Letting go of Why?

Why? It is the most human of all questions. As human beings, we are creatures of meaning, always deeply desiring meaning. We often tend to manfacture meaning. Because this question is human, all too human, it is limited. Hanging on to "Why?" limits you.

The Book of Job shows what happens when one clings to "Why?" In the end, Job doesn't really receive as satisfying answer to his question. Rather than asking "Why?", it's usually more important to grapple with "that."

This or that really happened. What now? It's okay that you can't make sense of it. I am of the view that in fallen and badly broken world, there is often no sense be made of things. And so, it's very often the case that any meaning you assign is an overlay, an imposition, a figment of your imagination. This especially true when trying to determine someone else's intentions. Most of the time, we don't know our own reasons why!

Most of the Book of Job consists of either Job's friends trying to answer Job's "Why?" or Job rejecting their facile answers (i.e., God is punishing you because of something you did) even as he continues imploring God. In the end, the divine answer Job receives can be summarized by this passage from Isaiah:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways . . . For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thought (Isa 55:8-9)

When reality is overwhelming, disorienting, bad, or even traumatic, "Why?" is a natural response. Like a lot of natural responses, the Spirit leads us beyond that. In his lovely little book Prayerfulness, Robert L. Wicks inists that "until we can let go of this question ["Why?"] and find new ways of relating to God and the event, moving on and moving deeper in our life is almost impossible" (90).

Perhaps the most pagan way of relating to God is to think that when something bad happens God is punishing you and when good things happen it is because God is pleased with you. God is not capricious. God is probably never the formal cause of what happens to you. Perhaps sometimes He might be the efficient cause. God is certainly the final cause of all things. If we're willing to let go of "Why?", God can and will make amazing things happen. If you love God and trust Him, all things can work together for your good.

Trust is earned. Trusting someone, even God, involves a risk. Most of the time the risk isn't whether or not things will work out for the better or maybe just be okay. Rather, the risk is not having things work out the way you want them to. What we often want is for bad things to just go away. Far from being an evasion of reality, Christian faith is a deep engagement with reality. Hope is realized by facing reality squarely.

More than God's pleasure or displeasure, I think the worst temptations are not to believe in God or to believe God is indifferent toward you. Of these two, the latter is worse than the former. We are not to put God to the test, which, scripturally, refers to trying to force God to do what you want Him to do. Trusting God when reality seems arrayed against you, which requires submission to His holy will and realzing that it isn't just all going to magically go away, is necessary. This means having no idea how this is going to work out or how I am going to make peace with this and imploring God, surrendering to Him.

As Eugene Peterson wrote: "When nothing we can do makes any difference and we are left standing around empty-handed and clueless, we are ready for God to create."

Monday of the Second Week of Lent

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

Our God is awesome because, for anyone who repents and seeks His mercy, He does not deal with him according to his sins. In other words, if you turn to Him, you won’t get what you deserve in the end. If this isn’t good news, I don’t know what might be.

In essence, the Gospel is pretty simple. Human life, “real” life, is what is complicated. A very complicated situation arises whenever someone who has done something truly terrible turns to the Lord and truly repents.

Of course, repentance consists of acknowledging the terrible sin(s) committed and accepting, perhaps even embracing, the just consequences that follow from them. Genuine repentance is not a way of avoiding responsibility or consequences. In his encyclical Spe salvi, Pope Benedict XVI noted:

Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value¹

He also pointed to something axiomatic: “Only God can create justice. And faith gives us the certainty that he does so.”² We must humbly acknowledge that ultimately, only God can judge. And judge He will. So, how you live your life matters both here and now and in eternity. This is Christian realism at its most stark.

