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February 23, 2010
Second Sunday of Lent - February 28, 2010
As I take my seat before this machine called a word-processor, a processor of words, I am, almost literally, without words. The unimaginable destruction and human suffering that has followed upon the 7.0 earthquake on the Caribbean nation of Haiti has left everyone who thinks about it and tries to write about it nearly speechless. No words in the English language can describe the suffering these good people have experienced. Graphic images make us turn our face away. On the streets and alleyways of the cities the odor of death makes people turn and walk in a different direction. In short, communications people who are generally skilled with words are suddenly left without. There are simply some natural occurrences on this planet that defy our ability or skill to explain or describe.
It should come as no surprise to us, therefore, that we live on a very fragile and unprotected planet. One sometimes even wonders whether humankind was meant to live on this planet we call earth. We seem to have little control over our environment.
Speaking for myself regarding this catastrophe, I can only say, “how quickly life can be transformed.” Haiti, a poor country but nonetheless a nation of fundamentally happy, dancing-people became a scene of indescribable terror, a terror that most of us have never experienced or even imagined. Buildings that were once relatively safe for living are now simply dust. (Ironically, one thinks of the prediction of the Ash Wednesday liturgy: “Thou art dust and to dust shalt thou return.”)
I think it is safe to say generally that inhabitants of the earth are not prepared for catastrophic transformations of this sort. We have a certain intuition that the earth is not our enemy. It provides food, water, protection, and natural sustenance for us. And then suddenly, as in Haiti, it is only fit as a burial ground for the unfortunate dead.
We all know, of course, that transformation happens slowly. If we have access to a photo of ourselves at First Communion, for instance, we know only too well how we have changed; our whole being, physically, emotionally, spiritually has been transformed by time and natural circumstances. Again, however, it happens so slowly and gradually that we hardly have any sense of it. That is why certain sudden transformations are often nearly unbearable because we are never ready.
The point, of course, is that transformations of all kinds and sorts happen throughout our life.
Then the question remains, what do they mean, how do we recognize them, how do we adjust to them, as adjust we must, if we are to live into the future?
We have several life stories in our scriptures for this Second Sunday of Holy Lent that give us an insight into the manner whereby three people, Abraham, Paul and Jesus experienced transformations in their lives.
Having lived approximately 1600 years B.C. we have scant knowledge of this Bedouin sheik, Abram, who followed his flocks in the Eastern desert, the Ur of the Chaldees. He was, no doubt a happy man: Flocks, wives, children were in abundance; protection from harm seemed eternally assured. On a certain night, however, he experiences a great mystery: A God of whom he knows nothing appears to him with the promise that he and his descendants will inherit the land from Egypt to the great river Euphrates, literally the whole Middle East. “On what evidence shall I know this,” says Abram: A flaming brazier and torch then passes between the two halves of the traditional sacrificial animal, the symbol of a covenant being made. And so it was, Abram became the father of many nations…but not instantly nor absolutely. It would be thousands of years of gradual transformation before the Israelites would recognize the ancient prediction. Indeed, it is happening this very day in East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Often transformation takes many lifetimes, sometimes never.
The second transformation story occurs in Paul’s life and is described in the letter to the church at Philippi. Paul is never satisfied until he can retell the story of his transformation into the life of Christ. With this in mind, he tells his recent converts that becoming a Christ follower does not happen instantaneously (as it happened with him, Paul). He goes on to say, however, that “Our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await a savior, our Lord Jesus Christ; he will change (transform) our lowly body to conform to His glorified body…)” It is safe to say that we, like the Church in Philippi, also travel through a gradual Christian transformation.
And finally, we are once again told the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration (transformation) on a high mountain. The disciples who were with Jesus during that life-changing moment could not describe the interior transformation that Jesus was experiencing. All they knew was that he appeared differently to them. He spoke with the ancient prophets, his forerunners. No doubt, he was reflecting on the founding of God’s reign that he was to undertake. All that we can make of this scene is that Jesus came down that mountain a different person: Like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. he could say: “I’ve been to the mountaintop; God allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and I have seen the Promised Land.” I would like to imagine that Dr. King’s experience was something like what Jesus and his disciples experienced at his transfiguration. Perhaps he could see his whole life in front of him.
