My Soul is Tired: But God Cares (Lent 2.B)

My great friend in Ireland, Father Barry Horan, is one of the happiest and most delightful priests you'll ever meet. I hope you will meet him when travelling is possible again.

But when Father Barry sends me a book, it’s usually a serious one—he's a very smart man who realizes that happiness is a serious problem.

For Christmas he sent me a book by the American writer Robert Wicks called Heartstorming: Creating a Place God Can Call Home. When I picked it up this week the book fell open to a chapter titled “My Soul is Tired.”

And that, dear friends, sums up how I feel this Second Sunday of Lent. My soul is tired.

I’m sure many of you feel the same way; in fact, I know many of you feel the same way, since you’ve told me what you’re dealing with. In the months since Christmas, there’s been more sorrow and struggle in the parish than there was in the first ten months of the pandemic.

This is not the place for details—but, trust me, there’s a lot of suffering out there.

Not all these rough things are a direct result of the pandemic. Some are just coincidence. But there’s much happening to make my own soul feel very weary.

Robert Wicks writes about the “gray” times in our lives. And he says that we can truly benefit from them if we don’t just ignore or play down our troubled feelings.

Our “low” points, he says, can bring spiritual blessings if we intentionally bring God into the times that are “difficult, disappointing, troubling, confusing… or sad.”

I don’t know about you, but my first thought is to ask God to get rid of these feelings, not to invite him in. But Wicks says by exploring them with God we can learn a great deal about ourselves and, more importantly, a great deal about God’s love.

In today’s second reading, St. Paul teaches that bad times are never the worst of times if we face them knowing God’s love. The apostle is writing about some of the terrible things he’s had to deal with—worse than what most of us face. Can misery separate us from the love of Christ? Is there anything so awful that it overwhelms God’s love in our hearts?

Paul all but shouts: No! No, whether life is all dark or just gray, God is with us, for us, and loving us.

He certainly knew Psalm 116, which we heard just before the second reading. He would have prayed it with conviction in all the many trials he faced: “I kept my faith, even when I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted.’”

I want to be able to pray those words myself in every difficulty. I want to keep my own faith strong, even in the roughest of times. But how?

Paul offers a two-part answer: first, by trusting that God is for us, not against us. He wants our good and our happiness. Second, by understanding that God who gave his only Son for us—the greatest gift imaginable—will not now abandon us to our troubles.

In case we miss that message, the first reading underlines it in red with the story of Abraham and Isaac. It still sends a chill up our spines. We don’t know how God the Father felt about sending his Son for us, since that’s beyond human comprehension. But we can all imagine how Abraham felt. This ancient story helps us to appreciate how much love there is behind the incarnation and the suffering of Christ.

Knowing about such love, can we really think that God doesn’t care about our gray times, our low times, our hard times?

So where does the Gospel account of the Transfiguration fit in?

First, it reminds us that Jesus does care about how we feel. Since the Transfiguration is only a foretaste of the Resurrection, it’s important not for what happened but for why it happened. Jesus is strengthening these key disciples to face his suffering and death. He cares enough to want to strengthen them in advance with a preview of the happy ending to the story of his Passion.

He wants us also to be strengthened by his Resurrection from the dead—to be strong enough to face any and every trial. As today’s Psalm says, “I kept my faith, even when I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted.’”

The Transfiguration also says something to us in our current circumstances. Jesus granted Peter and James and John more than knowledge; he gave them an experience—an experience not only of himself but of Elijah and Moses, who were so present on the mountain that Peter wanted to build them each a little chalet.

No less than on the mount of Transfiguration, Jesus wants us to experience his glory, the Law and the Prophets, and each other. He wants to gather us around him, right here in this church.

Only he can’t—at least not without getting a ticket from the Health Authority.

Yet Christians are an experiential, incarnational, and existential community. We are meant to gather. It is not good to be together only virtually.

Patiently we have waited; obediently we have waited. But the closing of churches—without sufficient evidence to justify it—has gone on too long. I am very pleased to tell you that Archbishop Miller has filed a formal request for reconsideration of the health order that has kept us away from Mass. And I encourage you to read the letter he’s written to Catholics explaining the reason for his decision.

