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Words

We heard in Sunday’s readings about planks and beams, good fruit and rotten trees. We heard from Sirach the advice not to judge anyone until we hear them speak. That’s usually what gets me into trouble – judging first. To be fair, speaking gets me into trouble too.

The verses from Sirach illustrate dramatically the power of our words. Our words and actions betray an inner spirit and clearly reveal our intention. What we say and do are windows for others to our soul. A good reflection as we begin Lent.

Paul concludes his discussion of resurrection in the second reading. When the bodies of the chosen become immortal, then the last enemy — death — is defeated. Scripture is fulfilled when sin is conquered by Christ’s Resurrection.

The serpent has no more sting; those who live in Christ can no longer be harmed. The commitment required of believers is worth every effort because the Christian is forever in the Lord and assured of triumph.

The passage from Luke teaches the dangers of judging others. The “speck and log” illustration exaggerates. Nevertheless, this powerful image remains with all who read the verses and reminds us again that self-improvement is a higher priority than observing and criticizing our neighbors’ weaknesses and failings.

The kids in my row were pointing at each other as the reader proclaimed the Gospel, which, if you can get over the obvious irony, is still pretty funny.

Sirach and Luke both remind us of the great power, either for good or for ill, contained in our words and actions. What we say in response to personal experiences or in judgment about the behavior of others may reflect more on us than on the object of our attention. Let our words and actions be signs of Christ’s redeeming presence all around.

Lent is coming. What will our words and actions reveal about our readiness?

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Trust

Before we decide to trust someone, we often look for credentials or tangible proof that will in turn dictate the extent of our confidence in that person. We want our trust to rest on the foundation of experience. Sunday’s readings look to concrete historical events that provide reasons to trust.

Seven of the Ten Commandments are forms of tribal wisdom aimed at the good of the community (see Jeremiah 35:6-9). As such, they predate Moses. They stem from the recognition that some actions promote community while others are hurtful.

In the commandments, the older regulations are ratified as accepted legislation. The stamp of divine approval makes them matters of loyalty to God. God intervened in history to bring the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt; therefore, God has a right to impose laws worthy of trust.

In dealing with the Corinthian community, Paul has to face the issues of credibility and trust. The Greeks desire some form of revelation that they can debate as worthy of rational acceptance. The Jews seek some sign or miracle that will provide a basis for confidence. Paul offers the cross, which for him is so central to faith that the gospel message is unintelligible without it.

In the cleansing of the Temple, Jesus appears as a latter-day Jeremiah who addresses the abuses of God’s dwelling place (see Jeremiah 7:1-15;26:1-19). The author of the gospel has adapted the original event to speak about the foundation of trust. Jesus’ zeal for the Temple is the reason for his death, and his resurrected body becomes the new Temple. The demand for a sign is answered by Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection experience.

Do we choose to imitate Jesus’ self-giving and thereby offer concrete proof of our trustworthiness?

We win loyalty by reaching out to others and meeting their needs, not by demanding unconditional confidence.

Just something to think about.

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Bring On Lent

As we move into Lent, let us remember the challenge of St. Benedict: He calls us to devote ourselves to prayer. He also tells us to add to the usual measure of our serving something by way of private prayer.

To pray is to stand like Moses before the burning bush,
to strip ourselves of all that binds us,
to awaken and experience all things as fresh and new,
to recognize that we are standing on holy ground
and God is present before us and within us.

That sounds nice, but how do we prepare for Lent? Benedict tells us that too:

By refusing to indulge evil habits
By devoting ourselves to prayer
By devoting ourselves to reading
To compunction of heart and self-denial
To abstain from food or drink.
To avoid needless talking…. so more silence.

As we move into Lent, let us take a few moments to slow down and give more time to prayer. Let us try to live in a state of continuous prayer. Let us live the healthier life that we always talk about and show mercy to others – mercy that will be coming from a pure place of prayer and union with God.

Some would say that it is not possible to live in a state of continuous prayer. Let’s try anyway.

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Lent?

I feel like we sort of stumbled through Lent. Family life has been messy, but love always is. The house is only now being put back together after painters, electricians, and masons were all gainfully employed by the Donovans for a bit.

We have not made it to evenings of Taize prayer or soup and supper at the parish like we had hoped. Between play practice, cello lessons, piano lessons, and therapy appointments, the weekends really have become about rest – after you do everything else you ignored during the week.

Parenting a teenager is hard. Parenting four at a time is, shall we say, not for the faint of heart.

So as we settle into this last full week of Lent, I am reminded of the words of my late friend and fellow pilgrim, Macrina.

The acting out of love to the extent of dying on a cross is a mystery I have never been fully able to understand. My limited ability to love stands embarrassed at such extravagance. My daily attempt falls short of my dreams. I carry my crosses carefully, trying to make sure they don’t take too much out of me.

