Faith

 

Not just the sanctuary or sacristy – Monday, 1st Week of Lent – Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18/ Matthew 25:31-46

If you are a Lenten observer then I suggest you spend time reading both the texts of sacred scripture that are proclaimed at Mass each day. They have been carefully brought together to express with clarity the mind of God and the mind of the Church. The texts of today are a case in point.

Leviticus 19 opens with the words, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Right away this seems like a tall order. We can barely get through our day without sin and even Proverbs 24:16 tells us that even a righteous man falls seven times a day. Yet there is a command that God makes, “You shall be holy.”

Holiness is not the only command that is given to us in Leviticus. The text of today forms part of a larger section that spans from chapters 17-27 of the book of Leviticus. Scholars call this section the ‘holiness code.’ Chapter 19 itself, from which our text is taken, mirrors and reiterates most of the commandments found in Exodus 20. God, it seems, is not satisfied with us being ‘good’ he demands more; he demands holiness.

Holiness is sadly understood as personal sanctification. I have to be without sin to be saved. But read Leviticus 19 and Matthew 25:31-46 and you will be surprised that for God, the business of holiness extends from the sanctuary and continues to every aspect of human life.

In Greek, the word for holy is ‘haggios’ which translates as ‘different.’ We are God’s holy people and so we are called to be different. In this sense Leviticus 19: 1-2 tells us that our ‘holy’ God is different from other gods and the Lord our God demands that we too are holy.

Why is good not enough to enter heaven? For the Jews, that which is unholy, both ritually and spiritually, would by their presence, pollute the Holy One or Holy objects. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Levite and the scribe walk away because they are on their way to Jerusalem and should they touch this man who may have been dead, then they too would have become ritually impure.

But in their endeavour to be ritually pure the Jews ignored everything else that was demanded of them in Leviticus 19 and the key to this chapter is verse 18, “to love your neighbour as yourself.” This is the verse along with Deuteronomy 6:5 that Jesus taught. We are called to love God with all our heart and mind and strength but also our neighbour as ourselves.

The Gospel of today takes up this aspect of holiness. The call to love our neighbour is an essential component of entering into the home of God the Father. In feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, rendering justice, and respecting the disabled we live the Gospel in five words, “you do it unto me.” The love of our neighbour is not merely some sentimental, emotional or passive love rather it is an action-oriented love. And Jesus took the love for strangers to a new height when he died on the cross.

Finally, we have to ask ourselves, who then is my neighbour? For the Jews in the OT, the neighbour was any other Israelite. When Jesus spoke of the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke chapter 10, he decided to expand the neighbourhood. For Jesus, the Samaritan was the neighbour and not just the people of my kith, kin and country.

God said, “You shall be holy.” See in this both a command and a promise. God indeed demands holiness but he is also making a promise, “You shall be holy.” The season of Lent makes demands on us but it also promises us the joy of being in God’s holy presence.

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Faith

Lent – A time to reboot – First Sunday of Lent, Year B – Mark 1: 12-15

The Gospel of the first Sunday of Lent always takes us through the narrative of the temptations of Jesus. While the Gospel of Luke and Matthew will tell us the three temptations that we are so familiar with, the Gospel of Mark seems to cut to the chase; it is brief, just two verses. Jesus is led by the spirit into the wilderness for 40 days, there to be tempted by Satan. Yet while he was surrounded by the wild beasts the angels waited on him.

Right away are told that Jesus, like us, experienced temptation. But his temptation was not some chocolate cake that passed under his nose in the season of Lent; he faced the might of satan. For satan, if there was ever going to be a moment to bring down God, this was it. Interestingly, Jesus did not face just three temptations; he was tempted for 40 days and when that did not work, the Gospel of Matthew and Luke tell us how satan made one last ditch effort with his last three temptations. Then satan left him but came back at an opportune moment in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Why was satan so riled up? When you look at the text preceding the temptations of Christ you will notice that Mark talks of the Baptism of Jesus. This was the moment that salvation history had waited with bated breath. We are told that at the Baptism of Jesus, the “heavens opened.” Satan knew that if the heavens had opened then all hell had to break loose. If he had to step in to destroy Jesus and save his kingdom of darkness then this was the moment.

