Gone Lenten

Over these days of Lent I am blogging day-by-day, meaning some days I will post and some, like yesterday, I won't. Over the course of this holy season I hope that I am able to write and share some things that are useful to anybody who reads these pages. It will be interesting to see where this wait-and-see attitude will lead.

In his book Living Prayer, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, writing about leaving slavery for freedom, using the Exodus of Israel from Egypt to explain, wrote: "They had to take risks, because no one is ever freed by a slave owner, and they had to cross the Red Sea; but beyond the Red Sea it was not yet the promised land, it was a burning desert and they were aware of it and knew that they would have to cross it in the face of great difficulties. And so are we when we decide to make a move that will liberate us from our enslavement: we must be aware that we shall be attacked by violence, by beguilement, by the inner enemies that are our old habits, our old craving for security, and nothing is promised, except the desert beyond. Beyond that is the promised land, but far beyond, and we must accept the risks of the journey."

Pope Benedict teaches us about Lent

Last Wednesday, 22 February, which was Ash Wednesday, during his weekly audience, the Holy Father gave a wonderful Lenten catechesis. The complete translation comes to us by way of Sandro Magister's website Chiesa, and his faithful translator, Matthew Sherry.

In his introduction to this important catechesis, Magister observes that Lent has lost much of its dynamism in the West, noting that we tend to pay more attention to the Islamic month of Ramadan. Lent is the Christian holy time, the time during which we prepare to celebrate the Paschal mystery of our Lord's death and resurrection, which the Holy Father calls "the heart of the mystery of our salvation:"

Dear brothers and sisters, in this Catechesis I would like to dwell briefly on the season of Lent. It is a journey of forty days that will lead us to the Paschal Triduum, memorial of the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord, the heart of the mystery of our salvation.

In the early centuries of the Church this was the time when those who had heard and accepted the message of Christ began, step by step, their journey of faith and conversion to receive the sacrament of baptism. It was a drawing close to the living God and an initiation of the faith to be gradually accomplished, through an inner change in the catechumens, that is, those who wished to become Christians and thus be incorporated into Christ and the Church.

Subsequently, penitents, and then all the faithful were invited to experience this journey of spiritual renewal, to conform themselves and their lives to that of Christ.

The participation of the whole community in the different steps of the Lenten path emphasizes an important dimension of Christian spirituality: redemption is not available to only a few, but to all, through the death and resurrection of Christ. Therefore, those who follow a journey of faith as catechumens to receive baptism, those who had strayed from God and the community of faith and seek reconciliation and those who lived their faith in full communion with the Church, together knew that the period before Easter is a period of metanoia, that is, of inner change, of repentance, the period that identifies our human life and our entire history as a process of conversion that is set in motion now in order to meet the Lord at the end of time.

In an expression that has become typical in the Liturgy, the Church calls the period in which we are now entering "Quadragesima," in short a period of forty days and, with a clear reference to Sacred Scripture, it introduces us to a specific spiritual context. Read the entire catechesis

Year B First Sunday of Lent

Readings: Gen. 9:8-15; Ps 25:4-9; 1 Pet. 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15

"The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). With these, the first words spoken by Jesus Christ at the beginning of His ministry in St. Mark’s Gospel, we begin our Lenten journey. Jesus proclaims these words after His baptism by John in the river Jordan, just as He emerges out of the desert after forty days. It is important to pay attention to the order of these events that inaugurate His ministry. First, Jesus was baptized by John and then, as if in response, He entered the desert. It also important to note that immediately following His baptism came His confirmation as God’s Only Begotten Son, the Messiah and Lord, when, upon His coming forth from the water, the heavens were “torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descend[ed] upon him. And a voice came from the heavens [saying], "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:10-11).