I always leave a little pink around the edges of my crosses. I can not bear unpleasant things. I honestly don’t know how Jesus did it! I can hardly accept WHY he did it. The why he did it always makes me feel guilty about the pink around the edges.

During Lent, at least, I’d like to let the pink go. I’d like to be content for forty days with a cross that is not pretty. But I am so young in my faith. It is hard not to cheat a little and search for soft, easy, pretty crosses.

O God of Lent, remember me. Help me to take all the clutter that I try to decorate my crosses with, all the ways I try to camouflage your death and dying because my faith has not grown enough and to look at death as it really is: an emptiness that brings me face to face with LIFE.

And yet, within my fragile, questioning heart I know that if I would ever dare get close enough to dying, to death, it would fall over into life.

O God of Lent, Your love has opened my eyes. It is my own pink-edged crosses that have broken my heart.

But your cross has saved me.

from Seasons of Your Heart
Macrina Wiederkehr

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On Lent and Crosses

The acting out of love to the extent of dying on a cross is a mystery I have never been fully able to understand. My limited ability to love stands embarrassed at such extravagance. My daily attempt falls short of my dreams. I carry my crosses carefully, trying to make sure they don’t take too much out of me.

I always leave a little pink around the edges of my crosses. I can not bear unpleasant things. I honestly don’t know how Jesus did it! I can hardly accept WHY he did it. The why he did it always makes me feel guilty about the pink around the edges.

During Lent, at least, I’d like to let the pink go. I’d like to be content for forty days with a cross that is not pretty. But I am so young in my faith. It is hard not to cheat a little and search for soft, easy, pretty crosses.

O God of Lent, remember me. Help me to take all the clutter that I try to decorate my crosses with, all the ways I try to camouflage your death and dying because my faith has not grown enough and to look at death as it really is: an emptiness that brings me face to face with LIFE.

And yet, within my fragile, questioning heart I know that if I would ever dare get close enough to dying, to death, it would fall over into life.

O God of Lent, Your love has opened my eyes. It is my own pink edged crosses that have broken my heart.

But your cross has saved me.

From Seasons of Your Heart by Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB

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Living Lent Well

We had a conversation at dinner last night about how we could “live Lent well.” One child thought that we could begin by putting away the Christmas decorations.

We sent her to her room.

I’m kidding, of course. I suggested we visit a new fish fry every week and then judge which one was best. I thought it was a great idea until one of the children reminded me that the whole judging thing might undo any holiness we achieved by the weekly Stations of the Cross, Taize prayer, or retreats we might attend.

So we will spend some time this week looking at the right ways for our family to keep watch during this holy season of hope. I know it starts Wednesday, so I already feel a bit behind, but it seems that every year, these seasons sneak up on us and we are halfway through them before we get out the Advent wreath or make it to Stations.

We will see if this year can be different. Honestly, it’s been too long since anything felt normal.

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The Face of Prayer

On Divine Mercy Sunday 2017, Bishop Frank Caggiano of the Diocese of Bridgeport announced an exciting new movement – The Face of Prayer – an online crusade that brings together social media, text alerts, and the power of prayer.

Now, nearly four years later, we are celebrating the eight million prayers that have been shared in this venture.

Joining the movement is easy. Simply text the word PRAY from your smartphone to 55778. You will automatically receive a response to confirm your subscription (standard texting rates apply).

Each day around 4 pm, you will receive a text from Bishop Caggiano inviting you to stop whatever you are doing and to pray for a specific intention. All prayers end with an invitation to recite one Hail Mary.

For the past several years, the Donovans have been blessed to write the prayers that are sent.

Sign up today. Right now. Stop reading this and text the word PRAY to 55778.

Visit https://thefaceofprayer.com to sign up to receive the texts via email if you are still paying for texts or have a flip phone (or just can’t figure out this whole text thing).

What better way to step up your prayer game this Lent.

 

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A Very Different Holy Week

It is hard to believe it is Holy Week without little crosses made of palm all over the place. Plus, I kind of miss those strings of palm that come from all the frayed edges. They get all over the car, the floor, and the kid’s rooms. The palms were a bit of a misnomer 2,000 years ago – as people confused the types of kingdom Jesus came to establish, so maybe not having them is a good thing.

Still, it is a whole new world, isn’t it?

We will not watch 12 people from the parish get their feet washed this week. We will wash each other’s feet at home.

We will not stand in line to venerate the cross, trying to kiss it where no one else has kissed it (I cannot be the only one who does that). Instead we will take a cross off the wall, read the Passion, and have our own little service.

There will be no fire on Holy Saturday night and sparse Easter baskets come Sunday morning.

But there is cause for joy. We are spending tons of time together, watching movies, laughing at old Vine videos on YouTube, and building the treehouse.

The walls of the treehouse are complete and the siding starts tomorrow. Fortunately, the supplies were delivered long before the virus took hold and I have even convinced a local roofer to come by as we hide in the house to put the roof on.

