Sometimes it Causes me to Tremble

 

The Fifth Sunday of Lent

20-21 March at St. Mary’s in Salem

Jer. 31:31-34

Heb. 5:7-9

John 12:20-33

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        With the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we begin Passiontide, which has two Sundays. It is our proximate preparation for the high holy days of the Paschal Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday). This first Sunday of the Passion is usually noted by people in parishes that still observe or have recovered the grand old custom of veiling crucifixes and statues. Covering up the statues is supposed to help us focus more attentively on Jesus in every aspect of all that He suffered for our salvation. This is our start to what climaxes in the unveiling and veneration of the Cross in the Liturgy of Good Friday, when the priest sings, “This is the wood of the Cross on which hung the Savior of the World!” And the congregation responds, “Come let us worship!”

The Second Sunday of the Passion will be next Sunday; we call it Palm Sunday. Besides the blessing of palms to remind us of the procession by which Jesus entered triumphantly into Jerusalem and took possession of its Temple, on that day the Passion account from one of the Synoptic Gospels is read with great solemnity. Again, with reference to Good Friday, that is the day for the whole Church to proclaim the Passion account from the Gospel of St. John.

Very simply stated, for Passiontide then which starts today, we work to focus on all that Jesus suffered for our sake, even unto death, death on a Cross. We seek to stir our hearts to love for Him and sincere repentance for our sins, which contributed to His terrible suffering.

        In our Second Reading today from the Letter to the Hebrews we read:

        “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”

        This obedience of Jesus even unto death on the Cross must be understood as a terribly radical thing. It cost Him dearly and reminds us that following Christ, being a faithful Catholic, is going to cost us. It will cause us suffering, as well.

        We just heard these words from St. John’s Gospel:

        “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.”

        Meditating upon the sufferings of Christ between now and Holy Thursday should touch our hearts and fill them with love and awe of the Son of God made Man, for Jesus, Who took on the heavy burden of the Cross. The Passion of Christ involved so much pain and ultimately an excruciating death. He did it for us that once again, as before the fall of Adam and Eve, the gates of Heaven might be opened, such that once we pass from this earthly scene, we might by the grace of God enter into the joy of everlasting life.

        It is not too late to jumpstart your Lent. You can still make yours a good Lent. In all seriousness, use this Passiontide to break your hard heart and surrender all you have and are to the Lord Who loved you even unto death upon the Cross!

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

The Sign of Contradiction and Just Punishment

 

The Fourth Sunday of Lent (LAETARE)

13-14 March 2021

at St. Mary’s in Salem

2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23

Eph 2:4-10

Jn 3:14-21

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

As a boy of high school age or maybe as a young man in college, I can remember being sort of embarrassed and annoyed that I had never learned how to quote Bible verses like some protestants do. The way they would shout out chapter and verse, “John 3:16!”, would infuriate me. I kept internally protesting this behavior and asking myself what sense does it make to shout out numbers? Wouldn’t it have been better to memorize the verse and repeat that?

(John 3:16) “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

Let it also be said from a thoroughly Catholic point of view that this lovely verse should never stand alone; it deserves a context. I cannot just take this verse from John’s Gospel and make of it what I will. On this Laetare Sunday, our Sunday for lightening up and rejoicing in the midst of our Lenten penance, there has to be more to this quote. Why has the Church chosen to focus on John 3:16 today? “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

Our first reading today from the 2^nd Book of Chronicles can help explain the choice of this iconic verse, which should inspire joy and bring us consolation. Let me quote from our Old Testament reading!

“Early and often did the Lord, the God of their fathers, send his messengers to them, for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets, until the anger of the Lord against his people was so inflamed that there was no remedy.”

God in His great love chastises us for our wrongdoing, for our failure to respond to His messengers. The Cambridge Dictionary defines “chastise” as “to punish or criticize someone strongly”. The punishment visited on God’s People to which 2^nd Chronicles refers was the destruction of Jerusalem and its great Temple, looting the whole place and carrying the people who survived the massacre off into Babylonian captivity. “Punish strongly” might be considered an understatement in this regard. God chastised His faithless people. Our wickedness or hard-heartedness before God must have consequences for us just as Israel scoffing God’s prophets had consequences in their day and time.

Read John 3:16 against that background if you will!

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

The Chaldeans carried the Jews off after crushing Israel and then 70 years later King Cyrus of Persia, called on the people to return home to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple.

Could you or I find ourselves living somewhere on this timeline of chastisement and blessing? Why not? Should we be fearful of punishment for our sins before a just God? Why not? The qualitative difference between Israel and us, Christ’s Church, is really not all that great. Granted, Chronicles speaks in a prophetic key.  Our Savior is not an earthly lord, like the great Cyrus, the king of the Persians. We have deliverance through Jesus, the Christ, God’s only Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Cyrus called Israel to restore true worship in Judah, their homeland. Jesus puts us on the way to our heavenly homeland, establishing not a brick-and-mortar temple in Jerusalem but worship of the living God in spirit and in truth.