Let us pray hard for a just and favourable response to the Archbishop’s request. Let us pray that before much longer we’ll look around this church and pray, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”

And between now and then, let’s do some heartstorming, asking God into our gray times so he can show us his love and peace.

Ambassadors for Christ - Ash Wednesday

 

What are you doing a week from tomorrow?

If you’re like most of us, you’re doing the same thing tomorrow and next week and the week after that. No-one is heading to Hawaii, there are no birthday parties on our calendars, and nobody’s asked you over for dinner.

We all agree that an empty calendar is a disappointment. But it’s also an opportunity—an opportunity to have the best Lent ever.

“Best Lent Ever” is a powerful phrase coined by Matthew Kelly, the popular Catholic speaker and writer. Every year he offers a video series to help people grow in Lent through prayer.

This year, he says “it’s not what you give up this Lent, it’s who you become.”

Can I ask you to look at this in a slightly different way? The invitation sounds a little bit me-centered.  Now that’s okay—Christians need to grow in personal responsibility through prayer, penance, and almsgiving. But what if we zoomed out and said it’s not what we give up this Lent, it’s who we help?

It’s not a huge stretch to change our focus from me to we, if I can use a phrase from the unfortunate Kielburger brothers.  The second reading puts it right in front of us: we are ambassadors. We are people on a mission. And our own holiness can’t be separated from the needs of others.

 It’s hard to think of a time when people needed people more than they do right now. A Lent centered on self-improvement alone just doesn’t quite cut it.

This year we'd better not follow the readings too closely. If the prophet Joel’s words inspire us to assemble a congregation of the young and old, brides and grooms, we will get shut down by the health authority. If we urge and entreat our friends and neighbours in imitation of St. Paul, they will shut us down.

Instead, I suggest we offer people what they need—a path to return to the Lord, a path to return to his Church, and a path out of the isolation imposed by the pandemic.

Fr. Jeff and I were delighted to see many familiar faces as we distributed ashes today, and Holy Communion on Sundays. But there are many faces we don’t see, even on Zoom. Some are uncomfortable with the computer, some don’t drive, while others may be nervous just going out.

Would you be Christ’s ambassadors to these parishioners this Lent?

Instead of giving up, would you reach out?

There’s only so much the parish can do without the help of dozens or hundreds of you. You have a network of people you know from church and haven’t been in touch with since the lockdown. Could you phone or email them? Could you send a card?

Of course, you don’t know who’s been away from parish activities, so in order to connect with the people who need a connection most, you’ll need to work at this. But if Lent isn’t a time for dedicated service, what is?

On Sunday, Fr. Jeff will suggest some of the practical ways we can invite people to be part of parish life as it is at present.

Everyone knows the three-legged stool on which Lent rests: prayer, penance, and charity. Becoming a parish ambassador checks all three boxes. Obviously, what I’m proposing is an act of charity—one that not only offers emotional support but spiritual help too.

Of course, we must pray for God to guide us when deciding to whom we should reach out, and pray for those people when we do connect, and afterwards. We can even tell them we’re doing that.

But I think this Lenten project also ticks the box marked penance, at least for many of us. We can feel nervous reaching out—we might be uncomfortable contacting people we don’t know very well.

What’s wrong with that? What is fasting, what is giving up coffee or alcohol, but making ourselves feel uncomfortable for a purpose?

Maybe it’s not what we give up, but who we become: ambassadors for Christ, helping our brothers and sisters in the parish rediscover fellowship and joy this difficult Lent.

Called to Community (6.B)

 

Mrs. McMurtry from Christ the Redeemer and Mrs. Antonucci from St. Anthony’s Parish were bragging to each other about their pastors.

“My pastor can speak Italian,” Mrs. McMurtry boasted to Mrs. Antonucci, “but yours only speaks English.”

“Maybe so,” Mrs. Antonucci replied, “but my pastor speaks good English while your Monsignor speaks bad Italian.”

