A Clarification & An Apology

Today I received an email from Mr. Frank X. Blisard, some of whose material I used on the blog on May 24, 2010. I'm reproducing his comments here in full in order to give complete credit to his original article. To Mr. Blisard I offer my appreciation for his clarification, as well as an apology for the sloppy way I handled this in the first place, with the hope that this will set it right.


HRA
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Rev. Allagree,

On your blog, "The Good Heart," in an entry dated Monday, May 24, 2010, you posted a large fragment of my article, "The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit—A Re-Examination," which was originally published in This Rock  Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 10 (December 2006), pp. 36-39.  For your convenience, here is the URL for the blog-page in question: http://thegoodheart.blogspot.com/2010/05/understanding-seven-gifts-of-spirit.html

While I am gratified and grateful that you found my writing on this subject worthwhile, and that you have exposed my insights to a wider and more "diverse" audience than otherwise would be the case, I must insist that you at least cite in full the source of my article.  I would also appreciate it if you would include the following hyperlink to the full article: http://archive.catholic.com/thisrock/2006/0612uan.asp

Finally, I note that the fragment you posted cuts off in mid-paragraph, at a quite important point in my argument.  The paragraph in question is lacking only one sentence (set in boldface in the exceprt below):

"The seven gifts are designed to be used in the world for the purpose of transforming that world for Christ. Isaiah 11 vividly portrays what these gifts are to be used for: to do what one is called to do in one’s own time and place to advance the kingdom of God. The specific, personal details of that call do not come into focus until one has realized his very limited, ungodlike place in the scheme of things (fear of the Lord), accepted one’s role as a member of God’s family (piety), and acquired the habit of following the Father’s specific directions for living a godly life (knowledge). This familiarity with God breeds the strength and courage needed to confront the evil that one inevitably encounters in one’s life (fortitude) and the cunning to nimbly shift one’s strategies to match—even anticipate—the many machinations of the Enemy (counsel). The more one engages in such "spiritual warfare," the more one perceives how such skirmishes fit into the big picture that is God’s master plan for establishing his reign in this fallen world (understanding) and the more confident, skillful, and successful one becomes in the conduct of his particular vocation (wisdom)."

Please do what you can to make sure this paragraph is reproduced in its entirety.

Thank you.

Frank X. Blisard
PO Box 58
Titusville NJ 08560
609-818-9309
frankblisard@msn.com   

Faith-full Discipleship

If there’s something we might think long and hard about during Lent, it’s the cost of being a disciple of Jesus.  He himself knew the cost. Mark wrote his account of the Gospel 40 years or so after Jesus’ death, at a time when hope within the Christian community may have been fading.  In perhaps the most difficult passage in all Scripture for us modern believers to understand in the context of the first-century Church, Mark writes (Mk 8:31-38) that “[Jesus] said this bluntly...”: that the Son of Man, God’s anointed, must suffer many things; be rejected by his community’s civil and religious leaders; and be killed in order to rise again.

Jesus’ followers can’t comprehend this.  Peter, who only moments before had acknowledged Jesus as “the Christ”, in the name of all the other Apostles, doesn’t want to hear this.  He and the others don’t understand the mission. The common idea of the Messiah at that time was of a powerful leader who would overthrow Israel’s enemies with the “shock and awe” of military might; who would purify worship at the Temple; as well as one who would make Israel the exemplary People of God: economically, politically, and spiritually.  What Jesus was now saying didn’t measure up to Peter’s or the others’ expectations. What is the price one has to pay to have faith in Jesus, to set one’s heart on him, to be his disciple? I suggest at least three things.

1) To be a faith-full disciple of Jesus means to measure people and reality by God’s standards, not by human standards.

Mark writes: “...Peter took [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. ‘Out of my sight, Satan [adversary]! You do not have in mind the things of God, but human things.’”  Self-centered blindness and lack of understanding is the “human thing” here.  The issue is clearly between God’s standards and ours. As all followers of Jesus throughout the ages, you and I struggle to live our faith in a society and a world which seems intent on honoring just about everything, except the self-sacrificing, self-giving service which Jesus modeled in his life.  Just as Peter, we presume that God should deal with evil as we do, namely, by not dealing with it.  Like Peter and the others, we really don’t like to dwell much on the suffering Jesus, or on the Cross.  Much less do we choose to deal with it when it touches our own lives.  We’d rather reject it, deny it, run away from it, get it over with as quickly as possible if we must deal with it, even if resurrection is ultimately promised.  To be a faith-full disciple of Jesus means to measure people and reality by God’s standards, not by human standards. 

