News is that God doesn’t give up on His Son or His vineyard. The “stone that the builders rejected” is presumably the son who is seized, thrown out, and killed (a clear reference to His Passion to come). Jesus puts aside the response of retribution that the elders give Him in order to point out something truly remarkable: the killed son has become the cornerstone. It is also instructive that His scriptural reference continues with by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes. This is an acknowledgement that something spiritually extraordinary is going on, the good work of the Lord. Thus, the killed son doesn’t just become a martyr who lives on in the people’s memory; no, Jesus is talking about something much more extraordinary: the Resurrection and the bursting of divinity into human history, giving birth to the liturgy and creating the Church.

    The Heir Cast Out of the Vineyard (1855-1856), William Cave Thomas | Creative Commons, courtesy The World of Glass/ArtUK.

    This new reality of salvation happens in the presence, not the absence, of the Spirit of Christ, alive in the world after the Resurrection. This makes us the new tenants in as much as we share Christ with the world. In his high-priestly prayer at the Last Supper, Jesus affirms this aspect of the Church: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:22-23).

    Leiva-Merikakis elaborates: “When people look for God in a visible form, they will see only each other. When they look for Christ, they will see only Christians. By giving us his own animating and sanctifying Spirit, Christ has entrusted us with everything that is his. No, ‘entrusted’ is not to say enough. Through his death and Resurrection, he has implanted in us a wholly new life, with all the same energies and principles of life that give thrust to his own life” (469).

    If we are in part the new tenants, are we (or our deeds) not also the fruit that the landlord will find? This is the question of all of salvation history: what kind of fruit will the landlord find? God has given us the ability to tend the vineyard through Christ’s Spirit active in our lives, but our deeds and charity, indeed all that we do here on earth are our fruits.

    Can we wisely accept the Spirit of Christ in our lives as a landlord who is present? Or will we continue to act as the Israelites did and conform to the law externally while having no internal relationship to the truth? Each of us this Lent has the opportunity to re-dedicate ourselves to tending the vineyard with Christ and bringing forth the fruits pleasing to the Lord.

    Red Vineyards at Arles (1888), Vincent van Gogh | Creative Commons, WikiArt.org.
  • Tree Beside Running Waters

    Tree Beside Running Waters

    Thursday in the Second Week of Lent: Jeremiah 17:5-10, Luke 16:19-31.

    (Note: this is a lightly edited version of the reflection I originally wrote in 2020 for the Second Thursday of Lent: Beware the Enchantments of the World.) 

    Today, we hear the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus from the gospel of St. Luke. On its surface, this parable seems to warn us of too much enjoyment in this world because we will pay for it later (in Hell). As we dig into the parable, however, we see a deeper problem with the rich man. The connection to the reading from Jeremiah becomes more apparent: the enchantments of this world distract us from God, who is busy giving us plenty of opportunities for redemption by our faith and actions.

    The opening of Jesus’s parable almost sounds like a fairy tale: “There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day.” This opening may tempt us to read it as a simple morality play. But the Truth spoken by the Word of God is not just a self-improvement class. It draws our spirit to dwell with Him, even if it does so via a warning.

    Our gospel passage opens: “Jesus said to the Pharisees…” and in Luke, Chapter 15, He is, in fact, in the middle of talking to them. Let’s back up a few verses to get the full context. “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this [his last parable that “You cannot serve God and wealth”], and they ridiculed him. So he said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God’” (Lk 16:14-15). These parables are specifically for them. We shall see that His criticism of loving money holds true for loving other human desires.

    The Userer, ca. 1766-1774, after George van der Mijn (1721-1763) | Creative Commons, courtesy the British Museum.

    What does today’s parable tell us about the rich man other than his expensive tastes and gluttony? We can glean that he did not seem to give alms of any sort to Lazarus, who would have been glad to have “scraps that fell” from his table. Just two days ago, we heard Jesus saying of the Pharisees: “For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. All their works are performed to be seen.” In the rich man we see the same lack of helping as we do in the Pharisees: he does “not lift a finger” to relieve Lazarus’s suffering.

    He displays his true colors when he finds himself in Hell. Unbelievably, he retains an arrogant sense of self-worth greater than Lazarus when he says, “Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.” Here the rich man is “in torment,” asking for pity, and he’s still treating Lazarus as a servant or slave! 

    Abraham explains that they are reaping their rewards based on their experiences and actions on earth, and that “a great chasm” separates them. And still the rich man asks, “send him to my father’s house” to warn his family to mend their ways, betraying his continued dismissal of Lazarus as a person with dignity. He sees Lazarus as a tool to be employed for his family’s benefit, arguing with Abraham, “if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.” His sense of superiority and belief that everyone (even Abraham!) should listen to him is astounding, and certainly a pointed example for the Pharisees who were listening.

    The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (1677), Jan Steen | Wikimedia Commons. I particularly like the self-important, dismissive expression of the man holding the goblet in the foreground, which captures the failings of the rich man archetype. Note that the actual rich man from the parable, however, seems to be in the upper right corner, even more removed from humanity in his gluttony. Overall, I appreciate Jan Steen’s painting for focusing on the enchantments of the world, raising a glass to toast today’s enjoyments, oblivious to the judgment that is coming.

     For his part, Abraham at first replies with a certain pity for the rich man, saying, “My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime …” This turns eerily neutral after the rich man displays his unrepentant attitude: “They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.” And finally he utters some baleful words indeed at the end: “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.” This last proclamation can clearly be applied to Christ, who will rise from the dead, and those who refuse to listen are, of course, the Pharisees themselves.

    If we return to the verse that set the context for the parable of the rich man, we can see how the parable illustrates Jesus’s point: “God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.” Money, gluttony, and other things “of the flesh” take the brunt of the blame, but let’s not overlook that Christ is talking about God knowing our hearts. Love of wealth and being noticed are the “bad fruit” from a diseased tree — “every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit” (Mt 7:15). The tree itself is what concerns God — He wants us to grow strong and beautiful and bear good fruit (i.e., love one another, good deeds), which require nourishment from Him and His precepts. 

    The Rich Man in Hell, Seeing Lazarus Embraced by Abraham, from The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (1554), Heinrich Aldegrever | Creative Commons, courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

    This is where the first reading from Jeremiah is helpful. He employs this same imagery of a tree that is either healthy or diseased, depending on a person’s attachment to God or to the world. He says that he “who seeks his strength in flesh … is like a barren bush in the desert … [that] stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth.” Conversely, “the man who trusts in the LORD … is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream … In the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit.” I love the image of a person strong in the Lord being a plant growing by running waters (also used in the first Psalm), probably because it simplifies life: all you need to make you thrive is the Word of God. What a refreshing thought when compared to all of the other “things” we think we need to do and accumulate in this life. Applying Jeremiah’s imagery to the gospel reading, the Pharisees are the “barren bush in the desert,” removed from the life-giving spring because they reflect everything back on themselves. While they seem rich (in this life), they will find that they are barren spiritually and destitute in the next life. 

    But, look! God gives us endless chances to return to the stream of living water. What was Lazarus but a chance for the rich man to turn his heart to God and practice charity? And what was Lazarus’s suffering but his cross to bear for the salvation of another (even if that other person did not accept the salvation offered to him)? This is God’s prerogative as our Master and Creator. The Word tells us through Jeremiah at the end of today’s reading:

    I, the LORD, alone probe the mind
    and test the heart,
    To reward everyone according to his ways,
    according to the merit of his deeds. 

    This is the work of God to bring us back to unity with Him: probing our minds, providing opportunities to exercise our spiritual muscle, and ultimately rewarding us according to our ways and deeds. As fruit shows us the type of tree, our deeds reveal the heart of the person. Charity comes from a good heart that finds its refreshment in the Lord. Selfishness comes from a heart focused on this world’s enchantments and the self alone. This is why we Catholics insist that our justification (i.e., place in heaven) comes from faith and works, not just faith alone. This teaching is found throughout scripture, no more clearly than today’s readings.

    At the risk of slightly repeating myself, let’s tackle one of the common complaints humans have voiced throughout our history, “why is there suffering in the world?” The parable of the rich man is a great reply to this. For the rich man, God is probing his heart and giving him opportunities to return to the sheepfold. For Lazarus, he must remember that he will be comforted in heaven if he bears his suffering with dignity and a focus on God. What’s more, all of us must remember that God works in ways beyond our immediate knowledge to bring us closer to him. Lazarus is God’s way to reach out to the rich man’s heart. Which of us can truly bemoan the honor of being used by God for a holy purpose, even if it involves our suffering? Was this not the exact example Christ set for us? 

    The Rich Man and Lazarus (The Parables of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ), 1864, Sir John Everett Millais | Creative Commons, courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I love this more tender artistic look at Lazarus, who is often sidelined in the story.

    In this vein, let’s finish this reflection with the words of St. Therèse of Lisieux. One of only three female Doctors of the Church, St. Therèse led an incredibly short life, dying at the age of 24 from tuberculosis. She suffered much (even as a child she suffered from mysterious illnesses that left her bed-bound) but bore it with incredible kindness towards others. “As Jesus had made me realize that the Cross was the means by which He would give me souls,” she said, “the more often it came my way, the more suffering attracted me.” What a fantastic attitude towards suffering!

