Third Sunday of Lent (March 20th, 2022)

The Church’s first scripture is an excerpt from the Old Testament Book of Exodus.

The Book of Exodus recalls the extraordinary events that led up to the liberation of the Israelites from slavery to the false gods of the Egypt.

Moses, an Israelite who had been adopted by the daughter of Pharoh (the god-king of the Egyptians) has been sent into exile to the land of Midian.  It is in Midian that Moses is summoned by the Lord to act as his emissary and as God’s emissary manifests his power in signs and wonders.

These signs and wonders will be terrifying to behold.

Today’s scripture from the Book of Exodus, Moses hears that the Lord has not been indifferent to the sufferings of the Israelites and has come to rescue them.

This scripture foreshadows the revelation of Christ, who is the power of God sent to affect the liberation of his creation from the power of sin, of death and of the devil- who like the gods of the Egyptians, afflict and enslave humanity.

God in Christ presents his power in signs and wonders, the most significant of which is the cross, which is terrifying to behold.

God in Christ did not reveal himself to us as simply a teacher or social reformer, but as the Lord God himself, who seeing the affliction of humanity enslaved to dark powers, entered into the human condition so as to confront the dark powers directly and reveal to us that these powers, that, like the gods of the Egyptians, seem so fierce and invincible, can actually be defeated.

As Christians, we are, like Moses, emissaries of the Lord, charged with a mission to announce that the one, true God despises the sin that afflicts us, the death that frightens us and the devil that accuses us.  Christians are meant, like Moses, to stand our ground athwart these dark powers and announce the power of God’s liberation in Christ.

The apostle Paul makes reference to Moses in his first letter to the Corinthians.  His purpose is to remind us that despite the signs and wonders that were revealed and the power of God that was manifested to the Israelites, they were not faithful to God and the consequences of this infidelity was grim.

He warns us Christians that we should not take our relationship with God in Christ for granted or think that it exempts us from living in the manner that Christ asks us.

It is not enough simply to bear the name of Christian as if it were merely a title or something akin to an ethnic identity.   Being a Christian is a way of life. This way of life makes demands on us and because of it we accept certain responsibilities. 

St. Paul insists that it is not merely being designated as a Christian that is enough, being a Christian is more than that.  The Israelites made that mistake and we should take care and be mindful of what it truly means to be a Christian or we will repeat the mistakes of our spiritual ancestors.

Today’s Gospel is strange as Christ the Lord makes reference to terrible events that were known to the people of his own time but seem obscure references to us.  After these observations Christ the Lord speaks to us in a parable, the meaning of which is meant to not only teach us, but also to warn.

Christ makes reference to how Pilate mixed the blood of Galileans with the temple sacrifices (an unspeakable desecration and sacrilege).  This horror is accounted for in the writings of the ancient historian Josephus as a response to acts of sedition against Roman rule (remember, the Israelites were subjects of the Roman emperor and their lands were under control of Caesar’s empire).

The other reference is to a terrible accident in which flaws in the construction of a tower results in the collapse of the structure and the deaths of many people.

What is this all about?

Christ is making references to these events in order to point out that life is precarious and has uncertain outcomes.  Misfortune befalls just and unjust alike. 

Christians will not be exempt from the raw facts of life.  It is within the reality of this world that we will know our purpose and discover our mission.

So… Given the unpredictability and fragility of life, we should not defer until later what God asks of us today, which for the Christian is the demand of love. 

This insight is a prepares us to consider the meaning of Christ’s parable. 

The unfruitful fig tree is an image of the Christian who is unproductive and who generates little to nothing.  Grace increases in us in the measure that we give it away.  Holiness is evident, not just in one’s interior disposition, but in external actions that manifest one’s interior life.  The Christian way of life is not about the evasion of responsibility, but about our willingness to love what Christ loves and to do what he asks us to do.

Because the fig tree is unproductive and does not generate life, it’s future is imperiled.  It receives a reprieve, becoming the recipient of a mercy, a grace that is undeserved.  God proves in Christ that he is the great giver of another chance.

If we are unproductive as Christians, there is the opportunity right now to repent of our indolence and resistance, but this opportunity, like life itself, has its own expiration date.

Life is short and unpredictable. Christ insists that he has work for us do during our lifetimes.  Our time to love is limited.  We must be attentive and be productive on behalf of love, for our opportunities to love what Christ loves and serve what Christ serves are not unlimited.     

The time to be a Christian is now, not later. 

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion (March 28th, 2021)

Each year faithful Christians stand at attention and listen to the proclamation of the Gospel accounts of the arrest, trial, torture and execution of the Lord Jesus.

This happens twice during Holy Week. Holy Week is the most sacred time of the Church’s year of worship- Christ’s suffering and death are marked and remembered today, on Passion (or Palm) Sunday and on Good Friday.