2) To be a faith-full disciple of Jesus means to expect a fate no better than Jesus’ fate. 

Mark relates Jesus’ message to hearers of his own time who, by then, would have be very familiar with the threat to their movement of the confiscation and destruction of their own property, and of the possibility of experiencing martyrdom because of their beliefs.  “If anyone would come after me, you must deny yourself and take up the cross and follow me.  For if you want to save your life you will lose it, but if you lose your life for me and for the gospel, you will save it.”  To deny oneself involves setting aside all those favored ties which hold me back from committing myself to Jesus wholeheartedly.  Jesus poses two rhetorical questions in the Gospel:  1) “What good is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit one’s soul (life)?” 2) “What can a person give in exchange for one’s soul (life)?”  

Jesus challenges our continual attempts to preserve ourselves and protect our own interests. He exposes the futility of our trying to secure our lives through trust in wealth and power, to surround ourselves with material possessions, to cling to other people in selfish, possessive, dominating relationships. It’s as though we presume that we can somehow evade inconvenience, suffering, and, eventually, death by clinging for dear life to the “good life”, that we can be in control of every aspect of our life.  We foolishly run from the sure knowledge that ultimately all those things and people will have to be given up and let go.  What is it so worth protecting that makes us so terrified of handing our lives over to Jesus in faith??  Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes: “To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us...”

To be a faith-full disciple of Jesus means to expect a fate no better than Jesus’ fate. 

3) To be a faith-full disciple of Jesus means standing in solidarity and loyalty to him, whatever the challenge to our discipleship. 

Jesus‘ warning is uncompromising.  Whoever is ashamed of Jesus to the point of denying him is “selling out” before God.  St. Paul, in Romans 8, asks what could possibly justify denying our loving God.  “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”  Is there anything in our experience which could cause us to deny that Man on the Cross?? Paul responds to his own question: “No,...For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing could merit our utter devotion as much as the living God who, not sparing even the Son, “gave him up for us all”; nor as much as God’s beloved only Son, Jesus, “who loved us.” To be a faith-full disciple of Jesus means standing in solidarity and loyalty to him, whatever the challenge to our discipleship. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor executed by the Nazis during World War II, a truly faithful and courageous disciple of Jesus, left us this moving testimony in his book The Cost of Discipleship:  “ ...Jesus Christ must suffer and be rejected.  This ‘must’ is inherent in the promise of God -- the Scripture must be fulfilled... Just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as [one] shares [the] Lord’s suffering and rejection and crucifixion...If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life.  We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering...It is not suffering per se but suffering-and-rejection...for the sake of Christ...The opposite of discipleship is to be ashamed of Christ and his cross... Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ...”

Ember Wednesday in Lent

The background and origin of the Ember Days in the Church's calendar have always been something of a mystery to me and to most other Christians. Just this morning my dear friend, Fr. Leo Joseph, OSF, sent me a copy of his parish newsletter, in which he gives a wonderful summary of what Ember Days are all about. Plus a tempting Lenten recipe! I couldn't help but reproduce it here for the benefit of blog readers:


Today is Ember Wednesday!  Whenever confronted by an unfamiliar observance, a friend of mine years ago in New York City, would always say 'Oh my God! What ever should I wear?' I might have suggested a hair-shirt, but she never wore anything that did not have a designer label sewn in it. In fact, Friday and Saturday of this week are also Ember Days -- the Ember Days of Lent.   

It is often supposed that the ancient Christian church co-opted pagan feasts and reoriented them to Christian purposes, but that actually seems to be true in this instance. In pagan Rome offerings were made to various gods and goddesses of agriculture in the hope that the deities would provide a bountiful harvest. Others point to the  Celtic custom of observing various festivals at three-month intervals: Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. 

The Christian observation of this seasonal observance of the Ember Days had its origin in Rome and from Rome the Ember Days gradually spread unevenly to Britain and the whole of Western Christendom. The English name for these days, 'Ember', derives from the Anglo-Saxon ymbren, a circuit or revolution (from ymb, around, and ryne, a course, running), clearly relating to the annual cycle of the year.  

We often find Ember Weeks and Days to be rarely celebrated or discussed amongst Anglicans, except maybe by seminarians who are reminded to write to their bishop this week.  Yet Ember Days are dutifully noted, four times a year, on our Episcopal liturgical  calendars and in the Book of Common Prayer.  But what is compelling is the purposes for which Ember Days remain in our calendar.  They mark the ebb and flow of the seasons with a pause for gratitude to God – not just the transition from spring and summer’s bounty to autumn’s harvest and winter’s rest – but from our birth in baptism, to life in the Eucharist, to anointing and death. Clergy are often ordained during Ember Weeks, to serve as the stewards of these sacramental mysteries.   Priests and deacons are charged to help the people make the bridge from things temporal to things eternal. By that same token, Ember Days allow us all to remember that we live by a different calendar in the Christian Church than that of the secular world.  As Christ’s own, we celebrate Ember Days as a seasonal pause for thanksgiving for God’s gifts, whatever they may be. The Collects for the Ember Days are found in the Book of Common Prayer on pages 205-206 (Traditional) and pages  256-257 (Contemporary) and are titled For the Ministry (Ember Days)...

Having said your prayers, you may now want to slip into the kitchen and prepare this special Ember Day treat that comes down to us from the Middle Ages! 

Ember Day Tart

Since Ember days were considered fasting days this recipe is meatless. Foods on the medieval table didn’t have the definite division  between savoury and sweet that today's foods do. This recipe is slightly sweet, even though it resembles  modern quiche. 

1 pie shell recipe (you may want to buy a good quality pre-made pie shell)  

2 medium onions,

3 eggs  

1 cup cream  

1/4 cup raisins  

1/8 tsp. cinnamon  

1/8 tsp. nutmeg  

Salt and pepper to taste  

1/8 tsp. saffron (optional)  

1 cup soft cheese, such as gruyere (optional)  

1/8 tsp ginger paste (or powdered ginger)  

2 tbsp. butter  

2 tbsp. sugar 

1 cup fresh parsley or cilantro (optional).

Roll out your pie dough and line a pie pan, crimping the edges. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Peel and chop your onions, not too finely. If you are using saffron, heat your cream in the mircowave or on the stove until just hot, then put in the saffron threads. Keep heating just until small bubbles form around the edges, then remove from the heat. 

Saute the onions in the butter until soft and slightly golden.

Spread in the pie shell. Sprinkle the raisins onto the onion layer. If you are using cheese, shred the cheese and sprinkle into the crust next. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat until foamy. Now you need to incorporate the hot cream into the eggs. 

While you are beating, add just 1/4 cup of the cream. When beaten together, add another 1/4 cup, beating constantly.

What you are doing is raising the temperature of the eggs without causing them to cook prematurely. Keeps adding the cream 1/4 at a time until all is added. Now you can add the spices, the sugar, and if you wish, the parsley, chopped finely. Carefully pour into the pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until the center puffs up. (This shows you the eggs are completely cooked).

Now, wouldn't this be a perfect way to end a rough day of prayer and fasting!

Fr. Leo+

On Turning 75

Today started well: I woke up breathing and able to get out of bed!


The first tune which popped up on my iPod, as I was doing my 30 minutes on the treadmill, fittingly turned out to be Gerald Finzi's arrangement of the Magnificat: "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior..."


Though I'm finding it hard to relate to it, my thoughts turn back these days over the past 3/4 of a century since that February 27th day in 1937, two years before the start of World War II, when I emerged in the delivery room of St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Dayton, OH. In past retreats I've used the introduction line: "I was conceived in grace and born of grace, since my mother's name is Grace!" Mom has since gone on to her reward, in 2003, at the age of 88. I can only hope that perhaps I'll have the "grace" to live that long, or beyond.


I think it's not by accident that, over the past few weeks, I was led to pick up and read The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day, edited by Robert Ellsberg. During my seminary days and early years in the priesthood, I was a great admirer of Dorothy and a loyal subscriber to the Catholic Worker. At some point I also read her book The Long Loneliness, which, she insists in her diaries, wasn't an autobiography, but rather a story of how she came to conversion in the Catholic faith. As I was reading the diaries, and now that I'm close to finishing them, I realize how similar a view she and I had/have about life, religion, people, etc., even though she was 40 years older than I. It's a regret that I never had the opportunity to meet her, though I remember that my spiritual director at college, Fr. Bob Lechner, had met her and spoke to me about her. She was a remarkable human being and Christian, who had an uncanny realization of what life was all about.


What have I learned in my 3/4 of a century of living? To name but a few things:
- That of all the books of Scripture, the Psalms express most articulately what I feel in the depths of my being.
- That God has created every human being good, even though one is challenged at times to seek and find that goodness.
- That, as Scott Peck has written and as I and others have experienced it, "life is difficult".
- That, if one allows it, hope, indeed, springs in the heart eternal.
- That the beauty and occasions for wonder in this world of people and things is endless.
- That love, which I've never truly understood and, perhaps, have rarely experienced or given, is still possible.
- That it seems to be an unfortunate characteristic of most human beings that they really don't want to know the truth as you perceive it.
- That I have an intense dislike for ants, pit bulls and leaf-blowers, and comprehend no reason why God created them.
- That things are usually never quite as they appear to be, whether for good or ill.
- That I've frequently made life far too complicated than it needs to be.
- That I've been abundantly blessed in the friendships and acquaintances that have come my way.
- That my two best human accomplishments so far were fathering my daughter and son.


At this point in my life, my health is good, my energy level high, my interest in learning and experiencing the world and people about me is ongoing, and my need for inward spiritual growth is vast. 25 more years doesn't seem unreasonable as a goal, but life turns on a dime, so who can know? It's enough to humbly accept whatever days the Lord allots and to try to use them for the best benefit of my fellow human beings.  For now, the words of Psalm 90 are as good a prayer as any:

The span of our life is seventy years,

perhaps in strength even eighty;

yet the sum of them is but labor and sorrow,

for they pass quickly and we are gone.

So teach us to number our days

that we may apply our hearts to wisdom...

Satisfy us by your loving-kindness in the morning; 

so shall we rejoice and be glad all the days of our life...

May the graciousness of God be upon us;

prosper the work of our hands;

prosper our handiwork.

Learning To Survive In The Lenten Desert

The Gospel readings of the first and last Sundays after Epiphany and the first Sunday in Lent have a common feature: the testimony of the Holy God that Jesus is "the Beloved" and that God is "well-pleased" with him.  Surely that's a tip-off that this is something extremely important for us to take notice of. In fact, last Sunday's reading verbalizes the need to "listen to him!"

Particularly in Lent, then, Jesus is the model, the exemplar upon whose words and actions ours are to be articulated and done.  In addition to Mark's Gospel reading today (1:9-15), the Collect reminds us that the "blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan...", and it asks that God who "know[s] the weaknesses of each of us" -- far better than we even know ourselves -- will come "quickly to help us..." 

Using Matthew's version of the temptation (which is used on Epiphany 1) rather than Mark’s, art interpreter, Sister Wendy Beckett, in her delightful little book, Sister Wendy's Meditations on the Mysteries of Our Faith (Liguori, 2007), comments: "We live in Lent for forty days in memory of the forty days Jesus spent in the desert, when he set himself to work out what was his Father’s will for him, and to encounter, unprotected, the full force of temptation... Matthew's Gospel is quite explicit: he was led by the Spirit into the desert 'to be tempted'..."  

Sr. Wendy uses the dramatic painting of the Temptation on the Mountain, painted by Duccio di Buoninsegna, originally on the back of his magnificent altarpiece, known as the Maestà, in order to meditate on temptation, both in Jesus and in us, and on the themes of darkness and light. The Maestà, composed of some 43 panels, was Duccio's master work, commissioned by the city of Siena for Siena's cathedral in 1308, and installed in June, 1311.  Sister Wendy narrates how Jesus is put in an unwanted situation by Satan the Adversary, and notes that "His face is very somber, and he clutches his cloak to his body as if to defend himself against contamination...", even as we ourselves cringe from temptations occasioned by unwholesome wandering thoughts, fantasies, and images of our "monkey-mind" which insert themselves so readily.  Sr. Wendy is struck by the contrast Duccio has painted between Satan, the figure of "a moving darkness, and emptiness on the landscape", and the figure of Jesus, "tempted in every way that we are, but without sin", repudiating temptation with a firm gesture of his hand, giving us the strength and resolve to turn away in our own times of testing.  "In the desert, hungry and alone," she says, "Jesus concentrated on his goals: he examined his life and possible future.  We are taken into Lent each year to urge us to do the same..." 

The Lenten desert country into which you and I have been invited once again is a landscape both "fascinating and terrifying”. We instinctively dread taking time to be face to face with ourselves before God, even for a short time like 6 1/2 weeks. Despite our best intentions, we often seek to fill the silences in our lives with diversion, with something to do, with something, as we often say, “meaningful”.  But, as an anonymous Swiss monk writes: “...The essence of the desert is the absence of man;...Where man is not, is neither sin nor rumour of the business of the world...” 

We enter these weeks of Lent not to do or to accomplish or to make ourselves become anything; not to “give up” cookies, or chocolate, or lattes, etc.; but something much deeper and more costly: namely, to give up our self-fullness. A young friend of mine in the Order of Julian of Norwich, Sister Therese, sent me a wonderful little card a few years ago which reads, “Abandon all hope of fruition.”  The only thing you and I are called to “do” during our desert journey these next few weeks is to get ourselves out of God’s way and to let God do what God wants to do with us.  Carmelite Sister Ruth Burrows poses this question: “...For what is the mystical life but God coming to do what we cannot do..? [It] is beyond our power, nothing we can do can bring us to it, but God is longing to give it to us, to all of us, not to a select few...The prerequisite on our part is an acceptance of poverty, of need, of helplessness; the deep awareness that we need Jesus our saviour...who is our holiness...”

 

The desert is the place of essentials, of the bottom-line. It’s the place where you and I are vulnerable to all our hidden demons and temptations. God bids us to withdraw to this place of spiritual inconvenience, in fact, God woos us to it. It’s the place of the unexpected. God doesn’t tip us off in advance as to what the Lenten desert has in store for us, and no two of us will encounter our desert in exactly the same way.

One thing is sure, however: despite its rigors, the desert will reveal to us, if we allow it, how totally God loves us, how utterly favored, "beloved",  we are by God, even as Jesus was God’s “beloved”. At the end of the desert journey there awaits the joy of renewed life, hope, and resurrection. But there is a cost. The anonymous monk quoted earlier gives us this advice: “...Humble and detached, go into the desert. For God, awaiting you there, you bring nothing worth having, except your entire availability...[God] is calling you to live on friendly terms with [God], to nothing else...You must be content to lose yourself entirely. If you secretly desire to be or to become ‘somebody’, you are doomed to failure. The desert is pitiless; it infallibly rejects all self-seekers...”

In the Prologue of his Rule for monks St. Benedict recommends that they willingly let the divine light into the desert country of their souls, “...and with startled ears” to “listen to what the divine voice is calling out every day...”:  an echo of the desire of our hearts which Psalm 95 voices: “Oh that today we would hearken to your voice!”

Finding The Help We Need

"...you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.


If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.


If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honourable;
if you honour it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;
then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isaiah 58:9b-14)

The whole Lenten season is a sort of renewed crying out to God for help. How consoling to know that God's reply, year after year, is always the same: "Here I am." Notice that God doesn't just leave it at that, however. Some very specific suggestions are offered in order that the darkness of our mind and spirit can be enlightened, that a map of the way forward can be given to guide us, that God can "satisfy our needs" and strengthen us, and that in the whole process we can be refreshed, renewed.

The suggestions?? Seeing to it that other peoples' burdens are lightened. Sharing food with those who are hungry. Addressing and dealing with the issues of those who are suffering. Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase The Message, puts it more graphically: "...get[ting] rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people's sins,...refusing 'business as usual', making money, running here and there..." God stresses that the key to being able to act on these suggestions is learning how to be selfless, learning how to rise above self-interest, "not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs..."

If, out of the depths of our need for help, we can accept God's grace, we'll become (again, in Peterson's translation) repairers of the breach between God and humanity, "restorer[s] of the streets", "those who can fix anything...[those who can] make the community livable again...Then you'll be free to enjoy God!"