In addition to, "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return," the other injunction that can be used when imposing ashes on Ash Wednesday, is "Repent and believe in the Gospel." To repent means to change, to be transformed, to be converted. The Greek word we translate into English as "repent" is metanoia. In today’s Gospel the word issuing from Jesus’ mouth is metanoeite, a form of metanoia that indicates repentance is on-going. Metanoeite, translated literally, means "be repenting," just as the word that follows it, pisteuete, literally rendered, means "be believing." All of this just means that repenting and believing the good news are not one-time events, but are on-going, that is, together they constitute a way of life. Again, the ordering is important; Jesus does not say, "believe and repent." Rather, He says, "Be repenting and be believing in the Gospel," indicating that the two are inextricably bound together, the one, believing, flowing from the other, repenting.

Our Psalm response today helps us understand this better. A few moments ago we sang together, "Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant." This prompts the question, "What about those who do not keep God’s covenant?" For those who do not keep God’s covenant, which you entered into when you were baptized, God’s ways are not love and truth, but just so many rules, a lot of prescriptions and prohibitions, merely a lot of "dos" and "donts." One mistake often made by those who do not see God’s covenant as love and truth, is to think they must believe in order to repent, which makes faith something abstract instead of something concrete, something spectral instead of bodily. It is important to grasp that God has only ever sought to establish one covenant with humanity. God’s covenant was succinctly articulated by the prophet Jeremiah, whose words are quoted directly in the New Testament by St. Paul, in 2 Corinthians, and the author of the Letter to Hebrews: "I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. 31:33; 2 Cor. 6:16; Heb. 8:10).

God, speaking through the prophet Ezekiel, in a passage we can’t help but turn to during Lent, says, "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you… I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep them ... you will be my people, and I will be your God" (Ezk. 26a. 27. 28b). Lent is the time when we seek to put to death the flesh so that we might have life in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is not disembodied life.

The word "flesh" in our reading today from 1 Peter is a variant of the Greek word sarx, as opposed to the Greek word soma, meaning "body." This is a crucial distinction, lest we tend towards a gnostic dualism, the kind that sees the human being as a spirit trapped in a body trying to get out. While Jesus was put to death in the flesh, life in the Spirit, which is eternal life, was fully realized by the resurrection of His body. Lent is the time of repentance, the time for penitential acts, the time for mortification, that is, putting to death everything in ourselves that is death-dealing instead of life-giving. Prayer, fasting, and alms-giving are but means to this end of being converted, changed, becoming more like Christ.

It is only by serving God in freedom that we realize God’s ways are love and truth. Paul warned the Galatians not to use their freedom "as an opportunity for the flesh," but to "serve one another in love" (Gal. 5:13). Paul says the one who lives by the Spirit does "not gratify the desire of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16). A person who lives by the Spirit, according to the apostle, realizes that "the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want" (Gal. 5:17). Even though the Spirit-filled person is not to do only what s/he wants, that is, often desires to do, such a person is "not under the law" (Gal. 5:18). What are the works of the flesh? St. Paul leaves us no doubt: "immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like" (Gal. 5:19-21a). Paul warns those who indulge in such fleshly pursuits, that they “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21b). By way of contrast, the apostle tells us that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23a). Those "who belong to Christ [Jesus],” St. Paul concludes, "have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires" (Gal. 5:24).

Our second reading for this First Sunday of Lent taken from 1 Peter, is one of the few times the lectionary bids us to take up Purgatory. St. Catherine of Genoa begins her Treatise on Purgatory, by saying a soul finds "herself, while still in the flesh, placed by the fiery love of God in Purgatory, which burnt her, cleansing whatever in her needed cleansing." It is interesting that St. Catherine spoke about the soul still being "in the flesh." Based on what she went on to say, I take her to be referring to the soul still encumbered by the fleshly desires, those that were enumerated by St. Paul, that were not mortified, that is, burnt out by the soul’s love of God before death. One goes to Purgatory to be purged of what St. Catherine described as all of "the rust and stains of sin" a person did not seek to rid himself of during mortality. She goes on to say that in Purgatory one can no longer ignore his/her issues, that is, those habits and affections that landed her/him there. Bearing witness to God’s great mercy and love, she went on to observe, "I believe no happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise."

