I'm not ready.

It's the end of Lent.  Today marks the start of the Holy Triduum.  At the Catholic Mass we relive these events that led up to the crucifixion of Christ so that we remember them always.  Tonight is the night that we spend with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, trying to stay awake as we pray with him.  It's also the night where we gather together in the Sanctuary and we watch as our Priest takes off his robes down to just his alb and begins to wash the feet of parishioners from all walks of life, both male and female. There is so much richness, so much treasure, so many pearls of great price to be learned from watching these events unfold before us and hearing the accompanying scriptures pronounced and sung.

It takes me back to my first Easter as a Catholic.  There I was trying to stay awake in the Garden.  I watched as many others walked out within just a few minutes of placing Christ in repose for adoration.  I had uncharitable thoughts.  "What you don't have time to spend more than a minute with Christ?"  "Why are you leaving so soon?" "Lord why can't they stay awake."  It was almost as if I were the Pharisee standing in the temple saying "Thank God I am not like this sinner."  Then the Eucharist caught my attention.  It was as if the Lord was speaking directly to me. "Can you not stay awake with me one hour?" My Lord reminded me that it was not they who were asleep.. but me... I was watching everyone else, but not watching Christ in the Eucharist.. not spending time in prayer with him.  I'll never forget that humbling lesson.

That's part of what is so amazing about being Catholic.  We don't just have a personal relationship with Christ, though we have that.   We also have a communal relationship with him, and better yet, we have a tangible, tactile relationship with him as well.  We believe that when the Priest says the words of consecration, the words that Christ himself gave us, that bread is transformed... that wine is changed... it's not just bread and wine anymore, it's substance has changed.  It is truly the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord and savior.  Think of that for a minute!  He not only comes down to see us, to be with us, to remind us of his presence in a substantial way; but he also allows us to receive him into our bodies to change us.. to mold us.. to bring us into that divine life that he promised.  We don't have to wait for the time after time itself ends for us, but we can experience Heaven right here and right now.

The book of Revelation used to scare me.   I used to spend hour after hour trying to pick out the right people in the news, the right signs, the right 'end of time' events... I was consumed with trying to find out when Armageddon was coming.  Then I read a book called The Lamb's Supper by Scott Hahn.  That book promoted an idea that was not new, one that the early church fathers held as well, that the book of Revelation was a vision of Heavenly worship.. Oh my how that changed my view of the Church and the Eucharist.. I began to see the flaming lamp stands around the altar, the Priest standing in persona Christi, the angels and saints gathering around and offering their prayers up as incense.. the prayers of the saints on earth... Oh yes, I began to see that God truly was present.. that Revelation was a glimpse of Heaven kissing earth.. A glimpse of the Holy Mass.

So tonight, tomorrow, Sunday... whatever Mass you are attending.. and not just during Easter, but for the rest of your lives.. Lift up your eyes to the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar and say with Peter, "“Master, then not only my feet, but my hands and head as well.”  That's what this is all about.. about the Eucharist.. about Christ himself... about His perpetual sacrifice, his todah to bring us into communion with the Father again.. to bring us into a communion with God that is so amazingly beautiful, but so challenging that in John chapter 6 we see many of his disciples stop following him when offered it.  This is not easy.. Are you ready? To sit with him in the garden?  To walk with him towards Calvary?  To pick up your own cross and head to your own Easter?   Not alone I am not.  I am not ready Lord.. but thanks be to Adonai that he has sent his only son to me in the Sacraments of the Holy Catholic church to help me have to grace to take one step in front of another.

Lord give me the grace to strip myself of all my outer coverings and walls, to expose myself to those who need their feet washed.. the widow, the orphan, the alien... may I be given supernatural humility to put myself to the side and provide for what they need.  May I be a servant leader like you... you who are so humble that you will come down as the most defenseless thing ever.. a piece of bread.. to provide me with everything I need, both physically and spiritually.. May I too pour myself out, may I place myself in the hands of those who are hurting and be a sacrament of your love for them as well.

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

Sitting on a fence is a man who sees no sense at all

Tomorrow’s Gospel reading finds the people once again questioning Jesus and doubting in him.  They accuse him of being allied with Beelzebub, the chief of demons, the entity we know as Satan himself.  Then others were testing him asking for more miracles, more signs.  The thing is the signs were an extra, an addition to Jesus mission, but the primary goal was to evangelize.  He came to spread the Good News the Kingdom of God was among them, it was right there, right now.  Jesus then goes on to tell them that a Kingdom cannot stand divided, it will always fall.   How could he then be performing these miracles from Satan?  These were miracles of healing, miracles of the light, miracles that brought people closer to God.. that brought them to the Message, not away from it.  

