Category: Lent

Behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split;  the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.  When the centurion and those who were with Him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe, and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

– Matthew 27:51-54

This is the day we’re in right now liturgically: pained at the crucifixion. Yet, unlike the fear of the centurion, we wait in hope because we know our Savior will rise on the third day.

May we all take this time to reflect on the glories of the Lord, to give thanks for His unending love, and to return to God with our whole hearts.

“Yet even now,” says the Lord,
    “return to Me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
    and rend your hearts and not your garments.”

– Joel 2:12-13

Happy Good Friday!

Blessed Good Friday? That sounds more appropriate. It is a very solemn day, after all, as we recognize (celebrate?) the brutal torture and crucifixion of God come down as Man. Can it really be a good day when we’re talking about the murder of any innocent life, let alone someone perfect and all-loving?

Strangely, yes.

So, for anyone tuning in not familiar with the term Good Friday, it’s effectively the culmination of the Lenten season. We spent all of Lent getting ready for this weekend: Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. On Easter Sunday, we celebrate Christ’s conquering of death through His resurrection. Yay! Happy day! Clearly Easter is a time of celebration!

And for Jesus to rise from the dead, He first had to become one of the dead. He had to die to rise. This makes sense logically. But why did He have to rise from the dead in the first place?

The short answer: to save us from ourselves.

In a previous series, we looked at the seven deadly sins and the virtues that combat them. Our working definition for sin is anything that turns our focus away from God. What we didn’t deeply discuss was the impact of sin on our lives. We didn’t go into how our choices to sin impact not only our relationship with God but also our relationships with those whom we love and the relationship we have with ourselves. I’m not going to short shrift this discussion by attempting to squish it in with the Good Friday discussion, so here’s the one-liner…

Sin hurts all of it, everything, everyone, cutting us off from our true, amazing selves as well as God and the people we love.

We mess up sometimes. That’s not a shocker, is it? It also probably comes as no surprise that messing up hurts the people we care about. For the sake of simplicity, let’s take a simple example: if you stab your friend’s hand while doing a knife trick, your friend probably won’t trust you with sharp objects for a while. Physical pain is a pretty solid deterrent for dangerous behavior because most people dislike being in physical pain.

In a similar way, when we sin, we withdraw ourselves from God. When we sin, we pull away from others, even the person we want to be. God doesn’t want us to feel isolated and unloved! God loves us more than we can begin to comprehend! God always has His merciful hand extended for guidance to lead us back to Him. God is merciful love.

God is also just. He abounds in mercy, but so, too, does He abound in justice. Mercy and justice are two sides of the same coin: something cannot be merciful if justice has not been properly applied. For a penalty to be merciful, the decision must first be rendered on whether the action was wrong, how much harm it caused, and the proper range of recourse. A two-year prison sentence might be considered lenient, forgiving, and merciful for some crimes and extremely harsh for others. Justice must be recognized for mercy to have an opportunity.

Justice, in this case, condemns us all to death for our sins. God did everything for us, and yet, through original sin, we turned away. We decide (on a recurring basis) that either we know better than God or that God doesn’t love us as much as He should. We decide, for whatever reason, that we are better off going about life without following the instructions God set for us.

Bad decisions happen.

God constantly calls us back.

So we try again. We decide, okay, that wasn’t the best idea after all. Maybe if I trust God in this one issue, we can move forward. Good on you! That’s awesome! God extended His merciful hand, and you are trying again. Marvelous!

Justice must still be paid.

For the wrongs we commit, and for the wrongs that all of humanity commits, there is a penalty. We owe everything and failed to give it, and the penalty for that is death.

But God wants to save us.

God, in His perfect justice, knew that the blood price had to be paid. God, in His perfect mercy, offers His hand to any who will return to Him. And God, in His perfect wisdom, knew precisely how to both extract justice and grant mercy.

