There’s an old story told of a priest who was a missionary to the Eskimos. One day an Eskimo asked him: “Father, if we had never heard about Jesus would we have gone to hell?” The priest replied: “Oh, no. You couldn’t be responsible for something you didn’t know.” The Eskimo replied: “Then why did you tell us?”
If Lent is a time to renew our faith, don’t we have to ask the prior question: what good is our faith? Is Christianity ‘good news’ or bad news? Are we more peaceful, happy, and joyful because we know Christ, or are we more worried about sin, anxious about salvation, or fearful of going to hell?
Because we know Jesus we have to take seriously his words: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who maltreat you. When someone slaps you on one cheek, turn and give him the other; when someone takes your coat, give him your shirt as well. Give to all who beg from you.” Who wants to live like that? Who in your circle of friends does live like that?
Haven’t we all at least wondered if maybe the pagans are having a better time? Imagine being able to have all the sex you want and not feel guilt. Imagine earning all the money you could and not have to worry about giving any to the poor. Imagine just looking out for yourself and not worrying about anyone else.
So, how is Christianity good news and not bad news? I think the answer is put very simply and very profoundly by St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, when he wrote: “Adam, the first man, became a living soul; the last Adam (Christ) has become a life-giving spirit. Notice the spiritual was not first; first came the natural and after that the spiritual. The first man was from earth, formed from the dust; the second is from heaven. Earthly men are like the man from earth, heavenly men are like the man from heaven.”
Put simply, our faith offers us a choice: do we follow our natural instincts, our earthly part, or do we try to follow our supernatural part, the part that is based on Christ. In a sense, we can say that selfishness is ‘hard wired’ into us. It’s about the preservation of the species. So we follow the fight or flight mechanism. We protect ourselves. We defend against the enemy. We accumulate to prepare for the future. This is about preservation.
Jesus, the ‘new Adam’ from heaven, is about transformation. Yes, I can protect myself, and I may indeed survive and reproduce, and the species may continue. If I look out for me, I may survive, but you may not. However, if we follow Christ, and look out for each other, then we will all survive. When we go the ‘extra mile’ in giving and forgiving we transform ourselves and our world.
No, it’s not ‘natural’ living like Christ. It is supernatural. That’s why we go to Mass, to the Eucharist, to feed on the body and blood of Christ: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life.” We can only live the Christ life if we have the Christ as our food. That is also why we pray. We need ongoing contact with Christ’s Spirit if we are going to let that Spirit live in us. That’s why we discipline ourselves. The person fasting from food enjoys food much more than the glutton. The believer sees food as a gift from God, while the glutton becomes addicted to food.
So, Christianity is good news after all. It’s the difference between simply living-and-dying, and living fully the life of God on earth and living with God forever in eternity. It’s the difference between the preservation of my individual life as opposed to being part of the transformation of the world. The work of Christianity is not based on will power or won’t power, but on Christ power. As St. Paul said: “It is now no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” That’s the work of the Lenten time and of a lifetime.
If Lent is a season of prayer and transformation, how does prayer transform us? Well, allow me to share a hymn I love that I recite each day as a prayer. Now, I realize that some of my faithful readers may be saying what one lady said: “Fr. Joe, you’ve given us so many prayers to say in your columns that I have to start praying ten minutes earlier!” While I’m certainly not trying to ‘multiply words’ for you to say, I do hope that you might recite parts of this hymn as a sort of mantra throughout the day. Here is the complete hymn:
“Breath on me, breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love the things you love,
And do what you would do.
Breathe on me, breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with you I have one will,
To live and to endure.
Breathe on me, breath of God,
My soul with grace refine,
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with your fire divine.
Breathe on me, breath of God,
So I shall never die,
But live with you the perfect life
In your eternity.
Isn’t that a marvelously transforming hymn? It reminds us that the act of prayer is not just what I do, but how I allow God to pray with and through me. At its deepest level, prayer is God praying in us. If we pray this with openness, we allow God to recreate us.
The breath of God captures so many images. It reminds us of God’s spirit hovering over the formless void and creating the world. It reminds us of Christ breathing forth his spirit on the cross, ending the power of sin and ushering in the power of grace. It reminds us of Christ breathing his Holy Spirit on the apostles on Easter Sunday evening, initiating this new creation. It reminds us of the spirit breathing life on the disciples at Pentecost. The breath of God is God creating for us, in us, and through us.
