Homily—Laetare Sunday

“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Jesus responds to this charge of the Pharisees and scribes with three parables: first, the Parable of the Lost Sheep, in which the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine in order to bring back the one lost sheep; and then the Parable of the lost coin, in which a woman with ten silver coins loses one and searches diligently until she finds it. Both cases are causes for calling together friends and neighbors to rejoice and celebrate, for what they once had lost but has been found and restored to them. Jesus concludes the parable of the lost sheep by saying, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” And at the end of the Parable of the Lost Coin: “Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. He concludes with the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which we have just heard.

Today, Laetare Sunday, the Church asks us to take a pause in this penitential season and rejoice, Laetare. As we sang in today’s Introit from Isaiah: “Rejoice, Jerusalem, you who have known sorrow. Soon shall Zion be found filled with consolation.” Today, the liturgy calls us to anticipate the Easter joy that we will celebrate in a few weeks. The parable of the prodigal son has much to say to us about genuine joy, festivity and celebration, as well as its false forms and the obstacles we place in its way. 

Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus says of John the Baptist, “I tell you among those born of women none is greater than John; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he”, Luke comments: “When they heard this all the people and the tax collectors justified God, having been baptized with the baptism of John; but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected to purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.” Here, too, the tax collectors and sinners who have drawn near to hear Jesus are open to the purposes of God, whereas the Pharisees are not, because their focus on ritual purity and , therefore, on who is therefore worthy to be a table companion with the righteous has rendered them incapable of rejoicing and celebrating the restoration of the lost. 

Jesus wants to bring them around, so let us look at how he does so through the three main characters of this parable.

First, the Father. The first trait of the father that I see is that he lets go. The younger of the sons said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that falls to me.” Followed immediately by, “And [the father] divided his living between them.” No discussion, no argument, no sign of displeasure or shock on the side of the father, only the laconic statement, “And he divided his living among them.” Request for the patrimony, gift of the patrimony, no more is said. The father is one who lets go. 

The father loves his two sons. He loves by letting go. His letting go is not neglect, but an expression of love and intimacy within the familial bonds of paternal and filial love. As he says later to the elder son, “You are always with me. And all that is mine is yours.”

The younger son senses the radical generosity of the father and the freedom that accompanies it. It had been part of his relationship with his father for his entire life; but now he disregards the laws of kinship and the familial bonds in which the letting go has its origin and becomes fruitful.

The freedom he has already is not sufficient for him and is not of the right kind. It’s too tied to the restrictions of familial bonds. The younger son longs for a freedom of his own making, of which he may regard himself as the origin, not his father. He also longs for a different kind of “letting go”, also of his own making, in which he can make use of his father’s wealth as he sees fit, without reference to the father. In this way, separate from his family, he believes he will find the happiness that the longs for, in an autonomous life of self-gratification.  And so he makes the presumptuous request, outrageous in the culture of his time, that the father hand over to him now the patrimony that is to come to him. It is given to him, and he goes off to pursue his ideal life. 

The elder son also senses this “letting go” that is so characteristic of his father. But to him, all this letting go is too much: too messy, too unpredictable, too many unknowns, too much uncertainty. So he reconfigures this disposition of his father into a life of discipline, hard work, duty and obligation. A self-made, well-ordered life which appears to him much more responsible and directed to a better outcome. He sets boundaries and limits where there were none.

But in doing so, he too shows himself to have chosen a life of autonomy from the father and his ways. He, too, has separated himself from familial bonds. He, too, is estranged from the father. 

The second trait of the love of the father I would like to call “letting be.” He leaves the sons to their choice. He does not abandon them, he accompanies them with his love, but he does not compel them either.  They remain free in their choices. 

Meanwhile, the younger son, humiliated by the results of his choices, comes to his senses, and, ready to repent, returns home.

The father, consistent with his understanding of love as letting go, without any concern for his honor as a man of his position in society, or how outlandish his behavior might appear to his fellow first century Jews, upon seeing his son, while he was still at a distance (this detail tells us that he always on the watch for his son’s return), consistent with tendency to excess, ran to meet him, embraced him, kissed him, clothed him in a robe, gave him a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet, restored him to his place in the family he had snubbed and abandoned, and ordered the killing of a fatted calf and threw a big feast.  

