Death

The following is the fifth installment of a seven-part lenten blog/video series sponsored by Franciscan Media. For the previous reflections, click here. For those subscribing by email, click here to watch the video.

 

My grandmother lived a very long, full life. In the 91 years before she died, she raised a lively family of ten children—her crown jewel—who then produced her twenty-eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren; never once did she go to a party and fail to make an impression on the other guests; and all throughout her life, she found pleasure praying the rosary and going to mass, even being fortunate enough to pilgrimage to both Rome and Medjugorje on multiple occasions. If there was a bucket list for my grandmother, I can hardly think of something that she left unchecked. She lived a very long, full life.

Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky.

Statistically speaking, roughly 160,000 people die every day around the world. Of those, 29,000 are children under the age of five dying from mostly preventable causes. And while overall age expectancy is up to 69 years old—the greatest it has ever been in human history—an estimated one in five people will still die between the ages of 15 and 60.

Why do three-year-olds die? Why are so many lives cut short leaving behind family and loved ones? Why, oh why, does God allow innocent people to die?

While some may see these questions as an attack on God, a show of one’s lack of faith or antagonism against religion, I believe that our asking them is not only justified, they are at the very core of our faith. More than anything else, our Christian faith finds its merit in our ability to answer the difficult questions of life and death. In fact, I believe that Jesus wanted us to ask the question so that He could answer it.

Cue chapter 11 of John’s Gospel.

Traveling around to preach with his disciples, Jesus hears word that his close friend, Lazarus, is gravely ill. Knowing of course that Jesus has already performed six extraordinary signs thus far in the Gospel, the reader no doubt expects Him to return to his friend to perform one more. But he doesn’t. Instead, and against his disciples urging, he remains where he is and lets Lazarus die. This detail is not lost upon Lazarus’ sister. Upon arriving to Lazarus’ house, now four days after his death, Martha shares with Jesus how she truly feels: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” Even though she concludes by showing that she trusts Jesus, Martha, once again, represents how we so often feel. Why, God, when you have such power would you let this happen? Don’t you love us? She, like so many of us in tragedy, is unable to reconcile how God can be all loving and all powerful, and yet allow things like this to happen.

So why did Jesus delay? Was it because He didn’t truly care for Lazarus? Surely not, as he wept when He saw his tomb.

Was it because He didn’t have the power to heal him? Surely not, as He had already shown the power to perform incredible signs of the Father’s glory.

No, the reason he delays, as He tells His disciples on the road that they are delaying, “is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Jesus wanted Lazarus to die so that He could show how pointless a fear of death is. Jesus wanted to show that death—the inevitable event that we dread and so tell ourselves will never happen to us, the thing that grips our souls and leaves us in fear more than anything else— has no power over Him. “I am the resurrection and the life,” He says. “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Death is not a punishment from God or something to fear because death is not the end of the story. It is a beginning. It is a sign of the great power and wonder of God to give even greater life to those who lose their earthly one, a sign that He demonstrates in his own dying, offering us a path to follow. We have to die if we want to be like Jesus. We have to die if we want to rise and live with him for eternity. In allowing Lazarus to die and demystifying the experience of death—even tragic ones—Jesus calls us to follow after Him, even in death, without fear.

And so He asks Martha, and I believe asks all of us when we find ourselves struck by tragedy, “Do you believe this?” Do we truly believe that Jesus has the power to conquer death? Do we believe that Jesus truly rose from the grave and that we who are baptized into his death will do the same? Do we believe that death is not the end but in fact simply a new beginning, a gateway into eternal communion with the creator of the universe?

And what would our lives look like if we truly did?

My guess is that it would still be sad. Jesus wept when he heard of Lazarus’ death because it’s always sad to lose someone we love. Whether its my 91-year-old grandmother or a three-year-old child, death is always tragic. It is still okay to mourn.

