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

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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.^↩

Jesus wishes to make you whole

Readings: Lev 13:1-2.44-46; Ps 32:1-2.5.11; 1 Cor 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45

"Lord, I am not worthy...but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." Today's reading is a variation on this theme taken from chapter eight of Saint Matthew's Gospel (see Matt 8:5-13). We say these words from Sacred Scripture at every Mass just prior to receiving communion. As a much-loved mentor once said to me on the subject of worthiness: "You're not worthy. Get over it!"

The leperous man in today's Gospel approaches Jesus. He strongly believes Jesus has the power to heal him if he wishes to do so. You see, the leper is uncertain whether Jesus, in contravention of what is clearly laid out in the Law in our first reading, wishes to heal him. Not only does Jesus wish to heal him, he does so by touching him. This touch renders Jesus ritually impure with regard to the Law.

Being of the tribe of Judah, Jesus is not a priest. After healing the man with leprosy, the Lord sends him to the priests and instructs him to then follow the Law to be declared clean, that is, free from his very visible illness, ritually pure and societally acceptable. There's a sense in which this seems odd in light of the fact that Jesus healed this man by breaking the Law.

The takeaway is that you are never too unclean for Jesus. In answer to your earnest petition, the Lord always says the healing word, always gives the healing touch. His wish and his will is to heal you, to restore you to wholeness. Frankly, anyone who believes he doesn't need the healing that only God can give cannot be a Christian.

A point worth pursuing is that there are so many people, so many Christians, who recognize their need for healing and who desire wholeness but hold back. Unlike the leperous man, whose approach to Jesus took courage, the kind of courage born from a deep desire, even from desperation, it is easy for many to hold back thinking things like, "I can't be forgiven for that." Or, "I am ashamed of what I did," letting that become a barrier. While Jesus merely touched the leper, he went to the cross and gave his life for you, even for, especially for, those "big" things, those "shameful" things.

Christ heals a leper, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1650

This is the final Sunday before Lent. Lent is a penitential season. It is a holy time to open yourself to the love of God given through Christ by the power of the Spirit. It is a time to assess your life and earnestly say to Jesus, "If you wish, you can make me clean." Then to hear Jesus say the healing words, "You are forgiven. I love you" and experience his healing touch.

While we don't hear the rest of the story of the healed man, at least not in its entirety, there can be little doubt that this experience was life-changing for him. In fact, despite being "solemnly" warned by Jesus not to say a word to anyone about what happened, he couldn't help but tell others what Jesus had done for him. It's safe to say, this man underwent a conversion, a profound change.

Saint Francis of Assisi, who is probably the most Christ-like saint in the Church's history, wrote about the abhorrence in which he held lepers. Then, one day, while riding on horseback, he encountered a man with leprosy. Despite being filled with disgust at the sight of this man, Francis was compelled to dismount and kiss him.

After giving the man with leprosy a gentle kiss of peace, the leper extended his hand to receive alms. Francis then gave him some money. Once remounted on his horse, Francis looked all around and could not see the man he just kissed and to whom he had given alms. In a moment, it occurred to Francis that he had just kissed Jesus.

Whether in reference to the evangelistic efforts of the man Jesus healed or Francis' Spirit-driven response to the very sick man he encountered, what else could Saint Paul have meant when, in our reading from his First Letter to the Corinthians, he wrote: "do everything for the glory of God"?

Memorial of Saint Agatha, virgin and martyr

Readings: 1 Corinthians 1:26-31; Psalm 31:3-4.6.16-17; Luke 9:23-26

Along with Felicity, Perpetua, Lucy, Cecilia, and Anastasia, Agatha is one of the six women, apart from the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is always invoked in Eucharistic Prayer I. Eucharistic Prayer I is also known as the Roman Canon.¹

Prior to the liturgical uniformity that started at the Council of Trent and reached its apex with the First Vatican Council, the Roman Canon, as you might guess, was only used in Rome. These six women, along with Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian, are all martyrs venerated highly by the Church in Rome.²

For the Church’s first several centuries, the only saints who were venerated were her martyrs, those who died in Odium Fidei, because of hatred of the faith. Their witness was their shed blood, given, not taken, in unwavering fidelity to Christ.

In his defense of the faith entitled Apologeticum, the Church Father Tertullian points out: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”³ But to paraphrase Oscar Wilde (who converted on his deathbed): just because someone is willing to die for something doesn’t mean it is true. Therefore, what precedes Tertullian's assertion about the blood of the martyrs is very important:

We are not a new philosophy but a divine revelation. That's why you can't just exterminate us; the more you kill the more we are⁴

In imitation of her Lord, the Church walks the via crucis'- this is today’s Gospel in a nutshell. The worst eras of Church history are those times when the Church was politically powerful and wealthy. That’s when comfort led the Church not only to be complacent but even unfaithful at times. Such situations do not produce martyrs, like Agatha.

But the Bridegroom is eternally faithful to his Bride. The Church is not holy because her members are holy but because Christ is holy. Whatever sanctity Christians attain comes from, through, and in Christ by the Holy Spirit’s power. It is through the sacraments, which have been called masterworks of the Holy Spirit, that Christ seeks to imbue us with holiness, that is, with his very self.

Indeed, there are people who willingly forfeit their lives for many causes, some quite significant and some rather trivial. If we’re being honest, Christian martyrs both in ancient Rome and in our own day are often seen as delusional. But if Christianity really is “a divine revelation,” this makes all the difference in the world.

