Third Sunday of Lent B

Image: Jesus' cleansing of the temple, 
Cathedrale d'Amiens 
from Art in the Christian Tradition, 
a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, 
Nashville, TN.

March 8, 2015

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One foggy, stormy night at sea, a ship's captain caught sight of what looked like the lights of another ship heading straight toward him.

He ordered his signalman to relay a message to the oncoming ship: "Change your course ten degrees to the south."

Immediately came the reply, "Change your course ten degrees to the north."

The lights were getting closer, so the captain responded firmly, "I'm a captain. Change your course south."

But the reply was equally firm, "I'm a seaman first class. Change your course north."

Outraged at such insolence as the lights loomed nearer and nearer, the captain fired back the mes­sage, "You idiot! I'm giving you one last chance to change your course south. I'm on a battleship!"

To which he received the cool reply,

"I'm giving you one last chance to change your course north. I'm in a lighthouse."

How easy it is to misunderstand or ignore what is right in front of us.

How easy it is to ignore the "lighthouses" in our lives.

Today's Gospel ends with some chilling words on this very matter: "Jesus needed no one to give him testimony about human nature.

For he was well aware of what was in the human heart." Do those words make us a little nervous?

They should. And if they don't, we really ought to be worried, because that's a pretty sure sign that we haven't yet seen a good photo of our innards.

So let's think about the dark side of our inner selves for a mo­ment.

What would Jesus see - what does he see ­there at the core of our insides?

An awful lot and a lot that's awful.

We started sinning young - was it fighting over toys or hating a new sibling or trying to manipulate the family with tantrums?

Who can even remember where we started.

But with the passage of time, we all developed our own particular specialties, truly rotten habits, stupid, mean, faithless, hateful things we could do regularly without even thinking about them.

And every time we made a mean or faithless choice, a little dose of spiritual poison was released into our system and headed straight for our hearts.

That has occurred many times over, day in day out, year after year, up to this moment.

The result is the damaged and wounded heart that Jesus sees this morning with perfect clarity.

So why didn't Jesus just wash his hands of the whole lot of us long ago?

Why was he willing to die on our behalf when he knew what was in us?

Because, in seeing our hearts with perfect clarity, Jesus saw more than the damage and rubble left by our sins.

He also saw our striving, our hungering for what is true and good, our longing for wholeness, our willingness to start over again and again, even though we know in advance that our greatest successes will be mixed with failures.

And seeing all that, he took pity on us.

He took us into his heart and encircled us with his compassion. We didn't earn any part of that; it's all a free gift!

What does he ask in return for such a gift?

Only that we tell ourselves the truth about all this.

 And the truth is that without his gift of compassion we would die.

If we have understood that inside, our hearts will have to soften and we will have to give the same compassion as freely as we have received it.

Compassion is not optional.

We owe it without any charge because we have been given it freely and without charge.

Compassion is not a burden but a unique opportunity.

It's the one chance we have to say, "Thanks, Lord, for the gift of life and for that very long line of second chances that stretches back to childhood and that reaches forward all the way to the end."

So let us begin now to speak with our deeds as well as our words.

May every day of ours - every act and every choice - speak loud and clear:

Thank you, Lord. Thank you very much!

Second Sunday of Lent B

March 1, 2015

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There once was a king whose greatest desire was to gain absolute power over every square inch of his kingdom.

He had succeeded in removing all the obstacles to his complete control except one: the people still put their ancient god above the king.

The king summoned his three wisest advisors to find a way to put an end to such worship.

"Where," asked the king, "where might the people's god be hidden and so be made to vanish from their lives and cease to challenge my rule?"

The first advisor suggested hiding the god at the summit of the highest mountain.

"No," said the king, "The people would abandon their homes and climb the highest mountain to search for their god."

The second advisor proposed hiding the people's god at the bottom of the sea.

But the king rejected that idea as well: "The people would probe the ocean's depths to find their god," he said.

Finally the third and wisest advisor, a wrinkled and bent old man, spoke his advice in a hoarse whisper. "0 mighty king," he said, "hide the people's god somewhere in their everyday lives. There they will never find it!"

The trusty advisor understood how we are!