    Since suffering was “attractive” to her as a way of doing God’s will, she saw small sacrifices less as burdens and more like acts of love. She writes, “Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”

    And, finally, almost as a nod to Lazarus in today’s reading, she writes, “Our Lord’s love shines out just as much through a little soul who yields completely to His Grace as it does through the greatest.” Talk about a tree growing next to life-giving waters! She is a true inspiration.

    Thank you, St. Therèse for giving us such a positive way to understand turning our hearts to God and making suffering a joy to bear for the Lord.

  • Worm of the Soul

    Worm of the Soul

    Wednesday of the Second Week in Lent: Jeremiah 18:18-20, Matthew 20:17-28.

    Today’s readings show the ugliness of jealousy, which St. Cyprian of Carthage calls “the root of all evil.” After examining the readings, I’d like to reflect on St. Cyprian’s Treatise on Jealousy and Envy, which offers some sharp insights.

    The Jews in Jeremiah’s time were tired of hearing his gloom-and-doom prophecies. In the Book of Jeremiah, we read of how his no-holds-barred warnings and criticisms land him in prison, get him beaten, and make him an outcast. Today’s reading shows the inner mindset of the Jews who wanted to discredit and destroy him: “Come, let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah … let us destroy him by his own tongue; let us carefully note his every word.”

    What provokes such evil in the hearts of his countrymen? Jeremiah wonders as much himself: “Must good be repaid with evil that they should dig a pit to take my life?”

    Jealousy (contemporary), Yvonne Wright | Image from pixels.com.

    There are many ways to react to a person who proclaims something upsetting. We can ignore them. We can disagree, perhaps loudly. We can silently listen to their harangue and think about it over time, seeing if there is any truth to it. Or, we can allow our passions to grip us and lash out. If we allow negative passions like anger to build, we begin to desire retribution in a more lasting way. This is the work of evil.

    But another sin may be in play in Jeremiah’s case, specifically jealousy. He is getting attention with his troubling prophecies, and the other priests and Jews are not liking the power and attention he is garnering. If jealousy is in the heart of Jeremiah’s adversaries, we can begin to understand how elaborate plots might develop.

    Jealousy is such an ugly sin that we never want to admit that it grips us. It’s embarrassing because it is such a strong sin, stripping us of everything elevated and good in character. Because it is ugly and embarrassing, we keep it hidden; we plot and the festering evil builds.

    In the gospel, Jesus quickly identifies this sin erupting among the Apostles and stamps it out before it can grow. When the Apostles learn of James and John’s desire to sit at Jesus’s right in Heaven, they “became indignant” and undoubtedly jealous. Jesus’s response is that while leaders in the Gentile world operate by having authority lorded over others, “it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.” Jesus must re-orient them to the goal of the Christian life: to serve and thereby inhabit and spread the love of the Father.

    The entire discussion of greatness and deservedness to sit at the Lord’s right hand is upended. If greatness is defined by being the best slave, then that’s a silly thing to be jealous over. In fact, as soon as you start serving people out of love, the idea of being regarded for one’s own greatness is absurd.

    And so we must ask ourselves what came over the mother of James and John (and them) when the request was made. The three of them are operating under a different mindset than Jesus’s teaching. She wants her sons to be great (and by extension, herself). As Christ points out, in the secular world this greatness comes at the cost of others — one is exalted above others, in fact the only way to know that one is exalted is by seeing others lower than you in status. This entire worldview relies on envy of that exalted status. People are motivated by jealousy over that position, even if it is currently unoccupied. This type of “greatness” will never be aligned with God’s self-giving love because at its heart is inequality and envy.

    This is precisely why Jesus must die in a mode of sacrifice, showing that glory resides not in earthly exaltation above others. He shows that glory can reside in the most detested and shunned of places: the Cross. This is the only world where greatness and God’s love can coexist: where greatness finds itself residing in servitude and sacrifice.

    So as we peel back the layers of motivation behind the persecution of Jeremiah and the yearned-for elevation of James and John, we find the ugly sin of jealousy. We also find this squarely at the heart of the Sanhedrin during the arrest, trial, and Crucifixion of Jesus. Today’s readings are a warning, pointing to the dangers of jealousy, which hides in the motivations by which we live out our lives. Lent is our time to root it out and stop it.

    Modern icon of Saint Cyprian, provenance unknown | Image from pilgrimcenterofhope.org.

    Saint Cyprian, Doctor of the Church, Bishop of Carthage and Martyr, was an African born of noble birth around the year 200 AD. Son of a Roman senator, he was a dissolute pagan in his youth, although well trained in rhetoric, philosophy and law. He converted to Christianity in his middle years. He went to his own beheading willingly in 258 AD after refusing to recant his Christianity during the persecutions of the Emperor Valerian.

    In his Treatise on Jealousy and Envy, St. Cyprian traces jealousy to Satan, “when he beheld man made in the image of God, broke forth into jealousy with malevolent envy— not hurling down another by the instinct of his jealousy before he himself was first hurled down by jealousy, captive before he takes captive, ruined before he ruins others” (4). This sin, therefore, is so powerful that it overcame the devil himself and is associated with the core of his own evil. “Thenceforth envy rages on the earth, in that he who is about to perish by jealousy obeys the author of his ruin, imitating the devil in his jealousy” (4).

    St. Cyprian traces how jealousy is at the heart of tragedies and figures throughout scripture: Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, King Saul and King David, and finally Christ and the Jews. Then, he proclaims that jealousy is, in fact, the source of all the other evils:

    It is the root of all evils, the fountain of disasters, the nursery of crimes, the material of transgressions. Thence arises hatred, thence proceeds animosity. Jealousy inflames avarice, in that one cannot be content with what is his own, while he sees another more wealthy. Jealousy stirs up ambition, when one sees another more exalted in honors. When jealousy darkens our perceptions, and reduces the secret agencies of the mind under its command, the fear of God is despised, the teaching of Christ is neglected, the day of judgment is not anticipated. Pride inflates, cruelty embitters, faithlessness prevaricates, impatience agitates, discord rages, anger grows hot; nor can he who has become the subject of a foreign authority any longer restrain or govern himself. By this the bond of the Lord’s peace is broken; by this is violated brotherly charity; by this truth is adulterated, unity is divided; men plunge into heresies and schisms when priests are disparaged, when bishops are envied … (6).

    We have heard the more memorable, “money is the root of all evil,” but is not money just a vector for envy? Cyprian has some memorable phrases of his own; I particularly like “nursery of crimes” and how jealousy removes our ability to “restrain or govern” ourselves. He has several great phrases at the start of the next section: “what a gnawing worm of the soul is it, what a plague-spot of our thoughts, what a rust of the heart, to be jealous of another, either in respect of his virtue or of his happiness … to make other people’s glory one’s own penalty” (7). Cyprian really brings home how jealousy is primarily a harm to our own selves, our own humanity.

    He says this even more forcefully: “Yet you are the enemy of no one’s well-being more than your own … Wherever you may be, your adversary is with you; your enemy is always in your own breast; your mischief is shut up within; you are tied and bound with the links of chains from which you cannot extricate yourself; you are captive under the tyranny of jealousy” (9). 

    Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (detail), 1545, Angelo Bronzino | Wikimedia Commons. This figure in the background of the painting is often thought to be Jealousy.

    This does resonate, at least with me. Even just from my adolescent jealousies over love interests, jealousy threatened to be overwhelming. It definitely seemed to act like a tyrant; and a tyrant harming me and my character more than anything else. With this in mind, I think about contemporary secular credos I hear from friends, “as long as I’m not harming anyone else, then it shouldn’t be anyone’s concern.” Do we really want to ascribe to this thinking? Don’t we want to help people who are being ruled by the gnawing worm of the soul, the tyrant of jealousy?

    We are called to bring others to God, and there is no room for someone to move toward God if they are ruled by jealousy. Our love of others and charity should move us to help people overcome their jealousies and envy. So, even if they are harming themselves and not others, it really might be our business and mission as Christians to bring the light of Christ into their lives.

    But, it’s certainly enough for us during this time of Lent to try to identify the sneaky, hiding currents of jealousy in ourselves. Christ gives us many teachings like that in today’s gospel reading to help us overcome jealousy specifically by making it irrelevant. I think that in most cases, jealousy thrives in a worldview that is secular and driven by desires of this world.

    Let’s close with some words of encouragement from St. Cyprian: “Tear out from your breast thorns and thistles, that the Lord’s seed may enrich you with a fertile produce, that the divine and spiritual cornfield may abound to the plentifulness of a fruitful harvest … let all bitterness which had settled within be softened by the sweetness of Christ” (17).

  • Set Things Right

    Set Things Right

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

    The prophet Isaiah utters a simple phrase in today’s reading that might serve as a saying for all of Lent: “Come now, let us set things right, says the LORD.” I love God’s gentleness here, like someone seeking to calm you, reassure you, and just move forward on a new path without dwelling anymore on the past. All the more striking is the fact that it comes in the midst of serious charges of having fallen away from him.

