Solemnity of Saint Joseph in the Year of Saint Joseph

Readings: 2 Sam 7:4-5a.12-14a.16; Ps 89:2-5.27-29; Rom 4:13.16-18.22; Matt 1:16.18-21.24a

In many countries, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph is a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics. The Church almost always celebrates Saint Joseph’s feast during Lent. The earliest Easter can possibly be is 22 March. On the extremely rare occasion Easter falls that early, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph is “bumped” by Holy Thursday. To give you an idea as to how rare this, the last time Easter was on 22 March was in 1818 and the next time it is celebrated that early will be in 2285.¹

It’s nice to have these celebrations in the midst of this holy season of penance. When either of these solemnities falls on a Friday of Lent, as Saint Joseph’s does today, there is no obligation to observe abstinence. So, tonight have steak for supper and thank Saint Joseph.

What these solemnities do is remind us to rejoice, to celebrate what God has done for us in and through Christ. Occurring when they do and so close together, these celebrations should deepen our appreciation of the beauty of the Paschal Mystery we are called to embody as Christ’s verum corpus, his true body.

In our Gospel, the inspired author of Matthew’s Gospel does not just tell us that Joseph was “a righteous man.”² He illustrates how he is righteous. Upon learning that his betrothed, which entails a deeper commitment than simply being engaged, was pregnant, knowing how these things happen and that he was not the father of this child, he was determined to shield Mary from the harsh prescription of the law, which, when applied strictly, held that she should be stoned to death.

It is important to note that Joseph did not have the dream informing him of Mary's child’s divine paternity until after his righteousness was made manifest. This also demonstrates what Saint Paul, in our reading from Romans, meant when he wrote “it was not through the law” that God kept his promise to Abraham, our father in faith, that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.³

According to the chronology of the Torah- the first five books of the Bible- God made his promise to Abraham well before he gave the law to Moses. It is to this same promise that the prophet Nathan alludes in our first reading; a promise that has advanced concretely, even if unevenly and unexpectedly, through history. It is crucial to grasp that God does not ultimately accomplish his purposes through the law. Saint Paul held that the law served as our teacher until Christ came.⁴

It is through Jesus Christ, a descendant of Abraham in the flesh, that God accomplishes his purposes. It is through Christ, by faith, that we are the children of Abraham- the fulfillment of God’s promise. Jesus is not a new Moses. And so, Joseph’s righteousness is not demonstrated by his strict adherence to the law but believing in and obeying God, who spoke to him through angels and in dreams.

Paul boldly asserted that the letter of the law kills, while the spirit of the law gives life.⁵ The spirit of the law is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Indeed, if Joseph had invoked the letter of law, the Son of God would have been killed in utero. People who scoff at Pope Francis’s insistence that God is a God of surprises have no deep grasp of scripture and they certainly cannot make sense of Saint Joseph's experience. As the late Rich Mullins observed: “God is a wild man.”

In the Hebrew Bible, it was Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham, according to biblical genealogy, who was famed for interpreting dreams. In fact, it was his interpretation of Pharaoh's dream that saved Egypt from famine and led him to becoming something like the prime minister of Egypt.

Staying in Matthew’s Gospel, it was Saint Joseph who took Mary and the child Jesus to Egypt. He did not go as leader, as a V.I.P. The Holy Family went to the land of the pharaohs as refugees, fleeing Herod’s murderous wrath. Presumably, while in the land of the Nile, Joseph plied his trade as carpenter, tekton in Greek.

In his Apostolic Letter, Patris Corde (“With a father’s heart”), promulgated last 8 December, the Solemnity of Immaculate Conception, Pope Francis declared this year the Year of Saint Joseph.

Saint Joseph Icon by Br. Claude, OSB, of Mount Angel Abbey]

In the opening sentence of Patris Corde, the Holy Father points out that in each of the four Gospels Jesus is referred to “the son of Joseph.”⁶ Later on, towards the end of the letter, he affirms that “Fathers are not born, but made.” Pope Francis insists that a “man does not become a father simply by bringing a child into the world, but by taking up the responsibility for the life of another.” By doing this, the pope insists, a man “becomes a father to” the person for whom he takes up responsibility.⁷

Because he was fully human, it would be ridiculous not to believe that for Jesus, as for all of us, who we become as people is both the result of nature and nurture. Sure, given that Jesus was also divine, this interaction is more complex- it is complex with us, too. But surely the kind of righteousness Joseph exhibited in the wake of discovering his betrothed was pregnant with child that was not his, gives us insight in how Jesus was raised.

