Friday After Ash Wednesday

Am posting several hours before Friday officially begins.  I hope to be in bed well before midnight.  Will give this homily to the Carmelites of the Aged and Infirm in Framingham at 7:45 AM. 

Is 58:1-9a

Ps 51

Mt 90:14-15

Fasting.  Why do we fast?  What is it about humans that impels them to voluntarily forgo, or severely limit, food and drink?  Possible motivations include: asceticism, purification, mourning, and supplication.  Alas, in the U.S. the primary reason for fasting and other “penitential-like practices” is weight loss.  Sackcloth and ashes have been replaced by sweat suits, treadmills and the absurd "detox" routines being shilled by faded or fading Hollywood starlets needing attention.

Xavier Leon-Dufour notes, “occasions and motives are varied.  But it is always a question of establishing oneself with faith in an attitude of humility in order to receive the action of God and to place oneself in his presence.” 

On Wednesday we were told how to fast.  With a washed face.  And combed hair.  And, if not with a smile, at least without a scowl.  Today’s first reading reveals more about the proper attitude toward fasting.  Fasting should lead to conversion, not quarreling and fighting.  Fasting is not an end unto itself.  Fasting is a means.  The second half of the reading describes ways of fasting other than going without food.  A lot of people would probably rather go without food than change their behavior so radically that it might actually cost something. 

In the short reading from Matthew’s Gospel John’s disciples are confused.  We fast.  The Pharisees fast.  Your disciples don’t.  Typical human behavior.  I’m miserable.  Why aren’t you?  It reminds me of a great definition of an alcoholic:  A patient who drinks more than his doctor. 

But, this interchange between John’s disciples and Jesus highlights the dangers of fasting, pride and ostentation.  Fasting is not a competitive sport.  In his summary on fasting Leon-Dufour notes .“(the Church) seeks by the practice of fasting to place the faithful in an attitude of total openness to the grace of the Lord, while waiting for his return.”  With that attitude we can pray with the great Miserere::

"A pure heart create for me, O God,

put a steadfast spirit within me . . . 

. . . O Lord, open my lips

and my mouth shall declare your praise."

Only when we can say the Miserere without equivocation can offer our sacrifice: A humbled and contrite heart. 

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Long weekend.  Real long weekend.  Flew out of Boston on Thursday to officiate at a friend's wedding with plans to return on a 6:30 PM flight on Sunday.  The notification that the flight was cancelled arrived on Saturday night.  The e-mail went on to explain that I was booked on a 2:30 PM flight.  OK.  I can live with that though it did wreck plans to visit a friend.  Took rental car to airport at noon on Sunday.  Went to check-in desk.  I was booked on a flight at 2:30 to be sure.  On Tuesday.  Fortunately I was staying with Jesuits so I returned.  Apparently Jet Blue cancels early and often.  I had a place to go.  What of a tourist who finds himself stranded at an airport with no where to go and perhaps a few cranky kids?    

Got back to Boston on Tuesday at 4 PM.  Spent 1 1/2 hours getting to BC via subway despite terrific connections and a not particularly crowded train.  Boston made a huge mistake in not putting the entire subway system underground.  Riding the Green Line B train from Government Center to Boston College is a preview of purgatory.  Fortunately the suffering was eased with a pizza prior to going to Campion.  

The attached photos are all of the same thing, a busted rusted bicycle.  It was leaning against a wall in Sevenhill.  From its appearance it appears to have been leaning for several years.  If I had to choose I think I would prefer to shoot in black and white than color.  

+Fr. Jack, SJ MD

Letting Go and Letting God

Mk 9:14-29

"I do believe, help my unbelief." In the context of this particular Gospel narrative, these are among the most poignant words in scripture.  We hear the words of a desperate father seeking help for his epileptic son. 

The apostles had already proven to be inept at helping the man whose increasing desperation is obvious.  The father's plea was precipitated by Jesus' frosty, and perhaps sarcastic, response to his request for help.  "If you can!  Everything is possible to the one who has faith."  The boy's father had faith in Jesus' ability to heal his son.  Faith drew him to seek out Jesus in the first place.  However, his faith wavered.  "But, if you can do anything have compassion and help us."  Thus Jesus' annoyed response, "If you can!?!"  (my punctuation)

In the synoptic Gospels Jesus' healing miracles depend on faith. They do not cause or create faith.  The faith may be on the part of the supplicant or on the parts of those who present the case to Jesus. Those of no faith or those hostile to faith, both then and now, can always find an alternate explanation for whatever happened.  Miracles occur in the context of faith.  Hence the desperate father's poignant act of faith, a prayer we would all do well to take to heart.  There is something else interesting in this narrative.  Jesus apologizes to his apostles for his shortness with them. 