Today, the Lord does not comfort us. Rather, He provokes us: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”³ Today’s readings are summed up nicely in a passage from Ephesians:

And do not grieve the holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed for the day of redemption. All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. [And] be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ⁴

In his magisterial address with which he opened the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pope Saint John XXIII insisted:

In our time, however, the Bride of Christ prefers to use medicine of mercy rather than severity. She wants to come to meet current needs, showing the validity of her doctrine rather than renewing sentences⁵

In his first message for Lent, Pope Leo invited us

to a very practical and frequently unappreciated form of abstinence: that of refraining from words that offend and hurt our neighbor. Let us begin by disarming our language, avoiding harsh words and rash judgement, refraining from slander and speaking ill of those who are not present and cannot defend themselves⁶

Striving to be like Christ means endeavoring to follow His follow His most difficult teachings. To love your enemies, pray for them, do them good. In the verses leading up to our short passage from Luke for today, Jesus asks:

For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same⁷

Christians reject the lex talionis, which insists on an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Like Tevye, the main character in Fiddler on the Roof, we realize that the result of living according to the lex talionis only leaves everyone blind and toothless.⁸

By following Christ Jesus, we go a better way.

---

1 Pope Benedict XVI. Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, sec. 44. 2007.^↩
2 Ibid.^↩
3 Luke 6:36.^↩
4 Ephesians 4:30-32.^↩
5 John XXIII. Gaudet Mater Ecclesiae. Address to Open the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. 1962.^↩
6 Pope Leo XIV. Message for Lent 2026.^↩
7 Luke 6:32-33..^↩
8 Fiddler on the Roof, film version, directed by Norman Jewison, 1971.^↩

Year A Second Sunday of Lent

Readings: Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 33:4-5.18-20.22; 2 Timothy 1:8b-10; Matthew 17:1-9

The Lord’s Transfiguration is the fourth Luminous mystery of the Blessed Mother’s Holy Rosary. This mystery’s fruit is the desire for holiness. In the part of the Sermon on the Mount known as the Beatitudes, which we spent several Sundays listening to just before Lent, Jesus calls blessed those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.¹

What does it mean to be holy, to be righteous? It means to be like Jesus. This requires obedience to the Father by listening to His Son’s teachings and endeavoring to follow them. Transfiguration or, more succinctly, conversion, is a better way to think about repentance than just being sorry for your sins, which, while necessary for repentance, is far from sufficient.

This holy season is a time-gift we receive each year. Receiving this time gift means repenting and believing in the Gospel, which is not a self-improvement project. As our responsorial for today puts it: “Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.”² To be like Christ means surrendering yourself to God. Indeed, Christ “saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design.”³

Abram, later Abraham, our father in faith, exemplifies this our reading from Genesis, which is summarized in the final sentence: “Abram went as the LORD directed him.”⁴ Jesus Christ is the Gospel. He is the Good News of salvation, the One who surrendered Himself completely to God, relinquishing His own will for the sake of love, even to the point of death.⁵

In the whole of our uniquely Christian scriptures, which together we call the New Testament, eternal life is clearly defined only once.This definition is found in the Gospel According to Saint John:

Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ⁶

Being a Christian means to desire holiness. It means being hungry and thirsty to be like Christ, a desire that is strengthened by the Eucharist. Becoming holy requires me to confront myself in those ways I know I am not like Him.

Transfiguration, by Titian, 1560 (Public Domain)

These realizations should cause me, in words from our Ash Wednesday reading from the Book of the Prophet Joel: “Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God.”⁷ This exhortation ends on a note of encouragement that gives hope:

for [the LORD] is gracious and merciful
slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love,
and relenting in punishment⁸

The Lord taught that those who truly hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied.⁹ Without repentance, there is no hunger, no thirst for Christ. Hence, there is no forgiveness, no conversion, no salvation. What good is a gift you refuse?

The good news, in part, is that, at least until death, God never ceases offering you the gift of salvation, purchased by the death of His Son, no matter how many times you refuse or ignore it. But that part, at least until death, recalls that I am dust and to dust I will return. This realization gives the Lord’s call great urgency.

As Count Leo Tolstoy wrote in a pamphlet at beginning of the twentieth century: “everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.”¹⁰ While you cannot be transfigured into Christ’s image merely by your own efforts, you certainly can’t be so converted with no effort!

Today, with Lent in full-swing- though it’s never too late to start- the Lord says to you: “Rise and do not be afraid.”¹¹ He desperately wants to hear you respond, “Jesus, I trust in You.”

