Let Us Rejoice!

The Church, through the medium of Liturgical Year, reminds us that Laetare (Rejoice!) is not just the name of a single day but it is an inescapable spiritual perspective for a lifetime. The Easter truth informs our faith every Sunday and every day of the year.

This has been a particularly hard winter for many of us… with record and enduring low temperatures, ever growing piles of snow and ice, ice, ice. The darkness of winter and the challenges inherent in that season try us. They turn us inward like a warm house on a snowy night calls us in and out of the wind. There is a beautiful parallel for us in this hemisphere, at least, between the natural season and the Liturgical season. Drawing us inward the Penitential Season of Lent invites us to reflect on the journey of our spiritual life and our growth in our relationship with God and others. There is a sense of Retreat when we pause and take the time apart to examine and sit with those deepest realities that anchor our faith.

As the winter has been hard, Lent, too, can be difficult. Knowing that, the Church in her wisdom marks the half-way point in the Lenten Season to allow us to take a breath amid the serious reflection and work of the penitential season. Part of the beauty of the entire Liturgical Year is this built-in rhythm that interfaces with the natural seasons and allows us, if we give ourselves to it, to move forward with the pace that our will and God’s good grace lead. Laetare Sunday, with its correlative partner, Gaudate Sunday in Advent, invites us to remember and celebrate, and, yes, rejoice as it echoes the Introit of the traditional Latin Mass, “Rejoice! Oh Jerusalem!” The rose vestments which replace the purple for a day are a surprise and a reminder of the Easter kerygma that enlivens our faith with love and enduring hope.

Cloy PotIn the midst of our reflection in this penitential season, the theme of forgiveness and healing encourages us to embrace the redemptive grace of Easter. Our frailty, our “Happy Fault” is an occasion for growth and God’s good grace. The image of a clay pot, an earthen vessel, has always spoken to me. It is fragile, flawed, often broken and mirrors our human condition. A psychologist friend once humorously commented that many of us are broken while some are just a little cracked. All kidding aside, it’s not difficult to see ourselves in this image. The wonderful lyricist Leonard Cohen wrote in his poem/song Anthem, “forget your perfect offering, there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Rejoice, I say again rejoice, not in the crack, but in the light!

Susan O’Hara teaches theology for Saint Joseph’s College Online.

Who Said This Was Going To Be Easy?

Lenten discipline requires the reconsideration of our spiritual state.

Deacon Scott Dodge (a great blog to follow after the St Joseph’s College Theology blog!) provides a thoughtful connection between popular culture and classic Christian art, specifically Grunewald’s Isenheim altarpierce, here. Deacon Scott: “The failure of our own words, of our ability to comprehend and articulate the greatness, the height, length, and depth of love of God’s great love for us should drive us to God’s word.” He then quotes Romans 5:6-9, but I would rather reflect on today’s Gospel, Matthew 5:11-17:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches others to do so
will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.
But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”

Each of the four Gospels brings its own voice, comforts, and challenges to the story of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Among Matthew’s many gifts (e.g., 16:18-20), I find most rewarding and provocative Chapter Five’s intensifications of the Jewish Law. Thou shall not murder? Well, even if you’re angry with somebody, stop what you’re doing and seek reconciliation. Thou shall not commit adultery? That’s not enough—do not even look another lustfully. So much for the nice, domesticated Jesus we like to tell ourselves we already resemble. No, in Matthew’s gospel Jesus holds us to a higher, not lower, standard. And this is the Word of God to which Lent inexorably drives us, not a Jesus who confirms our smugly-held opinions, nor a Jesus who simply ignores our sins. As G. K. Chesterton so aptly put it, “the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” Who said this was going to be easy?

Bernini from St Peters domeThe Lenten stereotype depicts the unwillingly ascetic Catholic wallowing in self-abnegation. I, though, found Deacon Scott’s words about God’s greatness reminded me of the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968). Barth often stood quite opposed to Roman Catholic theology, even as he avidly read St. Augustine and St. Anselm (among others). Good Calvinist that he was, Barth began his theology with the absolute sovereignty of God. Mankind cannot save itself; only God can do that. Barth asserted God’s NO! to all human pretensions to religious agency and self-direction. The YES that comes in the Incarnation overcomes that negation, but, Barth believed, the NO still remained. That, in part, was made grace what it was—thoroughly unmerited.  While he spent far more time and ink lambasting fellow Protestants, Barth always considered standard Roman Catholic spirituality a target of that divine NO! Thus it is seems rather ironic that Wikiquote welds Barth’s famous words of YES and NO to…Gian-Lorenzo Bernini’s Holy Spirit stained-glass window gracing the western wall of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Gone are the days when I accepted prima facie everything Barth wrote. Deo gratias! However, occasionally a little Barth reinvigorates the theological project. Barth’s insistence on divine sovereignty resonates with the Gospel image of Jesus declaring the Law’s enduring presence. Not only that, but the NO! extends to our own teaching. Since the Law remains valid, we simply cannot invent what we want and disregard what we dislike. Knowledge of the Law implies teaching the whole Law. We can’t blunt the sharp edges to make it “nicer.” With his customary brevity and sharp insight, Father Robert Barron critiques this facile presumption that being Christian means being nice. Father Barron doesn’t mention Barth—he doesn’t need to—but the point remains: God calls us to something greater than merely being nice to each other.

While it wanders off to once-current issues, this post from my own blog addresses the same point through the lens of an Augustinian critique of American evangelical eschatology. It wasn’t until I had read St. Augustine that I began to understand my dislike for Protestant eschatologies: they were too easy and too self-assured. Chapter Five of Matthew’s gospel offers the initial, damning criticism: this will not be easier—quite frankly, it will be more difficult than before! That is a tough message to hear, which perhaps is why Christian history is filled with those seeking waivers. Christian theology is filled with so many false starts because of the failure to confront honestly today’s gospel: Jesus comes not to abolish, but to uphold, the Law which, by the way, remains very much in effect. It is to such stark reminders that Lent calls us.

Quite frankly, we don’t always start where we should. I started with St. Augustine, and then only later realized that St. Augustine himself points us all back to the Gospel (and thus the Gospels). And there we find both the negation of our human pretensions and yet simultaneously the reaffirmation of God’s love for us—in the same person, Jesus. So will the Way of Jesus be an easy ride? More than likely no—in fact, it can be quite bumpy and crooked. What was that about not abolishing? Yet Jesus also tells us: “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). So it is not easy, but it will be worth it—and along the way we receive life itself.

Guest blogger Jeffrey Marlett blogs at Spiritual Diabetes.