Lent Week 4: Friday

Todays readings: Wis 2:1a, 12-22;Ps 34:17-18, 19-20, 21, 23; Jn 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

One of the most memorable scenes from Aaron Sorkin's play A Few Good Men, made all the more unforgettable by Jack Nicholson in the film adaptation, is the courtroom exchange between Lt. Kaffee and Colonel Jessep. This fiery scene reaches its peak when Kaffee demands the truth. Jessep's explosive retort that Kaffee "can't handle the truth" is a classic and much parodied line but it points to a dark side of fallen human nature. Our reaction to the truth can often be a less than positive experience. Many of us have felt the paralysis that the realisation of a loved one's death can bring; the irritation that arises when our debating partner raises a point that we can not rebuff or deny; and the anger that is caused when we discover a previously unknown weakness in ourselves. It is no surprise that the first reaction that fallen man has to the truth of his nakedness is shame. Whilst our reaction to the truth may bring discomfort and a pain, this does not make the truth any less true. It is therefore no surprise that when Truth itself comes in the person of Jesus Christ, that as the Book of Wisdom predicts, "the very sight of him is a burden to us".

This fear of the truth however lies within our fallen nature. Our perception and understanding of Truth is limited and it seems strange to us. In this case we turn from Truth and raise our emotional boundaries but the Truth is not far and alien. It invites us to live with it and even in it. It calls us to relationship based on love and joy. The greatest mark and sign of this is found in Christ's death and resurrection. The Lenten season allows us to deepen our relationship with Truth. It helps us to realise that we have nothing to fear from the truth. That is is not a burden because God carries that burden for us. It allows us to break down those remnants of the fortresses that we have allowed to build up round our hearts and open them fully to the love of God. With confidence we can the say that "we can handle the Truth!"; because Truth can handle us

Lent Week 4: Thursday

Today's readings: Exodus 32:7-14; Psalm 105(106); John 5:31-47

The words of the covenant echo through the Scriptures - 'you will be my people and I will be your God'. This is the relationship established by God with the people of Israel, in the first place through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then renewed through Moses, David and the other leaders and prophets of the people. As Christians we believe that the new covenant promised through the prophet Jeremiah is established in the work and person of Jesus Christ.

The first reading records a moment of tension in that covenant relationship. Knowing that the people have already lost faith and are worshipping a calf of molten metal God decides to dissolve his relationship with them. 'Your people', he says to Moses, 'whom you brought out of Egypt, have apostatised'. God's plan is to destroy them and begin again with a new group descended from Moses: 'of you I will make a great nation'.

But Moses, extraordinarily, helps God to be true to Himself! Why be angry with 'this people of yours', he says to God, 'whom you brought out of the land of Egypt'? It is as if he says: remember who they are and how you have already committed yourself to them, swearing by your own self. So, we are told,  'the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened'. It anticipates that moment in the parable of the Prodigal Son where the elder brother refers to 'this son of yours' only for the father to say 'your brother'. There are relationships that cannot be disowned no matter what difficulties may attend them. Covenant means pledged or committed love. Once enacted we are then forever related to those with whom we have made such commitments. We can never disown them for such is the nature of a  covenant.

The difficulties of understanding and sustaining the relationship with God are recognised also in the gospel reading. The works I do, says Jesus, and the Father who sent me, bear witness to me. He is arguing with his listeners precisely about his work and mission. 'I am not going to accuse you before the Father', he continues, 'let Moses be your accuser'. We have just seen what kind of accuser Moses was, appealing on behalf of the people and calling God to be true to His commitment! Jesus is the new, and greater, Moses in whom a new, and greater, covenant is sealed. He is the new, and greater, Mediator in whose obedience man is reconciled to God and returns faithful love to God.

In God's fidelity, some like to say, we see  what divine immutability implies: God has chosen us to be his people and he is our God. If we are now tempted to doubt this we have the blood of Jesus sealing a new and everlasting covenant. We may reject and try to forget God but God will never reject or forget us, for we are (literally) carved on the palm of his hand.

Lent Week 4: Wednesday

Today’s readings: Isaiah 49:8-15; Psalm 145:8-9, 13cd-14, 17-18; John 5:17-30

“My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”

Jesus makes himself equal to God, both in action and by words. He breaks the Sabbath, and he calls God his father. When they criticize him, Jesus argues that the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that the Father does himself. We may ask ourselves then, what the Father does, and why is it that Jesus remains active on the very Sabbath.

If we turn to the origin of the Sabbath, we read in the first chapter of Genesis how God created the earth and all within it. He gave us the frame of our existence, and then creates the image of himself to rule over the creation. Adam and Eve, and by them all humanity, has been given some of the power of God, some of the same capacity of creativity, of organizing, of shaping the surroundings of man. Still, on the Sabbath, all human beings are asked to stay calm, to remain passive. Is it because God himself rests on this day?

