Lenten Reflection

“The greatest among you must be your servant.   Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Christ really nails the scribes and Pharisees.     They put heavy burdens on others, but won’t “lift a finger to help them.”   Perform good words to be seen.   Love the paces of honor in public.    Don’t practice what they preach.

Stern words there.   Some challenge.  Humble yourself.  

Before our peers, our students, our friends, the entire world?    Who?

Not to be too morbid during Lent, but how big are our tombstones going to be in the cemetery?   In a religious community, all the stones are the same.   At the Trappist monastery at Gethsemani, , you have to look through the rows for Thomas Merton’s grave.   Then you see the little stones his fans have left on top of his simple headstone.

As my friend said, while we were strolling through the rows, “Let’s not forget these other great men.”

“The greatest among you shall be your servant.”   

Even a world-class author buried in the hills of Kentucky among his brother monks.    From a distance you can’t tell which stone is his.

There are some other lessons in today’s readings.

 The first reading gives us a stern warning about Lenten repentance.   

“Wash yourself clean – from red to white.”   Sounds like those images inspired by the Baltimore Catechism of wringing our souls clean like dirty sponges full of sin.  

Lent is a time, as Isaiah says, “to set things right.”

The reward is in the responsorial psalm – Psalm 50 – “To the upright I will show the saving power of god.”  

If we repent, the Lord will shower us with his saving grace.

In addition to the humility lesson, Jesus tells us to call “no one on earth your Father,” except our “father in heaven.”    How about a priest?   

Garry Wills addresses that in his new book “Why Priests?: A Failed Tradition”  - haven’t read it yet.  One reviewer called it, “a sour screed against the priesthood.”   

There has been lots of discussion about the book on my cyber common room, composed of former seminarians and priests, but we’ll leave that for another reflection.    Bet you can hardly wait.  Or better yet, maybe Father Frank has a homily in the works already.

The main lesson here is humility.

In the college seminary on Good Friday, I was once picked as one of the twelve students to have our feet washed by the rector – the big boss of the place.    We get up there, take off our shoes and soxes, and meanwhile, he’s wrapping  a white towel around his waist.   And he washes our feet, one pair at a time.

I was thinking – how humiliating.    This guy barely talks to us, and now he’s washing our feet?    Later we found out that the sacristan selected those he thought were the twelve smelliest feet in the house…even though one confrere anointed his feet with cologne before the service.

Where did that come from – the washing of the feet?    Christ did that at the Last Supper.   

If he can be that humble, why can’t we?

Why don’t we take a little time during Lent to be more humble?   I’m not saying to rewrite our CV’s or anything that drastic.    Or going over to the gym, and start washing smelly feet.

Just take some time to help out those who need us, those who look up to us, those who have less than us.

Take a little extra time to be humble.

 Jack Breslin

February 26, 2013

 

 

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Success Center

Every Monday thru Wednesday I volunteer at the Campus Ministries Success Center. I initially did Success Center for my education classes to gain my hours of experience and even after I was done with my hours I continued to volunteer. I am not an education major anymore but, I still volunteer at the Success Center. The reason why I continue is because I have compassion for the students who need help. Every time I go (to Success Center), multiple students ask for my assistance! I have had so much fun tutoring the kids and in return they respect my. In addition, we are all like family at Success Center - we help each other out where needed.  I even became Santa Claus for the Success Center kids because I knew they would like it. Even though the older kids knew it was me, they loved the holiday cheer. I can honestly say the Success Center has helped me as well as the students we tutor learn more about the world. - Steven Burth, Iona student

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Lenten Reflection

I can do that.  I can be merciful, forgiving, and generous.  I can stop judging and condemning.  It’s very easy here in the chapel.  Yes, but out there in the world it is not very easy

Jesus is not talking today about avoiding sin; he is talking about how we react to the evil committed by others.

Perhaps one of us has been the victim of evil; perhaps a relative, a friend or a neighbor has suffered.  Surely, we have all too recently and too often learned in the news about serious acts of violence.

We can feel it deep inside where our emotions well up, and our blood literally begins to boil.  That’s when Jesus’ words are hard to live.

At times like these, we don’t feel any mercy at all. But Jesus counsels us to be merciful.  We can’t change the past, and neither can the perpetrator. Two years after being shot, Blessed John Paul the Second visited the shooter in his prison cell.  The meeting was secret, but John Paul reported “I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust.”

Withholding judgment of a perpetrator is certainly difficult.  Jesus says “Stop” But even that is not enough.  We also need to withhold judgment of both those who support and those who assail perpetrators.  Jesus is telling us not to judge the family of a murderer or the fellow believers of a terrorist.  Neither should we judge demonstrators on either side of a controversial issue.

Condemnation leads to nowhere.  But stopping it can.   In 1978, after years of bloody warfare and bitter hostility, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat met with Jimmy Carter to negotiate and to sign the Camp David Accords. Then they shook hands.  Since that day, 35 more years of turmoil have racked the Middle East, but the peace they forged between Israel and Egypt still holds.