    The ugly truth of our sin and unworthiness does not diminish God’s desire to have us convert back to Him. We shall see that Jesus, too, presents us with this same invitation: “whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” That is, the door to your exultation is open, let’s go.

    The Prophet Isaiah (early 1700s), Antonio Balestra | Wikimedia Commons.

    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, brought their tastes and religious idolatry not just into the country but into the Temple itself. How wicked was he? 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.

    Given the king’s significant turning away from God, we can start to understand the dire warnings in Isaiah. Interestingly, these warnings are not focused on intensifying their forms of worship, which the Jewish priests may have been concerned with, 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.”

    The force of today’s first reading, though, is focused on the gentle promise of salvation if the people change their ways and return to God’s commandments and precepts in their hearts. Thinking of yesterday’s reflection about sin and forgiveness, this is another stunning look at God’s economy of love that wipes out debt in sheer mercy and abundance:

    Come now, let us set things right,
        says the LORD:
    Though your sins be like scarlet,
        they may become white as snow;
    Though they be crimson red,
        they may become white as wool.
    If you are willing, and obey,
        you shall eat the good things of the land;

    God is ready to forgive all, to turn our bright red sins into pure whiteness. All that is needed is our willingness and obedience.

    Turning to the gospel reading, we encounter a solid condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees by Jesus. This is interesting, to be sure, but we should avoid interpretations of the type I’ve heard where Jesus is compared to a subversive counter-culture figure. He is not an authority-toppling hippy, despite bad late-20th century interpretations.

    Separated from the reality on the ground by 2,000 years, we tend to simplify the Israel in the time of Christ. We must turn to some true Church scholarship to orient ourselves. Here is a short excerpt from The Christian Centuries, A New History of the Catholic Church, Vol One: The First Six Hundred Years (Part One by Jean Danielou):

    “The study of the primitive Church of Jerusalem has shown the complexity of the Jewish world in which the Church was growing, and the different elements which that framework introduced to it. We have mentioned the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Hellenists, but there were also the Herodians and the Zealots, and Justin also names the ‘Gentists, the Merists, the Galileans, the Hellenians, the Baptists.’ The Samaritans are also mentioned” (17).

    The list actually goes on. From this glimpse of complexity, we can learn a few things, primarily that there were many power structures and communities throughout the Jewish world, and the scribes and Pharisees in Jerusalem represent a specific kind. Thus, Jesus’s criticisms must be understood not as a dig at authority in general, but at a specific type of authority that had emerged around the Holy Temple at Jerusalem.

    In fact, while Jews throughout Israel acknowledged the main temple in Jerusalem as the seat of the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant had long ago been lost, ever since the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC. So, while Jerusalem continued to be regarded as the capital of Jewish priestly culture and law, Jews all over the Levant (Holy Land) had their own synagogues and self-sustaining communities. Some only made it to the temple in Jerusalem once in their lives. Meanwhile, Jews in Jerusalem developed a sense of superiority over other Jews. This was particularly evident in the scribes and Pharisees, who were the experts in the law.

    Jesus acknowledges that the scribes and Pharisees “have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you.” Let’s remind ourselves that Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to uphold every iota and perfect it (cf. Mt 5:17). But he adds that while they can speak the truth from scriptures while teaching the law, they should not be emulated as people who actually uphold that truth: “do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice.” What follows is a sharp critique of how they comport themselves. They tell everyone what they must do but do not help them do it. They embellish their physical appearance, specifically by widening their phylacteries and lengthening their fringes.

    These two examples are important because those things were meant to be a way to keep God’s law close to one’s heart and mind. Phylacteries are boxes affixed to the head and left arm that contain slips of paper with scriptural passages. The tassels on their clothing were commanded in the Book of Numbers by God to be worn as a reminder to keep his commandments. These devices, meant to remind a person to turn inwardly to God, were effectively showed off by the scribes and Pharisees. They were outwardly boasting using the very items meant to turn oneself inward. And then there is the problem of them wanting places of honor at tables and to be called “Rabbi.” We are presented with a picture of insufferable, arrogant, and self-absorbed teachers. 

    Portrait of an Old Man (Possibly a Rabbi), 1645, Rembrandt van Rijn | Creative Commons, courtesy The Leiden Collection

    What is this superiority complex but obsession with power? And this public preening is nothing but pride. Jesus wants to remind us that we are called to the exact opposite. The gospel ends with his words, “you have but one master, the Christ. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

    This injunction was admirably lived by the Desert Fathers (and Desert Mothers) who strove to be the best Christians they could a few centuries after Christ. We hear them echo His teachings clearly: “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” (Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Matoes 11). At its heart, this humble way of acting is uncritical of others and generous. It participates in the Way of love given to us by Christ.

    Once you have turned back to the Lord, swept up in his surging wave of love, the soft but insistent voice that you take on needs only to provide a little motivation: “Come now, let us set things right.”

     

  • The Flipside of Feeling Bad

    Monday of the Second Week in Lent: Daniel 9:4b-10, Luke 6:36-38.

    Today’s readings present us with two sides of the Christian coin: sin and forgiveness. One side is ugly and tarnished; when we look at it in the full light of day, we are humiliated by what it reveals about us. The other side, though, is shiny and new, stamped with God’s image, gorgeous to behold. As long as we walk this earth, we deal in these coins. The devil constantly presses us to use the ugly side while God offers to make it beautiful again. Our soul soars when the coin is made beautiful, but it demands a full accounting of our sin in order to flip that coin.

    The Coin Collector (1600), Joos van Craesbeeck | Creative Commons, courtesy of the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois.

    But God operates within a different economy: that of love. The economy of love is governed only by the rules of mercy and abundance. Jesus tells us that we can participate in God’s economy of love. He teaches us that the more we forgive others, the more we will be forgiven for our own sins. The economy of love is multiplicative, never divisive.

    Let’s consider the first reading where the author of the Book of Daniel presents an honest accounting for the sins of the Jews and an accompanying request for forgiveness. Humiliation is something the Jews knew well at the time the Book of Daniel was written (~165 BC). During this period, Antiochus IV Epiphanes was the Greek ruler over Israel who brutally put down the revolt recorded in the Book of Maccabees. “He ordered his soldiers to cut down without mercy those whom they met and to slay those who took refuge in their houses. There was a massacre of young and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter of virgins and infants. In the space of three days, eighty thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent death, and the same number being sold into slavery” (2 Maccabees 5:11–14). Then he tried to force the remaining Jews to worship Zeus on pain of death.

    Rather than bemoan their conquered and downtrodden state, the Book of Daniel acknowledges their humiliation and takes spiritual responsibility: “O LORD, we are shamefaced, like our kings, our princes, and our fathers, for having sinned against you.” The message is not all shame and doom, however. God’s covenant with his people still stands and hope is always there: “But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!” The Book of Daniel sees God’s compassion and forgiveness in the coming of the Messiah and the ultimate vindication of the chosen people. (The writer of Daniel uses the famous phrase “Son of Man” for the messiah — one that Jesus will use in reference to himself throughout his ministry.) He is pointing to Christ, waiting for a fuller experience of being human and redeemed.

    What can we learn from this long passage acknowledging sins? We aren’t Israelites who broke their covenant by worshipping idols and ignoring God’s commandments. Or are we more like them than we think? Our idols may not be golden calves, and our worship of them may not include burnt offerings, but how much more willing are we to sacrifice our time and money for things of leisure, pleasure, pride, and position than charity for our fellow human? Americans are notorious for a few things: relentless drive in the work world, greed, and consumption. I think we can honestly lament with Daniel, “we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws. We have not obeyed your servants the prophets.”

    We live in a world transformed by Christ, one that the author of Daniel longed for. God has provided us with a clear path to forgiveness, namely our sacrament of Reconciliation. Let’s recall that at the heart of this sacrament is a pledge to no longer sin and an honest intention to convert back to God in our ways. Church Fathers like Tertullian see Reconciliation as the amazing gift that it is and beg us to engage fully with it: “In so far as you do not spare yourself, the more, believe me, will God spare you!” (Repentance, 203 AD). A few centuries later, St. John Chrysostom writes much the same: “Unless you tell the magnitude of your debt, you do not experience the abundance of grace” (Homilies on Lazarus (388 AD), 4.4).

    The emphasis on public confession and penance grew throughout the centuries until it was commandeered by secular Kings during their own inquisitions to root out heretics in their populace. The Spanish Inquisition is the most infamous, and these trials culminated in the highly orchestrated auto-da-fé. Prisoners were taken outside the city walls to a place called the quemadero, or burning place, where the sentences were read. Prisoners who were acquitted or whose sentence was suspended would fall on their knees in thanksgiving, but the condemned would be punished (whipping, torture, burning at the stake).

    The auto-da-fé is the pinnacle of public humiliation for sins and stands at the outward bound of a philosophy of negative reasoning around sin. In negative reasoning, if God’s mercy is given to us in the measure that we “do not spare ourselves” (to use Tertullian’s words), then extreme penance and humiliations are better guarantees of mercy. In this line of reasoning, the auto-da-fé is not only justified, its punishments are the best thing we can do to save souls. (queue the shivers)

    The Inquisition Tribunal (1808), Francisco Goya | Wikimedia Commons.