Jesus evokes to the mind of those present two amazing images.  He compares his miracles to the miracles of the exorcists of the current Jewish clergy.  This brings back the image of Pharaoh and his magicians fighting against Moses.  

Luke and Matthew both have these Jewish images of Jesus that portray him as the New Moses, sent to lead Adonai’s people from slavery to the promised land in an Exodus par excellance.  Here Jesus infers that the people questioning him, the ones testing him, are like Pharaoh and his magicians, standing in the way of God’s plans.  

He challenges them to make a choice… there is no middle ground.. no third option.. either you believe that I am from the devil or that I wield the power of the finger of God.   

That bring’s another image to their minds.  The finger of God… the very thing which wrote the law, the tablet of stone.  What kind of man then would he be if he were doing this with that sort of power?  He challenges their Jewish sensibilities.   He says, look it’s impossible for me to be from Satan, Satan couldn’t perform these miracles without undermining his own goal.  Therefore I am wielding the finger of God.. I am writing the new covenant right before you, are you willing to let me write on your heart of stone? For some this message stuck, as we see with the Apostles, with the woman at the well, with good old Bartimaeus.   They accepted this teaching, this authority, and as such experienced a metanoia so powerful that they left behind their old lives and followed him, even unto death.  For others, like the young rich man, it left them sad and walking away.   We don’t know that he didn’t accept it, but we do know that he knew the message.

There is a book that I purchased many years ago in my search for the true Church.  It is called A Rabbi Talks with Jesus by Jacob Neusner.   In this book he imagines what it would be like to be one of these first century Jews confronted with the message of Christ.   He puts himself in several of the scenes where Christ taught his torah and asked himself, what would it mean to me?  What would my response be?  What is it that Christ is offering in his teaching?  In the end the Rabbi walks away from Christ, not accepting him as a savior.  One thing is clear though, there is no doubt in Jacob’s mind that Jesus is not just offering a new teaching but claiming divinity!  Claiming the power to write with the hand of God.  Claiming to be God.

That puts us in the same shoes as those gathered around Jesus in the Gospel, right here, right now.  The Gospel doesn’t just record an event from the first century, but presents the same event to every person of every time.  Jesus is standing before us today, two thousand years later, and saying “Who do you say that I am?”  He is offering to write on your heart of stone with the finger of God itself.   To take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.   That’s the Gospel, it challenges us to have an encounter, a relationship with God.  He wants to arm us with faith, and with an ally so strong that he can never be overcome.

In the scripture we are shown that Jesus has overcome Satan, he wields a divine authority, a beatific power that cannot be overcome.  Jesus speaks later in a parable where he says “When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe. But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him, he takes away the armor on which he relied and distributes the spoils.”  God has offered you the greatest spiritual military available and strength beyond human limits.   He has offered to fight for you, to guard your palace, and your soul will always be safe.”  All you have to do is be obedient, to listen to his Son and follow Him through the teachings he has handed on through his Apostles.  If our Armor is not Christ himself, then we will be overcome.  That’s what happens when we try to do it on our own isn’t it?  Those little sins that we keep falling into it.. when we think “I have this beat!” that’s the moment when it rears it’s ugly head.  However, when we fall on our knees and say “God I can’t do this on my own.. help me!”  That’s a moment of conversion.  A moment when we give ourselves to that defender who cannot be beaten, the King of the Universe himself.

It’s interesting when we look back to those who were given that offer at the very beginning of the salvation history they responded heartily “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” (Exodus 19:8)  Then we see in Jeremiah the Prophet reminding us how often we humans fail to do what we have promised.  

But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed. They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts and turned their backs, not their faces, to me. From the day that your fathers left the land of Egypt even to this day, I have sent you untiringly all my servants the prophets. Yet they have not obeyed me nor paid heed; they have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers. When you speak all these words to them, they will not listen to you either; when you call to them, they will not answer you. Say to them: This is the nation that does not listen to the voice of the LORD, its God,or take correction. Faithfulness has disappeared; the word itself is banished from their speech.

