Triduum- Good Friday

The Crucifixion, by Giotto (b. 1267 or 1277 - d. 1337 CE). Part of a cycle of frescoes showing the life of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. Scrovegni Chapel (aka Arena Chapel) in Padua, northern Italy. From c. 1304 to c. 1315

"He mounted the Cross to free us from the fascination with nothingness, to free us from the fascination with appearances, with the ephemeral."

Servant of God Msgr. Luigi Giussani

Triduum- Holy Thursday

Christ Washing the Disciples' Feet, by Jacopo Tintoretto (1519-1594)

“Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” (John 13:8)

"In his person, the deacon makes it clear that the liturgy must have concrete consequences in the world with all its needs, and that work in the world that is done in the spirit of charity has a spiritual dimension" Herbert Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology, 270.

Monday of Holy Week

Readings: Isaiah 42:1-7; Psalm 27:1-3.13-14; John 12:1-11

Being nine months to the day before Christmas, normally today we would mark the observance of the Solemnity of the Annunciation. Because this year it falls during Holy Week, it is transferred to Monday, 8 April. The reason is transferred to 8 April instead of 1 April is that just as nothing, not even a Solemnity, trumps the days of Holy Week, nothing trumps the days of the Easter Octave.

Our Gospel for today occurs subsequent to the final Gospel for our celebration of the Scrutiny of the Elect. We find Jesus again at Bethany in the house of his dear friends, the siblings Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. As you might imagine, Lazarus gained notoriety because Jesus raised him after he was dead for four days. As you might imagine, many people were eager to get a glimpse of this man as well as the One who raised him.

Something easy to miss in the Church’s Gospel for the final Scrutiny is that when Jesus sets out for Bethany, which is in Judea, as opposed to his native Galilee, he does so over the strong objection of his disciples. Their objection was that many in Judea wanted to stone Jesus to death.

Overriding their objection and, no doubt, their fear, Jesus set out for Bethany. This is when Thomas, who we know as “Doubting Thomas” because of his refusal to believe the testimony of the other disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead, “said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go to die with him.’”¹ This kind of upends the familiar view of Thomas as a skeptic, prone to disbelief.

It seems that not just Thomas, but all the disciples had some idea of what it might mean to die with Jesus. What they could understandably not understand was what it could mean for him to rise from the dead. Even now, it is very difficult to comprehend the meaning of Christ’s rising from the dead, let alone what it means to die and rise with him. As it pertains to the new life Christ seeks to give us, our failure to understand hampers us. While we still fear death, we don’t fear sin, which is deadly.

In our Gospel today, death hovers in the air. In response to Mary anointing him with costly oil, Jesus points to his own burial and tells his disciples “you do not always have me.”² This passage ends on a kind of ominous note, telling us that not only were the chief priests planning to kill Jesus, they were also planning to kill Lazarus because his coming back to life the cause of many to believe in Jesus.

Jesus' words “you do not always have me,” are illuminated by what Jesus says a few chapters later in Saint John’s Gospel, during the Last Supper Discourse. Here, he tells his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.”³ Let’s not forget, that the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence in, among, and through us until he returns.

In the context of the Eucharist and, indeed, all the Church’s sacraments, the Holy Spirit is the active agent. For instance, it is by the Spirit’s power that the bread and wine become for us Christ’s body and blood. These, in turn, make us Christ’s Verum Corpus, his True Body.

The Eucharist, the Mass, is not just our memorial of Jesus’ passion and death but our Spirit-given way of participating in it. This is made explicit in the Memorial Acclamation: “We proclaim your Death, O Lord, and profess your Resurrection, until you come again.”⁴ This is what Holy Week, which culminates in the Sacred Triduum, our Christian High Holy Days, is all about.

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1 John 11:7-16.^↩
2 John 12:8.^↩
3 John 16:7.^↩
4 See Roman Missal. Order of Mass. Eucharistic Prayer I, sec. 91.^↩

Passion Sunday

Readings: Mark 11:1-10; Is 50:4-7; Ps 22:8-9.17-20.23-24; Phil 2:6-11; Mark 14:1-15-47

“Rather, he emptied himself.”¹ The Greek verb meaning “to empty” is kenosis. Using the words of an ancient Christian hymn, which we call “the Kenotic Hymn,” Saint Paul takes us into the very nature of God. In my view, the mistake made in a lot of contemporary preaching is that rather than unpack God’s word, we look for diversions around it, for ways to make it entertaining, which often has the effect of watering it down.

Maybe this is done out of concern that people find the theo-drama of creation and redemption boring in and of itself. But why employ a story, a poem, a song, an anecdote when scripture gives you a song, the words of which convey simply and beautifully God’s deepest nature? The words of this hymn were inspired, which is why they made it into the scriptures.

What the Kenotic Hymn reveals is that it is the very nature of God to empty himself. Creation itself is kenotic, a divine emptying. Creation can be described as the love of God- Father, Son, and Spirit- overflowing, emptying out but never empty. This, in turn, shows us that the Son did not act contrary to his divine nature when he emptied himself by becoming human in the form of a slave and finally submitting himself, in obedience to the Father, to an unjust, painful, and let’s not forget in the context of his time and culture, a very shameful death.

Contemplating the Lord’s passion, one question that arises is “could it have been otherwise?” Indeed, there was long-lasting a debate between Dominican and Jesuit theologians on this very point. It stands to reason that God could redeem creation in any way he chose. God could have made a world that did not need to be redeemed. We know these are true observations because they provoke more questions about the deepest mysteries of existence.

Suffice it to say, by subjecting himself to his passion and death, Jesus showed us the deepest nature of God. This is why our epistle reading constitutes the heart of our readings for Passion Sunday. This ancient hymn that Paul, under inspiration from the Holy Spirit, pulled into his letter to the Church in ancient Philippi, provides us with a key to help unlock the mystery of the Lord’s passion and death.

Another question the Lord’s passion and death prompts is, who killed Jesus? A true Christian can only answer- “I did.” Reflecting on Christ’s crucifixion, one of the great Cappadocian Fathers, Saint Gregory Nazianzen, echoed and then riffed on a note from the Kenotic Hymn: “For your sake, and because of your sin, Christ himself was regarded as a sinner… Worship him who was hung on the cross because of you.”² Let there be no anti-Semitic understanding of Jesus’ death. Theologically, to say “the Jews” killed Jesus is not only dangerous but sheer nonsense that mocks our crucified Lord to the point of blasphemy.

The Passion of Jesus found in Mark is reckoned to be the oldest part of that Gospel. At the center of this account is not Jesus’ death but his institution of the Holy Eucharist, which we will commemorate profoundly on Holy Thursday. We make this connection in each Mass when we sing the Memorial Acclamation: “Save us Savior of the world/For by your cross and resurrection/You have set us free.”³

In Mark’s account, of necessity, the Lord institutes the Eucharist before his death and resurrection whereas we celebrate it in the wake of these things having occurred. The Lord’s passion and death, along with his resurrection are very different from discreet historical events, even really significant ones. The Greek word anamnesis best describes what happens in the Mass. It means more than merely remembering, it is something like a participation in the events of our salvation across space and time through liturgy. In this respect, it anticipates a quantum understanding of reality.

