On Ash Wednesday, Pope Benedict told his audience that following Jesus in the "Lenten desert" is the necessary condition to participate in Easter. He said that Adam was expelled from the earthly paradise, the symbol of communion with God, and now, in order to return to that communion and thus to true life, we must pass through the desert, the test of faith. Not alone but with Jesus. He, as always, precedes us and has already won the battle against the spirit of evil. He concluded that the meaning of Lent is that it is the time that each year that invites us to renew our decision to follow Christ on the path of humility in order to participate in his victory over sin and death.

Maybe that is why the Church chose this passage from Romans as our second reading. It is a ferverino to confess Jesus as our Lord. Confessing Jesus as Lord is a good place to start Lent, for sure. Just as Jesus had to enter the wilderness for forty days to firm up his allegiance to the Father and renounce self-seeking, life-diminishing temptations, we have this time to firm up our allegiance to Jesus. Of course, if we’re going to proclaim him as Lord of our lives, it helps to always be discerning what he is like so that we can know what to imitate. The temptation story gives us some insight into Jesus.

He is tempted to turn stone into bread, to be full rather than empty. While we of course want to feed the hungry, we also know that being too full can interfere with Jesus being our Lord. Our desires are not always his desires, and when our own desires become our full focus, how are we going to take his desires into our hearts. On Ash Wednesday I asked the school kids how they were going to make this day special. One happy delightful and innocent youngster said that he was going to play video games all day. It took me by surprise. I didn’t know how to respond so I went to the next raised hand. After the service, I wished I had said something like “But what if Jesus wants to tell you something? How will hear him?” That’s why we fast and pray. When we get some distance on our superficial desires of the moment, we have a chance to hear deeper things. Jesus is ok with being empty. He knows that it makes room for God.

He is tempted to have power over all the kingdoms of the earth. He could dominate and control people. Why not? Wouldn’t that be easier for all of us if Jesus just forced us to be good? But no, Jesus does not hold a scepter of power but hangs on a cross. Jesus will not control us. Jesus only invites us. That’s why it’s so easy to live without him. But that’s also why it’s so great when we choose him as Lord and friend. No one makes us be a follower of Jesus. It’s our choice, and we have these forty to make that choice.

He is tempted to assert himself as special. As God’s son he could jump off a building and angels would catch him. After forty days alone does he doubt that he is special and loved like we sometimes do? But he resists this last temptation also. He will choose humility. He will choose solidarity with all of us. He will not show off. Similarly, it is part of our own human development to want to assert ourselves and be recognized for what we can do. But if we contemplate the life of Jesus long enough and with the grace to see enough, we find that this self assertion is truly a vain enterprise compared with the deeper call to humility and solidarity with others.

Jesus is Lord, surely. Will you claim him as so this Lent? Will you follow his example and allow yourself to be empty? Will you freely accept an invitation that is easy enough to refuse? And can you put aside your desire to be served and find joy in being just like everyone else?

17 February 2010

ASH WEDNESDAY

Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated in 1980 because of his persistent advocacy for the poor of El Salvador and his condemnation of the violence against them. At his funeral, the cathedral was not large enough to hold the multitude that showed up and so they made a makeshift altar and put it in front of the cathedral doors that opened up on a large square in the city. Also on this square was a three story government building, on top of which were soldiers with guns. The Cardinal Archbishop of Mexico City delivered the homily and afterward the crowd voiced its approval with loud cries and chants. The soldiers felt fear and began to shoot into the crowd. Between ten and twenty people were killed and many more were wounded.

In the chaos that immediately followed the shooting, many people ran for protection in the cathedral. Among them was Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco. Members of the press saw him and asked for his reaction. He practically shouted into the microphone, “Six days ago Archbishop Romero was down the street preaching the Word of God and the next day somebody shot him. Today, the Cardinal was out there preaching the Word of God, and somebody starting shooting the people. Some people don’t like the Word of God!”

Today is Ash Wednesday. It’s time to ask ourselves if we like the Word of God. We might respond quickly “yes,” or others who have wrestled with its challenge might not be so quick to answer. The Word of God can comfort and console, yes. But it also cuts. Today part of God’s Word came from the prophet Joel: “Return to me with all your heart, says the Lord.”

On this day of all days it is right to let the Word of God break our hearts.

I think this can happen in two ways. 1. The Word of God names our sins. If we let it, it can reveal patterns of behavior that are displeasing to God. If we let it, if we have the courage to feel appropriate guilt, it can break our heart. It is common to think, “Well, I’m not perfect but God loves me anyway.” We use our humanity as an excuse to withhold our lives from God. Today is not the day to use our natural weakness as an excuse but to be frank about our sins. 2. The Word of God in its beauty can also break our hearts. “Be merciful as your Father in Heaven is merciful.” After washing his disciples’ feet he says “As I have done so must you also do.” Maybe you’ve had the impulse to love as totally and consistently as Jesus showed us God does. It’s a beautiful idea that can break our hearts even as it draws us nearer. We fear if we will be capable. Our minds convince us that it is impractical, and so our hearts close.