Here we see the third character trait of the father: compassion. 

The response of the elder son, on the other hand was anger. He had long ago distanced himself from his father’s way, which was the order of Charity, love as agape. The elder son’s order of duty and obligation made no room for such surprises as the return of the wayward younger son and the father’s joyful celebration at the restoration of the lost. 

We could say that both sons needed to learn true festivity, one that should have undergirded every aspect of their lives as they had been given, as they had received it from the start. A spirit of joyful celebration, at the most primal level, at the sheer givenness of their own existence and that of one another as other.  As a fitting response of gratitude to the father’s fundamental affirmation in love: “It is good that you exist.” 

A readiness to celebrate at the signs of the father’s goodness that had manifested itself again and again in their lives. Signs of this father who, from his abundance, is shamelessly prodigal in his generosity, who is ready to let go of his substance on behalf of his sons, who is ready to let be and accompany them amidst all the vicissitudes of life, with all their strengths and weakness, ups and downs and so on. Who even when they have rejected him is ready to receive them with joyful compassion when they return to him. What he asks of them is that they accept the familial bond in which all of this is nurtured and becomes fruitful, to accept the intimacy that is offered.

If they had done this, they would have been more likely to pass by any temptation to the paltry substitutes they had contrived. Choices that reduced one son to the precarious existence of a day laborer and the other to a kind of slave. 

As Christians, we know that we have such a father. We know that he is always with us and that everything he has is ours. Let us be open today to the inbreaking of his love that is going on all around us. Let us rejoice because, although we were lost, we have been found and restored to life as sons and daughters in Christ.  

Create a Clean Heart In Me

The Church lives Christ’s redemptive sacrifice throughout the liturgical year. However, in the season of Lent we would like to immerse ourselves in it in a particularly intense way, as the Apostle urges us: "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Corinthians 6:2). In this important season, the treasures of Redemption, merited for us by Christ crucified and risen, are dispensed to us in a most particular way. Thus the Psalmist’s exclamation: "Create in me a clean heart… and put a new and right spirit within me" becomes during Lent a strong call to conversion.

ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II Homily, Ash Wed., 12 Feb. 1997

Unity in the Eucharist

The New Testament uses the language of the Body of Christ so as to drum in a message about unity not simply as cooperation but as a sort of mutual creation: we constitute each other… In the central act of worship, the Eucharist, we come together to be fed—fed buy a reality wholly other to us yet made wholly accessible to us; fed so that we can feed one another. The Eucharist isn't an occasion when we set out to celebrate our togetherness and to encourage each other by the degree of our warm fellowship and close agreement. It is as we meet that we are fed by Christ, and because we are fed by him that we become able to feed each other. Somehow, no account of unity that doesn't bring us to this place is going to be adequate.

ROWAN WILLIAMS The Tablet, 18 Jan. 2008

Homily—Feast of the Annunciation

Two unavoidable things about fire: it both gives light and burns. In 1955 Flannery O’Connor said the following to one of her correspondents on her difficulties in being a Catholic writer: “One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, the whole reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation: that is, nobody in your audience.” Now, why would she refer to the central mystery of our faith as awful in its effects? Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t put it past her to be playing on the two meanings of the word “awful”: at the same time the everyday one of “terrible, off-putting” and then the other more exalted one: “full of awe”. Indeed, the fact that God at a certain point decided to become a human being is at the same time the most comforting and the most problematic of events, if we take it with all the earnestness of a believer like Flannery O’Con-nor, or of Our Lady herself. After all, Mary’s first reaction to Gabriel’s announcement was not delight but fear, and she was “greatly troubled” at God’s proposal to her—a truly honest and realistic reaction, hinting that she quite suspected all the hardships the Incarnation would bring in its wake. 

When we say that the Mother of the Lord presents to us the perfect model of faith, we often forget that this means not only accepting the will of God wholeheartedly as a source of joy but also wrestling mightily and bravely with the difficult contradictions that God’s will almost always introduces into our lives. It seems that God never comes to us only to console us and make us feel better about whatever situation we find ourselves in. Because God’s will always involves a plan for the salvation for the whole world and everyone in it, God’s consolation to us always comes accompanied with the expectation that we will become partners with him in the redemption of the world: that is, his grace in us must always become fruitful for the good of others, exactly as in Mary’s case: not for nothing do we call her the “Mother of the Redemption”; and this demand on God’s part can be an intense trial for our quintessentially lazy human nature.

