Lent Day 37

The Sower and the Seed

Jesus knew his audience understood images of cultivation and agriculture when he spoke the parable of the sower and the seed. The sower sows far and wide, some of the seed lands on the path where the birds eat it up; some falls on rocky ground where the life is choked off; some is sown among thorns, and some is sown on rich soil where it bears thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold.

Keep in mind that Jesus himself in person is the seed sown. Jesus is the logos that wants to take root in us. This seed is sown far and wide, through all sorts of means. It is destined for the whole world

But one thing that blocks its reception is lack of understanding, lack of education in the ways of the Spirit. The fundamentals have to be in place before the Word can be accepted.

People can be fascinated by the spiritual and the religious, drawn in by a charismatic personality or an intense experience, or by trauma. But when they lack the discipline of a religious tradition, they become in time vaguely spiritual. Nothing in life that is taken seriously subsists without discipline and perseverance.

The Word of God is the central and defining dynamic of life. To know the will of God, to know the mind of God, to understand his purpose and path, is all-important. Without it, you lose your way amidst all of the conflicting voices and inclinations of the world.

When we understand the faith; when we take the time to read theology, to study the Scripture, to feel with the church; when we have perseverance; when we are disciplined and enter into the practice of the faith; when we have our priorities straight, then the seed will take root in us. And it will bear fruit thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold.

Lent Day 38

The Gardener Who Sows Wildly

God speaks and his word is efficacious; it accomplishes what it says. This is true, of course, in the primordial moment of creation: God says, “Let there be light,” and there is light. It affects what it says.

And the effect of God is always life, always “fertility and fruitfulness” as the prophet Isaiah says.

Why does God create? Is it out of need? No. God creates because he is diffusivum sui, diffusive of himself, bubbling over with joy and fecundity. He creates, as Vatican I says, in order to manifest his glory. He is effervescent, exuberant, over the top, playful and creative love. God is the gardener of being who sows, plants, and prunes.

We see this in Jesus’ magnificent parable of the sower and seed. In the Palestine of Jesus’ time, seed was, like water, a precious commodity. In the unforgiving soil and harsh climate, one was very careful with seed. Indeed, one’s life could very much depend on how the precious seed was sown.

And what does this farmer in Jesus’ parable do? Well, he sows wildly, liberally, and seemingly without care as to where the seed lands. He sows on the rocks, in the thorny ground, on the path—and in good soil.

So, Jesus implies, does God sow the seed of his gracious and redeeming love. God is not discriminating, capricious, or arbitrary. He is just always himself, sowing his love whether we are ready for it or not, whether we are good soil or not.

The good news here is that if we are the least bit open and receptive, this seed will take root in us. Just let God be God and you will come to life.

Lent Day 39

How Will You Respond?

The parable of the sower and seed provides a very helpful examination of conscience.

The sower of the seed is God the Father, and the seed that he sows is Jesus his son. “The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart” (Mark 4:15).

I would imagine that practically everyone reading this reflection has heard the word of Jesus Christ. There are some reading who even attend church every Sunday and listen to that word. But perhaps you have never sought to deepen your faith, to understand what is being said. People will deepen their understanding of finance, science, literature, art, sports, technology—but they will often allow their religious understanding to remain at the eighth grade level. When we allow this to happen, the word will never take root in us.

“The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time” (Mark 4:16-17). I found this sometimes among the seminarians I used to teach. They could hear God’s word and that word could penetrate to their very heart and they could rejoice over it. But then they don’t allow it to sink deep into them. When they come down from their “high,” they lose interest and enthusiasm.

The Word of God is meant to sustain us precisely during the difficult times, but it can do this only if it reaches deep into us. The daily practice of the faith is essential here. Baseball practice is rarely if ever joyful. Violin practice is usually something of a drudgery. But those exercises allow people to play for the long haul. So in matters of God’s word: it has to be practiced.

“The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no fruit” (Mark 4:18-19). This is now a third danger, distinct from the first two. The first had to do with the mind, and the second with religious practice. This one has to do with worldliness, which is always a danger to faith.

This parable offers a meditation on the ways the Word of Jesus Christ lands in our hearts and souls. The most important issue that you will ever face, the most pressing question you will ever be asked is how do you respond when this word is sown?

Palm Sunday

A King and a Donkey

A donkey was, in Jesus' time, much what it is today: a humble, simple, unassuming little animal, used by very ordinary people to do their work. The wealthy and powerful might own horses or a team of oxen and a political leader might ride a stately steed, but none of them would have anything to do with donkeys.

All of his public career, Jesus had resisted when people called him the Messiah. He sternly ordered them to be silent. When they came to carry him off and make him King, he slipped away.

But now he is willing to be proclaimed precisely at the moment when he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. The Gospel is clear: this is not only a donkey; it is a colt, the foal of an ass, on whom no one had ever previously sat. This is a young, inexperienced, unimpressive donkey. This is the animal upon whom Jesus rides into town in triumph. In other words, this is no ordinary King; this is not the Messiah that they expected.

Now let us look even more closely at the animal. Jesus tells two of his disciples to go into a neighboring town and to find this beast of burden. “If anyone asks, respond, ‘the Master has need of it’” (Matthew 21:3). The humble donkey, pressed into service, is a model of discipleship. Our purpose in life is not to draw attention to ourselves, to have a brilliant career, or to aggrandize our egos. Rather, our purpose is to serve the Master’s need—to cooperate, as he sees fit, with his work.

