Lenten Reflection

Lenten Reflection, Wednesday, March 27, 2013- Paul M. Beaudin, PhD

 

Each Lent, it seems, I am asked to reflect upon a passage of scripture that in some way references having a beard plucked out…this year the passage includes the added imagery of buffets and spitting.  As a former urban school principal, Isaiah’s imagery conjures up my recollections of breaking up playground skirmishes on the asphalt in East Harlem.   But my personal recollections of that time are not why we break open the scripture today as a worshipping body during this Holy Week 2013. 

 

I would, rather, call our attention to two verses of this 26^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel.  In verse 18 the evangelist captures the words of Jesus as the apostles begin to prepare for Passover:  “My appointed time draws near…”  Subsequently, in verse 25 he references Judas’ response to the prediction of betrayal:   “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?”

 

It seems to me that these two verses capture much of the essence of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter…. and of our lives here at Iona…. and in our relationships with others and our world. 

 

Our lives are dictated by appointed times...a time to be born, a time to take attendance, a time to pay the credit card bill, a time for one’s dentist, a time to get to the Murphy lot in order to find a parking space, a time to post grades, and, ultimately, a time to die. 

 

For many of us, as well, the times of our lives are spent avoiding trouble, or trying to get out of it when we perceive we are caught in the muck and mire, or trying to deny responsibility by fibbing, or stretching the truth, or downright lying when we get caught, as my mother would say, with one’s hand in the cookie jar.  We paraphrase Judas at such junctures, turn our head ever so slightly, and with downcast eyes, respond, Surely it is not I?   

 

But Holy Week reminds us that the appointed time is really about something greater.  It is about a time to be courageous, a time to free ourselves from those fears which cause us to betray or deny the truth about that which is right, good, and holy.   Christ’s appointed time was his appointment with betrayal…and spitting… and buffeting…. and crucifixion… and death.  Not an appointment any of us would want to keep.  His amazing act of courage for the benefit of mankind models for each of us that our time is best spent, well spent.  By that I mean spending time raising our hearts, hands, and voices to the service of the gospel.

 

The recent selection of our Holy Father Francis I, has stirred so much

conversation in the media on Catholic social teaching and our corporate

Catholic response to the plight of the poor.  This is indeed the appointed

time to consider our role in addressing it in a personal and systemic way.  It

is not the appointed time to shrink away from the struggle for economic

justice and respond with Surely it is not I?  because we fear in some way

that the care of others would, perhaps, diminish our own wealth.  The care

of the poor is not the job of those students and campus ministers who go on

mission trips or of Brother Devlin who brings food and clothing to the

homeless or of those who work in the New Rochelle Soup Kitchen.  Now is

the appointed time for all of us.  The time to matter, a time to move the

world.

 As our new Holy Father stood on the balcony in St. Peter’s, he lowered his head and asked for the prayers of the gathered throng.  During the Last Supper, the First Eucharist, Christ knelt before his disciples and washed their feet.  These two acts, acts which overturn traditional relationships of people and power, remind us, too, that it is the appointed time to invert the pyramid of power.   It is the appointed time to, as Beatrice Bruteau suggests, to continue the Holy Thursday revolution, a movement of in which our power, leadership have nothing to do with feeding ego, but everything to do with feeding, clothing, and serving the poor.    So, today, the day before we reenact Christ’s act of humility and service, let us remember that this is, indeed, our appointed time here at Iona, in our local community, and in the lives of the poor.  For surely, Judas was wrong….for Surely it is I.

 

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Lenten Reflection

      LENTEN RELECTION (Monday March 3, 2013) Jack Donohue

“No  prophet is  accepted in his own native place.”  (Lk. 4)

 

     PROPHET:

        *One who speaks for the Lord

        * stands up/stands out

        *upstart/ firebrand

              *  Implores, exhorts, even berates

               *  Upsets the status quo

                          Out of comfort zone

                          Exposes dire circumstances

      >>Prophetic:  Things can be better/ Things will have to change

                           OR  ELSE!!!!