Finally, It is safe to say that most of us will never experience what Jesus experienced that day on the mountain. Transformations happen slowly, hardly even being noticed. Indeed, I will be bold enough to say that even Jesus began to see and understand his future gradually as he “went among the people and cured their ills.” Only the every day existential experiences can teach us who we are and what we shall become…yes, all the way to that place where the God of mystery reigns endlessly in peace.
The scriptures: Genesis 15: 5-12,17-18; Philippians 3: 17-4:1; Luke 9: 28b-36
Posted by Cindy Lentine at 02:51 PM.
February 16, 2010
The First Sunday of Lent [February 21, 2010]
I have a feeling that the person who was responsible (I’m assuming it was a pope) for the good ordering of the liturgical calendar, the ordered procession Sundays, feast days, obviously did not take the condition of human nature into consideration. It may sound trivial but it has only been approximately 6 weeks since we celebrated (yes celebrated) the Nativity of the Lord and the other lesser feasts that follow directly upon it.
And now, here we are today on the First Sunday of Lent being asked to put on ashes and dreary faces (well, not quite). But we are asked to change our thoughts to serious matters. I’m not sure whether most Christians are ready for that substantial transformation; whether we are prepared for it or not, however, the season has come for us to do some serious thinking about the manner in which we look at life and what we are doing about it
Of course, the anomaly in all this is that Lent is not for the sake of Lent; Lent is for life and living. it is a time for rethinking the patterns of our life to see whether they are leading us anywhere beyond the season itself.
Traditionally, we Christians have always opened the gospel for this Sunday that describes Jesus’ three temptations and how he dealt with them. The graphic language of the gospel has Jesus fighting against outside, worldly forces: satisfaction with self (stones to bread), power and glory (world domination), casting himself off the highest point of the temple. (Power over self).
The “old time” Lenten preachers would collapse these three into a familiar saying: “the world, the flesh and the devil.” Using the graphic description of the three temptations in the gospel, they assumed that human temptation came from the outside. Seriously minded people, they thought, were constantly harassed by powers beyond their control.
A more serious reflection on this passage, however, gives one the sense that a person, a human being, a Christian is fundamentally faced with self, with those inner urges that rise out of one’s psyche when in contact with the world. (Remember the old Pogo line? “We have met the enemy and they is us.”) The gospel story seems to say that the world and its allurements have the power of evil, a sense that, unless controlled, they will destroy a person. Jesus is portrayed, of course, as the one who has faced these temptations and overcame them, this being a model for the Christian as well.
Admittedly, of course, the world around us does have an effect upon our life, but only if we allow it to be so. We are all children of this world, but hopefully not of it.
I want insist, however, that it is not the world that is out to conquer us; it is our inner desire to react to those natural inner forces that rise up to struggle against us. Who of us has not felt the power to control our environment? Who has not lusted after the world’s attractions?
Nonetheless, it is not the world or its goods that are to be blamed; it is the uncontrolled inquisitiveness arising out of our emotions that causes us anxiety.
In this regard, Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun living in Erie Pennsylvania, has an interesting insight on the relationship between the world and the self: “In the midst of chaos,” she says, “it is nevertheless possible to be at peace because peace first comes from within ourselves, not from outside of us. Those who are not at peace within, would not be at peace in heaven.”
Given what Joan Chittister says regarding peace, we might well think of it as the predominant goal for Lent. Lent is not about overcoming “the evil one,” not about conquering our inner tendencies. Rather it is about coming to grips with self and making peace with ourselves
Ultimately, life for the Christian is not about battling the world, imaginary or real; rather it is about understanding the world as friend, brother or sister. We do not necessarily need to be “at war” with what attracts us.
With all that in mind, I am convinced that when the forty days and forty nights of Lent are completed and Easter dawns we will be at rest and at peace with ourselves. Have a peaceful Lent, my friends.
The scriptures: Deuteronomy 6: 4-11; l Romans 10: 8-13; Luke 4: 1-3
Posted by Cindy Lentine at 10:16 AM.
February 10, 2010
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time [February 14, 2010]
I am still amused when I reflect on my first year in college at the University of Notre Dame back in the early fifties of another century. I was exposed to courses I never knew existed: Latin, philosophy, logic, public speaking and many others. Here I am a young fellow from the farm along with some military experience but hardly a liberal scholar. So with that I began the process of being liberated from my youthful ignorance.
With utter amazement then I can remember the first piece of homework given in our fundamental philosophy course: “What is Happiness?” I could not even imagine anyone having the time to dwell on such an obvious issue. Is this what philosopher’s do for a living, I asked myself? Anyone with an ounce of brains can tell you what happiness is: it means having a car, money in your pocket, being able to go where you wish, having a girl friend and on and on.
Well, obviously, the professor did not consider these answers worthy of a grade. He wrote on the margin of the answer sheet: “Let me speak with you after class.”
That was the beginning of my great enlightening. Happiness, I learned, had little to do with money in the pocket or a car to drive wherever you wished. This was a philosophy class, after all. This was a class where one asked philosophical questions, deep, reflective questions about life itself and its meaning.
Later, in a conversation with the professor I discovered that happiness was indeed one of the most important questions people from ancient times had asked. The answer to that question would guide a person in all his activities throughout his/her lifetime. Philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, Socrates had plumbed that word to its roots with their young adult students and written treatises upon it.
It is not unlikely, therefore, that Jesus of Nazareth himself should have commented upon the question. He may not have considered himself a philosopher as such in the tradition of the Greeks, but as we know from our reading of the gospels he was indeed a wise person and often debated with the scribes over many of life’s issues.
It is with the issue of happiness before us in today’s gospel that we discover Jesus’ deep and surprising insight into some of life’s problems and their solutions.
In this selection of the gospel he is speaking to a large crowd of folks along with some of his own loyal supporters. They are all of peasant stock, local folks who might be considered among the poor of the land, tenant farmers, local artisans and others. In all matters of daily life their Roman occupiers dominated them. Given this social background, therefore, one would hardly consider them satisfied with life. They were not universally a “happy people” in our sense of that word today.
And yet, in this discourse before us we hear Jesus calling them happy despite that fact that they were poor, hated, insulted, denounced, unnoticed indeed, the bottom rung of humanity in the minds of many. Surely this must have left many of his listeners stunned to the core…that is, until he follows this surprise with another: The rich of the world may think that they are the happiest people in the world: no worry about money, food, security and all the rest. Indeed, they should feel aggrieved because all these “riches” will not last forever; in the world to come they shall truly be on the “bottom rung of human society.
Jesus is simply making a searing critique on the divisions in human society. He is saying that human advantages do not make for happiness; indeed, they distract us from those matters in life that bring peace of mind and soul, wholeness, contentment, satisfaction simply being alive and the recipient of God’s goodness.
At the same time, the discourse on happiness is a scathing condemnation of the lifestyle of the rich and self-contented. Their happiness, based on wealth, will not last. A day will come when all these short-lived treasures will be taken from them in death.
Ultimately, the discourse of Jesus on the state of riches and poverty is a critique upon the satisfied of the world, on those who wrongfully imagine that this is all there is to life…nothing more. In simpler terms Jesus is insisting that the poor already know what true happiness consists of, that is, knowing one’s place in God’s good universe and “jumping for joy” over it. (Jesus own words).
Have circumstances regarding poverty and riches changed in our age. Sadly, I think not. Many still feel deprived unless they have the best the secular world has to offer. Unfortunately they have not yet, with all their wealth, found true happiness, but they do not yet know that to be true.
What then can make us and keep us happy in the true philosophical sense? I can only describe it in a list of words. If you are thankful for what you have, contented in simply being a human person, free and carefree, untied to an agenda, open to the world around you, forgiving of your neighbor, in peace with whatever happens, consider yourself a happy person. “Jump for joy” because you have already inherited God’s kingdom.