St. Paul stated that it was "[f]or freedom [that] Christ set us free" (Gal. 5:1). If this is true, then how do we get around the fact that during Lent the Church obligates us to do certain things, like to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, as well as to abstain from the meat of warm-blooded animals on Fridays? It doesn’t take too much investigating to arrive at the conclusion that you are only obligated insofar as you obligate yourself. The Church has no enforcement mechanism for such matters, nor should it.

For example, when we fast we get hungry. When we are hungry we want to eat, which makes fasting difficult. It is precisely here where we engage in the struggle between Spirit and flesh, especially in our gluttonous culture, which forbids that any hunger pang should ever go unsatisfied. It is precisely when you experience this that you are forced to ask yourself, "Why am I doing this, again?" It is important in such a moment to understand that you are free, free to go ahead and eat something, realizing God will not love you less for doing so. So, what ought to stop you? The only thing that ought to stop you is your own desire, your desire for what is ultimate, your desire for complete fulfillment, your desire for God. This also helps you to see your weakness, which helps you understand how much you need God, shows you your true condition, which gives you a great opportunity to experience for yourself that God’s ways are love and truth. This realization is the only starting point for life in the Spirit because it is life in the Spirit, which is life eternal, that which was described by St. Augustine in a letter to the Roman widow, Proba, as "the life that is truly life." So, over these weeks leading us to Easter and beyond, be repenting and believing in the Gospel!

Desire is desire for God

In the Christian tradition it is said of fasting, which always refers to fasting from food, that it quickly reveals what controls us, be it our belly, our anger, our pride, etc. Hence, along with revealing to us both our need for bodily sustenance and, at least in our overfed society that typically laments injustice even as our manner of life makes us, even if indirectly, complicit in it, how much less sustenance we need when compared with how much we normally take, it also shows our other weaknesses, additional areas of need. It is a truism that if we fail control appetites, whether for food, or anything else, our appetites quickly control us. If you get angry at the slightest provocation, pretty soon being provoked by anger becomes your response to anything in life you find slightly challenging, irritating, or annoying. You become angry without giving it any thought.

Appetites that are totally out of one's control are addictions. Perhaps the most difficult thing for someone in the grip of an addiction is to admit that they are an addict, which is to admit that they have no control, not only over a particular appetite, but, as a result of an out-of-control appetite, over her/his life, which is controlled by the addiction. Also, to admit an addiction is to admit that it is an appetite you need help to get under control, the realization you can't do it on your own. Something that can be very discouraging to someone who has admitted an addiction, sought help, and is making progress, is the realization that the appetite, the desire, doesn't ever go away, it diminishes, lessens for a time, only to pop up again. Desire, after all, is an existential condition that constitutes our humanity.

In his book Fasting, which I have referenced several times over the past few weeks, Scot McKnight cites the example of Carl Lundquist, a university president who did not become familiar with fasting until he was a bit older. Walking back to his hotel from a meeting he attended in Korea during which Dr. Joon Gon Kim shared his own experience with fasting so that a political decision by the South Korean government would be overturned, Lundquist realized that he "had never fasted like that." He came to the further realization that the reason he had never fasted like that was likely because he "had never desired a work of God with the same intensity." McKnight uses Lundquist's experience to further his point "that it is the desire, the yearning, the 'want-it-ness' that gives rise to the kind of fasting that benefits the one [who fasts]." All of this is merely to pose the question, What do you want, I mean, really desire, both for yourself and others?

In a lovely book of blessings, To Bless the Space Between Us, the late John O'Donohue composed a blessing "For An Addict," that recognizes the desire:

On its way through the innocent night,
The moth is ambushed by the light,
Becomes glued to a window
Where a candle burns; its whole self,
Its dreams of flight and all desire
Trapped in one glazed gaze,
Now nothing else can satisfy
But the deadly beauty of flame...