But let’s take a look at these two aspects of the central Christian mystery which we are celebrating today in the middle of Lent: the aspects that make the In-carnation to be at once awesome to hear and terrible to bear. 

What could ever equal the marvel of God’s intense desire not only to be with us but to do so not in any external, superficial manner but indeed by becoming one of us? This extraordinary wonder should never cease to resonate in all the fibers of our being, every day of our lives. In fact, our awareness of this unheard-of marvel should be the habitual center of our faith, the place of refuge to which we flee in every temptation and in every suffering. It is a secret we want to shout out into the stars out of all the nights of our soul: the Creator of the universe has wanted to be at home in us, in me, sharing who we are from the inside out, not as a superior Being coming down upon us from above but, rather, as a devoted and active presence more intimate to my heart than I am to myself, and this every minute of my life! 

How magnificent for us to feel wanted, desired, understood, and supported by the very Source of our being! Is there any difficulty then that we cannot face, when the Creator has made himself at home in the dwelling of the creature, because he is so ravished by the beauty and goodness of what he has created, despite its myriad flaws? And the way in which all this occurs is so surprising and reassuring precisely because it is so ordinary. To effect Our Lord’s Incarnation the Holy Spirit comes, not only into our world, our habitat, but to the land of Israel, to the town of Nazareth, to the humble house of Mary and Joseph, and to the very room where Mary happens at that moment to be sewing, or cooking, or cleaning, or perhaps simply praying. (I doubt very much whether she was actually reading Scripture at that moment, as some pious authors and artists want to represent her. Because at that time poor Jews did not have scrolls of the Bible lying around the house. One magnificent icon shows Mary weaving, but weaving the red thread of her Son’s flesh!) She in whom the Scripture’s greatest promise was about to be fulfilled did not need to be reading Scripture. She herself was the living book of flesh in which the Holy Spirit was about to inscribe the Word of Life! It must have been a consolation beyond any imagining for Mary’s faith suddenly to become inhabited by the presence of the God who was already her all as her Creator. 

However, all is not consolation. When Our Lady gives her unconditional fiat to God through the angel, she must already suspect that the Almighty cannot come into our lives in that absolute, irreversible manner without certain fundamental challenges emerging, challenges that would prove terrible to an ordinary human heart. The initial trembling of her soul at Gabriel’s approach was not a misunderstanding or an excess of humility. Her human nature quaked at what she sensed was in store for her as Mother of the Messiah. The glorious fact that her son Jesus “will be called Son of the Most High…, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever” could not conceal the other fact that this Messiah was coming to deliver his people from their sins, and that he would do it by the offering of his own life as an atoning sacrifice. Her Son would be the King of Love who reigns from a cross. She was being invited to become the mother of a crucified King. 

Mary had intimate knowledge of the prophecies of Isaiah and of the ways of a God who is love; and so she must have already suspected what Simeon would eventually tell her explicitly in the temple at the Presentation: namely, that “this Child is to be a sign that is contradicted, and your own soul a sword shall pierce”—surely the sword of her compassion at the foot of the Cross. One doesn’t become intimately involved in the life of a redeeming God, one doesn’t admit the transforming presence of God into one’s house and soul, without joining God in the massive project of the world’s redemption. After admitting God and all God’s ways into the sanctuary of one’s life, one will never be able to go back to one’s previous, private, self-determined life. From the moment of the Annunciation on, neither Our Lady nor any of us can fail to find the Lord Jesus, the eternal God of the ages, alive and present and suffering in all human flesh we encounter, especially in the least of God’s children. 

Once human flesh has been touched by divinity, the whole world lights up with the burning presence of God. As at the burning bush, God present in human flesh through Mary’s unconsumed virginity makes us take off the sandals of our self-protection, the sandals of our arrogance, of our separateness, of our sham autonomy, in order to touch the Godhead with the skin of our feet and hands, with the sensitive skin of our hearts, in order to adore and serve the living God as he encounters us continually both in our own suffering and in the suffering of all who share our very same flesh.  

