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Homilies | Friday, March 06, 2015

Where is your brother?

Archbishop Wenski's Lenten reflection to Pastoral Center Staff

Archbishop Thomas Wenski's Lenten reflection to Pastoral Center Staff. St. Martha Church, March 6, 2015. 

Boy, the year is going by fast! 

We're already in March; you've got your zero-based budgets to work on for next year; tomorrow night, we'll set our clocks "springing forward"  Things are moving so fast - have we even noticed that it is Lent? 

These days almost everybody knows about Ramadan - we might not know when it begins or ends but we know that during Ramadan, Muslims do fast and pray. And apparently they do so quite intentionally and with appropriate seriousness of purpose. 

Have we approached Lent with the same intentionally and seriousness? 

I want to share with you Pope Francis' 2015 Message for Lent – I made copies in English and Spanish, so please take it home and read, or read it during some quiet time today. I'll just lift a few thoughts for his message for our reflection this morning. 

Pope Francis writes: "Lent is a time of renewal for the whole Church, for each communities and every believer. Above all it is a ‘time of grace’ (2 Cor 6:2). God does not ask of us anything that he himself has not first given us.”  

As members of the Church, we are a pilgrim people who, as one prayer says, go about mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.” In any case, our journey through life take us along hills and valleys; that is, through high points and low points  Our Lenten observances – prayer, fasting, and almsgiving –is a way of checking our spiritual GPS – to make sure that with all the twists and turns of our life’s journey we are still going in the right direction. Lent reminds us that the true purpose of life is not to seek our glory but God’s glory and that is found not through self-assertion or self-seeking or, as Pope Francis likes to say, “being self-absorbed”; but, through self-giving and self-sacrificing. 

Thus, Lent -which recalls Jesus' time in the desert - is a time of combat; a time of spiritual battle against spirit of evil.  

Lent assumes that we know the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil. And so Lent is not an invitation to engage in moral arguments or debates about why something is wrong or right; but, rather, it is an invitation to look at ourselves with unflinching honesty during this special time of grace and try to figure out why we choose wrongly, and learn what we must do.  

The various practices of Lent - fasting, praying, mortifications and sacrifices - are not about punishing ourselves. Rather, they about helping us to achieve the freedom that can help us practice at being our own best selves - to incline ourselves to do the right thing at the right time. 

So in the words of Pope Francis, "Lent is a favorable time for letting Christ serve us so that we in turn may become more like him. This happens whenever we hear the word of God and receive the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. There we become what we receive: the Body of Christ..." 

We have to let Christ “serve” us like Peter had to do at the Last Supper when he let Jesus wash his feet.  And, one way that Jesus serves us – a way that Jesus can help clean us up like Jesus cleaned Peter up – is simply to allow his Word to “wash over” us. Like that reading we read during the Easter Vigil from Israel, “For just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” 

In his message for Lent this year, Pope serves up three "words", three scripture verses that can assist us this Lent to face up to what Pope Francis sees as the great crisis facing the world today which he identifies as the "globalization of indifference". 

Here are the “three” words: 

From First Corinthians, “If one member suffers, all suffer together.” (1 Cor 12: 26)

From Genesis, “Where is your brother?” (Gen 1: 9);

And from James, “Make your hearts firm.” (Jas 5: 8) 

Indifference to our neighbor and to God describes pretty much our world today marked, as it is, with an increasingly self-absorbed individualism.  Pope Francis on his first visit outside of Rome went to Lampedusa to pray with and comfort African boat people who had been shipwrecked as they sailed seeking refuge in Europe.  He saw their plight as the result of the “globalization of indifference” that has created what he also calls a “throw-away” culture. The plights of refugees, the marginalization of immigrants, the loneliness of the elderly, the hopelessness of unemployed youth, the fracturing of the family are all part of a long litany of “woes” that a globalized indifference has created; and they lead to an equally long list of evils that the world “tolerates” – genocide, euthanasia, abortion, to name just a few. 

