Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)
In a few days, Lent begins.
Even though Lent begins relatively late this year, it always seems to come quickly after the memories of Christmas and New Year’s have begun to fade. Lent, of course, brings with it its own memories: purple vestments and altar cloths, giving up things we like, trying to take on a more penitential spirit.
In our busy lives, when we are pulled in several directions at once – all the while feeling like the person who is trying to keep a dozen plates spinning atop their poles all at once – it is tempting to not think too much about Lent. We may slide into autopilot, and simply do what we always do for Lent – give up the usual thing, take on the usual thing, without asking ourselves why we are doing what we are doing, and if it is getting us where we need to be. We forget that Lent is a gift of love from God to us – a gift that is offered to us so that our joy in the Lord might be more complete.
Therefore, dear readers, I invite you to pause with me and contemplate this gift of Lent. Why is it given to us? What is its purpose? How, then, can we welcome this gift in the best way possible, so that God can give us, through Lent, some gift that we truly need?
Our observance of Lent is modeled on the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness before He began His public ministry. Let us begin there and see where that takes us.
Jesus has just emerged from the obscurity of ordinary life in Nazareth, and has gone to John the Baptist, to accept baptism by him. Jesus does this, first of all, to ritually accept His mission from the Father. Both the Father and the Holy Spirit are present to seal this public commitment. Jesus’ mission from the Father has existed from all eternity. But, now being human, his humanity needs to ritualize it and publicly express it.
Then, His calling confirmed, Jesus goes out into the wilderness for forty days, where He is tested by Satan. This is necessary. Human beings experience a call from God, but also experience resistance within themselves – a resistance that Satan seeks to exploit constantly. Jesus, though Son, takes on the human resistance that we all deal with, and overcomes it by His utter faithfulness to His Father’s will.
Then, having overcome that human resistance by His fidelity to the Father, Jesus emerges from the wilderness and begins to preach. He tells anyone who will listen: “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Good News!”
What does this Kingdom of God mean? How did Jesus’ hearers understand it? It meant that all the promises which God had made to Israel in the past were being fulfilled, here and now, through Jesus. People were being offered forgiveness of sins, and healing in body, mind and spirit. The sins and divisions that separated people were being overcome. Jesus was gathering Israel together again. Those who were disabled or limited in any way would now find themselves filled with God’s own merciful presence, and could now know a joy, a gratitude, and a love that surpassed anything they dreamed possible. The Kingdom would only come in its fullness at the End, but anyone who believed in Jesus could experience it now. It was beginning now.
People could only be open to the Kingdom of God to the extent that they were willing to repent and believe. Repenting involved an acknowledgment of their sins, past and present. More than that, it involved an acknowledgment of whatever, even now, resists God’s Kingdom in their hearts and minds. The question becomes: which will become central in people’s lives: faith in the Kingdom of God, or the resistance to God’s presence and God’s will that we all encounter?
Let us now consider ourselves, today. We are baptized into Christ. Like Him, we have been given a mission. We each have our own vocation, our own manner of serving God in the world. We each hear His voice in various ways and seek to follow Him.
However, we also experience resistance. A friend of mine once used the analogy of electricity to explain this. Electricity seeks to flow, but some materials offer more resistance to it than others. The goal is to give electricity the least amount of resistance possible, so that it can flow more easily and do the tasks we need it to do. So, we use materials like copper in wiring because their resistance to electricity is low.
Our hearts work similarly. God’s love seeks to flow into us. But, due to original sin and other factors, we also offer resistance to God’s love. This resistance hampers our faith. It makes it more difficult to welcome God fully into our lives. God will not force His love on us. He waits for us to open the door – that is, to let go of resistance. He gives us the grace to do that – otherwise we could not – but it’s up to us to assent to it, to trust it, to say, “Let it all be according to Your will!”
This is where Lent comes in. It is a privileged time for us as Catholics. We are invited to pause long enough to hear Jesus proclaim to us the coming of the Kingdom of God. We are invited to pause long enough to look at our response to Jesus’ call, and see where our resistance is. Then, we are invited to take some steps through which we can let go of the resistance so that e can approach God with empty hands, ready to receive all the love and joy that God wants to flood us with.
What are some ways in which this resistance manifests itself? The Gospel for this Sunday gives us a few clues. Let’s look at a couple of Jesus’ sayings and see what He can teach us through them.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?