During the season of Lent, we too experience this reality. We are drawn to prayer, penance and almsgiving as disciplines to purify our souls. Sin has become a way of life for many of us. When the balance begins to shift, when we begin to invite the Lord into our lives, then Satan’s dominion over us is threatened. The more the Lord is welcomed into our lives the more satan will come after us with everything he has got. It would be shocking if you have never experienced this reality. Sadly, such an absence of satan’s attacks in our lives means that many of us are children of the darkness.

We need to understand our enemy, we need to understand satan. Satan is not his name, his name is Lucifer; satan is his title, his job description. This name appears 72 times in the New Testament. Satan simply means, deceiver. His deception stops at nothing. In the Gospel of Matthew and Luke, he tries to deceive none other than Jesus. Satan knows the ways of God and he knows his scriptures. Remember he was once a resident of heaven but now is a fallen angel. When he went after Our Lord with his final three temptations, he misquoted scriptures in his effort to deceive Our Lord. Christ is the author of life and THE WORD of God; that deception did not work.

Understand this, satan knew who Jesus was, yet he did not give up in his deceptive ways. If he could do that to Christ imagine how he goes after you and me. The first reading of today taken from Genesis reminds us how satan deceived the whole world at the time of Noah. Such was his dominion over the earth that God had to hit the reboot button. Every single man and woman had become a slave to satan but Noah and seven more of his kin. Let that reality set in. This is a formidable force that will stop at nothing. He once managed to cover the world with sin.

Satan attacks us when we are CLOSEST or LOWEST. He attacks us when we are closest to Christ. He can’t bear that Christ lives in us. He attacked Jesus when he saw the heavens open at the Baptism of Jesus. He sees the CLOSENESS of the Father, Son and Spirit. When this does not work, he attacks us when we are at our LOWEST. Remember how he came for Jesus in Gethsemane when Jesus was abandoned by all. He does the same with us.

Yet this is a defeated enemy. The season of Lent reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Christ defeated satan and in so doing freed us from satan. By his resurrection, he conquered death and sin. Jesus had already done the heavy lifting for us when he died on the cross. The season of Lent is the time when cooperate with the plan of God to save us.
I want to assure you that your journey through Lent, difficult as it may be, is not without assistance. In the Gospel of Mark, we are told that Christ is led into the wilderness. We are told that he will be tempted by satan for 40 days. We are told there were wild beasts but we are also told that God’s angels were with him. Know this, his angels are with you as you walk from darkness into his wonderful light.

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Faith

Am I the reason why the Church is not growing? Saturday after Ash Wednesday – Matthew 5:27-32

The call of Matthew the Apostle has been brilliantly painted by Caravaggio. It is one of three paintings that hang in the Contarelli Chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome.

The painting has a shell-shocked Matthew with his left hand pointed at his chest with a look of disbelief on his face. This was the famous itinerant preacher, the popular influencer of that time, calling this public sinner to follow him. Perhaps you and I feel the same in Lent. How can Christ call me? Perhaps our sins are not known to the world yet Christ knows them. So how can Christ call me? Like Matthew, we seem to say, ‘You got the wrong guy.’

But the painting also depicts Matthews’s right hand on the tax money that he has been counting with his four other companions. There is a wonderful reality to the painting. Like Matthew in the painting, we too feel conflicted. We hear the call of Jesus, and we want to follow him but one hand is still attached to sin. We know from the Gospels that Matthew made a clear choice, he let go of the money and followed Christ.

In doing so, Matthew made a ‘profession of faith.’ But on reading the text you may find that there are no words that Matthew uttered in response to his call. Matthew indeed said nothing, yet his actions were a profession of faith; “he left everything, he got up and followed him (Christ).” Merely professing our faith in the Church does not make us disciples if our actions don’t follow our words. The words that Matthew did not speak when he was called were made up when he wrote an entire Gospel.

