Lenten Attentiveness to God's Will for Us

 

Second Sunday of Lent

27-28 February 2021, St. Mary’s in Salem

 

Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18

Rom 8:31b-34

Mk 9:2-10

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        In the Second Reading today we hear from St. Paul:

        “Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us, who will condemn? Christ Jesus it is who died – or, rather, was raised – who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.”

        Divine advocacy! God Himself pleading our cause! The world to which St. Paul refers in his letter to the Romans is often quite foreign to us in our everyday life. The priorities of people even within the community of believers have changed in recent times. Basically, while some people out there today are worried about being judged or condemned by God, it is not the prevailing sentiment in Christian society, as a lot of people are not focused at all on the coming judgment. For that reason, many people experience no particular sense of relief in receiving the assurance that God is on our side and will see that we are not condemned.

Yes, it is too often the case that people are anxious about societal approval, but when it comes to eternal salvation, they are just plain indifferent or dull. This indifference to the things of God and to the prospect that at the end of our days on earth we will have to answer before Him is a characteristic of practical atheism, defined as living, thinking, or behaving as if God did not exist or, at any rate, somehow did not really count.

        If that sounds too brutal, let me say it another way. It is hard to imagine a lot of people in the Western world troubling themselves over the demands of discipleship – over what it means to follow Christ or to be caught up in a relationship with the Almighty. A felt need to sort things out and get them right with God, such as we experience of Abraham in the Genesis passage for today or in Jesus’ concern for his three chosen disciples in St. Luke’s account of the Transfiguration are not what move people generally in society.

        “Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.”

        Our Gospel today recounts the great mystery of our Lord transfigured in glory conversing with Moses and Elijah! That mysterious and awe-inspiring event took place up on one of the highest elevations in Galilee, in this case on Mount Tabor. Our Old Testament reading from the Book of Genesis recounts another mountain top experience, namely that of Abraham and his only son Isaac, up on Mount Moriah. On both summits, those chosen by God are given prophetic insight into His plan for them and for the life of the world. Both events sort out the scandal of dealing with a God requiring the sacrifice of an only son. On Mount Moriah the Almighty gives back Isaac to Abraham without taking his life. He does so in recognition of Abraham’s readiness to obey the Divine Will. On Tabor God reveals to Peter, James and John His Only Begotten Son, Jesus, in Whom all that was written in the Law and the Prophets finds its fulfillment. Death is to be swallowed up in Christ’s death and everlasting glory is His for the sake of the life of the world.

         “Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us, who will condemn? Christ Jesus it is who died – or, rather, was raised – who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.”

        It never ceases to amaze me just how quickly the forty days of Lent fly by. We are on the Second Sunday of Lent already and it could be that you have not even sat down to make a plan for this season of penance and prayer. It would seem for the most part that the Lenten culture of my childhood and the world which most of us old folk experienced a good sixty years ago has gotten lost. Back then Ash Wednesday hit and (bang!) no more candy, no desserts, no movies and on and on. If your parents belonged to the school which taught that Sundays did not count as days a penance, maybe then on that day once a week, you got a treat. Under that regime (say what you will!) you could not forget Lent. You were always thinking about your Lenten obligations, which meant that God was in your thoughts, and for better or for worse, that you were praying. Back then, weekly Stations of the Cross for the children of the parochial school at the end of a school day were a fond memory of a prayer we could really get into and which (be it noted!) got us out of the classroom a half hour early on that day.

        Did that kind of regimentation necessarily guarantee that we could better focus on what we ought to be about as God’s chosen ones, as His adopted children in Christ? Maybe yes, maybe no, but I do think that practical atheism was not as much an issue as it is today. The sacrifice of Isaac on Mont Moriah demanded as a test of Abraham by God certainly had our father in faith tied up in knots. Abraham had to sort out God’s will for him. It seemed totally out of touch with God’s promise to make him the father of many nations, and then all of a sudden, to reclaim as a burnt offering his only son Isaac, the one who should be the bearer of this promise. Peter, James and John, representative of the whole first community of the disciples of Jesus had to be prepared for the scandal of the Cross, of God claiming in death His only begotten Son, Whom His followers professed as the Messiah, God’s Chosen One.   