    Thankfully, Christ provides a much different teaching in today’s gospel. He says, “Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you.” In other words, live by God’s law and you will continue to live with God for eternity; carry divine love in your heart as you live, work, and act with other people, and divine love will be given to you for eternity. In addition to providing us with the Way to live in the light of truth, this is the antidote to negative reasoning about sin.

    Instead of the equation where greater humiliation and penance = greater forgiveness from God (negative reasoning), we encounter an equation where greater forgiveness towards others = greater forgiveness from God for our own sins (positive). We can see that the more we participate in the economy of love by which God operates, the more we are conforming ourselves to final unity with Him. This reciprocation is a refrain that Jesus repeats throughout his ministry. The Lord’s Prayer uses nearly the same formulation: “forgive us our trespasses, as [you see us forgiving others].”

    What changed from the old covenant in time of Daniel is that Jesus bursts into history as a bridge between Heaven and earth. He himself is the one gateway to the eternal Kingdom. Since we now have the liturgy that gives us true communion with God, we have the opportunity to carry our godliness into every aspect of our lives in a way that was never available before Christ. The liturgy as we live it is the new Way; the earliest Christians referred to themselves as followers “of the Way” (cf. Acts 9:1-2). To inhabit the spirit of the law (and let the Spirit inhabit us), we must not carry the spirit of condemnation and judgement, we must forgive and give.

    It’s easy to Monday-morning quarterback the problem with Inquisitors and the logic of the auto-da-fé. We must realize that this was a form of policing by the crown leveraged against non-Catholics and heretics, and reveals the problem with co-mingling our faith and political power structures. The state is charged with keeping the peace and enacting the national politics of a group of people. The Church is charged with saving souls. These are different aims and the centuries of Christendom in the Middle Ages gave us plenty of examples of how power structures of the state twisted and mobilized aspects of our faith for dubious ends.

    Christ calls us to something much different, much more radically personal. He calls us to begin operating within the generous, merciful economy of love. This has to be on an individual level, not a policy or state level, because it is a participation in the unique relationship God forges with each of us. Each person’s free will must be engaged within the state of life, personal histories, and sphere of influence that person has. The only law that can prescribe this type of engagement is a spiritual law because it involves the action of the soul in communion with God. No secular structure can know, much less evaluate, someone’s adherence to this law. Only God knows; and He knows us better than we know ourselves.

    Detail from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the Creation of Adam (1511), Michelangelo | Wikimedia Commons.

    Finally, I’d like to explain the title of this post. Just like our Christian coin on earth is sin/forgiveness, there is an associated mindset with which we can proceed in our lives. On one hand, we can focus on the awfulness of our sinful state and approach ourselves and everyone else as impure abscesses on the Body of Christ that require penance to eradicate. Or we could focus on the gift of forgiveness God gives us and the broader economy of love. This is the clear direction in which Jesus leads us. He speaks not just of forgiveness but of three other ways to understand God’s overflowing generosity:

    Stop judging and you will not be judged.
    Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
    Forgive and you will be forgiven.
    Give and gifts will be given to you;

    What unites these four is love and generosity — no judgement, no condemnation, just forgiving and giving. This is the way God works and Jesus is calling us to become more and more like him.

    This isn’t just good advice. His final statement in the gospel reading spells out, “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” I like the double meaning of measure being something you measure out to someone else as well as the way in which you take account of things. The “measure with which you measure” is not just the quantity of your generosity with others but also the way in which you’re thinking about your spiritual journey and salvation.

    This means that true salvation (i.e., divinification, union with God) comes to those in whom the spirit of generosity and forgiveness are infused to such an extent that they are everything. We are not “measuring” the number of times we forgive others or the number of gifts we give as a way to quantify or tally our movement towards Heaven. The way we go about things, “the measure with which we measure,” itself shuns the idea of quantification. We don’t count the hurts people enact on us; we don’t judge or condemn, we simply forgive. This Way of being, brought to us through Christ, is the point. And the more we walk the Way, the sooner and more completely God embraces us on that Way.

  • A Glimpse of Heaven

    A Glimpse of Heaven

    Second Sunday in Lent: Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Romans 8:31b-34, Mark 9:2-10.

    Today’s readings demand that we stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zone. Parts of our faith are easy to accept — the Beatitudes, for example — they mirror moral truths we find in other religions and civic systems. But when it comes to actual encounters with God, which are the endgame to which we’re all drawn, I might add, we find some frankly difficult episodes.

    Sure, God is love, but is he also the one who tells a man to sacrifice his own child, and tests him up to the point of the knife going in? That sounds extreme, almost unhinged, to our rational minds. And the Transfiguration includes what some would call ghosts, voices from the clouds, and secrecy pacts. This would be the description of a skeptic, of course. As believers, we have to come face-to-face with the Transfiguration as reality, not make believe; the truth, not a story.

    Sacrifice of Isaac (1635), Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn | Creative Commons, courtesy the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. There are several famous paintings of this moment, but the action captured in this one really strikes me – not just the hand of the angel on Abraham’s arm and the falling knife, but also Abraham’s hand completely covering Isaac’s face, pushing back his head and bearing his neck for the sacrifice. Isaac is clearly depicted as a lamb about to be slaughtered, and the vulnerability is moving.

    Lest we think we have to leave reason by the door as we enter into these moments of faith, there are rational underpinnings to God’s actions with Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The covenant God makes with him is fundamental for the preparation of humanity for his Son’s entry into history. It’s appropriate, then, that the patriarch understand and commit to the type of love God has in store for his progeny, God’s Chosen People.

    In poker terms, this love is all-in. No chips are set aside, nothing reserved. Today, we read that “God put Abraham to the test,” and not to belabor the comparison, but he needed to see if Abraham would go all-in. Why, we might ask, is this necessary?

    We can’t forget that God’s love allows for our own assent and free will to meet his. He never wants to take away our sovereignty over our own will; if he did, this would be a lesser love that does not respect us as complete beings. Not only that, we would be incapable of truly loving him back. We would be automatons, doing everything he willed like marionettes.

    As God is establishing his People, he needs to have these moments where his leaders, prophets, and other figures exercise their free will in the direction of faith otherwise this spiritual muscle and determination can wither and become weak. I think this is a good way of looking at what the scriptures call “testing” — it is, in fact, a loving act by God to help his chosen ones to grow in faith, to enact and uphold their end of the covenant (this is the definition of “being faithful”). They gain spiritual determination, but perhaps even more importantly they serve as a lasting example and teaching for all of us who follow.

    Who is this God? A God who wants us to come to him, not a God who cackles with sadistic glee by making us march around doing ridiculous and dangerous tasks. Every moment of salvation history is infused with God’s superabundant love. In order to truly understand our scriptures and the Word of God, this must be our starting point.

    This is why all the details are so important in our recorded scriptures. God acts with great purpose in the world and the Holy Spirit guides the pen of the authors of scriptures in order to capture these details faithfully. Two details from the first reading jump out at me today. First, it is what God’s messenger tells him: “Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.” I love how absolute the command is not to “do the least thing” to Isaac, displaying God’s absolute love for His creation. The angel acknowledges Abraham’s devotion to God (most translations write “that you fear God,” meaning you have great reverence, respect, awe, fear, and devotion), specifically because “you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.” As Christians, we see the significance of this episode because God, too, will be sacrificing his own Son (and not stopping it). God is not asking of us anything he is not willing to accomplish himself.

    The second detail that jumps out for me today is the ram. In a verse skipped over in today’s reading, Isaac asks Abraham where the lamb is for the sacrifice. Abraham replies, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son” (Gen 22:8a). This is a sad-but-lovely double meaning for Abraham because in his mind Isaac is himself this lamb led to the slaughter. What prompted him to say it this way? Perhaps it was the Word of God placing this phrasing in his mouth.

    While some scholars see no significance to the fact that a ram was what God provided instead of a lamb, others see a great significance here. I tend to see significance in scriptural details as the Doctors of the Church teach us to. A ram is just an adult sheep while a lamb is a young one, and a ram’s horns make it easier to be caught in a thicket and so be delivered to Abraham. More significantly, we know that ultimately an unblemished lamb will be sacrificed once and for all; John the Baptist tells us, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). The ram can be used for Abraham to sacrifice and save his son from physical death while Jesus, the Lamb of God, will be sacrificed to save us all from spiritual death.

    Agnus Dei (1635-1640), Fracisco de Zurbarán | Creative Commons, courtesy the Museo del Prado, Madrid.

    In the gospel reading, St. Mark’s account of the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John behold this spotless lamb: “he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.” The Transfiguration starts where Abraham finished — they have climbed the mountain with the Son and have found the lamb acceptable to God as a sacrifice. 

    But here God more fully reveals his Truth to humanity. “Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.” We are invited, like Peter, James and John, to ask what this could possibly mean. On the mountain — the place of encounter with God since time immemorial — our teacher is transfigured into a vision of purity so dazzling white it hurts the eyes. Clearly he is someone special and this is a great confirmation of our decision to follow him. But now he stands in the company of the greatest law-giver and the prophet who was to return to us, talking with them as an equal would!