Hope

Let us ask for the grace to believe that with God things really do change, that he will banish our fears, heal our wounds, turn our arid places into springs of water. Let us ask for the grace of hope, since hope revives our faith and rekindles our charity. It is for this hope that the deserts of today's world are thirsting.

POPE FRANCIS Custodians of Wonder: Daily Pope Francis

Homily—3rd Sunday of Lent

MOSES, MY BROTHER, MY SELF

Conversion is the central theme of the readings from Sacred Scripture for this Third Sunday of Lent, following on the heels of faith on the first Sunday and covenant on the second. The call to conversion is evident in the Gospel text, where we twice hear from Jesus himself the poignant warning: Unless you are converted, you will perish. The call to conversion is also present in St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians in the second reading, in the form of an admonition not to fall into idolatry and to fight bravely and continually against temptations of all sorts because such a fight is what the drama of conversion looks like in the concrete. And in the first reading from Exodus, conversion appears as a decisive turning point in the life of Moses. The crisis occurs at the moment when Moses receives from the Lord the explicit commandment to do something that Moses had already decided upon on his own, namely, the task of delivering the children of Israel from Egypt. By way of exception, we will concentrate today on this very substantial reading from Exodus rather than on the gospel. But let us not forget that Moses, sent by God as liberator, is one of the chief Old Testament figures who foreshadows the coming of the definitive Messiah who will save all people from their slavery to sin and death. 

Exodus here presents Moses in the midst of performing his ordinary daily task of tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro. It is important for us to consider his personal situation at this point in order to appreciate what comes afterwards. He is already 80 years old and at the completion of the second period of his life, which is divided into three periods of 40 years each. (He will die at 120!) Moses is thus at the peak of the middle phase of his life, and he sees himself as a man uprooted from his own people and threatened by Pharaoh, caught in the middle of a power struggle. His life is precarious, out of sorts, despite the fact that he does have both a family and work. He is a paradoxical character, a Hebrew who is alienated from his people, an Egyptian who has fled Egypt, and a foreigner in the eyes of his employer and father-in-law, Jethro.

This is the Moses who arrives in the desert, at the foot of Mount Horeb. Step by step, his everyday life has led him into a desert, into the terrible and despairing solitude of which the desert is a symbol. Mount Horeb, before which Moses will stand, will indeed in time become the fabulous “Mountain of God”; but in itself the name “Horeb” means “ruin”, “devastation”, “rubble”. Moses is taken by surprise and unprepared by something unwanted, unexpected, and unthinkable, and it overwhelms him as it would any of us. Yet this is precisely why the unforeseen thing that suddenly bursts into our lives can have a positive, transforming power on human beings: because it catches us helpless and vulnerable. At such a moment the mysterious force of an uncontrollable event can either deal the death blow to an already precarious life, or it can instead become a place for the renewal of our existence. Nevertheless, the ambiguity involved can be maddening!

The burning bush, which burns without being consumed, becomes not only a spectacle that attracts Moses’ eyes but also an event that regards him. “Out of the bush the Lord saw Moses”, the text says. In other words, the fire in the bush is looking back at Moses! Rebirth begins the moment we embrace the reality that touches us vitally, the moment we let it in rather than treat it as something to be avoided through attitudes of indifference, apathy and fear. Before the bush Moses takes off his sandals, which means that, in an act of adoration, he surrenders to the one true God his autonomy as self-determining person. Taking off one’s sandals is here not only an act of deep respect but also a symbol of renouncing one’s right to possession of the land. And, in response to the voice speaking to him from the fire, Moses veils his face, a sign of fear in the face of the divine and also a strategy to distance himself from the unexpected as it intrudes into his everyday life. There is no question that at this moment Moses is understandably afraid. And this fear becomes manifest as Moses replies with objections to the God who wants to entrust him with the task of going to Pharaoh to bring God’s people out of Egypt.

His first objection is: Who am I to go to Pharaoh? Moses feels inadequate, lacking charisma, with nothing in his person and history to justify this task. But God’s reply reorients Moses away from his frightened self and onto God’s promise of closeness: I will be with you. This reassuring answer from God means something like: ‘Do not give so much space to yourself in your own mind, so much space to your ego, in connection with this task I am entrusting to you. That would be the most direct route to failure. And this is the first condition for you to assume the leadership of my people: not to lean so much on your-self; rather, rely wholly on me, your Lord, who am sending you because I trust in you and know what I am doing and whom I have chosen.’

