One Hour Retreat for Holy Week: Who Am I? Where Is My Heart?

Pope Francis’ homily from Palm Sunday 2014 has always remained with me. For this year’s “One Hour Retreat for Holy Week,” I recommend that you first go back to the Passion story as told by Matthew, which we read together at Mass on Sunday. Then read Pope Francis’ reflection below, which is structured around a series of questions, each asking us to examine ourselves and our own place in the story of Jesus’ final hours.

Take your time with each question as you ponder the biblical text. Imagine yourself in the story. Be there with Jesus. Be honest with Jesus.

A very blessed Holy Week and a joyous Easter to each of you!

POPE FRANCIS’ PALM SUNDAY HOMILY 2014

“This week begins with the festive procession with olive branches: the entire populace welcomes Jesus. The children and young people sing, praising Jesus.  But this week continues in the mystery of Jesus’ death and his resurrection. We have just listened to the Passion of our Lord. We might well ask ourselves just one question:  Who am I? Who am I, before my Lord? Who am I, before Jesus who enters Jerusalem amid the enthusiasm of the crowd? Am I ready to express my joy, to praise him? Or do I stand back? Who am I, before the suffering Jesus?

We have just heard many, many names. The group of leaders, some priests, the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, who had decided to kill Jesus. They were waiting for the chance to arrest him. Am I like one of them?

We have also heard another name: Judas. Thirty pieces of silver. Am I like Judas? We have heard other names too: the disciples who understand nothing, who fell asleep while the Lord was suffering. Has my life fallen asleep? Or am I like the disciples, who did not realize what it was to betray Jesus? Or like that other disciple, who wanted to settle everything with a sword? Am I like them? Am I like Judas, who feigns loved and then kisses the Master in order to hand him over, to betray him? Am I a traitor?

Am I like those people in power who hastily summon a tribunal and seek false witnesses: am I like them? And when I do these things, if I do them, do I think that in this way I am saving the people?

Am I like Pilate? When I see that the situation is difficult, do I wash my hands and dodge my responsibility, allowing people to be condemned – or condemning them myself?

Am I like that crowd which was not sure whether they were at a religious meeting, a trial or a circus, and then chose Barabbas? For them it was all the same: it was more entertaining to humiliate Jesus.

Am I like the soldiers who strike the Lord, spit on him, insult him, find entertainment in humiliating him?

Am I like the Cyrenean, who was returning from work, weary, yet was good enough to help the Lord carry his cross?

Am I like those who walked by the cross and mocked Jesus:  “He was so courageous! Let him come down from the cross and then we will believe in him!” Mocking Jesus….

Am I like those fearless women, and like the mother of Jesus, who were there, suffering in silence?

Am I like Joseph [of Arimathea], the hidden disciple, who lovingly carries the body of Jesus to give it burial?

Am I like the two Marys, who remained at the Tomb, weeping and praying?

Am I like those leaders who went the next day to Pilate and said, “Look, this man said that he was going to rise again.  We cannot let another fraud take place!”, and who block life, who block the tomb, in order to maintain doctrine, lest life come forth?

Where is my heart? Which of these persons am I like? May this question remain with us throughout the entire week.”

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Homily delivered by Pope Francis from St. Peter’s Square, Vatican, April 13, 2014; to see text on Vatican website, click here.

To see previous years' "One Hour Retreats for Holy Week," click here and here.

Unknown Egyptian artist. Gouache on papyrus. Courtesy Sacred Art Pilgrim.

Some Lenten Levity, Courtesy Dorothy Day

In honor of Laetare Sunday (“Rejoice Sunday,” marking roughly our halfway mark through Lent), I thought I’d share a story with quasi-Lenten undertones (that’s a stretch) that made me laugh out loud.

It’s from a wonderful book put together by Rosalie G. Riegle entitled Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who Knew Her.  The book is full of impressions, stories and memories about the real Dorothy Day from a wide survey of people who knew her in all sorts of capacities throughout her life.  

A little background on this particular story – apparently Dorothy was known for disliking contemporary music!  Rosalie narrates with the help of longtime Catholic Worker Brian Terrell:

“Often the young [Catholic] Workers would ‘have a hard time understanding the grumbling of their elder leader as an expression of love,’ as Brian Terrell says. ‘For all its craziness, the Worker is a family, and in families it often happens that the elders complain about…the younger generation.’ Brian tells a generational story about Dorothy coming upon some young people at work in Maryhouse and listening to the Carly Simon song ‘I Haven’t Got Time for the Pain.’ Dorothy shook her cane at them and said, ‘You’ve always got to have time for the pain.’”

Dorothy Day! When I'm old enough to shake my cane at people, may God grant me your panache!

I doubt Dorothy ever shook her cane at these four whipper-snappers: Ralph DiGia, Dan Berrigan, Chris Kearns, and Tom Cornell. Photo courtesy of Jim Forest’s online photo album.  Click on the picture to visit Jim’s “Dorothy Day” album.

Lent: Are We Living Dangerously Enough?

At Lent retreats, I used to ask participants if they had ever been to the desert.  But after moving up to Connecticut, I finally stopped.  Everyone said “no.”  Except a few who would ask, “Does Las Vegas count?”

No, Las Vegas does not count.

Have you ever been to the desert? 

I have.  I understand what the desert is all about.  It is quiet, still, empty, beautiful, harsh and dangerous.  In the desert, you are always one false move away from needing something desperately.  Like water, or shade, or an antidote for a snake or spider bite. Yes, my desert had tarantulas.

In the desert you face your own fragility and the fragility of those around you.  All it takes is that mercilessly hot West Texas sun to remind you that your place in the universe is small and precarious.  Survival is not a given.

