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Walking in the Footsteps: Metanoia

Metanoia

The station church of Saints Marcellinus and Peter is located between St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran at the intersection of two busy streets. These two saints, who are mentioned in Eucharistic Prayer #1 (The Roman Canon), were both beheaded for their faith. This small church no longer holds their remains (they were re-located to Germany in the 9th century for use in the new churches there), but it still preserves the memory of their witness to the Father’s love for all of us.

Today’s homily takes up the theme of  Lent as a season of conversion, of metanoia, of purifying our ways of thinking. The stational liturgy today asks us to admit our need for further conversion, and shows us the way back to the Father.

Learning from Our Father’s Generosity

The well-known parable of the Prodigal Son asks us to confront the attitude of the elder son present in all of us. The elder son becomes angry at the generosity shown by the father for the younger son, a son who seemed to have lived the easy life, full of pleasure and enjoyment. This anger is not just because the younger prodigal son is welcomed back; it’s because the father’s love seems disproportionate to the actions of his sons. From the elder son’s point of view, the father seems to be more generous to the younger son; in fact, he seems to love the younger son more despite what the elder son has done for the father.  “Look,” he says, “all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends!”

Are we angry because others seem to be rewarded for doing nothing? Are we angry because our burdens seem to be more difficult than others’? Are we angry because we have to follow certain rules and others don’t, and they seem happier for it? In a word, are we angry because God still hasn’t given us our due? If we have these thoughts in our hearts, we really don’t know what redemption means. We really don’t know what Jesus accomplished through his passion death and resurrection.

But we can rediscover this Lent what it means to be saved. It’s appropriate that this station church, which is always connected to this Gospel in Lent, should have a shrine over there to Lourdes. It is at Lourdes where so many people who are ill and fearfully sick come to find rest. They bring the burden of feeling abandoned by God to Mary; they bring the heavy load of being the sickest person they know to this shrine and discover with and through Mary how much they are already blessed by God; how much they have already been given by God, freely, gratuitously, out of the generosity of his fatherly heart. They learned the meaning of what the father told his elder son, “Everything I have is yours”.

Mary, pray that we your sons and daughters may come to know this Lent the gratuitousness of divine love, a love that we already possess. And pray that we may in turn give that love to others. Amen.

Written by Fr. Anthony Lickteig

Photo by Fr. Justin Huber

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Finding Wisdom in an Old Hymn

One of the great yet largely unknown hymns of the Church is Take My Life, and Let it Be. It was written by Frances R. Havergal, in February of 1874 and speaks of the Christian’s total consecration to God.

I thought of this hymn today while talking with someone and thought too how appropriate it was as I write today on the evening of the Feast of the Annunciation. For, in today’s reading at Mass we read:

Sacrifice or oblation you wished not,
but ears open to obedience you gave me.
Holocausts or sin-offerings you sought not;
then said I, “Behold I come. (Psalm 40:7-8)

Now this psalm refers especially to Christ, but also then to us;  for it is not enough to be ritually observant. No indeed, Jesus has established a new manner of sacrifice. The priests of the Old Testament sacrificed something other than themselves: lambs, goats, turtledoves and so forth. But Jesus our High Priest sacrifices himself. In the New Testament, the priest and victim are one and the same.

Hence Psalm 40, above, declares that the sacrifice Jesus offered was not to kill an animal, but to obey, and offer himself. The same pattern is for us, who share in the royal priesthood of Christ.

While not all of us are ministerial priests who serve at the altar, all of us, by virtue of our baptism share in the royal priesthood. Hence we are to imitate Jesus, our high priest.

It is not enough for us to engage merely in ritual observance. In the end we must make the sacrifice of obedience, sacrificing our will, and wishes. Further, we must say with Jesus, “Behold I come.” That is to say, “I offer you the sacrifice of my own life, my mind, heart, will, strength, and body.”

St. Paul says, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as livings sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your act of worship. (Rom 12:1). This is what we offer to God, the gift of our very selves.

Consider this as you meditate on one of the great hymns of the 19th Century. Frances Havergal speaks of how she came to write it:

I went for a little visit of five days….. (to Areley House)….. The last night of my visit after I had retired….; it was nearly midnight. I was too happy to sleep, and passed most of the night in praise and renewal of my own consecration; and these little couplets formed themselves, and chimed in my heart one after another till they finished with “Ever, Only, ALL for Thee!” [1]

And these are the words she wrote:

Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my voice, and let me sing, always, only, for my King.
Take my lips, and let them be filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.

Take my intellect, and use, every power as Thou choose.
Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.

Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.

Yes, all for thee Lord. The sacrifice I offer to you is more than my money, more than my time, the sacrifice I offer is my very self, in imitation of your Son. My it be so Lord, ever more truly so, that my sacrifice be whole and entire: ever, only all for thee.