And yet, if we truly believed what Jesus showed us in his raising of Lazarus, we could never despair or give up hope. Our lives would not be dictated by fear of death, getting old, or losing loved ones, but constantly filled with the reassuring joy that nothing—not even death—can keep us from the communion we share with each other in Jesus. Jesus did not simply “raise from the dead,” Jesus is alive. Jesus is, in the present tense. And so are we. And so is everyone we love now or ever loved in the past. We may never know for sure why some people die tragically earlier than others, and yet we find in Jesus that the question doesn’t have the sting that it used to. Death is not a punishment or the end, but our entrance into eternal life with God and others.

 

Identity

The following is the fourth installment of a seven-part lenten blog/video series sponsored by Franciscan Media. For the previous reflections, click here. For those subscribing by email, click here to watch the video.

Guilty by association. While a concept that does not stand up in a court of law—one cannot be charged with a crime simply by being associated with a criminal—we know that it is a very powerful force in the court of public opinion. When someone does something bad, the moral character of everyone around them is called into question.

No clearer example of this can be seen than that of social groups in high school. Cliques. Despite the fact that each and every one of us is a unique set of thoughts, feelings, and actions, transcending simple categorization or affiliation, we cannot escape the corporate identities we take on. Nerds. Jocks. Preps. Partiers. Liberals. Conservatives. Religious. And so on. In our association with others—superficial or meaningful—our individual identity is unavoidably and irreparably shaped by the people around us: like it or not, who they are, how they act, and what people think of them will tremendously influence what people think of us.

While our lives as followers of Jesus cannot fairly be compared to a high school clique, the effect it has on our identity is spot on.

In our Gospel reading this week, we hear of a man born blind. Blind since birth, everyone has assumed that he is so because of sin, either his or his parents. Jesus does not agree: the man was born blind in order reveal the glory and power of the Father. Spitting into the ground, he forms a muddy substance—truly getting his hands dirty in the man’s life—and smears it on his eyes, an act that one would expect to further inhibit sight. Instead, in a miraculous gesture, Jesus gives the man the ability to see, symbolic of the light of faith that Jesus brings to the world.

And while that is extraordinary in itself, the most interesting part of the story is what comes next: Jesus disappears and lets the formerly blind man be the protagonist. Interrogated by everyone around him, his identity, moral standing, and allegiance are all called into question. Who are you and where did you come from? How was this miracle performed? Do you accept our authority as Jewish leaders? There the man stands, with Jesus nowhere to be found, taking on the exact ridicule and questioning that Jesus faces all throughout the Gospel of John. It’s as if the man is standing in for Jesus. It’s as if the man, in some strange way, now represents Jesus in the world, taking on the identity of the one who healed him…

The story of the man born blind is meant to typify the experience of the anyone who is given the light of faith to follow Jesus. For those who enter the faith and bear the name ‘Christian,’ not only are they able to see in ways they could never see before, they unavoidably adopt everything that goes along with Jesus’ identity. A Christian, we could say, is not just one who likes “the Christ” (from the Greek christos meaning “anointed one”), but is in fact one who embodies all that the Christ does, receives the Christ into their being, and then goes out into the world as Christ themselves.

In other words, the story of the man born blind is the story of our baptism.

When we enter the font and cleansed with water, our old way of life—our blindness—is washed away. In an act of miraculous grace, we are touched by Jesus and given grace upon grace, called from an experience of death to new life.

But that’s only the half of it.

After leaving the font a new person in Christ, we are anointed by the priest with oil on the crown of our head. Yes, in the image and likeness of the true anointed one—the Christ—we are crowned with oil and anointed into His identity and mission. Although essentially the same person we were before, with the same unique set of thoughts, feelings, and actions, our association with Jesus and the indelible mark that He puts on our soul forever changes our identity: now, not only free from sin but marked by Jesus, we enter the world in the image and likeness of the one true Christ. After our baptism, we are nothing less that “christs” in the world, called to live out His threefold ministry of being priest, prophet, and king.