Anamnesis plays a big role in Plato’s philosophy. This is perhaps best demonstrated in his dialogue with Meno.⁴ To prove his point that all learning is recollection (i.e., anamnesis), Socrates gives Meno’s unlearned slave a geometry problem and, by employing what we have come to call the “Socratic method,” which means engaging this unlearned man in dialogue, shows that even an unlearned slave, in an important sense, “knows” geometry.

Since liturgy is first theology, the most effective Christian catechesis is mystagogical. This means starting from someone’s experience and helping them connect their life to the liturgical celebration of the mystery of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection (i.e., the Paschal Mystery) through interaction and dialogue. Sadly, most of our catechesis remains merely didactic.

Even our liturgy for today, which requires us to stand not only for one but two Gospel readings, to process, short as it may be, along with all the regular parts of Mass can make you a little tired and maybe challenges your attention span, is mystagogical. In some small, liturgical, way, however, it brings us into the grueling nature of the Lord’s passion, which started and sundown and lasted until 3:00 pm the next day.

This is not to say that this in some way brings you into what Jesus himself experienced. Rather, by means of anamnesis, it is to hear him say what he said to Peter who, along with James and John, slept as he agonized in the garden:

[Scott], are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak⁵

This gets to something else Nazianzen pointed to in his sermon, in recognition and acceptance of the fact that Christ died because of you, “you must cease to sin.”⁶ Indeed, the flesh is weak, as those who have endeavored to keep a holy Lent have no doubt mystagogically (i.e., experientially) rediscovered!

Circling back to Jesus’ crucifixion as viewed through the lens of the Kenotic Hymn, it is vital to grasp that no one took the Lord’s life from him, not Judas, not the mob, not Pilate, not those who nailed him to the cross. He willingly laid it down and took it back up for you (and for me, and for those who nailed him to the cross, and for Pontius Pilate, and for the mob who clamored for his death, and for Barabbas, whose release was something, I am quite certain, with which Jesus concurred- perhaps even for Judas).

Just as it is easy to love humanity and hard to love that jackass over there, it is easy to believe in a very abstract way that Jesus died for the sins of the world. What I must grasp is that Jesus died for me out of love for me. Maybe this is something for each of us to reflect on between now and Good Friday when we venerate the Holy Cross after proclaiming together the Lord’s passion and death yet again. Perhaps, along with the Roman centurion who stood facing the cross on which Jesus hung, you too can say, as you face the cross, either again or perhaps for the first time, “Truly this man [is] the Son of God!”⁷

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1 Philippians 2:7.^↩
2 Liturgy of the Hours. Office of Readings. Second Reading for Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent.^↩
3 Roman Missal. Order of Mass. Eucharistic Prayer I, sec. 91.^↩
4 See Plato, Meno.^↩
5 Mark 14:37-38.^↩
6 Liturgy of the Hours. Office of Readings. Second Reading for Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent.^↩
7 Mark 15:39.^↩

Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Readings: Daniel 13:1-9.15-1719-30.33-62; Psalm 23:1-6; John 8:1-11

Whenever I hear Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery, my first question inevitably is, where is her partner? After all, you can’t commit adultery by yourself. He would be just as guilty and, depending on circumstances, if the episode of Susanna is any guide, maybe even more so.

I think our Psalm this evening, the beautiful and well-known Psalm twenty-three, provides us with a key to our readings for today. This is one of those Psalms that is often slightly off in many English translations. In the revised edition of the New American Bible, which is our American Catholic Bible, the first verse is translated quite accurately: “The LORD is my shepherd, there is nothing I lack.”¹

The first part of the last verse of Psalm 23, also needs a corrective translation. Often it is translated as “Only goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.” A better translation is in the revised New American Bible: “Indeed, goodness and mercy will pursue me all the days of my life” (italics mine).²

The better translation is important because it gives us a more accurate insight into God’s very nature. God, who is Goodness and who is Mercy, doesn’t just passively follow you. God actively pursues you! This is what a good shepherd does: seek out the lost sheep.

Tonight, we hear about two women. One, Susanna, is innocent, the unwitting victim of wicked men, while the other, who remains nameless, is by all indications guilty, caught in the very act of adultery.

The good news we can take away from this is that God not only vindicates the innocent. Through Jesus Christ, even the guilty can be vindicated. God pursues you with no less gentleness, kindness, and mercy than he pursued the woman caught in adultery, arriving on the scene just in time.

While apostolic credentials of the pericope of Jesus' encounter with the woman taken in adultery is not in question, it was not clear to the Church for some time in which Gospel it belonged. It fits well in John’s Gospel because, like the three Gospels we proclaim for the Scrutiny of the Elect, you can put yourself in the place of the Samaritan woman whom Jesus knew everything about and desired to save all the more, of the blind to whom the Lord gave sight, and Lazarus, who he raised from the dead, it is easy to be the woman caught in adultery.

Of course, this is not to accuse everyone of adultery. It is merely to point out that we’re all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness. As we read in 1 John: “If we say, ‘We are without sin,’ we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”³ Through Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit’s power, God is eager to forgive you. This is what the woman’s adulterous partner ran away from.

What is amazing is that is precisely through our lack that Christ gives us everything. He makes our fall the source of redemption. This may be his greatest miracle of all!

So badly does God want to forgive you that the first gift the Risen Lord gave to his Church after his resurrection was the Sacrament of Penance.⁴ It is through this sacrament you are reconciled to God and to the Church. It is through this sacrament that Christ says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”⁵

Jesus is always eager to meet you wherever you are. But he is not content to leave you where he found you. The Good Shepherd pursues you through the dark valley, accompanies you through (if you let him), sets a table before you, anoints your head with oil, and fills your cup to overflowing. Jesus+nothing=everything.

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1 Psalm 23:1.^↩
2 Psalm 23:6.^↩
3 1 John 1:8.^↩
4 John 8:11.^↩
5 John 20:19-23.^↩

Fifth Sunday of Lent- Third Scrutiny

Readings: Ezekiel 37:12-14; Psalm 130:1-8; Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-45

As English speakers, we tend to conflate “flesh” with “body.” Such a conflation leads to a perversion in the Christian understanding of the human person. This can have devastating practical consequences for those seeking to live a Christian life.

In Koine Greek, the language in which our uniquely Christian scriptures (i.e., the New Testament) were written, there are distinct words for “body” and “flesh”- soma and sarx, which do not usually refer to the same thing, especially in the authentic writings of Saint Paul.

Soma is the Greek word for “body,” while sarx is the Greek word Paul uses in our reading from Romans that translates as “flesh.” This is more than just a “Gee whiz” bit of information. Christianity is rooted in the Incarnation of God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who is himself “true God from true God.” To be incarnated is to be embodied, to have a body.

Far from rejecting the body, which is gnostic and antithetical to Christianity, we rejoice in our bodies and in all physical creation, which sacramentally points us to God. Through this Eucharist, for example, we offer ourselves, body, blood, soul, and humanity to the Father, through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Getting back to our reading from Romans, our body is dead to sin because, by God’s sanctifying grace given us through the sacraments, we are no longer in the flesh but live in the spirit because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Recall here the words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman from the Gospel for the First Scrutiny:

the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him¹

Here is a scrutinizing question: are you determined to worship God in Spirit and truth? Worshipping God in Spirit means worshipping God with your body, which, in its negative aspect, means not using your body to pursue fleshly desires. This is why, as Christians, we practice spiritual disciplines, which you perform with your body.

