Saturday of the second week in Eastertide

Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, and after getting into a boat, they started to cross the sea to Capernaum. It had already become dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea began to be stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. Then, when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat; and they were frightened. But He said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid." So they were willing to receive Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. (John 6:16-21 NASB)

                                                         * * *

We are so used to Jesus walking on the water; it's just one of those things that Jesus does. The disciples, though, must have been terrified. If I were out at sea, at night, in a strong wind, and I saw someone walking across the water--well, my first thought would be that I only thought I saw someone. People don't walk on water.  

Reading this passage this morning, I am struck by the implausibility of the event. No, not that I don't believe what it says; rather, I can well understand the disciples' fright. Not only that, but I think I would probably have ignored Jesus, telling myself that the figure walking towards the boat was just my imagination. And what I would miss! A miracle would pass me by unnoticed.

That makes me wonder how many miracles do pass me by these days. For God shows up implausibly, speaks almost imperceptibly, and works in unexpected places in not-the-usual way. I came across an email yesterday--an invitation to write, actually, dispelling a myth about Catholicism in 100 words, which is a pretty tall order. I hadn't read it carefully at the time. Now I wonder whether I missed something. Am I paying attention? Am I open to the possibility that God might be up to something new? Too often, I think, I look for God in the obvious places and forget that God is everywhere, always doing a new thing. 

I suppose there is a very good reason that the invitatory psalm (said at the beginning of the first office of the day) reminds us, 'if today, you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.' Not that we intend to ignore God; it just happens in the course of our daily life. God doesn't hit us over the head or wave a big yellow flag. We have to pay attention. Fortunately, even our attention to God is a gift of the Holy Spirit. If we want to hear God's voice, all we have to do is ask. 

Deo gratias.

Corpus Christi

Not exactly a reflection on the Mass reading today, but perhaps still of interest: thoughts on the sacrament and Christian life. It doesn't answer any questions about what Jesus means when he says he is the bread of heaven; hopefully you've heard a good homily about that!

Monday of the third week in Lent

Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and went away in a rage. Then his servants came near and spoke to him and said, "My father, had the prophet told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, 'Wash, and be clean'?"

2 Kings 5:12, 13

 

. . .

Exactly. Naaman expected something dramatic. If a miraculous cure is sought, the healing ought to amaze. But there isn't anything too exciting about taking a dip in the river.

This is a great story for me, for Lent--or anytime, really. A suitably astounding miracle (I'm thinking Elijah and the prophets of Ba'al) would go down well, especially if some intense engagement were required on my part. Extreme Christianity: ascetic achievement; big, bold miracles.

Nope. I think it is Abba Sisoes who, when asked for a word, says, 'go into your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.' Say your prayers, do the things you are supposed to do, and you will do well. It isn't the grand gesture, once-in-a-lifetime, but the little things done every day, that mark the path to holiness.

So says St Therese of Lisieux; so also said Mother Teresa. It's the little things. Being drawn to Benedictine spirituality, I tend to think in terms of the daily office: praying the appointed psalms at the appointed times. Work and pray, rest, repeat.

Simple. Not easy, but simple. And miraculous: this simple rhythm of work and prayer is possible only by grace.

Deo gratias.

Saturday of the second week in Lent

Who is a god like you, who pardons iniquity

And passes over the rebellious act

of the remnant of his possession?

He does not retain his anger forever,

Because he delights in unchanging love.

He will again have compassion on us;

He will tread our iniquities underfoot.

Micah 7: 18-19

 

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him

and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him

and kissed him.

Luke 15: 20

 

. . .

 

Here we are in Lent, 'still a long way off'; Easter is weeks away, and the penitential season stretches further ahead of us than behind. Lent has only just begun, it seems, and I have not been wholly faithful to the discipline I set for myself.

 

Yet even while we are yet a long way off, the Father sets out to meet us on the road. If the transfiguration shines some resurrection light in the midst of Lent, the parable of the prodigal son is an eruption of mercy in the midst of our examination of conscience. Before I have even recognized my sins fully, God is on the way to meet me in my contrition, to 'tread [my] iniquities underfoot.'

 

More could certainly be said about these texts, and about the prevenient grace of God (Calvin was right about that, but he certainly didn't discover it!); but the only thing that really needs to be said is: Deo gratias.

 

Thursday of the first week in Lent

On the day I called, you answered;

you increased the strength of my soul.

Psalm 137 [136]

 

. . .

 

Indeed. Strength of soul is what we require, what we seek, during Lent. Queen Esther sought it: her prayer for herself, in the passage set for Mass today, is for courage. She plans to intercede with the king on behalf or her people, but she trusts not in herself or even in the king. Her hope is in God alone; she implores God to save God's people, to change the king's heart. She offers herself as the means by which God might choose to do that.