We celebrated the 15th birthday of Ace Number One last week and I am grateful to the dozens of you who were a part of it. Tiger came home and she was delighted. If you want to see the video, let me know. I won’t post it here in an attempt to shield her privacy but for those who haven’t seen it, it will bring you to tears. We took portions of many of the letters you wrote and decorated the box. When she got to one that referenced the day he was lost, the look of surprise came over her and she tore through the box.

“He came home,” she muttered.

All of us knew the implications of the reunion. A childhood friend returned, reminding her of simpler times and easier days. He has been hanging out of her pocket since. It will take some time for her to get through all the notes and letters.

This week, we will celebrate another birthday as Maureen follows my footsteps into the next decade. We will delay her annual birthday dinner because of Good Friday but we will celebrate her life just the same.

May this holiest of weeks bring you closer together with your own loved one – even if only virtually.

May the solemnity of Holy Thursday give way to the eerie calm of Good Friday. May you turn off the television and find some solitude to remember the great sacrifice of that day.

May we remember that Jesus’ “yes” to God on the cross created the space where hatred goes to die and, in that act, Jesus literally loved hatred to death.

May we remember that he did it once for all, paying the debt man owed God but could not pay unless God became man. The paradox of salvation that is only possible if we understand that mankind needs redemption and yet cannot achieve it on his own.

As C.S. Lewis says, “Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person – and he would not need it.”

Let us remember that 2,000 years ago, God became man, walked among us, and tried to teach us what being fully human looked like.

As a viral darkness covers the earth, let us look for the light that comes from this simple fact: we know the end of the story.

That’s right. We know how this story ends.

In that, let us find the hope the world so desperately needs.

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The Longest Lent

It seems this Lent has lasted longer than most. It seems it might last longer. With the world around us shut down for another month or more, how can we celebrate Easter alone? How can we celebrate the washing of the feet, the veneration of the cross, the Easter fire, when the lights in our churches are turned off and the doors are locked?

Well, we could go back to the beginning.

We could remember that 2,000+ years ago there were no churches like there are today. There was no schedule, there were no livestreams, there were not daily phone calls and meetings reminding us of the distance between us.

There was only fear. Not of a virus, but of persecution for those who had followed the Lord.

And yet they gathered as families and cared for one another.They gathered as small communities and fed one another.

They washed each other’s feet by caring for widows and orphans.

They venerated the cross by remembering the sacrifice they had witnessed – even from afar.

They remembered their experience of the person of Jesus Christ and loved one another as a response.

Yes, Lent will seem long this year. Hope will seem distant. Light will seem weeks away.

But perhaps that is the gift of this pandemic: time to stay close with those who love us most, quarantined with those who love us no matter what. It offers us time to be still – as if we were in the dessert.

We must remember our experience of Jesus and his challenge to us to love one another, forgive one another, serve one another.

It started with an experience of Jesus.

That encounter led to discipleship.

May this experience – this desert experience – do the same.

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Sing Out, Earth and Skies

When you do Lent well, Easter means more.

This year, as a family, we did Lent well. We prayed together, we sacrificed, we talked about being better, and we talked about Lent. The poster created at work hung in the kitchen and, while it encouraged forty ways to live Lent well, we got to about half of them, which is pretty good, all things considered.

The kids were adamant that no one say the “A” word and chastised friends who did. We go through this every year.

The season – cold, snow, and all – seemed more real this year for some reason. Perhaps it was because we needed resurrection from a long, cold winter. Perhaps because for us, as a family, our Lent included power outages and hospitalizations, viruses and snow days. Perhaps it was last week’s funeral that tipped Lent more towards darkness than usual. Perhaps we gave up more, lived more intentionally, and waited, hoped, and prayed with greater fervor.

But come Sunday morning, the energy and enthusiasm was palpable and came not from chocolate but from the anticipation of getting the “A” word back. As we drove to church, the children, especially the youngest, wondered exactly when we could return to the singing of the “A word.”

When it was time to sing it within the context of Mass, no one missed a note.

Then, on the way home, we sang it some more.

Indeed, it is good to have the “A” word back.

We are an Easter people. A resurrection people. Alleluia. Alleluia.

Hope has transcended the bounds of death.

Death has been vanquished.

Even on the cross, overwhelmed by a prayer of abandonment by the God he has so earnestly and steadfastly served, Jesus refused to give over to resignation. He forgave.  He kept believing and hoping. He said, “yes” to God. Again and again, he said, “yes.”

Jesus has delivered himself entirely from himself in order to be completely God’s.

And so stones are rolled away. And God says, “yes” right back. God raises that which we crucify.

The tomb is empty. He has been raised. Now, go and tell the Good News.

We are an Easter people. And “Alleluia” is our song.

May your week be blessed.

~pjd