Moses’ second objection concerns the Name of God. The children of Israel will say to me: “What is the name of the God who sends you?” Concretely speaking, this means: ‘What does this God assure us of? What promise does he have in store for us so that we will believe him?’ Then God reveals his Name, a mysterious, unpronounceable name consisting only of four letters but can be translated in a variety of ways: I am who am, or I will be who I will be, or also, I am who I will be (which reveals God as himself being a promise!), or again, I will always be who I am (which reveals God as personified fidelity). This revelation of the divine Name presses Moses hard because, now that God has acceded to Moses’ request and revealed his true, intimate Name, Moses must reciprocate by believing God’s promise and God’s fidelity, despite the fact that he has no idea of what is actually going on!

Please note that Moses is neither a fool nor a coward. His objections to God’s proposals are well-founded in human logic, and not only these two objections at the burning bush but also the others he will formulate in the later chapters of Exodus. But the explanation of the divine Name given in Isaiah 52:6 should provide Moses (and us) with a sufficient answer to our doubts: My people shall know my name. And in that day they shall know that it is I who said: Here I am. The Hebrew language is terribly concrete and dynamic. God’s Name, which he himself alone can utter, does not say his inner being, in the abstract, but expresses his reliable being-there, his being-alongside, his being-there-with-and-for. To welcome this revelation of the divine Name is to make an act of wholehearted trust in the Lord. For his Name’s full resonance means: Here I am (with you, beside you, and for you). Against this hard and marvelous fact of God’s unwavering Presence both Moses and we should dash all our resistance and objections, all these fearful and deluded children of our feverish brains. 

And this act of dashing all our fears and false habits of mind on the Rock that is Christ-Emmanuel, God-with-us, marks the beginning of all conversion worth the name. Let us now, then, turn with our whole hearts to the One who from all eternity has already turned to us with a shining countenance, to give us life and joy in his Kingdom. Witness this Eucharist today: how could God ever be closer to us than by making himself our true Food and Drink, as he now will presently?

The Perfect Person’s Rule of Life

The perfect person does not only try to avoid evil, nor does he do good for fear of punishment, still less in order to qualify for the hope of a promised reward. The perfect person does good through love. His actions are not motivated by desire for personal benefit, so he does not have personal advantage as his aim. But as soon as he has realized the beauty of doing good, he does it with all his energies and in all that he does. He is not interested in fame, or a good reputation, or a human or divine reward. The rule of life for a perfect person is to be the image and likeness of God.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA Miscellaneous Studies, 4, 22

Homily—Feast of Saint Joseph

 It was on this day one dozen years ago that our beloved Pope Francis inaugurated his papal ministry. In the course of the ceremony he received the Fisherman's Ring as one of the symbols of his office, the Petrine Ministry.  This ring is like a wedding ring that symbolically binds him as Christ's Vicar to his beloved bride, the Catholic Church. I think of what is said to husbands in the Epistle to the Ephesians: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over to her.”  

       We celebrate today the Solemn Feast of St. Joseph, the husband of Mary.  With a grace filled love for her and obedience to God, Joseph handed himself over to her.  Mary was, indeed, the sole member of the Church of Jesus Christ.  In handing himself to her as husband he became, to use the word of Pope Francis in his inaugural sermon, he became the “Protector” of the seedling Church that was Mary with Jesus within her.  With explicit faith, hope and love, Joseph protected and guarded Mary and her child from manic Emperors, petty kings and religious fanatics. With great faith in God's will, he adopted her son Jesus into his royal line of  King David knowing that the authorities wanted her son killed because of this (perhaps all of them to share this fate).  Truely, faith hope and love were active along with his works, and by his works this trinity of virtues were perfected in him. Saint Joseph's being named Patron of the Universal Church is rooted in all this. He is ever our Protector. Finally, Joseph became the celibate lifetime companion of Mary and she became his--but it is a lifetime companionship that never ended because it blossomed into eternal life.