Photo Credit David Paul Ohmer via Creative Commons

Here is a modern version of this old hymn. The video links the words to vocations to the priesthood and religious life, but the hymn can surely refer to us all, whatever our state.

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Walking in the Footsteps: Cooperating with God’s will

Cooperating with God’s will

Today, the Church celebrates the feast of the Annunciation. Through Mary’s “Yes” to God, the Word became flesh within her womb. Today’s readings at Mass reflect Mary’s perfect cooperation with God’s will that helped bring about the redemption of mankind.

The responsorial psalm today is, “Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.” The second reading (Hebrews 10:4-10) teaches about Jesus Christ living the will of his Father. Jesus always prayed, “Behold, I come to do your will.” Finally, in today’s Gospel, we hear Mary’s words that changed the course of human events and invited God into our world: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” (Lk. 1:38)

The station church today is San Vitale. This church, going back to the fourth century, was a shrine to San Vitale, his wife, and sons – all of whom were martyrs for the faith. The martyrs are some of the Church’s greatest examples of people who followed God’s will very closely, even to the point of death.

In more recent history, the church of St. Vitale was connected to yet another martyr. During the 16th-century persecution of Catholics in England, Bishop John Fisher refused to sign the Oath of Supremacy that denied the pope’s authority and declared Henry VIII the head of the Church in England. Pope Clement VII named Fisher a cardinal and entrusted today’s station church, San Vitale, to Fisher as his titular church.  Fisher was martyred for the faith in 1535, soon after being named a cardinal. Like our Lady and Jesus, he said “yes” to the will of God.

This feast of the Annunciation, let us stay close to our Lady, so that with her we can say, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” By following God’s will, we too can be the instruments who bring Christ into the world.

Written by Patrick Lewis

Photo by Fr. Justin Huber

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When Facing an Uncertain Future

It’s a very special and wonderful moment when someone learns that they’re going to become a new parent. Yet first-time moms and dads can be apprehensive too. They may worry: “Am I up to the job? How will I juggle work and family? Will my baby be okay? How is my life going to change? Can we afford this?” Expectant parents can feel overwhelmed by their new responsibilities. Some even suffer depression.

Given this, we can appreciate how Mary may have felt at the Annunciation. It was an angel of light- not a nurse- who told her that she’d be a mom. What’s more, she wouldn’t be an ordinary mom- she was going to be a queen mother, as her son was to be a king who would rule forever! To top it off, she wasn’t even married yet, and somehow her child was to be conceived by a “Holy Spirit.”

Scripture describes Mary as frightened and confused- and who could blame her? Thankfully, Gabriel understood. He told Mary to put away her fears, and assured her that nothing is impossible for God.

But – aren’t Gabriel’s words meant for us too? Like Mary, we may face situations that seem daunting- things that fill us with fear, appear impossible, or make no logical sense, and we wonder how it all fits into God’s plan. We may find ourselves asking Mary’s question: “How can this be?”

When we do, Mary invites us to imitate her surrender, entrusting ourselves into the hands of a trustworthy God by saying, “Thy will be done.” Even though we may be afraid; even though we may not understand; even though the way ahead looks dark.

To know “The Lord is with thee” was enough for Mary. And praise God, the Lord will be with us too.

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/nab/032511.shtml

Photo credit: Robert Scoble via Creative Commons

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God Only Knows – On the Great Discovery of Our Very Selves

Today’s post is brief due to the fact that my own computer crashed – Disk error….Cache flaw….divide by zero….error….error….

Alas and despite my Computer Science Degree from 30 years ago, I am often mystified by the complexity of our modern devices. Most of us who use them really have very little idea of how they basically work!

But if you think these mere computers are complex, how about you? The Scripture from Thursday of this week at Mass says this:

More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it? I, the LORD, alone probe the mind and test the heart (Jer 17:9).

One of the greatest discoveries that we are onis the journey to discover our very own self. And only the Lord can really do this for us. For, it is so often the case that we allow illusions to dominate our sense of our self.

The world and so often tells us that we were made to be rich, powerful, beautiful, popular and so forth. And we run after these things, only to eventually discover their emptiness.

We too build up expectations for ourselves that are often wrong and misguided. We often try to be what others are, to have gifts that others have, to look like others etc. Perhaps it is the movie star or sports hero we feel drawn to imitate. Perhaps it is the media-driven body-type we must be. Perhaps there is some one we admire, and we have to be just like them.

But here is the real question: Who is the man or woman God made you to be? What are the gifts He gave you? What is His plan for your life?

This is the real and great discovery. And it is not merely a discovery, it is an acceptance, a whole hearted and grateful acceptance for the gifts that God has given me and the “self” he has made me to be.

In Lent this journey, this great discovery is intensified. But in the end it is a life-long journey that we must make, and God alone can show us the way.