    To be on the same level as Moses and Elijah, well, we perhaps didn’t expect such an exalted teacher. Not to mention, these great men are dead and yet here they are, seemingly in the flesh once again and holding a conversation with him. Are they apparitions or spirits? Are we to think that they are there in some sort of resurrected body? Whatever the case, this encounter is miraculous and great. Praise be to God, and how exalted this spiritual encounter must feel to be in the presence of these three great men!

    Thus, Peter says, let’s build a tent for everyone and stay here. This is how Moses welcomed the divine presence of God to stay with them in the desert, obscured by the cloud. The tent has a sacred significance for the temporary dwelling of the divine here on earth. I can relate to Peter here. Have you ever been on a retreat or encountered the sacraments in a way that was extraordinary, when you felt the Spirit of God more palpably than you ever had before? I’ve felt that — like my soul was soaring. And above any other reaction (fear, confusion, uncertainty, nervousness) was the desire to have it continue, to keep that feeling going. Let’s build a tent and stay awhile!

    But this is not the Christian path, always on the move, always in the world. 

    And in response to Peter’s naïve declaration, the Father arrives: “from the cloud came a voice, ‘This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.’” Peter, James and John must have been thunderstruck. Their teacher’s specialness was confirmed in a way that far surpassed any expectation. Moses and Elijah now appear as minor players in the drama where the Father reveals his Son as the unblemished lamb, the Savior. And just as abruptly as Jesus was transfigured before them, it all disappears. Mark writes, “Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them.” What was the point of having this revelation of the Son in all his Glory only visible to these three men for a few moments on a secluded mountain?

    Today’s Office of Readings gives us an explanation from Pope St. Leo the Great: 

    The great reason for this transfiguration was to remove the scandal of the cross from the hearts of his disciples, and to prevent the humiliation of his voluntary suffering from disturbing the faith of those who had witnessed the surpassing glory that lay concealed. With no less forethought he was also providing a firm foundation for the hope of holy Church. The whole body of Christ was to understand the kind of transformation that it would receive as his gift. The members of that body were to look forward to a share in that glory which first blazed out in Christ their head.

    This is a sharp insight. The Transfiguration occurs towards the end of Jesus’s ministry, shortly after he first shares with his Apostles “that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mk 8:31). Peter’s response is to vigorously tell Christ not to say such things (and Jesus famously responds, “get behind me, Satan,” pointing out that it is a temptation of course to deny the bitter cup he is asked to drink and he must not be tempted away from the Father’s will). This shows us that there was likely some emotional upheaval going on with the Apostles.

    They had given up everything to follow this man they believed to be the Messiah and he tells them the endgame is great suffering and being killed. Pope St. Leo the Great recognizes the despair that must have gripped the Apostles and the fact that the Transfiguration is God’s way of showing them the truth and glory behind the sacrifice before it was made. It is a glimpse of Heaven. This vision, imprinted on the very hearts of Peter, James and John, gives them the image of their faith to share with everyone else in their time of darkest despair after the Crucifixion. Christ always is this immaculate lamb, even when pierced and covered with blood and hanging from the cross. It is his core being, the Truth. To this day, this gives us our undimmable Christian hope for our reunion with our undefeatable Savior.

    The Transfiguration of the Lord (mosaic, Church of the Transfiguration, Mount Tabor, Israel), 1924, Umberto Noni | Wikimedia Commons. The caption is Latin for “And he was transfigured before them.”

    When we recognize the great purpose and significance of the Transfiguration, it helps us start to digest and accept the wondrous event as it took place. But no less than the Resurrection itself, we are called to believe this without seeing it with our own eyes. Doubting Thomas would (without a doubt) doubt the Transfiguration as much as the bodily Resurrection of our Savior. God’s question to us is the same as it was to Abraham: are you all-in?

    Our faith demands ever fiber of our minds, bodies, and souls. We must give ourselves back to our Creator, in love, in order to enter the Kingdom. This is the same action of Christ, giving himself wholly back to his Father in love. If we are called to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, we are also called to believe in his bodily Resurrection, his Ascension into Heaven, and his Transfiguration on the Mountain that revealed his Glory to the apostles to plant the seed of faith, hope, and love in the Church.

  • Pray for your Persecutors

    Pray for your Persecutors

    Saturday in the First Week of Lent: Deuteronomy 26:16-19, Matthew 5:43-48.

    Today’s readings spell out our compact with God in a nutshell. He will make us sacred and all he asks in return is that we love unconditionally. We will ponder today how difficult it is to love those who hate us and are mean to us, but let’s consider for a moment the flip side. How easy and generous this covenant is! After all, loving is the best feeling one can possibly have. Not just easy love for someone who’s nice to you, but also that generous love for a stranger when you give them a coffee or a blanket. God is not trying to lead us down a necessarily onerous path (although the Cross is part of the path) — He has infused this world with grace and His Spirit and nothing is greater than union with God’s grace and Spirit. They lift us up, give us strength, reveal beauty, and elevate our souls. This feels good. As Jesus tells us, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mt 11:29-30).

    Generosity (contemporary), Stig Lofnes | Image from silapix.com.

    For those like St. Thomas Aquinas, who believe our capacity for reason is an essential part of our spiritual being and scientific pursuits can aid our ability to know God’s wondrous works, the 2010s were a boom decade in happiness research. Several studies showed that people reported increased happiness when engaging in generous behaviors like giving sweets or money to others rather than keeping these things for themselves. This is “light” social science, but the hard sciences back this up.

    In the 2017 article “A neural link between generosity and happiness,” the authors use functional MRI to show that specific regions in the brain linked to happiness controls are more active in people practicing generosity: “Generous decisions engage the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) in the experimental more than in the control group and differentially modulate the connectivity between TPJ and ventral striatum. Importantly, striatal activity during generous decisions is directly related to changes in happiness.”¹ So science has finally showed a physical manifestation of something God has been urging us to do since we’ve been human! Listening to God’s Word and practicing charity undeniably makes us feel good.

    So why is it seem to be so rare?

    We can’t forget that we’re living in a fallen world, the devil’s world. Jesus acknowledges this, for instance, before his Passion and Death in John’s gospel: “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out” (John 12:31).

    St. Paul writes several times how Christians, the children of light, must continue what Christ started and dispel the darkness of the world. He describes the action of Satan: “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4). And the devil’s primary mode of blinding us to the truth is through our senses, through temptations that beguile us and ensnare us into believing that we must fulfill our desires at all costs.

    The redemption of the world out of the clutches of the devil won’t be complete until the Judgement Day and Christ’s return. Until then, we struggle with temptations contrary to God’s law. This is our cross to bear, and why Jesus tells us, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mt 16:24).

    The struggle is real. St. Paul writes to the Romans about the inner conflict between knowing what’s right but still doing the wrong thing: “For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom 7:14-15). He speaks of being sold into slavery under sin, that is the original sin of Adam and Eve that cursed humanity to be subjects of the prince of the world, Satan. 

    Yes, the struggle. This is why God and Moses are so forceful in setting the commandments before the Jewish people. God knows that, in our fallen state, we need strong guidance, a strong dose of His truth in order to sustain our moral fiber. Moses says, “This day the LORD, your God, commands you to observe these statutes and decrees. Be careful, then, to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.” In just the short passage from Deuteronomy in today’s first reading, we hear “command,” “observe,” “walk,” “hearken,” and “keep.” On the other side of the equation, we hear twice that God has “promised” them in return and twice that this is an “agreement.”

    If it feels a little bit like a parent repeating himself to his wayward child in order to impress upon the child the need to do the right thing, well, it is exactly that. But the promise is so great. In no uncertain terms, God promises to reverse the curse that He placed on humanity via Adam and Eve: “you will be a people sacred to the LORD.” 

    This return to a sacred state from our fallen state, as we know, comes through His Son and the great sacrifice to expiate our sins. God’s patient plan is to cultivate his Chosen People to be the receptacle of his divinity (Mary, that is) and the first recipients of his mercy and grace. 

    Triptych: Crucifixion and other Scenes (1302-1308), Duccio di Buoninsegna | Creative Commons, courtesy the Royal Collection Trust, England.

    But Jesus perfects our understanding of the Ten Commandments when he comes. Today, he teaches, “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” The “hate your enemy” part was not in the Ten Commandments but rose instead as a cultural tradition, which is why Jesus must correct it.

    He explains that if we want to be a people sacred to the Lord, we must truly be worthy to be called his children; we must act like Him: “that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” It’s a lovely sentence to describe the indiscriminate love of the Father, because sun and rain are life-giving aspects of creation that God has created to nourish us. Jesus ends with, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Tall order! This is the call of sainthood. But then, the reward couldn’t be greater, to reclaim our status as a people sacred to Him.

    OK, it’s time to get real with ourselves. Is perfection possible? Even just this one commandment, to love everyone, to pray for your persecutors? Let’s say that we are faithful people, that we cultivate a relationship with God in prayer and receive the sacraments as part of the Church on earth. Let’s say that we even make a point not to have “enemies,” per se. That is, even if people do evil against us, we forgive them and do not harbor hatred for them, making them an enemy. Is that the same as loving them?

