Stumbling in the Dark

The evangelists report many instances where Jesus heals a blind person.  In every case, the story can be read as a metaphor for the giving of spiritual sight – that is, faith – to the person.  Nowhere is this clearer than in the story we hear this morning.  (Jn 9:1-41).

Here the beggar – blind from birth – miraculously receives his physical sight.  Perhaps more miraculously, he also receives faith despite the consistent efforts of those around him to deny his insight.  He begins professing Jesus as simply “a man,” then claims he is a prophet, then one “from God” and, finally, he acknowledges Jesus as the “Son of Man,” a title which implied that Jesus was the Messiah.

But in John, this story is just as much about those who refuse to believe.  They remain as spiritually blind as they were at the beginning of the story.  They prefer their own dark world to the light which is Jesus.   We shake our heads at their foolishness and smile at Jesus’ rebuke to them.  Yet, I often find myself stumbling around blind in their same, dark world.

At times, I am like the man’s neighbors who see him in a new light.  I may simply doubt that such a thing is possible.  There must be a logical explanation.  After all, I live in a modern society in which science has made great advances, but science has yet to cure a man born blind.  Perhaps it is a trick; it is simply someone who looks like the blind man.  We have seen such remarkable strides in science in our lifetime, it is easy to believe that science will ultimately cure all of our ills, fix all of our problems, and make all of work easy.  We don’t need Jesus’ light, we’ll invent our own.      

At times, I am like the Pharisees, blinded by my own rules of what is right and what is wrong.  If somebody breaks the rules, why should I consider them worthy of my respect, never mind my love?  On the other hand, if I follow the rules, why shouldn’t I be rewarded handsomely?  In a sense, it is my success which blinds me.    As the disciples ask Jesus about the cause of the man’s blindness – “was it his sin or the sin of his parents” – I can easily confuse material and physical success or failure with blessings and curses from God.  I have been richly blessed by God during my life, so it is easy to assume that this is simply my just reward for hard work and good living.  Conversely, for those who are suffering, it is easy to assume that they can just follow my good example and be rewarded as I was.  I don’t need Jesus’ light, mine works just fine.

At times, I am like the man’s parents.  I am blinded by my fear of the light.  I am used the dark, I am comfortable in the dark.  Who knows what will happen if all of that changes?  What would people think if I stepped outside the normal boundaries?  I would rather stay quiet and be accepted than speak out and be rejected.  I don’t need Jesus’ light or his love; I’ll just settle for the light and esteem of others.

Just like the man’s neighbors, his parents, and the Pharisees, I think I have got plenty of light.  I’m not blind, am I? 

Yet science cures disease, but cannot eliminate death.  Science creates amazing amounts of food, yet does not eliminate even physical hunger, never mind spiritual hunger for meaning and purpose.  Science creates weapons of mass destruction, yet cannot eliminate war.

My hard work to succeed only seems to lead to more hard work.  I satisfy one set of desires only to realize that another, even greater set of desires lies just outside my reach.  If only I work a little harder or obey the rules a bit more diligently, I can get that, too!  And, if truth be told, I’m not really that good at working hard and following all the rules.  No matter how hard I try, I ultimately tire out or trip up on one rule or another. 

Finally, the esteem of others does me little good.  In fact, I find that when I am focused on winning the esteem of others, or at least not losing the little esteem I may already have, I don’t even like myself.

None of these false lights can keep me from stumbling in the dark.  I am truly blind.  Only the infinite and unconditional love of God, a love so great that he gave his only son for me and for you, a love so great that his son died an ignominious death on the cross for my sins and yours, only this great and magnanimous God can light my way surely and eternally.  By professing my faith in Jesus, the Light of the World, I live in the peace that science cannot invent, I live with the true and lasting joy that my hard work and diligence will never earn, and I bask in a love that never fails.

I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.

True Freedom

As a young child, it seemed to me that the purpose of rules and laws was to keep me from doing what I wanted to do.  They were the “don’ts” in my life – don’t do this, don’t do that.  I would often strain against those rules, testing them up to, and occasionally beyond, the limits.  Even today, as an adult, I am reminded that my attitude is often much the same.  For example, I am driving merrily along when I suddenly come upon another driver doggedly sticking to the posted 25 mph speed limit.  Of course, I suddenly come upon him – I have been driving quite a bit faster than that.  I am still testing the limits.