I conclude with a story about Rabbi Eleazar who thought, one day:

Eleazar, why are you not more like Moses? Moses was a great man! But then I thought again, that if I try to be Moses, I will one day face God who will say to me, Eleazar, why were you not more like Eleazar?

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Walking in the Footsteps: Making the ordinary holy

Doing Ordinary tasks with extraordinary love                  

The Thursday after the Second Sunday of Lent brings us to Santa Maria in Trastevere. Trastevere (“across the Tiber”) is a beautiful and ancient section of Rome. Its narrow streets and well preserved architecture give it a unique character, setting it apart from the rest of Rome.  One of the oldest Churches in the city, Santa Maria dates back to 220 when Pope St. Callistus founded it as a house church. The mosaic on the church’s façade, depicting the parable of the wise and unwise virgins, is from the 14th century. The central part of the apse is a glorious mosaic of Christ offering his mother a jeweled crown. In the homily today God calls us to do ordinary tasks with extraordinary love.

Sanctifying our work

Sanctifying our work and doing it well is a simple way to heaven, it is a method that is not beyond any of us, but present to us on a daily basis. This means that we must fulfill all of the duties of our particular state in life well. For a parent, this means providing for one’s family, spending time with one’s children, passing on to them the faith of our Church, and raising them to be followers of Christ. For a child, it means obeying your parents, doing your best in school, trying your hardest in extracurricular activities- and doing all of these things cheerfully and to the best of our ability since we offer everything to God.
To really achieve this we must undergo a revolution in the way we view the ordinary. If we do this we will begin to live with a supernatural outlook where we see God present in the important and unimportant events of daily life.  Where we really meet Christ is in the mundane events of our daily life. By sanctifying our work and daily obligations, we make our work place the horizon where we meet God.

Written by Fr. Charlie Gallagher

Photos by Fr.  Justin Huber

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Who’s at our Doorstep?

If you found on your doorstep this morning a filthy, starving, homeless man surrounded by stray dogs, how you your react? What would you do? What would you see?

Would you see an opportunity to love, an opportunity to heal, an opportunity to serve? Would you see a hurting and needy brother? Would you see the face of Christ himself? Or would you be disgusted, scared, annoyed, and worried about the impact on your property value? Would you try to ignore him and hope that he’d go away?

This seems to be what the rich man in today’s gospel did. It’s not that he couldn’t see Lazarus, because he even knew his name! He simply was too hard of heart, too indifferent, to do anything to help him. The rich man chose to separate himself from the plight of Lazarus his neighbor- a separation that continued after they both had died, except with a dramatic reversal of fortune.

Jesus told this parable to challenge our way of thinking about the needy, so that we can change our way of acting toward the needy. Jesus challenges us to see the Lazarus on our doorstep as a brother, not a burden; as an opportunity, not an inconvenience; as a person, not a problem.

He’s not asking us to do the impossible. What he is asking is that we change our attitude, and then to do what we can. Which may be more than we think! If you’ll recall, Lazarus would have been satisfied with table scraps- a reminder that even the small things we do can seem so great to those who have so little. Or as St. Anselm once said: “The fasts of the rich are the feasts of the poor.”

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/nab/032411.shtml

Photo credit: Ed Yourdon at Creative Commons

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Remembering the Hidden Costs of Our Affluence

Though we are in tough economic times we Americans live very well. Even the poorest among us live like royalty compared to the poor in many other parts of the world. And we do well, especially in Lent, to recall that our standard of living is partially possible because others work for pennies to produce our many consumer products.

A Worm in the Apple? In today’s Washington Post there was an article that draws me to consider anew my need to remember the poor. The article gives a look behind the scenes of how our relatively inexpensive electronic products are made. The article is entitled “Mike Daisey Discovers the Worm in Apple.” Daisey is a storyteller and has a show at a local theater entitled “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” In it, he recalls a trip he made last year to China where, he was given tours of the factories where Apple Hardware is assembled. Here let me quote some excerpts from the article written by Jane Horwitz:

Daisey traveled last spring to Shenzhen, China, where Apple’s and other companies’ hardware is made by subcontractors such as Foxconn. He posed as a businessman to gain access to many factories and used an interpreter to talk with workers.

Daisey was appalled by the working conditions — factory floors packed with 25,000 and more workers, some children, doing 12- and 18-hour shifts or longer, living in cramped quarters and shadowed by factory security people.

“I expected it to be bad. I expected it to be harsh. I was not actually prepared for how dehumanizing it was. I wasn’t actually prepared for the scale of it. .That was what shocked me,” Daisey says

Learning how his beloved iPhone, iPad and other gadgets were made broke his heart, he says. “I miss the pleasure of browsing technology in a world where the consequences didn’t cost people’s lives. I miss a sort of unfettered world where the big questions were what [a device’s] specifications were ….. a sort of techno-libertarian landscape that I didn’t even fully know that I inhabited…..”