What was the donkey’s task? He was a “Christopher,” a Christ-bearer. He carried the Lord into Jerusalem, paving the way for the passion and the redemption of the world. Would anyone have particularly noticed him? Probably not, except perhaps to laugh at this ludicrous animal.

The task of every disciple is just the same: to be a “Christopher,” a bearer of Christ to the world. Might we be unnoticed in this? Yes. Might we be laughed at? Of course. But the Master has need of us and so we perform our essential task.

Lent Day 41

Coming from the East

St. Mark tells us that Jesus approached the Holy City of Jerusalem from the east: “When Jesus and his disciples drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethpage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives…” The Mount of Olives was just to the east of Jerusalem, and Bethpage and Bethany were on the eastern slope of the Mount.

Why in the world would this detail be important? Well, in the prophet Ezekiel, we hear that, because of the corruption of the Temple, the glory of the Lord had up and left. This was one of the most devastating events in all of the Old Testament, for the Temple of the Lord was, in practically a literal sense, the dwelling place of Yahweh. To imagine that the glory of the Lord had quit the Temple was shocking in the extreme.

However, Ezekiel prophesied that one day the Lord would return to the Temple, and from the same direction by which he left—the east. Upon the return of the glory of Yahweh, Ezekiel predicted, the Temple would be rebuilt and reconstituted.

Pious Jews in Jesus’ time certainly knew these texts. As they watched Jesus, they couldn’t help but think of them, because Jesus proclaimed himself the true Temple: “You have a greater than the Temple here.”

And then see what Mark saw: Jesus approaching the old Temple from the east, just as Ezekiel said the glory of Yahweh would approach the Temple.

There we have Jesus, speaking and acting in the very person of God, the glory of Yahweh taking possession of his house.

Lent Day 42

Lord of the Temple

The Temple in Jerusalem was everything for ancient Jews. The Temple was the religious center of the nation, as well as political and cultural capital. To get some idea of its importance, we would have to think of the Vatican, the United Nations, and the Sorbonne. For the Biblical Jews is was more than a religious meeting place; it was God’s house, the place where God made his dwelling on earth, the tabernacle of Yahweh.

So what did it mean for a provincial prophet to come into the holy city of Jerusalem and make a ruckus in the Temple? Well, you can imagine. What if someone burst into St. Peter’s and began shouting and turning things over and announcing judgment? It would be shocking and embarrassing beyond words.

To make matters worse, Jesus says something that is as shocking as his actions.
When they ask him to give a justification for what he has done, he says, “I will destroy this Temple and in three days rebuild it.” He says he will destroy the most sacred symbol imaginable.

So what was he doing and why? First, in showing his lordship over even this most sacred symbol, he was announcing who he was—God. Second, he was instituting a new Temple--the temple of his own body. The authentic dwelling place of God, the sanctuary that replaces the corrupt sanctuaries of religion is the temple of his crucified and risen body. Jesus himself is the place where God dwells, and we in the measure that we are grafted on to him are Temples of the Holy Spirit.

Today the Church is the sacred Temple of Christ’s body; it is most itself when it gathers to pray as his body, and around his body and blood. Does it mean that the Church, in its institutional dimension, is beyond criticism? Obviously not. Sometimes we need the Lord to come into the Temple and clean it out.

Does it mean that, individually, we are clean and pure? No, in fact, it invites questions such as, what in our “Temple” needs to be purified? How have we allowed the moneychangers to invade the sacred space? What would arouse the anger of Jesus if he toured around inside our house?

Chrism mass

Cleansing Our Temple

We hear in the Gospel how Jesus entered the great Temple in Jerusalem—which for a Jew of that time was everything—and began to tear the place apart. Precisely because the Temple was supposed to be so holy, Jesus was flabbergasted at what had happened to it, how the trading of merchants had come to dominate what was supposed to be holy ground.

From the earliest days, Christian writers and spiritual teachers saw the Temple as symbolic of the human person. In fact, St. Paul himself referred to the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. Your very self is meant to be a temple, where God’s spirit dwells and where prayer, communion with God, is central.

But what happens to us sinners? The money changers and the merchants enter in. What is supposed to be a place of prayer becomes a den of thieves. And so the Lord must do in us now what he did in the Temple then: a little house-cleaning.

One of the best ways that we can cooperate with this process is to go back to the basics of the Ten Commandments. Let’s just look at the first three. The first three commandments have to do with the question of one’s fundamental spiritual orientation: who or what, precisely, is the object of your worship? What do you hold to be spiritually basic? If we’re honest, a lot of us would say something like sex, pleasure, money, power, status, or to sum all of this up, our own egos. And so we need to hear the very first commandment: “I am the Lord your God; you shall not have other gods besides me.”

Next, you shall not disrespect God with your speech, for this leads rather quickly to a denigration of God: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” This can seem fussy and puritanical, as though “swearing” is a terrible sin. But speech is a terribly powerful thing. What we say influences profoundly how we think and act, which in turn shapes our attitudes and behaviors.

And thirdly, you must worship this God on a regular basis. There is no place for the attitude of “I’m alright with God; I just have no time for going to Mass.” Or “I get nothing out of the Mass.” So what? You’re obliged to concretize your worship. “Keep holy the Sabbath day.”

What shape is the Temple of your soul in with regard to these first three commandments?