Twice, it seems, lest anyone miss the point of the gravity and significance of Christ crucified and dead in a grave. 

The cross of the Lord Jesus is inescapable for Christians and try as we might to soften the blow of his cross by decoration or by the reduction of its horror to a piece of attractive jewelry, the Crucified Savior a terrifying shock, made all the more so by what Christians believe about the Lord Jesus- that he is God.

The cross of Christ reveals truths of extraordinary importance about God and only a deep mysticism can fully plumb the depths of what it reveals. 

But it is not only the truth of God that is revealed in the cross of Christ but the truth about ourselves and about our humanity.  Each time account of the Passion, that is, suffering, of the Lord Jesus is proclaimed, we are meant to see ourselves in all Christ’s antagonists- Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate, Herod, Peter- all those who betrayed him, mocked him, and ran away- all these are stand ins for ourselves. This is what we do.  This is who we are. This is what sin has done to us.

That reckoning is hard to take as most of us have in our hearts compassion for the Crucified Savior.  But compassion is not enough as we approach the cross.  What is needed is contrition and repentance.  The thick darkness that envelopes Christ in his Passion, the response to which is his cry of dereliction from the cross, is the refusal of God that lurks in all of us, a refusal that manifests itself in every “no” to Christ.  It is that “no” that takes the form of the cross.

Thus, as we listen to the account of Christ’s suffering and death and look upon the image of Christ crucified, we come to see and understand ourselves, indeed the world- we see in ourselves the capability and potential for the absolute worst- not just to torture and kill and innocent man, but to torture and kill God.

It’s harsh and dreadful- and can only be as such.  This we must accept. 

In the Gospel of Luke, we are told that those who witnessed Christ crucified, at his death, “went away beating their breasts”- in other words they knew that they were implicated in it and couldn’t extricate themselves from it.  In Mark’s Gospel, proclaimed today, in the end, we are left at an impenetrable grave, with the only one who can absolve us inaccessible to us.

It’s grim.  And it’s best for our souls to leave it as such.  God is Christ accepted for our sakes that he would pass through suffering and death.  The Christian knows that our acceptance of God in Christ means that we have to pass through his cross and let its judgement fall on us, fall on our own refusals to love and to serve.

We Christians might take the proclamation of Christ’s Passion during Holy Week as a reminder that we should not move too quickly to Easter or become presumptive of the grace that the Resurrection of the Lord reveals. The cross may not be the final revelation, but it can’t be uncoupled from the revelation to come.

And there is the lesson.

Now is the time for a long, hard look at Christ’s cross, and at his grave and remember, and remind ourselves as to what happens, even now, as a result of our own refusals of God- our own refusals of Christ. 

Second Sunday of Lent (February 28th, 2021)

The Church’s first scripture for today is a startling passage from the first book of the Bible- The Book of Genesis.

In this text, the great patriarch Abraham is commanded by God to kill his beloved son. Abraham is to offer his son as a blood sacrifice to God.

One can only recoil in horror at this story and wonder as what it means.  For centuries much attention has been paid to this text as people sought to understand its meaning and grasp its lesson.  For what reason was this text included in the Bible? Why would God command such cruelty?  Why would Abraham comply?  What does this say about the God of biblical revelation? What does Abraham’s compliance say about us?

Like all the revelatory texts of the Bible, no one answer, no one meaning suffices as an answer or an explanation. For this reason, we should resist being glib or dismissive or reduce the meaning to a simplistic cliché.  A scripture like this excerpt from the Book of Genesis commands our attention because it is deeply mysterious and resists easy characterizations or answers.

One way of looking at this text is to consider it as an artifact of a culture that is seeking to understand itself.  In this regard the text is what is called an etiological tale- that is, a kind of origin story that explains why a culture does or does not do something of importance.

In this particular case it explains why the Israelites rejected the cults of human, particularly, child sacrifice, which were practiced by the cultures around them.  In this regard, the meaning of the story would be something like this: the purpose of this story is that God demonstrates to Abraham that he wants obedience, but he does not require the human or child sacrifices that were prevalent and practiced by other cultures.

This story, set in Israelite pre-history, explains why the sacrifices offered by the Israelites were different from other cultures.

 Another way of looking at it is that it provides an important observation about the nature of parenting in a world that is wrought with peril and uncertain outcomes.  In this regard the story is meant to provide us with insight.

Abraham is a stand in for all parents at all times and his beloved son Isaac is a stand in for all children.  The seemingly cruel command of God is signaling the danger and unpredictability of life, in which we receive children with love and gratitude, but we know that their lives are not simply our own to determine.

