LENTEN THREESOME

                             LENTEN THREESOME

 Jesus summons us to follow him by imitating his bold example of praying and fasting in the desert for 40 days and nights and in giving himself to others to the last drop of his blood.
Just as the devil tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden and Jesus in the desert, so he seeks to tempt us to disorder our relationship with ourselves, others and God.
Fasting, almsgiving and prayer are the threesome antidotes. The more we fast and prioritize spiritual nourishment over material food, the less vulnerable we will be to being tempted by bread and earthly pleasures.
The more we sacrifice ourselves and our belongings for others’ good, the less prone we will be to giving in to the devil’s seductions to seek power or control over them.
In addition to being a great remedy against the seductions of the Evil One, these three traditional practices are also a great means to help us reorder our relationship to God, our neighbor and appetites.
First, prayer. If God is truly first in our lives, we will want to commit to making the loving dialogue with God our foremost priority.
Rather than squeezing him into our day when we have time, we resolve to center our whole lives on him. Some Lenten resolutions to do this would be to come to daily Mass, “stay awake” with him in Gethsemane through Eucharistic adoration or a daily Holy Hour, pray the Stations of the Cross on Fridays, or try to attend a Lenten mission or retreat.
Second, fasting. Many of us, though believers, live like materialists, laboring harder to stock our refrigerators than to nourish ourselves spiritually.
Fasting helps us to say No to the devil’s temptations to prioritize our stomachs over our souls. It allows us to subordinate our bodily desires and needs to those of the Spirit, to control our desires rather than let them control us. The fast I ordinarily recommend is threefold: to drink mainly water throughout Lent, give up condiments on food (salt, pepper, sugar, butter, ketchup, salad dressing), and forsake sweets and snacks between meals. That’s a type of fast that not only is healthy, but at the end of 40 days will fill you with the discipline that it takes to be a disciple!
Third, almsgiving. Our biggest spiritual cancer often flows from selfishness or egocentrism. That is why the Lord commands us to give alms; to look toward others’ needs, not just our own; to love others in deeds and not just wish them well;  and to take responsibility for others’ welfare, for as often as we fail to do something for them, we fail to care for Christ (Matthew 25:45).
How charitable should we be? We should try to give more than our surplus time or resources, but extend ourselves like the widow with her mite, something that will conform us to Christ’s standard of loving generosity. We should also be deliberate about our charity, not just engaging in “random acts of kindness,” but having a concerted game plan of self-sacrifice, just as Jesus had one toward us from before the world’s foundation.
Like sportspersons having seasonal training to get back to the basics after a monsoon off, so Lent is the time for Christians to get back to the building blocks of a life built on Christ.
Championships often depend on the work done to form the habits that lead to greatness. Catholics would similarly profit from using Lent to jump-start the plan to form the habits that lead to virtue and ultimately to the eternal “Hall of Fame.”