    Can we remind ourselves to literally pray for the person who is being mean to us or making the planet a worse place by their greed and pride? Reason tells me that I would need a heck of a thick skin not to react badly to someone road raging at me or yelling at me in a store for no reason other than they are having a crappy day. Practically speaking, I think I would need tons of patience and tons of practice.

    While these practical considerations might be true to an extent, the one thing I’m not relying on here is God’s grace. If we are trying to be loving, wouldn’t it make sense to appeal to the author of love itself? Let’s be honest, we can’t do this on our own — our sense of pride and injustice is too great to have someone scream at us unreasonably and meet them with love in return. Or have someone drag us to court unfairly and meet them with love in return. Or have someone want to silence us, arrest us, beat us because we are different than them … and meet them with love in return.

    Thankfully, God made us more than just physical creatures. We are spiritual creatures! We have something available to us that elevates us from being mere animals and we need to enter into “that mysterious encounter known as prayer” (CCC, 2567). If we can shut off our knee-jerk response for just a moment and enter into that mystical space of prayer, it immediately helps us. Just closing your eyes and reaching out with your soul to ask God for help has a calming effect in my experience.

    We have many saints as role models for us. We also have modern role models who have dealt with some of the worst persecution outside of war — I’m speaking of icons from the civil rights movement, specifically Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Facing blind hatred from white supremacists, politicians reluctant to enact change, and a black populace vacillating between violent retribution and nonviolence, King’s words came from his deep Christian spirituality: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” King’s statement moves beyond the internal struggle to acknowledge the spiritual forces at work.

    If we do not consider that we are caught up in a much bigger world than what we perceive with our senses, we are blind to truths that we are called to understand. King helps us remember what Jesus had to say about his own Passion and Death — that it was about vanquishing Satan and death, not about his feelings or pride. I particularly like another quote from King: “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” He knew that beyond the emotional burden of hate, the burden of sin was much too great to carry.

    Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013), Derek Russell | Image from mccall.com

    Look at a video recording of what King had to deal with and realize that if he could channel love in the face of the hate he endured, it should be a piece of cake for most of the rest of us.

    As we keep our sights on being perfect just as our heavenly Father is perfect, Let’s remember that God knows what it’s like to be human. Jesus acknowledges the limitations of our minds and bodies to his favored apostles this when praying at the Garden of Gethsemane: “Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt 26:41). This added gift from God is that he showed us his willingness to become completely human and experience the same weaknesses we experience. There’s some experiential empathy for you. He gives us the sacrament of Reconciliation to help us return to him with a clean soul again and again. And he gives us the richness of his Word to explore over and over in order to help us slowly, painfully, resist hatred and enmity, replacing it with the spiritual ballast of prayer. 

     

     

    ¹ Park, S., Kahnt, T., Dogan, A. et al. A neural link between generosity and happiness. Nat Commun 8, 15964 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15964

  • The Problem with Little Sins

    The Problem with Little Sins

    Friday in the First Week of Lent: Ezekiel 18:21-28, Matthew 5:20-26.

    Most of us understand when something is evil because that word itself conjures the sense of serious moral wrong. Murder, for instance, is clearly evil, and hopefully we feel the same about stealing, cheating, and adultery.

    When we get to lying, things get a bit more vague. There’s that convenient category of “white lies” wherein we place our untruths not done out of malice but out of some other interest (often mistakenly considered “the other person’s own good”). I’d like to ponder this category of white lies because it attempts to bring the spirit of Christ’s words today to weaken the law that He also upholds.

    It’s a good example of how crafty we are in trying to turn a blind eye to venial sins.

    White Lie (2010), Erin Harper Vernon | Image from erinharpervernon.com.

    In the first reading, Ezekiel explains the repercussions of following or not following the moral law set by God. God speaks through Ezekiel: “If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just, he shall surely live, he shall not die.” Now some Jewish scholars and rabbis did interpret this as an eschatological “life and death,” meaning that God was speaking of eternal life in Heaven or death in Sheol. But many Jews heard this as a life and death on this earth, which implies that God’s retribution was like an instant karma type of thing (for instance, the Sadducees did not believe in resurrection).

    God continues by speaking of his relationship with us: “None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him; he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced.” A few notes here: first, we hear the great tenet of the Judeo-Christian faith, what the Jews call teshuva, or the ability to repent and be forgiven by God. God promises that he will not remember — completely forget! — the sins of a wicked man who turns from his sins and practices virtue. We sometimes continue to punish ourselves for past sins even after confession, so it’s important to realize that from the very first revelations to the prophets, God shares this aspect of his love for us.

    Second note: our spiritual life or death is inexorably tied to a relationship with God, not just our virtuous actions. It is not our virtuous actions by themselves that grant us spiritual life in the Kingdom, but God’s forgiveness as part of his covenant with us. This should make us want to avoid a “cold” virtuous life, where we are simply doing what is right because that’s what we’re supposed to do. We need to encounter Him at some point, in some way, and the more we encounter and embrace his love, the more we’re on the path to spiritual life in the Kingdom. God wants to make this personal.

    Ezekiel proclaims, “Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked? says the Lord GOD. Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way that he may live?” I just love the idea that God can derive pleasure and rejoice when we turn away from evil. Maybe it’s the thing in me that wants to please, but I can’t think of any greater calling than to cause delight in the Lord. As the source of good, he also reassures us that he’s not a deity who cackles with glee when it comes time to punish evil. This causes him no joy; he wants us all to join him in Heaven.

    As we turn to the gospel reading, we are again plunged into St. Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount. It starts with God’s call to be greater even than those who represent the pinnacle of Jewish observance of the law: “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.” Whoa! What is a regular, workingman Jew or Gentile supposed to think of this?

    Today’s gospel doesn’t show us, but this comes at the end of the section where Jesus proclaims, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill … whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:17, 19). I want to examine his specific phrasing here — Christ is not speaking of just obeying the law but of (dis)obeying and teaching others to do the same.

    Why does this matter? Because Christ’s entry into history has started the End Times, where we all receive a share in his divinity. By being baptized in the blood of Christ’s sacrifice, we emerge from our baptismal waters as new people, part of the Mystical Body of Christ. Thus, when we teach others something wrong, we are attempting to corrupt a very part of the divinity of Christ. Conversely, when we uphold the law and teach others to do the same, we are upholding our New Covenant with God, affirming the divinity of Christ in humanity, and bolstering the mystical relationship between our spiritual health, God’s love for us, and the love we pour out on each other in virtuous actions of charity.

    The Light of the World (1853-54), William Holman Hunt | Image from pixels.com.

    Then, Jesus delves into the seeming differences between mortal and venial sins. He acknowledges that we all are familiar with the law of mortal sin, that You shall not kill, adding, “But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.” Jesus seems to impose an impossible obstacle for our entrance to the Kingdom. He is equating unspoken and unacted upon anger with murder! How can we be this perfect?

    It helps to dig into the heart. What these share is evil intent. Our anger puts us in a position of opposing another person to such an extent that we wish to enact some type of violence — a verbal insult, public scorn, physical violence, etc. This reflects an attitude of hate, not love, where we no longer consider that person a brother or sister but instead see an enemy or an opponent. In this state of anger, we no longer abide by the spirit of the law. Murder is just an extreme physical manifestation of the same spiritual low point.

    Thus, Jesus wants to point out that it’s not just adherence to the outward details of the law, but an equal adherence to the spirit of the law that makes one righteous. He points out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Scribes throughout his ministry, and today’s teaching is an expansion of why he is upset over hypocrisy. His point here is the same as when he says, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them” (Mt 23:4). The spirit of their actions is not God’s Spirit of helping the downtrodden.

    The Law is in place to help us become more God-like, and when they place “heavy burdens” upon others (i.e., religious prescriptions) rather than helping and loving others as God does, they are no longer operating within God’s law, even though they seem to be. To rephrase Christ’s lesson here, we must allow the Holy Spirit to re-orient us in everything we think, say, and do. Otherwise, we are just as far from God when we think hateful thoughts as we are when we act them out.

    This lesson from the Incarnate Word of God is, as we would expect, the same that he shared with Ezekiel 600 years earlier. God wants to emphasize his intimate relationship with us and our salvation. He is trying to tell us that he wants a personal relationship with us; he wants us to get close to him in mind, spirit, and action.

    Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, the great 20th century Dominican spiritual master, can help us understand why venial sins are so destructive and to be avoided. He points out that while mortal sin is like committing spiritual suicide, “He who falls into venial sin impedes the action of God from exercising itself freely on him, and little by little ruins his spiritual health just as the alcoholic ruins the health of his body” (Knowing the Love of God, 16). I appreciate the analogy here — I can see how venial sins are somewhat addictive in that we fall into the habit of doing them because we think they’re no big deal, and I can see how they are spiritually destructive. We constantly make excuses for ourselves when we commit venial sins, specifically of the vein, “I didn’t mean to do something bad.” We are trying to excuse the slight against God and fellow human.

