Year A Third Sunday of Lent

Readings: Ex. 17:3-7; Ps. 95:1-2. 6-9; Rom. 5:1-2. 5-8; Jn. 4:5-42

On this Third Sunday of Lent we shift gears, that is, we turn from reading Matthew’s Gospel and shift our attention to John’s Gospel for three Sundays beginning today. For six weeks, from the fourth through the ninth Sundays of Ordinary Time, we read from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which began with our recitation of the beatitudes. Relevant to our readings for this Sunday is the beatitude, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied".(Matt. 5:6) Jesus, through whom God manifested His righteousness apart from the law, is the One, the only one, who quenches our thirst. (Rom. 3:21)

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom describing his youthful atheism spoke of how happy he was when at the age of fourteen, his Russian émigré family was finally able to live under one roof in Paris. They had been forced to live apart for several years. He described being reunited at home with his family as happiness and even bliss. He said that it was “odd to think that in a suburban house in Paris one could discover perfect happiness”. (Beginning to Pray 8) He went on to talk about what happened once he found himself "confronted with perfect happiness", namely "that if happiness is aimless, it’s unbearable". (8)

In describing this experience, Anthony said that as long as he had to overcome pain and struggle, there was always something beyond, a desire that allowed him to endure in the face of many hardships. Once he overcame all the suffering and pain and was reunited in a home with his family, because he believed in nothing, happiness quickly became unsatisfying, even dis-satisfactory. (8-9) In his youthful idealism, which tolerates no half-measures, he determined that if in one year he could not discover meaning, he would kill himself. Thankfully, God looked with great mercy on this thirsty young man. Within a few months of this pledge, due to a very reluctant encounter with a priest through a Russian youth organization, an encounter that introduced him to the Gospel, which he initially found "profoundly repulsive" and that left him feeling very indignant, he went home and for the first time in his life he picked up the Bible and, not wanting to waste any precious time, perused all four Gospels to see which one was the shortest. He started reading The Gospel According to St. Mark and before he reached the third chapter, he "suddenly became aware that on the other side of [his] desk there was a presence".(10)

Anthony quickly became certain that it was Christ who was there with him. Discussing this as an old man, the great spiritual master said that from that time forward he lived in the awareness that the Lord was his constant companion. The reason this was a turning point, a true conversion for him, was because he knew the Lord is alive. So, the Gospel did not unfold for the future metropolitan archbishop as a series of propositions, or even as a story, that he could choose to believe or disbelieve, but as a personal encounter with the resurrected and living Lord. (10) He later said of this experience, "I met Christ as a Person at a moment when I needed him in order to live, and at a moment when I was not in search of him. I was found; I did not find him".

This encounter with the risen Christ became his datum for experience, what we might call his filter for reality. This is why St. Anselm of Canterbury’s remark, "I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand", is descriptive rather than prescriptive and can only be internally realized, but never externally imposed. In this we also see the truth of what Pope Benedict wrote in his first encyclical letter: "Being Christian 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". (Deus Caritas Est, par. 1).

This brings us to the event described in today’s Gospel, which took place in Samaria and that became for a certain woman a life-changing encounter. Note that Jesus, apart from describing the woman’s less than stellar track record when it came to matters of the heart, performed no dramatic miracles. (Jn. 4:16-18) As a result of his intimate knowledge of her personal life, the woman was amazed, but only confessed Him to be a prophet before saying that, like the Jews, the Samaritans awaited the Messiah, "the one called the Christ", who would lead them to all truth. Hence, Jesus had to tell to her, "I am he, the one speaking to you". (Jn. 4:26) Like the young Anthony’s stark realization that happiness cannot be aimless, the woman’s failures in love only demonstrate to us how thirsty she truly was and what it was she thirsted for: love, which turns what into a Who.

