Friday of the First Week of Lent
Ezekiel 18:21-28  +  Matthew 5:20-26

“Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”

When you take up a passage of Sacred Scripture, remember that the passage may have several different meanings.  At a single sitting, you would likely only ponder one particular meaning, so as to keep your focus.  But after you’ve spent many months and years in prayerful reflection upon the Bible, as you come upon a passage that you’ve reflected upon before, you ought to consider whether there’s an additional meaning that you haven’t previously considered.

The Church has an ancient practice of looking within any particular Scripture passage for four different types of meaning, or “senses”.  Not every passage will bear all four, but we need to look for all four when we take up any given passage.  These four senses are:  the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical.  Without explaining what all four of these are, simply consider today’s Gospel passage in regard to the last of these four senses, the anagogical.

Simply put, the anagogical sense of Scripture takes the literal meaning of a passage and considers what it reveals about “the Last Things”.  The Last Things are Heaven and hell, death and judgment.  So while today’s parable might seem at first hearing only to relate to how a Christian ought to act in this world, the anagogical sense shows how the same parable also applies to life after death.  Reflect, then, on how Jesus’ words following the parable—“Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny”—teach us about the nature of God’s justice in requiring Christians who have been saved by God’s grace to undergo purification in Purgatory before being capable of sharing in the fullness of divine love in Heaven.

The Second Sunday of Lent [C]
Genesis 15:5-12,17-18  +  Philippians 3:17—4:1  +  Luke 9:28-36

But our citizenship is in heaven ….

In this Sunday’s First Reading from Genesis, we hear about God’s relationship with Abram, whom God renames “Abraham” a few chapters later.  In the snapshot of their relationship presented by the First Reading, we see the kernels of a life of prayer.

If you were to choose a single word out of the First Reading to summarize this snapshot, it would be the word “covenant”.  In our society, about the only place you hear of a “covenant” is in a housing edition that calls itself a “covenant community”.  This is a mis-use of the word “covenant”, because belonging to a housing community is based upon a contract.

A contract is based in time, has limits, and involves an exchange of money, possessions, and labor or the like.  By contrast, a covenant is based in eternity, is meant to be limitless, and involves an exchange of persons.  When one buys a house, one signs a contract.  When one marries one’s spouse, one enters into a covenant.  When one is baptized, one enters into a covenant with God, even if one is an infant.

In the First Reading, God enters a covenant with Abram, and through him, also with his progeny.  Through this covenant, God and Abram make promises about how they would act towards each other.  They enter into a relationship with spiritual and moral dimensions.

You can see here the similarity between the marriage covenant and a biblical covenant like that between God and Abram.  In a covenant, each party agrees not only to be moral in behavior towards the other, but even to sacrifice oneself for the other.

Entering into a covenant with God, or with another person in a sacrament like Marriage, is the giving of one’s whole self:  one’s whole life.  Each saint’s life demonstrates just how much effort this takes.  That’s why prayer is so needed, and in this we have an example of God’s generosity.  Not only does He enter into a covenant with us in our Baptism, so that we might possibly enjoy His life eternally in Heaven.  God gives us the strength through prayer and the sacraments to live up to our end of the deal.

What can we say about prayer, then, as it helps us grow stronger in our covenant relationship with God?  You might describe prayer as “communication” with God.  Real communication, whether in marriage or in one’s relationship with God, involves both listening and speaking.  A marriage where only one spouse speaks—where’s there’s no dialogue, but only monologues—will not grow to its intended fullness.

But this covenant relationship between God and Abram also shows us that prayer, while often a dialogue, is meant to lead into something profound.  The trance that Abram enters in the First Reading symbolizes the deepest stage of prayer:  what in our Catholic tradition is called mystical prayer.  This deepest stage of prayer is not just for gifted Christians like St. Teresa of Avila.

This deepest level of prayer is the goal of prayer for every Christian, as the Council Fathers at Vatican II said.  If you and I reach Heaven, this is what we will experience there:  a mystical relationship with God.

The question isn’t whether you are meant for this.  The question isn’t even only whether you will experience it in Heaven.  The spiritual life also asks whether even on earth you might grasp some glimpse of this experience in prayer while on earth.  A good resource to help Christians grow in this pursuit is Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen’s book Union with God according to St. John of the Cross (Sophia Institute Press).