They failed.  They failed because they eventually began to count on themselves.  They stopped trusting in God, they stopped listening to him and turned back to their own ego, their own means to try and provide for their own spiritual defense.  They were human.  God was faithful to them though.  He’s faithful to you.  He is merciful and forgiving (Dan 9:9). He has given us the fullness of revelation in Jesus Christ.  Jesus gave us the Church and her Sacraments to say to us: “When you fall, when you forget me, come back to me.. I am waiting.  I am your Father and you are my prodigal child!  When I see you coming to me in the distance, I will run to meet you in your filthiness, in your fallen state, and I will clean you up.. I will wrap my arms around you, clothe you in my robe!  Put my ring of authority on your finger!  Then invite you into my banquet.”  That’s what confession is!  That’s what the Sacrament of Reconciliation is all about… it’s about God reaching out to you to take care of you.. to change you.. to bring you into his feast, his banquet, to re-armor the inner chamber of your heart, that you can say again “All that you have said, I shall do.”

Let’s not waste the next few weeks of Lent.   As we draw closer to Holy Week, as we draw closer to the Via Dolorosa, let’s draw closer to Christ.  Let’s increase our prayer life, our fasting, and our almsgiving! Let’s put on the armor of God, and produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit in such abundance that no one will doubt whose side we are on.  God isn’t offering a middle ground. "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." Are you ready to choose?  Does your life say that you have sided with Jesus?  Is your heart made of flesh or are you clinging to remnants of stone?  Are you trusting in God to armor you?  Or burying your head in the sand and trying to do it on your own? Are you ready to stop sitting on the fence and climb over into the promised land?

His servant and yours,

Brian

“He must increase, I must decrease.”

Be Holy, As I am Holy

As we journey through Lent, one of the professors for our Diaconate class asked us: What does it mean to be holy?  I find this sort of reflection invaluable at this particular time as we struggle with temptation in our own deserts in preparation for our own Easter. 

Growing up as a Protestant gave me a different view on what it means to be Holy than I have now, though I believe it still influences me in that respect. My primary example of what I believed was a Holy Man would have to be, and still is in many ways, my grandfather. My grandfather was an old regular Baptist preacher and truly tried to live his life for Christ. He didn't allow many things in his home, from Biology books to “playing cards.” His way of life revolved around Sacred Scripture. He truly tried to set himself apart from the ways of the world.

I think that that in and of itself is a beautiful thing. The word itself, Holy, has roots that point to being set apart, being different. The Old Testament is filled with an example of how that God truly wanted his people to stand out, to be different than those around them. Holiness then rightfully boils down to one statement, though it is not limited to only it in anyway. I will take you as my own people, and you shall have me as your God. (Exodus 6:7) That is how I understand those 613 commandments presented in the Tanakh, as an example of how that the ancient Israelites understood they should behave in that relationship.

The Jubilee years, the Sabbath, the great Jubilee.. all intimate a way for us to do just that. Not only to reflect the extremely personal relationship that they were in with their deity, but also to allow them to do so in a way that reflected who He was. In sharing in His merciful outpouring of grace and forgiveness, they were able to be more like Him. That to me speaks volumes. That God, who did not need rest, allowed us to be able to not only take a rest when we frail humans needed one, but also be able to be more divine in our actions by doing so.

Then the Father took this even further by sending his Son to take on human flesh. By God becoming man he sanctified a way of life. Then speaking in His own words from the sermon on the mount he portrayed to us that propriety in a fullness that expresses what it means to be fully human. God has given us a path through the Beatitudes that exemplifies a paradigm that would change the world if embraced by all people. A paradigm that is best expressed by Jesus himself on the cross. Saint Thomas Aquinas in his eloquent method of speaking expounded on the four spheres of influence that tend to lead to sin. Power, Wealth, Pleasure, and Honor. He surmised that all sin is rooted in one or more of these temptations. Jesus gave us the Beatitudes as a perfect antidote to those spheres, then he lived them out on the cross. As a man on the cross he had no power, he was nailed in place. He had no wealth as they gambled for his clothing on the ground below. He had not pleasure but pain and discomfort. He had no honor but rather the death reserved for the most heinous of all criminals.

In today's society it seems that to be holy is seen as someone who simply attends church regularly, is a 'good' person, and doesn't judge others. To me, being holy has become something even more profound, that is to be more like Christ himself. We should be different, we should be a peculiar and a particular people. Not because we want to be, but because Christ calls us to a radical separation from the world in our manor and behavior. He calls us to Sainthood and a level of perfection that is only possible through releasing control of ourselves to the Holy Spirit. My Grandfather had a powerful idea of how to express that in his conduct and activity, but I disagree with some of his methods. That's truly the crux of the issue. To be holy means to be configured to Christ in our actions and our lives. That might look very different than how the ancient Israelites did it, and in fact it might look different based on our different vocations and stations of life, but it is a calling that every single Christian is called to. It does not mean that we will be perfect or immaculate, but will actualize perfection via a Sacramental life.