---

1 Matthew 5:6.^↩
2 Psalm 33:22.^↩
3 2 Timothy 1:9.^↩
4 Genesis 12:4a.^↩
5 Matthew 26:39.^↩
6 John 17:3.^↩
7 Joel 2:13.^↩
8 Joel 2:13.^↩
9 Matthew 5:6.^↩
10 Leo Tolstoy. "Three Methods of Reform." Translated in 1900.^↩
11 Matthew 17:9.^↩

I know I am dust, but that isn't all

In my homily for Ash Wednesday, I noted that I preferred the "Repent and believe in the Gospel" formula to the more traditional "Remember you are dust and to dust you will return" one. Both, of course, are perfectly fine. My rationale for my personal preference was that I don't need to come to Church to be reminded of my mortality because I am reminded of it all the time.

Well, on Wednesday morning my father-in-law died. This was not unexpected. He had been under hospice care since right after the New Year. Thankfully, my wife and her brother (his only two children) made it to Ohio in time to see their Dad before he passed.

I do need to be reminded of my hope: Jesus Christ. He is the Gospel. He is the Good News. Above all, He is my friend and Companion, without whom my life would like both meaning and purpose. And so, I also have to be reminded of my on-going need to repent. To do whatever I must do and forsake whatever I must forsake to be more and more transformed into His image.

Speaking of life (and death) events that remind me of my mortality, I retired from my career of 30 years. Yesterday was my first day of that retirement (I don't officially retire until the end of next week, but I am on leave until then). It is gratifying. As noted ad nauseum here on my little "blogspot page," I am moving to a different full-time job(s). But yet another reminder of the transitory nature of this life.

Way back in my mid-20s I could fit everything I owned, minus some really cheap pressboard bedroom furniture, in my VW Rabbit Wolfsburg Edition. When things were stressful (I was a full-time student working part-time and serving the Reserve), my escape fantasy was loading everything up in my car and relocating to some random place to begin again. In all honesty, while I am glad I persevered and did not flee (I have been immensely lucky and blessed in all aspects of my life), I sometimes pine for the simplicity of those days.

But you can't live your life in reverse or live it worrying about what can happen in the future. Hence, the beauty of the title of de Cassuade's spiritual classic: The Sacrament of the Present Moment. Remember, a sacrament is a visible and tangible sign of Christ's presence in and for the world. He is (t)here every moment. As the Christian Brothers say at the beginning of each meeting, class, etc.- "Let us remember that we are in the holy presence of God."

At root, this is what Lent is about. Of course, this consists of eliminating those things that cloud my perception, making me unable to experience God's holy presence. It is also why the Examen is so important.

So, while on the subject of cars, I recently ran across a video of Gary Numan performing his '80s hit, "Cars," live with NIN way back in 2009. For a long time, Numan kind of hated his most popular song. Eventually, he reconciled and embraced it. This performance is simply great:

This is the last post for February.

The desert of my soul

Readings: Genesis 2:7-9.3:1-7; Psalm 51:3-6.12-13.17; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

In this desert that I call my soul/
I always play the starring role/
So lonely..."

I guess as people grow older many develop stock phrases. Without a doubt, if repeated too often, these quickly grow tiresome. In a positive sense, the purpose these phrases seem to serve the purpose of distilling the wisdom one thinks s/he has gained over the course of life.

I'm sure you saw it coming a thousand miles away that that was a lead up to using one of my stock phrases. If not, don't say I didn't warn you! "I have to slog through a lot of self before I need worry about the devil." This is why I started off with those lyrics from The Police's song "So Lonely." While it would be utterly impossible to grow in love of God and neighbor without other people and without a community of fellow disciples, there is an irreducibly personal dimension to following Christ and endeavoring, with His help, to become more like Him.

While this is to get a little ahead of ourselves, the fruit of the fourth Luminous Mystery of the Blessed Mother's Holy Rosary is the desire for holiness. The mystery, of course, is Jesus' Transfiguration. There are times I really think I desire holiness. But, then, I shrink in the face of the changes acting in accord with such a desire would require me to make.

In his play, Lady Windermere's Fan, Oscar famously put these words on the lips of his character Lord Darlington: "I can resist anything except temptation." As is usually the case, this isn't all there is to the thought Wilde sought to express. This sentence is prefaced by: "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it." I don't think this is a case of Wilde being too clever by half. In this is contained an echo of something Saint Augustine wrote in his Confessions: "Give me chastity and continency, only not yet" (Book 8, Chap VII).

As with the Beatitudes, it's tempting to do a deep dive into the three temptations the Lord experienced during his time in the desert. Really, that is rehashed time and again. What I want to focus on is the fact that Jesus really was tempted. As we read in the Letter to the Hebrews, which is most likely an extended sermon: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).

What do I mean by the Lord being really tempted? This prompts the deep question: Could Jesus have sinned by caving into any one of the three temptations, the most immediate of which is to quickly "make" Himself something to eat? After all, the inspired author of Matthew tells us He was hungry. This is really the question, Was Jesus free? If He wasn't free, then does what we read about in the Synoptic accounts of His desert sojourn amount to something like a divinely orchestrated puppet show? I think the sacred author of Hebrews understands and answers this question.

Gifted theologian, Archbishop Bruno Forte, in the published and translated edition of the 2004 Spiritual Exercises he gave to the Roman Curia, entitled To Follow You, Light of Life, dealt with this important question beautifully when he wrote:

Jesus does not seek easy consensus or pander to people's expectations, but rather subverts them. Jesus chooses the Father: with an act of sovereign freedom he prefers obedience to God and abnegation of self over obedience to self, which would imply the rejection of God. He does not succumb to the pull of immediate success; he believes in the Father with indestructible confidence. In the hour of temptation, Jesus reaffirms his freedom from himself, free for the Father and for others, free with the freedom of love

As it turns out, we have a great high priest who is both able and very wiling to sympathize with our weaknesses because He "has been similarly tested in every way. . ." And so, we can "confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help" (Hebrews 4:16).

Our first reading happens in the garden. But seeking to assume the starring role in the drama of existence is what starts the desertification process. Lent, which is an old English word referring to springtime, is the time open yourself to God to turn the desert of your soul into a lush garden. For this to happen, you must relinquish the starring role. Way easier said/written than done.

And so, in the beautiful words of Psalm 51- the Miserere (today's Responsorial is more or less the same as Ash Wednesday): A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me (Ps 51:12).

"Have mercy on me, God"

Today is the Friday after Ash Wednesday. I always think of Ash Wednesday to the following Saturday as the warm-up period for Lent. Then, on the First Sunday of Lent, the season really kicks in.

Repentance gets short shrift these days. It sometimes seems that to suggest there are things in all of our lives that need to change is an affront to human dignity. It's uncomfortable to adhere to the belief that we're broken people living in a fallen world. In the age of "identity," it's important to point out that a Christian finds her/his identity in Christ. This puts us in a mode of becoming.

It's easy to the believe that "the world," which is an abstraction, is fallen, or even that "humanity" (another abstraction) is broken. It's harder to believe that I am. It's downright challenging to believe that the most important thing I can do to change the world is to change myself.

In a pamphlet translated from Russian into English in 1900 and given the English title "Three Methods of Reform," Leo Tolstoy addressed this head-on:

There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself

For anyone who has attempted to change himself, you know, while such an undertaking can bear some fruit, it usually proves futile.

As a Christian, I believe I need God's help to make the changes that I really need to make. This help is usually termed "grace." In the Act of Contrition, at least the one I use, this is acknowledged. Praying to God, the penitent pledges, "I firmly intend, with Your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin."

I would think that the Lenten disciplines one undertakes would have some correlation to what one needs to change, either to embrace or to avoid. What you take up during Lent is as important, if not more so, than what you give up. One clue to this assertion is that the Collect for Ash Wednesday refers to Lent as "this campaign of Christian service."

is While being conformed into the image of Christ isn't something you can achieve solely by your own efforts, it does require your effort, your cooperation. This is what the holy season of Lent urges us to do more intentionally. It is a time to reassess, to recommit, to endeavor to live the new life you received in baptism. Lent is preparation for the renewal of your bapstimal promises at Easter.

Whenever I remember it, I am deeply moved by Pope Francis' response to the first question he was asked by Father Anthony Spadoro, a fellow Jesuit, in a lengthy interview at the beginning of his pontificate. The question was Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio? His reply? I do not know what might be the most fitting description…. I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.