Several chapters on in his Letter to the Romans, the apostle exhorts the Christians of ancient Rome:

to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect²

Paul positively describes what it means to live in the spirit. Again, becoming Catholic as an adult should not amount merely to the adoption of a new moniker indicating your religious preference. It is the beginning of your new life, which includes a way of life, one in which you seek to live like Christ in an increasingly indifferent world, a world governed by adherence to the hedonistically existential axiom of getting all you can while you can.

If the body weren’t central to Christianity, then rather than raise his dead friend Lazarus, Jesus would’ve consoled his sisters with something like, “He’s in heaven with God now.” Well, if you’ve ever lost anyone you loved and to whom you were very close, you know such words are often cold comfort, particularly when uttered while standing at the edge of their grave, a place where grief and doubt abound, which are the conditions for hope as opposed to mere optimism.

After complaining to Jesus that Lazarus would not have died had he come earlier, Martha is not terribly consoled by his assurance “Your brother will rise.” You can almost hear the terseness of her response: “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.”³ So much for pious platitudes!

Jesus then leads Martha deeper by asking if she believes that he, Jesus, is “the resurrection and the life” and that by believing this she will never die. To which she responds with a profound confession of faith. Similarly, Mary, the contemplative sister, also tells Jesus that if he had come sooner Lazarus would not have died.⁴

Seeing Mary’s grief, the Lord is affected and weeps.⁵ He, too, loves Lazarus as well as Martha and Mary. As Jesus shows signs of grief, some in the crowd ask in a vein similar to the sisters: “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”⁶ Then, after calling for the removal of the stone that sealed the tomb, and praying to the Father, Jesus, in a loud voice, calls Lazarus forth. He emerges alive.

This Gospel is the culmination of the scrutinies because just as you are the woman at the well to whom Jesus revealed his true identity by knowing everything about her and loving her anyway, just as you are the blind man to whom Jesus gave true sight by healing him and showing him who he is, you are Lazarus called forth from the grave.

Jesus Christ has conquered death. This is the Good News! Christus resurrexit, quia Deus caritas est!⁷ Here’s another scrutinizing question: Do you believe this in the way Martha professed it? As a Christian, you must confess, "I believe... in the resurrection of the body."⁸

As then-Father/Professor Josef Ratzinger observed quite a few years ago:

This life is not everything. There is an eternity. Today, it is very unmodern to say this, even in theology. To speak of life beyond death looks like a flight from life here on earth. But what if it is true? Can one simply pass it by? Can one dismiss it as mere consolation? Is it not precisely this reality that bestows on life its seriousness, its freedom, its hope?⁹

Christ will demonstrate his mastery over death again when you die, are buried, and rise to new life through the waters of baptism. This is no less a miracle than the one in today’s Gospel or the one from our Gospel for the Second Scrutiny. Eternal life is not the life that begins after physical death. Eternal life begins at baptism. Eternal life, which is life in the Spirit, is now and forever. La vida eterna es por los siglos de los siglos.

My dear Elect, Jesus Christ calls you forth from the grave of sin, the grave of unbelief, the grave of indifference toward life, from the gray and nagging dissatisfaction of life in the flesh, a life in which too much is never enough, a life that does not satisfy because it cannot satisfy. Fleshly life cannot satisfy because God made you for himself and your heart is restless until it rests in him.¹⁰ And so, once again,

Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will give you light¹¹

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1 John 4:23-24.^↩
2 Romans 12:1-2.^↩
3 John 11:23-24.^↩
4 John 11:25-27.32-37.^↩
5 John 11:35.^↩
6 John 11:37.^↩
7 Pope Benedict XVI. Easter Urbi et Orbi Message. 16 April 2006.^↩
8 Apostles Creed, Article 11.^↩
9 Robert Cardinal Sarah. He Gave Us So Much: A Tribute to Benedict XVI. Trans. Michael J. Miller, 130-131.^↩
10 Saint Augustine. Confessions. Book I, Chapter 1, Section 1.^↩
11 Ephesians 5:14.^↩

Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Readings: Isaiah 65:17-21; Ps 30:2.4-6.11-13; John 4:43-54

We too quickly become accustomed to a debased Christianity, making it a philosophy of life, a culture, or, worse yet, a politics, which can help but be disengaged from Jesus’ teachings in one way or another. We’ve reached that point in Lent where we are confronted with and by Jesus through the readings, particularly the Gospel readings.

Our Gospel today immediately follows Jesus’ encounter with the woman in Samaria. At the end of that encounter, at the urging of the inhabitants of the Samaritan village, he stayed with them for two days.¹

According to John’s itinerary, Jesus passes through Samaria as he returns to his native Galilee from a trip to Jerusalem. Because Jesus performed no miracles for his fellow Galileans before his journey to Jerusalem but wowed the Galileans who were also in Jerusalem during a major feast with signs and wonders, they gleefully welcomed him back as he entered Cana of Galilee, where, the inspired author reminds us, he turned water into wine at a wedding feast.

In the fourth Gospel, the miracle at the wedding feast in Cana marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Of course, this miracle is the second Luminous Mystery of the Holy Rosary. This mystery’s fruit is to Jesus through Mary.

If you remember, the Lord was reluctant to do something to help at the wedding when all the wine had been consumed. He only intervened because of his mother. She forced the issue by telling the servants, with reference to her Son- “Do whatever he tells you.”²

In today’s Gospel, the lack of belief on the part of his fellow Galileans, indicated by their fickleness, was seen by Jesus for what it was: bad faith, which is no faith at all. Far from being elated by his triumphant return, he seems to be not disappointed as much as disgusted.

Jesus’ disgust is brought into bold relief when his response to the royal official’s request that he go with him to Capernaum to heal his son, who was close to death, was: “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”³ Nonetheless, in his mercy, he healed the man's son, saving him from death.

The Lord’s response stands in contrast to a common misconception about him. This misconception is something like the “Buddy Christ” from Kevin Smith’s movie Dogma. In this film, Buddy Christ is the central feature in what is just an ad campaign, as so many “evangelization” programs tend to be. The name of the campaign is “Catholicism Wow!”

Cardinal Glick, the driving force behind the ad campaign, played by the late George Carlin, notes that because too many people find the crucifix “wholly depressing,” the Church is retiring it and replacing it with the Buddy Christ. It is a Sacred Heart statue featuring a smiling and winking Jesus, who points at onlookers with one hand while giving the thumbs-up sign with the other.

As we profess in the Creed, Jesus is “true God from true God.” His divinity is made manifest through his humanity. In his person, humanity and divinity are wholly integrated, making him “the perfect man.”⁴ It is through his very person, in which divinity and humanity perfectly cohere, that he seeks to restore our likeness to God, which is lost through sin.⁵ Another word for this is “divinization.”