 

And he does. God increases her strength of soul, God changes the king's heart, and thereby saves his people.

 

So the deprecation of God that Jesus offers in the gospel reading for today describes the God who answered Esther's prayer and awed the psalmist with constancy of his love and saving help. We can be of good hope that when we seek him--as we do during Lent--he will be found by us, and will give us what we most need: strength of soul, so that we can follow Jesus ever more nearly, and be formed ever more closely to his likeness.

 

And that is good news indeed.

 

Deo gratias.

Tuesday of the first week in Lent

Yes, if you forgive others their failings, your heavenly Father will forgive you yours, but if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive your failings either.

                                                                        Matthew 6:15

When Isaac of the Thebaid visited a community, he saw that one of the brothers was sinful, and he passed sentence on him. But when he was returning to his cell in the desert, the angel of the Lord came and stood in front of the door of his cell, and said, “I will not let you go in.” He asked, “why not?” The angel of the Lord replied, “God sent me to ask you, ‘Where do you tell me to send that sinful brother whom you sentenced?’” At once Isaac repented, saying, “I have sinned, forgive me.” The angle said, “Get up, God has forgiven you. In future take care to judge no man before God has judged him.”

*        *        *

The desert fathers and mother have quite a bit to say about forgiveness. Forgiving plays a key role in the training of the soul in humility. They seem to have taken Matthew’s warnings about forgiveness and not judging quite literally and very seriously.

I wonder if we really believe the words of Matthew’s gospel. On the face of it—reading the way the words go—it seems clear that forgiving is absolutely essential Christian practice. To refuse to forgive others is to refuse to receive the forgiveness of God; as it says elsewhere in the gospel, “the measure you give will be the measure you get.”

It is vital, according to Matthew and the desert ascetics, to forgive. It is also perhaps the most difficult of all sayings. We are not programmed to give way. Even the youngest talkers learn early on to exclaim, “No!” and “Mine!” We do not, on the whole, uphold turning the other cheek as a moral standard. Anger, bitterness, resentment, even murder can be justified (though not excused: justifiable homicide does not mean the perpetrator is innocent). We learn the right reasons for holding onto the wounds we have suffered. We recognize, of course, the failure in losing our temper over something insignificant. But we also know how to be properly angry, to retain the sins of those who have wronged us. We have been hurt: it is they who have hurt us who should ask forgiveness. They ought to make the first move. We want to make repentance or contrition the prerequisite for forgiveness.

But God doesn’t. God, the Lord, is slow to anger and rich in mercy. God is like the prodigal father, who goes out to meet his son, and interrupts his act of contrition with a call for celebration. God makes the first move…and the second, and the third, and so on. Always God’s mercy goes before us, making the way for our repentance. Forgiveness is part of God’s creativity—yes, God’s creativity. God makes a way where there is no way; God’s mercy is new every morning, welcoming sinners like me back into the sheepfold. And out of that same inexhaustible supply, the fountain of living water, we can draw grace to give away—if only we will.

Eternal Father, you forgive us without resentment and love us without reserve. By your Holy Spirit give us the grace to live in that love and to extend it to everyone we meet.

Ash Wednesday

Have mercy on me, O God,
  according to your steadfast love;
According to your abundant mercy,
  blot out my transgressions.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
  and done that which is evil in your sight,
So that you are justified in your sentence,
  and blameless in your judgement.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
  and put a new and right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
  and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

O Lord, open my lips,
  and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.

                                              Psalm 51 [50]

.         .          .

Today we begin Lent, with ashes and penitence; we undertake practices that will, with the help of the Holy Spirit, turn us back to God. Today I acknowledge that, however satisfactory I think my Christian life is, I still need God to give me a clean heart, and a new and right (or steadfast, as some translations have it) spirit within me.

Psalm 51 is a psalm of David, the one that dates from his famous fall: his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah. I can look back on my life since last Easter and see nothing quite so vicious in my own life. And yet--I know my transgressions, I know the dark and cold places in my own heart. I know that 'I have greatly sinned, in thought and word, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.' My inattention to the Holy Spirit bears fruit of impatience and anger, envy and despair and resentment.

And so I pray with David, 'Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of your salvation'. However much penance I might undertake this Lent, however carefully I might scrutinize my conscience, I cannot do what needs to be done for myself. I can only empty myself to welcome the risen Lord, who himself will give the clean heart that will receive him at Easter.

Thursday after Epiphany

We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

 

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world-our faith.

1 John 4:19-5:1-4 NASB

 

...