        If you still have not made a plan to do something special for Lent, especially in terms of some kind of penance or mortification, then do so today. Find a reasonable way to intensify and improve your life of prayer.

        Not too far from my home in Sioux Falls is one of those national barber franchises. They want you to use their app to see how long your wait is going to be for a haircut and log in online. It works pretty well! For the Sacrament of Penance, I have not yet seen an app to let you check your phone to see how long the confession line. My recommendation would be to get your confession in early now in Lent. So far on Saturdays at 4pm before Mass, I have not been exactly overworked. Last Wednesday after Stations I would have stayed as long as need be but no takers, and this coming Wednesday 3 March the same. March 10 and 24 are reserved for CCD confessions and March 17 the Bishop is coming for Confirmation, so do not put things off for too long or you may wish I had invented a confession-app. If you have a hard time accusing yourself of sin, it could be that you are a saint, but it could also be, that sad to say, you are a practical atheist… Think it over!

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

The Road Less Traveled Through the Desert

 

1^st Sunday of Lent

February 20-21, 2021

St. Mary’s in Salem

Genesis 9:8-15

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:12-15

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        As recounted in the Book of Genesis, the Church teaches that the rainbow given by God to Noah is God’s covenant sign to His People that He will never destroy the earth again by the waters of a flood. The rainbow was to remind Noah of God’s covenant promise; it is a pact with relevance also for us. Just as the obedience of Noah assured him and his family survival in the flood and a future in God’s new world, so we too can be assured and confident that the Lord will carry us if we respond in obedience to His call.

St. Peter taught that the flood prefigured our Baptism in Christ. Just as Noah and his family, with all the animals in the ark, came through the waters which otherwise brought death to the world around them, so through the waters of Baptism into Christ’s death we come to eternal life, our sharing in the glory of His resurrection.

        On this First Sunday of Lent, we can say that in our day judgment is being pronounced to punish for disobedience, as well as to reward those who are faithful to God’s commands. Noah listened to and obeyed God, hence he was saved, and his future destiny was forever bound up with the Lord. From the first chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel today, we hear that after His time of trial, those forty days He spent fasting and praying to His Heavenly Father in the desert, Jesus came forth from the wilderness to preach in Galilee: “This is the time of fulfillment.” He proclaimed. “The kingdom of God is at Hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Our annual observance of Lent, 40 days for doing penance and dedicating ourselves to prayer is to be lived after the model of Jesus in the desert, our preparation for playing a prophetic role in the world in which we find ourselves is grounded in our observance of Lent. Lent is after the manner of Christ our desert experience. It is not so much that a good Lent is meant to set us up to go around preaching like Jesus did, but that we faithful Catholics, by word and example in our family circle, at work and in society, through a fruitful observance of Lent, we are enabled to touch and transform the lives of those around us. The holiness of my life, my living by the commandments, profoundly faithful to the Lord, prepares me for the challenge of conquering Satan and winning our world for Christ.

You may object, I have done my best and have only sadness and failure to show for it. I am referring to the tragedy of loved ones or their offspring, who do not practice the faith of their Baptism, who have abandoned the faith we tried to share with them as they were growing up. This is a great heartbreak for the Church, especially for parents and grandparents who did their best to share the precious gift of Catholic faith with their children only to have them walk away, showing no appreciation for our gift to them. It is with profound sadness that we many times must endure the rejection of that faith which is so very dear to us by those whom above all others we so wanted to rejoice in that gift which makes all the difference in our lives.

Lots of years ago, maybe a generation or two back in time, it was not uncommon for parents to disown adult children who no longer practiced their faith, who were what we call “fallen away Catholics”. Why did they react so sternly toward their children who had fallen away? For some families it was simply a matter of pride and for others a genuine terror that a grown child or an adult brother or sister had cut ties with the Church and therefore with the living God. These unfortunate souls opt for life without God. Years back, it was unthinkable that people would knowingly choose to stay outside or abandon the ark of salvation and hence be lost in the flood. Today rather than condemn or ostracize them, we are more apt to blame ourselves for their rejection of Jesus Christ and His Church.

People today who abandon the faith are often simply conforming to the godlessness, to the materialism of popular culture. They are like the neighbors of Noah who thought he was some kind of a kook, building that ark far from any body of water. Binding ourselves to assist at Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, confessing our sins with a certain regularity, holding to the Commandments, and letting prayer fill our lives often open us up to ridicule, because faithful Catholic behavior is indeed counter cultural. We are a minority voice, especially here in the Western world.