The difficulty is that to be disposed to deeper levels of prayer, we have to root out of our souls the selfishness that lies underneath the surface of our lives.  So the Christian life is like the chicken and the egg:  the relationship between our moral life and spiritual life is complex.  Each builds upon the other.

To take one simple step forward this Lent, in either our moral life or our spiritual life, we should keep in mind the simple phrase of Saint Paul in today’s Second Reading:  “our citizenship is in Heaven.”  God has created you for Heaven, not for earth.  Like Jesus at the Transfiguration, we cannot remain here and rest.  We have an exodus to make, a pilgrimage to set out upon, and Christ is our guide if we would only hear and heed Him.

Thursday of the First Week of Lent
Esther C:12,14-16,23-25  +  Matthew 7:7-12

“… how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.”

When a Christian is a beginner in the spiritual life, most of his prayers are likely prayers of petition.  As he grows in spiritual maturity, fewer of his prayers will be petitions.  More of his prayers will be of the other three types of vocal prayer:  contrition, thanksgiving and adoration.

However, is one of the goals of the spiritual life to no longer offer prayers of petition?  Should you strive to reach the point where you no longer “need” to offer petitions?  Would this even be possible?

In the secular culture that surrounds us, independence is prized.  Standing on one’s own two feet is a hallmark of personal identity.  But Christian growth is marked by becoming more like a little child.  This occurs as one realizes one’s deep and abiding—indeed, everlasting—dependence upon God the Father.  One doesn’t, strictly speaking, grow in dependence upon God, for one can never be anything but fully dependent upon Him.  One grows, rather, in one’s awareness of this dependence, as well as one’s comfort in resting in His providential care.

Wednesday of the First Week of Lent
Jonah 3:1-10  +  Luke 11:29-32

“Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.”

Signs are important in the Christian journey.  Jesus speaks of two signs in today’s Gospel passage.  He says that both Jonah and the Son of Man are signs for others.  But Jesus says more.  He explains that “as” Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, “so will” the Son of Man be a sign to “this generation”.

So we need to ask first how it was that Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites.  The Old Testament Book of Jonah presents Jonah in two ways.  First, Jonah preaches the need for repentance throughout Nineveh.  Second, he is thrown overboard into deep waters and is swallowed by a large fish where he spends three days, all because he is the scapegoat for the affliction facing his shipmates.

Given all this, how does Jonah foreshadow Jesus serving as a sign to Jesus’ own generation?  First, Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of God.  This proclamation always begins with preaching the need for repentance and conversion.  His preaching, however, along with His saving works, inevitably lead to His condemnation.  Jesus rhetorically asks His co-religionists, “I have shown you many good works from my Father.  For which of these are you trying to stone me?” [John 10:32].  This reflects what the Beloved Disciple declares in the prologue of his Gospel account:  “He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him” [John 1:11].

Jesus’ rejection reaches its climax on Good Friday.  Yet we need to reflect upon the plain fact that Jesus’ rejection continues today.  His rejection, which the story of Jonah foreshadows, is shared in today by each faithful member of Christ’s Body who lives and breathes in this fallen world.  At His Last Supper Jesus declares to His disciples, “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first” [John 15:18].

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent
Isaiah 55:10-11  +  Matthew 6:7-15

“If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you.”

Our prayers of petition add nothing to God:  neither to His knowledge of us, nor to His love for us.  God cannot love us more than He already does. Likewise, He knows everything about us, better then we know ourselves.  He knows our past lives, our current thoughts, motives and actions, and our destiny.  So if we offer our petitions to God, since we do so not for God’s sake, we must do so for our sake.  But in what sense is this true?

If our petitions are answered as we wish, then the act of petitioning God beforehand helps our little minds understand our dependence on God:  that every good thing comes from him, not from ourselves.

If our petitions are not answered as we wish, because what we wish is contrary to what God wishes for us, then the act of petitioning God helps our little hearts turn towards Him and ask questions about our own desires, and how we might need to reform them.  Hopefully this helps us enter more deeply into God’s Heart and His desires for us.