 

****ONE REACTION:    “Who is this?   Preaching to us?  The  carpenter’s son?”

                         >>>He came unto his own, and His own  received  Him not……….

 

**** WHAT OF US??

    >> Psalm:  “A thirst is in my soul for the living God;

                  When shall I go and behold the face of God?”  (Ps 42)

 

  >>JOURNEY OF LENT….

          Good Friday/ Easter

 

       A DARING PRAYER:   “Anima Christi”    (pray it every day for the rest of Lent)

                       Soul of Christ, sanctify me;

                       Body of Christ, save me;

                       Blood of Christ, inebriate me;

                       Water from the side of Christ, wash me;

                        Passion of Christ,  strengthen me;

                        O good Jesus, hear me;

                        Within thy wounds hide me;

                        Permit me not to be separated from thee;

                       From the malignant enemy defend me;

                       In the hour of my death call me

                       And bid me to come unto Thee

                       That with Thy saints I may praise Thee

                       Forever and ever.

                                                           Amen                        

            

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Lenten Reflection

Reflection for Mass by Jeanne McDermott                                                  March 21, 2013 

 

Readings of the Day:  Genesis 17:3-9

                                       Psalm 105:4-9

                                      John 8:51-59

 

In today’s readings, we hear God speaking to Abram about a new covenant he is establishing with Abraham, an everlasting pact to be Abram’s God and the God of his descendants after him.  Abram would even experience a name change to Abraham as father of a host of nations.  Covenant is a powerful word capturing the way God sees his relationship to his people. 

History is full of all kinds of ethnic groups and peoples developing relationships with other groups that changed the way they lived and operated.  They were oftentimes born out of necessity for survival, and were irrevocable, and unchangeable.  They blended families and tribes so that they became bigger, better, stronger, and unified.  What belonged to one tribe now belonged to the other as well.  These covenants expanded each tribe’s influence, resources, their ability to provide and to protect.

In Hebrew, the literal translation of the word covenant means:

A-cut-where-blood-flows. 

Looking at our faith history, God seems to take covenants and the shedding of blood very seriously:

God’s first covenant, made with Adam and Eve, was effected by the shedding of animal’s blood so that animal skins could be made to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness as a result of sin.  Although viewed as a punishment in some respects, it was the foundation of the provision and covenant of salvation to come.

God’s covenant with Abraham was effected by the shedding of blood in a sacrifice, originally to be Abraham’s son, but in a merciful last moment substitution by God, a ram was sacrificed instead.

In American culture, our understanding of covenant is much more “civilized.”  Our bonds and alliances are not usually made with the shedding of blood, but usually are established through legal contracts officiated by lawyers.  Sometimes, in less formal settings such as the Sunday afternoon athletic field, a spit in the palms and a handshake will do. 

As a child, covenant history also had its impact on me and my family and how we conducted business in the neighborhood.  I remember playing outdoors during the summer all day with my four brothers, the neighborhood kids, and our next door neighbors the McBrides, who had four girls.  There were always minor neighborhood “wars” with disagreements over power, challenges of strength and declarations of who was the best.   My brothers and I were closest to our next door neighbors, the McBride girls, and one year we talked about how we could beat the other neighborhood kids by sticking together.  To ritualize this decision, we remembered our teachers telling us of traditions where covenants were made by cutting wrists and mingling blood together to form a covenant.  We thought our ritual wouldn’t be complete unless we did something similar.

However, making a slice into our flesh was a little off-putting, even to us mighty “warriors”, and sensibility won out.  We settled on pricking the finger of my brother Larry who was the oldest, and the finger of Kim, who was the toughest of the McBride girls.  They put their fingers together and mingled their two drops of blood, and a new entity was born.  We created a bigger, stronger, and more unified front.  It did a world of good for us.  Psychologically we knew we had the advantage.  Spiritually we knew we would not back down because too many others had our back.  We won dodge ball games, stick ball games and generally felt on top of the world.