       I first noticed this concept “lifetime companionship” to describe marriage in the film of Karol Wojtyla's 1960 mystical play “The Jeweler's Shop.”  It is a play about a marriage rooted in love contrasted with another rooted in materialism, and then about their children.  In the scene of the proposal in the good marriage, the man asks the woman he loves, “Will you be my lifetime companion?” She responds with joyful reciprocity. I have been thinking lately that in this concept “lifetime companionship” is a clue to a way we can experience with Saint Joseph the great mystery of his being the husband of the Ever Virgin Mary. I, for one, would be repulsed by a spirituality where I would think of myself as “husband” of Mary. However, the notion of being the lifetime companion of Mary is very attractive to me spiritually.

       The word “companion” has an incredibly beautiful etymology. It comes from the Latin word “com,” meaning “together with,” and the Latin word “panis,” meaning “bread.”  Literally, says the Oxford Dictionary, it means “one who breaks bread with another.”  So, in the Jeweler's Shop drama,  the good man is asking the woman, “Will you break and share bread together with me all the days of our lives?”  In the case of Joseph, husband of Mary, not only will he be breaking bread with her all the days of his life, but also with the very One who will eventually reveal Himself (perhaps even to St. Joseph) as the Living Bread come done from heaven, as the Bread of Eternal Life, their son Jesus.  Yes, ultimately, Jesus is the Living Bread that Joseph, husband of Mary, shared with her all the days of his life on earth and now shares in a transcendent manner for all eternity.

        St. Bernard, in the 45^th Sermon on the Song of Songs, recommends to all of us who feel discouragement in the spiritual life, yet wish to be saints, to become  a lifetime companion to Mary—he uses the word “friend.”  In Cistercian theological anthropology, a “friend” who is not one forever was never a friend. Becoming a friend to Mary, therefore, means becoming a lifetime companion in word and deed.  Deeds suggested by Pope Francis 12 years ago are all encompassing: (quote)“to protect the whole of creation, to protect each person, especially the poorest and to protect ourselves.” (unquote) Being near Mary enables us to hear the voice of the Bridegroom Jesus calling us to live a holy life and so to have a place at the wedding feast of the Lamb in heaven, where we will recline with Mary and Joseph and Jesus and all the blessed who are invited—yes, all of us are invited.  In just a few minutes we will all even now be invited to the foretaste of this heavenly banquet in the sacred banquet of the Eucharist. Breaking the Living Bread of the Eucharist together empowers us to a true friendship, a true companionship with all, one that is rooted in God,.  St. Joseph, the husband of Mary, shared the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ, with his lifetime companion, Mary.  They share the Living Bread of Life with us. In that we all can rejoice as on a wedding day.  Happy “wedding day” anniversary, Pope Francis! We are all praying for you.

       

       

Tenderness

And what is tenderness? It is the love that comes close and becomes real. It is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears and the hands. Tenderness means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future. A child's love for mom and dad grows through their touch, their gaze, their voice, their tenderness. I like when I hear parents talk to their babies, adapting to the little child, sharing the same level of communication. This is tenderness: being on the same level as the other…

POPE FRANCIS Video Message, April 26, 2017 

Being Ourselves

That we are poor sinners doesn't mean we should feel guilty for existing, as many people may unconsciously do. God's look gives us full rights to be ourselves, with our limitations and deficiencies. It gives us the "right to make mistakes," and delivers us, so to speak, from the imprisoning sense that we ought to be something other than we are. That feeling does not originate in God's will but in our damaged psyches.

JACQUES PHILIPPE Interior Freedom

The Ladder of Love

Love, therefore, is the origin and source of all good things; it is a most excellent defense, the road that leads to heaven. Whoever walks in love can neither stray nor be afraid. Love guides, love protects, love leads to the end. Christ our Lord, brethren, set up for us this ladder of love, and by it every Christian can climb to heaven. You must, therefore, keep a firm hold on love, you must show it to one another, and by progress in it climb up to heaven.

ST. FULGENTIUS OF RUSPE

The Absence of Us

The real problem in prayer is not the absence of God but the absence of us. It's not that God isn't there; it’s (nine times out of ten) that we are not. We are all over the place, entertaining memories, fantasies, anxieties. God is simply there in unending patience, saying to us, “So when are you actually going to arrive? When are you going to sit and listen, to stop roaming about, and be present?”