One must have eyes to see that in a world that is increasingly seen by many as devoid of any transcendent meaning, the Christian martyrs, placing their hope in Christ, stand as beacons for the safe harbor of God’s love, pointing toward the full revelation of God in Jesus Christ. They demonstrate that each and every person is not only created but is redeemed in order to realize her/his destiny, the end for which each of us exists. And so, the martyrs point us to the One who is our origin and our destiny.

Depiction of Saint Agatha's martyrdom, by Sebastiano del Piombo, 1520

Born around AD 230, Agatha, who lived on the island of Sicily. Like quite a few women martyrs of the early Church, she died to defend her virginity, something about which many get rankled today. In some instances, this is warranted. Known to be physically attractive, she drew the attention of a high Roman official in Sicily- Quintianus.

It wasn’t just the case that Agatha was a virgin because she happened to be a young woman with no carnal experience. Heeding Saint Paul’s exhortation that “An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit,” she consecrated herself wholly to Christ, choosing celibacy and virginity.⁵

But Quintianus was persistent in his pursuit of Agatha. She was persistent in spurning him. When the persecution of Christians under the emperor Decius broke out in AD250, Quintianus saw his opportunity. Knowing Agatha was a Christian, he had her arrested and brought a judge. He was the judge.

Agatha’s choice was simple, marry Quintianus, which meant effectively renouncing Christ through the violation of her complete consecration to him, or be executed for being a Christian. Her reply, as it has come down was:

Jesus Christ, Lord of all, you see my heart, you know my desires. Possess all that I am. I am your sheep: make me worthy to overcome the devil⁶

Agatha saw there was no profit in forfeiting herself to gain the world. After all, to be the wife of a Roman official of high standing would be quite cushy. Instead, she denied herself, took up her cross, and followed Christ. The martyrs show us that hope lies on the other side of optimism. Or, as Saint Paul put it: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.”⁷

Her martyrdom is triumph, not tragedy, which is why we can pray- Sancta Agatha, ora pro nobis.

---

1 Roman Missal. The Order of Mass. Eucharistic Prayer I, sec. 96.^↩
2 Ibid., sec. 86.^↩
3 Tertullian. Apologeticum.^↩
4 Ibid.^↩
5 1 Corinthians 1:34.^↩
6 Catholic Online. “Saint Agatha”.^↩
7 1 Corinthians 15:19.^↩

Jesus heals Job

Readings: Job 7:1-4.6-7; Psalm 147:1-6; 1 Corinthians 9:16-19.22-23; Mark 1:29-39

I actually think the title of this post could easily serve as my reflection on the readings for this Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B of the Sunday lectionary cycle.

Following on the heels of last week, our Gospel for this Sunday starts with the very next verse of the first chapter of Mark. It bears noting, yet again, how dense this chapter is. Also worth noting, is that today's Gospel, narratively speaking, also takes place during the first day of Jesus' public ministry. It is an action-packed day that sees God's kingdom breaking into the world in a dramatic way. One hallmark of the Kingdom is healing and wholeness.

While our Gospel today conveys the Lord's healing activity in the aggregate, it's important to understand that for each person healed of an affliction, be it physical, psychological, or spiritual this is huge! No doubt, many people whom Jesus healed felt like Job: hopeless to the point of despair. Like Job, many were probably resigned to never seeing happiness again.

Jesus doesn't just bring hope to those in despair. He is hope itself. For those who, like Paul, have the hope that is Christ Jesus, we can't help sharing our hope, sharing Jesus. We do this after the manner of the apostle by serving others and becoming weak in the understanding that "when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor 12:10). Hope is healing.

Like the demon-possessed man in our Gospel for this past Monday, you share Jesus not merely or sometimes not even by telling those in despair "all that the Lord in his pity has done for you" (Mark 5:19 see also ). Rather, you must take pity, or, to put it more palatably, have compassion for, someone you encounter for whom things seem hopeless and who feel helpless. Thus, you show, not just say, "all that the Lord in his pity has done for you."

Healing, especially spiritual healing, can happen in a sudden, unmistakable way, or, as is often the case, slowly over time. Along with the anointing of the sick, penance is a sacrament of healing. The Eucharist, which Saint Ignatius of Antioch, in his Letter to the Ephesians, called "the medicine of immortality" and "the antidote to prevent us from dying," has healing properties as well. As the sacrament of sacraments, the Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist is a sacrament of initiation, a sacrament of healing, and a sacrament at the service of communion.

Let's not forget the basic fact that the Eucharist began to be reserved in order to take it to those who were ill. When you bring communion to the sick, you bring Christ in the fourfold way he is present in the Eucharistic celebration. The minister or extraordinary minister represents the assembly and the priest, at whose hands the Lord accepted our sacrifice, you share God's word, and then give Holy Communion.

It is precisely in these seemingly mundane, ordinary ways that we share Christ. It is by sharing him that the sharer also receives. For someone who may be thinking they've never had the experience with Jesus about which I am writing, service to others in Jesus' name for the sake of God's kingdom is the best way faciliate such encounters.

In light of this important and often underemphasized healing aspect of the Eucharist, we don't so much need a Eucharistic Revival as we need to let the Eucharist, with assitance from the sacraments of anointing and penance, revive us!