Six months ago we had a flood at our home which caused extensive damage to our first floor. As the walls were being removed, we discovered mold, some that was caused by the flood and some that had been there for quite some time, growing and spreading. The discovery of mold led to the removal of ceilings and sub floors. Until recently, our first and second floors were exposed down to floor and ceiling beams!
As I begin to prepare for the season of Lent, I find that our home renovation is a nice working image for the spiritual potential of Lent. Like how a fresh coat of paint can completely change the feel of a room, adding some more time for personal prayer or joining in a service project might be enough to enrich your spiritual life. On the other hand, the season of Lent is really about a much larger renovation project. Lent invites us with the tools of prayer, fasting and almsgiving to strip the old paint off, to pull up the floors and look for the sin that is like mold. What is the sin, that like mold is growing unseen within us but spreading out through our thoughts and actions. Through the disciplines of Lent we are called to strip away the walls that may be allowing that sin to spread.
This Lent the archdiocese has some tools to offer for the renovation project. If you are thinking about praying more with Scripture, consider buying the newly revised New American Bible which is the fruit of almost 20 years of new Scholarship on the books of the Old Testament. Again this year, on Wednesday evenings in the Archdiocese of Washington and Diocese of Arlington churches will be open for prayer and confession.
We can make our fasting a tool for feeding the hungry by participation in Operation Rice Bowl. I know that the presence of the rice bowl on my table is a reminder of the fast I have chosen and it makes it easy to put the money I save by giving up my daily Starbucks fix right in the bowl.
Our Environmental Concerns committee is offering a Lent Calendar that invites us to reflect on the stewardship dimension of our discipleshipfrom an environmental perspective through prayer and a “carbon fast.” All of these are tools to aid us in deepening our relationship with the Lord and leaving go of bad habits that grow into sin and take on good habits that grow into virtues.
One long-suffering landlord tells of having to evict tenants who refused to pay their rent, in spite of repeated calls and personal visits. Before they left, however, the tenants trashed the house: The front door was shattered; the drains were clogged with paraffin; the electric system was intentionally shorted out; beer bottles were used to smash the windows; all the appliances were sold; the carpet was ruined with bleach; battery acid was poured on the floor tiles; and the walls were spray painted and hacked with a knife.
The parable Jesus told in today’s gospel includes a landlord horror story. These tenants, however, didn’t simply refuse to pay the rent. The beat and killed those whom the landlord sent to collect it- including the landlord’s son. These tenants weren’t just vandals and deadbeats. They were murderers!
Jesus told this parable as a challenge and a warning to certain religious leaders of his day: They were the tenants in the story; the landowner is God the Father; the son is Jesus himself; and the vineyard represents the people of God.
But in a sense, we can understand this parable as being a challenge to us too. Just as the religious leaders in question had been given stewardship of God’s people, we too have been given stewardship, or responsibility, for the things of God- people, property, talents, opportunities, and time. Indeed, all of creation is ultimately God’s, and nothing takes place in it unless he allows it to happen. As Christians, even our own lives are not our own. “A Christian is not his own master,” wrote St. Ignatius of Antioch, “since all his time belongs to God.” In all things, we are simply custodians.
You and I have been entrusted with great gifts, for which one day we must render an account. We have a generous and patient landlord; may we be faithful and responsible tenants.
Some two hundred years ago, a Cherokee Indian named Drowning Bear allowed a missionary to read to him several chapters of the Bible. After having listened for some time, Drowning Bear said to the missionary: “It seems to be a good book; strange that the white people are not better after having had it for so long.”
Drowning Bear’s implication was that if we actually lived in obedience to the Word of God, our lives would be dramatically better as a result. This was precisely our Lord’s point in today’s gospel. Jesus invites us not only to hear his Word; he wants us also to act on it. To put it another way, God’s Word was spoken not simply for our information. Instead, it’s meant for our application, that our lives might be blessed with transformation.
For this to happen, however, we first need to listen. We can’t act on God’s Word if we can’t hear it! Unfortunately, listening isn’t something we’re always good at doing. In an old joke, a crabby husband asks his wife, “Why do women talk so much?” To which his rightfully annoyed wife replied: “Because we have to say everything twice!” The joke’s point is that we don’t always listen very well to each other. Sometimes we also don’t listen very well to God- and there’s nothing too funny about that
It might be that we’re too distracted to listen to God. When the “Word of the Lord” is proclaimed for us, our expected response is “Thanks be to God.” If we were honest, however, we probably should say, “Huh? Could you say that again?” One contributing factor is “information overload.” Through every conceivable form of media – electronic and otherwise- we’re bombarded with more data than we’re able to handle. It can shatter our attention spans and make us very reluctant to add any additional voices to the mix- even if it’s God’s.