God is hidden, but not in some remote, faraway spot.

God is right here in our everyday lives.

Yet we rarely see him and rarely recognize his presence.

All too often we fear that we are walking alone and we dread that our journey may have no destination, may be just a long walk to nowhere.

All too often we are deaf and blind to God.

So it is for us ­doubting and weary wayfarers - that Jesus was transfigured and, just for a moment, shone like the sun on the top of that mountain.

And it is to us, the blind and the deaf, that God is speaking through that stunning event.

And what is God saying? "I am with you always, walking at your side.

And your name is written on the palm of my hand.

If you listen carefully, you'll hear me whispering to you.

If you watch closely, you'll see that I am here.

So watch and listen!"

Tt takes time to learn how to listen attentively and 'respectfully to everyday life.

It takes time to learn how to hear what's really going on around us and to see what's always been right under our nose.

 It does take time, but if we persist in paying respectful attention to everyday life, very slowly we'll begin to catch a glimpse of God when we look at a rose;

we'll begin to feel the nearness of God in the cool of an evening breeze;

we'll begin to hear God's voice echoing inside the voice of a friend. And we'll begin to know the warmth of God's presence as we hold a newborn child.

The road we walk is a long one, often rough, and sometimes dangerous.

But God desires that none of us walk that road alone.

God desires that at every moment of every day we have the comfort, the strength, and the delight of divine company.

 A friendship that is ours for the taking.

What a tragedy it would be to settle for anything less!

What a tragedy it would be to walk forever alone!

Let that tragedy not be ours!

First Sunday of Lent B

February 22, 2015

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One of the great ironies in life is that, too often, success brings more unhappiness, jealousy, and destructiveness than joy, blessing, and harmony into the world.

Daily our newspapers carry the familiar headlines: Millionaire superstar arrested on drug charges. Movie star found dead of overdose. Baseball star jailed for spousal abuse.. Rock star dead of unknown causes at age 33.

Those are the big headlines, but these things happen in our lives at another level. Our successes and achievements are often the cause of self-centeredness, arrogance, jealousy, and destructiveness both inside ourselves and within our relationships.

Why? Why is it that the things which should bring us happiness, admiration, and harmony, so often bring us the opposite? Are success, admiration, and money bad? No.

All good things come from God, success and money included. What is bad is that, too often, these are attained before a person has been sufficiently prepared to handle them.

Then they destroy rather than build up. In biblical terms, what happens is that someone enters the promised land before spending sufficient time in the desert.

A bit grandiose perhaps? Why dignify these with high biblical references?

Because they so clearly illustrate the spiritual truth: Before possessing the promised land there must first be a time in the desert.

What is meant by this? The desert, biblically and mystically, is not so much a physical place, a geography, as a place in the heart.

The desert is that place where we go to face our demons, feel our smallness, be in a special intimacy with God, and prepare ourselves for the promised land.

The idea of the desert as a place of purification has deep biblical roots. The scriptures tell us that, before they could enter into the promised land, the Israelites had to first wander in the desert for forty years—letting themselves be led by God, undergoing many trials, and swallowing much impatience.

This was God’s planning. Thus the desert came to be seen as the place that correctly shapes the heart and the idea developed that one should prepare oneself for major transitions by first spending some time in the desert.

Initially this was taken quite literally and religious men and women looking for purification would often go off into some actual physical desert and stay there for a time. Jesus did this.

After his baptism, he went off for “forty days” into the Sinai desert.

Later, as the scriptures developed, the concept of desert was de-literalized.

It was taken to mean more a place in the heart than a place on a map and was understood to be a mystical thing:

Before you are ready to fully and gratefully receive life, you have to first be readied by facing your own demons and this means going “into the desert,” namely, entering that place where you are most frightened, lonely, and threatened. .

In order to be filled by God one must first be emptied.  

The desert does this for you. It empties you.

Therefore, it is not a place wherein you can decide how you want to grow and change, but is a place that you undergo, expose yourself to, and have the courage to face.

The idea is not so much that you do things there, but that things happen to you while there—silent, unseen, transforming things.

The desert purifies you, almost against your will, through God’s efforts. In the desert, what really occurs is a cosmic confrontation between God and the devil; though this happens within and through you.