God gave us His only begotten Son, Jesus, to die an excruciating death in our place. Jesus suffered a torturous day of sentencing, beatings, mockery, bloodletting, abandonment, and every kind of pain imaginable. And then He died. Jesus died on the cross that first Good Friday so that we can return to Him and the Father.

Today’s sorrow comes from the death of Jesus.

Today’s joy is that God loves us so much that He decided to take our place on that cross.

Remember on this solemn day that there is still joy. We know that Jesus rises on the third day. We know that because Jesus died and rose on the third day, there is hope. There is hope. There is hope in every difficulty, in every dark alley, in every agonizing moment, in every forced half-smile, in every wince, in every fear. In every single situation, there is hope because my Savior lived, died, and rose from the dead to guide me back to Him. That is how much God loves me, how much God loves you. God loves each of us to the point of accepting death in the most painful manner possible to just give us a path in case we choose to return to Him.

Boundless love is always something to be joyful for.

Happy Good Friday.

Many recognize the practice of “giving something up for Lent” and use it as an opportunity to better themselves or their habits. Do you perhaps have an addiction to Oreo cookies or Doritos chips? Maybe you read a lot of drivel and it’s souring your life? Are your daily habits what they should be for you to be your ideal self, or is there one you want to subtract or add to get there?

If you want to start one habit this year to better yourself, Lent is the best opportunity: it’s an open invitation to unity with others by “offering up” something. The practice includes giving up a certain kind of food (the cliché being chocolate), quitting a bad habit (such as smoking or drinking), or starting a new habit (such as running every morning or praying every evening). This can be used any number of ways; the key thing is that whatever your Lenten practice is, it should draw you closer to God.

As a lay Catholic, I practice the Lenten preparation for Easter every year. Some years the habit sticks better than others. (I gave up cursing in three distinct Lenten seasons, for example.) Some years are more ambitious than others. (The first time I gave up my foul mouth I was in undergrad and surrounded by people who actively prodded me to not keep that practice; the third time, my circles were more supportive.) Some years are about adding things in (like a daily morning swim routine or a nightly walk). What I do changes every year, yet every year it’s something to bring me closer to God.

This practice is called the Lenten sacrifice. Many of us go to one end or the other of the intensity spectrum, either going all out because only the most difficult task will suffice or sliding by with the least amount of effort but it still counting. I have fallen prey to each of these practices generally as a result of thinking I have to prove my Catholic-ness. However, being the most hardcore isn’t the point, nor is checking some box on the list.

The word sacrifice is derived from two old Latin terms: “sacer” and “faciō.” Sacer means sacred or holy; faciō means to do or to make. Combined, it becomes sacrificō and has a literal translation of doing for the Holy One. Thus, a sacrifice doesn’t have to be tremendously strenuous, and a Lenten sacrifice isn’t about checking all the boxes. It’s simply doing something, big or small, to offer to God.

In that same vein, God doesn’t want us to suffer. He welcomes all of our offerings – whether they are painful trials and tribulations or inviting Him to spend an evening with us while we spend time with friends. Sacrifices can take many forms. As long as we are offering something to the Holy One, it constitutes a sacrifice. Every time we stumble, literally or figuratively, if we give that to God, it’s a sacrifice. Every time we smile or laugh, if we give that to God, it’s a sacrifice. Every time we bake a cake or watch movies with friends or spend time with family, if we give that to God, it’s a sacrifice.

See the theme here?

So long as we offer something to God, we are making a sacrifice. The reason this practice is so much at the forefront during Lent is because we are preparing for Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. As we continue through Lent, we draw nearer the day of the Resurrection, and as we draw nearer the day of the Resurrection, the more focused we should be on God. What better way to become more focused on God than to think of Him every time we do a specific thing that we are doing for Him?