In his lovely letter, Pope Francis discusses Saint Joseph under five headings: A tender and loving father; An obedient father; An accepting father; A creatively courageous father, A working father.

In the first section, pointing to the enormity of the task with which God entrusted Saint Joseph- raising the Son of God- the Holy Father notes, quoting Saint Paul, which quote is included in our second reading, that “The history of salvation is worked out ‘in hope against hope' (Rom 4:18).” Most of God’s plans, he asserts, “are realized in and despite our frailty.” “Even through Joseph’s fears, God’s will, his history and his plan were at work.” And so, Joseph “teaches us that faith in God includes believing that he can work even through our fears, frailties and our weaknesses.”⁸

As an obedient father, in each situation, “Joseph declared his own ‘fiat,’ his own “be it done unto me according to your will,” like those of Mary at the Annunciation and Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.”⁹

Joseph accepted God’s will, even when it was not likely what he would have willed for himself. When he was told by the angel not be afraid and to bring the pregnant Mary into his home as his wife, Joseph set aside anger and disappointment and accepted his circumstances. He did not resign himself to some vague fate. Rather, he accepted God’s will with courage and hope.¹⁰

In addition to facing the situations in which he found himself with courage and obedience, Joseph was creative. He turned “problems into possibilities,” always remaining open to divine providence, allways discerning God's will for his life. Taking his family to Egypt is an example of this.¹¹

Of course, Saint Joseph was a worker. On 1 May, we celebrate the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker. This ties back into the environment of Jesus’s upbringing. Like Joseph, Jesus, too, was a tekton, someone who earned his living, at least up until the beginning of his public ministry, with his hands.¹²

Alluding to the fact that in many of her prayers, the Church refers to Saint Joseph as the Blessed Virgin’s chaste spouse, Pope Francis notes that, in the first instance, chastity is the “summation of an attitude that is opposite of possessiveness.”¹³

He goes on to state that “Chastity is freedom from possessiveness in every sphere of one’s life.” Hence, only when love is chaste, is it true love. The logic of love is always the logic of freedom. So, there is something to the saying “If you love someone, set them free.” Love that is love can only be freely chosen. In either time or eternity, it can never be imposed.

God is love. And so, God is freedom. Jesus came to liberate us. The answer to the question “Does God love me?” is always and emphatically “Yes!” Proof of this is Jesus on the cross: “God so loved the world…”¹⁴ The more important question is, “Do I love God?” Saint Joseph shows us what an affirmative answer to that question looks like.

---

1 MrReid.org, “You’ve already experienced the earliest Easter you’ll ever know.”^↩
2 Matthew 1:19.^↩
3 Genesis 5:15.^↩
4 Galatians 3:23-26.^↩
5 2 Corinthians 3:6.^↩
6 Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter, Patris Corde; Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3; Luke 4:22; John 6:42.^↩
7 Ibid- all citations in this paragraph.^↩
8 Patris Corde, “A tender loving father.”^↩
9 Patris Corde, “An obedient father.”^↩
10 Patris Corde, “An accepting father.”^↩
11 Patris Corde, “A creatively courageous father.”^↩
12 Patris Corde, “A working father.”^↩
13 Patris Corde- this and next paragraph.^↩
14 John 3:16.^↩

Faith is decisive

One of the biggest and most dangerous lies is that of racial purity. There is no such thing. We're all way more closely related than racists would have us believe. Humanity, like the triune God, should strive for unity in diversity.

Myths of racial purity/superiority, in the service of which religion is often misappropriated, at least in the modern era, are responsible for a lot of war, death, and devastation. If you consider yourself a Christian, one of our religion's central theses is that race doesn't matter, genealogy doesn't matter, etc.

You're not a Christian because you're Italian, Irish, Venezuelan... Faith in Christ is the decisive factor. Having faith means recognizing that God did not become human merely to make you easy in your comfort but challenge you at the deepest level of your being, urging you to forsake your idols.

Anyone can have faith in Christ- it's not exclusive but universally inclusive. If you miss this, you miss Christianity. As Jesus insisted: "God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones" (Matthew 3:9).

Jesus, Crucifixion & the Latin Tree of Sin, by Sandra Silberzweig

If you pay close attention to the exodus narrative, you will find this: "The Israelites set out from Rameses for Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, not counting the children. A crowd of mixed ancestry also went up with them, with livestock in great abundance, both flocks and herds" (Exodus 12:37-38)

Nonetheless, some continue to insist that white males are the most endangered group of people. What laugh! Generally speaking, at least in the U.S., we're the problem.