This indifference also represents a real temptation for us Christians. Each year during Lent we need to hear once more the voice of the prophets who cry out and trouble our conscience.  Pope Francis reminds us that in the Eucharist we become what we receive:  the Body of Christ. “In this body”, the Pope writes, “there is no room for the indifference which so often seems to possess our hearts. For whoever is of Christ, belongs to one body, and in him we cannot be indifferent to one another.” "If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy" (1 Cor 12:26) 

“... [E]very Christian community is called to go out of itself and to be engaged in the life of the greater society of which it is a part, especially with the poor and those who are far away. The Church is missionary by her very nature; she is not self-enclosed but sent out to every nation and people...."

Yesterday, Bishop Baldachino and I returned from Tallahassee when we participated in the Red Mass and “Catholic Days at the Capitol”.  More than 300 Catholics from around the State spent two days lobbying our legislature on a number of issues like diversion programs to keep young people out of the criminal justice system and legislation requiring a unanimous jury recommendation before the death penalty could be proposed.  This is one way of being engaged in the life of the greater society. Next week, I’m in Washington for a series of meetings with the various bishop committees I serve on:  Pro-life, Migration and Clinic, Religious Freedom, Catholic Relief Services, Domestic committee on Justice and Peace.  This work might not seem to be “churchy” but it is engagement on behalf of “the poor and those who are far away”. Such work has me writing letters to Congress about the budget and saying things like this: “As pastors, we see every day the human consequences of budget choices. Our Catholic community defends the unborn, feeds the hungry, shelters the homeless, educates the young, and cares for the sick, both at home and abroad. We help poor families rise above crushing poverty, resettle refugees fleeing conflict and persecution, and reach out to communities devastated by wars, natural disasters and famines. In much of this work, we are partners with government, and our combined resources allow us to reach further and help more,”…. 

“Where is your brother?”  This was question God asked Cain after he had murdered Abel. And can we not also take “this word” and understand that God is asking us the same question as well.  Understanding that we are our brothers’ keepers can be a way of overcoming indifference and our pretensions to self-sufficiency.  19th Century Rabbi, Rav Israel Salanter, said, "My neighbor's material need is my own spiritual need." 

In his Lenten Message, Pope Francis writes, “I would invite everyone to live this Lent as an opportunity for engaging in what Benedict XVI called a formation of the heart (cf. Deus Caritas Est, 31). A merciful heart does not mean a weak heart. Anyone who wishes to be merciful must have a strong and steadfast heart, closed to the tempter but open to God. A heart which lets itself be pierced by the Spirit so as to bring love along the roads that lead to our brothers and sisters. And, ultimately, a poor heart, one which realizes its own poverty and gives itself freely for others. ...” 

And so the third “Word”, “Make your heart firm” – closed to the tempter but open to God. 

Lent, as I said earlier, about is about an unflinching honesty that can help us see – with the help of God’s grace – what we must do to form our hearts.  As in the Litany of the Sacred Heart, we ask the Lord, “Fac cor nostrum secundum cor tuum” (Make our hearts like yours).  

God's love does not allow him to be indifferent to what happens to us. Jesus's passion, death and resurrection has opened the gate between heaven and earth once and for all.  And the Church, Pope Francis says, “is like the hand holding open that gate” – through our ministry of Word, Sacraments and Witness. 

The World withdraws into itself – and, in doing so, shuts or wants to shut the gate.

Therefore, it should be no surprise that the Church is rejected, crushed and wounded, that the hand is slapped as it were. But even so, in a vast sea of indifference, our parishes, schools and other institutions should be “islands of mercy”. Recalling that first word, “if one suffers all suffer”, “we also remember that we share in the merits and joys of the saints, even as they share in our struggles and our longing for peace and reconciliation. Their joy in the victory of the Risen Christ gives us strength as we strive to overcome our indifference and hardness of heart.” 

So, let me end, with those three “words”: 

From First Corinthians, “If one member suffers, all suffer together.” (1 Cor 12: 26)

From Genesis, “Where is your brother?” (Gen 1: 9);

And from James, “Make your hearts firm.” (Jas 5: 8)

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