Because we are not like God, which means we are not yet fully human, we sometimes find Jesus’ words and disposition puzzling. But we can be quite sure that while he certainly performed signs and wonders, Jesus did not come to launch a divine shock and awe campaign that we could call “God Wow!”

Our Gospel today is a variation on theme which comes to full fruition at the end of the Gospel According to Saint John, when “doubting” Thomas can see and touch the risen Lord: “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”⁶

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1 See John 4:1-42..^↩
2 See John 2:1-12.^↩
3 John 4:48.^↩
4 Second Vatican Council. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et Spes], sec. 22.^↩
5 Ibid.^↩
6 John 20:29.^↩

Fourth Sunday of Lent- Second Scrutiny

Readings: 1 Samuel 16:1b.6-7.10-13a; Psalm 23:1-6; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

Today we celebrate Latare Sunday. Latare Sunday is a day of rejoicing within the otherwise austere season of Lent. t all Sundays in Lent remain celebrations of the Lord’s resurrection, which is why, when calculating how long Lent is, you do not count Sundays.

Today we have a great reason to rejoice: the Second Scrutiny of our Elect. Rather than scrutinize them, we bless and strengthen them to scrutinize themselves. Indeed, for all of us, the season of Lent is a time for self-examination, a time for renewing our practice of the core spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, which should be characteristic of our lives as Christians all the time.

Our Gospel for the First Scrutiny, which we celebrated last Sunday at the 9:00 AM Mass, was Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman. In that encounter, Jesus declared himself forthrightly to be the Messiah, the one for whom the woman was hopefully waiting. I think it is easily lost on us how astounding it is that Jesus, a man whom this woman encounters while he sits by Jacob’s well, the one who engages her in a bit of an enigmatic dialog, is the Messiah, the one who will tell her everything.¹

We easily forget that it was not intuitively obvious to the casual observer in first-century Israel that this guy from Nazareth, Mary and Joseph’s son, was not only the Messiah, God’s anointed, but the only begotten Son of God in the flesh. Something quite similar is at work in our Gospel today. But before coming to that, it bears noting that David is a messianic figure. Our first reading today serves to demonstrate something Saint Paul describes well:

God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God²

Jesus, the unexpected, unassuming, and often unwelcome Messiah, is the exemplar of this divinely revealed truth.

Apart from Jesus and the healed man, only some of Jesus’ disciples witnessed this unprecedented healing. While it quickly became evident, despite doubts, that something amazing had happened when this man who everyone knew was blind could now see, the divine origin of the power that healed him was called into question. But, when queried, all the man could say, was this Jesus fellow smeared mud on his eyes and now he could see.

It wasn’t until after his ordeal with the Pharisees that Jesus revealed to the man to whom he gave sight who he is using almost the exact same words he used when revealing his identity to the Samaritan woman. This tells us something deeply important about faith. When the man asks, in response to Jesus’ question about whether he believes in the Son of Man, “who is he that I might believe in him?,” Jesus responded with “You have seen him” and, in so many words, “It is me, one speaking with you.”³

To see Jesus for who he is is to see reality in a whole new way. Or stated another way, to really see Jesus is to really see. One way to understand the man’s washing his eyes in the Pool of Siloam is as a kind of baptism, washing. To see and believe in Jesus Christ is what it means to have eyes to see. We also must have ears to hear and hearts that love him enough to live according to his words. Hope is the flower of faith and charity is its fruit.

Someone who is infused with the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love is someone who nurtures these by praying, fasting, and giving alms, thus living as a child of the light. There is no better segue to the third and final scrutiny, the Gospel for which is Jesus calling his dead friend Lazarus forth from the tomb, than the ending of our second reading, which New Testament scholars think was taken from an early Christian baptismal hymn:

Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will give you light⁴

You see, Jesus did not just give the man his eyesight. He gave him life!

Friday afternoon, a friend, who is an educator, texted me asking how I might respond to the question “What are people for?” My answer came quite quickly. I texted him that my answer is the answer to the third question from the old Baltimore Catechism. The first question is, “Who made us?” “Us,” of course, refers to human beings. The third question, which contains the answer to the first, is “God made us to show forth His goodness and to share with us His everlasting happiness in heaven.”⁵

Alternatively, I texted, riffing off Saint Irenaeus of Lyons’ insistence that “the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God,” I texted him that what people are for is to show forth God’s glory.”⁶

The man to whom Jesus gave sight didn’t glorify God merely by receiving his sight, though this miracle, as Jesus intimates, was wrought on behalf of this blind man so “the works of God might be made visible through him.”⁷ He glorified God by confessing his belief in Jesus and then worshipping him.⁸

Mass comes from the Latin word missa, which literally means to be dismissed. Missa is also the root of the word missio, which translates into English as “mission.” And so, at the end of each Mass, all of us are sent forth on mission to proclaim the Gospel.

Just as the Samaritan woman eagerly told her fellow villagers about Jesus, can you imagine the man who was formerly blind not telling others what Jesus had done for him? Rather than apologetics that traffics in proofs and arguments, telling others what Jesus has done for you what it really means to evangelize, to tell others the Good News.

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1 See John 4:5-42..^↩
2 1 Corinthians 1:27-29.^↩
3 John 9:36-37.^↩
4 Ephesians 5:14.^↩
5 Baltimore Catechism. Lesson One. Question 3.^↩
6 Saint Irenaeus of Lyons. Against the Heretics, Book 4, Chapter 20, Section 7.^↩
7 John 9:3.^↩
8 John 9:38.^↩

Monday of the Third Week of Lent

Readings: 2 Kings 5:1-15ab; Ps 42:2-3; 43:3-4; Luke 4:24-30

A question posed by our readings today is “Are you open to letting Jesus challenge you or do you only look to him for consolation?” Because this question points to an important aspect of repentance, it is relevant to our observance of Lent.

One risk for those of us who seek to practice our faith daily run is the routinization of our practice. On the one hand, when it comes to practicing spiritual discipline, habitus is necessary. In other words, it is important to observe fixed times for prayer and plan days for fasting, to set aside time for spiritual reading, to practice solitude and silence, to pray the Rosary, do the Examen, or pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

The risk we need to recognize is becoming content and self-satisfied with your spiritual routine, which amounts to something like the feeling that you’ve domesticated God. When practiced well, these disciplines should open you to the movements of the Holy Spirit, not close you off to what the Spirit might be trying to say, and what changes is the Spirit prompting you to make. Change in response to the word of God is the definition of repentance.

In the spiritual life, to say that God is infinite, that is, unbounded, means something quite practical. There is always more to God than any of us can perceive at any moment. As Pope Francis taught:

The word of God… comes as “a surprise, since our God is the God of surprises: he comes and always does new things. He is newness. The Gospel is newness. Revelation is newness”¹

Hence, you must be careful not to build your spiritual life on the foundation of your preconceptions about God. Of course, we all have preconceptions. But over time, your understanding of God should grow and deepen. To grow in the knowledge of God, which is the end toward which the practice of the spiritual disciplines is the means, leads inevitably to loving God more. Just as inevitably, growing in love of God leads to an increased love of neighbor.

It is clear in each of the Gospels that Jesus was not the Messiah most Jews of his day expected, he did not conform to their preconceptions, just as Elisha was not the miracle worker Naaman expected. Because of his pride, Naaman almost refused the cure he graciously received from God by heeding the prophet’s directions, which seemed demeaning to him.