This is also why we try to offer a Lenten sacrifice that affects us at least daily: it gives us a prime opportunity to frequently focus on Christ. It doesn’t have to be particularly onerous or dreadful or troublesome; it just has to be something that causes us to look to God. Maybe we look to God for strength in finishing a run while training for a marathon; maybe we focus on Him in thanksgiving for five minutes of peace during a hectic week. The result is the same: time spent walking with Christ. This is what the Lenten sacrifice is about.

Are you doing a Lenten sacrifice? How does it draw you nearer to the Holy One?

Is that a thing?

I’ve been wishing people a cheerful “Happy Ash Wednesday!” all day. I mean it, I feel it, and I truly want today to be a happy one, yet at the same time, every time I’ve said it, I’ve wondered if that’s a proper greeting for today. It simply seems out of place, perhaps even off. We’re kicking off the season of Lent, many of us fighting incessant tummy rumblings before it’s even socially acceptable to admit as much; what could possibly be happy about that?

Easter is it’s own (post-Lent) season; the question is, what reason is there to be happy about Lent?

Two words:
(1) Progress
(2) Mine

Progress

The concept is simple, but it requires some reading into the season to understand how it applies. Lent is a season of repentance, of turning away from sin (anything that takes us away from God), so that we may more clearly focus on God. We seek to better seek God in our lives; sometimes we do this by deleting negative attachments and/or adding God-focused habits. The goal of Lent is to choose God over worldly pleasures, comforts, and other temptations.

(That’s not to say that these things are bad; they might be quite good. For example, it is good to have a nice bed to sleep in that supports you so you can sleep well and better serve people come the new day. This bed certainly counts as a worldly comfort, but there’s nothing inherently sinful about it.)

Over the course of Lent, we should find ourselves nearing God. Now, that’s a necessarily relative term because we are all starting from different places, but it is simultaneously objective because we are only measuring against ourselves. Specifically, if I move ten paces, we can measure whether I ended up closer to or, alternatively, farther away from God. There is a key element missing here for us to take that leap.

We need to know where we are.

Lent is a time for self-assessment. We determine who we are and where we are on our journey of faith so we can figure out the next step to take us closer to God. Introspectively assessing ourselves enables us to move forward by allowing us to orient ourselves; in determining our current location, we can see a little more clearly how to get where we’re headed. Being able to see the path strengthens us to take it, even when the road isn’t easy.

Mine

Specific to Ash Wednesday (happy today!) is this particular word: mine. It’s not normally what I think of when I think of Ash Wednesday, and I’ll keep it brief because I recommend watching Father Mike Schmitz’s video for more information on this point.

On Ash Wednesday, we get ashes smeared on our foreheads in a very particular way. The ashes symbolize what we are – ashes and dust, creatures made by God. In the grand scheme of things, if we zoom out on time and assess the value of all of humanity over the course of eternity, that value is, approximately, nil. Nothing. In the grand scheme of things, we don’t really matter. Except: Jesus.

The ashes go on our forehead as a cross. This is Jesus claiming us as his own by marking us with the sign of the war He waged for our hearts on Calvary. That cross of ashes says two things: we are nothing, and yet God wants nothing more than our hearts. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you so much that He lived, died, and rose from the dead to claim you as His own knowing full well that you weren’t going to be perfect and knowing full well that He will love you through your imperfections. That is the message of today, and that is certainly worth celebrating.

Happy Ash Wednesday.

Further Investigation

• Father Mike Schmitz offers a great video called The Significance of Ash Wednesday. In this touching video of less than eight minutes, he discusses the meaning of today’s celebration: we are ashes, yet Jesus loves us precisely as we are.
• Ashes by Tom Conry is a classic Ash Wednesday hymn. I discovered some scathing articles about the song, but I interpret the song quite differently. (One article specifically discusses what a paltry offering the ashes of last year’s palms are, for example, but we’re not offering the palms: the “ashes” we’re offering are ourselves, for we are but ashes and to dust shall we return.) Worth a listen/sing.
• A less controversial song for today is Ashes to Ashes by Dan Schutte which is also worth a listen/sing.