Okay, it’s not a true story. But my rusty Italian is good enough to spot the Italian origin of one of the pandemic’s top ten words: isolation. The first part of isolation, i-s-o-l-a is isola, the Italian word for island.

When someone with Covid symptoms is told to isolate, he or she is asked to stay on an island—a desert island, like a castaway.

But in the immortal words of the English poet John Donne, “No man is an island.” We're not built for isolation.

People who have had Covid tell us how difficult quarantine can be; they’ve felt disoriented and cut off. And it’s no surprise—humans are social, created in the image of God who is himself three persons in unity.

The same is true for countless elderly persons locked down in care facilities or hospitals.

In the Book of Genesis, God said, “it is not good for man to be alone,” and so he created Eve to join Adam—there is something fundamentally wrong with alone-ness.

When our first reading was written 2700 years ago, and when today’s Gospel unfolded 2000 years ago, the leper’s torment was as much the isolation and exclusion from society as the disease itself.

This reading from the book of Leviticus offers a grim picture of the leper’s fate.  Already afflicted by illness—which may or may not have been leprosy—he is ordered to turn himself into something out of a horror movie, ensuring no one would even think of approaching.

Before the invention of antibiotics, which today cure most cases of Hansen’s Disease, the modern name for leprosy, you could call it a fate worse than death.

The curse of leprosy in the ancient world was far grimmer than this pandemic, although it’s hard not to make a connection between the leper’s face covering and our masks, or with his isolation and current quarantine restrictions.

Can you blame the leper in the Gospel story for telling anyone who would listen that Jesus had healed him? What a burden the Lord lifted from him, body and soul! How do you keep joyful news like that to yourself?

So, what’s the key message for us in this morning’s Gospel? Is it that Jesus can work healing miracles, or is there something more?

I think the Word of God today might be telling us that Jesus wants to end our isolation. Even in a pandemic, he calls us into community.

In the first place, he invites us to community with God—to enter into relationship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Europe's oldest person, a French nun, survived Covid and a lengthy period of isolation, recovering in time to celebrate her 117^th birthday last week.  I wasn’t surprised to read that prayer helped her face her illness and even the prospect of death itself with great peace.

Even cooped up in her room, she was never truly alone.

In the second place, Jesus wants us to experience Christian community—fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. No man, or woman, is an island in the Church. Almost everyone I have spoken to during the pandemic mentions losing what we might call “family ties” in the parish second only to the restriction of the sacraments themselves.

For some, it’s the after-Mass coffee they miss the most; for others, just the cheery greeting exchanged as the leave church. But for all, the pandemic has underlined the importance of being together on our journey as disciples of the Lord.

Strengthening our spirit of community must be a top priority in the parish as the pandemic drags on.

Solidarity is closely related to community. Christians are called to stand together, united even in our sinfulness. Each year, on Ash Wednesday, we line up together as fellow penitents to receive the mark of ashes on our foreheads.

This year, Ash Wednesday will look different. Instead of approaching the altar and hearing those famous words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” parishioners will stay in their cars and have the ashes sprinkled silently on their heads.

It will look different, but receiving the ashes is still an act of solidarity with our brothers and sisters, uniting us in opposition to the isolation of sin.

I did a bit of research this week and discovered that there were more parishioners than I thought who don’t take part in the livestream Mass. Obviously, there is no commandment or Church law requiring people to watch. It’s certainly not the same as attending Mass.

However, the livestream—even without a coffee hour or folks to smile at—keeps alive our community connection. Receiving Holy Communion after the Mass gives us a brief but beautiful moment of physical connection with the parish. Most importantly, receiving the Eucharist deepens our community—our communion—with God.

Our Lenten plan for the parish aims to deepen our connection to one another as we deepen our love for the Lord. We’ll be telling you more in the days ahead.

But for now, just think about two things: First, is there someone you know has become somewhat isolated from the parish?

Second, are you feeling disconnected from the parish, even though you used to be involved?

Father Jeff and I will explore the answers to those questions with you in our homilies for Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday of Lent. Because it’s not good—and not part of God’s plan—for any Christian to be alone.