As we read on in the Bible, however, we see that there is a difference between the actions or non-actions that man is called to do on this day, and what God does himself. Because, where man is commanded to lay down his work (Exodus 20,10), God himself “works” in the sense that he blesses the day and makes it holy (20,11). The blessing implies that we receive from God what we cannot give to ourselves. It is a day of healing, a day of restitution, a day of life. It is not, as we may tend to feel, a moral obligation to remain silent and passive during the holy Sunday, like in blind obedience. It is not a day of blindness, it is the opposite; a resting day where we open our eyes for God's acting in us, it is a day for us to be sanctified by God. This means that we give God room in our life, to let him give us what we are not capable of giving ourselves. We are called to stay close to ourselves, to open up to the source of life within ourselves which has its origin in the Son of God, the source of life (Revelation 21,6). Jesus Christ leads us to God’s blessing, and with his blessing, we may pass on to others what we ourselves have received.

Many mystics have experienced and understood the existential necessity of letting God into our inner life, and one of these voices comes from Charles de Foucauld, a Cistercian monk who directly inspired the foundation of the congregations the Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus. Contemplating for many years in the desert of Algeria, he described this fundamental dimension of the Christian live through a simple sentence. Let us then, in this period of lent, meditate on his words:

- an hour a day,

- a day a week,

- a week a year,

shall man stay in his desert

Lent Week 4: Tuesday

Today's readings: Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12; Psalm 64; John 5:1-16

In the Church's liturgy, Ezekiel's vision of the temple with the stream of fecund and life-giving water flowing from its right side is taken to be an image of baptism. During Eastertide, when the people are sprinkled with water from the baptismal font, the Church sings: "I saw water flowing from the right side of the temple ... and it brought God's life and his salvation". For the temple is Christ's body (see John 2:21) which was pierced in the side by a lance as he hung on the cross, "and at once there came out blood and water" (John 19:34). Interestingly, St John does not say on which side Christ was pierced but Christian art and tradition, inspired by the vision of Ezekiel, has always indicated the right side. Flowing from Christ's side, blood is taken to be a sign of the Eucharist, and water to be a sign of baptism, and through these sacraments of his Body, the Church, we share in God's life, and receive his salvation. As we pass the mid-Lent mark, the Church's liturgy increasingly indicates these great sacraments of initiation which thousands of people around the world will be receiving this Easter.

Although we often think of Lent as our 'springtime', and we are concerned with the penances, spiritual renewal, and soul-searching that we might undertake, the holy season of Lent is not specifically for us who have already been baptised. At its core, it is for those candidates for the sacraments (catechumens), and we who are already baptised accompany them in these final weeks of their preparation. We accompany them in prayer but above all by example. As the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) puts it: "During Lent, the period of purification and enlightenment, the faithful should take care to ... give the Elect [those to be baptised] the example of their own renewal in the spirit of penance, faith, and charity".

Therefore, the discipline of Lent is lived for others, and hence we are reminded that the whole Christian life also has this communal dimension. What we do does not just affect us, but also our brothers and sisters in Christ - who may be encouraged or scandalized by our actions - as well as non-Christians. As Christians, we have to give ourselves daily, and not just for 40 days, to God's call to conversion and discipleship - taking up our mat, and rising from sin to walk with Christ. No one gets in our way, or prevents us from the life-giving waters apart from our sinful selves. But if we let him, Jesus Christ will raise us up, and lead us to the waters, so that the new life we received in baptism might bear fruit in good works, as we become like a tree whose fruit and leaves are freely given to others that they might have life and healing. Then, transformed by God's grace, we shall be "like a tree that is planted beside the flowing waters, that yields its fruit in due season and whose leaves shall never fade; and all that [we do] shall prosper" (Psalm 1:4).

Lent Week 4: Monday

John 4: 43-54: From Faithless Familiarity to Fervent Faith

Today’s gospel documents an interesting range and also shift in opinions and attitudes to Jesus. It also shows Jesus to be perceptive and realistic about people’s attitudes to him but also understanding, even accommodating, and helpful in spite of this, and thus able to draw them on to real faith and real recognition of him.

At the outset Jesus accepts that locals do not tend to see one of their own as remarkable (v 44). Familiarity, if it does not breed contempt, breeds a certain indifference. It is only the stir he has created in Jerusalem, turning over the market stalls in the temple, that improves their view of him (v 45). I guess the motivation for this change of opinion could be very mixed., even dubious. The Northerners, the Galileans, were happy to hear about one of their own stirring things up in the sophisticated and perhaps conceited, even corrupt, southern capital. However, Jesus accepts this advance in his status and it becomes a platform for locals to approach him for a cure (v 47). Again Jesus sees that this is all that is wanted and though he makes it clear his own aim is faith in himself for who he really is, not just what he can do for people, he still works the healing miracle (v 48-49). Seeing the miracle, though Jesus is no longer present, a whole household comes to belief – which we can take to mean come into a saving belief in Jesus as the saviour sent by God. From not very promising beginnings a whole household has come to faith and the story continues to ripple out through history, making waves (vv 53-54).

This gospel thus tells us that even now God is also astute in dealing with each of us, and the mixed bag in us, consisting of varying intellectual attitudes, requests for our daily needs, a genuine search for salvation and desire to love God simply for who God is. It is good to recognise and admit to ourselves our own complexity, one that is fluid rather than static. It is also good to reflect on our own faith journey and appreciate just how God has dealt with the complexity of who we each are. This will teach us useful lessons enabling us to help others.

