Breaking the Word

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Ash Wednesday

Bugs in the Light

Readings: Joel 2:12-18; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13,14 & 17; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Picture: cc Ken-ichi

Sisters and brothers, if you were to go for a walk in the woods and turn over a rock that was lying on the ground, what do you think will happen? Very likely, you will see lots of tiny insects scrambling about, desperately looking for a place to hide. These little guys like to live in places that are damp and dark. So that when the rock is lifted, and the sunlight shines upon them, their first reaction is to run away.

I’m not sure about you, sisters and brothers, but I find this image of bugs scrambling to escape the light, a useful one for helping me to appreciate the reason why I need Lent. As you know, in a little more than forty days time, we will be celebrating Easter Sunday. Slightly more than six weeks from today, we will celebrate in a special way that incredible moment when the stone was rolled away from the tomb, and the brilliant light of the Crucified and Risen Christ shone out upon the world. As an important part of our celebration, we will also be renewing our baptismal promises. We will be recommitting ourselves, not just to live and to walk in the marvelous Light of Christ, but also to share it with others.

There’s just one problem. If I were to be completely honest with myself, I have to admit that there’s a part of me that will find it difficult to rejoice at Easter. When the stone is rolled away and the Light of Christ shines out, there’s a part of me that probably won’t be rushing out to welcome the Light with open arms. Instead, this part of me will be desperately trying to run away and to hide. For I know that even though the Light of Christ gives life, it can also be very uncomfortable. To remain in the light also means being willing to forgive and even to love those who have hurt me. It means taking time to care for those who need my attention: my family, my friends, my colleagues, my neighbors... Remaining in the light means being willing to take up my own cross daily, and follow in the footsteps of the Lord. Sisters and brothers, as embarrassed as I am to say it, like those bugs living under the rock in the woods, there is a part of me that prefers the damp and the dark to the light.

Which is why I need these days of Lent. This is a special time. In the words of the second reading, this is the very acceptable time. This is the day of salvation. During these holy days, together with all of you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, I will ask the Lord to wash me from my guilt, to cleanse me from my sin, to create for me a clean heart. I will allow the Lord to prepare me to walk in his Light.

I will do this especially by engaging in the traditional practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. But I have to be careful. For, as Jesus reminds us in the gospel, it is possible to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons. It is possible to pray and to fast and to give alms only so that others will see me and think highly of me. But when I do this, I remain engulfed in darkness. When I seek only the harsh glare of public approval, my heart becomes hardened in selfishness. What I need, instead, is to seek the approval of the One whom the prophet Joel speaks about in the first reading: The God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in kindness and relenting in punishment. Under the gentle glow of God’s compassionate love, I can learn to allow my heart to melt, and even to break. Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord your God.

With a broken heart, I can learn to welcome the Light of Christ.

Sisters and brothers, in your life, are there any stones that need overturning, any bugs that need rousing, this Lent?

No comments:

Breaking News: Ordinary Time

Apart from those seasons having their own distinctive character, thirty-three or thirty-four weeks remain in the yearly cycle that do not celebrate a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ. Rather, especially on the Sundays, they are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. This period is known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time begins on Monday after the Sunday following 6 January and continues until Tuesday before Ash Wednesday inclusive. It begins again on Monday after Pentecost and ends before Evening Prayer I of the First Sunday of Advent. This is also the reason for the series of liturgical texts found in both the Roman Missal and The Liturgy of the Hours (Vol. III - IV), for Sundays and weekdays in this season. ~ General Norms for the Liturgical Year & Calendar, 43-44

From 36th Jesuit General Congregation

It is our union with one another in Christ that testifies to the Good News more powerfully than our competences and abilities.... In our individualistic and competitive age, we should remember that the community plays a very special role since it is a privileged place of apostolic discernment.... The Jesuit community is a concrete space in which we live as friends in the Lord. This life together is always at the service of mission, but because these fraternal bonds proclaim the Gospel, it is itself a mission. –Companions in a Mission of Reconciliation and Justice (CMRJ), nn. 7-9.

With the poor, we can learn what hope and courage mean.... In our communities and apostolates, we hear the call to rediscover hospitality to strangers, to the young, to the poor, and to those who are persecuted. Christ himself teaches us this hospitality. –CMRJ, nn. 15-16.

At the heart of Ignatian spirituality is the transforming encounter with the mercy of God in Christ that moves us to a generous personal response. The experience of the merciful gaze of God on our weakness and sinfulness humbles us and fills us with gratitude, helping us to become compassionate ministers to all.... For us Jesuits, compassion is action, an action discerned together. Yet we know that there is no authentic familiarity with God if we do not allow ourselves to be moved to compassion and action by an encounter with the Christ who is revealed in the suffering, vulnerable faces of people, indeed in the suffering of creation. –CMRJ, nn. 19-20.

(T)he Society must respond more decisively to the Church’s call for a new evangelization, giving special emphasis to ministry to and with the young and with families.... A special gift Jesuits and the Ignatian family have to offer to the Church and her mission of evangelization is Ignatian spirituality, which facilitates the experience of God and can therefore greatly help the process of personal and communal conversion. –CMRJ, nn. 22-23.

In many societies, there is an increased level of conflict and polarization, which often gives rise to violence that is all the more appalling because it is motivated and justified by distorted religious convictions. In such situations, Jesuits, along with all who seek the common good, are called to contribute from their religious-spiritual traditions towards the building of peace, on local and global levels. –CMRJ, n. 28.

Pope Francis has emphasized the fundamental connection between the environmental crisis and the social crisis in which we live today. Poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization are linked with environmental degradation. These are not separate crises but one crisis that is a symptom of something much deeper: the flawed way societies and economies are organised. The current economic system with its predatory orientation discards natural resources as well as people. For this reason, Pope Francis insists that the only adequate solution must be a radical one. The direction of development must be altered if it is to be sustainable. We Jesuits are called to help heal a broken world, promoting a new way of producing and consuming, which puts God’s creation at the center.... The multifaceted challenge of caring for our common home calls for a multifaceted response from the Society. We begin by changing our personal and community lifestyles, adopting behaviour coherent with our desire for reconciliation with creation. – CMRJ, nn. 29-30

From 35th Jesuit General Congregation

From General Congregation 35

By sending us to 'those physical and spiritual places which others do not or have difficulty reaching,' the Pope entrusts to us the task to 'build bridges of understanding and dialogue,' according to the best tradition of the Society, in the diversity of its ministries.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 6

To be missioned to this work 'at the New Frontiers of our times' always requires that one also be rooted at the very heart of the Church. This tension, specific to the Ignatian charism, opens the way to true creative fidelity.
- Decree With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism, n. 13

In every mission that we carry out, we seek only to be where (Christ) sends us. The grace we receive as Jesuits is to be and to go with him, looking on the world with his eyes, loving it with his heart and entering into its depths with his unending compassion.
- Decree on Identity, n. 15

For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this look and provide a pedagogy inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people - especially the young - into it.
- Decree on Identity, n. 10

Our ministries of proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Life of Christ in the sacraments continue to be fundamental for our mission and our lives together as Jesuits.
- Decree on Mission, n. 19

The complexity of the problems we face and the richness of the opportunities offered demand that we engage in building bridges between rich and poor and establishing advocacy links of mutual support between those who hold political power and those who find it difficult to voice their interests. Our intellectual apostolate provides an inestimable help in setting up these bridges, offering us new ways of understanding in depth the mechanism and links among our present problems.
- Decree on Mission, n. 28

Jesuit community is not just for mission, it is itself mission.
- Decree on Mission, n. 41

In this global context it is important to highlight the extraordinary potential represented by our character as an international and multicultural body. Acting consistently with this character can not only enhance the apostolic effectiveness of our work but in a fragmented and divided world it can witness to the reconciliation in solidarity of all the children of God.
- Decree on Mission, n. 43

Faith in Jesus Christ teaches us that self-realization comes from self-giving and that freedom is not so much the power to choose as the power to order our choices toward love. At the same time, love for Jesus Christ and the desire to follow him call us to trusting commitment. Commitment to the Word Incarnate cannot be separated from commitment to the concrete manifestations of the Word that are at the center of our lives, the Church and the Society which exists to serve the Church.
- Decree on Obedience, n. 19

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

No comments:

Post a Comment