On reflection, this seems a natural source of frustration for us.  Laws and rules make us aware of our limits.  They make us aware of our finiteness.  We cannot do it all, be it all, for we are limited, finite beings.  Yet, inside, we yearn for something greater.  We are created in God’s image, and are endowed with an eternal soul that seeks and yearns for reunion with its creator, the limitless, eternal, infinite God.

In today’s readings, both Moses (Dt 6:1-9) and Jesus (Mt 5:17-19) remind us that the true purpose of God’s law is not to remind us of our finiteness by imposing limits on us, but to open for us the door to righteousness, to holiness, to the infinite and unconditional love of God.  The doors which it seems to close are those that lead to dead ends that we often mistake for freedom – materialism, selfishness, individualism, exclusivity, hedonism, and humanism.

But Jesus knows something that Moses may have guessed, but could not really know, for Moses’s experience with God’s law was necessarily a brief one, limited to his own lifetime on earth.  Jesus knows that our pride and greed can corrupt even the God-given law of righteousness and justice, a law which demands justice and care for the poorest of the poor, the widows and the orphans, a law which demands that our first love be for the one and only God, and a law that insists we love our neighbors as ourselves.

Jesus knows that we can – and often do – pervert this law by focusing on the letter of the law, using it to exclude justice and mercy from those who perhaps don’t follow it as closely as we like to think we do.  We can pervert the law by using it to exact vengeance on those who harm us, but of course, meticulously measuring out that vengeance to the “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” standard,  as if such exact and objective measurement was possible.

Jesus comes not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, to show us through his life, his teachings, and, most importantly, through his death and resurrection, that the law truly leads us to our all-loving, all-merciful God if we follow it through Jesus, the fulfillment of the law.  Following the lead of Jesus and putting humility ahead of pride, mercy ahead of vengeance, compassion ahead of competition, we uncover the true spirit of the law, the spirit which Jesus goes on to teach us in the rest of the Sermon of the Mount, the spirit which insists that we turn the other cheek, love our enemies, leave judgment to God, treat others as we would have them treat us, and live free of anxiety for material and physical well-being, for our all-loving God surely knows of and will provide for all of our needs.

Jesus fulfills the law and opens for us the door to true freedom, for it is the door which leads to our deepest yearning – the everlasting, ever-loving, infinite God who created us to be one with him and one with each other. 

Step through this door and enter the kingdom of God.

St. Joseph

We interrupt this Lent for a very special celebration – the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Okay, perhaps many of us don’t think of this as the big “saint day” this week.  After all, how many were “wearin’ the green” on Monday?  The St. Patrick’s Day parade made the front pages of the newspaper, but today – meh!  Each year at Christmas, I get a New York Times Crossword Puzzle Calendar.  At the bottom of the page they note special holidays.  On Monday, of course, it said “St. Patrick’s Day.”  Today – nothing.

As I kid, I was well attuned to the relative disparity in mid-March celebrations.  My mom’s family was all Irish.  Her father had emigrated from Ireland, so St. Patrick’s Day was a major celebration.  Yet, St. Joseph was my patron saint and we never celebrated that at all.  My consolation was that I attended St. Joseph School in Endicott, New York.  My feast day was a day off from school!

Even in religious art, St. Joseph has often been relegated to the background.  In the early church, there was virtually no veneration of St. Joseph.  It was not until the sixteenth century that his feast day was celebrated throughout the Church.  And yet, it is right and just that we pull out the liturgical stops today and celebrate this day with great solemnity, for humble St. Joseph played a vital role in our salvation.

When the Mary says yes to the God’s invitation, she places herself in mortal jeopardy.  In the Jewish law, an unmarried woman who became pregnant was subject to stoning.  While Joseph, who was a righteous man, may have spared her from that fate by his plan to quietly divorce her, she would have certainly been subjected to severe exclusion from society.  God had another idea.  Joseph was told to take Mary into his home as his wife – implicitly telling the world that this child was his, and that Mary and the child should be accorded proper respect and dignity.