This Gospel also encourages us to accept, realistically and pragmatically when dealingpastorally  with people we meet and who we want to help come to and grow in knowledge and love of Jesus. At the same time we are to be wise, discerning and shrewd, and keep hoping and praying expectantly, if patiently, for real saving faith to be planted and grow in them. God does continue to work signs in our day, and people do come to believe in Jesus.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Today's readings: 1 Samuel 16:1,6-7,10-13; Psalm 22; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

Saint John, throughout his gospel, makes great use of the images of darkness and light. In today's gospel this is manifested in Jesus' encounter with a blind man, a man who lived in darkness (Isaiah 9:2, Matthew 4:16). This man's physical disability is used by John to represent the spiritual blindness of Israel and indeed of the whole of humanity. We walked in darkness, unable to see God, until Jesus, the light of the world gave us sight (John 9:5).

The early Church associated this illumination, this enlightenment, with baptism. Indeed, today's gospel was often used in the instruction of catechumens to illustrate this very idea. Just as the Blind Man receives the gift of physical sight after he is anointed by Jesus (John 9:6) and sent to wash in a pool of water (John 9:7), so the Christian receives the gift of spiritual sight, of faith, when he or she comes up out of the waters of baptism.

But it seems that whilst this healed man - and by implication also the newly baptized Christian - is able to 'see' the light after he comes up out of the waters, he does not immediately understand the gift that he has received, or indeed the true identity of the giver of that gift. Our formerly blind man is able to tell his neighbours that Jesus has healed him, but he cannot tell them where Jesus is. A process of deepening must take place if his relationship with Christ is to mature. This deepening occurs in the midst of his interrogation by the Pharisees, by the testing of the Pharisees.

Here we have an interesting parallel with Jesus' forty day fast in the desert. It is often suggested that Jesus in his humanity came to understand his mission in his confrontation with Satan in the wilderness. The testing of Satan deepens Jesus' understanding of how he must carry out God's will. Similarly, in today's gospel it is the questioning, tempting, testing of the Pharisees that leads the healed man to delve further into the mystery of the Incarnation.

First, in response to the confused questioning of the Pharisees, he declares that Jesus is a prophet (John 9:17); next, when the questioning gets more aggressive, his spirited defence of his healer leads him to declare that Jesus is 'from God' (John 9:23); finally, when the Pharisees throw him out, Jesus comes to find him and reveals that he is the Christ, the Messiah. The Blind Man bows down and worships (John 9: 38). We see in the Blind Man, then, an allegory of a spiritual journey. The once Blind Man faithfully witnesses to what he has seen. As a result his gift of sight, given by cleansing waters, matures into a recognition of Jesus' true identity.

We too are on a spiritual journey. We come from God, and are on our way back to God. Our baptism marks not the end of the journey but a new beginning. It is a gift that must be unpacked over a lifetime. Yet often we only come to understand how precious our baptism is, how precious is our gift of faith, when that gift is threatened. During Lent we follow Christ into the desert to be tested. This testing is to help us refocus our priorities. We more easily recognize what is truly important when it seems like we have nothing.

Subscribe to the Godzdogz Podcast on Itunes

Lent Week 3: Saturday

Today's readings:  Hosea 2:15-6:6; Psalm 50; Luke 18:9-14

Today's parable is a wonderful trap. We can easily find ourselves, like a teacher I heard of saying to her class, 'thank God children that we are not like the Pharisee'. Catching ourselves on we might then say, 'well, actually, even if I'm not a sinner like the Publican, I'm a more sophisticated kind of sinner, more like the Pharisee, with more interesting sins, things like pride and self-righteousness and hypocrisy'. Either way we are thinking of ourselves rather than God and that seems like the opposite of what prayer is about. We are trying to solve spiritual problems mathematically when they can only be solved in suffering, prayer and love.

The parable of the two men who went up to pray in the Temple leads us into the heart of paradoxes and reversals that characterise the teaching of Jesus through and through. This is especially so as he journeys towards Jerusalem for it is in Jerusalem that he enters personally into the great paradox and enacts the great reversal. The first will be last and the last first, he taught them. The one who humbles himself will be exalted and the one who exalts himself will be humbled. The prodigal son is welcomed home in spite of the protestations of the elder brother. Love your enemies and hate your families. The one who saves his life loses it and the one who loses his life for the sake of the gospel will find it. The one who thinks he is qualified is criticised and the one who thinks he does not belong goes home having found favour with God.

The suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus is the great reversal in which all these teachings are fulfilled. In the garden of Gethsemane we will see him, a humble and humbled man brought to his knees by life. We are told that the prayer of the humble man pierces the heavens and it seems as if this prayer also is one that is not answered: 'let this cup pass me by'. But his other, deeper prayer is answered, of course, 'not my will but yours be done'. In his mathematics of the spiritual life the Pharisee needed to compare himself with the Publican as if it was some kind of competition. The humble person, on the other hand, compares himself only with God and thereby knows his own nothingness and his own greatness.