LENTEN THREESOME

                             LENTEN THREESOME

 Jesus summons us to follow him by imitating his bold example of praying and fasting in the desert for 40 days and nights and in giving himself to others to the last drop of his blood.
Just as the devil tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden and Jesus in the desert, so he seeks to tempt us to disorder our relationship with ourselves, others and God.
Fasting, almsgiving and prayer are the threesome antidotes. The more we fast and prioritize spiritual nourishment over material food, the less vulnerable we will be to being tempted by bread and earthly pleasures.
The more we sacrifice ourselves and our belongings for others’ good, the less prone we will be to giving in to the devil’s seductions to seek power or control over them.
In addition to being a great remedy against the seductions of the Evil One, these three traditional practices are also a great means to help us reorder our relationship to God, our neighbor and appetites.
First, prayer. If God is truly first in our lives, we will want to commit to making the loving dialogue with God our foremost priority.
Rather than squeezing him into our day when we have time, we resolve to center our whole lives on him. Some Lenten resolutions to do this would be to come to daily Mass, “stay awake” with him in Gethsemane through Eucharistic adoration or a daily Holy Hour, pray the Stations of the Cross on Fridays, or try to attend a Lenten mission or retreat.
Second, fasting. Many of us, though believers, live like materialists, laboring harder to stock our refrigerators than to nourish ourselves spiritually.
Fasting helps us to say No to the devil’s temptations to prioritize our stomachs over our souls. It allows us to subordinate our bodily desires and needs to those of the Spirit, to control our desires rather than let them control us. The fast I ordinarily recommend is threefold: to drink mainly water throughout Lent, give up condiments on food (salt, pepper, sugar, butter, ketchup, salad dressing), and forsake sweets and snacks between meals. That’s a type of fast that not only is healthy, but at the end of 40 days will fill you with the discipline that it takes to be a disciple!
Third, almsgiving. Our biggest spiritual cancer often flows from selfishness or egocentrism. That is why the Lord commands us to give alms; to look toward others’ needs, not just our own; to love others in deeds and not just wish them well;  and to take responsibility for others’ welfare, for as often as we fail to do something for them, we fail to care for Christ (Matthew 25:45).
How charitable should we be? We should try to give more than our surplus time or resources, but extend ourselves like the widow with her mite, something that will conform us to Christ’s standard of loving generosity. We should also be deliberate about our charity, not just engaging in “random acts of kindness,” but having a concerted game plan of self-sacrifice, just as Jesus had one toward us from before the world’s foundation.
Like sportspersons having seasonal training to get back to the basics after a monsoon off, so Lent is the time for Christians to get back to the building blocks of a life built on Christ.
Championships often depend on the work done to form the habits that lead to greatness. Catholics would similarly profit from using Lent to jump-start the plan to form the habits that lead to virtue and ultimately to the eternal “Hall of Fame.”

ASH WEDNESDAY AND VALENTINE DAY

               Ash Wednesday and Valentine Day 14th. February 2018

We forget that Valentine’s Day was – and still is – a Catholic feast; that love – including romantic love – is something of God.  In fact, this year is a good opportunity for us Catholics to reclaim Valentine’s Day, to use it as an occasion to remind the world what love really is. We are showing to the world what we have always known and which the world has forgotten: love is all about joyful sacrifice.                                                      As we enter the Lenten season together with our friends and dates, we remind ourselves and others that suffering is the touchstone of love, that the point of penance is not to perform arduous feats of self-denial but to love God and others better, and that with love, suffering is turned into joy. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, and Lent culminates in the commemoration of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.                                                     History tells us that in the year AD 136, the Roman emperor Hadrian — in efforts to obliterate Christianity — built a temple to Venus, the pagan goddess of love, on the site of the crucifixion of Christ. It took great efforts two centuries later to uncover the True Cross beneath the ruins of the temple to Venus. This Valentine’s Day, and hopefully on every Valentine’s Day after, we can bear witness to the true meaning of love after its supplanting for centuries by a perverted understanding of it. Let us show by our example of joyful sacrifice that we know how to truly love.

ROMANTIC ASH WEDNESDAY

ASH WEDNESDAY AND VALENTINE'S DAY 14th. February 2018

It is an age-old tactic of the devil to exaggerate the hardship entailed by our obligations towards God. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent twisted God’s command not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and asked Eve if God prohibited them from eating of any tree in the garden. The devil continues using this tactic to today; thus, for example, we rebel against reasonable guidelines against wearing short skirts and low necklines in church because we perceive these guidelines as requiring us to wrap ourselves in sheets.

The same goes true with the mandatory fasting and abstinence from meat on Ash Wednesday, and warnings against celebrating Valentine’s Day in a sinful fashion. With regard to the former, it is difficult, to be sure, as I can attest from my struggle to practice portion control on ordinary days. But we tend to exaggerate the hardship it entails. We forget that 1) nothing prohibits us from making the allowed full meal for the day a special one, and 2) non-meat dishes can be delicious.