That is what we celebrate during Easter and what we prepare for in Lent. While it is a season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, a season to focus on our sinfulness and call upon God’s mercy, our ultimate focus in this season is to call to mind the identity we share in Jesus and to prepare ourselves to renew our baptismal promise to be who Christ has anointed us to be. Like it or not, when Jesus touched us and gave us the light to see, we became guilty by association, defined by and treated in the way that He is treated: Glory. Love. Ridicule. Confrontation. Praise. Persecution. Death… and Resurrection.

Hungry

The following is the third installment of a seven-part lenten blog/video series sponsored by Franciscan Media. For the previous reflections, click here. For those subscribing by email, click here to watch the video.

Chinese food is one of the many gifts from God on this earth. Cheap, easily accessible, usually sold in enormous quantities, and basically uniform in quality across the country, it’s the sort of food that I absolutely crave from time to time. Who doesn’t love a towering supply of fried meat and simple carbs?

And yet, the very things that make Chinese food so desirable—price, quantity, convenience, greasiness/saltiness—are the very things that ultimately make it unsatisfying. As much as I have craved and even went out of my way to get it, I cannot remember a single occasion in which I felt great after eating it. Bloated, lethargic, and somehow still hungry, I immediately regret the decision and swear to myself that I will never eat the food ever again.

Until the next time I’m craving Chinese food and “just have to have it.”

Naturally, it is a bizarre situation that any sane person can see is unhealthy. Why would you continually do something that is not only unhealthy, but unfulfilling and unsatisfying? Why continue to look for new answers in the same wrong places?

Now there’s a powerful question for us with implications far beyond Chinese food…

In our Gospel this week, we find Jesus asking the woman at the well this very question. Having had five husbands, and currently with a man that is not her husband, we sense a potentially unhealthy pattern in her life. The fact that she meets Jesus alone at a well—a biblically symbolic place for romantic partners to meet (see Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, and Moses and Zipporah)— indicates that even now, after so many failed attempts, she might be continuing to look for a new ‘lord.’

Again we might ask, Why continue to look for new answers in the same wrong places?

More than 1600 years ago, St. Augustine, a man famous for his own unhealthy behavior and failings, offered one of the great spiritual insights: in the opening chapter of his Confessions, he writes, “You move us to delight in praising You; for You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.” For him, our hearts live in a constant state of uncomfortable longing, incomplete and yearning to be filled. We are so desperate to rid ourselves of this feeling that we look to the world for the answer. What will make me happy, we ask. What will make me feel complete and full and content with who I am? There’s always something out there that we need—if we just had that one thing… our life would be meaningful and fulfilling. Food, relationships, status, power, accomplishments, luxury, comfort, fun, stability. Whatever it is, our longing hearts longs to be fulfilled.

But it never happens, does it? Like an empty stomach seeking Chinese food or a five-time divorcee seeking another husband, we are never truly satisfied. There’s always something more we want. And then something more. And then something more. As much as we might find pleasure in the things of this world, and as much as some things may be quite good for our spiritual well-being, the fact of the matter is exactly as Augustine says: “Our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.”

In His encounter at the well, Jesus is inviting the woman—and each of us many years later—to give up the constant search for things that cannot fulfill and to turn to the only one who truly can: Himself. He is the living water that quenches thirst. He is the true “Lord” that will never leave us. And He wants us to turn to Him.

This week, allow yourself to have a personal encounter with the Lord.

Yes, a personal encounter. A time when your phone is turned off, the door is closed, and your heart is open to hear his voice. A time when all the other fleeting and unfulfilling desires of the world are put on hold—even if just momentarily—and you can simply be with Jesus. A time when you can simply be you, without all of the masks and fronts and public niceties that we put on, and let the Lord meet you as you are—vulnerable, open, and restless.

At first, this may seem like a daunting task. In the beginning, it may seem difficult or overwhelming, something meant only for monks and mystics. But it doesn’t have to be. Jesus didn’t test the woman’s knowledge, make her perform amazing tasks, or question her worthiness. All He wanted from the woman was a chance to talk. He just wanted to fill her hungry heart.