The people of Nazareth, most of whom would’ve been related to Jesus in some way, rejected God’s anointed and even sought to kill him. According to Luke, after marveling at his words indicating he was the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy from the portion of the scroll of Isaiah that he had just read to them in the synagogue, the backlash with which our Gospel reading ends seems to have been prompted by someone then asking, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?”² In other words, “We know this guy. How can he be the Messiah?”

Are you willing to let Jesus, through the power of the Spirit, unsettle you and maybe blow up your expectations? Is your soul still thirsty for God, or do you feel like you’ve drunk your fill?

---

1 Pope Francis. Daily Meditation for 20 January 2014.^↩
2 Luke 4:22.^↩

Third Sunday of Lent- First Scrutiny

Readings: Ex 17:3-7; Ps 95:1-2.6-9; Rom 5:1-2.5-8; John 4:5-42

“Stay thirsty,” so we are advised by the most interesting man in the world. It’s better, however, to phrase this as a question before employing it as an exhortation. So, existentially speaking, Are you thirsty? If you are thirsty, what are you thirsty for?

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that our humanity largely consists of our desire, our longing. We desire, we long for, health, fulfillment, contentment, achievement, love, influence, satisfaction. It’s often the case, to quote the Rolling Stones, despite trying and trying, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” One thing to point out about the list above is that some of the things we long for are at odds with other things we desire.

Desire is the genesis of hope. Hope is perhaps best defined as desire properly directed. All earthly things fade away: money, possessions, accomplishments, even lovely sunny days at the beach. In his letter to the wealthy widow, Proba, after noting that “so far as this world is concerned, [you are] noble and wealthy, and the mother of such an illustrious family, and, although a widow, not desolate,” Saint Augustine commends her for “wisely” understanding “that in this world and in this life the soul has no sure portion.”¹

In other words, this wealthy Roman widow lived in hope, which flowed from understanding what she truly desired. But to be precise, it is not a what but a who that is the proper object of human desire: Jesus Christ. It is Christ and him alone who provides the living water welling up to eternal life. Eternal life, as Augustine so emphatically points out multiple times in his letter to Proba, is the life that is truly life. It is the life we desire, a life without lack.

To understand this, to want this, to believe this, and live according to this is what it means to receive the gift of hope, which, along with faith and charity, is a theological virtue. While faith, hope, and charity are gifts from God, you can and should cultivate these virtues, just like you cultivate the natural virtues. One way to cultivate the virtue of hope is to understand that, just as eternal life is fully realized beyond death, hope lies beyond optimism. As statesman, playwright, and philosopher Vaclav Havel observed:

Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons²

And so, every disappointment, every loss, every sorrow, every moment of emptiness and pain is an opportunity to cultivate the theological virtue of hope as we, Eve’s poor banished children, make our way through what is quite often a valley of tears.

Immediately preceding the verses from the fifth chapter of Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans that comprise our second reading, we hear that, as Christians,

we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, endurance proven character, and proven character, hope and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us³

Woman at the Well, by Carl Bloch, 1865-1879

We can safely say that the woman Jesus encountered at the well in Samaria did not lack desire. After all, she had been married five times and was now living with a man to whom she was not married. It seems quite clear that she didn’t lack optimism either! Nonetheless, she was not entirely without hope.

Her hope is evidenced by her pointing to the coming of the Messiah, who “will tell us everything.”⁴ Imagine her disorientation when she heard Jesus say, “I am he, the one speaking with you.”⁵ His claim was made plausible by his telling her the truth about her life, telling her things about herself that there was no way he could know because she had never met him before.

Jesus Christ is our hope. He opens the door to eternal life. He is the one, as Saint Paul writes, “through whom we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand.”⁶ This “grace in which we stand” is nothing less than God sharing divine life with us.

God’s primary means of imbuing us with his very life, which is nothing less than his very self, are the sacraments. This is most clearly manifest in the Eucharist, which “is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows.”⁷

Baptism, which is strengthened (i.e., “confirmed”) by confirmation, is the gateway to the Eucharist. In baptism, you don’t merely drink from the well of eternal life, you are immersed in it, it becomes the grace in which you not only stand but in which you live, move, and have your being. To use a metaphor to describe what the great theologian Karl Rahner pointed out in his Meditations on the Sacraments, we swim in grace like fish swim in water.⁸

The difference between you and a fish is that you are capable of living this as a conscious reality, which is what it means to live a graceful life, a hopeful life. Baptism is not just a gaining of the new moniker “Catholic” or “Christian.” It is Jesus calling you forth from the tomb like he called his friend Lazarus, but that is to get ahead of ourselves.

Through the waters of baptism, as Saint Paul points out in the very next chapter of Romans in a verse that is part of our epistle reading for the Great Easter Vigil, preparation for which is what today’s scrutiny is all about, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you die, are buried, and are raised to new life in Christ. Eternal life is not only the life you hope for after death. Eternal life begins with your sacramental death and resurrection enacted through Baptism.

In this life, the Christian daily lives the tension between the already and not yet of life eternal. It is the Eucharist, that is, Christ himself, that fills your emptiness and quenches your thirst. So, until the day your hope is fully realized, stay thirsty, which is to say, remain hopeful.

---

1 Saint Augustine. Letter to Proba, an2154, 1.1.^↩
2 Vaclav Havel. Disturbing the Peace, pp 181-182.^↩
3 Romans 5:3-5.^↩
4 John 4:25.^↩
5 John 4:26.^↩
6 Romans 5:2.^↩
7 Second Vatican Council. Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy [Sacrosanctum Concilium], sec. 10.^↩
8 Karl Rahner. Meditations on the Sacraments, Introduction.^↩

Leap Year reflection- Lent a time of hope for change

Since 29 February only comes around once every four years, I wanted to seize the day and post something to mark the occasion. Since 29 February falls during the season of Lent, what comes immediately to my mind is Trevor Hudson's observation that each season of the liturgical year is a "time-gift." These seasons are gifts because they "help us participate more fully in what God has done in human history" (Pauses for Lent: 40 Words for 40 Days. Upper Room Books. Kindle Edition, Location 77).

I receive 29 February as a time-gift. It is the gift of an extra day, not of Lent because even during Leap Year, Lent remains the same length, and not of life because my life is however long it is going to be. It merely adds a day to this year: AD2024. The last Leap Year was in 2020, the time of pandemic panic. It's hard to forget all the lamentations and jokes about, of all years, 2020 being longer.

Time is a strange thing. Our ways of marking time, while not exactly arbitrary, have nothing of the absolute about them. According to our solar calendar, a year is the amount of time it takes the Earth to do a complete rotation around the sun.

At its most basic, time is a function of change. If you think about a mechanical clock, one with a second hand, a second is a measurement of how long it takes for the hand to move from one tick mark to the next. This also shows us that space and time, while distinct in a way, are inextricably bound together.

Isn't Lent also about change?

