3rd Sunday of Lent, Cycle C - March 24, 2019

3rd Sunday of Lent

 Cycle C

Saint Mary Parish, Pylesville   4pm and 8am Masses

March 24, 2019   

Does God Punish? 

There is a way of thinking that I have heard sometimes and that makes me very uncomfortable.

Over the years, I have heard some Christians groups condemning various people or kinds of people. They have labelled them as sinners and even evil.

And then they take it a step farther. When bad things happen to those people whom they see as great sinners, these Christian groups say that it is God punishing them.

So, maybe those people have fallen on hard times financially or maybe they have contracted a serious sickness. These Christian groups say that because those people are so bad, God is punishing.

According to these groups, the bad things that are happening to those people are God’s intentional punishment. And, in turn, the punishments are proof of how bad those people are.

God Does Not Punish

Well, in today’s gospel, Jesus debunks this way of thinking.

The people around Jesus bring up a recent event. Some folks up in Galilee were put to death by the Roman official Pilate.

They were thrown into a fire that they themselves were using for their religious sacrifices. Jesus realizes that the people around him are thinking that those Galileans who were killed must have done something bad.

They must have been really bad sinners and it must have been God punishing them. And Jesus says: “No way!

“They weren’t any more sinful than any of you. You can’t say this and think that way.”

Jesus himself then raises another example. A building had collapsed and some people were killed.

And again, Jesus insists that those people weren’t any more sinful that anyone else. This was not God punishing them for being bad or sinful persons.

Not Punished forSin

So, what I see here is Jesus teaching us something about our image of God.

The point is that God is not a punisher. Yes, sometimes bad things happen to us.

But bad things don’t just happen to bad people – we all know that. They happen to good people too.

They just happen. God is not a punisher.

If we look at the thrust of the gospels, Jesus’ dominant theme is that God loves us – unconditionally and forever. And a loving God does not, ever, turn his back on us and punish us.

God is not playing a reward/punishment game with us. God just loves us and keeps loving us when we foul up and keeps trying to draw us into his way of love.

It’s something like me standing here in the sanctuary facing the tabernacle. I am facing Jesus in the Eucharist.

I can turn around and turn my back on Jesus and the tabernacle. But Jesus is still there, still looking at me and present to me and loving me. 

Punished bySin 

One of our good Catholic theologians puts it this way.

We are not punished forour sins; we are punished byour sins. We are not punished forour sins; we are punished byour sins.

This is really a key point and may be a shift in our understanding. So, yes, you and I can sin, but it is really our sins that punish us.

For example, if I keep on holding a grudge against someone, the bitterness and vengeance in my heart really eats away at me and distorts and disfigures me as a person. That behavior hurts or punishes me.

Or if I overeat or overdrink, the result is that I may get coronary problems or liver disease or lots of other possible troubles. That behavior hurts or punishes me. 

The point is that we are not punished forour sins by an all-loving God. Instead, we are punished byour sins – to the sadness and disappointment of our loving God.

Repentance 

At the end of today’s passage, Jesus gives the image of the fig tree.

Scripture scholars tell us that Jesus is not saying that he is going to cut us down as someone might cut down a tree that bears no fruit. Instead, Jesus is trying to shake us up a bit. 

It’s as if he’s grabbing us by the shoulders and saying: “Wake up! Turn back to the Father, to God!

“Identify the sin in your lives and repent of it. Because if you don’t, that sin is going to punish you right now and might end up punishing you for all eternity.

“Just turn around and look at your loving God! And live out of that love and you’ll be fine.”

2nd Sunday of Lent, Cycle C - March 17, 2019

2^nd Sunday of Lent

 Cycle C

March 17, 2019   

Rothschild Mansion

There is a story that back in the nineteenth century, some tourists were passing by the famous mansion of the Rothschild family in London.

These tourists noted that on one end of the mansion, the cornices and exterior wall were unfinished. They wondered why this was so since the Rothschilds were one of the wealthiest families in Europe.

The explanation is interesting. Lord Rothschild explained that he was an orthodox Jew and according to Orthodox tradition, the house of every Jew was to have some part left unfinished.  

Why? To bear witness that the occupant of the house is like Abraham, in a sense unfinished, a person on a journey with no lasting home on this earth.    

Life as Circle

That practice helps us to appreciate today’s Scripture readings.

It helps us to realize that we are all on a journey. Some years ago, I read a book entitled The Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill.

Cahill states that up until the time of Abraham, ancient peoples viewed life as a circle. They believed that what had happened in the past would happen again in a continuous circle.

They also believed that everything was determined by heavenly powers. And so, our task was to meditate on the ceaseless, circular flow of life.

We were to do this until we came to peace with this and with our own death as part of that great circle. Now, as I said, that was the ancient view of life, but one of the gifts of the Jews was that Abraham changed this way of thinking.

Life as Journey

The background to today’s first reading is that Abraham has listened to God’s call and set out to an unknown land.

He sets out on a journey and ever since then the way to look at human life is as a journey. This change of outlook now means that there is much more to life than the past simply repeating itself.

Now there is the possibility of a different future and we have responsibility for creating it. The Old Testament also reveals that this journey is not just from one country to another, as it was for Abraham and Moses.

It is not just an outer journey, a journey outside me. Instead, it is primarily an inner journey, a journey to our inner self where we can find God.

It is a journey of becoming one with God and becoming more and more like God. In the long run, it is a journey back to God. 

A Journey with No Tents

This understanding carries right over into Christianity.

The gospels consistently show Jesus on a journey to Jerusalem. They also call us to see our lives as a journey and they add an important caution about this.

The caution is that we have to resist the temptation to pitch our tents, in other words, to stay put. In today’s gospel, Jesus will not let Peter do this because he knows that there is still a lot of the journey ahead and a lot of work to do.

The question is: how might we find ourselves pitching our tents today? We might be doing this when we say things like: “This is the way I’ve always done it.”

Or,“This is the way I learned it and have always understood it.”Statements like these might be saying that we are closing ourselves off to looking at things differently or doing things differently.  

For example, we can pitch our tents in the understanding of ourselves. Maybe we just turn off any comment that calls us to examine our attitude or way of speaking about certain persons or groups of people.

We can also pitch our tents in the understanding of our faith. Maybe we resist understanding faith as primarily a relationship with God that is to grow and deepen – a living relationship instead of just a static list of truths.

The point is that like Peter in the gospel, we need to resist the temptation of pitching our tents. This is what the Season of Lent that calls us to do – to keep growing, to keep on the journey of life.

1st Sunday of Lent, Cycle C - March 10, 2019

1st Sunday of Lent

Cycle C

March 10, 2019   

The Desert and Demons

Today’s gospel tells us that Jesus goes into the desert east of Jerusalem to face his demons.

His doing that symbolizes the need we all have to go into a desert-like place, into the silence of our own hearts.  It symbolizes the need we all have to wrestle with the dark sides of our lives.  

If Jesus finds it essential to wrestle with these dark sides, shouldn’t we also find this essential?  And beyond that, isn’t it possible that the demons or dark sides Jesus has to face are some of the basic ones we have to face?

1. Stone to Bread 

The first demon Jesus faces is the temptation to change stone to bread.

Jesus responds, “One does not live on bread alone.”  Those who first heard Jesus and observed his lifestyle realized that he was in touch with a life that went beyond the physical and the earthly.

Jesus is saying that we are to live on bread, but “not… on bread alone.”  The early Christians believed this and fed hungry spirits with the food of God’s Word and also fed hungry stomachs with real bread.

Their commitment to do this came from following Jesus’ invitation to make a 180-degree change in their value system. They were to look upon all others with a different mindset – as God’s sons and daughters.

With this different frame of mind, we are moved to take care of the immediate needs of others.  And we are also moved to examine the social structures that probably helped to create these needs in the first place.  

No question, Jesus’ plan to change mindsets will be more difficult and it will take longer, but in the long run it will produce lasting good.  So, the demon here is the temptation to reject doing this.

2. Power over All

The second demon Jesus faces is the temptation to gain power over everything.