Why let the Word of God break your heart? Who wants pain and anxiety? The best answer to this comes from the poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen who wrote, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” We let the Word of God break our hearts, because that’s how the light gets in.

February 14, 2010

6^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I Corinthians 15: 16-20; Luke 6:20-26

It would be nice, easier, if Jesus had just stopped after verse 24. We would all concur and nod in agreement that God loves the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the persecuted. Just like we feel for the victims of the Haiti earthquake and chip in to the collection for their relief. We have an intuition that God is close to the suffering. But then maybe we squirm a little as Jesus goes on. Woe to you who are rich, who have full bellies, who are far from sorrow and whom everybody likes...for you will grieve and weep and be hungry. We can hear it as a threat. I hear it as a call to deeper communion.

One sunny afternoon in warm Guatemala three weeks ago, the group I was with visited one of the poorest areas of Guatemala City. A Maryknoll priest had set up a storefront church there. He and his helpers had renovated a small garage facing the street into a chapel. We walked around the neighborhood before celebrating mass there. During this week, we saw some homes patched together with sheets of metal and a little wood. Other homes weren’t as bad, but one woman from one of these sheet metal houses invited a few of us in and told us a sad story of how her husband abandoned her long ago and only last year her son had taken everything on any value from this home and left her also. For money, she does a little mending and makes about 150 Quetzales per month, or about $18 per month. She was happy to talk to us strange strangers and smiled and waved when we left to celebrate mass.

After mass, I stayed behind with the priest there and lingered for an hour or so. He had some business to take care of, so I just stood around. I saw kicking a small plastic ball around and so joined him. Soon a small group of kids, maybe six years old, joined the fun. Fortunately they had two balls because one kid kicked his too hard and wide and it floated over the razor wire of a neighbor’s fence. The kids had pleading looks on their faces, and finally the door of the house opened and a woman about my age came out, grabbed the ball and took it inside her house. Did she really take that kids ball? I was relieved when I saw the door open again and the woman walked down toward her gate. But instead of opening it she appeared to be locking extra locks on the gate and then went into her house never to be seen again.

My thought was: Just like Mrs. Poole who used to take our foul balls into her house when we hit them there from our corner sandlot. She was even a minister’s wife, which made the whole occurrent seem even more wrong. But rather than judge either Mrs. Poole of my past or this current ball snatcher too harshly, I paused to appreciate my solidarity with these kids from another place and time. We continued to play with the remaining ball for quite a while.

I noticed one little girl who would win many cute contests slip her hand into my pocket where my camera was. I told her not to but she kept doing it, so I moved the camera to my zip jacket pocket where it was more secure. She played a little while longer with us, but then seemed to disappear. I eventually left that neighborhood feeling like I had done a good thing and bridged a big gap.

Then I got home and before going to bed counted my money. I was $80 short. I searched everywhere, and, not finding it, realized that I had four twenty dollar bills in the same pocket my camera had been in. I’ll never be sure, but I think the little cute girl got it. I had a lot of reactions. My first was of forgiveness, not because of any noble Christ-like instinct but because I realized that I wouldn’t miss the $80 all that much and it would clearly mean a lot more to people in that neighborhood. I did the math, and what was sort of chump change in my pocket was over four months salary for the woman down the block. I think more than anything, I felt embarrassed because I had this false sense of solidarity with the children and one of them stole from me. It was no use pretending there was not a huge gap, and that trying to live in solidarity involves some risks for those who have much and try to be in communion with those who have less. Yes, stealing in wrong. But how about the less obvious wrongs that I do that contribute to this gap. When I could buy coffee that is “fair-trade” and gives a living wage to the Central American farmers but choose instead to buy something two bucks cheaper...that seems like an immoral choice to me also. In Menomonie I don’t feel rich. But I am rich.

In his “woes” Jesus calls us rich to live in view of the Resurrection. This life is temporary. God looks down on all his children knowing that one day this test of how well we lived together will be over. Through this Gospel, he begs us to see this life in the context of life in heaven and to adjust our attitudes and actions. Our little world here is not the whole world. How will we show God that we care about the poor, the hungry, to grieving and the persecuted?

7 February 2010

5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

[I am indebted to Fr. Joseph Donders for the insight beneath this homily]

For Peter, something about the fish was different that brought him to his knees. He had witnessed the miracle of the water made wine, but he knew that farmer’s made wine. He had witnessed Jesus expelling demons from people, but he had seen physicians making men and women whole again. But here Jesus was on his own turf. HE, Peter, was the best fisherman in the village. He knew the lake better than anyone, and certainly MUCH better than Jesus did. It was really just to be polite and to humor Jesus that he followed his direction to go into deeper water and cast his nets where he knew darned well there were no fish.