Let me limit my message to you to a simple exhortation: Renew your personal resolve this Lent to take the road less traveled, to strive to enter by the narrow gate, as Scripture says. Let me say the same thing using the image of the rainbow from this Sunday’s readings! In English we talk about one who “chases rainbows” as somebody who is constantly pursuing things that are unrealistic or unlikely to happen. I do not want you to do that. In recommending God’s rainbow covenant to you, I wish to recall the example of Noah’s obedience to God’s command. In doing so, I am going with the surest and best thing in the world, namely trust in God to carry us and bring us home to Him happy at the end of our days. I make my recommendation not only because it is the most reasonable, but also lest you be turned over to death and destruction.

 In the Old Testament, God told His Children, Israel in the desert, to choose life and not death. Think it over; ponder this option during your 40 days of Lent; let our loving Lord carry you through the storms of life to safety in His Kingdom!

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Facing the Challenge of our Times

 

Shea, Monsignor James P.

From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age 

University of Mary Press. Kindle Edition. 2020. 

    I had mentioned to someone that it was my resolve to read this little book on Ash Wednesday and I got it done! It was well worth the time, as it is indeed thought provoking. Even so, I have my doubts as to whether it should be taken as the interpretive key for pastoral planning in the United States today. I just do not think that we are called to retool along the lines of imagining ourselves back in apostolic times or as if we were working out of the catacombs to be able to successfully proclaim the Gospel. Monsignor Shea, of course, does not say that and has no such pretense, but in the discussions I have heard so far, some people seem to want to go that route.

    It remains to be seen if the sin of hypocrisy best sums up what is wrong with the Christendom model for living the faith or being Catholic. Granted, apostolic mission demands fortitude. Without a major dose of courage, nobody is going to witness to the faith in our secularized society. Even so, there was more to cultural Catholicism; parochial schools, Sunday Mass, Forty Hours Devotions, monthly confession, parish bazars and bingo, plus the scores of religious vocations to missionary and apostolic institutes of the consecrated life sustained or accompanied something of real substance and life. An old Irish Dominican friend long deceased, told me that on his street in Northern Ireland, every other house could boast a vocation to the priesthood or sisterhood, back in the 1940's and '50's. Christendom may have sustained that surge, but again, the model or construct had its depth;  there was much more to it than an overarching and perhaps sustaining cultural model. Christendom inspired faith.

    Monsignor Shea alludes to the need for improvements in priestly formation for a very different type of ministry today. Personally, I am not so sure that the challenges have changed that much or that "Going My Way" or "Bells of St. Mary's" ever really caught the substance of the challenge to living out the priestly vocation better than a half century ago.

    Read the book for yourself and see what you can glean from it. The persuasive witness (Pope Paul VI) argument alluded to by Msgr. Shea has its merits, but it is not enough. There is more at play in evangelizing our world.

 

Call out a Fast! Gather All the People!

 

Ash Wednesday - February 17, 2021

St. Mary’s in Salem

Joel 2:12-18

2 Cor 5:20-6:2

Matt 6:1-6, 16-18

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        One of the neatest things about Ash Wednesday, which is how we begin our observance of Lent each year, is that Ash Wednesday is for everybody. Just like in Israel of old, when the prophet Joel announced his message in God’s Name, all are invited to accept ashes on the forehead. Ash Wednesday is a call to repentance from sin and it is for everyone from least to greatest.

        “with fasting, weeping and mourning” … “return to me with your whole heart” says the prophet on God’s behalf.

         Among God’s People both Old and New Testament there is no one who can stand blameless before the Lord, we all need to change our hearts. We all need to turn back to God; we all need to beseech Him to spare us and not punish us as we deserve for having played strange with Him. All of us old and young, adults, adolescents, children, even babies, to the extent that we can make choices, we all need to be forgiven by God for not having put the Lord at the center of our lives.

        “Gather the people, notify the congregation; Assemble the elders, gather the children and the infants at the breast.” For what purpose? To beg pardon of God, all of us and without exception.

        We do it by letting the priest smudge our foreheads with blessed ashes saying, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return!”

