Wednesday, 3rd Week in Lent

 

Mt 5, 17-19

Jesus ascends a mountain and gathers his disciples to teach them, according to Matthew’s gospel, chapters 5-7.  Moses before him brought God’s word to the Israelites from a high mountain.  Now, Jesus teaches as the New Moses. He does not abolish what the great patriarch taught; he brings it to fulfillment.

Lent gathers us again to listen to the Sermon on the Mount.  Sublime promises of a Kingdom are made to us; our God is gracious and near. But this part of the gospel reminds us of little things, the small steps, the “least commandments,” we must keep to enter the Kingdom of heaven.

This is a season–our reading reminds us– for remembering that small things like a cup of cold water, a visit to the sick, feeding someone hungry, clothing someone naked, speaking a “word to the weary to rouse them” are important commandments of God.

Yes, lent calls us to think great thoughts and embrace great visions of faith, But the law of God often comes down to small things, and the greatest in the kingdom of God are the best at that.

“The most important things for you are: humility of heart, patience, meekness, charity toward all, and seeing in your neighbor an image of God and loving him in God and for God.” ( Letter 1114)

 

What small step do you want me to take today, O Lord?

What can I do to help the neighbor I meet,

Who is made in your image?

Prayers teach us to pray

Prayers teach us how to pray. The collect for  this Thursday after Ash Wednesday is a simple prayer that says so much.  Listen to it:

Lord,

may everything we do

begin with your inspiration,

continue with your help

and reach perfection under your guidance.

We ask this through Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever.

Let’s recognize where we stand before God– empty-handed. And so we look for God to put something into our hand, to give the bread we need, inspire us. We start with nothing.

Then, we ask for help with what we are about now. We can’t continue without God.

Finally, God must guide us to complete what we are about in our lives. It’s not about what we want or plan,  but “your will be done.”

Yet, we pray with a sublime hope:

We ask this through Jesus Christ, who has shown us a God who loves us, who promises to make our prayer his own, who is our advocate, our Savior, our reward.

Fighting in Church

Today’s Office of Readings has the letter to the Corinthians by Pope St. Clement 1, written about 95 AD,  just after the last of the New Testament writings were written.

Fighting erupted among the members of the church in Corinth, once cared for by Paul the Apostle, who scolded them for the same thing. There’s slander and backbiting and complaining going on; people like to hear themselves talk, Clement remarks, quoting scripture: If you talk a lot you only hear yourself. A big talker thinks he’s always right.

The Corinthians were a scrappy bunch, it seems.

Clement tells them that their fighting makes the church look bad among their unbelieving neighbors. Who wants to belong to a community like that? Paul wrote to the Romans; I guess Clement thought he should write to the Corinthians.

Stop fighting among yourselves and do some good, the pope says. Obey your leaders, but above all, obey God. Bow down in respect before God and be silent before his holy will, as the Prophet Isaiah bowed silently  before the overwhelming presence of God in the temple.

“Our boasting and our confidence must rest on him. Let us be subject to his will. Look carefully at the whole host of his angels; they stand ready and serve his will. Scripture says: Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him, and a thousand thousand served him, and cried out: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole creation is full of his glory.”

“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts…” We say at Mass. We bow down before God; our thoughts, our judgments, our plans are nothing before God’s thoughts, judgments and plans. We know so little. Be humble before your God, Clement says, then you’ll get along with your neighbor.

Good advice for all of us.

Clement’s letter also gives the earliest testimony to the deaths of Peter and Paul at Rome.

Serving Others

The Old Testament reading from the Prophet Zechariah, our first reading for this Sunday, is almost a picture of Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey, while the crowd threw palm branches before him.

The prophet Zechariah predicted a king coming to Jerusalem who would be its savior and Messiah, but he would come humbly, not in a war chariot, surrounded by warriors with bows and arrows, like the kings of the time. He would come as a poor man, riding a little donkey, meekly, bringing peace. (Zech  9)

In his Palm Sunday account,  Matthew’s gospel  says explicitly that Jesus fulfills this prophecy.  He wasn’t one of the Zealots, a Jewish party that advocated change by violence in Jesus’ day. Matthew wants to assert that Jesus was against violence; he brings peace.

Jesus’ words read in our gospel today could be put appropriately on his lips as he enters Jerusalem on a donkey:

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,

and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.

We easily forget the power of humility. We’re an aggressive society. Like the Zealots of Jesus’ day, many today believe that the only way you can get things done is by force and by violence.They like strong words and strong actions. At the same time, they see patience as weakness. Actually, patience is strength.

After the Revolutionary War, George Washington met one day with a number of his troops who were disgruntled  because the Continental Congress hadn’t paid them yet for their long years of hard service. The ex-soldiers were angry, on the brink of another revolution.

Washington took out a paper to address them, but he couldn’t read it. His eyesight was failing. So he put on a pair of spectacles. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, “ but I have lost my sight in the service of my country. “

No one remembered what Washington went on to say after that, but the mood of the men changed. They remembered what he had gone through. The humility of the man won them.

So we remember Jesus Christ, his own poor birth, his love for those with little, his cruel death and resurrection. He labored and was burdened, and the laboring and the burden have stayed with him. Even risen, he carries marks of the nails and the spear. He knows what we go through.

We can rest in him. We hope we can be like him.