There are aspects to life, things in this world that are out of our control and try as we might these realities can overtake us, with the worst outcome being death.  Both parents and children must at some point face down the uncontrollability and unpredictable nature of human existence and all men and women must accept the gravity of what it means to bring a child into the world and that the love between a parent and a child necessarily entails great sacrifices and a confrontation with what we fear the most- the grief that comes when things do not go as we had hoped or expected.

Parents will not truly love their children if their central pre-occupation is simply to control them and insulate them from the raw facts of human existence.  A child that only knows the world through the narrowness of comforts, exemptions from difficulties, and remains insulated from the reality of loss and risk will never be fully themselves.

Thus, parents and children, must, like Abraham and Isaac make that journey to Moriah together, and it is a journey to understand that the challenges of life must be confronted forthrightly and directly; that love must be risked despite uncertain outcomes; and that loss and grief cannot be wished away.  Being parent and truly bringing a child to maturity means that both parents and children must come to terms with the full measure of what it means to be human.

Finally, this text is about the disclosure of a mystery that its original author did not fully understand.  In this respect, the story is really about Christ and his mission.  Christ is the beloved son of the Father, a child of the promise through whom God acts to bring into being a great nation called the Church. 

 Christ’s life will culminate in becoming a sacrifice, a sacrifice he makes of his own life so as to set right our relationship with God, a sacrifice that is necessary so that we can see that nothing escapes the power of God to redeem and to save- not even suffering, not even grief and loss, not even death.  Christ’s sacrifice is to accept these realities for himself.  He does not have to- he chooses this because this is what his Father asks of him.  Christ does this knowing that the benefit will not be to himself, but for us. 

In this respect, today’s scripture from the Book of Genesis, is meant to suggest to us the great and fundamental reality commemorated during Holy Week- that is, the sacrifice of Christ.

Just a few words on the holy Gospel. 

In today’s scripture from the Gospel of Mark, Christ’s disciples are witnesses to an extraordinary revelation- they see Christ for who he really and truly is.  Who is Jesus Christ?  He is the one, true God who has accepted a human nature and revealed himself to us as a man, he has come to meet us in Christ face to face.

The man they have come to know is ever much more than who he appears to be- he is God.  This is the point today’s Gospel is making and what we should consider as most important about the Gospel we have heard.

This revelation should make the mysteries of Holy Week all the more strange and compelling, for what happens to the Lord Jesus is happening to God and through all that Christ experiences, God is revealing himself to us- who he really and truly is and what he asks us all to accept. 

God is not for us Christians merely a concept or emotion, but instead, God is a living, divine person who not only interacts with us, but has shared with us the experience of being human. Holy Week reveals the full extent of this experience.

To be a Christian in truth does not mean that we merely accept Christ as an important historical figure or a teacher of timeless truths, but as God. 

Peter, James and John caught a glimpse of this revelation on that high mountain, a revelation that was confirmed for them in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

The lesson:

Christian spirituality is mostly about coming to terms with the divinity of Jesus Christ and learning to accept his divinity.  His divinity presented itself to the world in a form that was confounding and mysterious.  This mystery was not simply the dazzling light of the transfiguration, but the revelation of God in real flesh and blood- a real flesh and blood that we will be compelled to see in all its radiant intensity in the great mysteries of Holy Week.

Second Sunday of Lent (March 8th, 2020)

Around the year 250 AD, a plague swept through the Roman Empire which had devastating consequences. Known as the “Plague of Cyprian” (named after St. Cyprian of Carthage, who did not cause the plague, but lived through it, and whose testimony provided an account of the devastation) the mortality rates recorded in the city of Rome were said to be 5000 people a day. This was just in Rome. The population of the city of Alexandria was recorded to have diminished by 68% due to deaths and people fleeing the city. Refugees pressed against the borders of the Roman Empire, the economy ground to a halt, scant public services ceased, and the political order collapsed. It was a disaster of apocalyptic proportions.

It also was not the first time in human history that a contagious epidemic had shaken the human project of civilization to its foundations. But what made this plague different was the effect it had on a small religious sect called the Church.

The Church, a reality that we know as a vast international reality with well over a billion adherents, was a small minority in 250 AD and it was also a minority that was illegal, despised and held with suspicion by anyone that mattered in the culture. The Church was considered by many to be either dangerous or a joke.

Yet in the face of the devastating plague, people saw the Church in a different light, a light that illuminated a quality of the profession and practice of their strange faith they the culture found both confounding and compelling.

This quality was a religiously motivated, magnanimous compassion that the Christians called charity.

A first hand account of the plague describes the odd behavior of Christians: “Heedless of danger they took charge of the sick, attending to their needs and ministering to them in Christ”.

And this care and ministry was not limited to their co-religionists. Even their pagan neighbors were the recipients of their compassion, with no distinction of rich or poor. An attitude and action that confused a culture that was strictly conscious of class, status and separatist in terms of tribe, ethnicity, religion and family.