Jesus spent forty days in the desert.  Israel spent forty years.  Days and years of precarious living.  Days and years of facing one’s own weakness, accepting that survival is not a given, looking beyond oneself or one’s environment for certainty. 

Leaning heavily upon God alone, Jesus and Israel emerged from their deserts.  Israel settled in a new land and embarked upon an enormous task, to live faithfully as God’s people.  Jesus was strengthened and resolved for mission, to tell God’s story to the human race and to love his own to the end.

We speak of Lent as our desert time.  In this desert, do we recognize how fragile we are, how precarious life is, how the structures and things we depend on for security are one false move away from falling around us like a house of cards? 

Precarious living is actually Gospel living.  It recognizes that total dependence on God is where true strength is found.  The trials of the desert are where we meet God and live only by what he offers – living water, the shadow of his wing, and the antidote of his love. 

From Lent, from life, from desert, we may not emerge unscathed.  But we can emerge as God’s own, strengthened, emboldened for mission and “filled with the power of the Spirit” (Lk. 4:14). 

* * *

“If we ask God for so little it may well be because we feel the need for him so little.  We are leading complacent, secure, well-protected, mediocre lives.  We aren’t living dangerously enough; we aren’t living the way Jesus wanted us to live when he proclaimed the good news” (Anthony de Mello, Contact with God: Retreat Conferences). 

Briton Riviere, The Temptation in the Wilderness, 1898

A Good Old-Fashioned Lenten Fast

I read something today that I’ve honestly never thought about before.  An article by Fr. Daniel Merz at USCCB.org points out that Adam and Eve were asked to fast.  To fast is to limit oneself in some way, to do without.  God asked Adam and Eve to “do without” that one tree.  As we know, they chose to break that fast.

That tree, and the breaking of that fast, symbolize the choices we have in life, the free will which is the greatest of human gifts.  Without free will, there are no relationships because there is no love.  Without free will, we aren’t human.

Adam and Eve lived in a paradise of sorts.  And yet even in this paradise, they were asked to fast.  This simple idea helps us understand fasting – its purpose, its goodness, and why it should still be part of our lives.  Most of us modern Americans live in a kind of paradise in the sense that we have every single thing we need or want practically within arms’ reach.  Want entertainment?  Get it.  Want news?  Got it.  Want food?  Open the fridge. 

Fasting is a deliberate attempt on our part to put the brakes on “having it all.”  It seems that even God, who wanted the very best for Adam and Eve, thought it wise to give them limits.  Of course this wasn’t to cause suffering or to impose his “rules” on them.  Perhaps the fast simply allows the opportunity to live more deliberately, to make choices.  There’s a link between fasting and freedom.    

I like a good old-fashioned Lenten fast.  I like the idea of giving something up.  It’s so simple.  It’s so obvious.  It’s so good.  I know there’s a lot of buzz out there about not giving up sweets or alcohol or any of those very old-school things.  I disagree.  Put the brakes on.  Exercise your free will.  Feel the freedom of saying “no.”  Because that link between fasting and freedom is really a link between fasting and love.  Our Lenten fast is a deliberate offering of our freedom for the sake of the other.  Perhaps it is a simple offering of love between you and Jesus.  Or perhaps when you fast, you turn that sacrifice into a material gift for someone in real need, someone who doesn’t have a “material paradise” at their fingertips.

Another way fasting helps us love is simply by training us to “put the brakes on” in other areas of our lives.  The discipline we gain from giving up concrete things like food, drink, and entertainment, can help us learn to give up those more abstract things like gossip, grudges and impatience.  If we have the strength to say no to an afternoon snack, maybe we will have the strength to walk away from that hurtful conversation at work. 

The goal of Lent is no different than the goal of life:  to love God and love our neighbor.  I know I can do that better when I have self-control and when I live deliberately, when my life is not about easy living but about slowly turning myself outward, toward the other – God and my neighbor.  There’s a link between fasting and love.  Lent is the right time to discover it.

John Kohan, Mixed Media Collage, Courtesy John Kohan, sacredartpilgrim.com.

Burying the Alleluia

As many of you know, I started my first parish job at the ripe old age of 23, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.  Fortunately, my predecessor, Sr. Blanche Twigg, had run a tight ship.  It was just my job to keep it floating.   

Sr. Blanche had many gifts that I did not have, and one was that she really knew how to work with children.  She understood that they are both literal and mystical.  I discovered this about Sr. Blanche as my first Lent in the parish approached. 

About a week before Ash Wednesday, my co-worker in the Religious Education office disappeared into the storage room, rummaged around for a bit, and emerged with an old banner that read “A-L-L-E-L-U-I-A!”  She then informed me that it was almost time to bury it.

Apparently every year, Sr. Blanche would gather the children together and talk to them about Lent.  Then she would fold up the big banner and symbolically bury it.  “ALLELUIA” went dark until Easter, when it was once again allowed to see the light of day.

When I heard about this, I couldn’t decide if it was a stroke of pedagogical genius or a hopelessly depressing gesture.  Saying good-bye to “ALLELUIA” was deeply symbolic but also really sad!

I thought about Sr. Blanche’s banner as I sat in church on Divine Mercy Sunday.  A visiting priest, whose own father is dying in Africa, dug deep and gave of himself and filled the church with Easter laughter.  Interwoven throughout genuine messages of faith, hope and love was humor that brought the room to life and charged it with Christian joy. 

Easter laughter is a long, and some might say strange, tradition of the Church.  There was a time when the liturgy actually called for a good joke during the Easter homily!  Laughter expresses joy, even our joy that He is Risen.   Even in church, even at Mass!  Laughter connects us with others who share our joy and expresses the end of our waiting, the consummation of our longing, the last of our days without alleluias.

We have dug up the “ALLELUIA.”  He is risen, indeed! 

A reflection about Easter laughter by Joseph Ratzinger can be found here.