        It is not theater; it is not play acting. It is a prayer, a meditation on just how fragile, how tenuous human life is. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says – do not do penance for show! No, that is not the sense of Ash Wednesday. What we are doing is bringing home a fundamental truth using a powerful sacramental, namely blessed ashes. It should inspire us to do real penance in the next 40 days leading up to the great feast of Easter.

        May the Lord hear our prayer today and help us, all of us, to return to Him with our whole heart!

Praised be Jesus Christ!

       

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Peter out from Prison

 

     Time and again of late I find myself confronted by good people, some laity, some priests, and even bishops, who muse about or suspect that a new and great persecution of the Church is about to fall upon us. To my way of thinking, they speak much too lightly about such a glorious and yet thoroughly horrendous turn of events as the pathway to Church renewal. All those I have encountered, who allude to this visitation, do so either with an air of indifference toward the darkness it would bring or with a certain optimism concerning its good fruits. They seem not to grasp the depth of anguish and suffering visited upon the early Christian martyrs and would seem to pass over the tragedy of sorting out the apostasy through fear of death and suffering, which cast down countless more souls than those who remained faithful to Christ and to His Church, who carried off the crown of martyrdom.  

    Obviously, I am not speaking of the pondered position of George Weigel outlined in his book, EVANGELICAL CATHOLICISM. Even there, though, I find it hard to share the hopes for success which he and others tie, to some extent at least, to reasoned discourse. We too in our day are confronted by hot heads provoking the  rabble and by degenerates like Herod, acting with impunity.

    For some odd reason, from the Acts of the Apostles, the part played by Rhoda in the account of St. Peter's liberation from prison chains came to mind:

    "Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hands of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.” As soon as he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many had gathered and were praying. When he knocked at the outer gate, a maid named Rhoda came to answer. On recognizing Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that, instead of opening the gate, she ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gate. They said to her, “You are out of your mind!” But she insisted that it was so. They said, “It is his angel.” Meanwhile Peter continued knocking; and when they opened the gate, they saw him and were amazed. He motioned to them with his hand to be silent, and described for them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he added, “Tell this to James and to the believers.” Then he left and went to another place." (Acts 12: 11-17)

Harper Bibles. NRSV Catholic Edition Bible (p. 1026). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

   

    It is a much less horrific account of how things went down in the early Church than, let us say, the acts of the martyrdom of St. Agatha. There we read of all the attacks both physical and psychological on this little girl, she too protected by her guardian angel and while dying in prison was visited by St. Peter who restored her mutilated body to integrity.

    Nonetheless, Herod's beheading of James and plans to execute Peter, holding him in prison chains, come as another crescendo after the stoning of St. Stephen, the first martyr of Acts. Mob rage claimed Stephen and Herod's political conniving took James to glory and almost did Peter. How can it be different in our own day and time? How can one not tremble in drawing parallels between the martyrs of then and the possibilities for us now? Our reflective, prayerful reading of the martyrologies should help us get into the skin of people like St. Ignatius of Antioch, eager, yes, but without illusions about what it would mean to be pulverized in the jaws of wild beasts.

 

   What I guess I am missing are those gatherings of the faithful, immersed in prayers of supplication to God on behalf of those on the front lines, the apostles, the confessors, those destined for martyrdom. Maybe Rhoda and company come to mind, because they were not expecting Peter to come knocking in answer to their prayers for his deliverance. Those early believers caught up in earnest prayer were taken off guard by the Divine Mercy. Peter was delivered from a horrible fate and they saw him again and sent him off to another place to hide from Herod.

  

  What are the marks of the apostolic age? Can you pit it against a Christendom in freefall? I do not think I would. In either model, I am looking for the urgent supplication of Rhoda and company, gathered in ceaseless prayer in the house of Mary the mother of John Mark.

    May this Lent be both penitent and insistently prayerful for the community of believers!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

 

Facing Evil Head On

 5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

6-7 February 2021 – St. Mary’s in Salem

 

Jb 7:1-4, 6-7

1 Cor 9: 16-19, 22-23

Mk 1:29-39

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

    Mark’s Gospel here describes Jesus as the itinerant preacher and worker of wonders and healing. Jesus in the Gospel is not a political figure: He is not out to exercise leverage or gain control over His listeners. The Lord is acting openly and inviting His listeners to respond in freedom. He is healing them and lifting them up without asking anything in return. I would say that is why the people are drawn to Him. But we note His response to their enthusiasm:

    “’Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.’ So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.”