It is easy to give lip service to forgiveness and to mouth hollow words, but real forgiveness is arduous.  After the fall of apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.  He said, “Forgiving is not forgetting; it’s actually remembering--remembering and not using your right to hit back. It’s a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you don’t want to repeat what happened.”

It seems strange that Jesus choose to include giving in his list. It doesn’t seem to fit with the others.  But he is not talking about giving that is easy but about giving that is difficult.  It is easy to give to our friends and relatives.  It is easy to give to charities and disaster relief.  Elsewhere he talks about how much more the widow who gives her last penny has done than the rich man who gives a fortune. 

In today’s context he is talking about giving to our enemy.  During the American Revolution, British Admiral Lord Howe met a delegation from the Second Continental Congress in an attempt to negotiate peace.  Howe carried two lists.  The longer list contained the names of those he had the authority to pardon.  The second list contained the name of John Adams, the most outspoken advocate of independence; Adams was to be hung on the spot.

 A few years earlier, after the Boston Massacre, the British soldiers who were charged could not find a defense attorney because every lawyer in Massachusetts thought that taking the job would end his career.  John Adams took the case, had six of them acquitted of all charges, and the other two acquitted of murder, although found guilty of manslaughter.  Adams gift to his enemies did not end his career.  That year he was elected to the colonial legislature, later he was sent to both Continental Congresses, negotiated the Treaty of Paris, was first American ambassador to Great Britain, the first Vice President of the United States, and our second President.   “A good measure packed together, shaken down, and overflowing.”  Jesus words are difficult.  They are not impossible.  - Dr. Jim Carpenter

 

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Lenten Reflection

Thursday after Ash Wednesday, 14 February 2013

(Deuteronony 30:15-20; Luke 9:22-25)

In all the years I have helped organize Lenten Reflections, I don’t think I have ever offered a reflection on this first day of the series. Let me take advantage of the opening slot to dedicate Lenten Reflections this year to the man who first organized Lenten Reflections at Iona, back in the early 1970s: Jim Poisson was at that time the Director of Campus Ministry, a young Crozier priest filled with energy and enthusiasm. After he left Iona, he worked at the Brothers’ high school in Rhode Island; I saw him not long ago at the wake for our former president, Br. Jack Driscoll, and the energy and enthusiasm are still there. Sometimes he shares his ideas in letters to Commonweal magazine. I wish for Jim many more years of rich and productive life, and I thank him for inventing Lenten Reflections.

When I think about retirement, I often fantasize that it would be fun, at least once, to follow the sun into spring. Sometime in March, my wife Ellen and I would travel south until we reached the first signs of the new season, perhaps in Georgia, and then head north in stages, reaching our home in time to see the pear trees in full bloom and all of nature turning green again.

 Lent, which literally means spring, is about following the Son of God into a springtime of renewed commitment to him. The earliest followers of Christ were known as followers of the Way, but soon they became known as Christians, because the Way for these people was Jesus himself. Today’s Gospel reminds us that “Jesus is the reason for the season.” In a few brief words, the passage from Luke’s Gospel focuses our attention on the point of all the things we might do for Lent. All of them involve taking up our own cross every day and following Jesus on the road through suffering and death to eternal life.

The readings for Ash Wednesday focus on strategies for “keeping Lent,” as Jesus himself reflects in the Gospel on how to pray, fast, and give alms in worship of the Father. Today’s readings call us to move forward into the season, literally following Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, where he will die in order that we might live. If you look at today’s Gospel in the context of chapter 9 of Luke, you will see that Jesus offers these words just after Simon Peter has answered Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter says that Jesus is “the Messiah of God,” and Jesus warns the disciples to keep this identity quiet, because he knows that, when it becomes widely known he will face death for his supposed blasphemy. So Peter’s recognition leads Jesus to make the first of three predictions of his passion. Before the end of chapter 9, he will make the second  prediction and he will set out on the road to Jerusalem. In Luke’s Gospel, up to this point Jesus has ministered in Galilee and areas near it. The second half of Luke’s Gospel narrates Jesus’ slow journey south toward Jerusalem.

So, at the beginning of Lent, the Church asks us to consider the end of the journey in Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection. “And resurrection.”—every one of his predictions about his violent and painful death concludes with the promise of resurrection. The first reading today, from Deuteronomy, focuses on the best way to follow Christ. Choose life over death, says Moses to the Israelites as they prepare to cross the Jordan into the promised land. And how are they to choose life? “By loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.”

All the things we DO for Lent—giving up, taking on—are meant to help us focus on the daily task of the Christian, taking up the cross. We devote our energy to getting closer to the Lord through prayer, self-denial, and works of love for others. In other words, we imitate Christ and, in doing so, put our own selfish desires and obsessions in the trunk of the car so that Jesus and his priorities can travel with us up front as we drive into new life. The paradox of today’s Gospel is at the heart of our faith—dying to self, we live more closely to Jesus and ultimately save our lives for all eternity.

Today’s opening prayer, in the translation we used until last year, could easily be a prayer we say every morning, certainly on the mornings of Lent:

“Lord, may everything we do begin with your inspiration, continue with your help, and reach perfection under your guidance. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

                                                                                                            (John Mahon)

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