Given Saint Patrick's history of being captured and initially brought to Eire as a slave, I've always found a lot of resonance and correspondence in the collaboration between Ziggy Marley (one of Bob's sons) and The Chieftans on Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." As a result, this collaborative version of this great song is our traditio for the Solemnity of Saint Joseph:

At least to my mind, "our prophets," the ones we kill, are those who point us toward overcoming our murderous tribalism: MLK, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy, and many others, chief among whom is Jesus, God's Son. God did not kill his Son, we did- you and me. Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Fourth Sunday of Lent: Second Scrutiny

Readings: 1 Sam 16:1b.6-7.10-13a;- Ps 23:1-6; Eph 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

A prophet, a king, two anointings, the LORD as a shepherd, light, darkness, awakening, Jesus, a blind man, a washing, a healing, a warning of judgment- our readings for the Second Scrutiny of our Elect contain enough material to write a good-sized book! Maybe it will be an international best-seller. Perhaps we’ll call it “the Bible.”

Looking at Samuel's response to the LORD's prompting to head to Bethlehem to the house of Jesse to find and anoint Israel's new king, which was necessitated by the current king’s disobedience, we see that it was only after Samuel considered six of Jesse's seven sons that he found God's anointed in the seventh, that is, the least among them- even though, biblically-speaking, seven is the number of completeness.

This episode dramatically highlights the fact that God often (as in almost-always) chooses the least likely person to accomplish his purposes. Of course, Jesus himself, the only begotten Son of the Father, is the ultimate proof of this divine tendency. Why does God work this way? I think it's so that there is no doubt that it is God who is at work reconciling the world to himself and, while requiring our cooperation, is not accomplished by human effort.

You don't have to take my word to verify that God chooses the least likely people to accomplish his purposes, or even that of Sacred Scripture, just look around, not only at the Elect, but at the rest of us, at the ekklesia, that is, the Church, and not just in the pews, but up here on the chancel, too. I believe that what St Paul wrote to the ancient Church in Corinth still applies today:

consider your own calling... Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God. It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption¹

The people of God remain the original motley crew. According to the upside-down nature of God's Kingdom, being the least and lowly is the surest sign of election.

My dear Elect, you have been called by the Lord from darkness to live in the glory of his magnificent light, which illumines you from within and is the very power of the Holy Spirit. It is by means of the Holy Spirit that our risen Lord remains present, not just to us, but in and through us until he comes again. And so, heed the apostle's exhortation: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”²

It has been observed that “original sin is the one verifiable Christian dogma.”³ Accordingly, in the most real sense, we are all born blind. Like the man Jesus heals by restoring his sight in today’s Gospel, without doing all the required theological parsing, there is a scriptural sense in which our blindness is not necessarily the result of either our sin or that of our parents. St Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, noted:

creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God⁴

This is wonderfully and gloriously sung about at the beginning of the upcoming Easter Vigil in that great and ancient hymn, the Exsultet:

O happy fault, that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!⁵

My dear Elect, Christ has elected you, which election we confirmed a few weeks ago at the Rite of Election. Like the blind man in today's Gospel, you are chosen so “that the works of God might be made visible through [you].”⁶

Always bear in mind that you have done nothing to earn your election. Your chosen-ness, like David's, is a bit of a mystery. Keep in mind that God's glory shines forth much more through your faults, failures, and weaknesses than through your gifts, talents, and things you are good at. But you are chosen to bear witness to others about what Jesus has done for you and to invite them to meet the Savior that they, too, might see.

Again, like the blind man in today's Gospel, who immediately began to pay a price for being chosen (another of those great mysteries- that of the cross), you will be washed in baptism, anointed in confirmation, and further drawn into the very life of God. In communion you will be fully incorporated into Christ’s verum corpus, his true Body. Then you can truly say, “I was blind and now I see.”⁷

---

1 1 Corinthians 1:26-30.^↩
2 Ephesians 5:14.^↩
3 James Martin, S.J., Jesus: A Pigrimage, 100.^↩
4 Romans 8:20-21.^↩
5 Roman Missal, “The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night,” sec. 19.^↩
6 John 9:3.^↩
7 John 9:25.^↩

Jesus on the Cross: facing our fear of death

As useful as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can be in helping someone initialize change when it comes to problematic behavior, studies show that over time this fades. CBT is not concerned with the whys of what needs to change. It provides practical ways of dealing with the "what"- with behavior. I am not a psychologist and I am not going to provide proof of what I am going to assert in the form of empirical data derived from studies. But I think not dealing with the why may be one reason why CBT techniques tend to fade.