Yet if our petitions are not answered as we wish because what we wish is something we are not ready for, then the act of petitioning God helps our little souls to grow in their capacity and desire for God’s good gift.  We hear St. Augustine speak to this holy need in the Office of Readings during the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time:

“The whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire.  Now what you long for, you do not yet see:  however, by longing, you are made capable, so that when that has come which you may see, you shall be filled.  For just as, if you would fill a bag, and know how great the thing is that shall be given, you stretch the opening of the sack or the skin, or whatever else it be—you know how much you would put in, and see that the bag is narrow—by stretching you make it capable of holding more.  So God, by deferring our hope, stretches our desire; by the desiring, stretches the mind; by stretching, increases its capacity.  Let us desire therefore, my brethren, for we shall be filled.”

Monday of the First Week of Lent
Leviticus 19:1-2,11-18  +  Matthew 25:31-46

“Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

At the beginning of this first full week of Lent, Jesus preaches to us about the Final Judgment.  The parable that Jesus preaches in today’s Gospel passage reminds us of the old adage:  “Always begin with your end in mind.”  This saying is good for reflection first thing in the morning, as an entire day upon God’s green earth stretches out before us.  At the beginning of the day we pray the Morning Offering, which reminds us that each day on earth is about God:  living in His love, and for His glory.

This saying—“Always begin with the end in mind.”—is good for reflection at the beginning of Lent, as we recognize our need for conversion, our need for forgiveness, and our need for redemption.  Thanks be to God that all of these are possible in Christ!

Some would argue that God’s Judgment at the Second Coming inspires fear, and so therefore we ought not reflect upon either the Second Coming, or upon the three of the four Last Things that seem “negative”:  Hell, death and judgment.  But Hell, death and judgment do not come directly from God.  God permits each, but only when man chooses them.  God’s direct choice is always love.  Love is the end for which God has created each person.  Reflecting upon the consequences of the Last Things help us more firmly choose God in all things, even in suffering.

Saturday after Ash Wednesday
Isaiah 58:9-14  +  Luke 5:27-32

Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.

During Lent, any time that you hear the word “way” you ought to think of the Via Dolorosa:  the “Way of Sorrows”.  This is the way from the city of Jerusalem to the top of the hill of Calvary, where Jesus’ feet and wrists were nailed to a cross.  For the Jews in ancient days, Jerusalem was the greatest city on the face of the earth.  It was as close to Heaven as you could find on earth.  Little wonder, then, that the city of Jerusalem was often used in the Scriptures as a “type” or symbol for Heaven.  This is where the phrase “the heavenly Jerusalem” comes from.

Jerusalem was so great a place that anyone who resided there would rarely leave it.  If they did, it would only be for a serious reason.  But to go outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem, and travel up to the hill of Calvary in order to be crucified:  there was a particular shame in this.  Going outside of Jerusalem to be killed by the state was symbolic of being an outcast in death.

So you can see how this way—the Via Dolorosa—was not only a way of sorrow, but of shame as well.  No wonder that most of the apostles weren’t willing to walk the Way of the Cross behind their Master.

But this is the “way” that the Psalmist foreshadowed:  “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.”  It is a way of contradiction, because it leads from a city of life, power and strength, to a barren hilltop of death, weakness and impotence.  It is not a way that any right-thinking person would want to go, if he learned about what’s important from the teachers of this world.

But Our Lord has a unique way to teach us:  a way that we learn only in the process of following Him.  This way leads to mercy, forgiveness and—through mercy and forgiveness—divine love.  For all the times that we are tempted by our culture to cultivate bitterness, anger and resentment against those who have hurt and harmed us, Our Lord invites us to follow Him along a different way.

Friday after Ash Wednesday
Isaiah 58:1-9  +  Matthew 9:14-15

My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit ….

Both John the Baptist’s disciples in the Gospel Reading and the house of Jacob in the First Reading are thoroughly focused upon themselves.  The people of the house of Jacob seem to be fasting as a way of gaining leverage in their negotiations with God.  John’s disciples want to know why Jesus’ disciples don’t have to fast in the same way they do.