If you have a hungry heart, a restless heart that continues to fill itself up with things that eventually fade, then this blog and video are for you. What Jesus asked of the woman at the well is no different from what He asks of us today. He just wants to fill our hungry hearts. All of ours:

“No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since ‘no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord’. The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step towards Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms. Now is the time to say to Jesus: ‘Lord, I have let myself be deceived; in a thousand ways I have shunned your love, yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord, take me once more into your redeeming embrace.’ How good it feels to come back to him whenever we are lost! Let me say this once more: God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy” (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 3).

 

Keep Going

The following is the second installment of a seven-part lenten blog/video series sponsored by Franciscan Media. For the first reflection, click here. For those subscribing by email, click here to see the video. If you would like to subscribe via email, click here.

“I’ve made it.” In a moment of self-reflection, have you ever looked around at your life—all that you’ve done, all that you have, and all that the future holds—and realized that you were on a mountain? In this moment, you realize, this moment of sublime comfort and perfect confidence, all the pieces of your life have fallen into place and you are finally exactly where you want to be. “I’ve made it… and I don’t want to leave.”

I can distinctly remember this feeling three times in my life.

There was the spring of my junior year of high school, a time when, with the help of a driver’s license and regular paychecks, I began to develop my own identity and independence. Add that to having my first serious girlfriend, being a starter on the varsity baseball team, taking AP classes that counted towards college, and a faith that was beginning to mean something to me, not just my parents, and it was easy to think, at 17, that I’d “made it.”

I think also of my sophomore year in college, a time when the confidence I have in myself today  began to materialize. Beyond the awkwardness and doubt of being a freshman and over the heartache and disappointment of losing the dreams of my two high school loves (baseball and girlfriend), I found myself discovering an inspiring world of new ideas, developing serious friends who liked me for who I was, and enjoying an environment that, outside of some moderate work, was nothing but fun and carefree. It was quite easy to think, at 20, that I’d “made it.”

Most recently, I am reminded of my summer in Triangle, VA as a simply-professed friar, a time when I began to see myself as a public minister for the first time. Encouraged for four years to focus on my weaknesses and go to the places where I felt least comfortable, I finally found myself in a place familiar to my past experience, doing things that played to my strengths, with a brother that inspired me to be a better man. And I was appreciated for it. It was very easy to think, at 26, that I’d “made it.”

And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, I can clearly see now that I had not, in fact, “made it” in those moments. While each of one represents a “mountain moment,” a peak compared to what I had experienced before and not to be discounted, the continuation of life has shown me that there are often other mountains ahead greater than the ones of the present. Had I, at any of these moments in my life, decided to stay rather than continue on, remain in what was comfortable rather than risk the trek back down, I would have never experienced the amazing things ahead.

Such is the experience of Peter, James, and John on the mountain with Jesus. Separated from the other disciples, they are witness to what was probably the greatest sight in human history to that point: the Transfiguration. Right before their eyes, Jesus’ perfect humanity and sublime divinity shine like the sun, a visual representation of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. Realizing they were on the most hallowed of grounds, they fall to their knees in prayer, overwhelmed with the reality before them: they are speaking to God made flesh. Nothing in their experience, or the experience of anyone else who had ever lived, could match what they were now a part of. They had “made it,” in a sense.

Naturally, Peter wants to stay. Why would they ever leave the presence of God on the mountain? What could matter more in life than this? He offers to build a tent for Jesus, to make the experience permanent for them all. But Jesus declines. While, yes, they find themselves in a proverbial mountain experience, Jesus knows that this is but a glimpse of what is to come; Jesus knows that there are other mountains to climb, other amazing sights to see. To stay on this mountain would be to forgo His entry into Jerusalem, His death on the cross, His resurrection from the dead, and the sending of His Holy Spirit.

They cannot stay on this mountain. They have to keep going.