At risk of gross oversimplification, by contrast, psychonanalytic approaches deal almost exclusively with the why. Psychanalysis seeks to delve deeply into the psyche. Why am I writing about this? I am writing about this because the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year B, is John 3:14-21. This passage begins with these words, placed in Jesus's mouth: "And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

The reference to the serpent points to an episode in the Book of Numbers (21:4-9). In this passage, the Israelites are set upon by poisonous serpents. Those who were bitten died. God commanded Moses to make a bronze replica of the serpent and mount it on a pole. All those who were bitten had to do to be healed was to look at the bronze serpent. Yet, some still perished because they would not look.

The thought that prompted this post came to me in the form of a question: Why a serpent? Referring back to wrote I wrote about psychotherapy, I think it helps us to face what we fear. The Israelites clearly feared the poisonous serpents who were killing them. If bitten, they could be healed by looking at a replica of a serpent. It may also be useful to know that in the ancient world of the Middle East, the serpent was a symbol of wisdom. Comimg to my point, they were saved by facing what they feared.

Still appearing on medical insigna, the serpent on a pole remains, even in our day, a symbol of healing.

In the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus's use of the phrase "lifted up" is a reference to his crucifixion. The Greek word used for "lifted" means simply to be heightened. It can also mean to be exalted.

This brings me to the overall point: Our greatest fear is death. As Paul notes in Romans 5:12- sin is the result of death, not vice-versa (see "Following Jesus requires ruthless trust" second, third, and fourth paragraphs). And so, when we look at Jesus hanging on the cross, we encounter our greatest fear: death.

Like the serpent raised up in what the inspired author of Saint John's Gospel calls, in Greek, the ἐρήμῳ, which literally means "the desolate," facing what we fear heals us. Being "saved" means being "salved," which means being healed. Jesus not only faced but overcame not only death but hell for us.

This is one more way of seeing how hope lies beyond optimism.

God's need of us

This Third Friday of Lent finds us about half-way through this annual season of penance. How is it going for you? Have all your New Year's-like resolutions melted away? I hope so! How American: Lent, a time for self-improvement.

A brief dialogue:

You need God and, in a certain and very real way, God needs you.

God needs me?

Yes.

But God is God. Isn't part of being God being self-sufficient?

No, not necessarily. Is creation a wholly superfluous act on God's part? If God were complete and sufficient, why would God create? Can God do without us?

And so it goes. I have an entire section of my dissertation dedicated to this.

Before starting his essay “Creation Out of Love” with the words “God creates out of love,” Paul Fiddes strikes the right note with his epigraph, taken from William Vanstone’s Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense: “The activity of God in creation must be vulnerable.”¹ To insist that God created the world “out of love,” according to Fiddes, is not only to offer a reason for creation, but to forward a dangerous proposition, the consequences of which we must be prepared to accept

I pick this up a few paragraphs later after a discussion and attempted rebuttal of what Heidegger asserts in his first lecture on metaphysics about how believing in God begs the question of Being:

The dangerous proposition Fiddes forwards, which he rightly observes seems “theologically outrageous” to certain Christians, is that “a God who creates ‘out of love’ has needs to be satisfied.”² This assertion can be explained straightforwardly by means of an analogy. The analog is human love. “A loving God,” Fiddes insists, “needs response from some kind of created world, and especially from personal beings who are outside the internal life of God.”³ The first move Fiddes makes to bolster this audacious claim is to invoke a poem by a seventeenth century English poet, Thomas Traherne:

        Want in God is a treasure to us.
        For had there been no Need He would not hav Created the World,
        not Made us…Wants Satisfied Produce infinit Joys.”³

Fiddes quickly parts ways with Traherne, however, by denying that God’s infinite needs are eternally met because such an assertion once again renders creation superfluous, not even seeing creation as icing on the cake, but perhaps amounting to but a few sprinkles

Anyway, something to think about. I will add that all our talk about God being relational has to have some concrete meaning.

This, I think, helps explain why Lent can never mainly be about me reaching out to God. Rather, by the practice of the three fundamental spiritual disciplines that constitute part of any genuinely Christian spirituality, I clear some space, not for God to work, but to experience God who is always already at work.