As for the latter, why must we equate celebrating Valentine’s Day with sinful activities?  Why must we assume that certain prohibited activities are the only ways we can celebrate our love – especially our romantic love – on Valentine’s Day?

We forget that Valentine’s Day was – and still is – a Catholic feast; that love – including romantic love – is something of God.  It is true that this year, liturgically speaking, Ash Wednesday takes precedence over the feast of St. Valentine. There’s nothing wrong, too, with scheduling a Valentine’s Day celebration the day before or the day after Ash Wednesday this year. But neither is there any reason we cannot, within the limits imposed by the mandatory forms of penance, celebrate our love on Valentine’s Day this year.

In fact, this year is a good opportunity for us Catholics to reclaim Valentine’s Day, to use it as an occasion to remind the world what love really is. As we take our allowed full one meal on that day in special seafood grills or sushi bars with our dates, perhaps after going to the church together to have ashes imposed on our foreheads or after having spent time together in a wholesome yet no less wonderful way (which we are supposed to do anyway on any other time of the year), we are showing to the world what we have always known and which the world has forgotten: love is all about joyful sacrifice. As we enter the Lenten season together with our dates, we remind ourselves and others that suffering is the touchstone of love, that the point of penance is not to perform arduous feats of self-denial but to love God and others better, and that with love, suffering is turned into joy.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, and Lent culminates in the commemoration of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. History tells us that in the year AD 136, the Roman emperor Hadrian — in efforts to obliterate Christianity — built a temple to Venus, the pagan goddess of love, on the site of the crucifixion of Christ. It took great efforts two centuries later to uncover the True Cross beneath the ruins of the temple to Venus.

This Valentine’s Day, and hopefully on every Valentine’s Day after, we can bear witness to the true meaning of love after its supplanting for centuries by a perverted understanding of it. Let us show by our example of joyful sacrifice that we know how to truly love.

EASTER KNOWING

EASTER KNOWING

            Jesus was not a mythical god whose fabled life was played out in a timeless kingdom. Nor was he merely a first century hippie or Gnostic or social proactivater opposing structures and hierarchies. Those who present Jesus like this are playing down or totalling ignoring his divine sonship and salvation ministry. Jesus Christ was no gaunt, shadowy figure, but a person of flesh and blood, hard as nuts and gentle as the dawn in springtime. He dealt with men and women with unconventional etiquette, and even though they often failed to understand him, he made a great difference to their lives. Seen, heard, felt, and touched, here was someone who was just ordinary yet mysterious, but, in the last instance, worth living and dying for. That was what his disciples finally found out, though they had to go a long way to do so.

            There are touching bits of evidence in the gospel that spin off from the disciples’ pride in their association with Jesus. Well, at least till his arrest and death, when they disintegrated and scrambled for safety. Till much after the resurrection of Jesus the disciples do not come off as recruitment-poster models, flawless and handsome genotypes. The amazing honesty of the gospels is that they avoid sculpting the disciples as heroes in marble. And yet Jesus had planted in their hearts the seeds of transformation, a transformation that was triggered at Pentecost.

The memories of the early Christians, treasured and utilised in their preaching and church life, were precisely those words and works of Jesus that had the power to transform lives. How could they forget the risen Lord breaking into the isolation of the upper room where the disciples huddled in fear, or the hauntingly beautiful Emmaus story ? The New Testament’s bare bones narration of the essential words of Jesus are lean and to the point; they bear the sure traces of countless repetition. Despite the cross  -  the emblem of disastrous and monumental failure  -  the Christian community knew one thing, the most basic fact that they encapsulated and proclaimed in a single powerful phrase: “HE IS RISEN.” This has unceasingly reverberated in a community that has remained unshattered for over 2,000 years.