“That I may love the things you love and do what you would do.” Doesn’t that sum up so much of the Christian life? We want to love what God loves and to do what God does.
“Until with you I have one will”. When we are doing God’s will, we are doing what we were created to do. It will be the best us of our time, our talent, and our treasure. The 12-step programs define God’s will as “doing the next right thing.”
“Until this earthly part of me glows with your fire divine.” We want our flesh, our very beings, to glow with God’s light. When Thomas Merton had his famous moment of ecstasy on the streets of Louisville, he described everyone as “glowing with light”. For a moment he saw everyone as they are. We often don’t see ourselves as light. We know our own darkness. Old sins, old thought patterns, old addictions are like old friends we can’t imagine living without. Instead of feeling shame, we need to bring them into the light of God’s love and have God transform our darkness, our self perception, into light.
“So I shall never die”. Flesh and blood does die. However, we also believe that God will transform our very dust into glorified bodies, like his own resurrected body.
Prayer transforms what we love, how we live, what we do, how we see ourselves, how we understand eternal life. The power of prayer is not what we do on our own. Prayer is allowing God to work through us. We can resist the Spirit, and obstruct the work of the Spirit. But we don’t control the Spirit. However, if we recite this prayer daily, even parts of it over and over each day, we will notice ourselves changing. After all, the God who breathed creation into life can certainly recreate us – if we let God do it.
While many things have been said about Mel Gibson’s “Passion of Christ”, we all have to agree that it got out attention! Also, every reviewer or commentator I heard said the same thing: “this is not for children”. In those words, I rejoiced. The rating of the movie, and the challenge of Christ, are for adult conversion and change of heart.
Christmas has been so sentimentalized that, as the song goes: “Christmas is for children”. With Santa and reindeer, buying and selling, cooking and decorating, the holiday has dominated the holy day. We celebrate each year the birth of the Messiah, the birth of God as a human being, but how much are our lives changed by the annual celebration?
The death of the Messiah is harder to sentimentalize, so society usually ignores it. Stores fast-forward to Easter with flowers and bunnies and eggs. We like celebrations – the birth of a baby Jesus, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We don’t like to deal with the reality of evil in the life of Jesus, or in our own lives.
How could a God made man, who came preaching only love and doing only good, have been rejected? It wasn’t the lack of expansiveness of God’s love as much as it was the narrowness of human vision. For certain observant Jewish leaders, the behavior and words of Jesus would have been profoundly upsetting. Touching lepers would have been perceived as violating purity codes. Speaking of the destruction of the Temple would have been blasphemy. Questioning interpretations of the law would have been seen as unorthodox and betraying the traditions of their ancestors.
When I hear the venom spewed on talk shows against “those people”, it’s easy to see how people can do great harm by vilifying others, thinking all the while they’re doing good. No doubt those who conspired against Jesus really felt that getting rid of him was in the best interest of preserving their religion.
None of this was anti Semitic. It was some Jewish authorities against other Jews. However, when Paul took the message of Christ to the Gentiles things would change. Within roughly fifty years, what had been all Jewish followers of Christ had become all Gentile. Christians became a persecuted religion in the Roman Empire for hundreds of years. When the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 313, Christians suddenly were in power. Tragically, some Christians then persecuted the Jews, for centuries.
The narrowness of human vision that had led some initial religious leaders to reject Jesus, would be the same narrowness that would lead later Christian religions to reject Jews, and other religions. It would lead Christians to kill other Christians after the tragic split between the East and the West, and later again after the Reformation.
The passion, death, and suffering of Christ remind us of the profound love of God for us. This is a God willing to die for His creatures. That thought can change our lives.
Second, the suffering of Christ reminds us of the reality of evil. We humans have free will, even a flawed will if you believe in Original Sin, and thus we can fail to see love, and even respond to love with fear and violence.
Finally, Catholic piety has always celebrated the suffering and death of Jesus in the Stations of the Cross – the journey of Christ to Calvary. Every Church has them, and every Church prays that journey. That is the genius of Catholic piety – not just to watch a play or movie, but to turn the passion into prayer.