    Garrigou-Lagrange is unsparing in his assessment of what sin means: “Sin is not only a foolishness and a vileness, but considered in relation to God it is also the blackest ingratitude, the greatest injustice, and the gravest outrage” (21). This is where I want to go with this reflection: how do we hurt our relationship with God when we sin?

    Garrigou-Lagrange justifies his statements about ingratitude, injustice, and outrage against God by reminding us of his sovereignty as Creator of the Universe. He writes, “God, the Creator, has full rights over our life. As supreme overlord He has the right of possession over our mind and our heart, and this right, more absolute than any of our property rights, remains binding even if we forget it” (21). What a wake-up call for us. We are so used to imagining that we are independent actors in the world, sovereign over our own bodies and minds, that all our cultural messaging argues to the contrary of God’s primary sovereignty.

    Contemporary American rhetoric over “rights,” in particular, is an extreme example of how we imagine that the most inviolable thing in the world is our right to do as we see fit within the law (or change the law if it’s inconvenient). But how wrong this is! The most inviolable thing is God’s sovereignty, and we are his subjects. We owe him our faith and loyalty and his Law is not to be changed in any way. This does not sit easy with the contemporary imagination.

    Of course God is no tyrant and, instead of forcing our obedience, he gives us the free will to obey or disobey, to grow closer to him or to push him away. As we’ve observed in prior reflections, he has called out to us before we searched for him. And he constantly offers us his grace. That is where we start.

    Thus, as Garrigou-Lagrange points out, “In the present, in the very instant in which it is committed, venial sin deprives the soul of a precious grace. In that instant, grace was offered us to make progress in perfection, to be charitable, fervent, and industrious … Now this grace has been lost by our neglect, our laziness, and our limited charity” (23). Perhaps if we start thinking of our venial sins in this way, as a moment when we pushed away the grace that could have perfected us, we will become more aware of the fact that they are sins.

    Sorrowing old man (“At Eternity’s Gate”), 1890, Vincent van Gogh | Wikimedia Commons.

    I want to circle back to the idea of “white lies.” This might be the most common type of venial sin and it is a real perversion of Christ’s teaching in the gospel today. We justify white lies by saying that we are operating under a spirit of goodness. We don’t want someone to get overly upset by the truth, or we want to shield them from difficult truths, so we lie. But Jesus doesn’t say that the spirit trumps the letter of the law. Upholding the spirit of God’s goodness is part and parcel of the Law that also prescribes a specific way of action. The basis of these prescriptions are the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes. We can’t justify breaking the command to be truthful by saying we meant well. Let’s remember St. Paul’s great words to the Ephesians: “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light” (Eph 5:8).

    Both readings today display how God wants us to convert to Him, fully and unreservedly. Unless we’re in a monastery, praying constantly, it’s easy for us to be tempted to venial sin and turn our backs to God’s offer of grace. But that’s why Lent is so important, so that prayer, fasting, and acts of charity can help us fight temptations and remain close to God. 

  • Asking for God’s Help

    Asking for God’s Help

    Thursday in the First Week of Lent: Esther C: 12, 14-16, 23-25, Matthew 7:7-12.

    Today, we hear Jesus tell us “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Christians have reflected on these words since the earliest days of the Church, and our perspectives have ranged from awe over a responsive God to expectations of a vending-machine deity. God is decidedly not a vending machine or djinn in a lamp, granting wishes. The key to understanding Jesus’s words is to put today’s gospel reading in context.

    This reading is a small excerpt from the magnificent Sermon on the Mount, which stretches from Matthew 5:1 to 7:29, three full gospel chapters. It opens with the Beatitudes, includes the Lord’s Prayer, and ends with dire warnings over not aligning oneself interiorly to God. This is one great teaching, and cherry picking a saying here and there, while easy to do, greatly misrepresents the complex threads of his teaching.

    Old Man Praying (1665-1670), Gerrit Dou | Creative Commons, courtesy The Leiden Collection.

    There are several passages that specifically warn against a flippant, easy way of asking God for what you want. The most direct might be: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’” (Mt 7:21-23). This is a person calling out — asking, seeking, knocking — but the answer is unimaginably awful. Christ tells this person, “go away from me, you evildoers.”

    Doesn’t this contradict the excerpt from today’s gospel? Jesus explains the crucial qualifier: only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven will enter the kingdom. Another aspect of this passage that jumps out at me is when he says, “I never knew you,” to the person clamoring to enter the kingdom. Getting to know Christ is an absolutely essential part of our Christian journey. There simply is no salvation unless we acknowledge him as God, walk alongside him, and ask him to intercede for us to receive God’s mercy.

    This Christian journey happens as we live the liturgy, both sacramentally in our sacred spaces and practically in our secular spaces. And at the heart of today’s reading is a particular aspect of the journey: prayer. Our asking, seeking and knocking are ways we appeal to God through prayer.

    But let’s not get this backwards — anything we ask God in prayer is already a response to Him having first reached out to us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “God calls man first. Man may forget his Creator or hide far from his face; he may run after idols or accuse the deity of having abandoned him; yet the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer” (2567). He gave us prophets, he gave us revelation, he gave us his Son, he gives us miracles; in short, he has provided the reason to believe in him and a reason to call out to him for help.

    The question is, are we coming from a place where we are his humble servants, begging to know his will? Or are we instead coming from a place where we’ve already identified an outcome we want and are asking him to fulfill it? I want a good grade, a healthy dog, a politician to change his views, etc. In these scenarios, we have supplanted his will with our will. It’s easy to do — something, in fact, we’re much more likely to do than not because patiently, quietly, humbly discerning God’s will takes lots of prayer and lots of practice.

    Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that asking for a good grade or a healthy dog is a bad thing. In fact, it is a sign that we want to bring God into our daily travails, to live with him and his help in everything. My gripe (to be honest – that’s what it is) is the all-too-common contemporary response we hear when people don’t get what they want. “How could God do that to me?” is the gist of this response.

    And sometimes it’s such a violent response when dealing with things like life, death, and suffering, that people decide to push God out of their lives, stop “being Catholic” (which is impossible, BTW, once you’ve been baptized into the Church), or even deny His existence. This is as transparently the work of Satan as it gets; we can practically see him sitting on the shoulder of these people prompting them to put their will ahead of God’s, to react with anger over outcomes they set for themselves, to blame God, and to ultimately decide to deny Him. We must avoid these things at all costs.

    And Jesus teaches us how to orient ourselves appropriately right here in the Sermon on the Mount. The Lord’s Prayer is the pinnacle of how to pray to our Father and the way to orient ourselves. Let’s recall our first two petitions at the beginning of the prayer, after acknowledging his holiness: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done …” We are asking, before all else, to hasten to the Kingdom of God. This does not mean that we are asking for death or for the end of the world, but for unification with God, which can happen while in this world as the saints show us.

    Do we believe this when we say it? Is this the thrust of our lives — to hasten to the Kingdom above all else? If it is, then earthly concerns take on a decidedly lower importance.

    The second request to God is that his will is done here on earth like we know it is in heaven. Christ repeats this many times throughout his ministry and lives it by willingly going through his Passion and Death according to the will of his Father. Jesus can’t stress enough for us how important this aspect of prayer and faith life is for us. God’s will — often unknowable and veiled — is something we hope to discern; but regardless of fully knowing, it is something we desire to be realized in the world.

    That’s real trust, you might say, and yes, it is! But there is nothing better to want than the will of Goodness itself, of Love itself, of Wisdom and Justice itself. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us to align ourselves with his will, feed ourselves on the spiritual food of his Word and worry less about this world and more about our spiritual well-being.

    Jesus reiterates this a few verses later: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? … But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mt 6:25, 33). Ahh, what a salve for our constant worry! Our Lord tells us not to worry about our lives and earthly things but to “strive first” for the Kingdom and God’s righteousness, then everything else will fall into place.

    Woman in Prayer (contemporary), by Maria Magdalena Oosthuizen | Image from pinterest.com.

    So, let’s return to today’s gospel reading with the broader context of the Sermon on the Mount in mind. When Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you,” I have to believe that he has something specific in mind. He has already told us to be humble petitioners yearning for the Kingdom, so what we are asking for is ultimately for God’s will to be done, if not understood. What we are seeking is his guidance in our lives. And we are knocking on his door in that response to his invitation to know him — we are knocking because we want his grace and love to overwhelm us in our lives.

    And just like we know how to give good gifts to our children, “how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.” Let’s just not imagine that we know what those good things are or when we’ll receive them, if ever in this world. Our humbleness dictates that we to not presume to put our desires or will ahead of the supreme will.

    Does Jesus direct us only to ask for God’s will to be done and nothing else? Not exactly, although I think he emphasizes that this should be first in our order of operations. Once we start to know God and love him, we can become instruments of his love in this world and that’s where charity comes in. We can bring our petitions on behalf of others, which come about because of God’s love working through us and manifesting as charity, thanks to “that mysterious encounter known as prayer.”

    And so in the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Mourning is an act of charity for the souls of the departed. Also: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” This hunger and thirst for righteousness is not just one’s own perfection but a desire for God’s justice for others in the world. And, of course, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” The mercy that we pour out for our fellow humans is absolutely an act of charity, and God rewards us in the Kingdom for this.