Humble Leadership

As 6th century Rome started to fall apart and he became pope, St. Gregory the Great wrote one of his great scriptural commentaries called the Moralia, or a Commentary on the Book of Job. Gregory ends his commentary with some humble words that reveal someone who is not afraid to know himself. He’s a humble man, and  we need humble leaders today. I simplify his words, not distorting them, I hope:

“Now that I have finished this work, I have to look at myself. We are so complex, even when we try speaking the truth. Let me go from the forum of words to the senate house of my heart, to take council about myself.

I don’t want to speak anything evil or speak poorly about what is good.

I wish my words please the One is good.  Yet, can I claim I have spoken no evil at all? Have I spoken less well than I should, perhaps? When I look within, pushing aside leafy words and branches of arguments, and examine my deepest intentions, I know I intend to please God, but has some desire for human praise crept in? Has it intruded into my simple desire to please God?

Later, much later, I may realize this. Often, our intentions to please God are joined by a secret yen for human praise. Self-righteously, we even use God’s gifts to please others.

So in my commentary I reveal God’s gifts, but let me confess my wounds too. Let me instruct the little ones by my words, but let others take pity on my weakness. I offer help to some and seek help from others. As I tell some what to do, I open my heart to others to admit what they should forgive.  I give medicine to some, but do not hide my wounds from others. My reader will have more than paid me back if, for what he hears from me, he offers his tears for me.”

The Mother of James and John

Mt 20:17-28

As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem,
he took the Twelve disciples aside by themselves,
and said to them on the way,
“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,
and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests
and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death,
and hand him over to the Gentiles
to be mocked and scourged and crucified,
and he will be raised on the third day.”

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons
and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something.
He said to her, “What do you wish?”
She answered him,
“Command that these two sons of mine sit,
one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom.”
Jesus said in reply,
“You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”
They said to him, “We can.”
He replied,
“My chalice you will indeed drink,
but to sit at my right and at my left,
this is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”
When the ten heard this,
they became indignant at the two brothers.
But Jesus summoned them and said,
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,
and the great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather,Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

We usually think of Lent as a personal journey, a time to tune-up spiritually. But that’s not all it is. Lent is also a time for the church to be renewed.

“We” are going up to Jerusalem, Jesus tells his disciples, and announces his coming sufferings and death. His disciples follow him to the holy place where challenge and reward awaits, as Matthew’s gospel says. Through the ages, his church will be renewed by the graces of his paschal mystery in the world and time in which it lives.

The mother of James and John on that journey with her sons evidently saw the holy city as a place of opportunity for herself and them. “Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom.” She’s looking for power and prestige.

Jesus reminds her that his followers are to serve and not be served. It’s a service that will cost them, not make them rich, for “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

As a church of disciples, the church must serve the world in which it lives and its members must serve each other, but like the mother of James and John, it’s always beset by the temptation to look for and hold on to power and prestige. In Lent Jesus calls his church to humble service : “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.”

A cross stands atop our churches as a proclamation of belief in Jesus Christ. It’s also a promise to serve the world as Jesus did.

A Voice for Changing Times

John the Baptist is a good figure to look at in changing times. St. Augustine calls him“the voice.” “John is the voice, but the Lord is the Word who was in the beginning. John is the voice that lasts for a time; from the beginning Christ is the Word who lives for ever.”

His “voice” passes away. For example, John’s baptism is no longer practiced. I suppose if we are to cede to the Word our own voice too must pass away, something of ourselves has to go. And does it also apply to what we cherish:  the things we hold dear, the institutions that have upheld us, the families that supported us?  What must give way for  God’s way? We think so little of this.

“What does prepare the way mean, if not “pray well”? What does prepare the way mean, if not “be humble in your thoughts”? We should take our lesson from John the Baptist. He is thought to be the Christ; he declares he is not what they think. He does not take advantage of their mistake to further his own glory.

If he had said, “I am the Christ,” you can imagine how readily he would have been believed, since they believed he was the Christ even before he spoke. But he did not say it; he acknowledged what he was. He pointed out clearly who he was; he humbled himself.

He saw where his salvation lay. He understood that he was a lamp, and his fear was that it might be blown out by the wind of pride.”

The Power of Desire

The present global financial crisis has shaken our confidence in basic institutions like government and finance. Something’s wrong and has to be fixed, but how?

Can experts tell us? Most of them couldn’t see this crisis coming at all, so they should be careful with answers. I’m sure some strong voices will claim to know what to do. Hitler launched his career in the Great Depression; voices like his will be promising us better times.

Wouldn’t it be good to have this crisis make us all humble realize our limits. The whole world must search patiently for answers. Like little children crossing a busy street, we have to hold hands and stick together.

Quoting from the First Letter of St. John, St. Augustine reminds us of the limits of religious knowledge. “By these words, the tongue has done its best,” he says;  human words can never fully describe the divine reality. We must be humble approaching God. Religions should speak to the world humbly too.

“The entire Christian life is in fact a life of holy desire,” the saint says. That doesn’t mean we stop searching for knowledge; to do so would bed to deny one of our greatest gifts–our minds.  But we’re like containers meant to hold a lot. As long as we live, we wont be filled, nor can we ever be satisfied with what we know– there’s always more.

It’s desire that keeps us open to God’s promised wisdom and knowledge, Augustine says.  Desire must motivate our world today as it stumbles along looking for answers. Deisre and humility.