In Jesus’ time, people expected the Savior to come with great power.  Jesus’ response again shows a different plan:“You shall worship God alone.”

It is tempting to worship power, to resort to power and force to do even good things.  The problem is that this usually leaves some death and destruction in its path – what is sometimes called “collateral damage.”  

We can see this in the relationships between nations and also in our personal relationships.  Jesus cautions about power and force and calls us to be respectful of others and seek what is good for both sides.  

Sometimes it may not be possible to do this, but Jesus calls us to this way whenever we can.  He calls us to stop playing the power games of win/lose with each other where I come out on top and the other person is diminished.

Instead we are to seek the mutual flourishing of ourselves and others whenever possible.  The demon here is the temptation to reject what Jesus calls us to do.       

3. Proving Our Greatness

The third demon Jesus faces is the temptation to jump off the roof of the temple to prove his greatness as God.

Jesus responds, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”  The issue here is that sometimes we want to make ourselves the center of focus.

Sometimes we want to impress others with how much we know or how successful we are.  Sometimes we do not really listen to others but interrupt and get things focused on ourselves again.

We need to recall that the risen Jesus did not feel the need to appear at the front door of Pilate’s home with a TV crew and say, “Look at who I really am and how stupid you were.”  Instead, he just appeared to his followers as a way to continue his work.

So, for us, we can become more and more God-like and even feel better and better about ourselves not by calling attention to ourselves, but by living responsibly and doing the best we can in everyday life.  The demon is the temptation to reject Jesus’ example here.

Conclusion

So, the demons Jesus confronts in the desert are probably the same ones we need to confront in the silence of our hearts.  

This Season of Lent invites us to go into the desert of our inner selves.  It invites us to deal with the demons we find there.

Ash Wednesday, Cycle C - March 6, 2019

Ash Wednesday

Cycle C

March 6, 2019     

Ashes 

I am always struck by how many of us come to church on Ash Wednesday.

We have almost made it a self-declared holyday of obligation! Recently, I was doing some reading and I came across an insight into why this may be so.

The idea is that Ash Wednesday speaks to realities that we usually like to avoid and not think about. But, we know it is safe to look at them here today with God and with other persons of faith. 

So, the ashes speak of our mortality. They remind us that our time on this earth is limited and that someday we will return to God.

The ashes also speak to the incompleteness or fragmentation of human life. Maybe each one of us realizes within ourselves that our lives or relationships are not exactly what we would like them to be and we are not quite sure what to do about that.

The ashes also speak to our human imperfection. We know that we have our dark sides and weaknesses and growth edges and we can bring all of that here to God.

So, the ashes speak powerfully to us and that is why we come here this morning. And then, Jesus in the gospel passage sends us forth with three spiritual practices in mind: fasting, prayer, and charitable giving.

These are to help us to live out of the awareness that the ashes create. I recommend that fasting is the pivotal practice because it leads to prayer and charity.

Fasting as the Key

The Church calls us to fast – to limit the amount of food we eat on two days:  today and on Good Friday. The Church also asks us to abstain from eating meat today and on all the Fridays of Lent.

That’s really not all that difficult, although the Church also asks us to consider adopting some form of fasting or self-denial that is personal to ourselves – maybe giving up chocolate or beer, things like that. But, if we just do the minimal fast that the Church asks, that’s fine.

Our fasting has three purposes.

First, the experience of a little bit of physical hunger helps us to experience our spiritual hunger for God. 

It is only God who can satisfy this deeper hunger within us. In this way, our fasting can lead to some prayer, to make time for reflection, to read some Scripture each day, to pray the rosary, just to speak to God from our own hearts, just to pray in a way that is good for us.

Second, our voluntary experience of a little bit of hunger helps to create a bond with those who are hungry without choosing it.

It gives us a sensitivity to those who are in need. In this way, our fasting can lead us to charity and to do what we can to assist others.

And third, fasting from food often connects us with some behavior from which we need to fast.

For example, maybe we need to fast from talking negatively about others or always putting ourselves and our own preferences first. This is what repentance means. 

So, may the ashes speak deeply to each of us today and lead us to a closer relationship with Jesus through this Lenten Season.