    Our Gospel reading today makes it clear that Jesus simply walked away, withdrew from popularity. “For this purpose have I come.”

There are other passages which say that He ran the other way, when they tried to make Him king, an earthly ruler. Jesus saw His mission in a radically different manner than did some of His first followers. The Lord was not out to promote a popular or populist movement; He did not seek to win over the majority or take control of society in a public way. In that sense, I suppose, it should come as no surprise that for a first reading this Sunday the Church has chosen a rather difficult passage from the Old Testament Book of Job.  

        “I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.”

    These words from the Book of Job characterize the hardships which came to Job in his trials and which often come to the sick and to some elderly people, who find it extremely hard to sleep at night: “I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.”  They speak to a common enough drama in the lives of people who suffer and have big worries or anxieties, or perhaps serious illness, physical aches and pains. Typically, it is young people, healthy as they are, whom we must shake out of the feathers. The difference between health and frailty, fortune in life and misfortune, can indeed be described in terms of a good night’s sleep or the lack thereof.

    This presents me with a question that I believe more of our Catholic people need to be asking themselves. What is the Gospel about really? What is the Good News? What is its message by Christ’s will and what is the Church there for? I will not exclude the possibility that there are people out there who know exactly where the Church is or where it should be going today. If, however, you are uneasy about the picture St. Mark paints of Jesus, teaching simply for the sake of truth and healing especially by casting out evil, it could be that you need to face up to our question. What is the Gospel, the Good News, what is the Church all about?

I am back home here now in South Dakota just over a month and in the last two weeks, I have been invited to the deanery meetings of two different groups of priests and deacons (in Brookings and in Sioux Falls) and in both groups they discussed a project which Bishop has proposed for the diocese in this coming season of Lent. The idea would be to read together and discuss in groups a pamphlet by Monsignor James P. Shea, published by the University of Mary Press in the Diocese of Bismarck. The booklet is entitled: “From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age”.

    I had not heard before of the book in Switzerland and now I have started reading it myself. As I am just at the introduction, I do not really have an opinion on the position taken by Monsignor Shea. It is one he shares with other insightful people. He is not the only one to propose a different approach to living our Catholicism. We will have to see if he can convince me that we find ourselves in a new apostolic age, no longer able to depend on the institutions and structures of Christendom.

    Fair or not, I would like to say that our fundamental question is not one of pitting true apostolic zeal against the tried-and-true institutions of the past. That would be a simplification of the problem which is a crisis of faith and faith practice among today’s Catholics. I think the fundamental issue is another, the one already mentioned, namely, human suffering: “I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.”

    Let me be clear, when in the Gospel Jesus was healing and casting out demons, not only was He not playing politics in a power game, but He was not doing social work either. The Son of God Incarnate was doing what God does; He was loving first and without conditions. Jesus was proclaiming the truth in its fullness and healing those who sought healing from Him. The Lord was casting out demons and doing so in power, not imposing His will or His message on His neighbor but opening His hand to all in need and striking down the devil. “For this purpose have I come.”

    In the classic or routine form of things, just like in the Book of Job, people feel themselves confronted with the problem of suffering, the problem of evil in the world. How can we claim that God is good and loves us, if innocent people suffer so much? “I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.” Jesus did it directly and unconditionally – free of charge if you will.

      You might say that I am refusing to acknowledge the indifference or faithlessness typical of so many in contemporary society. I am sorry, but such people are a lost cause, their indifference is perverse, and it is to be condemned; serious or earnest people face differently life and the question of the role of God in my life. We need to be busy with the all-important question of where God is when I suffer. Job answered that question by professing that God is so much greater; His ways are unsearchable. In the Catholic Church, in Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God, we see the Lord taking on and healing our fallen world and doing so one person at a time, teaching, casting out demons and restoring people to health.

    If we do not know Jesus that way, this coming Lent might be our chance to seek His face and know healing and strength in Him. “I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.” We need to be eager to seek the Holy One Who dawns from on high and Who has sought us first. 

    Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI