Made New

I don’t know about you, but Easter always makes me feel renewed. After six weeks of Lent and then the drama of Holy Week, Easter comes along like a long deep breath of fresh air.  It’s as if the whole world inhales and drinks in the sunshine and new life of His resurrection.  Easter affirms and strengthens us like no other season. Easter invites us to shake off our old ways and put on the white garment of our baptism.  Every Easter Christ invites us again to follow Him.  That need for a connection with God is hard-wired into us.   As St. Augustine ways, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.  So how do our hearts “rest” in Jesus?  There are several examples in the Gospels that show us how different people find their rest in Christ, but this is one of my favorites.

Bartimaeus is a blind beggar we see sitting on the road near Jericho (Mark 10:46-52).  We remember that Jericho is a sinful city that the Israelites had to conquer in their quest to possess the Promised Land.  The early Christians would hear this Gospel story and associateJericho with sinfulness.  Then we learn that Bartimaeus is blind.

Being blind was a terrible affliction in Biblical times because you couldn’t earn a living to support yourself and your family.  You had to beg.  Begging is an act of profound humility.  You are saying to the world: “I can’t make it on my own.  I need your help.”  And that’s what Bartimaeus did when he heard that Jesus was passing by—he begged Him for help.  “Jesus, Son of David, take pity on me”(Mark 10:47).  The people around him told Bartimaeus to be quiet, but hedidn’t listen to them.  He kept begging Jesus to help him.  So Jesus stood still and called for Bartimaeus to come closer.  Bartimaeus threw off his cloak, leapt up, and ran to Jesus.  Christ asked him, “What do you want Me to do for you? And the blind man said to Him, “Master, that I may see.”  Jesus said, “Go, your faith has made you whole;”  And immediately, Bartimaeus could see and he began to followJesus.

This encounter between the blind man and our Lord can teach us a lot about what it means to live in God’s grace.  First, we have to know we’re sinners.  Like Bartimaeus, we can’t see the good, the true and the beautiful.  We’re weighed down in the dirt by our sins.  When we can acknowledge our sinfulness, we know the only way out  of it is to beg for help.  We can’t fix ourselves.  This is a real temptation in our “self-help” culture.  But it’s not the Lord’s way.  THe only way to gain our sight is to beg.  And we have to persist and never stop asking.  This can be uncomfortable because friends and family, like the crowd around Bartimaeus, don’t think we need to look to Christ for help.  It goes against our cultural self-reliance.  And it’s exactly what Jesus loves.

When we call out to Him, He stands still.  Christ is the center of creation, the still point of the turning universe.  Everything revolves around Him.  He calls to Bartimaeus—just as He calls to each one of us.  The Greek word that expresses that calling is the same root word as the word for “church.”  Christ calls us into His Church.  It’s never just a “me and Jesus” experience as some may think.  Our calling is to love and follow Him in the context of His Bride, the Church.  And when He calls us we should respond like the blind man does, by throwing off our cloak (our sins, our doubts, our old ways of doing things) and leap up to go to Jesus.  Bartimaeus doesn’t hesitate or ask advice or call a committee meeting:  he hears the call of Jesus, he throws off his old life and he runs to Him.  And then Jesus asks him the central question of his life and of our lives.

“What do you want Me to do for you?” Imagine if your Savior asked youthat right now.  What would you tell Him?  Think about that for a moment.  What can Jesus do for you right now, today, right where you are in your life?  Bartimaeus tells Jesus that he wants to see.  This is a great answer!  He wants to see like Jesus sees.  He wants to BE LIKE JESUS.  And Jesus tells him that his faith has healed him. 