At my age, I probably won’t do much “jumping” but I can imagine what it must feel like.
The scriptures: Jeremiah 17: 5-8; 1 Corinthians 15: 12, 16-20; Luke 6: 17, 20-26
Posted by Cindy Lentine at 09:17 AM.
February 02, 2010
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time [February 7, 2010]
Think a little with me, my friends, about one of life’s deep mysteries at least a mystery for me. It is a question that many of us who are a little older often think about. How is it that we have become who we are? What series of happenings brought me to this point in my history that I can clearly understand my identity? Why have I chosen this career and not another, this way of living that is unique to me and to none other? Contrary to the stories that are told in the reading from the prophet Isaiah and the Gospel of St. Luke today, our decision to follow our way of life did not happen at one spectacular moment in our history; there was no overwhelming vision that steered us in this way rather than another.
My sense of it is that there have probably been a whole series of events that have happened, and not just ordinary, garden-variety occurrences. No, rather there were small epiphanies, momentary flashes of enlightenment that we cannot explain except that they came from God.
Let me offer you a couple examples: Several years ago one of my best friends, a mountain climber, lost his hold on a rock outcropping on Little Bear peak in Colorado and fell over a thousand feet to his death. I think I grew up at that moment and suddenly realized that so few things in life are under our control, we are fragile creatures. Death comes upon us unawares. But it was a sacred moment for me. There was a mystery in it all.
On another occasion I was called to a hospital emergency room to be with a mother whose young college-age daughter had just committed suicide. I could only think: Human life is tenuous; who knows what is occurring in the mind of a person that they will take their own life like this?
Finally, I was once called to a hospital to calm a young man and his wife whose first child had just died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. (SIDS) The man was so overwhelmed with grief that he literally put his fist through a wall.
I remember asking myself whether the hand of God was part of these tragedies. I thought to myself: Even God must be weeping in these moments of life.
My point in all this is to say that I came to grips with my life during those moments. I would take nothing in life for granted hereafter
There are, of course, many, many events that are also unexplainably beautiful: There is transcendence in the birth of a child; there is something of God in the first words a child speaks, the first step it takes. They come close to being divine occurrences. We grow up in those moments; we see life in some deeper fashion.
Having considered all that, we have two events in our Sunday scriptures for today that were interpreted as beyond the human: The first happened to Isaiah at a moment when felt the call to be a prophet. He is in the Jerusalem temple; God appears to him in the midst of angelic creatures; the building shakes; the odor of incense is overwhelming. Then he hears the voice of the Lord God saying: “Who will go for us? Whom shall we send?” His immediate response is: “Here I am, send me.”
I interpret this event as a unique vocation that happened at a moment’s notice. It is quite unlike most vocations, however, that come about as a result of many sacred moments in life.
The second vocation event happens to three of Jesus’ followers, all who make their living as fishermen. Their skill and luck, however, are running against them. Jesus takes matters in hand and suddenly their boats are overflowing with fish. The three can only describe this as a divine event that led to their decision to follow Jesus. Of course, we know the rest of the story from history: Peter James and John became the first leaders of the Church.
The point of these stories is to say that a vocation rises up out of ordinary human events that we, in turn, interpret as divine occasions, the work of God in human form. True, some events may seem tragic, as we have just described. But even the tragic events in human life speak of God.
I think there is no one answer to my opening question: How did I come to this point in my life? It is rather a whole series of events that happened rather haphazardly in life. Our task is one of interpretation, of imagination. God is ultimately discovered in the details, the unexplainable, the beautiful, the overwhelming, The awesome and yes, even in the tragic. Strange, isn’t it, how we end up being who we are, doing what we do? For some, perhaps the lucky few, it comes in a flash of insight. But for the rest of us…well it may be a lifetime and perhaps that’s not so bad, you know?
The scriptures: Isaiah 6: 1-2a, 3-8; 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11; Luke 5: 1-11
Posted by Cindy Lentine at 02:51 PM.