One of the few complex philosophical ideas Pope Francis evokes quite regularly is the insistence that "time is greater than space." His reason for doing this is to bring forward the idea that genuine human progress (i.e., change/conversion), our progress towards becoming ever authentically human, is a function of time. Rather than a quantum leap, true conversion is a progression, something that happens over time and through experience. As the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes ("Joy and hope"), beautifully articulates, Jesus Christ is the "perfect" human being (sec. 22).

This brings us back to Lent as a "time-gift." In reality, every day is a time-gift, is it not? Any day and every day can be New Year's Day, a new beginning. Just as most every Friday (solemnities excepted) is a "little" Good Friday and every Sunday, including Sundays of Lent (which don't count against the 40 days), is a "little" Easter, every going to sleep is a "little" death and every awakening is a "little" resurrection. We must reconnect liturgy to life!

I used to find C.S. Lewis' insistence that "Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done" very discouraging (from Letters to Malcom, Chiefly on Prayer). Then I realized how ridiculous it is, especially given life's dynamism, to think- "Why can't I just put my trust in God and be done with it?" In other words, "Why can't I just stand here and not move?" Time is greater than space.

In his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, a substantial draft of which he inherited from Pope Benedict, we find several Bergoglian interjections. One of those can be found at the end of the letter's fifty-seventh section. This section is a beautiful meditation on the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. Its main focus, however, is hope. It deals with how hope integrates faith and love (i.e., caritas, charity).

Let us refuse to be robbed of hope, or to allow our hope to be dimmed by facile answers and solutions which block our progress, "fragmenting" time and changing it into space. Time is always much greater than space. Space hardens processes, whereas time propels towards the future and encourages us to go forward in hope

Monday of the Second Week of Lent

Readings: Daniel 9:4b-10; Psalm 79:8-9.11.13; Luke 6:36-38

Befitting this holy season, our Liturgy of the Word today looks something like a penitential rite. It begins with an acknowledgment of sin:

We have sinned, been wicked and done evil; we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws. We have not obeyed your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name…¹

Then, in our Responsorial, we move to something akin to a Kyrie, a plea for God’s mercy: “Lord, do not deal with us according to our sins.”²

Jesus, in our Gospel reading, gives us the conditions for receiving God’s forgiveness, which is a gift, a grace.

In our contemporary idiom, karma, a Buddhist term, refers to getting what you deserve. If you spend any time on social media, you read quite a few invocations of karma. As Christians, we are people of grace. I don’t know about you, but I will take grace over karma any day.

Theologically, grace usually refers to unmerited favor given us by God. In other words, God doesn’t grace us because we deserve it. He graces us because God is God and self-giving constitutes divine nature at its deepest level.³

If I want to receive God’s grace given in Christ through the Spirit’s power, I must be willing to extend that same grace to others. Among these “others” to whom I must extend grace are not only but especially my enemies.

In a few moments, gathered around the Lord’s Table, we will pray “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”⁴ If you’re praying this prayer intentionally, you are accepting God’s condition for forgiving you. What you’re praying is something like “God forgive me both on the condition that I forgive others and to the extent that I forgive others.”

In our Gospel today, Jesus says, “Forgive and you will be forgiven.”⁵ You know from experience that it is often easier to invoke karma over someone who has wronged you than it is to extend the grace of forgiveness, let alone do what the Lord enjoins in the verse immediately preceding the first verse of our Gospel for today- to love that and do good to that person.⁶

---

1 Daniel:5-6.^↩
2 Psalm 79:9; Lectionary 230.^↩
3 See Philippians 2:5-11. ^↩
4 Roman Missal. The Order of Mass, The Communion Rite, sec. 124.^↩
5 Luke 6:37. ^↩
5 Luke 6:35.^↩

Christian Metamorphosis

Readings: Gen 22:1-2.10-13.15-18; Ps 116:10.15-19; Rom 8:31b-34; Mark 9:2-10

Lent is about transformation, that is, metamorphosis.

The Eucharist is about transformation, that is metamorphosis.

Eucharistic transformation is not primarily about what we label "transubstantiation."

Mainly, Eucharistic transformation is about how our reception of Holy Communion makes us the Body of Christ. This is why the most important part of the eucharistic liturgy, the part to which it all builds, is the Communion Rite.

At the end of the day, the only convincing "proof" (or disproof) that our meager gifts of bread and wine become Christ's body and blood are the lives of those of us who partake of it. Does the change provoke a response?

Living a eucharistic life, which is living a life of thanksgiving, is to be an evangelist.

Apologetics is just apologetics. Nonetheless, apologetically speaking, if the Eucharist doesn't produce the effects it claims or any discernible effects at all, then no matter how elegant your theory (theology), how real can it be?

Metamorphosis is the Greek word translated as "transfigured" in our Gospel for today.

What if instead of beholding a vision that somehow exists outside of reality, or even outside of time (let's think in a quantum way), Jesus' "transfiguration," his metamorphosis, how Peter, James, and John see him in this encounter, is seeing him as he really is all the time?

In beholding Jesus on the mountain top, seeing also Moses and Elijah, and hearing the voice of the Father, I assert the three men are having an intense experience of reality, of the world.

What do I mean by "world" in this context?

Wittgenstein began his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with-

1. The world is everything that is the case.
    1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
          1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts.
          1.12 For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is                    not the case
         1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.

I agree with Dallas Willard, who was a philosophy professor as well as a great Christian spiritual teacher, when he insisted that not only do we interact with the material world mainly by means of our minds, but that "We bring the reality of God into our lives by making contact with him through our minds." Our actions, in turn, result from that contact (Life Without Lack: Living in the Fullness of Psalm 23, 8).

The Transfiguration of the Lord, by D. Nollet, 1694

For a Christian, that Jesus is the beloved Son of the Father is a fact, not a myth or merely a nifty-keen way to make sense of the world but only one of several equally viable options. While I suppose Jesus' Lordship is a fact both in the world and about the world, more importantly, it is the fact that constitutes the world.

To understand Jesus as Messiah is to revere him as Lord. In this pericope, the fact of Jesus' unique and divine Sonship is shown by there not being "anyone but Jesus alone" after the cloud lifted and the divine voice trailed off. This is meant to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah). He is the full revelation of Father.

Because I don't want to make a mockery of Wittgenstein's careful thinking by quoting him inappropriately, far from acknowledging Jesus as Lord, Wittgenstein, citing Paul's insistence that "no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3), averred that that claim said "nothing" to him. Why did the philosopher balk at acknowledging Jesus as Lord? "Because I do not believe that he will come to judge me" (Culture and Value, 37).

Wittgenstein insisted that the idea of Jesus returning to judge the living and the dead, as Christians profess in the Creed, also said nothing to him. Jesus judging him, he continued, "could say something to me, only if I lived completely differently" (Ibid.). This is the crux of the matter, isn't it?

This metamorphosis that causes you to live completely differently does not result in you being changed into something or someone completely different. Rather, it is to be changed into someone completed. To become who God made and redeemed you to be is what it means to be sanctified.

The first lesson in what means to rise from the dead is understanding that first you must die.

"I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice..." (Rom 12:1). It is by so doing, by the grace of God, you start to "be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you might discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect" (Rom 12:2).