In the midst of a disaster, people saw that the Church did not just provide emotional solace or a sense of identity, but a practical, prescription for action, that the culture found counter-intuitive. This prescription was called charity, and this charity was not limited to financial assistance, but direct intervention on behalf of the afflicted, even though to do so, meant great risk.

Historian Rodney Stark estimated that in areas of the empire of without a Christian presence, 30% succumbed to the plague. In contrast, areas of the empire in which there was a strong Christian presence, the rate of mortality was cut by 20%.

Thus in Rome, if the mortality rates were 5000 a day, the intervention of Christians likely saved 1000 people a day who would without the Church would have died.

This was long before the modern understanding of epidemiology, contagion and without advanced medical technology or pharmaceuticals.

Many Christians would die as a result of their interventions, but one observer remarked that he witnessed in their passing “serenity and happiness”. Christians demonstrated they had a transcendent reference point in their faith that encouraged them to overcome fear and revulsion with charity.

In the wake of the plague, conversions to Christianity would increase, and these numbers were of great concern to cultural elites who perceived this minority religious movement as a real threat to their status quo. Christians had made themselves credible, not simply through eloquent argumentation but by practicing publically what they believed to be true.

Their motivation for all this risk taking was not merely a vague humanism, but a robust faith in Jesus Christ, whom they believed to be the one, true God who had accepted for himself a human nature and lived a real human life. This one, true God, Jesus Christ, like humanity in all things but sin, existed not as an idea or feeling, or as a spirit inhabiting a statue (like the pagan gods) but met them personally in the reality of the Church, taught them the truth about God and about themselves in the Gospel, and gave Christians his life and presence in the Holy Communion of the Eucharist. The proper end towards which the religious convictions and practices of the Christians was directed was this uncanny charity that motivated them to take great risks, move towards, rather than away, from danger, and to serve all that God in Christ had created and loved, including especially, strangers and even enemies.

The reality of our situation right now, with 24/7 reporting on a mysterious contagion from the East is much different from the situation in 250 AD, but our fears are the same and also, the Church is still here.

And what Christians believed about God, about their way of life, about who they had to become in a moment of crisis is still believed today. At least, this is the case on paper, in our Sacred texts and our Catechism, but it’s up to every generation of Christians to take what is in the books and embody that teaching in real lives.

If we don’t then the world, rightly, looks at us as a marginal faith based entertainment club rather than the life and presence of God in Christ in the world.

Out of charity, the Church has asked that we Christians accept precautionary measures in regards to some of our ritual practices because of risks associated with the Coronavirus. These precautions, though they are intended towards the common good, might be received by some Christians as disruptions and as such will be criticized, but please remember that they are acts of charity meant to protect the most vulnerable.

If fears become reality, we Christians may be asked to take some risks so that the sick might be cared for and that people receive the Holy Sacraments, especially those who need them the most. It’s a good time for us Christians to make sure we know who our neighbors are, especially those neighbors who are elderly and alone, those who are most vulnerable and may have no one to care for them. We also need to overcome the natural impulse to simply take care of our own, and ask ourselves how the Church is prepared to care for strangers and those who do not share our faith. It also may be the time that we have to offer to help, even taking a lower place, rather than placing ourselves in charge. How will you assist those who will have to place themselves at risk?

There is no time in our lives when our faith in Christ does not measure and judge us and there has been no age of the Church’s life where there has not been a crisis. The long history of the Church is a history of crisis management. We are naïve and mistaken if we think this is not the case.

The Christians of 250 AD were a minority that for many years gained strength from their narrowness. The Cyprian plague changed that. They grew and became stronger because narrowness gave way to reality, the reality that Christ intends his Church to be in the world, not withdrawn from it- not becoming the world, but changing it. You have to go out and take risks to do this.

In Christ’s holy Gospel, we hear of his transfiguration, a mysterious event where the Lord Jesus revealed who he really is- he is God.

Christ is God, who, as I have said many times, accepts a human nature and lives a real, human life. In doing so he goes where we all go- into suffering and death, and in this descent into the raw facts of our lives he reveals that neither suffering and death are the end of us and even within those experiences, he is present and working. He does all this, God does this for us in Christ, not because he has to, or because he needs to, but because of his charity, his love for us. Out of love he risks the worst so that in the midst of the worst we can still be found by him.

Seeing the Lord Jesus for who he really and truly is and accepting him in this revelation is at the heart of the Gospel. Our natural preference is to make the Lord Jesus into someone we want him to be. This happens usually because we intuit correctly that if Christ is who he reveals himself to be, we have to change, and this change will inevitably entail risks and following him into experiences that we would rather stay away from.