May some glimmer
Of outside light reach your eyes
To help your recognize how
You have fallen for a vampire...

That your lost and lonesome heart
Might learn to cry out
For the true intimacy
Of love that waits
To take you home."

I don't think you have to be addict to receive this blessing, which is one that God, who because of Jesus we can call "our Father," wants to bestow on each one of us. Nonetheless, God, precisely because He is love, always respects our freedom, that is, not only waits, but longs for us to recognize our need and to begin to fulfill our desire.

"What good am I - if I know and don't do"

Brother Jones' appeal to your conscience and mine is our traditio on this first Friday of Lent.

One book of Scripture we should all spend some time reading over Lent is the Letter of James. Here's one reason why: "Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in the mirror. He sees himself. then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like" (James 1:23-24).

As Golda Meir once said (I am sorry I don't know the context): "Don't be humble. You're not that great." Sounds like something my maternal grandmother would've said to me.

Libertas ecclesiae II: importance of transcendence for society

This post is a brief follow-up to my post the other day, which was picked up and published on-line by Il Sussidiario, Libertas ecclesiae: freedom for truth. On 25 January 2012, incidentally the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, during a New Year's meeting traditionally held by the French president with the country's religious leaders, President Nicholas Sarkozy gave a speech that would puzzle most Americans, who are so deeply invested pragmatic liberal (not in the narrow ideological sense, but in the broader sense) secularism, said, "A secular society is one which has decided to separate churches from the state, so the state doesn’t have to account for its choices to churches, and churches don’t depend on the state to live and organize –this is secularity, a secular republic." Indeed, such a state is a secular republic as we well know. His remarks were given in response to the public support of his main challenger in this year's French presidential election, the Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, that the 1905 law of separation of Church and state be written into the French constitution.

In a relatively widely reported speech he gave at the Cathedral of St. John Lateran in December 2007, Sarkozy addressed laïcité, a French concept meaning something like a state of detente between the Church and the state, in which religions have no involvement in government affairs and are, in turn, left alone by the state, which is what the 1905 French law set forth. In his speech in Rome he said the law should be interpreted and applied "more positively" so that religion is viewed "not as a danger, but as an advantage."

In his January 2012 speech he went on to say, "But this doesn’t mean churches, respecting the law, are forbidden from speaking. Nor does it mean your words shouldn’t go beyond the walls of your places of worship. That would be a strange idea of democracy: Everyone has a right to speak, except you."

President Sarkozy went on to insist, "No religion will impose dogmas and precepts in France on those who wish to avoid them. But nothing can prohibit the idea of transcendence from being present in our society. The concord and harmony governing relations between the different religious currents here and irrigating the social body provide an excellent guarantee of peace."

It is tempting to let this last passage go without comment, but it is important that nothing prohibits the idea of transcendence from being present in society (not that the Mystery is limited by such prohibitions, as history has shown). Only a society that not only makes room for, but that facilitates, transcendence has a chance of being a fully human society. Conversely, we must resist the distillation of religion into so many values.

Ash Wednesday: "Repent and believe in Gospel"

On this Ash Wednesday, I merely want to post the prayer of my brother deacon of old, St. Ephrem the Syrian, which can be prayed daily throughout Lent. The prostrations make our prayer a bodily act of worship:

O Lord and Master of my life, Grant not unto me a spirit of idleness, of discouragement, of lust for power, and of vain speaking. [Prostration]

But bestow upon me, Thy servant, the spirit of chastity, of meekness, of patience, and of love. [Prostration]

Yea, O Lord and King, grant that I may perceive my own transgressions, and judge not my brother, for blessed art Thou unto ages of ages. Amen. [Prostration]

May we bear the wounds of your Son in our bodies, for through his body he gave us life.