Parable and Conscience Meditation March 6

Glorious Cross  March 6

(The Crosier) is able to abstain from legitimate satisfactions to be in solidarity with those who have nothing (Profile of the Congolese Crosier).

Who is the courageous person?  It is someone who, in the face of trial, embraces the mission:  the person ready to suffer for the good of others.  Trials are not momentary.  Courageous people face them going to bed and getting up in the morning.  Courage demands paying attention always, accepting what is experienced with an open and calm spirit.  Having such a spirit prepares one for the endurance of privations, physical violence and personal humiliation.  If there is no human support at hand, resistance is nonetheless supported by confidence in God.  Courage remains alert, knowing that enemies are coming to trouble.  The courageous person has no defense except the Lord.  Here one recognizes the image of the Suffering Servant of the Old Testament, a messianic figure through whom the people of Israel will be saved.  He is mild and, at the same time, hard as a rock.  He is sensitive to his own pain and, at the same time, resolved to suffer for others.  He is an image of Christ, who set his face toward Jerusalem where he would be delivered into the hands of the religious and political powers, be abandoned by his friends and executed for the salvation of others:  the truly courageous man.

The wild boar risks falling into the pit to save its baby.  (Mongo)

Parable and Conscience Meditation March 5

Glorious Cross  March 5

For you have given your children a sacred time for the renewing and purifying of their hearts, that, freed from disordered affections, they may so deal with the things of this passing world as to hold rather to the things that eternally endure. (Preface, Lent II).

The Letter of St. James speaks about the root of all conflicts in the community as the egotistical tendencies of the heart that ravage fraternal relationships.  To overcome them, it is necessary to discover and acknowledge them, to detest and resist them.  This is not easy because egotism strongly defends itself.  It does not want to be dethroned.  The egotist offers many justifications for the behavior and turns attention toward others:  “Me, envious?  Not possible!  Me, jealous?  Never!  Me, bad?  Inconceivable!  If you want to see some really vile tendencies, look at the others.”  To loathe and counter egotism is difficult because that is felt as attacking one’s very person. Excuses are made not to fight it:  “Mortification of my desires is a practice now passé, self-denial is an unenlightened idea.  You have to stay positive.”  But the challenge of James remains:  submit, resist, purify, discipline, lament, weep, humble yourself.  According to James, the training of the will through mortification of human desires is what awakens the conscience to a future of participation in Christ’s glory.

When the ostrich has to fly, it claims, “I am a camel” and when it has to carry a load, it claims, “I’m a bird.”  (Arab)

Parable and Conscience Meditation March 4

Glorious Cross  March 4

We venerate your cross, we praise your resurrection (Veneration of the Cross, Good Friday).

Praise be to you, O Christ,

    for the victory of your Glorious Cross!

Through the Power of your Death and Resurrection,

    be our Champion over the evil which afflicts us:

    the sickness of our bodies,

    the errors of our minds,

    the confusion of our feelings,

    the guilt of our consciences,

    the brokenness of our relationships,

    and the weakness of our faith.

Make good our hope in you

    and restore us now and forever to your Glory,

    O Crucified and Risen Lord. Amen.

Strong roots sustain the trees and their leaves.  (Zimba)

Parable and Conscience Meditation March 3

Glorious Cross  March 3

His hands and feet horribly pierced, our Savior is nailed to the cross (Proper liturgy of the Crosiers, second Tuesday before Lent).

It was not necessary to nail Jesus to the cross, as though he had the intention to resist.  No, he went to the cross voluntarily to give his life: “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own” (Jn 10:18).  In this matter, he was the perfect reflection of his Father, who created everything from nothing out of love, who redeemed Israel only for reasons of the heart and who sent his Son because He so loved the world.  Even if Jesus hadn’t been nailed to the cross by the hammers of his executioners, he would have attached himself to it because of his radical devotion to his brothers and sisters.  The nails became his welcome collaborators in the work of salvation.  They became also the irons that branded the marks of his Passion on his glorious body, to remain forever a testimony to his sacrificial love.   Why the need for a show of force at Calvary?  The victim was a volunteer.  This is the example for the disciples, who are always tempted to withdraw their hands from sacrificial commitment and flee the demands of love.

Someone who doesn’t know the turtle shoots arrows at its shell.  (Minyanka)

Parable and Conscience Meditation March 2

Glorious Cross  March 2

In making our profession among our brothers and before the People of God, we solemnly and publicly pledge ourselves to incorporate our life and call to Christian service into the Order of the Holy Cross (Const. 10.2).

“Into the Order of the Holy Cross”—that is the context of our religious formation and Christian commitment.  It is right good the base and point of departure of all Christian spirituality is the Paschal Mystery of Jesus, symbolized by his Cross.  The program of formation in the New Testament is also our own because of the inspired wisdom of our founders.  Our vows invite us to a sacrificial love in imitation of the Crucified.  The vows participate in the Glorious Cross, in the dynamism of dying and rising:  poverty by rooting oneself in the needs of others as priority; chastity by forgetting oneself to embrace every man as brother, every woman as sister; and obedience by serving others with abandon in the community and elsewhere.  Furthermore, the traditional style of life of Canons Regular is marked by the Church of the Acts.  The life-style of the early Church was born of the experience of the Paschal Mystery.  It is a life of dying and rising that seeks as perfect a balance as possible between communion with God, brotherhood among the believers and solidarity with the world.  This is the meaning of “Order of the Holy Cross.”

Anyone who loves his dog has to love its fleas also.  (Mongo)

Parable and Conscience Meditation March 1

Glorious Cross  March 1

How many blows inflicted on the naked body of Jesus in the Pretorium!  How many drops of blood fell from his flesh! (Proper liturgy of the Crosiers, fourth Friday of Lent).

The whip is an instrument of punishment used often with the intention to reform someone.  The hope is that with the lashes of the whip, the transgressor would be saved from his bad behavior and begin acting in a more acceptable way.  Perhaps this was Pontius Pilate’s strategy with Jesus:  having had him scourged, Pilate was hoping to control the growing threat to his sovereignty posed by this troublemaker.  Or, at least, it was an attempt on his part to appease the Jewish leaders and to get them to retract their demand for capital punishment.  In any case, scourging Jesus to shape him up was a promising punishment in Pilate’s eyes.  But this is the question:  to shape him up about what?  Did he show himself a rebel against the occupying Roman regime?  Then he would be punished as a political collaborator.  Or, was he an apostate to the Jewish faith?  In that case, he would be punished as a penitent.  In fact, thanks to the whip, Jesus was very much revealed as the liberator of every regime in the world and the founder of a new, holy people.  The whip accomplished its goal!

If you don’t crush the lemon, you will think it’s a bad herb.  (African Proverb)

TableTalk, Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is like the Lone Ranger getting his masked ripped off or having all your boyfriends see you without your makeup or showing up at work one day in your pajamas.  And the reason is that on Ash Wednesday, each of us stands before God and everybody else with foreheads smudged with ashes.  The basic message is “I am a sinner.”   Receiving ashes is not simply an act of traditional Catholic piety and devotion, not just one more way to show others that we are Catholics.  Receiving ashes is first a public statement that my mask is off.  “I am a sinner.”

In the first reading of this day’s liturgy from the prophet Joel, the following proclamation is made:  “Blow the trumpet in Zion!  proclaim a fast, call an assembly; Gather the people, notify the congregation; Assemble the elders, gather the children and the infants at the breast” . . . and all that because I am a sinner.

Lent is about two things.  The first is how to get the mask off and the second is how to live with it off. 

Lent is primarily about humility, about the truth, about being me without the mask:  I am a sinner.  The Word of God spoken to us in the liturgies throughout Lent is meant to bring us to humility.  Our living together as Christians in the Church during this season also provides the opportunity for us to listen to and take seriously what others are saying about us, about the darkness they see in us, about our weaknesses.  Lent is the time when we take a good look at ourselves every day in the mirror. 

Secondly, Lent is about practicing against our sin.  That is the meaning of penance.  Lenten penance is meant to fit the sin.  It is not just “giving up something” or “doing something more.”  Lenten penance takes our sin very seriously and practices against it. 

If my sin is in my body, for example, if I overindulge in food or drink or abuse my sexuality, then my Lenten penance should practice against it by fasting or abstaining or disciplining myself more carefully.  If my sin is in my mind and imagination, like when I keep reading or looking at or thinking about something that pulls me downward, then I must practice against the sin by a Lenten penance that closes the cover of the book or magazine, turns the TV or computer off or puts something better in my head.  If my sin is in my heart, in the way I am speaking to or acting toward or thinking hurtfully about spouse or children or friends and colleagues or even my enemies, then my Lenten penance should practice against the sin.  Perhaps I need to choose to do at least one good deed each day for someone I offend.  And if my sin is in my spirit, that is, in the way I am with God in my life, if I have abandoned faith or don’t really pray anymore, then the Lenten penance should practice against my sin by a decision like struggling to spend at least three minutes a day prayerfully seeking God’s presence. 

Lent is forty days of humility and penance.  It is forty days of getting the mask off.  Jesus does not speak kindly of hypocrites in our Ash Wednesday Gospel reading.  The hypocrite is the masked man or woman, the person we no longer want to be.  Lent is forty days of practicing living with the mask off.   We must be concerned, as St. Paul writes in the Second Letter to the Corinthians today, to “not receive the grace of God in vain.”  How many of us have done that?  What has happened in our life history to the wonderful Baptismal grace we once received?  What have we come to, despite the great acts of God’s love in each of our lives?  We need to live again with the mask off.

On Ash Wednesday we are invited to be marked with ashes.  When we look at one another today smudged with ashes, we are saying to each other that our masks are off. 

As we leave the Church today, there will be people who see us with the ashes on our forehands.  Some may say, “Oh, I see you are a Catholic!”  Our best response would be to say, “Oh no, I am a sinner!”