God’s covenant with us may include these kinds of little life issues, but of course it is also about much greater things, and is about a much greater passion, commitment and love.  For thousands of years, God has continually pursued his commitment to us, even in the face of our failures to keep our part.  Our faith history is one of breaking our faith, and then being restored by a gracious and forgiving God who is slow to anger and abounding in mercy.  He continually sets us up for success, and finally, offers the promise of a new covenant that is unbreakable.  Unbreakable because it is made not between God and humans as the others were, but is made between God and himself, wrapped in the tent of Jesus’ flesh, tempted in all ways as we are, but able to remain sinless.

In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus firmly and freely establishing His divinity.  He doesn’t couch it in parables or metaphors, but states clearly that “before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  This incites the Jewish crowd to hearing what they believe is “blasphemy” and they become enraged to the point of trying to kill Jesus.  The Jewish crowd was most likely looking for a savior or messiah who would be a mighty warrior, visually appealing, a good political networker, and financially savvy.  Jesus was a faster and prayer, had no visual appeal of beauty, had someone else overseeing the money, and had no political agenda.

But he had an unquenchable love for people, for his heavenly Father, and for doing his Father’s will, even though it would cost him his life under extreme torture, mockery, and carrying the weight of the world’s sin on himself.  His unquenchable love would see him through becoming an everlasting covenant sealed by his own shed blood on the cross that would gain us entry into eternal life if we can only believe.  An everlasting covenant that would need no further sacrifice or shedding of blood, but would last through all eternity and open the way for us to be forever one with Christ, one with the Father, and one with the Holy Spirit.

During this Lenten season, and always, may we find joy in such unquenchable and unstoppable love, and allow it to saturate us so that we in turn, can love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength.

 

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Lenten Reflection

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you!

            Psalm 139 ... You knit me together in my mother's room...you really know me!

            When I think or cell someone or text...of a loved one on subway...infinitely closer than person next to me

Have no fear...I am with you to deliver you! From whatever is going one...bankruptcy....illness...breakup of a relationship...

And because you have no fear you can sing a NEW SONG!

 New song is Easter and Resurrection and we are all part of this Resurrection

We resurrect with Jesus...we are one with Him in all he does

The song is to announce

·        His salvation day after day

·        To tell His glory

·        to proclaim God's marvelous deeds!

·        what marvelous deeds have we experienced!!!!!

....Let your love for one another be intense... strong word intense!

Be hospitable...one of the hallmarks of Iona College...WE SEE IT EVERY DAY!!!!

Whoever serves, as we all do, let it be with the strength that God supplies!

            I can do all things in Him who strengthens me!

            In Something Beautiful for God Mother Teresa says to her sisters, let the people eat you up...let the people eat you up.

            it appears Pope Francis did this in Argentina and came to be POPE

The Lake of Gennesaret is also the Sea of Galilee

Astonishment at Jesus and what he can do where do we find our sense of astonishment today? In the resurrection which we share with Jesus. where is our sense of wonder.... where is our sense of astonishment that we are not afraid....

 

They left everything and followed him!!!

THE DEER'S CRY....GO ON UTUBE...RITA CONNELLY...SHAWN DAVIES      -         Br. Kevin Devlin

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Lenten Reflection

Lenten Gospel           Healing the Mute                  

No doubt each of us has his / her own favorite gospel and mine is the one composed by the Lucan community – the one that offers a portrait of Jesus the Healer.

And so it is with today’s portion, we come upon Jesus once again in his arduous and faithful work of healing – healing us, yesterday, today and forever.

Though the lesson of the gospel today surpasses the simple encounter with Christ the healer, I was arrested by one phrase that I wish to parse with you:  “Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute…”

It struck me as a strange turn of phrase – focusing as it did on the DEMON that was mute; or the muteness of the demon.  And this got me thinking about the particular kind of healing that was underway beneath my eyes, and this morning within our hearing.

In the ancient world, and among popular healers like Jesus, arresting conditions were thought to be not just somatic situations originating in the body or physical plane, but also psychic situations originating in forces, or disordered entities beyond the body, but perhaps from the invisible fields that we inhabit sometimes to our peril.