Last Sunday morning, driving home from Church after leading a conversation with the Elect of our parish (i.e., adults who will be baptized at Easter) on Salvation, I heard this song by one of my favorite groups, the Welsh band The Alarm. So, "Rescue Me" is our traditio for today.

God not only wants but needs to save you, redeem you, sanctify you, conform you into the image of Christ, which is the full realization of your humanity, which, in turn, is the point of the incarnation.

---

1 Paul Fiddes, “Creation Out of Love,” in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, ed. John Polkinghorne, 167.^↩
2 Ibid.^↩
3 "Creation Out of Love," 169.^↩

Third Sunday of Lent: First Scrutiny

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

Because at this Mass we are celebrating the first of three scrutinies for our Elect, we are using the readings from Year A of the Lectionary. These readings are geared towards Christian initiation. Since we are all preparing to renew our baptismal promises at Easter, these readings speak to us all.

Our reading from Exodus tells about when Moses, under great duress, struck the rock, making water flow from it to give drink to the parched Israelites and their livestock. Taking the near mutiny to the LORD in prayer, Moses said, “What shall I do with this people? A little more and they will stone me!”¹ Thirst in the desert, it seems, was getting the better of everyone. After striking the rock with his stick and making water flow from it, Moses named this place “Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the LORD, saying, ‘Is the LORD in our midst or not?’”²

Our responsorial Psalm, Psalm 95, is the Psalm with which the Church traditionally begins the Liturgy of the Hours each day: “Today listen to the voice of LORD, do not grow stubborn as your fathers did in the wilderness, when at Meribah and Massah they challenged me and provoked me although they had seen all of my works.”³ Massah is from the Hebrew verb “to test,” while Meribah, is derived from the Hebrew word for quarreling.”⁴ So, by opening each day with Psalm 95, the Church, the people of God, are invited to remember what the Lord has done for us, which remembrance should ease our anxiety about the present and the future.

In her encounter with the Archangel Gabriel, Mary, during the Annunciation, which solemnity we celebrate on 25 March, in convincing the Blessed Virgin to cooperate with God, called to mind what God had already done. He reminded her that Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, had conceived a child despite, like Sarah and Hannah, being beyond child-bearing years, saying, in effect: “You doubt what God can do? Look at what God has already done.”⁵ Looking backward helps Mary look ahead. As Kierkegaard sagely observed: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.”⁶

In our first reading, while the people invoke being led out of Egypt, they attribute this to Moses, not to God (“Why then did you bring us up out of Egypt? To have us die of thirst with our children and our livestock?”⁷). Further, Moses does not remind them that it was God, not him, who delivered them, nor does he bring to mind the many signs and wonders that were part of their deliverance. The lesson here is obvious: if you look back over your own life, God, by various ways and means has led you to this moment and is leading you on to the saving waters of baptism.

Our reading from St Paul's Letter to the Romans is an exhortation to hope. Of the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and love), hope is the least understood. While one who hopes aspires to something not yet realized, hope is distinct from mere wishing. Hope is the flower of faith and love is their fruit. Hope, far from being a mere wish, is attained through experience- the experience of finding yourself on the far side of optimism.

The hope we have, which can be described as thirst, Paul tells us, “does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.”⁸ We must be careful not to sentimentalize this. Having the love of God poured into your heart is what brings about conversion. Conversion into the image of Christ is an often agonizing, lifelong process.

In our Gospel this morning, which tells of Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob, what the woman said to the Lord indicates that Jews and Samaritans, while closely related, did not like each other very much. Usually, Jews going from Galilee, Jesus’s native region, to Jerusalem, rather than walk the direct route through Samaria, by-passed this region by going east and walking along the west bank of the Jordan River to Jericho and from there heading up the mountain to the Holy City.

The mere fact that Jesus, along with his (clearly very uneasy) disciples, is passing through Samaria, is no small thing in and of itself. The unusual nature of this episode is further brought home when Jesus begins to speak, not only to a Samaritan but to an unaccompanied woman: two things an observant male Jew would assiduously avoid!

This woman went out to fetch water, not at the usual time, toward evening, but at midday, perhaps because she knew she would be alone. Likely due to her having been married five times and currently living with a man who was not her husband, she was viewed as a bit of a hussy, someone to be shunned by decent people. Not only did the Lord not shun her, he engaged her.

