Tag: <span>cross</span>

May 26, 2021May 13, 2021

No Picnic

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Every day on earth is a miracle, and we should take stock of this from time to time: My life, as a free and thinking being, is like a universe unto itself; and that universe combines with a squishy pile of matter, subject to all the harsh physical laws to which every rock on our planet is subject. And, that squishy pile of matter is useful for our driving spirit, to transport it in time and space and to manipulate the physical world surrounding it. It is a marvelous reality, one that would be completely unexpected to an external observer of the cold, inanimate broader universe in which human life is found.

But as marvelous as it is, human life is fraught with sufferings, miseries, and humiliations, as depicted in the first reading and the psalm. We pray to God to come to our aid in the midst of our sufferings and difficulties, hopeful that He will lift us up, hopeful that He loves us and is willing to use His power on our behalf.

The gospel of today presents a curious segue from a description of suffering to a request for glory. Jesus describes to his disciples in some detail the trials and sufferings to which He will be subjected, but from which He will emerge in glory. Seemingly rather callously, James and John request a place of privilege in Jesus’ glory, ignoring the part about scourging, mocking, and execution. We may scoff at these men for their lack of compassion with their Master.

But aren’t we the same at times? We want what we want. Like the author of the first reading, we want divine aid, we want to be saved from our miseries. Like James and John, we quest after tangible glory.

In the end, though, as marvelous as this beautiful life is that God has created for us, we cannot expect a reality different from that with which Jesus confronts James and John. Here on earth we are living in a “valley of tears,” in which we are called to drink of the same chalice from which Jesus is called to drink. Here on earth, our peace and glorious destiny are not fully consummated. We are called to accept the sufferings of our life together with Jesus, and offer them as an aid to Him in His great mission of saving human beings.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that you understand His message to James and John, and that you too are willing to drink the chalice of which He drank. Ask Him to give you the strength to hope in eternity for the consummation of your desires for greatness and glory, and to accept fully your mission here on earth, with all its grave challenges.

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March 20, 2021March 3, 2021

Fish out of Water

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

The Christian life makes us behave strangely.

Ordinary people, who perceive no transcendence in their lives and who live for the glories and gratifications of this world, order their lives around what they perceive to be most beneficial to their earthly existence.

This does not automatically convert people into animals. Many of those with secular ideals consider altruism, especially toward those for whom they feel affection or compassion, as part of the scope of what makes their world a better place. Such persons can be kind, understanding, and empathetic.

But to such persons, the Christian way of life is strange. Kindness may not be strange to them, but self-sacrifice for the welfare of another is. Idealism may not be strange to them, but the notion of obedience to God is. It is very strange.

Now, it may not appear to be a difference destined to cause conflict. But when we consider how obedience to God involves things like norms of basic sexual morality and the ordering of society around them, we see how obedience can clash drastically with the earth-bound ideals of our age. And because secular culture is not tethered to any constant norm, the clash can take on different forms in different ages.

From the world’s perspective, the Christian life makes us behave strangely, and at times, the world determines that we must be thwarted from this “strange” behavior.

Today’s first reading shows the Hebrews plotting against the life of the prophet Jeremiah, and in today’s gospel, we see the Pharisees plotting against the life of Jesus. We see in Jeremiah and Jesus how the world cannot tolerate the messenger of obedience to God.

But it is also interesting to note how the temple guards are not successful in arresting Jesus. Because they find His preaching so mesmerizing and authoritative, they cannot bring themselves to carry out their original intention of seizing Him.

In this sense Christians are strange as well: Obedience to God and adoption as children of God ultimately brings about an ennobling transformation in us that even non-believers can perceive–such that their reaction may be as striking as the guards’ reaction to Jesus.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Imagine Jesus asking you, “Can you drink of the cup that I shall drink?” (cf. Mt. 10:38) He asks each of us if we are willing to suffer misunderstandings, envy, and scorn from the world. Answer Him that you know that His way leads to Calvary, and that you will not abandon Him because of it.

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March 13, 2021February 25, 2021

Turnaround

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s first reading speaks of the hope a soul in the midst of conversion, hope for merciful, reviving, refreshing treatment from the Lord.

Then, in that reading, we come upon curious lines:

He will revive us after two days;
on the third day he will raise us up,
to live in his presence.

What a coincidence! This sounds a little like the Resurrection of Jesus. Then we look again at the reading, and it speaks of God striking down, God rending–but then of God reviving. So, is this a reading about conversion, or is it a foreshadowing of the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus?

The answer: Both. Both are intertwined in the eyes of God. Sometimes we forget the totality with which Jesus took upon Himself our sins–all the sins of humanity, from all time. As He takes those sins upon Himself in Gethsemane, then takes them to Calvary to be killed with them, and then ultimately rises, He goes through a “conversion”–He defeats them and raises mankind to a new purity aimed at profound and exalted union with God.

By contrast, in the gospel, the Pharisee sees no need for conversion. He lives a stellar life, unsullied by the typical sins of mankind. He even gives a significant portion of his income to God. But he makes the mistake that St. Paul warns about throughout the epistles: He thinks to find his salvation and righteousness in compliance with the law, in his own virtue.

Jesus is looking for us to do as the tax collector does in today’s gospel: He recognizes his sin, and he seeks conversion; he begs for God’s mercy. Jesus wants us to enter into His great dynamic of conversion, the one He Himself underwent through His Passion, death, and Resurrection.

So, is Lent about foreseeing and meditating on the mysteries of Holy Week, or is it about personal conversion to the Lord? The answer: It is about both. For God, these two concepts are inextricably united. Jesus’ saving mystery is nothing other than the act of the conversion of mankind to God. And we find our righteousness and salvation, and the strength for our personal conversion, only in the power of His conversion act–in the power of the Cross.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Thank the Lord for going through the humiliation and pain of conversion for you, even though He was sinless. Tell Him that you embrace wholeheartedly His Cross and His offer of conversion even though for you, too, it is a painful process. Ask Him to make your heart a purified, total offering to the Father, like His own.

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January 27, 2021January 19, 2021

Many Layers

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

The mystery of the priesthood is multi-layered and rich. We have the exalted, eternal reality that we hear about today: Christ, the High Priest, entering into the everlasting sanctuary, offering Himself eternally, once and for all, for the expiation of sins.

Then we have the reality that the priest offers at the altar each day, in imitation of the Last Supper, where the bread and the wine are truly transformed into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Savior. Once again, all the intensity of love for the welfare of His disciples is present, as it was at that first Mass. And that same reality re-presents the sacrifice of Calvary itself, where the High Priest performs the self-offering that becomes that definitive eternal offering for the forgiveness of sins.

We can think of the priestly act of Christ as a response to sin; we can think of Jesus, as it were, clawing His way back to a good place for humanity with His sacrifice, with great effort.

But it is well to remember that, while God never wills sin itself, the entire drama of Christ’s sacrifice was planned by God from eternity, before Adam ever took his first step in the garden, before the serpent came calling. For God was not content with the level of union Adam shared with Him in Eden. He desired a much more intimate union, one that would come from the full mutual gift of self. And this exalted union is what Christ achieved so neatly, BOTH from the human and the divine perspective, on the Cross, and re-constitutes continuously in eternity.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: In the midst of the evil surrounding us each day, tell Jesus that you trust in the divine plan; that even the evil that occurs winds up paradoxically as an ingredient so effective for the fulfillment of His plan, that it almost appears necessary. Just as Adam’s sin was the catalyst that led to our glorious Savior. Tell Him that you trust in Him, and lean confidently on Him.

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January 21, 2021January 12, 2021

The Center of It All

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

As we put today’s first reading and gospel together, we realize that the climactic moments of Jesus’ ministry where he heals great numbers of the sick, disabled, and possessed only make sense in the shadow of the Cross. And, the Cross only makes sense in light of His role as the great, eternal High Priest.

In the gospel we see Jesus pressed from every side as the afflicted clamor to get close to Him for healing. It is a very vivid, earthy picture, where we even see Him order up a boat in case he needs a little physical distance.

Yet this very earthy seen is part of a glorious plan that, per the first reading, ultimately plays out for eternity in Heaven, where the great High priest has entered once and for all, offering Himself as the definitive sacrifice.

One can say that, as omnipotent as God is, and by inclusion of course therefore Jesus Christ Himself is likewise, He set up such an inviolable and permanent respect for man’s freedom, that to release us from the consequences of that freedom, He felt the need to offer Himself up in atonement.

It is this act of atonement, Jesus’ death on the Cross, that reaches back and overshadows with its power the incredibly potent scene in today’s gospel, of the transmission of saving healing. The power to save man from the consequences of his sin comes from the Cross.

And it is that same act of atonement, the one we see by its effect present in today’s earthy scene, that is offered eternally by the great High Priest, Jesus Christ, to His Father for us all.

Not only the gospel, but all of salvation history, from the moment Adam sinned to the end of time–indeed, all of history–revolves around the saving act of Jesus’ death and Resurrection. And, with the great High Priest offering that sacrifice for eternity in heaven, eternity itself revolves around the very same axis.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: One can never meditate too much on the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. But today, perhaps meditate on these mysteries in in a new light: The light of how they stand center stage in both time and in eternity as the apex moment of the grand plan that God designed for man at the beginning. Then, chat with Jesus, great High Priest and yet your intimate friend, and ask Him to help your life to fit into that plan in just the manner that He wishes.

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November 4, 2020October 17, 2020

Take It Up

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Let’s be honest: St. Paul might not get an “A” in Advanced Writing class at Harvard. He’s guilty of a run-on sentence here and there. Sometimes there are different concepts combined into one sentence. To be fair, he did his writing at a time when standards were a bit different. Anyone who has studied classical Latin knows that run-ons were the order of the day.

This makes it all the more fun to tease out the depths of his heart through his words. His theology is rich; his spirituality, profound.

For example, what do we take from these words?

“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
For God is the one who, for his good purpose,
works in you both to desire and to work.
Do everything without grumbling or questioning,
that you may be blameless and innocent.”

So, so often we think our work as Christians is to try to deduce moral perfection and work toward it. But there is a reason to be fearful, to tremble, to stand in awe. It is a joyful fear, if there is such a thing; a joyful awe. The awe-inspiring thing about Christianity is that “God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.” This is why we must not grumble or question. Ours is to draw near to Him, as near as we can possibly come each day. Approach the Eucharist and dialogue with Him in the intimacy of our hearts after Communion. Spend solid chunks of time with Him in dialogue and prayer. And then, ours is to trust Him, in fearsome awe: For He is the one who, for his good purpose, will create good desires in us and accomplish what He wants in us. He has got it all figured out.

So much better than trying to inject exquisite, cold, dry little moral niceties deduced from our own two-dimensional intellect into our day, as some sort of substitute for true meaning. He alone, and what He does in us, is that meaning.

In the Gospel today, Jesus furthers our understanding of why we are to approach our Christian vocation with fear and trembling, and He does so in a rather sobering way. We are to be willing to sacrifice even the noblest things that are dearest to us for Him, as we take up a real cross of suffering in life to follow Him. That work that Paul describes God doing in us in not always fun, and is certainly not easy. It involves the cross of radical detachment.

But, as Paul elsewhere says, “If we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him.” And what a glorious life it is–even here on earth, so much more fulfilled and happy than a life without Him. With a yet far happier and more glorious eternal life to follow.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: The path God has planned for each of us is awe-inspiring. On the one hand, filled with His tender and loving guidance, which itself is the source of our happiness. On the other hand, full of increasing detachment, sacrifice, and some suffering as well. Think of Jesus in prison on the night before He died. Talk to Him there. In the intimacy of that setting, ask Him how better to take up your own cross and follow Him.

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October 9, 2020September 18, 2020

The Curse of God

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In the first reading, St. Paul explains some beautiful theology about how only faith in God saves; abiding by the law cannot save anyone. Essentially, the best you can do by keeping the law is a non-negative. By following the law, even, we may say, the Ten Commandments, the best we can do is avoid heaping additional condemnation (“curse”) on ourselves through additional sin.

Since following the law cannot save, the implication is that condemnation is already upon us, even before we transgress the law for the first time. This is the doctrine of original sin.

When Paul says that faith alone saves, he is not saying that whether or not we follow the Ten Commandments does not matter. Rather, he is saying that a non-negative isn’t going to get us out of the rut of condemnation we’re already in. We need the “strong man” from today’s Gospel passage, God Himself in the flesh, to go beyond the non-negative to a net positive–to blow the doors of the cell of condemnation in which we have enclosed ourselves through sin, and release us to be free in Him once more.

And this salvation comes free of charge–all we need is to believe in it, to have faith like that of Abraham.

When speaking about the curse hanging over us from which Christ saves us, St. Paul uses a striking image: “Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree.” (Cf. Dt. 21:23) In the book of Deuteronomy, a book of the law, it is mandated that a corpse hanged on a pole for a capital offense not be left overnight, because a corpse hanging on a tree is a curse of God.

The capital offender has done what St. Paul describes. He has heaped condemnation upon himself by the most grievous offense of the law. As such, his corpse on display represents God’s curse.

But in reference to this passage from Deuteronomy, Paul emphasizes that “Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” by becoming the one whose corpse hangs from the tree. By becoming the curse of God. No wonder Christ utters those mysterious words from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (cf. Mt. 27:46) He has taken the place of the capital offender and, hanging from the tree, has become the curse of God. “For our sake,” Paul tells us elsewhere in arguably the most striking statement in all his writings, the Father “made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

This is the degree of the love of God for us.

So when you call out to Him with a need, will He not hear you?

So it is, as today’s Alleluia verse tells us, that “The prince of this world will now be cast out, and when I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all to myself, says the Lord.”

In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus explains why he can’t be casting out demons by the power of another demon. The demon is safe from expulsion until one stronger than he–that is, not another demon, on the same plane of power as he–comes along. Only when one stronger comes along, Jesus, the Son of God, is the demon cast out. (cf. Jn 12:31-32)

Today’s gospel thus explains the dynamic described by St. Paul. In the act of becoming the curse of God, and thus removing our curse, Jesus is the strong man by whom “the prince of this world will now be cast out.” And so it is that, lifted up to the earth, as the condemned man on the tree, the curse of God, Jesus draws all men to Himself, and grants them the free gift of salvation that they could never achieve on their own, even through perfect fulfillment of the law.

If God the Father is the Creator, and Christ the Redeemer, then Christ’s Redemption is the the Father’s most awe-inspiring creation in the history of the universe.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Gaze at a crucifix and behold the curse of God: Christ voluntarily become sin to save you. When we do not trust in Christ’s power and love for us, it is like the slap in the face that the soldier gave him before the Sanhedrin (cf. Jn. 18:22). Ask Jesus to help you to love Him by trusting in His mercy for you, and by trusting in His power to direct your life on the path of happiness.

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October 5, 2020September 15, 2020

Heresy: How to Win Friends

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In today’s first reading, Paul lays down for all time a precedent for rigorous defense against heresy. He does not say that those who preach a gospel different from the gospel of Jesus should receive an audience and respectful dialogue. He says they are to be accursed. Twice.

Of course, Paul’s intent is not to urge us to treat others who think differently from us with disrespect or disdain (or to burn them at the stake). He himself opens a respectful dialogue with pagans at the Areopagus (cf. Acts 17).

Rather, he calls out what a grave sin it is to mislead the flock of Jesus with false teachings. The history of the Church is full of men who teach falsely, often for one of two reasons: 1) To reduce a profound, mysterious truth to a false image that, however, is more understandable for people (e.g. Arianism), and 2) To circumvent the more difficult and uncomfortable demands of Christianity (e.g. Modernism). The object of both of these distortions appears to be the attraction of more followers through greater ease; ultimately, worldly, human vanity.

We may not be called upon to preach publicly in defense of Christian truth against heresy. But Paul’s message holds a lesson for us. Too often we’d like to “dumb down” the Gospel in our own lives, to make it easier for ourselves. We also would often like to make Christianity more aligned to the views of the many nice people in the world around us, to allow ourselves to feel less like a fish out of water, and to make it easier to get along.

Faithfulness to the difficult ideal of the Gospel does not mean all of us are called out into the desert to live as hermits, and it certainly does not mean that we should shun our neighbors or call down God’s wrath on them.

Rather, all the purity, difficulty, challenge, and exalted excellence of Christ’s message is summed up in the words of the scribe today’s gospel, which Jesus immediately affirms: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” True, humble love of God and our neighbor will incline us away from anything that offers an easy solution, for ourselves or others, down the wrong path.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that you will follow wherever He leads, even if it is to Calvary. Ask for His help never to be separated from Him through your own love of ease, comfort, and the esteem of others. Ask Him to help you persevere in your resolution to follow Him and His message, as challenging as it is, in its fullness.

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September 14, 2020August 28, 2020

The Power and the Glory

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today again we see magnificent wisdom on the part of the Church in its selection of the readings for this feast.

There is something unexpected about today’s feast. It is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, also known as the Triumph of the Holy Cross. It is not called the Triumph of the Resurrection, but of the Cross.

The second reading is one of the most beautiful passages in all of Scripture, perhaps because St. Paul himself is clearly so moved by the degree of Christ’s gratuitous willingness to undergo slavery, abasement and death to free us from our sins. In harmony with the glorifying action of God the Father, St. Paul exalts joyfully in the greatness and glory of such a Savior.

The Gospel passage recalls the first reading, where at God’s command, Moses lifts up the image of a saraph serpent, and the Israelites are cured of their snakebites, which are the result of their sin against God. Interestingly, it is the image not of something holy, but of the serpent–the fruit of their sin–that is used to bring about their healing.

So it is with the Holy Cross: It is God crucified, the horrible fruit of our sin, that heals us from that sin. “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

It is not the Resurrection on its own that we venerate, forgetting about the Cross like some sort of unpleasant necessary evil that is best not talked about. Rather, the glorious, triumphant light of the Resurrection shines on and exalts the Cross as the culminating act of all history: The moment when God Himself in flesh performs the greatest act of love ever witnessed, sacrificing His life out of love that “the world might be saved through Him.” The Cross is the moment of Jesus Christ’s great power, when He wins victory over sin and death.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Contemplate a crucifix. Imagine the glorious light of the Resurrection shining on it. Tell Jesus that you adore Him right there, at that moment, on the Cross, and you believe in the power of His sacrifice. Tell Him that you embrace the way of the Cross, of sacrificial love, for your own life as well, with all your heart.

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September 5, 2020August 24, 2020

Emotional Poverty for Others’ Enrichment

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

The same St. Paul who gives us the first reading also wrote in his second letter to the same audience, “For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sake he became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

Paul describes himself today as called to be a poor, homeless outcast for the enrichment of the Christian communities. There is no doubt that in his own calling, he seen an extension of the mission of Christ in this specific vein.

Have you ever felt as though you sacrificed in a big way for someone else’s benefit? Have you ever kept the sacrifice hidden or downplayed it so as not to mitigate the happiness of the beneficiary through some sort of sense of debt to you?

This noble approach can bring with it a further sacrifice of a sense of sadness, an unintentional, unwanted feeling of self-pity for not being recognized and loved in the way that you yourself are loving. Such self-pity is not really selfishness, as long as we do not cast passive-aggressive guilt on others with our words, but rather the normal human reaction to a perception that we give more love than we receive.

We hear it a bit in Paul’s words today. The Christian communities are benefiting, and he is paying the bill. He doesn’t reproach the Corinthians for this state of affairs, but rather leverages it to encourage them not to be proud and boastful, but mindful that there is nothing that they have that they have not received.

Even today’s gospel contains overtones of the same sort of dynamic. In the act of “owning” the Sabbath, Jesus is providing for his disciples’ needs. Yet He is the one who is taking the slander for it, one more plank of resentment to form the cross upon which He will ultimately hang. He provides, He pays the price, and the disciples as usual come across as a bit oblivious.

And then, let us look at His Heart in the moment when He ultimately pays that price. Hanging on the cross, He cries, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” We could imagine Him paying the price from the position of infinite wealth and abundance from His position as Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. But no, as Paul says, He has become poor. Needy. Emotionally, existentially needy. He has wanted and accepted this–to lift us up, not from a position of strength, but of poverty and weakness.

A feeling of loneliness, particularly one of unrequited love or a sense of ingratitude from others, is not something to be shunned as selfish self-pity, but a state to be embraced as one of the most privileged states within which to unite ourselves to Christ. It is one of the realest, deepest ways to experience something of the depths of what He experienced for us on the cross.

When we feel lonely, in embracing this cross, we can offer it for those we love, perhaps especially those loved ones from whom we are feeling some sense of ingratitude, whether real or subjective, whether lasting or fleeting. This compounds the value of whatever sacrifice we have made for those we perceive as ungrateful, taking a mere earthly gesture of generosity on our part and conferring upon it resounding, eternal value.

Like the value in the economy of salvation of the sacrifices that Paul offered for the early Christians, which powered evangelization itself.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Think of moments of loneliness that you have experienced, especially those harder moments of loneliness that have cut deeper because they have been occasioned by those you love. Now, contemplate the depth of loneliness that Christ experienced on the cross: Abandonment, confusion, ingratitude from the intimates whom He has been shepherding for three years–but also, emotional distancing from His own Father, His all in all. Tell Him that you are happy to experience the loneliness that comes from love and generosity whenever He should wish to share with you this gift, to win grace for souls as He did. Tell Him that you are willing to become poor, that others may become rich in Him, and that you trust Him to take care of all your needs.

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