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Can you drink of the chalice?

This morning pilgrims starting from the North American College were blessed with clear skies for a relatively short trek to San Cecilia.  The church, found in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood, literally “across the Tiber” from the ancient city of Rome, is located just at the bottom of the Janiculum Hill.  Excavations under the church suggest that it is built over the baths of St. Cecilia’s home, where Roman authorities first tried to execute her by drowning.  Failing to do so, executioners attempted to decapitate the saintly woman, but failed again, ultimately leaving St. Cecilia to die of her fatal wounds.  Tradition holds that prior to dying she entrusted all her goods to the church and asked Pope Urban to turn her home into a place of worship.

St. Cecilia gives great witness to Christ’s question in the Gospel, “Can you drink of the chalice I am going to drink?”  As today’ celebrant noted in his homily, the sons of Zebedee enthusiastically replied “yes” to Christ’s question out of sheer love and devotion for Our Lord,  but perhaps without a full understanding of the questions implications. In the case of St. Cecilia, who likewise replied yes, it might be said that she did so with greater awareness of the implications to her response. She was seeking to live the Christian life at a time when it was an illegal religion and fully aware that it could be punishable by death.

Saying “YES”

Throughout the centuries various men and women, lay, religious and cleric, have responded yes to Christ’s question and have aided in passing on the faith from generation to generation. As such, the faith has come down to each one of us. Having received that faith, Our Lord now poses the question to each of us, Can you drink of the chalice I am going to drink?

This season of Lent offers us an opportunity to reflect on our readiness to drink from Christ’s chalice in witness to the faith.  The season gives us a chance to strengthen ourselves by turning to God and seeking to keep a proper relationship with the world and those around us through prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  These practices deepen and fortify us interiorly so we can give public witness to our faith in ordinary and extraordinary ways; to live our faith in such a way that others will take notice. Doing so, we will express our desire to drink from Christ’s chalice.

Written by Francisco Aguirre

For one candidate, his journey to the Catholic faith began with a conversation with a Buddhist monk. For a couple expecting their first child, it was the result of hours of conversation about what was missing in their lives and what they wanted to be able to give their child. I knew these two stories and I wondered at the amazing number of ways our Lord calls people to a deeper relationship with him and with the church as I watched Cardinal Wuerl greet more than 1,000 men, women and children who will enter our church at Easter.

A church of many faces

In five different languages the names of the elect were called  and they started to move forward. One young boy’s sneakers lighted up as he climbed the steps into the sanctuary at the Basilica. Cardinal Wuerl bent down on one knee to greet him eye to eye!  Young girls in flip-flops and tattooed young men followed. There were people dressed in the suits they wear as the walk the halls of Congress and people dressed to head to work at hospitals, restaurants and construction sites following the ceremony.  There were whole families coming into the church and there were college students who have made the decision on their own. Some walked the length of the Shrine with the hand of their sponsors on their shoulders. Some had huge smiles and some looked a bit overwhelmed by the size of the sanctuary, the presence of the Cardinal and bishops and unsure of what would happen next. I couldn’t help but wonder at what exactly was the event or turning point in their lives that led them to this moment today.

An Evangelizing Church

Though the event or turning point is as unique as each individual, in chatting with the newest members of our church, what is repeated over and over is the importance of feeling welcomed and the witness and testimony of the Catholics they have met in their RCIA classes, at the parish and in their workplaces.  In the Catholics they met, they encountered Christ!  

Agents of the New Evangelization

I also wondered how many more people might we welcome if all of us were more faithful to our mission as evangelizers. As Cardinal Wuerl reminds us in his pastoral letter, Disciples of the Lord: Sharing the Vision, all of us share in the mission of evangelization. “To be true disciples of the Lord, believers must bear witness to their faith, and ‘witnesses testify not only with words, but also with their lives.'” affirms Pope John Paul II.  It is not too early to start thinking about who in your life you can invite to come to know Our Lord and whom we can welcome next year at the Rite of Election.

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Our Roman station church liturgies take us today to the church of St. Balbina. Little is known of this saint, though it is said she was a virgin who died a martyr’s death. Her remains are located under the main altar of this church, which has been in use since the late 4^th century A.D. The church is located south of the Vatican on the Aventine Hill, very near the Circus Maximus. In a way this location is fitting because most if not all of the Christians who were martyred for their faith in Rome would have been murdered not in the Coliseum, but in Circus Maximus, under the shadow of the Emperor’s palace.

Today’s first reading from Isaiah calls us to recognize our sinfulness in the eyes of the Lord. But this recognition of our sin is not without hope, for the Lord also offers us the opportunity of returning to him. Speaking through Isaiah the Lord says, “Wash yourselves clean!…Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow”.  The homily this morning focused on this invitation, which is part of every celebration of the Eucharist. At the beginning of every Mass, we are called to remember our sins, adopting the attitude of the tax collector in the Temple who prayed, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner”. And we then cry “Lord, have mercy!”, like the two blind men on the road to Jericho who called out to Jesus, “Lord, Son of David, have pity on us!” Like these two blind men, we thus dispose ourselves to encounter the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist.

During Lent, we are called to remember that it is only through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that we are able to follow the command of the Lord to “Wash ourselves clean!” Our Lord calls us today to recognize that we are still not perfect, that we still cling to some sins, large or small. But he also invites us to again repent, and to receive his forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. For it is only in this Sacrament, in this particular encounter with the Lord Jesus, that “though our sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow!”

A Church in Layers

One of the delights to be discovered about the city of Rome is its three-dimensionality: the city exists in layers. In a three-thousand-year-old city, it seems that every building is built on top of an older building. In the case of today’s station church, in fact, two older buildings. The current church of St. Clement, dedicated in 1128 and named after the fourth pope, rises on the ruins of its older 4^th century predecessor. This, in turn, lies on top of a cluster of buildings from the imperial Roman era, one of which belonged to a wealthy Christian and had been entrusted to the Church for use as a parish. Few buildings better exemplify the continuity of our faith from its earliest days as a small and persecuted sect to its current status as a mature and flourishing religion.

Ecumenical Considerations

In addition to these archaeological delights, St. Clement holds another type of treasure: the relics of both St. Clement and of St. Ignatius of Antioch. The two men took opposite routes in their lives: St. Clement was exiled from Rome around 100 by the emperor and was later martyred near the Black Sea in the east, where he had gone to evangelize; St. Ignatius was arrested around the same time in Antioch (in Syria) and brought west to Rome to be thrown to the lions in the Coliseum. Today’s celebrant noted that in this church, “The Church breathes deeply with both lungs” – that is, with a faith handed on by both eastern Greek and western Latin Christians. We might pause today in our own Lenten journey to pray for the many other Christians who are also making this journey to Easter, our Orthodox and Protestant brethren, and to ask God that, through Christ, we might soon all be united in worship and belief as were Sts. Clement and Ignatius.

Pilgrim Profile

After Mass I stopped to chat with a tall and lanky college student who sang in today’s choir. Ephrem Shaffer is a seminarian from the diocese of St. Cloud, Minnesota, and a student at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. Ephrem arrived in Rome in January for a semester abroad, along with some 30 other students from St. Thomas. His dark and cold morning walk this morning to the 7 a.m. station church Mass took him about 50 minutes – “Done in a Lenten spirit of penance!” he laughs. But the lure of seeing ancient churches and approaching saints’ relics is tough to resist. “It is hard to think of faith as mythical after visiting these places. The saints are real people, and they have passed on to us an Incarnational faith.”