He cast the net. And suddenly there was a rush in the water he could sense. The boat started being weighed down under the weight of the catch. Pulling it toward the boat he saw the variety of fish–pike, tilapia, eel, perch–and automatically started calculating the profit, some at $5 a pound, some at $4.... And then it hit him. He was standing in the company of God. He fell at the knees of Jesus and said “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

Why that reaction? It’s the same reaction the prophet Isaiah has in the first reading. When he realizes that he is in the very presence of God, his reaction is “Woe is me; I am doomed!” There is an African proverb, “You don’t want to be too close to the king.” It means that if you’re too close to the powerful one, then you might be sent off to do things you don’t want to do like sending a message to the enemy, going off to battle, or cooking his dinner. It reminds me of something I heard in the parish a couple weeks ago: that women tend to avoid going to the PCCW meetings because they fear that they will be tapped for a leadership position or some responsibility if they go. I understand that. It’s a good everyday example of shying away from an encounter because we fear too much will be asked of us.

I suspect it’s that way with Peter and Isaiah. They are people who believe in God and pray for his presence, but they still cower when their prayers come true and they are confronted with God. “God knows too much about me. God wants to much from me. God is too single-minded about his Kingdom. I will lose my life!”

That’s the risk when we live with Jesus close by. That’s why it can be so hard to really be with him. It’s why we have so much difficulty with our prayers. We don’t need a devil to tell us not to pray. Our own nature tells us not to do it. Who wants to be touched by God? --because being touched means being sent. And most of us would rather control our own lives than be sent somewhere by Jesus. Maybe, we convince ourselves, it’s better to have just enough Jesus to make us feel loved, but not so much to make us come out of ourselves and serve the world.

And so we come to the table again this week, where the Body is broken and given, to remind ourselves, to tantalize our spirits with the truth of the deeper waters: that it is in losing ourselves that we find ourselves.

31 January 2010

4^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; I corinthians12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30

It’s not often that the first and second readings overshadow the Gospel with their beauty and clarity, but so it is this week. Through the Prophet Jeremiah and St. Paul we hear about the call to follow God and the call to love, which really are one and the same. Jeremiah writes of God’s intimate knowledge of us–“before you were in the womb I knew you”–and God’s plan for us–a prophet to the nations I appointed you.” I chose this reading to be read at my ordination mass because of its sense of intimacy and call. Through Paul we have the call to love, not because it’s the right thing to do or because it’s our duty, but because it is just such a beautiful way to live. Love attracts us by calling forth all that thirsts for what is good and true and beautiful. How many of you chose this as your wedding reading?

I missed the last two weekends here in Menomonie because I was in Guatemala and El Salvador, where I heard many stories of call and love. Taking the side of the poor over against the interests of the rich and powerful has always carried risk throughout history, but it was particularly so in El Salvador in the 1980's. The few families that ran the whole country and controlled the military benefitted from the poor of the land staying that way. Jean Donovan, a lay woman from Cleveland, came to El Salvador in the late 70's to educate families in general but also about the Catholic faith. She soon felt threatened by the army. She wrote her parents, “If you take care of child who has been macheted, bayonnetted, or orphaned by excessive violence, you are considered a communist and a threat.” She knew she was in danger and could have gone home to safe Cleveland. Why didn’t she? In her words, “Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador. I almost could except for the children, the poor bruised victims of this insanity. Who would care for them? Whose heart would be so staunch as to favor the reasonable ting in a sea of their tears and helplessness. Not mine, dear friend, not mine.” Two weeks later her car was pulled over and she and three nuns who did similar work with the poor were raped, tortured and murdered. It’s not a happy story, but neither is it depressing. They followed the call to love, made the world a better place and are surely with God in glory now.

Archbishop Oscar Romero was an inspiration to Jean. She, along with all the poor of El Salvador, listened to his weekly Sunday homilies on the radio as the sole voice for the voiceless denouncing the violence and calling for a just solution to the conflict. He was not a radical. Listening to people who knew him, I learned that he had a very disciplined and consistent prayer life and that he knew the documents issued by the Vatican better than anyone. He was a man of the Church in a very strong way. With his love for the Church he also had a very strong love for the poor. After hearing one of his homilies that was critical of the government sponsored violence, someone asked him “Why are you against the government?” He said, “I’m not against the government. I am of the side of the people, and the government is against the people.” He was saying mass for a group of nuns in March 1980 when an agent of the military government waited for him to approach the altar and then killed him with one bullet.

Romero followed the call to love, to be the voice of the voiceless—he and Jean and many more. God knew them before they were formed in their mother’s wombs and appointed them to be his voice and arms. Their calls from God ended up being extraordinary, giving their lives in the pattern of Jesus himself. But though it ended extraordinarily, it is important to see that their vocations began quite ordinarily–with a call to love. Love is patient and kind, and it is courageous. We do not know where love will lead us, whether to ordinary or extraordinary things. Well, that’s not quite true. We do know that love with lead us to God.