            It was not faith that created the resurrection, but the resurrection that created the faith. The empty tomb may excite our curiosity as a preliminary, but it is the new presence of Jesus in his community that ignites our faith and feeds our proclamation. The earliest form of Easter preaching was that “he was seen.” People saw him, and it was not a ghost they saw. They not merely saw him, they knew him. Thus a new stage was reached in their relationship with him as against the previous stage of earthly life and death. Jesus did not return to the scene like a bizarrely resuscitated corpse, but had traversed death to a new and transcendent existence, neither this side of the grave nor beyond. He belonged here and yet did not. The disciples had a new knowledge of him but at once found it impossible to “place him” in their mental atlas. It was rather their atlas that took on new contours by this new knowledge, the power of which liberated their hearts from the stranglehold of death. Knowledge is power. Knowing Jesus relativises death and tames it. According to the book of Revelation, Jesus holds the keys of death and Sheol, and he turns the key in the heart of the faithful ones to transform their death and abolish Sheol.

So, who is Jesus Christ ? He is the death-perfected Son of God and man, the source and rationale of the Easter proclamation. And the burning of the heart is the test of authenticity, as is made plain at the end of the profoundly touching Emmaus story. What matters is not so much the emptiness of the tomb as the fullness of the heart, which the Lord promised when he said, “....and it shall be given you in full measure, pressed down and flowing over.” From then on hacks have become heroes, and they can now be cast in gold, silver, and bronze.

PREACHING - A SIGN OF CONTRADICTION

More than forty years ago (1976), a Polish archbishop was invited to preach the Lenten retreat for the pope and the Roman Curia. At the time, only the Holy Spirit knew that the retreat master, Cardinal Wojtyla, would become Pope John Paul II two years henceforth. The future Successor of Saint Peter chose as the theme for his meditations the expression Sign of Contradiction. The title derives from Simeon’s prophetic utterance to Our Lady in the temple. “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted” (Luke 2:34).

The Presentation of the Lord in the temple is the archetypical consecration. The evangelist, Saint Luke, makes this abundantly evident in his description of the event. The Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph present the Child to the Lord (cf. Luke 2:22). It is a ritual act that likewise corresponds to the law of the Lord. For what has just happened in this joyful mystery can only be rightly called a consecration (cf. Luke 2:23). As with other consecrations of the Lord, the spoken words are just as momentous as the physical acts.

The words coming out of the mouth of Simeon at the Presentation convey an incontestable Christological content. The messiah has truly come but his messianic mission will be far from easy before he gets to Calvary. There are those who reject Jesus because “no prophet is without honor in his native place and in his own house” (Matt. 13:57). There are those who reject him in Capernaum, walking away “and no longer [accompanying] him” (John 6:66) upon hearing that he is the Bread of Life. Rejected was he then and rejected is he now. But not even rejection by the ransomed of any and all times deters the Lord from carrying out his propitiatory sacrifice on Calvary. Rejection is just not outside the ambit of the Lord’s mediation. And neither is it outside of the mediation of those men who are made other Christs by priestly ordination.

Good Preaching Necessarily Draws Opposition
Following Christ, all priests of the new dispensation are called in their consecrations to speak words that will be opposed. In his public ministry, Jesus spoke words which drew opposition all the time, none more resisted than this word: Repent! Evangelization and catechesis are always moments for conversion. When priests speak in the pulpit, we have a privileged moment for that opposition and resistance to the word to be broken down if we approach our work in the right way. Context, discernment and prudence are key factors in all pastoral endeavors and never are they more essential than in preaching about sensitive topics like God’s gift of sexuality. The overwhelming pastoral need in this area still requires an act of the will on our part. And once that is in place, I still may want to know: Where do I start?

Next year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical on the integrity of the marital act, reminding us that we cannot detach its life-giving meaning from its love-giving meaning without deleterious consequences. It came as the Sexual Revolution was just ramping up. Five decades on, everywhere we look, we see the bitter fruit of that revolution. It begs the question, then, what if we did not go silent in the pulpit on Humanae Vitae? What if we mustered the courage to speak on its truth and did not give in to fear?