A demon was understood to be an autonomous entity or energy that took possession of a person from outside of themselves, but perhaps to which they were vulnerable for some reason; perhaps the demonic spirit was like a dis-ease that moved among those whose psychic immune systems were weak; perhaps demons moved in like viruses and infected persons and populations with their pathology.

Whatever their source, today we are invited to consider “the mute demon” – the demon that would make us dumb, silent, speechless, unable to speak, to answer, to respond, to object, to scream, to confirm, to sing, to say what our heart or mind or conscience intends.

As I began to sit with the problem of the mute demon, it began to shape shift, to show me its many faces, its essential pathology.

And it began to challenge me to a critical examine - an examination of my own consciousness - to see where I might be harboring the mute demon – the one who would silence my word – my word of truth, of compassion, of kindness, of care, of joy, of encouragement, of challenge, of yes when yes is what is called for, of no when no is what is called for.

It is fascinating to research the root of words: 

Mute comes from a Sanskrit vein mukah meaning dumb;

In Greek, myein - which means to have a shut mouth;

And I pondered this: when is it really dumb to keep my mouth shut – or even still, when is it demonic to keep my mouth shut?

As the word migrates to Latin it means silent or speechless, and again I am cast into examine: when has my silence been occasioned by the arresting mutation of my true self, my true voice, my word and all that implies in terms of personal integrity?

When the psalmist cries “O God Open my Lips and my mouth shall proclaim your praise,” she is awakening those spiritual anti-bodies that can begin to heal pathology of the mute demon – he is invoking the energy and the power to ever be voicing the angelic power of human speech – what a word can indeed do (as we have been thinking of what it can undo).

As it can undo confidence and hope – it can likewise encourage.  It can inspire as well as deflate; it can praise as well as curse - for we are echoes of the Eternal Word sounding for all time through this cosmos, the echo of that Word through whom all things were made.

And as Brother Jack Driscoll loved to remind us, when the psalmist prayed to have his mouth opened – to be relieved of any vulnerability to the demon of muteness – he was in fact saying “O God, remove the obstacles to my speech, in my speech; O God, open my boundaries, my borders…”

When those boundaries of the mind and heart are open to the vitality of grace, there may arise, ironically, another kind of muteness – not one socially or psychotically imposed by anxiety or depression, repression or fear or trauma or just plain mean withholdingness.

 

This other  kind of muteness – a sacred muteness - is a discrete silence because what is felt or experienced or seen is just way beyond words – this is a holy muteness, and angelic muteness.  This “mu” is the root of (and the route toward) mysticism in the Christian tradition; this “mu” is the root of (and the route toward) enlightenment in the Buddhist tradition, as any etymological word search will reveal.

Is this the homeopathic transformation of our demonic muteness – our inability to voice the goodness, beauty, truth of the moment, the situation, our holding our tongue when truly an authentic liberating word is called for?  Is this sacred silencing of “mu” the ironic and counter-intuitive therapy for dissipating the mute demon?

When we are healed of demonic withholding,  then perhaps we abide in a gracious, mindful silence.  When our muteness is angelic, it is harmless, intentionally so.  It is the gate to our own and others’ enlightenment.

So this day, this spiritual inquiry: how and when does my silence hurt or harm me or another; how does it heal and bless? - Kathleen Deignan, CND

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Lenten Reflection

As I was reading the Gospel I felt a sense of joy because it states that whoever obeys and teaches the commandments will be called the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus is speaking about all of us.  If we follow the commandments and teach others to do so we will be exalted in Heaven; isn’t that a beautiful thing to look forward to?  It makes us think, especially during this time of Lent - how am I living my life, what can I change?  Will I be able to be called one of the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?

This Gospel also reminds me of Edmund Rice and what he did for the poor children in Ireland.  He took them in when no one else cared, he educated and clothed them; he elevated them to a better place.  He would wait outside of school and shake the children’s hands when they entered making these children feel special; inspiring them be better people.  Edmund Rice taught the children how to honor one another; to love.  What is one of the greatest commandments – to love your neighbor as yourself.  Edmund Rice would go out to the prisons and visit so that the prisoners knew there was someone who cared.  He bought the freedom of a slave years before the Emancipation Proclamation.  And this slave, Black Johnny as he was called, repaid Edmund by leaving his property to the Presentation Sisters who took him in.  Edmund accepted and loved everyone, and at times I’m sure it wasn’t easy. 