Ash Wednesday: A Lenten Call To Prayer

Almighty and everlasting God,...create and make in us new and contrite

hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins...may obtain of you, the God

of all mercy...perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

“You are dust, and to dust you will return.” With this ancient formula, heard by Christians all over the world on Ash Wednesday as the sign of the Cross is traced on their foreheads, we begin the season of Lent. This symbolic act is both a solemn reminder of our being marked in Baptism “as Christ’s own,  forever”, as well as an invitation to renew our lives. Ash Wednesday and Lent are marked by the practice and spirit of penitence. The process of repentance isn’t, some sick form of regret about past mistakes. At the outset of his public ministry Jesus proclaimed, “Repent,  for the reign of God has come!” In Greek repentance literally means a change of mind, of heart, a change of spiritual presence in the heart. In Baptism you and I began to live, as St. Paul puts it, “in Christ”. Jesus hints that to live in him is to be part of and to dwell already in the reign of God: “the reign of God is within you”. Given our human condition, you and I are well aware that we continually stand in need of being called back to change our minds and hearts, and to live in the reign, the presence of Jesus the Christ.

By God’s grace this Lent holds promise of being a special season and time for all of us together to discover or to rediscover Jesus’ presence and peace in our lives. The beloved prayer of St. Francis Assisi expresses this theme so well, and can be of particular help during Lent.

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. 

Where there is hatred, let us sow love; 

where there is injury, pardon; 

where there is discord, union; 

where there is doubt, faith; 

where there is despair, hope; 

where there is darkness, light; 

where there is sadness, joy. 

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; 

to be understood as to understand; 

to be loved as to love. 

For it is in giving that we receive; 

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; 

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

One of Lent’s traditional disciplines, and the chief way we come to find God’s presence and peace, is to pray for it. We pray for all sorts of things: healing for a sick relative; peace for a dying friend; for inspiration in taking an exam; for the relief of suffering folks throughout the world. St. Francis reminds us that, above all, in praying we need to pray for God. The focus isn’t on asking God for something, but asking that God be there, be present, in everything. Thousand of years before St. Francis, another saint, Augustine of Hippo, exclaimed: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you!” Andrew Weyermann says, “We have a spirit that curves us into ourselves so that our every want becomes an insatiable need.” We feel all sorts of compelling needs: to put ourselves first; to outdo those who oppose us or differ with our opinions; to be powerful and to possess; to be noticed and needed: even, and perhaps especially, after all those emptinesses have been sated and satisfied, if only momentarily. We find ourselves still reaching out for something more to ease the hollowness and loneliness. But how does one ask for that? How do we pray? “We do not know how we ought to pray...”, says St. Paul.

As we journey together through Lent, anticipating the celebration of Jesus‘ Resurrection, perhaps we can learn to allow the Holy Spirit of God and of Jesus to plead for us, as Paul continues, “with sighs too deep for words...” Perhaps, following Francis‘ example, we can ask for a special measure of God’s presence: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” In praying like that we ask for two things:       

• “Make me in your presence.” So often those words, “make me”, are spoken as words of defiance, of declaring a war of wills. In saying them to God, they take on a whole different meaning, expressing our willingness to hand ourselves over to God present, to allow ourselves to be shaped into something new. St. Paul discovered such a rebirth in the presence of the Risen Christ on the way to Damascus. For Francis, God’s renewing presence took the form of a leper whom others found loathesome, but whom Francis nevertheless lovingly embraced. In Baptism you and I became a new creation in God’s presence, and each time we turn back to God, each time we change our hearts, God stands with us: present, here. “Make me, Lord; create me anew.
• “Use me for your presence.” No one likes to be used, in the sense of having to cater to someone else’s needs and desires, being taken advantage of. Yet there is a sense in which we need to be and choose to be used for God’s purposes. “Make me an instrument of your peace.” It’s similar to the eager team player on the bench who begs his coach: “Use me.” You and I need the assurance that we and our lives count for something, that we’re here on this planet for a reason. St. Paul expresses the reason in this way: “God...through Christ...has given us the ministry of reconciliation...We are ambassadors for Christ...” Perhaps this poem by Thomas Merton, The Candlemas Procession, will resonate with us as we go about our Lenten renewal:

Look kindly, Jesus where we come,

New Simeons, to kindle,

Each at Your infant sacrifice his own life’s candle.

And when Your flame turns into many tongues,

See how the One is multiplied, among us, hundreds!

And goes among the humble, and consoles our sinful kindred.

...Nor burn we now with brown and smoking flames, but bright

Until our sacrifice is done,

(By which not we, but You are known)

And then, returning to our Father, one by one

Give back our lives like wise and waxen lights.