ROWAN WILLIAMS Being Disciples: Essentials of the Christian Life

Homily—First Sunday of Lent

Lent, the springtime of the Church, situates us between two gardens-- the garden of Eden, that lush middle Eastern paradise where the first Adam lost his innocence and the garden of the Resurrection on Easter morning where Jesus the new Adam wounded and resurrected will walk in peace restoring our lost innocence. In between we spend forty days with him in the desert.

Named by the Father, Beloved Son at his baptism, Jesus is now led by the Spirit into the desert to be tested by Satan. The ache of hunger, the lure of cheap, empty success, the enticement of having all nations under his control by misuse of his power. These temptations are all about the nature of Jesus’ vocation and his ministry, and the Evil One’s determination to have Jesus deny his identity as Beloved Son and to doubt the mission he has received from the Father. As if to say: “Just forget this Incarnation thing. Why bother? It will be too messy. Why trouble yourself? Just be God, you know, heavenly, far away. I’ll take care of things down here. Leave it to me. But now, turn stones into bread. That’ll be easy for you. You’re God after all. Be super-Jesus. Fly. Fall off the cliff and have angels come and rescue you. You can do it in a flash. Why pretend? Just show your sensational power; show us who you really are.” But worse and most insidious of all is that middle temptation: “Deny your true identity as obedient Son of the Father and worship me, and I’ll share all my worldly power with you. Isn’t that all you really want?” Thank God, Jesus will have none of it. He stands his ground, well aware of Satan’s lies; he holds on to the truth of who he is and why he’s come. 

My sisters and brothers, the incarnation drives Satan crazy, this mingling of divinity and humanity. For the Accuser knows it is his undoing - God and our flesh forever one. Jesus absolutely refuses to deny his identity as fully human, fully divine, for his humanity is the sacrament of his divinity; the full, real expression of God’s love for us. Satan wants him to deny the self-forgetful Love that he enfleshes. But Jesus wants so much to be like us - in all that is ordinary, obscure and laborious. And so this morning the battle lines are set. Two rival kingdoms. Power and prestige vs compassion and humble service. Satan’s counter kingdom vs the kingdom of God. 

As his ministry begins, Jesus makes clear his determination to deliver us from the Enemy, who always wants to lead us away from God. In obedience to the Father, he comes to heal, to feed and to wash our feet. His power revealed in weakness, humble self-offering and compassionate love. Satan wants him to forget this Love that will lead to his excruciating self-emptying even unto death, death on a cross. True enough, Jesus will struggle in Gethsemane, even sweating blood out of fear, but he will continue to surrender to the Father’s will for him. The cross will be his final answer to Satan. For on the cross God will let Himself be murdered for our freedom from all accusations against us, and death will die in Him. Jesus’ victory over sin and death, will be accomplished through his exquisite suffering in quiet trust and obedience to the Father. Satan suspects that something’s afoot, and he’s trying his damnedest to fight back, and he won’t ever give up. Luke assures us that having been dismissed by the Lord, Satan departed from him only “for a time.” The battle this morning is only the first movement in the drama of our redemption. 

Jesus’ temptation by the Accuser was to be other than he is, God with us, God for us, God’s most beloved Son. Our temptations are perhaps a zillion variations on a similar theme- to be less than who we are-  dearly beloved children of God. Like Jesus we live with beasts, our own inner demons. We are day in day out persecuted, beguiled and tempted but never, never abandoned for we carry about in ourselves the dying of Jesus so that his risen self may also be revealed in us also. This is our hard and beautiful destiny, our baptismal truth. We are in Christ. And this morning he teaches us how to embrace our identity with him as God’s beloved children and to hold fast to our call to serve God and not self. He who is our refuge in all temptations is tempted today and is victorious to reveal to us our power as baptized members of His Body. 

Perhaps all this talk of the evil spirit makes us uncomfortable, too spooky, superstitious. But doesn’t our experience tell us that he is very real? For if we desire God, deeply desire Christ Jesus, desire to belong to him, to choose his way, then simple logic will tell us that the unclean spirit, the evil one, will always want the opposite; want to confuse us and draw us away from Jesus. But rest assured Jesus’ power in us through the Spirit is utterly opposed to the power of the demonic; and his self-offering on the cross will mark its ultimate defeat.