In essence, Joseph’s humble obedience – his “yes” to God – was almost as crucial to our salvation as was Mary’s fiat.

We celebrate today to learn from Joseph’s humility, to learn from Joseph’s obedience, that oftentimes our own plans just aren’t good enough.   We pray with St. Joseph that we recognize God’s will in our life.  We pray with St. Joseph that we, like he, have the courage to say “yes” to God.

St. Joseph, pray for us.

Jonah

If I was playing a word association game as a young boy, my response to the word “Jonah” would undoubtedly have been “whale.”  That’s what I knew about Jonah, that he was swallowed by a whale.  But the story of Jonah is much more than a simple fish story.  For in many ways, strange as it may seem, we re-live Jonah’s story most every day of our lives.

Jonah was a prophet, and, of course, each one of us is also a prophet.  By our baptism, we are joined with Christ’s ministry as priest, prophet and king.  But our re-living of Jonah’s life goes beyond this simple comparison.

Just looking at today’s reading (Jon 3:1-10), Jonah seems to be an obedient and very successful prophet.  The Lord tells him to warn Ninevah about their evil ways, but also tell them that God is ready to have mercy of them if they reform their lives.  Jonah hops right to it, Ninevah reforms and is converted to the way of the Lord, and God’s mercy rains down on them.  But we came in this morning in the middle of the story.

The first time the Lord called Jonah to preach at Ninevah, his reaction was quite different.  He promptly booked passage on a boat for Tarshish, literally as far from Ninevah as he could possibly go.  He probably felt that God couldn’t possibly want him to go to Ninevah.  After all, Ninevah wasn’t even Hebrew; it was the capital of the Assyrian empire, enemies of the chosen people.  Why waste time, not to mention risking life and limb, to keep your enemies from destroying themselves with their evil ways?  It took God -- and a large fish -- to turn Jonah back to where we find him this morning, ready to preach God’s universal mercy.

We, too, frequently find ourselves questioning our call from God, our call to live God’s law, to show God’s love and mercy to everyone, and most especially, to those who may have hurt us, those who have offended us, the Ninevites in our lives.  We try to avoid our mission, to jump a ship for Tarshish or perhaps simply to cross to the other side of the street.

There have been times when a neighbor, a co-worker, perhaps a fellow student when I was in school, has done or said something which offended me.  How many times have I then shut that person out from my life, avoided that person?  When forced to be near the person, how many times did I just give the cold shoulder, assuming that this person was not worthy of my love, not worthy of God’s love?  How many times has the phrase “go to hell” gone through my mind?

At those times, I become Jonah, a prophet running from his calling, a selective prophet, one who has put human limits on God’s limitless mercy.

And this is only the start.  For if I can exclude these acquaintances from my love, then certainly people I’ve never even met, people guilty of much more heinous acts, are even more likely to be excluded.  As a society, we routinely execute criminals whom, I suppose we’ve assumed, are beyond reconciliation with God, beyond reconciliation with you and with me.  Aren’t these people simply the Ninevites in our lives, the people we’d just as soon see go to hell? 

It wasn’t so long ago, ironically enough, that we looked to the land of modern day Ninevah and saw an enemy who, we believed – and probably rightly so -- had offended us mightily, hated us mightily, and harbored most evil designs against us.  How did we treat Saddam Hussein, the king of our Ninevites? 

Jonah’s story today lives today in each one of us, in our response to personal insult, in our response to crime, our response to evil around the world.

During Lent, we make a special effort to reform our lives and believe in the good news – the good news that Jesus comes to save all sinners, not just us, not just those who we happen to like, not just those who happen to like us, but all sinners.  By our baptism, we are charged to spread this good news, to be prophets of the good news, most especially – like Jonah – to be prophets to the Ninevites in our lives.  

Sorrowful Joy, Joyful Sorrow

The story of Adam and Eve's fall from grace rings true in a special way for parents.

You put a new carpet in the living room and tell the kids that there is no food or drink in the living room.  Eat in the kitchen, eat in the family room, even take your snacks to the bedroom if you want, but no food in the living room.  Where do find the next empty dish or glass?

You bake a special dessert for relatives that are coming to visit and, as you leave the house, you tell the kids there are lots of things to snack on in the house, but don't touch the cookies cooling on the counter; we're saving them for Aunt Mary and Uncle John.  So how many cookies are missing when you come home?