Our job is only to be have the courage to be there. The idea is that God does the work, providing we have the courage to show up.

In terms of an image, this is what the season of lent is meant to be, time in the desert to courageously face the chaos and the demons within us and to let God do battle with them through us.

As the prophet Hosea vividly describes it, the desert is the place where God speaks to our heart,

the place where our covenant relationship with God is renewed as it was in the beginning.

Pope Francis diversifies his cardinals. But will they have clout where it counts?

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis’ new cardinals, who will be formally installed on Saturday (Feb. 14), represent everything the pope says he wants for the future of Catholicism: a church that reaches out to the periphery and the margins, and one that represents those frontiers more than the central administration in Rome.

That’s why he picked cardinals for the first time ever from countries like Myanmar and Cape Verde, as well as one from the Pacific archipelago of Tonga, which has just 15,000 Catholics out of a population of 100,000 spread across 176 islands.

The 15 new cardinals who are of voting age — five new “honorary” cardinals are over 80 and ineligible to vote for the next pope — come from 14 countries and include prelates from Ethiopia, Panama, Thailand and Vietnam, and from places in Europe far removed from the traditional power dioceses of Old World Catholicism.

In fact, only one new cardinal comes from the Roman Curia, the Italian-dominated papal bureaucracy that Francis is struggling to tame in the wake of a series of scandals that revealed a deep dysfunction at Catholicism’s home office.

But will diversifying the College of Cardinals make it look more like the church’s global flock of 1.2 billion members? Or will it leave the electors so fragmented by geography, language and viewpoints that they won’t be able to serve as a counterweight to career churchmen in Rome?

“Prelates who have no Vatican experience, who don’t speak Italian, and who don’t themselves have the experience of running a large and complex ecclesiastical operation, may feel a natural tendency to defer to the old hands” who have been blamed for Rome’s troubles, veteran Vatican expert John Allen wrote on the Catholic news site Crux.

“The bottom line is that Francis may run the risk of bolstering the old guard rather than cutting it down to size,” he said.

Certainly the breadth and depth of the transformation in the College of Cardinals is remarkable.

In the 2013 papal conclave that elected Francis — an Argentine and the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere — Europeans made up 52 percent of the electors; today they account for just over 45 percent, the lowest level ever. The new cardinals bring the total voting-age membership of the College of Cardinals to 125.

Meanwhile, cardinal-electors from the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the majority of Catholics live, now comprise about 41 percent of the electors, up from 35 percent in 2013 and their highest level ever.

At the same time, the percentage of curial officials has dropped in these two years, from 35 percent to 29 percent.

But while their numbers are smaller, could the curialists have a home-field advantage that would allow them to slow reforms or run the table at a future conclave? Several cardinals and church officials say they don’t think so.

Archbishop John Dew of New Zealand, one of the newly minted “princes of the church,” argued that Francis has already shifted “the balance of power” away from Europe by appointing leaders from “the end of the world,” as Francis referred to himself at his election.

“It’s an opportunity to have a voice and to be heard so (that) it’s not just the curial cardinals speaking, which it’s tended to be for a long time,” said Dew, 66. “So it isn’t all the Roman mentality, the European mentality” dominating church governance.

Dew also noted that Francis is deliberately bringing all the cardinals together in regular meetings to advise him on challenges facing the church and on reforming the Curia. He is also convening regular synods, or meetings of top bishops together with leading cardinals who come from outside Rome.

That leadership approach has two effects. One, it lets the Curia know that the bureaucracy is there to serve the wider church, not the other way around.

And two, it allows the cardinals — who are the ones who will have to elect the next pope from their ranks — to get to know each other better, and to work together. “That does give a sense that we’re in this together,” Dew said.

“You see the function of cardinal, the position of a cardinal, is changing,” Cardinal-designate Berhaneyesus Souraphiel of Ethiopia told National Catholic Reporter. “It’s no more a big honorific task.”

“This is more those who will be nearer to the Holy Father — when he asks our views, our opinions, he will be able to get them,” Souraphiel said.