Perhaps like the Pharisees in the Gospel of today, we too are upset when a sinner finds the first pew and is called to the table of the Lord. We speak and write volumes of our desire for our Church congregations to grow. We wish our youth to come back in droves but we won’t allow out priests, and we won’t let our parish pastoral plans cater to these needs. They must cater to my needs in Church first, thus making Christ a captive of four walls. Ironically those who are confused and have questions about the faith are out there, yet all of our ministry is within the four walls of our Church. We are busy saving the saved!

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Faith

Lent – The most wonderful time of the year?

The very title of the article would have reminded you of Christmas had it not ended with a question mark. Without a doubt, the very words, ‘most wonderful time of the year’ would get you humming that ever-popular song. But on the eve of the Holy season of Lent and with the question mark that I have placed at the end of this title, your mind has now begun to wonder if something is wrong with this writer.

How can Lent even be the most wonderful time of the year? Lent has traditionally been associated with an absence of joy. Prayer, fasting, abstinence and almsgiving are not on an average person’s wish list. To make matters worse, the Church is bathed with the colour purple and there is an ‘in your face’ absence of any external festivity. Yet I insist that this is the most wonderful time of the year.

Let me elaborate. When I travel away from home, the last day of my travel or holiday always seems to make me restless. There is a desire to get to my bed, my choice of food, my routine and my home. This, I am sure, is a common lived experience. Lent is that time when we come home; home to the Church, home to our family, home to our common meal and Master.

While at Christmastime we long to get home, to be with family; Lent too is a time, when having stayed or sadly even strayed away from THE family of God, we get an opportunity to come back to the family of the Church; to be forgiven, to be loved and to heal the heart and soul. What could be more wonderful than that?

Approach this season as it should be, with a sense of joy, with a sense of homecoming. For this is truly the most wonderful time of the year.

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Opinion

Are you narrow-minded?

Narrow-minded people are by definition ‘not willing to accept ideas or ways of behaving that are different from their own.’ Well, in that case, I declare I am narrow-minded and every Christian ought to be. After all, why should I accept ideas and ways of behaving that go against the very commandments of God even if the whole world chooses to follow them?

Those who choose to love the Lord and are intolerant of sin (not the sinner) are often labelled, boxed and relegated to the back rooms of public debate as being narrow-minded; while sin is sanctioned as open-minded and desirable.

Quite recently I reached out to two friends, one married and one a happy bachelor. Both have been very actively working out to what can only be described as perfectly chiseled bodies. I presume that the goal of working out is to stay in shape, remain healthy and inspire others to stay healthy too. Up to this point in my life I thought of myself as ‘open-minded’ but of late I have been meditating on the path to holiness. Images such as this would have been for me something that should be perfectly acceptable and ‘open-minded’. Yet when you begin to meditate on God’s words and his will, you begin to see things differently.

I wrote to both my friends and I must say right away that they were kind and even respectful of my ‘narrow-mindedness.’ I made a case that a married man’s body belongs to him and his wife. While it has become an acceptable way of life to dandy one’s body half naked (even in Church) the scriptures tell us that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 6:19) Even more, such images could and may be the cause of leading others to lust and sin. What if the body of this married man now became the envy of another woman or man?

Simply accepting what society has been dumping on us in the guise of open-mindedness has led to a downfall of the way we present ourselves even in the Church. The prophets never tired of condemning sin. Christ did not come to make us a happy-clappy society but to save us from sin. If that be so, then why is the condemnation of sin (again not the sinner) in any and every form been met with silence from the pulpit? Why do our Bishops and priests not feel the need to reiterate, even a thousand times the need for an appropriate dress code in Church? If the Vatican won’t let an inappropriately dressed person into St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, then why do we at a local level allow such behaviour as acceptable?

Jesus made a case for that road less taken; the road that has been called narrow-minded by the world. He spoke of the narrow gate in Matthew 7:13-14. He said, “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Today, I want to pay tribute to the many clergy and especially the religious nuns who in our institutions enforced a strict moral life even though they were and are still flippantly dismissed as ‘narrow-minded’. I thank them for fighting a battle for heaven and encourage you to petition your Bishops, priests and religious to stop the desecration of Churches by the disrespect that such ‘broad-mindedness’ has led us to.

Fr Warner D’souza

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