When we run to Jesus and accept His calling, following Him wherever He leads us, His grace will make us whole.  Christ frees us to become all that He created us to be.  But that freedom comes with a great price–the Cross.  When we embrace Jesus, we must also embrace His Cross.  Easter is the great invitation to leap up, throw off our old ways, pick up our cross and follow the Lord.  Our faith has healed us.His Cross has redeemed us.  Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

“Look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him, everything   else thrown in.” —C.S. Lewis

Holy Week

The images of Holy Week draw us into the drama of Christ’s last few days before Calvary. On Palm Sunday we hear the crowds shouting, “Hosanna!” as Jesus enters Jerusalem There’s a kind of frenzy in the air. Lots of people are following Jesus. Lots of soldiers are following Jesus. He’s coming to celebrate the Passover feast with his friends. He’s coming to suffer and to die, betrayed by a friend and denied by a friend. And He’s coming to rise from the grave on Easter morning.

We’re so familiar with the story that sometimes we gloss over the uncomfortable images in our haste to roll the stone away and cry, “Alleluia! He is risen!” It’s a common human mistake. In fact, it’s the core of the prosperity Gospel fad. But here’s the truth: Jesus said, “If anyone will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up His cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). He never tells us that if we follow Him we’ll be rich and powerful and healthy. Or even, happy. The saints have always known this. They view suffering and sacrifice as the doorway to an intimate relationship with Jesus.

In Jerusalem, the path that Jesus walked from His condemnation to Golgotha is called the “Via Dolorosa” or “Way of Sorrows.” This recalls the prophet Isaiah’s description of our Savior: “He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief…”(Isaiah 53:3). Pilgrims today retrace His footsteps, stopping to pray and to remember His passion and suffering for our sake. The Stations of the Cross, these same instances as on the Jerusalem “way,” are in every Catholic Church and we pray them often during Lent. We recall how Christ was arrested, beaten, stripped, and burdened to carry His Cross. At each fall, at every humiliation and torture, we kneel and pray these words: “We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You, because by Your Holy Cross You have redeemed the world.” Christ performed many miracles of healing, and yet His miracles didn’t save us. He taught beautiful parables of mercy and forgiveness, yet His preaching didn’t save us. What saves us? His death on the Cross. And that’s what this week is about.

A few years ago at World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Pope Francis prayed the Stations of the Cross with more than a million young people. He asked them 3 questions. This week is a good time for us to ask ourselves these same questions: What have I left at the Cross? What has the Cross of Jesus left for me? What does the Cross teach me?

We pray to be more like Jesus. We beg Him to hold us close to His Sacred Heart. Yet it can be hard for us to accept the fact that suffering comes with that embrace. To be more like Him, we must walk the Via Dolorosa, too. We’re beaten down, spat upon, kicked and left alone with no one to stand up for us or defend us or make a case for us. We fall down. We get up. We fall down again. We get up again. Through our blood and sweat we can see that hill ahead of us, two crosses already there. Two thieves hang in agony and we know that soon, we’ll take our place between them. Each one of us bears a cross of suffering, just at the Church does. She is maligned, accused of every wrongdoing and shortcoming and sin. She will suffer because Her Spouse suffers. And She wouldn’t have it any other way. Her very life is in Him, and apart from His Cross, she is nothing but a social club: well-meaning but not life-giving. The glory and power of the Resurrection are bought at the terrible price of His suffering and death. On Good Friday, on the Cross, Easter looks a million miles away. But without suffering, without the power of His Blood, the stone of the tomb is impossibly heavy, unable to be rolled away. In these days of Holy Week, we walk with Jesus, and we weep.

“He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our sins. The punishment that brought us peace was on Him. And by His wounds we are healed.”

—–Isaiah 53:5

At The Tomb

“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? “(John 20:15). Mary Magdalene has gone to Jesus’ tomb and found Him gone. Her friend was dead and she felt lost and alone. They had killed Him and now they’d even taken His body away. There was nothing she could do now but weep for her lost Savior and her lost hope.

 When was the last time you felt like everything you loved was lost? All of us have been where Mary was that morning. We’ve all been so devastated by a loss that we didn’t anticipate and couldn’t see our way through. Maybe we lost someone to death. Or divorce. Or abandonment. Our dream job was “downsized.” Our usually-healthy body was laid low by an accident or a serious illness. We’ve been betrayed by someone we trusted with our whole heart. Mary Magdalene had put her faith in Jesus and His promise of new life. She had hoped in Christ. Now, in His tomb, she wept because it was all gone. In that moment for her, hope was nowhere to be found. And that’s when Christ asks her: “Whom are you looking for?” You see, Christ was there with her all the time. He was there in the midst of Mary’s despair and hopelessness. He saw every tear and heard every sob. No one knows abandonment like Jesus. His friends fell asleep in the Garden and ran away into the night when the soldiers came for Him. He knows what it feels like for friends to leave you alone.  He knows what it feels like to be betrayed by a friend and sold out. He’s been there. His closest friend denied even knowing him and not once, but three times.

 When we’re in a tomb of loneliness and we feel betrayed and abandoned, the question Jesus asked of Mary is the one we need to ask ourselves: “Whom are you looking for?” We want acceptance and affirmation. We want to be valued. We want to feel needed and cherished. We want the wounds of our childhood and past relationships to be bound up and healed. We want to feel good enough. We want to be loved for the person that we are. We want to be needed because we’re valuable and unique. We want to be treated with dignity and respect. We need to feel like we matter to another person. We need to be affirmed and supported in our decisions and choices. And yet most of us are disappointed. Most of us, at some point in our lives, have the experience of Mary Magdalene. In those moments before she recognized the risen Christ speaking to her, Mary was at the lowest point of her life. We’ve all been there. Lost, alone, disappointed and hopeless. It’s the moment Easter was made for.

Easter says to us: “You are loved just the way you are, with all your sins and wounds and shortcomings. You are My unique and priceless child, formed by My own hands. I made the universe for you. I put the sun and moon and stars in place, just for you. You’re the reason I left heaven, to be born as one of you, to live and die on a Cross so that we can be together forever. You are the reason for Good Friday. You’re the reason for Easter morning.” When Mary Magdalene heard Jesus call her by name, she recognized Him at last. Jesus knows you by name, down to the number of hairs on your head and the DNA of your cells. He knows your joys and your fears, all your hopes and every one of your sins. And He came  that “you might have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10). This is the promise of Easter, fulfilled by the empty tomb Mary found that morning. So…..Whom are you looking for?

“Now let the heavens be joyful, Let earth her song begin: Let the round world keep triumph, And all that is therein; Invisible and visible, Their notes let all things blend, For Christ the Lord is risen Our joy that hath no end.”

                 —-Saint John of Damascus

Repent

Springtime has finally arrived (we hope!) in north Georgia.  The dark rainy days of winter are slowly slipping away into memory and every day sees new blooms in our gardens and the woods around us.  A thousand shades of green are blanketing the hills and ridges as sleeping buds burst forth to find the sun. I know how they feel.  I’m feeling that same longing for the new life of spring, too.  These past few weeks of Lent have prepared us for the true Light of Easter.  We’ve been walking to Jerusalem with our Lord, through the good times He’s shared with His friends and now as we will be with Him through His Passion and the Cross of Good Friday.  Spring is about changes and new beginnings.  And change is painful.

But change is also hopeful.  A new beginning opens a world of possibilities.  For me, writing is like that.  I’m old-fashioned and use a pen and paper writing everything in longhand.  Sitting down with a blank white page in front of me is at once a gift and a burden.  I can write whatever words I want to write and that’s a marvelous gift.  But that freedom brings with it the burden of choosing which words to write and in what order and for what purpose.  This is very much what Easter is for us as well.  The sacrifice of the Cross opens heaven for us again.  After original sin entered the world through our first parents, a gulf of separation kept us from knowing God as He created us to know Him. He wanted to be in an intimate relationship with each one of us, every moment of every day.  So He had to build a bridge from His throne to our hearts.  And He imagined that bridge in the form of a Cross.  A simple wooden cross that would reach from the depths of our sins to the heights of heaven.