    But let’s remember the order of operations here: 1. Love God first; ask for His will to be done, seek for His guidance, knock on His door for grace; and then: 2. Love your neighbor; ask for God’s love to pour through you to them, seek for their good, knock on His door to grace them. All of our Christian attitude and prayer is outwardly focused, not inwardly. May we remember this!

    I don’t want to miss saying a few words about the lovely reading from Esther. Here are my thoughts as recounted from last year’s reflection. For me, the Book of Esther is a bit of an odd duck in the Old Testament. It’s a great story explaining the establishment of the Jewish holiday of Purim, but the colorful narrative of ironic reversals and high-stakes changes of fortune remind me of a Shakespearean play. The setting is Babylon, and while many Jews have started to return to Israel after the Babylonian Captivity officially ends, Esther and her uncle Mordecai are some of those who remain. She’s not presented as particularly devout, and her most striking asset is her beauty, which gets her chosen as Queen after “trying out” with many other young virgins in the harem.

    But her secularism changes when the king is convinced to pass an edict that all Jews in the kingdom “shall all—wives and children included—be utterly destroyed by the swords of their enemies, without pity or restraint, on the fourteenth day of the twelfth month, Adar, of this present year.” Mordecai asks Esther to intercede with the king. In a passage before the one read today, Mordecai implores her not to “keep silence at such a time as this,” and says, “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” 

    The rub is that no one can come into the king’s presence without being summoned or they are killed. So in order to ask for him to change the edict, Esther must take her life in her hands. But, Esther is convinced that action is needed. And — praise the Lord — the action she takes begins with God. She responds to Mordecai: “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do.”

    Queen Esther (1878), Edwin Long | Wikimedia Commons.

    This is where we join today’s reading. Esther, alone and “seized with mortal anguish,” falls back on the faith of her people. She covers her head with ashes and dung and utterly humbles every part of her body. Clearly, her prayer is fervent and sincere. It takes the form of both petition to help her find the right words and intercession, to save all of the Jews from slaughter. It seems to me that this reading is included in our Lectionary as a reminder of the sincerity with which we should pray to our God when we ask for his help. Also, it shows us that she is moved by charity, not selfish concerns, something that prefigures what Christ will eventually set up as the paradigm for His Church.

     

  • Something Greater Is Here

    Something Greater Is Here

    Wednesday of the First Week of Lent: Jonah 3:1-10, Luke 11:29-32.

    We are steeped in the importance of Christology with today’s readings. In his 1998 Encyclical Letter, Fides et Ratio, Pope Saint John Paul II writes, “The word of God reveals the final destiny of men and women and provides a unifying explanation of all that they do in the world” (81). Do we really understand that the incarnate Word of God is this important?

    Do we interpret all of history through Christ or do we think that he’s just one voice among many holy voices?

    Today’s readings lead us to reflect on Christ, the “Something Greater,” who came to earth. Note that the reflection below is a lightly edited and revised version of the one I posted last year on this day in Lent.

    Today’s readings trace the Word’s presence among several faithless generations as an agent of conversion to God. The first reading tells us of Jonah and the Ninevites. The short Book of Jonah is as rich a study of human error as it is brief in length. The reading we receive today is the entirety of Chapter 3, one quarter of the whole Book of Jonah. It occurs after Jonah has already tried to flee God’s command to warn the people of Nineveh, after he is swallowed by the giant fish for three days and then spit back up on land after his prayer of distress from the belly of the fish. In other words, we encounter a man who believes in God but is unwilling to do His work. God puts him through trials to purify his heart, and Jonah finally realizes his indebtedness to God and converts to do the work he is asked. Many of us live a parallel relationship with God.

    Jonah and the Whale (Jonas uitgespuwd door de walvis), 1621, Pieter Lastman | Wikimedia Commons.

    Note that the beginning of today’s reading is specific about who speaks to Jonah: “the word of the LORD,” that is, the Son of God. The Word of God is patient with Jonah, willing to put up with Jonah’s reluctance to show us how we can be His instruments in the world. While Nineveh would have taken three days to walk through, the people listen to Jonah on just his first day, much to his surprise. In fact, everyone, king included, puts on sackcloth, fasts, repents, and asks God to be spared. Jonah, unwilling and unwitting as he is, has done the Lord’s work and brings about a miraculous change in the people that saves them.

    (As an aside, Chapter 4 of Jonah is worth revisiting if you haven’t read it lately. We see a pouting Jonah get angry with God because he was made to look like a fool since his warning did not come true. He just doesn’t understand that he should rejoice over the success of his warning and God’s resulting mercy. God gives him one last lesson in the matter. Jonah is so relatable!)

    In the gospel reading, Jesus recalls Jonah’s work as well as the Jewish King Solomon as a way to show his contemporaries that they are completely missing God in front of them. Christ says,

    At the judgment
    the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation
    and she will condemn them,
    because she came from the ends of the earth
    to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
    and there is something greater than Solomon here.

    Let’s take a moment to recall this piece of Jewish history as related in the 1st Book of Kings, Chapter 10 .  After he takes the throne, King Solomon displays that he truly loves God and makes many sacrifices to Him. He is then visited by God in a dream and told: “Ask what I should give you.” Solomon asks for wisdom to best govern God’s people. It pleases God greatly that Solomon’s petition was not selfish but for the benefit of the nation. The Word of God replies, “Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.” (Note that the Book of Wisdom in the Bible is also known as the Wisdom of Solomon).

    What is the Wisdom of God? St. Thomas Aquinas tells us (and the Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes this), “In God, power, essence, will, intellect, wisdom, and justice are all identical. Nothing therefore can be in God’s power which could not be in his just will or his wise intellect” (CCC 271). Wisdom is part and parcel of God’s intellect and power. And God shares his Wisdom through his Word, which is Truth. Therefore, the Word of God, who is Christ, is the expression of Wisdom, and was a constant companion of Solomon.

    Back to our passage, “the queen of the south” is the Queen of Sheba (Sheba is thought to be either modern-day Yemen or Ethiopia). She hears of Solomon’s fame and “came to test him with hard questions.” She brings a huge retinue with loads of treasures and precious spices. She’s very skeptical, but after speaking with him and seeing firsthand how he rules, she exclaims, “The report was true that I heard in my own land of your accomplishments and of your wisdom, but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. Not even half had been told me; your wisdom and prosperity far surpass the report that I had heard.” She bestows great treasures upon him.

    To recap: the Ninevites and the Queen of Sheba are Gentiles (non-Jews) who come to believe thanks to a Jewish figure who walks with the Word of God and does God’s will. Is this not exactly Jesus’s mission as He establishes the Church? First, he starts with the Chosen People but then opens the gates of the Kingdom to all humanity. The point in today’s passage is that if Gentiles can be converted — those who don’t even know the rich history of the Chosen People’s walk with God over the centuries — then how bad is it that Jews themselves can’t listen to the Word of God right in front of them? To be condemned by the Queen of Sheba and the Ninevites is ignominious indeed!

    The Queen of Sheba (1911), Edmund Dulac | Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art.

    Jesus does not call them an evil generation because of a general lack of faith in God or a betrayal of his commandments, but because of their lack of faith in Him. He says, “At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and there is something greater than Jonah here.” Yes, that something greater is the Word of God in the flesh. Unlike the warnings of the prophets in the Old Testament, who were mainly concerned with those disobeying God’s laws, Jesus has a very specific condemnation related to not believing in his divinity.

    Why is this so important? Because the New Covenant given to us — our new Baptism — relies on the faith that God himself has made a sacrifice in the form of a human in order to open up a new reality of communion with Him. If we don’t believe that Jesus is God, then we are closing the door to our own salvation. 

    But Christ proclaims, “no sign will be given it [this generation], except the sign of Jonah.” This has at least two levels of meaning. First, the sign of Jonah is a call to repentance. Jonah’s words that scared an entire city and its king into wearing sackcloth and begging for mercy were, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Christ gives this same sign to the Jews, and the earthquake that shakes the temple and the curtain of the Holy of Holies being torn in half do indeed overthrow the Old Covenant. The new Jerusalem is born: it is the resurrected body of Christ.

    Second, we have to understand that the “sign of Jonah” was also understood as a positive thing. God goes out of his way to cure Jonah of his bitterness and vengeful nature at the end of the Book of Jonah. In the gospel reading, Jesus makes a distinction between Jonah’s words and the overall sign that he became: “Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.” The good news here is that the Ninevites listened to Jonah. He did, in fact, save them from destruction. His words were those of condemnation, but the result was repentance. Thus, the overall “sign” Jonah represents is conversion. Christ is letting them know that He is a sign from the Father, who wants them to repent and see His Son. That sign is a hopeful one of conversion and deliverance.

    The third level of meaning in the “sign of Jonah” is the one least expected by the Jews. What do we usually associate with Jonah? The whale! He spends three days in the belly of the whale and then is miraculously spit up on the beach. This is the sign of resurrection. What a sign to receive! And, truly, that sign of Jonah launched the Church as the Body of Christ that exists to this day and will exist forever.