In the past, such gatherings of cardinals in Rome were so infrequent, or had so little to do with governing the church, that cardinals really didn’t know each other very well. That’s changing fast, and along with it the dynamics of how the church operates, with a much greater stress on decentralization.

“This is a very healthy thing that we are seeing,” Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl said during a break between the series of meetings that the pope has been holding with his cardinals over the past week.

Wuerl, who has long experience dealing with Rome and is today a key American adviser to Francis, said that on a practical level, Francis’ efforts to diversify the College of Cardinals — and the Curia — has suddenly made the Vatican much less Italian and therefore much easier for cardinals with little Roman experience to contribute.

Wuerl recalled that as recently as a synod meeting in 2012, months before Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI resigned, Latin was the official language of the discussions.

The next year, after Francis was pope, Italian replaced Latin, and now cardinals are increasingly simply speaking in their mother tongue.

“I think we are already seeing a way of dealing with the fact that not everybody has to speak Italian, which is the lingua franca of the Curia,” Wuerl said. “If you speak in English or French or Spanish, chances are everyone in the room will understand what you are saying.”

“I’ve never experienced that before,” he said.

Ash Wednesday

Image: "Blessing the Dust" © Jan Richardson

February 18, 2015

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Ashes are not so much grim as they are true. They are real. They tell an honest story, perhaps more honest than any story about our human life that we=re listening to anywhere else in 21st century American life.

The ashes are nothing if they are not the Gospel summons to enter into Lent as a church.

Here we are, the ones who will be marked with ash, the ones told to remember and to repent.

Let=s be clear about a few things that Lent is not.

First, Lent is not a one-day show.

Lent is today and every day until we are exhausted and ready to enter that amazing grace of Three Days that get us from Holy Thursday night to Easter Sunday.

Second, Lent is not some sort of churchy self-improvement program that asks just a tiny bit of self-denial and rewards us with lost pounds or saved money.

Third, Lent is not something I do by myself, my own little good resolutions, my own little prayers, my own little coins for the poor.

What is Lent?

It is literally breathtaking and life-giving.

It is hard and deeply disturbing because it is not about your piety or mine, not about sins, not about earning grace or points or anything else.

It is the church becoming the church.

It is baptized people becoming baptized people.

It is good human beings like ourselves trying to grapple with what the Gospel asks of good human beings now, here, the end of February 2007 and in our city, our nation, our world that is so beaten down by greed gone wild, yet remains the world that God so loved.

Ashes are honest, and today we wear them to remind each other that they summon us to take these 40days and get ourselves, however young or old we are, into training to do and be all that we promised and all that we renounced at our baptism.

By learning how to pray,

by learning to fast in some ways that will tell us what we really hunger for,

by learning to give what we callAours@without counting on anything except the mercy of God: that is what Lent will be for us.

No one does it alone.

I don=t keep Lent.

  You don=t keep Lent.

The church keeps Lent.

And more than any other season, in Lent we so need to see each other here on the six Sundays of Lent,

we so need to hear each other singing,

we so need to join each other at the table and in the procession that surrounds the table.

We so need to bring here our best efforts and our constant failures.

We so need to hear the stories Sunday by Sunday, the crucial stories that will unfold in us what our baptism means.

So let=s make a Lent like we have never made a Lent before.

We will pray in many ways.

We will fast and discover what it is that we should be so hungry and thirsty for.

We will begin to let go of our desperate hold on what we call Aours,@ and start working ourselves out of slavery and into the freedom of God=s children.

And doing this, we=ll walk boldly and yet with trepidation toward that font where on the night of the sacred Easter Vigil we will dare to promise and renounce anew

and we will dare to baptize those newcomers who want to drown all the works of sin and want to live freely and as servants in Christ our Lord.

Sixth Sunday Ordinary Time B

February 15, 2015

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What a contrast between the first reading and the gospel today!

Both readings deal with the treatment of lepers, although the approaches are radically different.

In the first reading, an exclusive approach is the norm: quarantine.

Lepers are segregated from other people, excluded from society, banished to the margins of society, stripped of their dignity— a rejected and dejected people.

There is little reason to wonder why those who suffered from the dread disease that we now call Hansen's disease, were referred to as "the living dead."

It was a death sentence for those who contracted this disease.