Another reason we don’t listen well to God’s Word is that it gets drowned out by “cultural static.” It’s easy to understand why this happens. The world literally shouts at us – “Look at me! Buy me! Sleep with me!”- and we can’t seem to hear anything else- especially God, who typically speaks in whispers. And the same world that shouts at us insists that we join the rat race. We wind up so exhausted that making time for God’s Word seems like a luxury, something to put off for a day when we’re less stressed. It’s not that we’ve pushed God’s Word away; it’s simply been squeezed out.
But sometimes we do push God’s Word away, because we don’t want to hear it. We’re afraid of what we might be told and what changes God will call us to make in our lives. Maybe it’s about money. Or forgiveness. Or our relationships. Or sex. Perhaps we’re too proud, too angry, or too addicted to listen. Whatever it may be, we know that with knowledge comes responsibility, so we try to take the “ignorance is bliss” approach. When we do this, it’s not society or our schedules that’s interfering with the Word of God. We have only ourselves to blame, because we’ve stuck our fingers in our ears.
We only plug our ears, however, when we think that God’s Word might have something valid to say to us. At times, we think just the opposite. We don’t make ourselves deaf to God’s Word; we simply dismiss it, because we’re convinced that it has nothing to say to us, or that it’s too confusing or old-fashioned to bother with. Should this be the case, we’re in good company. St. Augustine, a great figure from the Church’s first centuries, once felt exactly the same way. As a young man, he read the Bible in his quest for truth, but found himself disappointed. He didn’t encounter the lofty philosophy he preferred to read, but accounts of violent conflict and very imperfect people that left him confused.
All that changed when Augustine met St. Ambrose, whose preaching helped him understand the Bible for what it is: An inspired account of God’s unfolding plan throughout history, all leading to Jesus. Augustine came to appreciate that not only is Jesus the key to understanding the Bible, but that Jesus himself is heard through the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God- because through it we hear the voice of Jesus, who is the Word of God: the Word-made-flesh.
It is this voice that today’s Scriptures challenge us to listen to, and act upon, today. In our noisy world, we can be deaf to God’s Word. In our selfish world, it’s tempting to resist God’s Word. In our skeptical world, it’s fashionable to dismiss God’s Word. In our overscheduled world, it’s easy to neglect God’s Word. Yet we neglect God’s Word at our peril. Life can be hard, challenging, painful, confusing. Maybe that’s why Jesus spoke of powerful winds and rain in his parable, because they describe what we feel like we’re contending with at times. Jesus’ point was that if we build our life upon his Word, we’ll have the strength and resources to withstand the flood waters when they rise. And if we don’t, we won’t, and we risk being swept away by the currents.
To build our lives upon God’s Word is like building our house on rock, as Jesus said. Think of Manhattan, if you will: Perhaps the greatest concentration of brick, mortar, steel and timber anywhere in the world. And all of it rests upon a huge mass of rock. Anything else couldn’t bear the weight. That’s true of our lives, too. Sometimes we have a heavy load to bear; it can seem like we have the weight of the world upon our shoulders! We can bear the strain…but only if our life’s foundation is the rock of the Word of God.
Drowning Bear was right: God’s Word is good, and we have indeed had it a long time. But it’s up to us to listen, act, and allow ourselves to be changed.
Two men walking approached a standing ladder. One passed right under it. His companion, however, gave it a wide birth. “You don’t believe that old superstition, do you?” asked the first man. “Not really,” the other answered, “but I don’t want to take any chances- just in case.”
Sometimes we approach prayer the way the second man approached the ladder. We don’t really think it’s going to make a difference, but we go ahead and do it – just in case.
That’s how Peter thought in today’s gospel, when he expressed amazement that a fig tree Jesus cursed had withered. Jesus used this moment to teach us that we shouldn’t be surprised or shocked when our prayers make a difference. Prayer isn’t like wishing upon a star or tossing a coin down a well. Instead, our prayers are offered to a living God who listens, cares, and who always answers in the way that’s best for us. Prayer changes things, and we should always have faith that it does.
We don’t want to be like the crowd who gathered during a drought to pray for rain. The priest sent them home, insisting it wouldn’t rain that day. “Why not?” they demanded. “Because none of you brought an umbrella.”
After losing an important battle, King Louis XIV of France complained, “Has God forgotten how much I’ve done for him?” That’s a deeply arrogant statement! But let’s not cast any stones. It’s easy to conclude that God owes us something.
That’s what James and John did in yesterday’s gospel. Because they were disciples, they assumed they were entitled to special favors, and approached Jesus with a demand: “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”
In today’s gospel, Bartimaeus also approached Jesus. But he didn’t make any demands. Instead, he offered a humble plea: “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.”