So what do we do?  What do we do as members of the Iona community?  Do we teach students justice; do we teach them to accept one another; do we teach them to be ethical?  Do we nurture them mind, body and spirit?  Do we elevate our students when they’re down; do we reach out to those who need our help?  Are WE accepting of one another?  During this time of Lent, are we thinking about who we are? 

What do we do as members of society and for our families?  Do we follow the commandments by Honoring our Father and Mother?   Do we keep Holy the Lord’s Day?  Do we reach out to the elderly?  Are we there just to lend an ear or a helping hand?

All we need to do is to look toward Jesus for the assistance we need in areas where we may be lacking; to pray for forgiveness and ask how can we obey and teach His commandments because one day I’m sure we all would like to be called the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. - Felicia Colangelo

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Lenten Reflection

“Do not let us be put to shame”

 

Today’s two readings demonstrate how to experience shame and how to work through shame.

 

During Lent, we are called to take stock of our sinfulness, but without losing hope that God will forgive, that our closest loved ones will forgive, and that we will forgive ourselves and others.  And yet, this deep into the Lenten season, with daily reminders that we are sometimes not as good as we strive to be or as others expect us to be, it is all to easy to feel shame, to be ashamed.  It is also all too easy to shame others who do not live up to our expectations. 

 

Shame is more troubling than guilt.  We feel guilt in response to an action that we have performed;  it is an emotional rejection of an action; it is a psychological marker to remind us to avoid those actions in the future.  Shame is deeper, darker, and more terrifying.  We feel shame in response to our selves; shame is an emotion that can lower our self-esteem; it is an emotion that rejects, repudiates, and disdains the self.  If you feel shame, you are ashamed of your self.  Your self. 

 

You feel guilty when you commit an act that you know does not represent your true self.  You feel shame when you commit an act that you begin to believe represents your self.  You yell at someone you love and feel guilty because you define yourself as a patient person; you yell at someone you love and feel ashamed because you begin to believe that you are actually an angry, hateful person, through and through.   Left untended or repressed or suppressed, shame can lead to isolation, depression, and despair.  But shame, like all other emotions, is not meant to be ignored.  We are meant to struggle through shame, to cope with shame, to learn from shame. 

 

The truth of the matter is that our sinfulness “brings us” so “low” that no one but God, and nothing but love and forgiveness, can keep us from shame, or help us through shame.   Jesus’s parable about the servant’s debt has us realize that mercy and grace are from God, yes, but not like manna from heaven.  Love is the answer to shame, and each person is utterly dependent upon the love of others to withstand moments of shame.  The patience, kindness, and compassion that the master feels for the servant are the only ways to lead other people through feelings of shame and towards a true sense of self-worth and dignity. 

 

The master’s servant does not get the message.  He does not love when his time comes to act as master.  Instead of inspiring, instead of giving breath, the master’s servant chokes his fellow servant, deprives him of breath, of spirit, of life.  Love and forgiveness give life and dignity; deprivation and grudges make for shame, self-loathing, and suffering.  Because he puts his own servant to shame, the master’s servant is tortured until he pays back his debt.  In other words, the master’s servant is shamed for his selfishness—he desired compassion when he needed it, but he refused to impart compassion to others when they needed it.  He was selfish.  He lacked empathy.  He was the center of his own universe.  His ego trumped his humanity.  No sinful condition is worse, and no sin is more deserving of shame, Jesus seems to suggest, than this selfishness.

 

We are all sinners, we all suffer shame, we all need love and forgiveness.  These truths must be the touchstones of each relationship, every relationship, between the core of one person and the core of another, in the home and in the board room, in the nursery and in the funeral parlor, in the classroom and in the chapel.  - T.J. Moretti

 

 

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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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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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