In the second week of Lent, the story of the Transfiguration is a powerful encouragement to all Christians at the beginning of this long journey. Called into the desert and tested by the devil, there is often a part of us that feels overwhelmed by the task. The road ahead might be too difficult, we say. I don’t know if I can make it. Especially when we look around at our lives and find comfort in what we have, it can be easy for us to stay where we are and convince ourselves that we’ve reached the finish line.

But we haven’t reached the finish line, have we?

In showing the disciples the glory of the Transfiguration, Jesus offers them—and us—a glimpse of what they seek, not so that they will be content with what they have and stay, but to give them strength and inspiration to continue on ahead. As Christians, Lent is a time in which Jesus exhorts us to get off the mountain and continue our journey. Stepping outside of what is familiar and comfortable, He reminds us of what we lack and offers us a glimpse of what He offers those who walk with him.

Like the disciples, we have to walk down the mountain. We have to keep going.

Distorted

The following is the first of seven weekly Lenten reflections written and produced by Br. Casey and sponsored by Franciscan Media. Each Friday, a new blog post and video will be published here and on Franciscan Media’s blog. Feel free to share these reflections on social media, and check out all that Franciscan Media has to offer! 

Pleasure. A delicious meal of our favorite food. . .  a beautiful symphony at the theatre. . .  a hot shower after a long day in the cold. With five senses and billions of nerves in the human body, there are an infinite number of ways to experience pleasure from the world around us. What a wonderful part of the human experience, am I right?

A little over a century ago, the prevailing moral norms of Victorian culture would not have agreed. Closely associating pleasure with sin, leaders sought to remove pleasure completely from normal life. If it felt good, they thought, it was morally bad. Pleasure was from the devil. Adherents avoided meat and filled themselves with bran and coarsely ground wheat flour; sleep was often brief and interrupted; exercise was regular and excessive; clothing was restrictive and covered as much as possible; and anything that might lead to carnal desire was removed from their routine. In every way possible, pleasure was to be avoided, repressed, and mitigated, and replaced with austerity and denial.

Now, far removed from these external practices (and arguably on the other end of the spectrum), I can’t help but wonder if the mindset of that age still has a hold on us. Even in the midst of a pleasure-seeking culture today, I get the sense that many people still associate pleasure with sin. There is a part of us, I think, that still feels guilty when something is too good.

Is pleasure really from the devil? Is it something that we should be concerned about?

For an answer to this, I look to one of my favorite books of all time: C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Imagining a corporate world of demons whose sole purpose is to lure people away from God, the book consists of 31 letters of advice from an experienced demon to his nephew, offering insight into the human experience and tips as to how the young demon can best tempt his assigned human. In one such letter, Screwtape, the experienced demon, offers a discussion on pleasure and how it might be used to exploit the human, but also warns against it:

“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s [God] ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, as times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence, we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable.” (The Screwtape Letters, Letter 9)

In other words, the purest form of every pleasure—that which is most original and most pleasing—is actually from God, and is quite good; what the devil offers us are easier, cheaper knockoffs that are only a distortions of the gifts we have been given, and eventually leaves us dissatisfied. Things like food, drink, reputation, power, money, authority, pride, comfort, and yes… sex, are all gifts that originate in God and are in fact good in themselves. But sometimes, rather recognizing that these great things come from God and have been given to us to share for the sake of the world, we can seek them solely for the sake of pleasure, separate from an experience of God and at the expense of healthy relationships. Nothing the devil offers us can ever be better than what we are already offered by God.

As we begin Lent and enter into a period of sacrifice and simplicity, often giving up some of the pleasures of our world, I think it is important to keep this truth at the center of our focus. When we sacrifice things during this season, we do not do so because pleasure is bad and we need to purify ourselves of it. We sacrifice things so as to restore what has been distorted in us, to strip ourselves of the bad habits we’ve created and the false truths we’ve accepted so we can return with perfect vision and utmost focus on the one who created the pleasures in the first place. For a moment, we give up all that is extra in our life so that we can truly know and rely on what, and who, is most essential: our relationship with God.

For the next reflection in this series, click here.

Breaking In The Habit

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