The hope of the Cross of Christ is our greatest gift.  Through Him, we have the new life we long for–here and for all eternity in heaven.  But the joy of the resurrection comes with the exquisite price of Golgotha.  Easter is meaningless without Good Friday.  In our culture, we often skip anything that smacks of sacrifice or suffering.  We want to get straight to joy and happiness.  But one look at the life of Jesus shows us how we are to live.  And no time in His life is more revealing than this week.  He spends time with His friends.  He spends time in prayer.  He helps those around Him with what they need.  He keeps His heart open and His eyes fixed on Friday.  He is motivated by one thing and one thing only:  love.  As we journey towards this Easter Sunday, how well do our lives reflect the hope of Jesus’ gift of the Cross?  Like Christ, do we live a life full of prayer and service to others?  Are we open to helping those around us when they need help?  Does love motivate the decisions we make?  If you’re like me, you probably have a ways to to.  And that’s exactly when Jesus loves us most—when we still have a ways to go and we choose to make that journey with Him.

If you’ve been away from Christ, today is the perfect day to come home to Him.  He’s waiting for you in the sacrament of confession.  He’s waiting for you in the celebration and sacrifice of the Holy Mass.  He’s waiting to give you the hope and the joy that He purchased for you on the Cross.  Spring is the season of new life and light.  Christ is calling you to return to Him and receive the new life that only He can offer.

“Even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to Me with all your heart..”

                                                                                             —Joel 2:12

She’s Praying For You

They live their lives in a building with very limited access to the outside world. They dress in a simple habit and crucifix. They wear sandals, plain leather shoes, or they go barefoot. They only go outside to receive medical care. They vote by absentee ballot. Their families can visit them twice a year and then only through a metal grate which separates them. Their groceries and other supplies are brought to them by volunteers who place the items in a turntable in the wall so that they can be retrieved without direct contact. Daily life inside is a rhythm of prayer and work in community and in private. There is very little talking, but a frequent sound heard is the ringing of a bell which signifies time for prayer, work, meals, sleeping and waking up. There are no radios or televisions, no computers or tablets, only the sound of footsteps on tile floors. All in all, it’s an atmosphere of peace and quiet.

This is a very general description of what you might find in any one of the thousands of religious houses throughout the world. Catholic women enter different orders of sisters whose lives are dedicated to prayer. There are differences among the orders, but in general each sister lives in a very small and simple room, called a “cell.” It’s usually furnished with a bed, desk, chair and crucifix. The day begins at 12:30 a.m. when the bell rings for matins, or morning prayer. It will ring again for the six other times of prayer which comprise the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours. After about an hour of prayer, the sisters return to sleep until 5 a.m. when they begin their day. They attend morning Mass and then eat a simple breakfast, like toast and coffee. This meal is usually eaten in silence, and while standing. After more prayer, the sisters begin their work day. Some orders may sew vestments while others bake communion waferss to bring in money for their support. Others have no regular labor other than to pray. Of course every house has to provide for its own household needs such as cooking, cleaning, gardening, and sewing, etc. For all these sisters, their work is also prayer.

Lunch is usually the largest meal, with homemade breads and soups and perhaps fruit for dessert. Meat is rarely if ever eaten. Then it’s back to work and prayer until vespers which is usually at 4 p.m. A light meal might be eaten afterwards while someone reads aloud from a selection of poems, news articles or books. Recreation follows where the sisters can play games, practice musical instruments and talk. Then they gather again in the chapel for Compline, which is the final prayer of the Church’s day. They retire to their cell where they might read and pray until lights out at 8:45.  

This way of life may seem extreme, but for the women who are called to live this vocation, it is a foretaste of what they imagine heaven will be. They care for one another, work together for the common good and offer every waking moment to the Lord. They pray for our world and for all our needs and requests. They pray for peace and for the Church. In their enclosed gardens, the fruit of prayer is a gift to the outside world. I believe these cloisters are like precious gems whose value is beyond our knowing. What a treasure we have in them and in their vocation of love.  

“And He said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the one to come eternal life.”

       —-Luke 15:29-30