The first reading gives a sample of the purification rite whereby the afflicted could be restored to the community.

Why, if leprosy is incurable?

The word "unclean," encompassed more than Hansen's disease.

Taking no chances, dermatological disorders of all sorts were considered unclean, for example, psoriasis, eczema, acne, boils, ulcers, rashes, and even dandruff.

Unlike leprosy, many of these conditions were curable, and those were the people reinstated into the community.

"Go, show yourself to the priest." (Mark 1:44)

In the gospel, Jesus adopts an inclusive approach.

He refuses to exclude from his space the leper who speaks to him.

He is happy to touch the leper.

He wants to cure the leper and he does so.

He respects his dignity.

Jesus always looked toward the edges of the crowds gathered around him and he invites those who have been banished to assume a center-stage role.

Often this was much to the annoyance of the other people.

In daring to touch the untouchable, Jesus becomes the outcast, the one who must hide.

No, I haven't seen any lepers standing in rags announcing that they are "unclean."

Our "lepers" today may be those who stand in front of us in the grocery checkout line with food stamps

or our young people who wear jewelry in the "wrong" places on their bodies.

You get the picture.

Today's lepers are quite aware that we resist standing near them, that we hope they'll choose another row to sit in, or that we caution our children about speaking to them.

They, and we, know well the depth to which we humans can stoop in our desire to distance ourselves from those we deem unacceptable.

There is one other facet to this story about those who are "unclean."

It may be relatively easy to identify who the "lepers" are for each of us.

The question is this:

Can we identify and acknowledge the "unclean" place within ourselves?

Those limitations or sins that discourage or embarrass us?

Do we touch that which is "untouchable" in ourselves?

If not, there's probably little chance we will have compassion for the flaws of others.

We are about to enter the Lenten season, a time to strip away our pretenses and defenses

to discover what lies beneath the layers of accumulated "stuff."

Should we choose to look deep inside, we may find that place within our own unique "leprosy" that is still in need of healing.

Perhaps we will be prompted to approach the One who can touch us lovingly, and make us clean.

Perhaps, kneeling together, we will recognize that in our deep, secret flaws,

we and the leper are one.

In that discovery, we might be willing to widen our circle to include all those we keep at arm's length, untouchable for whatever reason.

Perhaps, come Easter, may each of us, like that healed leper, have something worth shouting about!

Fifth Sunday Ordinary Time B

February 8, 2015

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 A woman was the mother of ten children - the wildest kids you could imagine.

The father traveled extensively in his work, so she was, for all intents and purposes, raising these hellions alone.

The poor woman's life was unbearable.

A sister from the local parish heard of her plight and called her.

Seeing their small house and the behavior of the children, the nun's heart went out to the poor woman.

She tried to provide what little help and support she could.

Sister offered the woman a playpen that someone had donated to the church.

The distracted woman, who had never heard of a playpen, nonetheless welcomed the gift.

Sometime later, Sister met the woman at church.

With tears in her eyes, the mother thanked her for the gift.

 "That playpen has saved my life!" she said to Sister. "It's marvelous.

 Every afternoon at three o'clock, I jump into the playpen with a book and the children can't get to me."

Like the poor harried mother, we all need that "out of the way" place to re-center our lives on the things of God.

When I used to have three masses a weekend, after the 2nd mass on Sunday, I would feel like I didn’t want to talk or see another human being for at least the rest of the day, so I would usually hibernate in my easy chair or vegetate in front of the tv

All of us regularly need to escape the crowd at times.

Like Jesus' rising at dawn and going to a deserted place, we must create our own "out of the way" place in our own schedules:

an early morning hour before the rest of the house rises,

a brief visit to a church during lunch,

the last few minutes each evening before retiring.

It can be a time for quiet prayer, for reading the Scriptures; for offering the Liturgy of the Hours,

for reflecting on the words and insights of some of the great spiritual writers.

Finding that "out of the way place,"  creating within our day that "sacred time" to be alone with God,

can be the source of insight and grace that will illuminate every place and moment of our life.

we can't experience God, we can't grow spiritually or mentally or emotionally, if we don't find our own way of taking a "time out" regularly.

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