 

I included the whole passage because I find it puzzling. At first, I thought I would just reflect on the first verses. These, to me, have a clear application. And their application fits nicely with the things I am thinking about at the moment, to do with the Church and the kind of love that marks the Church as the body of Christ. See? Here it is: the love for brothers and sisters in Christ (at least) is what identifies us as Christians. The verses in 1 John don't offer any provisos that would allow us to choose which brothers and sisters to love--only those who love us, or think like we do; or only those who are able-bodied, or of sound mind. The only possible qualification is that we love the ones we see. But I am not sure that counts, exactly.

 

I like this, because I am writing about the Christian calling to love the poor and the weak. I would like to say that the measure of the Church's love and holiness is the way she receives those who suffer and are in need, those who the world says have nothing to offer. That's because the world doesn't understand that Christ offers himself to us in the broken and the desperate, that we might receive Him. We cannot see God, but God has made us in his image, and in Christ God has shown himself truly and fully. God came to us poor, and still comes to us poor: we are to receive him with love.

 

But what about this business about the commandments? I would have thought that we would be able to tell that we love the children of God pretty straightforwardly. Isn't it obvious that we can tell that we love by our demonstrations of that love? Apparently not. I suspect that there is a lot more to this passage than I yet realize, and it is worth a great deal of unpacking, so I will make just one observation (which is also related to the Church). Loving the children of God is not not about those actions that show love. It is about more than those actions. If I am grasping this accurately, keeping the commandments is also about integrity and holiness. Loving the children of God and living in sin are incommensurate, maybe even mutually exclusive. There is no 'private' sin, sin that only affects us. When one member suffers, the whole body suffers. That's a mystery; that is, we don't know how the sort of sin that seems just to be between ourselves and God affects the whole body. How does such sin impair our love for the children of God? (Maybe all sin has a horizontal dimension?)

 

However such seemingly private sin weakens the whole body, it is a sobering thought, and one that makes me more eager for the sacrament of reconciliation and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. For though it is hard and serious news, it is still, after all, good news: Christ came to save sinners.

 

Deo gratias.

Thirty-first Sunday in ordinary time

You can do all things and overlook [people's] sins so that they can repent.

Wisdom 11: 24

 

. . .

 

Somehow--maybe it was struggling to keep the two-year-old quiet--I didn't hear this in Mass this morning. Not that it wasn't read: it was read by the son of my two-year-old's godmother. But I missed it, and the priest didn't comment on it in his homily, which focused on the gospel. Fair enough, I suppose. There is a good deal to say about Zacchaeus. Still, the readings in the lectionary are ordered, and combinations occur for a reason. Sometimes that reason is pretty hard to discern, but today it is less puzzling.

 

At least it's less puzzling if you happen to be a Catholic who has strayed far into Reformed and Evangelical territory. Then the prevenience of grace leaps out of every page of the Bible--even the books of the Bible that only appear in the Catholic editions of the Bible. And here it is in the book of Wisdom. I always associate Wisdom with the key passages in chapters 7-9, about the role of wisdom in creation, including one of my favourites: omnia disponit suaviter, [widsom] arranges all things delightfully. So finding this other theme of the Bible, the grace of God that makes way for the sinner's return, there in Wisdom is, well, delightful.

 

And it is, of course, this path-breaking grace of God that drives Zacchaeus up the tree. The change has already begun. Can it be anything other than the Holy Spirit that draws Zacchaeus to Jesus? I don't think so, and I could quote some early church theologians to support that claim. Besides, Jesus does just what the verse in Wisdom says: he "overlooks" Zacchaeus' sins, so that he can repent. Religious leaders aren't supposed to hang out with infamous sinners, but Jesus doesn't seem too worried about that. He sees beyond the sin, sees the person who needs the space to repent. Jesus makes repentance possible.

 

Two things follow from this, for me. First, I am struck by the space-making work of Christ. I have noticed it elsewhere in the gospels (see Mark 5: 30-34, for example), but never connected it to Zacchaeus, to repentance. So also, I realize, Jesus is making space, always, for my repentance. Am I perceiving it? Do I enter into that space, or do I avoid it? (I'm not certain, but I am more determined to get to confession this Saturday!) Second, and this is something that has been tugging at me for a little while, Jesus makes space for pretty unpleasant people. Tax collectors are the bad guys in the first century, not the people the messiah is supposed to befriend. Who are the people around me that Jesus wants to befriend? I'm guessing they're not the people I would ordinarily find friend-like.

 

No wonder I haven't seen that space for repentance as space for me: I have just divided the people around me into people like me (friend-like) and people who need space for repentance. The fact that both (1) that Jesus makes space for me to repent and (2) Jesus makes space for "obvious" sinners--the "tax collectors" of our day--to repent means that I am not so different as I might like to think.

 

Luckily, there's plenty of that prevenient grace to go around.

 

Deo gratias.