These two different approaches were met with two different responses from Jesus. James and John’s request was denied, and Jesus actually took them down a notch. But Bartimaeus’ prayer was granted. His sight was restored, and he was praised for his faith.
Maybe it’s significant that Bartimaeus is described as a beggar. As St. Augustine wrote, “Man is a beggar before God,” because it’s as a beggar that we should approach God in prayer. If our prayer is “Give me what I deserve,” we’ll likely wind up disappointed. But if we pray, “O Lord, please give me what I need,” we’ll find, like Bartimaeus, that God always does.
Colleges and Universities are usually thought to be a place where knowledge is conferred. But one is justified; it seems, in questioning whether knowledge can be conferred in settings where common sense and prudence are so gravely lacking. Here are excerpts from an article today in the Washington Examiner:
New Jersey’s flagship state university has decided to allow male and female students to share rooms in three dorms in an effort to make the Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus more inclusive for gay students after a highly publicized suicide last year.
Starting this fall, all students — whether gay, lesbian, transgender or heterosexual — can choose either male or female roommates under the pilot program. Men and women will share bathrooms.
A similar, but smaller, pilot program is being launched at the Newark campus.
A number of other schools, including the University of Maryland, New York’s Columbia University and Washington’s George Washington University, offer similar housing options….
Rutgers got wide attention last year after freshman Tyler Clementi killed himself by jumping off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River. Authorities say that days before, his roommate in a dorm used a webcam to capture Clementi during an intimate encounter with another man…..[Following] there was increased scrutiny of the way gay, lesbian and transgender students are sometimes treated on campus….
The absurdity and imprudence of campus life grows graver with each decade. College Campuses, as a general rule, are a grave threat to the moral life of the students who attend. Students, who need clear guidance on moral issues, are thrown by faculty and parents into a moral cesspool of drugs, alcohol, and illicit sexual union. The irresponsibility of college faculty and administrators is nothing short of horrifying.
Of course we have journeyed to this latest absurdity of males and females sharing dorm rooms in stages.
Many years ago many colleges were not even co-ed, due to the reasonable premise that sexual temptation and distractions were problematic in a learning environment. Those colleges that were co-ed carefully segregated the young men and women in separate dorm buildings altogether. Women’s dorms were carefully protected. A guard in the front lobby limited access, and if a young woman had a male visitor she would come down to the lobby and meet him there. Men were not allowed beyond the lobby.
Now I was not born yesterday, and I surely know that there may have been some sneaking around and use of back entrances and fire escapes. But in the end, colleges had strict policies that both discouraged fornication and limited opportunities for the behavior. This was prudent and responsible.
By the late sixties boundaries began to disappear and faculty and college administrators began to shed their sense of responsibility for the moral life of the students. This, of course, is one of the more serious problems of the modern age wherein we no longer share a moral vision and/or have a care for the moral condition of one another. Never mind the terrible toll that all the drinking, drugs and sex has on the young men and women. The dangerous behaviors, the STDs, pregnancy, abortion and moral confusion, never mind all that. That is “none of our business.”
It is a malfeasance due to the utter neglect shown by those who ought to have greater care for the overall well-being of the students. To them the Lord has this to say, It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin (Luke 17:2)
Through the 1970s and into the 80s common dorm buildings for men and women become more the norm. There was the fiction of separate floors, but what is a staircase to desirous tweens and twenty-somes.
The next absurdity was common bathroom facilities on mixed floors. Why did the women even tolerate such an indignity? Even as a male, I would never have gone to a college where they would suggest to me the absurdity of shared toilet stalls and showers for men and women together.
And now the final blow: “Just let ‘em shack up openly,” as an officially sanctioned university policy. After all, who really cares about their moral life? Who’s really to say anyway? Or so the stinking thinking seems to be.
And then, just to add more absurdity, the leap is made that somehow all of this is really meant to be “gay-friendly.” What young college men and women shacking up has to do with affirming the gay lifestyle is surely opaque to me. To someone such as me, uninitiated in the sexual revolution, the explanation the university gives about this connection still makes no sense, even once it is offered. Living in the same dorm room says only one thing to me: fornication is fine. Of course it isn’t fine and colleges ought not encourage such imprudent and, I would add, sinful behavior.
I don’t know what I would do if I were a parent today. I don’t think I could send my kids off to most colleges or universities. I’d have to look carefully for a traditional Catholic College.
Some argue we have to send them off to the big name places so they can get a good career. To this Jesus has something to say, What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose his soul? (Mark 8:36). We need to re-examine our priorities. What is more important, the degree and career, or one’s soul? Parents usually want to know something of the tuition costs of college and will often go up with their kid to orientation. But do they ask to meet with the Catholic Chaplain? Do they assess the moral climate? Do they insist on proper housing and reasonable moral safeguards for their children?
