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Daily Scripture

+ Ash Wednesday

Lent is not about losing weight but about loving more.

Readings: Joel 2:12-18 Psalm 51:3-6, 12-14, 17 Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your heart, rend your hearts, not your garments. [Joel 2:1-2]

Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them. When you give alms, don’t blow a bugle before you. When you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray in secret. When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. [Matthew 6:1-2, 5-6]

I didn’t like Lent as a kid. The approach was too negative and down right gloomy. I don’t like the color purple either. The sermons were doom and gloom. It’s not that I didn’t think I had no need of penance and repentance. Even as a youngster, I realized that I was far from perfect—not quite “the feller mi mudder t’ought I wuz.” But even as a kid, I did better with positive affirmation.

Ash Wednesday is like New Years Day. People make lots of resolutions only to be broken by Saturday. Well, not quite but close.

The word Lent comes from the German word meaning “lengthen.” The liturgical season is allied with the season of the year. Yes, the days are getting longer and the frozen earth is getting soften. The birds are chirping earlier and the buds are getting ready to burst. The sun is getting warmer as it heads toward the equator.

So Lent is a time to till the soil of our souls. It’s a retreat that we might not choose on our own but a necessary retreat. In essence, it’s a drive or a campaign for holistic living, for healthy living.

Let begins not with resolutions but with an attitude adjustment. The three days between Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday in Lent are what I might call a respite from the routine in the midst of the routine, if you know what I mean. It’s a time to walk through the ‘field’ or the pasture and take a hard look at the soil to see if it’s ready for the seed. The seed is God’s Word and the soil is our soul.

You got it. It’s time for a little soul work with a hard look at what’s not working in our relationship with God, with our families and with our ‘neighbors.’

Turn the soil over (metanoia) and you’ll know what is necessary for a more fruitful way of life. Then the resolutions whatever they be—not too many—will work.

If Lent works well, then we will want to continue our Lenten ‘practices’ after Easter.

That’s what true conversion is all about.

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time 'B'

Saturday January 21, 2012

Where the rubber meets the road.

It’s still my favorite story of all times and all seasons., Victor Hugo’s timeless Les Miserables.

Jean Valjean is a simple character driven by “caritas”—an active, outgoing animating love for others. He helps the prostitute, Fantine. He protects his workers and gives constantly to the poor. But this was not always his greatest attribute. In his melodramatic conversion, in his promise to Fantine and in his unparalleled commitment to protect Cosette, he confronts the power of hell and dies in the arms of Cosette at peace with himself and with his God. It’s a touching scene that melts even the most hardened heart and moves a witness to tears. Put to music by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, it is even more dramatic and powerful.

Drama softens hardened hearts and moves even the most disengaged to action. It also has the power to expose the reality of evil that lays beneath the veneer of the self-possessed and the arrogance that controls the lives of others as if it were possible to unseat the eternal God or dismiss his universal embrace of humanity.

We have before us at the beginning of this third week in ordinary time, three dramatic readings. The first is a biblical cartoon, excessive in its humor; the second an urgent appeal excessive in its demands and the third a gracious invitation excessive in its naiveté. Yet all of the readings have the potential to move us to a new level of understanding of the kingdom of God and the beauty of discipleship in Christ lived within the ordinary circumstances of life.

But could we not cite other heroes in real time who have allowed themselves to be drawn into the circle of Jesus’ disciples, people who travel to foreign lands not with weapons but with healing tools to rebuild what warriors have destroyed? I’m thinking of movements and projects such as ‘Africa Surgery’, ‘Healing the Children’, ‘From houses to Homes’, or human rights activists and social service workers making God’s presence felt here in our own country.

Jonah was a reluctant prophet whose judgment of pagan Nineveh the Baghdad of Assyria was inconsistent with God’s opinion that they were worthy of onversion.

The letter of Paul demanding complete abandonment of the world including marriage and the attachment to any human emotion is an overstatement to make the point that nothing should cloud the pursuit of eternal values and eternal goals. Paul was writing in the conviction that Christ’s second coming was imminent.

The ‘kindom’ of God is our destiny and everything else must be subordinated to that end. Paradoxically, it is the pursuit of God’s glory that brings happiness on this earth and lasting beatitude in heaven. To think and act like God is the very reason for our existence. “God made me to know him, to love him and to show forth his goodness in this life and to be happy with God forever in next.” [Baltimore Catechism] It’s a definition that still works for old and young.

The disciples, ordinary men, were invited to abandon fish, fare and family for a noble purpose — the pursuit of justice, love and peace, with Jesus leading the way. This was not a repudiation of marriage or family but the extension of that commitment to embrace all humanity as one family.

Though our life stories are surely less dramatic than that of Valjean, or Jonah or Paul or any of the Apostles, we are challenged to broaden the context of our daily routine and open up to the fullness of God’s grace in our lives wherever we live, whatever our call or career. There is a standing invitation to do so. Our acceptance will move us from protectionist spirituality to a more outgoing all-embracing life rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It’s not likely that a walk through Nineveh or New York or Chicago or Morristown crying out “Forty days more and this town will be destroyed” will change the hearts of anyone. In fact, it might well result in a free ride to the psychiatric unit at the nearest hospital. Massive conversions don’t happen that way except in evangelical tents or stadiums but they are not usually lasting.

Far more effective in today’s world is a more subtle approach that arouses the curiosity of onlookers about our indefatigable pursuit of justice and goodness in the ordinary affairs of life. Actions still do speak louder than words.

If we are caught up in the love of the God we cannot see, we will become conduits of God’s grace for those we can see. Our unique vocation is lived in and through our marriage, our job, our public and private political life and our volunteer service. That’s where the rubber meets the road.