It is interesting that some of the residents of Sychar came to believe that Jesus was the Christ on the basis of the woman’s testimony, "Many more began to believe in him" as a result of their own personal encounter with Jesus, saying "to the woman, 'We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world'". (Jn. 4:41-42) This shows us that you and I are no different from Anthony Bloom, the woman at the well, or the ancient Samaritan villagers, who had life-changing encounters with Christ. You might ask, how I can say this with such confidence. I can say this confidently because you are here participating in this Eucharist where we receive from the altar the bread of life and the cup of salvation, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Elect are here, too. These are women and men who have been preparing over the last year to be incorporated into Christ’s Body, the Church. In this first of three scrutinies, they acknowledge the Lord Jesus as "the fountain for which they thirst". They acknowledge they need Him by confessing their faults, acknowledging, with St. Paul, that the Father’s love for us is proven "in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us". (Rom. 5:8) They do this in the confidence that, like the woman at the well, He will quench their thirst, giving them the water that will become in them "a spring… welling up to eternal life" (Jn. 4: 14). Today as they come forward, they "boast in hope of the glory of God", showing us that "hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into [their] hearts through the Holy Spirit". (Rom. 5:2b.5)

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Overcoming our "petty expectations"

Today I am grateful that I have little to say, nothing burning, nothing urgent. It is truly a grace for me. I was very struck this morning by a short review of Andre Dubus' film, which I now intend to watch, We Don't Live Here Anymore by my friend Sharon. It made me think about love and worthiness. Moreover, it made me grateful that I do not have to be worthy to be loved. This is certainly true of God, but it remains abstract if we have not experienced it for ourselves. So, I am even more grateful for those who love me despite my often manifest unworthiness. My wife shows me this all the time, through my good days and bad days.

Sharon's review of Dubus' film put me in mind of the book of the prophet Hosea, which demonstrates this very dramatically: "When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, 'Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord'. So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son." (Hosea 1:2-3) Then begins the story of fidelity, which requires that we overcome ourselves.

Thinking on these things forces me to revisit something I posted late last month on not repaying evil for evil. Elder Sampson, a Russian Orthodox monk, who insisted that his spiritual children forgive, said, referring to the unwillingness of some under his direction to forgive, "I’ve always concluded: this means that they still have not gotten the point, that the whole secret, that all the salt of Christianity lies in this: to forgive, to excuse, to justify, not to know, not to remember." I took issue with his insistence on justifying. This morning I think I understand, at least in my mind, what it means to be justified by Christ a little better, a little deeper.

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"But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game"

"I watched with glee/while your kings and queens/fought for ten decades/for the gods they made"

Pope Benedict has observed and publicly stated more than once that violence committed in the name of God or religion is false. In the second volume of his life of our Lord he states, "Violence does not build up the kingdom of God. On the contrary, it is a favorite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be. It serves not humanity, but inhumanity."

Even though today is Friday, is not a day of either fasting or abstinence because today we observe the Solemnity of the Annunciation. So, say a Memoraré and have a cheeseburger. Let's remember that by His cross and resurrection, Christ broke the cycle of violence showed the great lie behind the myth of retributive violence. This is why we should all rejoice that just before Lent Pat Quinn, the governor of Illinois, abolished the death penalty in that state.

Magnificat anima mea Dominum

Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord

Sunset begins our observance of the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, which, as I mentioned last Saturday, falls nine months prior to our observance of the Nativity of the Lord. Because the Annunciation is a solemnity, though not a holy day of obligation, we are not required to abstain from meat on this particular Friday of Lent because we observe solemnities as we do Sundays. In the Latin Church Sundays are always feast days, not fast days.

"Lowliness is assured by majesty, weakness by power, mortality by eternity. To pay the debt for our sinful state, a nature that is incapable of suffering was joined to one that could suffer. Thus, in keeping with the healing that we needed, one and the same mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, was able to die in one nature, and unable to die in another...

"He took the nature of a servant without stain of sin, enlarging our humanity without diminishing his divinity. He emptied himself; though invisible he made himself visible, the Creator and Lord of all things he chose to be one of us mortal men. Yet this was the condescension of compassion, not the loss of omnipotence. So, he who in the nature of God had created man, became in the nature of a servant man himself." (Pope St. Leo the Great)

The Annunciation, by John William Waterhouse, 1914

Of course, this occurred in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

From the Christian East Hieromonk Athanasios the Iviritan, speaking to a Lutheran minister from Norway, said, "We worship God, we honor the saints, and we venerate the only Mother of God with pure filial emotions, for she is our sweetest Mother by grace. Oh, how you are deprived... because you do not venerate her who is the second after God to administer His gifts to all mankind."

East meets West when Athanasios notes that it was none other than St. Augustine who said, "three things could not have been more perfectly created by our omnipotent God than these: the Incarnation, the Virgin, and the blessed life of the just in the life to come."

A deep diaconal bow to John Sanidopoulos, who blogs at Mystagogy for the part by Athanasios. The excerpt from St. Leo's sermon comes from the Office of Readings for the Solemnity of the Annunciation.

Veni Sancte Spiritus, veni per Mariam

We were to fast from the beginning; our refusal was our downfall

St. Basil in an ancient and comprehensive sermon notes that "fasting is even older than the Law. If you wait a little, you will discover the truth of what I have said. Do not suppose that fasting originated with the Day of Atonement, appointed for Israel on the tenth day of the seventh month. (Lev. 23:27) No, go back through history and inquire into the ancient origins of fasting. It is not a recent invention; it is an heirloom handed down by our fathers. Everything distinguished by antiquity is venerable. Have respect for the antiquity of fasting. It is as old as humanity itself; it was prescribed in Paradise.

Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden, by Masaccio, ca. 1426-1428

"It was the first commandment that Adam received: 'Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat. (Gen. 2:17) Through the words 'ye shall not eat' the law of fasting and abstinence is laid down. If Eve had fasted from the tree, we would not now be in need of this fast. 'They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.' (Matt. 9:12) We have been wounded through sin; we are healed through repentance, but repentance without fasting is fruitless. 'Cursed is the ground.... Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth for thee.' (Gen. 3:17-18) You were ordered to live in sorrow, not in luxury. Make amends to God through fasting. Yet even life in Paradise is an image of fasting, not only insofar as man, sharing the life of the Angels, attained to likeness with them through being contented with little, but also insofar as those things which human ingenuity subsequently invented had not yet been devised by those living in Paradise, be it the drinking of wine, the slaughter of animals, or whatever else befuddles the human mind."

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"A regard for every person starts the dialogue"

I am working very hard to avoid politics, apologetics, confrontations over the course of this holy season. Nonetheless, the world marches on and, alas, I am still me. So, with a deep diaconal bow to my dear friend Sharon, I want to draw attention to something written by Giorgio Vittadini, whom I admire very much. In addition to bringing Vittadini's remarks to my attention on Cahiers Péguy, Sharon also translated them into English from Italian. Her translation of Giorgio's piece appears in its entirety on the English page of the on-line publication Il Sussidiario, which is a site I urge you look at every day. In the interest of full disclosure and by way of a "plug", from time-to-time the editors of Il Sussidiario pick-up items from this blog and occasionally I write exclusive pieces. My most recent piece was on Egypt.

Getting to the point, here's an excerpt of what Vittadini wrote about the incoherence of the politics of armed intervention over the past two decades. With Vittadini, I ask, is this the best response?

"The excuse is always a humanitarian intervention or the defense of peace in jeopardy. It began with Serbia in the 90s. With the justification of humanitarian intervention, Belgrade and Serbia were indiscriminately bombed, leading to the overthrow of Milosevic.

"Arrested and tried for crimes against humanity at The Hague, he put attorney Carla del Ponte in a corner by demonstrating, in the light of international principles, that the reasons given for the action against his government had no legal basis. At that point, he died mysteriously in prison. Milosevic's was not an exemplary government with regard to the rights of his people, but he was democratically elected and his was not worse than other regimes (such as China) to which countries like France have bowed. Then it came to Saddam Hussein and the two Bush wars: the first for the invasion of Kuwait, the second for alleged possession of nuclear weapons. It turned out that Saddam did not possess any weapons of mass destruction. Only John Paul II and a few others, in fact, were against the war."

Pres. Obama seems to positively embrace incoherence, looking straight into the cameras yesterday in Santiago, Chilé and saying with a straight face that while it is his administration's determination that Col. Qaddafi must relinquish power, getting him to let go of power is not an objective of our military intervention. So, again, what are the implications of our involvement and our determination to get rid Qaddafi, do these decisions, as seemingly incogruent as they are with each other, take into consideration, as Vittadini insists they must, "all the factors at play"?

