Breaking the Word: Straightening the Crooked

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Straightening the Crooked

Ash Wednesday

Readings: Joel 2:12-18; Psalm 50:3-6,12-14,17; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2; Matthew 6:1-6,16-18

Sisters and brothers, imagine, for a moment, that you’re at a local supermarket. Doing some last-minute shopping. You’re in a hurry. You want to get what you need, and leave as soon as you can. But you encounter a problem. The shopping cart the store has provided refuses to cooperate. No matter how hard you try to push it in a straight line, it keeps veering off to one side. Threatening to collide into the shelves. Or into other shoppers. And you realise why. One of its four wheels is crooked.

Those of us who have ever had an experience like this will know how annoying it can be. But if this is true of shopping carts with a crooked wheel, what about people with crooked hearts? Yes, it is possible, isn’t it, for people to have a crooked heart? Even Christians like you and me. Speaking for myself, I find that I am, for the most part, obedient to God. I try to arrange my life so that it moves along in the general direction that God wants. But only for the most part. If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that deep within me, there is something like a crooked wheel. An annoying tendency to resist God’s best intentions for my life. A stubborn desire to go my own way. To veer off-course. And, in the process, to sabotage my own happiness. And the happiness of others.

Which is why I need a day like Ash Wednesday. And a season like Lent. A time for me to allow God to do some maintenance work on the shopping cart of my heart. To straighten the crooked wheel. To speak to me in those tender words from our Mass readings today. Words that call me to repentance. Come back to me with all your heart, fasting, weeping, mourning.’ Let your hearts be broken, not your garments torn. To tell me not to procrastinate any longer. For now is the favourable time; this is the day of salvation.

As a Church, we respond to these words by undertaking the traditional penitential practices of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Practices aimed at straightening what has become bent. Turning selfish and egotistical hearts back in the direction of love. Love of God. Love of neighbour. Love even of enemies. And I’ll need to tailor these practices to my own particular circumstances and needs. I’ll need to ask what kind of prayer I need to to? From what kind of things do I need to fast? To which groups of people do I need to give alms?

But I also need to be careful. For it is possible to perform these penitential practices in the wrong way. In a harmful way. In a way that simply burdens the shopping cart of my heart with more and more concerns. So that what needs to be straightened, ends up being made more crooked than it was before. And the practices that are aimed at deflating my ego, end up leaving it even more bloated than it was before. Which is why I need to listen carefully to the advice that Jesus offers in the gospel today: Be careful not to parade your good deeds before men to attract their notice; by doing this you will lose all reward from your Father in heaven. I need to be careful about my motivation for undertaking our Lenten discipline. Not to attract attention. But to be transformed. Not to be self-satisfied. But to give of myself in love.

Sisters and brothers, as we enter this great Season of Lent, what must we do to let God straighten the crooked wheels of our hearts today?

1 comment:

Seeing Is BelievingFri Feb 12, 07:53:00 pm GMT+8
O Lord

During this Season of Lent,

CHANGE MY HEART O GOD,
make me more like You.
Teach me to love like You
and to die to myself and all that is not God within me,
so that I may LIVE IN YOU, LOVE DIVINE and LOVE PERFECT.

O God, as You continue to write straight with crooked lines - please help to straighten all the crookedness within me;
teach me Your paths and guide me to walk only in Your ways, always.

O Lord, may YOU INCREASE, as I decrease.

Amen.

Seeing Is Believing
12 February 2016
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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