We have great power in Christ Jesus, more power than perhaps we realize, to make the grace-filled choice and dismiss the unclean spirit; a power given to us at our baptism, when faith in Christ Jesus was entrusted to us. But it is a power we need to keep asserting, that’s why we will renew our baptismal promises at the Easter Vigil. “Do you refuse to be mastered by sin? I do. Do you reject the glamor of evil? I do. Do you reject Satan? I do.” Jesus is crazy in love with our humanity; longing always to rescue us and bring us home to his Father. And so once again this morning, he will mingle his flesh with our flesh in the Holy Communion we are about to receive.

Contemplation

Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source. It knows the Source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with certitude that goes beyond reason and beyond simple faith… It is a more profound depth of faith, a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images, in words, or even in clear concepts.

THOMAS MERTON New Seeds of Contemplation

Homily—Ash Wednesday

“Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. …” This is the summons from the prophet Joel that opens our Lenten season: “Return!” I couldn’t help but hear resonances from St. Bernard’s sermon 74 which we read in our Experientia program, only with an unexpected twist. In that sermon it was the soul crying out to her beloved to return. As St. Bernard put it, “When the Word leaves the soul, the enduring desire for him becomes a single, sustained cry of the soul, a single, sustained call of “Return” until he come.” The Word inspires this cry in the soul. But today, we have a reversal. It is not the soul, crying out for her Bridegroom. It is the Lord crying out to our souls and to the entire Church to return with her whole heart. 

The entire Church needs to hear this call to return. Holy as she is, she has strayed on all too many occasions. At times she comes with all devotion to sit at the Lord’s feet and listen to his word; she comes to share in his table and receive the bread of life; she comes to care for the least of his sick and rejected brethren. But at other times she has gone away, committing scandals, faltering in her faith, her hope, and her love—indifferent to the face of her beloved. Think of some of the times you have received the grace of God in vain. But even then, the Lord does not cease to cry out, “Return to me with your whole heart…” His desire is to leave behind a blessing, for when sin increases, his grace abounds all the more. Let us confess this mercy. Let us rend our hearts in thanksgiving. “Return” is a good word for the Lenten journey we are beginning. 

But return from where? Not from some physical distance but from the land of unlikeness. The visits of the Word are intended to re-form us in his likeness so that we might see him as he is. When we go away, it is because we are attracted to unlikeness. Looking at the truth becomes too embarrassing for us. It is easier to set our minds on things below rather than on things above. But how do we return? The prophet Joel gives us a hint: “Return to me with your whole heart…” Wholeness of heart is the grace of this season, bringing us back from a divided heart. Ask yourself this: Where is my treasure? A time of quiet prayer will tell us where our heart is. A period of sacred reading will poke a hole in our pretensions. We monks, especially, who have been called to fasting, to weeping, and to mourning on behalf of ourselves and others, how often have we strayed from our purpose? “Return to me that I may return to you” says the Lord.

Brothers and sisters, the prophet Joel concludes with these words today: “Then the LORD was stirred to concern for his land and took pity on his people.” This is our hope. These ashes are a sign of our return. “For gracious and merciful is (the LORD), slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.”

Self-Seeking

Saint Benedict is almost ruthless on the question of self seeking—self-will. What he is aiming at is to eradicate from our lives—to save us from ourselves—those forms of self-seeking and assertiveness which lead us into misery and constitute a barrier between ourselves and God. There is nothing so subtle, so pervasive, as the enthronement of “self” at the expense of others and of God.

CARDINAL BASIL HUME, OSB The Intentional Life

The Holy Name of Jesus

Through persistence in the Jesus prayer the intellect obtains a state of sweetness and peace…

The more the rain falls on the Earth, the softer it makes it; similarly, the more we call upon Christ’s Holy Name, the greater the rejoicing and exaltation it brings to the earth of our heart…

The sun rising over the Earth creates the daylight; and the vulnerable and Holy Name of the Lord Jesus, shining continually in the mind, gives birth to countless thoughts radiant as the sun.

The Philokalia, Vol. 1