As a child, praying those Stations of the Cross, I knew about nails in Jesus’ hands, whips that beat him, and thorns that crowned him, and a cross that held him and a spear in his side. In prayer I was with Jesus in those moments. And I learned something else. I learned that I could take those nails out of his hands, get rid of the whip, take off the crown, even ease the crucifixion by changing my behavior. I learned that I did that every time I was kind, gentle, giving and forgiving to others. We crucify Christ on earth again and again in our cruelty. We ease the suffering of Christ on earth again and again by our kindness. “What you do to the least person, you do to me.” If we believe that we are redeemed by the blood of Christ, can we ‘redeem’ his suffering by ending all prejudice, persecutions, cruelty, and unkindness? Can we show the selfless love to each other that Christ has shown to us?
While watching a Passion Play about the sufferings of Christ, or attending a movie like Mel Gibson’s “Passion of Christ” can inspire us, a far more traditional, and, more effective way to follow Christ to the cross, is to pray the passion. The Stations of the Cross have long been a favorite of Catholic prayer and piety. In the sprit of the times, I would like to offer my own humble reflections on how the Stations can impact our lives.
The first station, Jesus is condemned to death.
When others make unfair judgments of me, or unkind remarks about me, can I identify with how Jesus must have felt? When I am tempted to gossip about others or to judge others, do I realize I am condemning Christ again?
The second station, Jesus carries his cross.
When life is unfair, when sickness strikes, when family problems occur, when a divorce happens, do I believe Jesus is still with me, helping me to carry me cross?
The third station, Jesus falls the first time.
Am I filled with shame when I fall into sin, or am I embarrassed when I make a mistake? Or, do I believe that Jesus will help me up, and help me to get back on the right way again?
The fourth station, Jesus meets His mother.
Living or dead, can I forgive my parents for what they were not, and in person or in prayer, can I thank them for all that they were? Can I thank them for all the times they were there when I needed them?
The fifth station, Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross.
Do I let others help me, or am I sometimes too proud to let others know I need help? Do I believe when someone else helps me that it is really God helping me?
The sixth station, Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
When she finished wiping his face, the divine image was left on the cloth. Do we believe we are made in the image of God? Do we believe we help to restore that image when we help someone else?
The seventh station, Jesus falls the second time.
Do I get discouraged when I fall repeatedly? Do I get tired of other people’s repeated failures? Or, do I learn to forgive myself and others?
The eighth station, the women of Jerusalem weep over Jesus.
When we’re hurting, do we think just of ourselves, or do we reach out and comfort others as Jesus comforted the women who cried for him?
The ninth station, Jesus falls the third time.
Just as Jesus grew more exhausted, do we get depressed as we grow older because we can’t do all that we used to do? Or, instead of putting ourselves down for what we can’t do, do we get up and do what we can?
The tenth station, Jesus is stripped of his garments.
Do we realize that death will strip away all of our pretenses? Do we believe that the only things we really have are what we give away?
The eleventh station, Jesus is nailed to the cross.
Jesus was crucified, and so are we. For us, it may be the thorns of loneliness, the nails of misunderstanding, the sweat of frustration, and the scars of our failures. When we suffer, do we believe that Jesus suffers with us?
The twelfth station, Jesus dies on the cross.
In the face of death, do we surrender to fear, or faith? Does the thought of death bring despair or hope? Is death the end, or the beginning?
The thirteenth station, Jesus is taken down from the cross.
Do we believe that we take Jesus off the cross every time we help a hurting person, every time we lend a listening ear, every time we visit a shut-in, every time we feed a hungry person?
The fourteenth station, Jesus is laid in the tomb.
Do we believe that the loved ones we have buried will not stay buried? Do we believe we will not stay in the tomb either?
The stations end with Christ’s burial, but the Gospels end with Christ’s resurrection. Do we believe that this living Jesus is with us right now? Will we accept death with Christ in order to experience eternal life with Christ?
Christianity - Good News or Bad News
Catholic Review, March 3, 2004
A Prayer for Lent
Catholic Review, March 11, 2004
Not for Children
Catholic Review, March 18, 2004
Thoughts on the Stations
Catholic Review, March 25, 2002