Upon first confronting the apostles' ineptness Jesus' irritation with them is obvious.  However, at the end of the narrative, in the privacy of the house, when the disciples ask why they couldn't drive the spirit out of the boy, Jesus, by way of apology, explains to them, "This kind can only come out through prayer."  The apostles still had a long way to go in the area of prayer and more critically, in their own faith in Jesus. 

Over the weekend the college seminarians from Providence, Rhode Island were on retreat at Campion Center.  They left behind a sheet with hymns they used.  I noticed one I'd never heard of before.  The hymn is titled, "Faith Begins By Letting Go."  The first verse reads as follows:

"Faith begins by letting go,

giving up what had seemed sure,

taking risks and pressing on,

though the way feels less secure. . . "

Thus, we can and must say with the epileptic boy's father, "I do believe, help my unbelief."

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It is warming up a bit though more snow and ice is predicted for later in the week. Very cold weekend in the offing.  Couldn't that groundhog have taken this year off?

One of my favorite places to visit with a camera slung over my shoulder (and some lenses, batteries and other stuff bulging out of my pockets) is the Jianguo Holiday Flower Market and Jade Market.  The large sheds that contain the markets are under a very large highway overpass thus adding an extra level of protection from the periodic torrential downpours of Taiwan.  I've taken many hundreds of shots there, being limited only by physical exhaustion.  Below are three of paper lanterns for sale in the market.  I have a similar one hanging over my desk.  Ignatius had it in his room when we were in theology at Weston Jesuit.  In the frantic rush to pack (the car to pick him up for the airport was in front of the house and he wasn't done) he left it behind.  I kept it.  I would have purchased one of these but the odds of getting it home in one piece were not good.  

+Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

Sixth Monday in Ordinary Time

Jas 1:1-11

Ps 119:67-8, 71-2,75-6

Mk 8:11-13

The Gospel today is about as short as a Gospel reading can be, just three verses.  But it packs a punch and reflects the first reading from James.  While James exhorts those who are being troubled to hold onto their faith, Jesus is expressing his frustration with those who demand signs almost as a basis for having faith, of a sort.

In both the Old Testament and the New Testament asking for a "sign" is asking for a miracle.  As a bit of trivia, the word miracle does not appear in either testament.  The closest we come to what we understand as miracle is a word translated as "marvel" that appears only once in the New Testament, in Matthew.  Thus, asking for a sign is asking for a miracle of some sort. 

The Russian writer Dostoyevsky put it well when he wrote, "Man seeks not so much God as the miraculous."  The late Jesuit Father Stanley Marrow describes the same with less brevity.  "The difficulty with signs and miracles, even the greatest of them, is that our appetite for them is insatiable.  The recipient of the favor . . . keeps coming back for more.  We are forever testing to see if God is still there, whether our prayers are getting through."

Jesus' signs and miracles are manifestations of God but they do not produce faith.  They are only experienced--or sometimes even noticed--by those with faith. 

As James exhorts in his letter, "ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind."  When we demand signs from God we are going to be disappointed because our demand for a sign comes not from faith but from an attitude of "oh yeah?  Show me."  May we approach God not with an attitude of show me but with the words of the psalmist on our lips,

"I know, O Lord,

that your ordinances are just

and in your faithfulness

you have afflicted me.

Let your kindness comfort me."

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Just a few photos.  

I've been fascinated for years by the Dutch genre paintings, particularly the still life works that depict glass, light, shadow and so on.  It took a long time to come to an appreciation of that kind of work.  Given the snow and general unpleasantness of the weekend weather (it was a tad warmer but the low tonight is to be 9) there were good excuses to stay in and play with photos. 

The first is a detail of a small stained glass window in an out-of-the-way hallway near where the two other photos were taken. 

These two are the same place taken from different perspectives.  They remind me of the Dutch Master paintings in the way the light makes all the difference.  The scene itself was more than a little mundane (and kind of dusty too, given the lack of traffic through the area).  

+Fr Jack, SJ, MD

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Salt and Light

Is 58:7-10

Ps 112:4-5, 6-7, 8-9

1 Cor 2:1-5

Mt 5:13-16

There is something missing from the first reading.  That something is the first six verses of chapter 58 of the Book of Isaiah.  Those beginning verses put the reading we just heard into context.  In the missing verses the prophet Isaiah is denouncing the people.  He is not denouncing them because they had assumed and adopted pagan customs and practices but because they performed their own religious practices, such as fasting and penance, insincerely and hypocritically.