So it also is with the Church. More often than not, Christians are exerting tremendous effort to make the Church into what we want it to be- an institution, a debating society, a political lobby, a servant of our ideologies, a fantasy kingdom, social club, an ethnic identity. All these are attempts by us to gain strength from our narrowness.

But the moment comes, when narrowness will not suffice, and a crisis demands more of us, and we have to decide as to whether or not we will go where the Lord Jesus wants us to go.

Third Sunday of Lent (March 24th, 2019)

Just a few words regarding the Lord’s Gospel for today:

In the year 70 AD, just decades after the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the Romans would invade the lands of the Israelites and place the city of Jerusalem under siege.  This happened in response to warring factions of Israelites that had seized control of city and attempted to establish what they believed to be a true expression of the prophetic hope for a Messianic kingdom. Impatient that God was not acting in accord with their own aspirations, they sought to do for themselves what God had declared only he should and could do.  They would make for themselves the kingdom of God.  What they created was hell on earth.

The Roman administration was expelled, those presumed to have been collaborators with Roman power were either killed or driven out of the city. A new king, acclaimed as a new David, was announced and even though an invasion by the full force of the Roman army, then the most powerful military force in the world, was inevitable, the revolutionaries believed since their cause was righteous on behalf of the God of Israel, they had nothing to fear.

They were brave, but they were also fools.

The rebellion would be utterly crushed by Roman might and city of Jerusalem would be utterly destroyed.  It was a catastrophe that exceeded that of the invasion of Babylon hundreds of years before in 587 BC.

Christ’s words in his Gospel for today foreshadow the events of 70 AD.  He knows what is coming and he warns the people where things are heading and that the terror to come will sweep away righteous and unrighteous, innocent and guilty.  The only means to endure is to repent- to change.  And Christ also knows that in pride and narrowness, this will be difficult, because human beings prove themselves over and over again that we would rather be ruined than change.

If you read and study the Gospels carefully you will come face to face with the fact that Christ’s words are so very often dire and even threatening.  He foresees that an end is coming and a judgment with it.  Often times this tendency is interpreted by Christians, transposed if you will, as a matter concerning of our deaths and what happens after that event.  And this is true, but it is not the whole of what Christ intends for us to hear.

Christ’s reference point is worldly, not just otherworldly.  He warns us that the judgment of God will arrive in the here and now and we must be prepared to receive it.  This judgment will most often look like the events of 70 AD- a catastrophe of human design, a reckoning with decisions that we have made, decisions that are contrary to God’s will and purposes, that bring about terrifying results- political decisions, economic decisions, cultural decisions, personal decisions.  In all these decisions we will be convinced of our own righteousness and will justify our decisions at all costs- even in the face of their apparent failure.

When our decisions are concerned more with self- interest than self-giving love… When our decisions favor the attainment of wealth, pleasure, power, and honors at the cost of justice and truth… Then disaster inevitably follows.  Judgement arrives as the cost of our decisions and we don’t have to wait until after death to pay the price and count the cost and sin being what it is, our protests of innocence will matter little when the day of reckoning comes.

This was the harsh lesson for the Israelites of 587 BC and then again of 70 AD.

It is a lesson for all of us- even now.

If we attend to this lesson, then we will repent, not later, but now.  If we attend to this lesson, we will change now rather than be ruined later.

Lent is given to us, given to the Church as a privileged and urgent time to repent.  This repentance is not just some kind of exercise in self-improvement, but an opportunity to move out of the confined and defensive shelter of the self-involved and self-interested structures that we create, structures we use to insulate ourselves from ever having to change.  A thorough examination of conscience that compels us to consider both what we have done and failed to do, that is, our decisions, prepares us to face the judgement of God- and what is the judgment of God?  What have our fears done to us?  What have our refusals to love and to forgive and to serve made us into?  What darkeness has our desperate clinging to our need to be right created in our own lives and the lives of others?

It is a pain filled reckoning and realization of our own truth.  There is nothing capricious in the judgment of God. The judgment of God means that we see our own truth. This revelation is not deferred to the end of our lives, but it is happening even now.  The judgment we face at the end of our lives is so terrifying because at the moment of death we lose any power we had to change, to repent.

The urgency of Christ’s words in his Gospel are about all this.  We should not wait to repent, to come to terms with our truth, what we have done and what we have failed to do.  Why?  Because in this present moment of judgment we can still change, we can still repent.

Like the fig tree in Christ’s parable, we have a chance, but we can lose that opportunity.

All this does not just seem harsh, it is harsh.  Because of our affluence and distorted sense that we are more exceptional than we actually are, many Christians sidestep the harder facts of the Gospel, meaning Christ’s words of warning and judgment, for a pseudo-gospel of personal affirmation.  No change or repentance is ever really necessary in this pseudo-gospel because the point of Christ’s revelation is simply to affirm us as we are, not to provoke us to change.