And we clergy too have to think about this. For it often happens that someone will say, “Great News!, My Kid just got a full scholarship to Harvard or Columbia or whatever.” And we clergy say, “Great!” when what we should say is, “Ok, now who is going to preach the Gospel to your kid up there so he stands a chance of not losing his soul?” For it is quite possible, in the current moral climate of college, for a reasonably decent kid to go in, come out a Harvard lawyer, but be headed straight for hell. How serious are we clergy in speaking to our departing college kids about the moral climate and the need to resist it? Even before they pick a college, how insistent are we that they look for a moral climate better that Rutgers et al.?
As for me, I do gather my departing college students and give them the “stay with Jesus talk.” We do try and connect them with the local Catholic parish or Newman center. I want them to enter the college scene with sobriety (pardon the pun), and realizing that they are often heading for a real moral swamp, that they had better not wade in. But I need to do more. I need a small cadre of volunteers to call our students regularly and make sure they are getting to Mass, going to confession and avoiding sin.
We have to do better by our children than to send them to moral swamps. Where are the outraged parents and alumni of these colleges? Places like Rutgers can only get away with this sort of absurd plan because parents and alumni either don’t care, or are silent. We too, if we remain silent are part of the problem. I told a certain college I once did some studies with, that they would never get a dime or a recommendation from me as an alumnus until they cleaned up their moral act.
To end on a positive note, there ARE some very good Catholic colleges out there that still care for the moral life of the young people entrusted to their care. The Cardinal Newman Society keeps a pretty good watch on the health of Catholic Colleges and has issued a guide “Choosing a Catholic College” to assist parents and college bound students in seeking a healthy moral and academic environment that is in conformity with Catholic teaching.
We need to be serious. Many colleges are a serious threat out children’s moral welfare and eternal salvation. Orate et vigilate! (pray and be watchful!)
Photo Credit: New Brunswick City, NJ (Right Click for Properties).
In a letter, a woman complained bitterly to an advice columnist that a homeless person hadn’t thanked her for the pocket change she’d given him. The columnist explained to her that we don’t always get recognized for the good we do. Today’s gospel reminds us that we shouldn’t expect to.
Yet that’s exactly what James and John did. They assumed that because they followed Jesus, they deserved special positions of honor and prestige. Jesus had to teach them that to follow him is to be a servant, and servants don’t go looking for recognition or reward. True service is selfless. It’s concerned with others’ needs, not our own.
This is something we often need to be reminded of, especially in our relationships. So often, we’ll try to love others…if they’re loving to us. Or we’ll try to love them… because we want them to love us in return. Or we’ll try to love them… because we want to feel good about ourselves.
But how often do we love others just for love’s sake? Probably not as often as we should. Maybe not as often as we think. Yet that is what Jesus does for us; this is what Jesus calls us to do. The world needs the love we have to share. And this love doesn’t seek rewards. Because true love is reward enough in itself.
“Name it and claim it” is a common refrain in historically African American churches. It refers to any one the many blessings God has in store for us every day. It also refers to the type of attitude a faithful one must have in order to receive a blessing from the Lord. The Holy Scripture says that, “If any of your lacks wisdom, ask it of the Lord who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly. But, that person must ask in faith. For the person without faith is like the wave, tossed and driven by the wind, erratic in all things. Such a person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.” – James 1:3
“Prosperity Gospel”
I have heard this refrain used poorly, especially by a few preachers that appear on television. They have a theology, often referred to as “prosperity gospel” that suggests that this refrain can be used for material gain – Claim a luxury car and God will give it to you. I have never been motivated by the refrain for material reasons. Furthermore, a humble Christian does not order God around. Rather, like Christ taught, we say, “Your will be done.” “Name it and claim it” should help me focus on the spiritual blessings of God such as wisdom, faith, hope and charity. My material needs will take care of themselves – And I don’t NEED a luxury car!
This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
At my school we use this refrain and this scripture to encourage each other and to help one another focus on Christ. For example, when I am dreading a certain meeting or a possible negative encounter, I am tempted to say to myself, “This is going to be a horrible day!”. It is at this moment that I must remember to “Name it, then claim it!” If I name my blessing as “This is a day that the Lord has made” then I can claim it. In other words, God’s blessings are always before us. It is just that sometimes, we cannot see the blessing and thus, we fail to claim it.
Name it and claim it!
As you read this, name and claim a blessing. If nothing more, you have the blessing seeking a relationship with God. Sometimes, that alone is enough!