In both readings God is trying to make clear what the purpose of fasting (or, in fact, any type of penance) is.  On the surface, when we fast we are imitating Christ, who fasted for forty days in the desert.  Whenever we carry out works of penance by denying something we want, we are imitating Christ who denied his own life for our sake.

But on a deeper level, through our penance we are clearing out our souls.  We are clearing out of our soul those desires which serve only ourselves.  The more and more we remove these desires, the more room there is in our soul for the desires of God, the fruit of which are the works that He wants to accomplish within us and through us.

Lent is about preparing our souls to accept the Cross of Christ in our own lives.  When we seek to follow in the footsteps of Christ, we ourselves are led to Calvary, where with Mary and the apostle John we gaze upon our God who died for us.  At the foot of the cross we learn humility and gratitude for the sacrifice Christ made on the Cross for us.

The First Sunday of Lent [C]
Deuteronomy 26:4-10  +  Romans 10:8-13  +  Luke 4:1-13

He brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand and outstretched arm ….

There are many different types of freedom.  For example, sometimes we want to be free from the influence that another person holds over us.  Sometimes we want to be free from a job, or from an agreement we’ve made with someone, or from an assignment that we’ve been handed.  But none of those is the type of freedom that Jesus gave up his life to offer us.

Jesus died on the Cross to free us from our own sinfulness.  During Lent, we look inside ourselves, and look at how we have enslaved ourselves to sin, thereby destroying the greatest type of human freedom:  the power to choose what is best in life, which is to say, what is of God.

There is, of course, no human being who does not experience the temptation to sin.  Even Jesus experienced temptation, as we hear in today’s Gospel passage.

There are many situations in life that present temptations.  God uses some temptations, in fact, in order to “school us” in self-discipline.

Some situations, though, we must stay away from if they are occasions of sin.  But how does a person know whether something—for her or him personally—is a near occasion of sin?  Some situations are occasions of sin for practically everyone.  But other situations are occasions of sin for only some individuals.

Everyone who wants to take God’s call to holiness seriously is invited to follow Christ.  But since each of us leads a different life—through a particular vocation with unique circumstances—each walks a different path through this spiritual desert.  Nonetheless, each path leads through the same desert, and it is Christ who leads each of us.

There are three stages by which Jesus leads His disciple through the desert.  The first stage is the simplest and perhaps easiest:  the sacrifice of material things, which we practice in our fasting.  Each of us must learn how to resist the temptation to live our lives by “bread alone”.  This doesn’t necessarily mean owning nothing—like monks or nuns—but it does mean not being attached to our belongings.  By detaching ourselves from things, fasting increases our self-control and freedom.

The second stage through the desert is the sacrifice of power and control over others, which is what we practice through almsgiving.  There are many ways in which we, like Christ, are called to exercise power authentically (for example, with money and positions of authority), and we face temptations to abuse that power.  At this second level of sacrifice, it can take us longer to be honest with ourselves and face up to our sins.  But by detaching ourselves from control over others, almsgiving increases our self-control and freedom.

The third stage through the desert is the final stage:  the end stage.  This stage, which we sometimes simply call “prayer”, is underestimated.  Authentic prayer means sacrificing our life to a God who doesn’t always give us the answers we feel we need.

We human beings want to understand the path that we are on.  Likewise, we want to understand the meaning of each cross that appears in our lives.  Like the other two stages through the desert, this is a matter of control.  Unfortun­ately, when we don’t get answers, it’s easy instead to choose sin, because sin seems at least to offer an answer as well as some sort of control.  Such an answer will of course be false, and the sort of control that sin offers ends up making life more difficult.  But as human beings, we become comfortable with sin and the falsehoods it offers.

Sin sinks roots into our lives.  We begin to accept sin as so ordinary a part of our lives that we don’t see it as sin anymore.  Once sins take deep root in our lives, it’s easy to believe that those sins are part of us, and that we can’t live without them:  that there’s no use in trying to root them out of our lives.

It’s much harder to face the truth that Jesus is calling each of us into this driest and hottest part of the desert.  He is calling each of us to radical holiness.  He is calling each of us to conform our lives to His Cross:  the Cross that we will reverence—bow before, kneel before, and kiss—on Good Friday.