Our second reading today from St. Paul to the Ephesians explains it so: “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ – by grace you have been saved -, raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus…”

Apart from the Church providing us with a broader context, note too that our Gospel today does not limit its quote to verse 16. The passage read from St. John today starts with verse 14 and goes through verse 21; the Gospel quotes Jesus explaining God’s mercy toward His people in the context of the bronze serpent set up in the desert by Moses, declaring that image to be prophetic of the Son of Man lifted up on the Cross, “so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Death-dealing crucifixion in Christ Jesus brings life, brings salvation.

The coat of arms of the Diocese of Sioux Falls has two principal elements: first, the bronze serpent on the cross (inspired by the French explorers use of the word “Sioux” meaning snake). This was a reference to the Dakota or Lakota tribe they found living here when they came; second, the wavy blue lines of a waterfall add the reference to the falls on the Sioux River, so important for the commercial development of our see city back then. In 2004 at my episcopal ordination, I took that coat of arms for my own. I changed it a bit, shifting the serpent and cross from the center to the top field and dividing the bottom field in two, using the falls to recall our baptism into Christ and adding a third field, namely that of Mary’s Star, as a tribute to the Mother of God.

Without its proper context, John 3:16 does not probably have much more to say to a person than just shouting out the numbers. Its proper context has to do with Israel’s chastisement in the desert, offering life through the unlikely symbol of the bronze serpent. Because of our sins, we dare not expect other of God than due punishment. Nonetheless, we place our hope in Him, “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ – by grace you have been saved…”

So, John 3:16 on Laetare Sunday, a time for us to rejoice in the mercy of God, who did not spare His only Son, but delivered Him up for all of us!

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God

 

Third Sunday of Lent

6-7 March 2021 at St. Mary’s in Salem

 Ex. 20:1-17

1 Cor. 1:22-25

John 2:13-25

 Praised be Jesus Christ!

    “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

    “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Words from St. Paul to the Romans!

  In this Sunday’s first Reading, we just heard the Ten Commandments proclaimed from the Book of Exodus. As we know from elsewhere in the Old Testament, the commandments were for God’s Chosen People not only a heavy responsibility to be lived out in their daily lives, but they were also a boast, a source of pride, because they indicated the wisdom of God, the Giver of the Law. ATTENTION: with the New Testament that changes.

    “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

        If we had to sum up what makes the New Testament different in 10 words or less, that would be it. “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

        As precious as the 10 Commandments are to us as a rule of life, we read them as Catholics in the light of the person and mission of Jesus Christ. Jesus, Our Lord and Savior, is our unique point of reference, the one and only absolute authority for us in our lives. Through His Church, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, we come to know Jesus and His Will for us.

        For Christians, focusing our lives on the Lord has always been tough, even back in the time of St. Paul, but I get the impression that it is even harder today, because in the Western World at least religiosity has fallen on hard times. The challenge to live the Christian message was never easy (Hence the words of St. Paul: “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,”). The conflict or scandal here has to do with the exclusivity of the person and message of Jesus Christ. The 10 Commandments are guideposts, but to invest study and obedience in them alone is not enough. Jesus, true God and true Man, must take center stage in our lives; He must animate my living the Law. My attachment to Him is what breathes a soul into the Law and thereby into my daily living.

Of course, the situation in the world today would be much better, less dramatic, if people started with the 10 Commandments, if they truly held to God’s Law. The Law is foundational; it is where we start; it prepares the way of the Gospel and opens our hearts to Christ. Sadly however, in our day a general lack of respect for God’s Law puts us at a disadvantage in terms of knowing Christ. We must deal with our disadvantage, with that loss of appreciation for good old-time religion, by which I mean the best cultural Catholicism has to offer. Religiosity does not seem any longer to be the binding thread which holds society together, as indeed it did for millennia and up until just decades ago. This type of religiosity applied not only to Catholics but to all the other groups who are party to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Sadly, today none of these groups or institutions seems to count for much in our secularized world. You get the impression that people nowadays think it quaint that for most of human history a given people was not considered a people at all, that a culture was worthless if it was not somehow built up on God. God and His Law for all of history was what made a people blessed. Divine precept established a people and gave it something to be proud of. That was true of the Old Testament and since the dawn of the Christian era has gone radically farther and been thoroughly personalized; the Son of God has taken center stage. The Law is anchored in Jesus, the only Way, the only Truth, and as such the Life of the world.

        It is in that sense that we understand today’s Gospel. Jesus drove out the buyers and sellers, with all their wares, Jesus drove them out of the Temple. He took over and established right order in God’s House, the House of His Heavenly Father as He said. He spoke then of the true Temple, not of stones and mortar, but the Temple of His Body, which His enemies would crush on the Cross, but that He would raise up from the grave in three days. In the era of the New Testament old-time religion reaches fulfillment in the person of Jesus, God made Man.

        Question! How is your Lenten time of prayer and penance going? Is it helping you to open your heart to our Lord and Savior, allowing Him to command in your life? My message would be: Do not be shy of that possibility! Do not be ashamed of choosing the very best for yourself personally, and by your witness and good example for the world around you as well. Start with renewed attention for the Law which can bring you genuine wisdom, but do not stop there! Turn your life over to Christ! Let Him reign in your heart! His is the power and the glory.

        “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI