I Sunday Lent, Cycle B

Gn 9:8-15
Ps 25:4-9
1 Pt 3:18-22
Mk 1:12-15

It’s that time again, isn’t it? The season where we have put the ashes on our forehead, eat less, give up something near and dear to us, and pray more for forty days in anticipation to the greatest day of our year: Easter! Hopefully we do all these “extra” things not because the Church tells us to do it, but because we desire to honor the faith that has been handed down to us through the ages. Hopefully we do these things not because we want to show-off our “Catholicity”, but because we desire to use these outward signs as an aide to our inner perfection. Hopefully we do these things not because we enjoy extra suffering, but because we earnestly desire to journey into the desert with Jesus and unite ourselves with Him.

For the next few Sundays, we will be hearing from different parts of the Old Testament. When I first read these readings, I did not understand why we would be hearing about Noah and his ark. It would not have been my first choice. But when I looked ahead in the lectionary, I connected the dots. It is all about God’s covenant and promises to His people. We heard about Noah, next week we will hear from Abraham and the following week will be about Moses. These stories are all about how God has intervened in the world. But they are all to foreshadow what will happen at the end of our forty day journey of Lent – we will enter into the paschal mystery.

When Adam and Eve fell, sin entered the world and God has been slowly revealing His plan in the Old Testament to save us from eternal punishment. The first of these is Noah’s Ark. The great flood of forty days to destroy His own creation and to preserve Noah’s family and all the animals was the first attempt to save the world: wipe out the bad and keep the good. In the end, people still sinned. The most important part in the story of Noah’s Ark is when God makes a new covenant with Noah and his people. God says,

This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come of the covenant between me and you… I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant… when I bring clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings... the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings.

Notice that God says covenant three times – this means that this is important to Him. The rainbow is the sign of His promise to us. Saving the world through destructive water doesn’t really work. However, the waters of baptism does save the world as St. Peter recalls in his letter. Instead of the death of mankind to save eight, God uses the death of His Son to save all of mankind. St. Peter calls the flood of Noah a prefiguring of baptism. Because now the waters bring about regeneration instead of death and destruction. Therefore, the promise that God makes is completely fulfilled in Christ’s work. Every time you see a rainbow, you see Christ’s love for all, bringing life to all.

As Jesus was driven into the desert, he thirsted and hungered. We journey with Him into this desert so that the waters of baptism at the Easter Vigil will quench our thirst for God. These forty days are a time of repentance and meditation on Christ – all that He did 2000 years ago and all that He is doing in your life. Lent is not about sadness, but it certainly may seem that way. Traditionally, no weddings or baptisms are celebrated during this time. The “Gloria” is no longer sung, bare branches and muted colors decorate the sanctuary. Music is more somber and penitential.

During Lent, there are extra practices that we do. Simply put there are three of them: fasting and/or abstinence, prayer, and almsgiving. It seems like this season is about pain and suffering as we are “forced” to give up something we like or “forced” to do something holy. If we stop at the act itself, we have lost the meaning behind the action. The giving up of candy or the praying a daily rosary means nothing if your act does not bring you closer to God. All of our Lenten practices must not stop at the act itself, but move to greater goal of growing closer to God. If I were to just read the first reading of Noah’s Ark and stop there, I would not understand that this is all in God’s plan of salvation through baptism. In the same way, we cannot just stop at the one thing and forget the rest. We cannot just give up something and not grow closer to God. Unlike New Year’s Resolutions, these works are done not just for the betterment or perfection of self, but for a greater realization and awareness of the Lord working in your life. If you forget to fast or abstain or you forget to do what you wanted to do for Lent, do not let that get you down or stop your practice. Persevere! Pick up the practice again and pick up where you left off. It is all about increasing your faith and strengthening your relationship with God – transforming your life into what is pleasing to God.

A friend once told me, “Lent is the season of austerity.” It is a season where things are stripped down to the bare essentials so that the TRUTH may be revealed. When that happens, we do not always like what we see and it is sometimes painful. When things are stripped of its ornamentation, it forces us to see more clearly and to focus on what is really important in our life. The truth is sometimes painful, but it should not stop there. The pain can become a source for healing. As we meditate and pray on our Lord’s Passion on the Cross, we see His suffering and we see our sins nailed on the Cross. But if we stopped there, we would not understand the true meaning of suffering: our Redemption in the greatest act of Love. The Cross is our salvation, the Cross is our strength. Look to it and meditate on Him. He is right there suffering with us.

For this Season of Lent let us avail ourselves to the “austerity” of the season. Let us strip away that which is superfluous and unnecessary to face the Truth in our life. Let us take on our practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as a means to understand ourselves better and to grow in relationship with the Lord. Let us do them without forsaking the meaning behind what we are doing. Let us repent of our sinful ways, offering them up to the Lord that we may be transformed and be pleasing to Him once again.

VII Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Is 43:18-19, 21-22, 24b-25
Ps 41:2-5, 13-14
2 Cor 1:18-22
Mk 2:1-12

I’ve got good news and bad news. Bad news is Ash Wednesday is this week. Good news is three more days to fatten up.

God is selfish. Isn’t it true? He really is selfish. He created the universe. He created the sun and the moon and the earth. He created the stars in the heavens and the oceans abroad. He created the plants, the animals, the land, the air – all things visible and invisible. He created everything around us, each and every one of us, he created…. and saw that it was very good. It was pleasing to Him! Why? Why did God make man? The old Baltimore Catechism gives us this answer: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next. It sounds very self-centered that God would create a being just so that He could be known, loved, and served. Doesn’t it? It would be like me going out to make friends just so they can know all about me, love me, and help me whenever I want them to do so. Or maybe like some genius who creates a robot to be his companion for life, waiting on him hand and foot. It sounds pretty selfish doesn’t it? Or at least self serving.

We read today in Isaiah, these words, The people I formed for myself, that they might announce my praise. Yet you did not call up on me… for you grew weary of me…. You burdened me with your sins and wearied me with your crimes. He forms people for himself to praise him and honor him – and they didn’t do what He wanted them to do. Like a failed science experiment He is not happy with the results. Then he goes on to say, It is I, I, who wipe out, for my own sake, your offenses. He speaks to us like He is going to forgive us, but actually He does it for His own sake!! And I’m thinking to myself, “He’s the one who made us!” It was not my fault I was born this way, a sinner. It is not my fault that God created me imperfect and I can’t do everything He created me to do.

It almost seems like one big game: the game of LIFE! He created this Candy Land of a game. He set the rules, and made it impossible for us to win with all these different Chutes and Ladders and hoops we have to jump through. He’s got a Monopoly on everything. He’s the master and we are His Chess pawns. At least that’s what I’m getting from this reading. It is not unnatural to feel a little bit of resentment. It is not unnatural to feel down-trodden and hung out left out to dry. Many atheists, secularists, and those that have fallen away from the faith have taken this sentiment and moved it to its furthest extremes, denying His very existence. They’ve decided that it’s not worth the Risk to live their life in this “Charade”. They’ve crossed every Taboo! and gone so far as to accuse God of rigging the stakes, calling Him selfish, self-centered, or that bully with a magnifying glass and we the ants Scrabbleing about trying not to get burned.

As in every religion it seems like there is some sort of game to appease the gods, but ours is a little bit different. However, our story, our game is the only one where God intervenes, incarnates, lived in His creation, and experienced everything we experience. When you think about it, if this was really just one big game and it was God versus us, God actually “cheats” at His own game so that we could win! If we were to only read Isaiah like I just did, we would have taken Jesus Christ completely out of the picture. How does God the Father wipe away our offenses, how does He make the way in the desert and turn wasteland into rivers? He sends His Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer and die on the cross for us. Is this really selfishness? Is this really for His sake? He could have just said, Forgetaboutit. You’re Forgiven!! But He doesn’t, does He? No, He puts Himself on the line for us, to show how to live, how to love, how to fight temptation, how to be persecuted, and how to die. But why? It doesn’t make any sense!!

It doesn’t make any sense because couldn’t be any less selfish! He is actually all gift and directed towards another. That is love. True love can never be directed towards yourself, it must be directed towards another – to will the good for/to another. That is why we have a Holy Trinity, one God in three Persons. Self-love is and will never be fruitful, but a husband and wife loving each overflows in with so much fruitfulness that another person is created. It is why the marriage between husband and wife is so sacred. Marriage provides a living and tangible example of the Trinitarian relationship of God here on earth. Your marriage is a living witness and testimony of God to the whole world!! The love that a family shares is the very love of God writ small. How awesome and incredible is that? I bet marriages would last a lot longer and be taken more seriously if they realized that their relationship participated in the very divinity of the Holy Trinity. (Suddenly a Vegas wedding in a drive thru chapel doesn’t seem so appealing anymore.) And what kind of parent would not give their children the world? Again God is emulated in this as well. As a Mother or Father cleans up after their children’s mess, God cleans up after ours. How many parents have stayed up with their kids doing homework? Or maybe your kids are working on a big project and it is taking every fiber of your being not to do it for them? Or when they are first learning to tie their shoes, you have to resist the urge to do it for them. Some parents have more success than others – let’s just say in my family, I wore Velcro almost through junior high. Having children helps to draw out the habit of love and turn it into virtue – the love from their hearts into concrete action. That love is and should be completely unselfish, compassionate, and unconditional.

When I hear these readings proclaimed, I am humbled at what God has done for me personally, and then I am struck in awe when I’ve see what He has done and continues to do for the whole world, redeeming creation and making it new. How can this be selfish? How can this be self-serving when He offers Himself only Son for our salvation?

If Jesus Christ did not come into this world to reveal Himself, to heal us of our infirmities, forgive our sins, and bring about virtues that are always grounded in Him, then we might have reason to suspect that this religion and belief thing is all one big game. But He did come into this world: healing the paralyzed, making the blind see, the deaf hear, and forgiving people’s sins. He has shown us the way, the way to look beyond ourselves and to start looking at our neighbor. Selfishness will never look beyond the self, but in God’s great act of love He extends not only His forgiveness, but also His divine Sonship. That means that we have become sons and daughters in Christ. This divine adoption is incredible when you think about… We belong to God, we are in His family. It’s not us versus Him, we are all in this together. That’s why we pray for each other, that’s why we help each other, and are called to love each other – we are in one big family.

I said in the very beginning that God is selfish. Lest I go into heresy or blasphemy or Fr. Ivey gets angry letters and phone calls, I want to qualify what I meant. God is first and foremost love. He is the very definition of love and the measure by which we love. He created us out of love because He wants to share it. He loves us so much that He would never want to suffer eternal punishment for disobedience. He could have made us like robots and never given us free will. But we all know that’s not real love. Forced love is cannot be real love. Love must be freely given and freely reciprocated, given back. So everyday He shows us how much He loves us by giving himself in the Eucharist. Like the paralytic man coming down from the roof, Jesus comes to be with us in the Eucharist. Where the paralytic needed healing, Jesus gives us the healing. Where the man needed forgiveness, Jesus comes and gives us forgiveness. In addition to all of that, when we receive the Eucharist, we receive Him and become transformed into His Body. We become the Body of Christ. As the early Church Fathers wrote, “God became man, so that man could become like God.” As the Father loves the Son, the Son brings us into Himself so that He may love us all the more as sons and daughters of the Father. I think it is pretty incredible then. God is selfish, but only in the sense that He loves us so much that we become like Him and be brought in union with Him – we are His.

VI Monday, Ordinary Time, Year II

Jas 1:1-11
Ps 119:67-76
Mk 8:11-13

I was on a cruise in the Bahamas right before this year began. And on such cruises we have excursions to go on shore and do some exploration. You can water ski, go shopping, parasail, snorkel, and things like that. Well, I went snorkeling and so I’m swimming about looking at the reefs and corals and stuff – just floating on the water. It was actually really neat to just float and let the waves take you wherever. It felt really free and so relaxing compared to being cooped up on the cruise ship rooms. Perhaps you have had that experience as well, just floating around and going wherever the currents take you. It’s just so freeing!

But I think it can be deceptive to let wherever the current takes you because you could swept out to sea and you will lack the strength to come back. In St. James’ epistle he writes about that: But he should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind. The Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign from heaven. Ironically enough, just before this passage we read today, Jesus had fed 4000 people in another region – which is sandwiched on the other side of this passage explaining the feeding of the 4000. To give them the benefit of the doubt: Whether or not the Pharisees were witnesses to that miracle is difficult to say, but we can say because of this “Marcan Sandwich” that this passage is indeed important. But when they asked him for a sign what did Jesus do? He sighed from the depth of his spirit!! I can only imagine Jesus doing a “Divine Face Palm… ‘O God!’” (wait that’s me…) His frustration is palpable. These were men without faith – doubting and being swept around be the wind.

The benefit of being tested in various trials allows one to go along the way with God. If you are never tested, never compared, never met with any obstacles, then you are like one floating around the sea with no direction and no guidance. Yes, you are free… but where are you going? Those that float around must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways. Have a singleness of mind and heart, one that is ordered to God, discerning His will. Ask in faith and not in doubt like the Pharisees. As you encounter obstacles and trials, these are to help you in persevering and finding His will. Be alert and be attuned to His loving guidance at every moment of every day.