Few things test juvenile curiosity more than a “Keep Out” or “Don’t Touch” sign.

Frustrating as this might be, when our memories don't fail us and we are honest with ourselves, we remember that we tested our own parents' patience in much the same way.  In fact, we haven't grown up all that much.  We still don't like to obey those limits imposed by others.  When the speed limit is 25, how fast do we drive?  My average is probably about 35 or 40.  Okay, so now we're on a road where the speed limit is 40, how fast do we drive?  I plead the fifth.

Limits:  Our kids don't like to obey them.  We don't like to obey them.  We spend our lives testing them, trying to get around them, trying to eliminate them.  In some sense, this is good. It can lead to discoveries, to advances that would never be possible if someone didn't venture out beyond what others perceived to be an unsurpassable limit.

Lent reminds that there is an absolute limit.  This is the limit of our creatureliness, our nature as finite, created beings.  When we test this ultimate limit, we can only bring ourselves pain and misery, for we separate ourselves from our source, we separate ourselves from the Creator.

Despite aspiring to absolute independence, literally the independence of being my own god, I am always subject to outside influences.  I might like to think I’m “doing it my way” or "being the master of my destiny", but I’m simply choosing which master I will obey - whose limits I should accept.

Do I accept the limits of a mere fellow creature or do I accept the limits of my Creator? True joy and happiness can only be realized if I not only accept, but embrace the limits of my creatureliness, if I accept the fact that as a creature, I have a Creator, a Creator who, as He reveals himself to us in Scripture, loves us with an infinite and unconditional love; subjects himself to testing, torture and death that we might be saved from our own sinful ways; and calls us to love him and love others with our whole hearts, with our whole minds, with our whole strength.

During Lent, we live out dramatic contrasts: the great sorrow at our sins and the incomparable joy of our redemption; the “happy fault” of Adam that leads to such a savior as Jesus Christ; the limits of our creatureliness and the limitless love of our Creator.

We fast to remember the sacrifice Christ endured for us, emptying ourselves to appreciate the fullness of God’s mercy.  We pray for the strength to resist temptation, to thank and praise God for his gracious bounty, and to come closer to our source of joy.  We give alms to share His love and spread the true peace He alone can offer. 

Let the sorrowful joy, the joyful sorrow, of Lent begin.  

Spring Training

Ever since I was a little kid, this has been an exciting time of year for me.  No, I wasn’t that excited about Lent.  I’ve always been a big baseball fan and spring training has begun!  All things are possible.  

But perhaps it’s some sort of God-incidence that Lent and baseball’s spring training overlap.  Just the ballplayers in Florida and Arizona are brushing up their pitching, batting and fielding skills for the regular season, we can use Lent to brush up our spiritual practices of prayer, almsgiving and fasting for our year-round roles as Easter people, those people who have been baptized and made one with Christ in his roles as priest, prophet and king.

In our priestly role, we are a bridge from the world to God.  Jesus, of course, was perfect in this role, since he was God-become-man.  To be effective in our priestly role, we must connect ourselves more closely to God.  Prayer, especially combined with the grace of the sacraments, is a most efficacious means of making this connection.  What can you do this Lent to enhance your prayer life or your participation in the sacraments that you might be a more holy, more priestly person?

A prophet is one who proclaims the word of God.  Jesus was the perfect prophet – so much so that we call him the Word of God.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1).   While we may not be skilled preachers, we can join Jesus as prophets by our acts of love.  What can you do this Lent to begin or improve your practice of almsgiving or other charitable acts that these prophetic acts may allow others to better feel the love that God has for each of his children?

As kings, we are just care-takers and stewards of God’s creation.  Jesus came to save not just us, but all of creation, and he entrusts the world to our care.  We cannot do this without being conscientious consumers of the world’s resources.  Fasting is an excellent way to become more conscious of what we consume – the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the fuel we burn.  How can you use fasting this Lent to become more conscious of wasteful consumption and habits, that you might be a more just steward of God’s creation?

This Lent, may all of us, through prayer, almsgiving and fasting, more fully realize our calling to be priest, prophet and king  – a truly Easter people.