Pseudo-gospels are a perennial temptation for Christians.  Every age of the Church’s life has heard the proclamation of a pseudo-gospel.  These false gospels lull us into complacency and excuse our decisions, but they all inevitably fail and they fail precisely because they are a lie.

The true Gospel tells the truth and this is why the Gospel itself always arrives in our lives as the judgment of God.  Faced with the Gospel we are compelled to a decision- will we repent?  Will we change?  That decision is now, not later.

The judgment we face is now, not later.

Second Sunday of Lent (March 17th, 2019)

The Church’s first scripture for today is an excerpt from the first book of the Bible- the Book of Genesis.  The Book of Genesis is a book of beginnings, a book of origins.  From it we learn the beginning of creation, of humanity and of the Israelites.

The Israelites originate as a people from the great Old Testament patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah.  Abraham is called forth by God from the life he knew and sets out on a journey that God promises will take him to lands that will become the homeland for his descendants, who, God promises, will be a great nation “as numerous as a stars in the heavens”.

In today’s scripture this promise is literally cut in a sacrifice and becomes a covenant between God and Abraham.  A covenant is best understood for our purposes as a relationship, a relationship that goes much deeper than merely a legal contract.  The sacrifice indicates the depth of the relationship between God and Abraham- it is a matter of life and death.

In the aftermath of this sacrifice, Abraham has a frightening mystical experience, where God makes his presence known to him, a presence Abraham encounters as a “deep terrifying darkness”.

It is in that terrifying darkness that Abraham comes to terms with the unknowability of God, for the God of the Old Testament is vividly mysterious, an indication that he cannot be confined like the gods of the pagans to a place or manipulated through spells and incantations.  The God of the Bible does not need the sacrifices that are offered and it is not our sacrifices or worship that sustain him, as it did the gods of Abraham’s ancestors.  Instead, the God of the Bible is the subverter of magic or controlled for our own purposes.  His sacrifices are accepted as signs and symbols of the relationship he has with his people and he needs none of them to be who he is.  But we need these sacrifices to remind us who we are and that there is no true love or relationship without sacrifice.  The deep mystery of this God, the one true God, overtakes Abraham with terror.

But this is not the only reason for Abraham’s terror.

Abraham experiences for himself the vulnerability of genuine faith.  We Christians too often pay lip service to faith, making it merely an emotional comfort, or using faith as a declaration of our tribal identity. But while comfort might come to us as a result of faith, and faith can and should order our way of life, it is not in the superficiality of our emotions or our identity, that makes for authentic faith.

Faith is most raw and real when, like the experience of Abraham, we come to terms with the reality of God, rather than the idols of him that we so often create out of our desires and fears.  Further, faith is authentic and true, when, like Abraham’s faith, it is professed as an act of trust in promises that remain outside of our ability to manipulate or control and that have indefinite and unexpected outcomes.

Faith is not magic, it is not a way of currying favor with God so that we can get what we want.  Faith is an expression of our relationship with God, an act of trust, that what he has promised will be fulfilled.

We Christians profess our faith in Christ and the promises he makes to us concern not just our lives in this world, but beyond this world- beyond our death. We become through this act of faith, his chosen people, a new kind of Israelite.  And it is through us, incorporated as spiritual descendants of ancient Abraham, that God’s promises to Abraham are fulfilled.

This act of faith originates in the terrifying darkness of the cross and it is cut in the sacrifice of his Body and his Blood.  We experience this in the Mass, for the Mass is not just our community gathered to pray, or a cultural pageant, but the Mass is the Church, the new Israelites, gathered together in an encounter with the one, true and living God- who makes himself known to us in the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament and gives his sacrifice to us as a new covenant, a new relationship that God presents to us with the gravity and severity of a matter of life and death- his life and death, our life and death.  It is through this life and death that God’s promises to us in Christ are fulfilled.

And in this life and death there is mystery and there is terror, and there is also the presence of the living and true God.

The second scripture is an excerpt from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians and in this text the Apostle Paul reminds us of the promises of Christ- that in Christ we are given a life beyond the life that we have now- this life, this world, indeed our very bodies are not ends in themselves, but are a means by which God will grant to us an even greater life, even greater world and an even greater bodies than what we currently possess.  We Christians call this heaven, which is not merely a place, but the event of our transformation from death to glory.  It is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead that engenders in us trust that God in Christ will accomplish for us what he revealed in his body risen from the dead.

St. Paul also testifies that this act of faith in Christ makes us different, and this difference should be evident in the manner that we live, in our unique way of life.  Christians are not meant to be like everyone else, but also hold to specific values and behaviors that mark us as being different from the cultures in which we live, values that are meant to indicate to ourselves and others that our faith is not in politics, economics, or culture, but in Christ.