Jesus did so by appealing to what it was she was really thirsty for- unconditional acceptance, life-giving love, the more for which we long even in life’s most contented moments. Jesus offered her the water that would slake her deep, existential thirst, the water that becomes in the one who imbibes “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”⁹ Wisely, she eagerly accepted it.

Jesus then bids her go fetch her husband, which occasions her oblique confession, “I do not have a husband.”¹⁰ Upon this admission, we see Divine Mercy at work when Jesus says to her, in what I can only imagine with the greatest of tenderness: “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”¹¹

I don’t know about you, but I find this to be very good news: the Lord knows everything about you and still loves you completely. While Jesus takes you as you are, he is not content to leave you where he found you. If you were fine, why would you feel so unfulfilled? Why would you bother being here today? Jesus is leading you to the fulfillment of what you truly desire, what St. Augustine, in a letter to the Roman widow Proba, called “the life that is truly life.”¹²

As a result of her encounter, the Samaritan woman was clearly changed. Jesus revealed to her that he is the Messiah, the one awaited by both Jews and Samaritans, the one in and through whom God would no longer be worshiped either on Mount Gerazim or in Jerusalem, but be worshiped by true worshipers, who are temples of God's Spirit, anywhere and everywhere, like in Bountiful, Utah.

Like those who also encountered the Lord up close and in person, this woman could not keep this good news to herself, she was compelled to tell others what Jesus had done for her. Telling others what Jesus has done for you is called “evangelization.”

My brothers and sisters, our dear Elect, today, Jesus invites you, indeed all of us, to the water. Specifically, to the water of baptism. He invites us not only to drink but to be immersed in the very life of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The essence of divine life is love, in Greek agape, which refers to self-giving, self-sacrificing love, most powerfully expressed with Jesus on the cross. Being thus refreshed, you are to worship God in spirit and in truth, witnessing to what God has done for you in Christ by the power of their Holy Spirit.

---

1 Exodus 17:4.^↩
2 Exodus 17:7.^↩
3 Psalm 95:7-9.^↩
4 Richard J. Clifford, SJ, “Exodus,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 51.^↩
5 Luke 1:26-38.^↩
6 J. Collins, The Mind of Kierkegaard. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953, 37.^↩
7 Exodus 17:3.^↩
8 Romans 5:5.^↩
9 John 4:14.^↩
10 John 4:17.^↩
11 John 4:17-18.^↩
12 St. Augustine, “Letter to Proba.”^↩

Time's dimensions

On 24 February 2021, the last of my Dad's siblings died. My Aunt Sheila, who, if I could be said to have a second mother, was surely mine, died from complications of multiple strokes at age 85. Her funeral was this past Tuesday. On my way home, I drove through South Weber, the town where I lived my first 10 years and my Mom's hometown. I drove from where my aunt lived, using South Weber Drive- the route we used to go back-and-forth to my aunt's house- past our old house. Once again, I had the acute perception of just how quickly time passes and how fleeting are our lives, even when we live to be "old."

With my Aunt Sheila's death, not only have my Dad and all his brothers and sisters passed away, so have all their spouses, except my Mom. The day after my aunt's funeral was my Mom's eightieth birthday. I am blessed that my Mom looks great, feels great, and is in very good health. Tonight, my sisters and I are celebrating her birthday with her!

My Dad, me, my older sister, and my Mom

As I was pondering all of this in my heart, I was struck by the stark fact that a whole generation of my family is now gone. Corny as it may sound, it gave me a renewed sense of responsibility and purpose. I am grateful that I was born into my family. While I've always been a bit incomprehensible to members of both my immediate and extended families, I have always been loved and accepted as belonging. I have come to see that this is no small thing in life. Nonetheless, I took it for granted for most of my life, which is also a blessing of sorts.

After my aunt's visitation on Monday evening, I was able to stay up late looking at photo albums my Mom has been putting together during her pandemic isolation. It was a great experience, a bittersweet one. The photo above (a photo of a photo) had to have been taken in 1967 or 1968. At 55 it's weird to see photos of my parents and think "Man, they were so young." I think the same thing when I see pictures of my wife and me from 20-25 years ago.

What is "now" if not the intersection of the past and the future? Where/what is "nowhere" but "now here"? "Nothing" is not an empty concept.

Today is a beautiful early Spring day here along the Wasatch Front of the Rocky Mountains. It's one of those days that makes believing in resurrection relatively easy. Our traditio for this Second Friday of Lent is Madness's Our House, what else?