Nonetheless, Lent, which means "springtime," is not the time wallow in your unrighteousness. It is a time to change with God's help by realizing how much God loves you, even as you struggle or fail. As Saint Paul wrote to the Roman Christians: "But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8)

Our traditio is what else but a choral rendition of Psalm 51, the Miserere.

Ash Wednesday

Readings: Joel 2:12-8; Psalm 51:3-6.12-14.17; Matthew 6:1-6.16-18

Our Collect for Ash Wednesday describes the holy season of Lent as “this campaign of Christian service.” This prayer goes on to note that we begin this campaign “with holy fasting.”¹ Since both service and fasting are mentioned in the opening prayer, right from the start we have the trifecta: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

There is a reason liturgy is prima theologia or first theology. There is no better way of learning about faith than to actively participate in Mass, what the Church calls assisting at Mass. Hence, we should attentively listen to the prayers of the Sacred Liturgy.

While addressed to God, these prayers constitute our prayer, not just those of the priest. After all, by virtue of baptism, the Church is made a kingdom of priests, offering not just prayers and sacrifices but our entire selves to God through Christ. Better assisting better at Mass is a great Lenten commitment!

I am convinced that there is a strong correlation between the three fundamental spiritual disciplines, taught by our Lord Himself in today’s Gospel, and the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. Faith correlates to praying, hope to fasting, and love to almsgiving. Just as hope is the flower of faith and love their fruit, fasting flows from prayer to sacrifice to self-giving service.

Just as hope is the trickiest of the theological virtues to pin down, fasting is the hardest of the fundamental spiritual disciplines to undertake. When fasting, we give up for a specified period something we need to live, namely food. Through fasting, we make the Lord’s reply to the devil’s first temptation- to turn rocks into bread to satisfy His hunger- our own:

One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God²

Where is your hope? What or who gives you hope? What is it that you want from life? What is true happiness and how is it achieved? How does your hope structure and shape your life? Moreover, how does the structure of your life reveal your hope?

For the imposition of ashes, which serves as the penitential rite, there are two formulae: First, is the most familiar: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Alternatively: “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”³

I don’t know about you, but I don't have to come to Church to be reminded of my mortality. As parents, mentors, beloved colleagues and parishioners, friends, cousins, etc., grow infirm and even die, I’m reminded of this inevitable fact very often. This is how reality makes me mindful that I am dust.

It is because, by the grace of God, I believe in the Gospel, which is nicely summarized by Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, that I find hope not in death but through it. Repenting is not a one-off thing. Rather, it is a continual, lifelong process of conversion.

To repent is to change, to convert, to be ever more conformed to the image of Christ. En español, la segunda fórmula es “Conviértete y cree en el evangelio.” Si, es conviértete no esta arrepientete. In Spanish, the second formula translates as “Be converted and believe in the Gospel,” not “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” This gets to the heart of the matter regarding not only of Ash Wednesday and of Lent but Christian life. Esto llega al meollo de la cuestión, no solo en lo que respecta al Miércoles de Ceniza y la Cuaresma, sino también a la vida cristiana.

Practically, what it means to repent, to be converted, is to engage in this “campaign of Christian service.” Our engagement in this campaign is, in large part, what constitutes our “battle against spiritual evils.”⁴ As Christians, we don’t fight fire with fire. To extend the analogy, we fight fire with water. In this, we heed Saint Paul’s exhortation to not only not be overcome by evil, but to “overcome evil with good.”⁵ Prayer and fasting are what distinguish our service, our diakonia, as characteristically “Christian.”

According to the Collect, fasting is our weapon of self-restraint. Learning not to always put yourself first is a demanding thing. It requires training. Sacrifices like eating less to give more to the poor, spending less time online or watching television to spend more time praying and serving others, especially those in need, are what we are urged to do not only for Lent, but for life. This is how we become what Saint Paul calls Christians in our second reading: “ambassadors for Christ.”⁶

---

1 Roman Missal. Lent. Ash Wednesday.^↩
2 Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3.^↩
2 Roman Missal. Lent. Ash Wednesday.^↩
4 Ibid.^↩
5 Romans 12:21.^↩
6 2 Corinthians 5:20.^↩