This is unsettling to many people, indeed, it is unsettling to many Christians.  The great temptation in every age of the Church’s life is accommodate ourselves to the cultures in which we live, to make ourselves acceptable and our way of life no different than the cultural, political or economic expectations of our time and place.  We Christians do this out of fear or frustration or even because we think it makes our faith more acceptable to those who might refuse or misunderstand us.  But whatever our reasons and justifications, St. Paul insists that we lose much, indeed the world loses much, if we Christians are unwilling to be who Christ intends for us to be.

Finally, the disciples of the Lord Jesus witness an extraordinary revelation.  Christ reveals his glory, which is the Glory of God.  Remember, Christians, the great mystery of Christ is not the revelation of a spiritual teaching or political reform, but the mysterious revelation that God has accepted for himself a human nature and lived a real, human life.  This is who the Lord Jesus is- not a social reformer or religious guru- Christ is God in our flesh.  God in a human body.  God become man. Jesus Christ is God who meets us face to face.

The mystical experience of Abraham from the Book of Genesis foreshadows what today’s Gospel describes.  Christ’s disciples take the place of Abraham and God in Christ reveals himself not in darkness, but in radiant light.

Christians are meant to be witnesses to the truth of God in Christ.  This truth is not a concept or an idea, but it is testimony to his person, testimony to who Jesus Christ really and truly is.  Christians are meant to be the ones who God has assigned the mission of inviting the world to know who he really and truly is and sharing with others the gifts God gives to us in Christ.  The greatest of these gifts is a relationship, a covenant with Christ that he gives to us in the Church.

If we Christians are to be true to who God intends for us to be then we must set about knowing Jesus, and knowing him, not just as a significant historical figure, but as a living, divine person, as the one, true God.  There is no other Jesus than this.  We might be more comfortable with a Jesus of our own making or a Jesus much less than who he reveals himself to be.  But the truth of Christ’s revelation is not meant to make us comfortable, but to make us holy, to transform us, to make us who God intends for us to be.

If we do not know Christ, we cannot truly be Christians.  If we cannot accept Christ for who he really and truly is, then we will not accept the way of life he offers.  Knowing and accepting Jesus for who he really and truly is- this is the challenge the Gospel places before us today.

First Sunday of Lent (March 10th, 2019)

The Church’s first scripture for today is an excerpt from the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy.  The word “deuteronomy” means “second law” and that signals to us the purpose of the text- this book is about Moses giving the Israelites the law that which will order their unique way of life. The “second law” means that this law follows from the law that was delivered at Mt. Sinai.  It is through the practices of the law that the Israelites will realize their God given mission, which is to serve as witnesses to the one, true God, and through their way of life, provide the world with a means by which those who are not Israelites can know the one, true God and perhaps even share in the Israelite way of life.

In this particular text from the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the Israelites that they originate, not in worldly glory or privilege or in power, but in suffering, in what the world despised and considered of no real importance.  Even when they grew in great numbers, they remained oppressed and unable to free themselves from their afflictions.  All that they have and are, all that they have accomplished is not because of their own greatness or ingenuity, but instead, it is all because God intervened in their lives in an extraordinary way.  The Israelites owe their survival, indeed their very lives to God, and their history demonstrates that without his intervention, they would have surely perished.

Moses insists that the Israelites recall this during their worship and this is important, for it reminds us the kind of worship that God wants, not just from the Israelites, but from us.

Worship can degenerate into merely a form of our own self-expression, a method of self-aggrandizement.  This distortion happens when our focus in on ourselves, on our experiences, on how worship pleases us and makes us feel important. When this is the case, the true object of our worship, God, is displaced with idols of our own making.  Thus, Moses, whose spiritual vision is so perceptive, seeks to inoculate the Israelites from this tendency by insisting that as they worship they understand that what they are doing is not simply about themselves, but about God, and specifically, an act of appreciation for what God has accomplished for them.

The worship of the Church is intended to draw us out of ourselves, while it proclaims our exultation in Christ, it is not meant to build up our self-esteem or be an exercise in self-expression.  Instead, it is an act of praise, of appreciation, for what God has done for us in Christ.  Thus, Moses’ advice about worship is necessary for us to take to heart.  We also need to remember as we gather to worship God that who we are as Christians originates in suffering, in what the world despised and continues to despise, and that our glory is not in what we have accomplished, but what God accomplishes for us and through us.

If we bring to our worship this disposition of humility, then the mysteries of our worship will be revealed.