Daisey portrays Apple co-founder Jobs not as a villain, but as a tough visionary who has yet to be enlightened about the China issue.

The full article is here: Worm in the Apple

A few thoughts on this

  1. Our modern economy is almost a miracle: Relatively inexpensive goods, plentiful variety, year round produce, quick delivery, and few shortages. I said it is almost a miracle. For the truth is our abundant and relatively inexpensive products are often made possible for us because many in the world work for pennies to produce them. As Daisey notes they often have terrible working conditions and long hours as well. It seems almost impossible to me that I can buy a decent shirt for under $20, especially when I consider the cost of the materials, shipping and overhead. It has to be the cheap labor that makes it possible. The same is true for our marvelous electronics. They are often astonishingly inexpensive considering what we get. Here too, considering all the parts, research and development costs, shipping, overhead and all. Again, it has to be the labor costs that are low. Daisey’s portrait here confirms that.
  2. I realize that economies are complicated things. I am not an economist and cannot easily envision a different way. It is possible that in trying to fix this problem of inequity, we may make things worse for the poor. It often seems the most dangerous thing the poor can hear is: Hi, we’re from the government and we’re here to help you.
  3. But noting that there IS a problem may be the first stage of justice. We human beings like to stay sleepy. We don’t like to ask too many questions like, “Where did this product come from and how can it possibly be so cheap?” Questions like these are uncomfortable, because deep down, most of us know the answer isn’t pretty. So we don’t ask, we don’t even wonder. But honestly we should ask, we should wonder, and we should face the truth, that a lot of our comfort and prosperity, a lot of our cheap products, are made possible because others, who supply us, live with far less and are paid little.
  4. The Pope on sleepiness – Regarding our sleepiness, our wish to remain drowsy and dreamily unaware of injustice, the Pope has a remarkable mediation in his new book, Jesus of Nazareth, Vol II. He is meditating here on the summons that Jesus gave the disciples in the Garden to “stay awake and watch, lest they give way to temptation” (Mk 14). The Pope writes: Across the centuries it is the drowsiness of the disciples that opens up possibilities for the power of the evil one. Such drowsiness deadens the soul, so that it remains undisturbed by the power of the evil one at work in the world, and by all the injustice and suffering ravaging the earth. In its state of numbness, the soul prefers not to see all this; it is easily persuaded that things cannot be so bad, so as to continue in the self-satisfaction of its own comfortable existence. Yet this deadening of souls, this lack of vigilance….is what gives the evil one power in the world. On beholding the drowsy disciples, so disinclined to rouse themselves, the Lord says, “My soul is very sorrowful , even to death.”
  5. It is easy to feel overwhelmed in the face of so complex an issue, an issue involving a world-wide economy with 100,000 moving parts, not mention many governments, some of them corrupt, and a complicated interplay between money, materials and manpower. What is the best solution? Is it a boycott? Is it protests? Daisey suggests in the article that maybe we ought to stop upgrading our stuff for a while to send a message. But would that really help the poor, or would it possibly cause them greater harm? Here a scripture comes to mind: The poor are caught in schemes that others have made (Ps 10:2).
  6. Personal Reform? This is not an economic blog, and not a political one. Hence I do not propose immediate solutions along those lines, if they even exist. What I do propose is a more personal reform. I propose that we ask questions of ourselves and others, that we ponder justice. That we develop a greater love and solidarity for the poor, many of whom are integral to our “miracle” economy (troubled though it currently is). Perhaps we can consider being personally more generous to the needy and the poor when we are given opportunities to do so. Gratitude to the God is essential for all we have, but part of this gratitude should also include deep prayer to God for the world’s poor, many of whom supply our economy by their blood, sweat and tears. And as our love of the poor deepens, our desire of justice for them also grows.
  7. Personal practice – The next time I pick up that tomato at the store, perhaps I can consider that some one far less affluent that I may have picked or processed it. The next time I gleefully open the box with the brand new computer, filled with excitement as on Christmas morning, I ought to remember the Chinese peasant who may have had a hand in assembling it and who could never dream of owning one that nice for himself.
  8. Ask God for a deeper love for the poor, the many unknown souls who are the hidden foundation and the hidden cost in our inexpensive products. Demanding draconian solutions may not be what is best, but love and gratitude for the poor will surely lay a foundation for greater justice and a desire to find creative solutions.
  9. One Day God came to Cain and asked, Where is your brother? As if also to say, How is your brother? Account for me as to his welfare. Cain shrugged, Am I my brother’s keeper? (cf Gen 4:9). Well you know the answer. We ARE the keeper, we ought to have care for the welfare of others. In Lent we ought to pray for a deepening care for the welfare of others.

Photo Credit: Ethicalstyle.com (Right click for URL)