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Challenging aspects of following Christ

With a deep diaconal bow to my fellow deacon, Charles Joiner, who is Orthodox, I am posting an excerpt from the late Fr. Seraphim Rose’s book, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, in which he comments on much of what passes for Christian spirituality today:

"The life of self-centeredness and self-satisfaction lived by most of today’s 'Christians' is so all-pervading that it effectively seals them off from any understanding at all of spiritual life; and when such people do undertake 'spiritual life,' it is only as another form of self-satisfaction. This can be seen quite clearly in the totally false religious ideal both of the 'charismatic' movement and the various forms of 'Christian meditation': all of them promise (and give very quickly) an experience of 'contentment' and 'peace.' But this is not the Christian ideal at all, which if anything may be summed up as a fierce battle and struggle. The ‘contentment' and 'peace' described in these contemporary 'spiritual' movements are quite manifestly the product of spiritual deception, of spiritual self-satisfaction––which is the absolute death of the God-oriented spiritual life. All these forms of 'Christian meditation' operate solely on the psychic level and have nothing whatever in common with Christian spirituality. Christian spirituality is formed in the arduous struggle to acquire the eternal Kingdom of Heaven, which fully begins only with the dissolution of this temporal world, and the true Christian struggler never finds repose even in the foretastes of eternal blessedness which might be vouchsafed to him in this life; but the Eastern religions, to which the Kingdom of Heaven has not been revealed, strive only to acquire psychic states which begin and end in this life."

In trying to keep it simple, I will add only one observation, namely the banishment from contemporary Christian life, at least in the West, of those traditional disciplines that are difficult. First among these are the disciplines of fasting and abstinence. It seems that those of us in the well-fed and over-sexed West see the need to fast from virtually everything except food and sex. The reason for this is because when we do we get hungry and horny, which means grappling with these basic desires of our flesh, which are not intrinsically evil, just as our bodies are not evil. However, these desires often rule our lives, or at least exercise undue influence over us. Christ wants to liberate us from all that enslaves us, from all that distracts us from loving as we are loved, which means dying to ourselves. So, we are loathe to eliminate meat, cheese, milk, indeed, all animal products, including fish, from our diet for a prescribed season, or even a few days a week, let alone wine and conjugal relations, which disciplines have been part of Christian praxis from the very beginning. Sure these things can take on a dead formalism, but this, too, must be resisted. It is not resisited by falling into being lax.

When Philippine Archbishop Paciano Aniceto, who serves as chairman of the Commission on Family Life of the Philippines’ Conference of Catholic Bishops, suggested to married Catholics in his country at the beginning of Lent that they might consider abstaining from sexual relations by mutual agreement over these forty days, citing Muslim practice during the month of Ramadan, his suggestion, at least in the U.S., was met with sarcasm and smug ridicule, despite the fact he made it clear that he was only making a suggestion and not seeking to impose anything, which is only to suggest what Sacred Scripture itself recommends, when St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

"Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: 'It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.' But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control". (1 Cor. 7:1-5- ESV- underlining emphasis mine)

If I am not mistaken, Lent is a time we devote ourselves to prayer more intensively. Passages like this in Scripture are often dismissed by Western Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, as antiquated, outdated, and irrelevant to contemporary life. While I certainly do not take a literalist approach to Scripture, I cannot dismiss challenging passages with the wave of my hand. I fully recognize that for some people this would never occur as a possibility and I would never insist that it is incumbent upon married couples to do this for even a day, let alone for a week, month, or six weeks, but I think as Christians we have to acknowledge there may well be something to it.

Of course, such an undertaking requires a certain amount of spiritual maturity, meaning it cannot be done on a whim or for superficial, legalistic, or moralistic reasons. It also requires competent spiritual direction in order for it to be fruitful, competent spiritual directors are in short supply these days. Like all disciplines it is a means to an end, not an end in itself. We do not become holy by our own efforts, God is the one who transforms us, but not only does God not change us against our will, He does not do so without our cooperation. So, while our reasons for doing these things must be primarily spiritual, like fasting from food, it also has practical benefits, such as deepening marital intimacy, which is surely fostered by such things as praying (more) together, engaging in spiritual reading together, etc. Those who undertake such a spiritual endeavor must do so quietly, not seeking to draw attention to themselves, so that it might help them be transformed from image to likeness together, which is what the sacrament of matrimony is all about. (Mark10:6-8; Gen. 1:27)

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