The Church’s second scripture is an excerpt from the “magnum opus” of the Apostle Paul- his letter to the Romans.  The letter to the Romans seems to have been written by St. Paul as an introduction to the Christians of early Church in Rome.  These Christians were Israelites, and thus the concern of St. Paul to clarify how he understands the relationship of Christ to Israelites and the Church to Israel.  Not being Israelites ourselves, much of the letter to Romans might seem obtuse to us, but there remains great spiritual benefit in our coming to understand what St. Paul has to say.

St. Paul testifies that both Israelites and Gentiles can share a relationship with God because of what God has accomplished in Christ.  In fact, what God has accomplished in Christ is to create a new kind of Israel called the Church which gathers both Israelites and Gentiles in a relationship with God.  There was a tendency among Israelites to absolutize their unique culture, to make it not so much an invitation to others to know God, but a hindrance to God.  Being an Israelite was the priority and the absolute, not God in Christ.  Such an emphasis was placed on Israelite identity and culture, that it signaled to the Gentiles that a relationship with the one, true God was simply impossible for them.  This is the attitude that Christ himself criticizes as being prevalent among the Pharisees- Israel becomes not a bridge over which people may cross to come to know God, but a blockade to prevent access to him.

St. Paul insists that through coming to know Christ, one is also invited into a new kind of relationship with God that is called the Church.  The Church is a new kind of Israel, a bridge over which people are invited to cross so that they might have a relationship with God and enjoy the gift of a new way of life.  This is the meaning of his words about there now being “no distinction between Jew and Greek” for God in Christ wills all to know him and to be “saved”.

The Israelites were not the only ones who ever fell into the temptation to absolutize their culture or to create blocks instead of bridges to those seeking a relationship with the one, true God.  We can fall into that temptation ourselves when we elevate our own culture to an absolute or when we see our own faith as stick to beat people back with rather than an outstretched hand that invites people to know Christ in the Church.  Indeed, the tribalism that infects our culture also infects the Church!  How often does our identity as Catholics become not a matter of knowing and serving the Lord but about choosing sides!  How often do we seek to reduce people to the categories that appeal to our sense of what we think to be acceptable!  How many times does our worship seems more a pageant for cultures or an expression of our ideologies rather than a visible sign that our relationship with Christ is the priority and the absolute!

Our relationship with Christ is the absolute, not our culture, tribe, race, ethnicity, political affiliation, economic status, or any of the “identity markers” that have become our culture’s new and secular profession of faith.  This priority of Christ was a revolution when St. Paul proclaimed it centuries ago and it remains a revolution today.

Finally, the Gospel presents the Lord Jesus “tempted” by the devil.  The solidarity of God in Christ with us is such that he submits himself to the temptings of the devil, knowing for himself how humanity experiences the evil one’s cunning power, cruel accusations, and malevolent insinuations.

The evil one presents all the wealth, pleasure, power and honors that is at his disposal and promises to grant all the Lord Jesus if he would but serve him.

Of course, the devil reveals not only his own malice, but his foolishness, as nothing he can offer compares to what Christ in his divinity already possesses.

The temptations show the limits of the devil’s power, for hidden from him is the full extent of who precisely he is dealing with.

Christ refuses the devil’s temptings, in the end, dispelling the evil one by asserting who he really is- the Lord himself!

Wealth, pleasure, power and honors are not in themselves evil, for properly understood and used, they can all do much good.  But it is precisely what is good for us that the devil seeks to pervert and he does so by promising us the good things we desire but under the condition that we use those good things to serve his own malicious and destructive ends.

When we give into this temptation, we are destroyed.  That is the devil’s end.  The evil one hates us because she hates everything and everyone that God loves and this is why all his promises to us are false and empty and though attractive, always lead to our destruction.

The evil one, who was bold enough to tempt Christ, is also tempting all of us.  He seeks to destroy us, not through the ridiculous displays of special effects that movies and television show us as evidence of his power, but through our decisions, through our own exercise of our own will to choose and to decide.  Thus, he makes us agents of our own destruction, and as we are destroyed by our choices, by our decisions, he accuses us of being worth nothing but damnation.  We can, of course, refuse him, as Christ did, but that means living with less than what we often desire in terms of wealth, pleasure, power and honors.  Accepting less when we could have more is hard for us, especially when we think that we are somehow strong enough to overcome the devil’s bargains and turn his evil into something good.  It is this kind of pride that comes before our fall.

The consolation in this Gospel is that in the midst of the devil’s temptings, Christ the Lord is with us.  We are very limited in our power to fight the devil and often too weak to resist his temptings, and this is why Christ has entered into our condition, accepted a human nature, and lived a real, human life.  Christ did this to be with, even in that dark moment when the evil emerges from the shadows and insists to us he has the power to give us everything that we desire.

Christ inserts himself into the terrifying confrontation with Satan that all of us will inevitably face.  In the midst of that evil, Christ is present and willing to lead us from the wasteland of temptation and to deliver us from evil.