The Jewish Study Bible makes an interesting comment on the background for this reading.  The people observed rituals such as fasting not out of true devotion but for their own benefit.  People prayed for divine intervention in their quarrels against each other. The prophet is denouncing the people because they fasted and did penance so as to manipulate God, as if that were possible.  The verses we heard here make more sense with this background.  Isaiah is instructing the people about what a true fast means.  True fasting is not starving one's body.  That's dieting.  True fasting means sharing what one has with others and thus having less for oneself.  Humility is not sitting in sackcloth and ashes looking pathetic for all who pass by.  True humility means a desire for justice.  True humility includes compassion toward those who suffer.  With Ash Wednesday just a few weeks away we would do well to come back to this reading. It gives good instruction for how we are called to observe Lent. 

"You are the salt of the earth.  But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?"

Jesus' image of 'the salt of the earth' is part of common English usage.  It is a compliment to the person who is described that way.  As used in colloquial English 'salt of the earth' means a good or worthy person who places the needs of others first.  It implies actions free of underhanded dealings and devious behaviors that ultimately benefit the self.    But salt is tricky.  It is not always a blessing.  

On one hand salt purifies and preserves food.  That is an important use even today.  It adds exquisite flavor to food.  Unsalted pretzels, for example, are an abomination.  But add a few grains of salt and flavor explodes.  On the other hand salt can also poison.  Watering plants with salt water will kill them.  Too much salt in the diet can result in high blood pressure, congestive heart failure and a generalized feeling of bloat. 

Jesus' sayings about salt are not easy to understand.  I was bothered for years by the words, "If salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?"  How can salt lose its taste?  That was always a problem in my mind.  But it wasn't a problem only because of Jesus' saying.   Part of the problem was my grandmother.

Grandma, who lived four blocks away, came to dinner every Sunday.  Almost every week she would announce, "They don't make salt as salty as they used to."  Even when I was sixteen it didn't make sense though I didn't know why.  By the time I was in my thirties, after years studying biology, chemistry, and human physiology, my mom began saying the same thing.  Generally she would make the announcement while shaking salt over the potatoes that I had just cooked at my house.  "You didn't add enough salt.  And remember, they don't make it as salty as they used to." (OK Jack, count to ten.  She is your mother). 

There is an explanation for salt seeming to lose its flavor. It is not because of the salt.  It is our fault.  Salt is as salty as it has always been.  But, as we age our ability to detect and taste salt on the tongue diminishes dramatically.  What seems to be salted just right to someone who is 85 may be experienced as very salty to someone 35.

Jesus is the light of the world.  Jesus is also the salt of the earth who preserves, purifies, and protects us just as salt preserves food and protects it from contamination.  We cannot afford to lose our taste for that salt.  We cannot allow our taste for the Word of God to diminish as we age. 

While it is never a good idea to shake too much salt on the mashed potatoes, we can never take in enough of the Word of God.  We can never get enough of the salt of the earth or the salt TO the earth that is Jesus and his life.  Paul prayed in the second reading, " . . . so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God."  That power of God is light for the world and salt for the earth.  May we never lose sight of that light.  May our faith never be low salt.

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Very busy week with more of the same coming.  Fr. Dan Harrington, SJ, one of the world's greatest New Testament scholars died on Saturday here at Campion.  He came after dealing with cancer for four years.  In the early autumn it became apparent that he could not get the care he needed in a busy community at the school so he came out here.  He will be very missed by the faculty, students, and the world of New Testament scholarship in general.  He was my thesis adviser at Weston Jesuit School of Theology when it was still in Harvard Square.  He was a passionate sports fan.  Every Monday during football season he would have some  comment on the Penn State game of the previous Saturday.  Very nice man who wore his considerable learning and erudition lightly, never using it like a club to beat others who were less accomplished into submission.  This is a rare trait among academics.  

The photos are all the same subject.  One of the men had some orchids in his room.  I had the camera when I passed by.  The shots didn't come out of the camera looking all that great.  Wretched wall color in the room for starters along with very poor light.  After a lot of post-processing (not with Photoshop) I was happy with the results.  

The first photo is an 'out of the camera.'  Not very good by any stretch.  This is the sort of thing that an amateur could not have corrected in the past. 

Same photo after about 20 minutes of adjustment. 

A friend wondered how it would look in black and white.  I'm not sure about this one.   Added a few 'buds' to cover the supporting stick on the left.  That part looks much better in black and white than it did in color. 

The final three are different shots all of which were similarly manipulated in the Aperture 3 program. 

 +Fr. Jack, SJ, MD