How else can you offer yourself except through the Eucharist, in which we pray that Christ by the Spirit's power "make of us an eternal offering" to the Father? (Eucharistic Prayer II)

Taking a cue from Saint Ignatius of Loyola, this transfiguration requires you not only to discern what is good and pleasing and perfect but to endeavor to act on what you discern, no matter what it may be. We don't call Abraham our Father in faith for nothing.

Praying for Priestly Vocations- 40-hour Adoration

It is appropriate during our parish 40-hour Adoration for Vocations to take a few moments to reflect on the Eucharist and vocation. Being “the source and summit” of our faith, everything we do should start with flow back to the Eucharist.¹ Another way to say this is that, as Christians, everything we do should start and end with thanksgiving.

To whom do we give thanks and for what are we thankful? In power of the Holy Spirit, we give thanks to the Father for what he has done for us in and through Christ.

“It is through the sacraments and the exercise of the virtues that the sacred nature and organic structure of the priestly community is brought into operation.”² The priestly community, here, refers to the Church. What is Adoration if not the virtue of adoring Jesus Christ present in and through this sacrament?

Adoration, as Fr. Andrzej noted on Sunday, is an extension of the eucharistic liturgy. It flows out from and back to the Holy Mass. Therefore, as we adore Christ on this altar, we need to keep in mind that through our reception of Holy Communion, Christ comes to be present in us in a no less real and no less a powerful way than he is present in the tabernacle and, during Adoration, in the monstrance.

At the end of each Mass, we are sent forth with one of several dismissals the Roman Missal provides. One of these is “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.”³ From Mass, you are sent on a mission to make Christ present wherever you are. This is the call of God's priestly people given in baptism. This is the primary vocation of everyone who is baptized: the Pope, bishops, priests, religious, laity, and even deacons. It is how you become a saint. We are all called to be saints, which is the highest Christian call.

During these 40 hours, we pray specifically for vocations to the priesthood. Even more specifically, for vocations to the priesthood for the Diocese of Salt Lake City. During this time, it is important to not only to pray for more priests. We must pray for the right priests.

Who are the right priests? They are those called by Christ to serve, yes, serve God’s people. There is a reason one is a deacon before one becomes a priest- service precedes sacrifice. While the call to be a priest is a call to be a leader, the “right” priest is one who hears and heeds these words of Jesus:

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave³

Note the shift from “servant” at the beginning to “slave” at the end. In the original Greek, servant is diakonos, which, when translated, is deacon. While a diakonos is a servant, a doulos is a slave.

In Greek, not only are these words not synonymous, they have quite distinctive meanings. Most languages are not plagued with the ambiguities of modern English. A doulos is someone who belongs to another; a bond-slave, without any ownership rights of his own. By contrast, a diakonos refers to someone who performs a service, or, by Jesus' time, even to an administrator. The “right” priest is both a diakonos and a doulos. In imitation of our Lord, a priest is the servant and the slave of those he leads, not their master.

As we continue this Forty Hour Devotion, let us implore God for more priests and for the right men to heed Christ’s call. Let us also pray that we receive the grace to continue to live out the vocations to which God has called each of us.

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1 Second Vatican Council. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church [Lumen Gentium], sec. 11.^↩
2 Ibid.^↩
3 Roman Missal. The Order of Mass. ^↩
4 Matthew 20:25-27.^↩

Year B First Sunday of Lent

Readings: Genesis 9:8-15; Psalm 25:4-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15

Our Lenten journey is predicated on Jesus’ forty days in the desert after his baptism. Rather than as a response to baptism and be declared pleasing by the Father, our Lenten journey is in preparation for baptism. In the Church, Lent began as a time when the Elect (i.e., adult women and men) would undertake intense spiritual preparation for their baptism at the Great Easter Vigil.

Over time, this forty-day period became a time of preparation for the entire Church, including those already baptized. Hence, while preparing the Elect for baptism and, along with Candidates, for the sacraments of confirmation and Eucharist as well, Lent prepares the rest of us for the renewal of our baptismal promises at the Easter Vigil.

In what does our preparation consist? It consists of a more intensive and intentional practice of the three fundamental spiritual disciplines taught to us by our Lord himself: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In reality, the constant practice of these disciplines constitutes Christian life. There is an inextricable bond between these disciplines.

Fasting links prayer to almsgiving. We practice these not to earn but to perhaps enhance through reality, the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. We call these the “theological virtues” because, unlike the natural virtues, such as prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, they are gifts of God and not acquired through our own efforts.

In a manner like the response of Jesus to his baptism and being declared pleasing to the Father, which was his Spirit-led retreat into the desert and his subsequent and equally Spirit-led proclamation of the kingdom, practice of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving is our response to being imbued with faith, hope, and love.

Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are how we, as Jesus’ followers, make visible the gifts God so graciously and generously gives us through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Doing these things habituates you to live your life in Christ. It’s how the kingdom of God is incarnated, which we, as the Body of Christ, are called and empowered to do.

If you were here on Ash Wednesday, at the distribution of ashes, Christ called you to repentance through the Church with words of Jesus from today’s Gospel: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” We need to be careful not to let receiving ashes become nothing more than an empty ritual. In other words, there needs to be a desire and intent to repent.

While contrition, that is, being sorry for your sins, is part of repentance, it is the beginning, the first step. To repent means to change, to convert. Above all, for a Christian, it means desiring and striving to be more like Christ, opening yourself to the Holy Spirit to be more conformed to Christ’s image.

Originally, human beings were created in God’s image and likeness. While the imago Dei (i.e., the image of God) is ineradicable- this forms the basis of the Christian understanding of human rights- likeness to God, which is likeness to Christ, is lost through sin. Our likeness to God is restored by grace through the sacraments.

The sacraments are the inexhaustible spring of God’s grace. Especially during Lent, which is a season of penance, the sacrament of penance is made more available. Uniquely and singularly, you receive through this sacrament the healing and wholeness, the grace you need to repent, to change to live in a more Christlike way. Just as hope joins faith to love, and fasting links prayer and almsgiving, being an extension of baptism, the sacrament of penance links baptism to Eucharist.

Making these kinds of connections is important for us as Catholics. By virtue of our baptism, our confirmation, our marriage, our ordination, our religious profession, our faithful singleness, and our participation in the Eucharist, we participate in God’s sacramental economy of grace. The Church, which is herself the sacrament of salvation in and for the world, exists primarily for this purpose and is, therefore, indispensable for salvation.

Fasting is about what you need to give up to fully place your hope in Jesus Christ, and almsgiving is about what you need to take up for others to grow in charity and become more like him.

The question you need to ask when giving something up for Lent, like chocolate, is how does this aid my conversion to Christ? That said, we could all stand to do more penance. Not only is giving up something you enjoy and that is not bad in and of itself, like meat on Fridays, okay, when done in a penitential spirit, it is good.

In short, let everything begin with the Lord’s inspiration, continue with his help, and reach perfection under his guidance. This will save you from undertaking an exhaustive program of self-improvement, which is antithetical to the spirit of Lent.

Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom is the fourth Luminous Mystery of Our Lady’s Holy Rosary. Repentance and trust in God are the fruit of this mystery. It is important to point out that in Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom according to Saint Mark, repenting comes before believing. Being a disciple is like being an apprentice. Like an apprentice, you come to know by doing.