Jesus, as He so often does, uses exaggeration to drive home a point for us. It is a point that we in our day may need more than ever. We live in a divided, polarized, contentious culture. Social media seem to be motivated by the need to stir up outrage (in one camp) over what people (in another camp) are saying or doing. If we pray at all for those we perceive to be our adversaries, it is that THEY convert, that THEY change. We do not readily admit our own faults. Oh, we’ll be glad to say, in generic terms, that we are not perfect. But let someone point out any SPECIFIC fault they see in us, and watch the reaction – the resistance! We are happy to point out how others need to repent. We refuse to see any specific way WE need to repent. This is one form of resistance that gets in God’s way, so to speak. We can’t begin to correct others until we have acknowledged our own specific sins and sought the mercy of God.
However, with some of us, the saying of Jesus is reversed. We easily exaggerate our own faults, and minimize the faults of others. It is good to see our faults, of course. However, we can so exaggerate them that we cannot let them go. We cannot believe that God or other people could forgive them. We drag them behind us. They weigh us down. They become resistance of a different kind. We cannot hear or trust God’s forgiveness. We feel we are broken and must pay the price, over and over again. We forget that acknowledging our sin is only the beginning. The next step is the point: welcoming God’s mercy, love and joy. It is a gift God wants to give us. We need to trust that gift, and to trust God, in order to receive it.
No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher.
From the time we were very young, we have learned about faith and God and life from our teachers. Who were our teachers? Our parents, other relatives, friends, priests, teachers in school or in church, and other influential people in our lives. Famous people of the past and present whom we admire also serve as teachers for us.
Chances are that, for each of us, one or two particular teachers became the dominant ones for us – those who laid the foundations for how we see ourselves, other people, the world, and God. These were – and are – our parents: our biological parents, or those who filled the role of parents for us and raised us. We became strongly influences by our parents.
However, no matter how good our parents were (or are), they remain human and limited. They passed on to us all the love that they learned and were able to accept. However, they also passed on to us their limitations, their resistance to God’s grace, their own sinfulness. Our parents may have been very good teachers for us, if we were so fortunate. Nevertheless, if our parents – or any other human being – remain our dominant teacher(s), we will find ourselves stuck at some point along our journey of faith. We have inherited their resistance to God, as well as our own. We have been blessed by their goodness, but have also been hurt by their sins and failures. If our parents remain our main teachers for life, we may reap the blessings of their goodness, but we will never move beyond their limitations. “No disciple is superior to the teacher”, Jesus tells us.
Therefore, we have another source of resistance. Who is our main teacher now? Is it our parents, or any one person or group of persons, or is our main Teacher Christ Himself? This can be a tricky one, as we only hear of Christ through other people – through their openness to Him and their resistance to Him. This is where we need to hear from more people who are friends of God, as well as the Bible and the Tradition of the Church. We need to understand that the message of Jesus is greater than what any one person – no matter how good – can tell to us alone. That gives us the grace, the wisdom, and the perspective we need to evaluate what our parents and other teachers have given us: to know what to acknowledge as true and to abide by it, and to know what to let go of as incomplete or wrong. Our parents may have given us mixed and confusing messages of how they loved us, or how God loves us. They may have done the best they could. But we need to get the full message, so that any hurts our parents or others may have caused us can be healed, and that we can be more open to the Lord as our true Teacher. We can thank our parents for what they gave us, but remember that all good things are ultimately from God.
So, where does this leave us, as we begin this Lenten season?
Let’s summarize in this way. Jesus has come to offer us not only forgiveness and healing, but the very love and life of God Himself. Nothing else can heal or satisfy our hearts as they need to be healed and satisfied. We want God’s love, but we also find in ourselves some resistance to that love.
Where is my resistance now? Where is yours? What can I do for Lent and beyond Lent – to help myself let go of that resistance so that I can give a fuller, more complete “yes” to Jesus in my life, right now? Fasting or giving up sweets could be a symbolic start to this, as long as we understand this as making room in my life for Jesus by letting go of my resistance so that His love and grace can do more in my heart and soul and body and mind. The fasting itself is not the point. The point is a closer union with God. That’s the goal. May our Lent become a means through which God can draw us closer to Himself and then bless us with a love and a joy we never believed possible in this earthly life. God wants to give us this very thing. Let Him!!