Silence on this issue has made it seem that most priests have been unconvinced of Humanae Vitae’s rightness for the faith. It has also made it seem that some priests value their popularity a bit too much. It is good to recall here Jesus’ warning: “Woe to you when all speak well of you” (Luke 6:26). This warning comes with the judgment that false prophets are revealed precisely in the fact that everyone says nice things about them (cf. Luke 6:26). Any false prophet is ipso facto disqualified from being a sign of contradiction.

Let me finish with a few comments about the saint I invoked at the beginning of this essay. Saint Thomas More is in every sense of the expression a saint for our times. Although he was married and had children, celibate priests ought to be mindful of the things we have in common with him. While his conflict was with the king, it was over the indissolubility of marriage, a matter that should concern us all. All Catholics—regardless of their vocations in life—ought to be able to recognize that marriage is a permanent union raised to the dignity of a sacrament by Christ. Without a vibrant marriage culture however, society is inestimably weakened. And so is the Church.

Vocations to the priesthood take root in families and are nourished within this milieu. The flourishing of marriage and family life is tethered ever so fragilely to the flourishing of vocations to the priesthood. But who among us can make the case that marriage and the priesthood are flourishing at this time? All the empirical data suggests not a flourishing but a wilting. Marriage and the priesthood have been harmed enormously by a misuse of sexuality. A return to health for both vocations however is not going to be found in laxity and compromise. No, it will arise out of a defense of what is true. Jesus assures the apostles at the Last Supper that they are already consecrated in the truth. It has occurred in the very word he speaks to them (cf. John 17:17). Let us be re-invigorated to preach that word in season and out of season. For the good of the culture and our faith, let us be and remain signs of contradiction!

SIMEON 29 DECEMBER LUKE 2,22 - 25

SIMEON 29 December Lk. 2,22 – 35

Simeon was a prophet, devout and righteous, docile and sensitive to the Spirit’s leading and prompting. He knew immediately that the Child of Mary was the Messiah, the consolation of Israel. As a prophet, his heart was attuned to the work of God in his generation. As God’s plan unfolded, his heart leapt for joy and adoration at the glory of God’s wisdom and revelation. Simeon is a wonderful model for us as one who was truly governed by God’s Holy Spirit. We, like him, are called to live so as to respond to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Simeon was able to be an instrument of prophecy because he was not dominated by his own thoughts and ideas about the Messiah. The humility and obscurity of Jesus’ coming did not offend him, and he embraced God’s revelation with a glad and willing heart. Every prophet desires to know what God is saying to his or her generation, and is eager to usher in the Kingdom of heaven.

We can almost taste the sense of wonder, marvel and astonishment that Joseph and Mary experienced. The joy at Simeon’s revelation must have sustained them as they grappled to understand the meaning of Simeon’s prophecy. The knowledge that their Son would be a sign of contradiction, one who would cause the rise and the falling of many and reveal the hearts of people, could not have been an easy message to bear.

The suggestion that Joseph and Mary simply absorbed these things without the understandable anguish that would accompany such an announcement is unrealistic. We don’t know the impact that Simeon’s word had on Mary. No mother likes to hear that her child will suffer, and Mary must have wrestled with what it would mean that her own grief would be like a sword piercing her heart. The drama of our salvation is lived out on the backcloth of a profound humanity, embracing both the wonder of hope and the dark clouds of fear and dread. The Holy Spirit wants to bring us deeper and further into the mystery of Jesus’ birth. We can be confident that as we humbly approach the throne of grace for wisdom and light, the sword of the Spirit will pierce our own hearts.

PRAYER

Most Holy Spirit, create in me the heart of a prophet. Grant me a spirit of humility and service and make me sensitive and docile to your guidance and leading. Make me like your servant, Simeon, prepare and long or your coming. Amen.