Being good news, the Gospel isn’t just something you hear or merely read about, it is an experience. “Being Christian,” Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”¹

In a very real sense, Ash Wednesday to the Saturday after Ash Wednesday, as the clunky liturgical nomenclature dubs it, is a Lenten warm-up. The six weeks of Lent begin in earnest today, the First Sunday of Lent. And so, today is a great time to prayerfully think about this holy season and how, by the grace of God, you need to better incorporate prayer, fasting, and almsgiving into the rhythm of your own life.

Lent is a gift of time, given to consider very specifically those areas of your life that need healing, those things that need to change for you to be converted more fully to Christ. Through the season of Lent, you repent so that, at Easter, you can credibly profess your belief.

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1 Pope Benedict XVI. Encyclical Letter, Deus Caritas Est [God is Love], sec. 1.^↩

Ash Wednesday

Readings: Joel 2:12-18; Ps 51:3-6.12-14.17; 2 Cor 5:20-6:2; Matt 6:1-6.16-18

In our well-fed society, Lent is the time we are urged to fast from everything but food. The problem with this is that it breaks the intrinsic connection between the three fundamental spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Why go hungry when you can work hard at not dropping the f-bomb, or watch less TV, or give up chocolate, or alcohol, or whatever?

It may well be the case that you could stand to watch less TV, clean up your language, eat less chocolate, or drink fewer alcoholic beverages. Maybe abstaining from these things during Lent is something you prayerfully discern you should do. Be careful! Lent is not the time when you try to make yourself uncomfortable in some fiddling but irritating way.

Traditionally, fasting referred to foregoing food and drink for religious purposes. Hence, fasting is not dieting, though, for those whose health permits them to fast in an extended manner, there are health benefits that come from fasting. The detox your body undergoes during periods of extended fasting is most conducive to prayer, meditation, and contemplation.

In his Letter to the Philippians, about those he dubs “enemies of the cross of Christ,” Saint Paul states “Their God is their stomach; their glory is in their ‘shame.’ Their minds are occupied with earthly things.”¹ I take this to mean they live according to the pleasure principle.

By contrast, the apostle insists that Christians are people of hope, joyfully longing for Christ’s return, when he “will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself.”² Fasting is an act of hope because it is a powerful means of even now letting Christ Jesus subject you to himself.

Today, along with Good Friday, is a day of fasting and, if you must eat something, a day of abstinence. Hence, if you eat you do not eat the meat of warm-blooded animals. Such days do not require you to eat fish, let alone require you to prepare an elaborate seafood meal. A simple meal with no meat more than suffices.

Next week, between the First and Second Sundays of Lent, on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, you have the chance to observe Ember Days. While not as stringent as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, these, too, are days of fasting and abstinence. Formerly obligatory, the observance of Ember Days, while encouraged, is now optional but, sadly, little observed.

Ember Days happen four times a year, seasonally. In spring, the first full week of Lent. In summer, the week between Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. Fall Ember days are observed the week after the Exaltation of the Cross. The week after the Feast of Saint Lucy is when winter’s Ember Days come around.

The practice of fasting during Lent and beyond, even if this just means skipping a few meals a week, eating less for your meals, preparing less and simpler food, or trying not to eat between meals, is basic: eat less and give more to the poor. Not only does fasting allow us to be in solidarity with those who daily lack what we take for granted, but it is also an act of penance, a way, by the grace of God, through the merits of Jesus Christ and all the saints, making right, in some small way, those things you did wrong.

Just as hope joins faith to charity, fasting links prayer to almsgiving. Prayer corresponds to the theological virtue of faith. When practiced by itself, prayer can turn you in on yourself. Almsgiving, which can either be giving money to those in need and/or sacrificial service to others, when done apart from a spirit of prayer and fasting, while certainly good, can easily become humanitarianism. In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI noted that caritas, or agape:

does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support. In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of [the human person]: the mistaken notion that [s/he] can live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans [women and men] and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human³

Hope is the flower of faith and charity is their fruit. It is by practicing these spiritual disciplines that we become what Saint Paul urges us to be: “ambassadors of Christ.”⁴

Be careful, lest, like the Pharisees, you turn your practice of these disciplines into ends rather than the means they are intended to be. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are means to the end of loving God and neighbor ever more deeply. Desiring to love God and neighbor better is how you let Christ subject you to himself. Transforming as they do soul, body, and heart, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are means for the conversion we all need to undergo.

However, practicing these spiritual disciplines won’t bring you closer to God. Only God can bring you closer to Himself. What the practice of these fundamental spiritual disciplines, taught to us by Christ himself, is meant to do is to help you get yourself, your ego, out of the way so you are open to God’s grace.

My dear friends in Christ, Lent is not a time for programs of radical self-improvement. It is a time of grace. A time to open yourself more fully to God through the integrated practice of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We do this together in preparation for the renewal of our baptismal promises at the Great Easter Vigil and to prepare us for life eternal.

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1 Philippians 3:18b-19.^↩
2 Philippians 3:21.^↩
3 Pope Benedict XVI. Encyclical Letter. Deus Caritas Est, sec. 28b.^↩
4 2 Corinthians 5:20.^↩

Monday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: James 1:1-11; Psalm 119-67-68.71-72.75-76; Mark 8:11-13

Jesus was ambivalent about his miracles and healings. While they are signs of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, they are not of primary importance. Being external and somewhat spectacular, signs and wonders can detract from the basic message of the Gospel. Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem was not “the magical mystery tour.” Rather, it is the road to salvation walked through the world.

As handed on in Mark’s Gospel, when he emerged after forty days from the desert, Jesus proclaimed: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”¹ So, the Lord’s miracles are meant to demonstrate exteriorly the message each of us must take to heart. Besides, as Dostoevsky noted- “Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.”²

Our two readings fit nicely together (funny how the lectionary does that!). Any genuine disciple of Jesus understands that being a Christian does not guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen to you. As our reading from James indicates, quite to the contrary. Jesus puts it more succinctly in the Last Supper Discourse in Saint John’s Gospel: “In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”³

Woe unto You, Scribes and Pharisees, JamesTissot, 1886-1894

The beauty of our first reading is that it articulates the role that adversity plays in Christian life. Perseverance is a rare virtue these days. Yet, perseverance is the fruit of the fifth Sorrowful Mystery of Our Lady’s Holy Rosary, which mystery is crucifixion. The fourth sorrowful mystery is Jesus carrying the cross, the fruit of that mystery is patience.

When bad things happen to you, it is not because you’ve displeased God in some way and as a result, you’re experiencing divine wrath. Scripture turns this immature, warped, worldly, and faithless view on its head: “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials.”⁴

To repent means to have a change of mind, a change of heart, to be converted. It can also mean turning around and walking in a different direction. You can’t follow Jesus walking with your head down, your hands in your pockets, dragging your feet. The day after tomorrow, as you receive the ashes, you will be called, as begin your forty days of preparation for Easter: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”⁵

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1 Mark 1:15.^↩
2 Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov, Part I, Book I, Chapter 5, “The Elders.”^↩
3 John 16:33.^↩
4 James 1:2.^↩
5 Roman Missal. Ash Wednesday.^↩