New Levels

Fourth Sunday of Lent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  A few people in the parish know that I play the online game, Clash of Clans.  For those who know, I’m Town Hall 17.  For those who don’t, probably best not to wonder too much.  It’s a game on the phone or tablet where you collect resources, build and defend your village, and war with other plays to get more resources and collect special rewards.  It’s not a role-playing game, but just a fun, online pass time that gives me a distraction a few times a day when I can use a rest for my brain.
    Inevitably, as I get close to getting to the highest level for all my buildings and troops (maxing out, we call it), they release new levels and new things which moves the finish line farther away.  For example, just as I was about to complete most of my buildings for Town Hall 16, they added Town Hall 17 and new upgrades on most of the buildings, which means I had to start saving resources to get to the next level.
    All this “nerding out” does have a point.  In our Gospel today, and to a lesser extent in the epistle, we have different layers that lead somewhere else.  In the epistle it’s a bit simpler: we start with the story of Abraham and Sarah and their slave Hagar.  Now, Abraham and Sarah and Hagar were all real.  They lived life as the Bible describes, including Sarah “convincing” Abraham to have relations with Hagar because Sarah was barren, and Hagar giving birth to Ishmael.  But then God allows Sarah to give birth to a son Isaac after she has relations with Abraham.  And, like the good soap opera which it sounds like, the two women who bore sons to Abraham don’t get along.  But St. Paul notes that this true story was also a foreshadowing of the Law of Moses (represented by Hagar and Ishmael) and the Law of Christ (represented by Sarah and Isaac.). But it also points to the earthly Jerusalem (again, represented by Hagar and Ishmael) and the heavenly Jerusalem (again, represented by Sarah and Isaac).  Just when you think you understand one story, it’s taken to the next level.  And the epistle, as I mentioned, is the easier reading of the two.
    In the Gospel, we have all sorts of levels going on, some of which are directly mentioned, but some of which only make sense in the broader Biblical and theological context.  We start with Passover in the Book of Exodus (the anniversary of which is the time in which the Gospel takes place).  Hopefully we remember what happened: the Israelites put the blood of the unblemished lamb on the doorposts of their houses in Egypt, so that the Angel of Death would pass over their houses.  God established it as a liturgical feast to be celebrated every year as the making present of the past event of the thing that made Pharaoh free the Israelites from slavery.  That’s the first level.
    The second level is the Gospel today, which takes place around the feast of Passover.  In the Gospel, Jesus miraculously multiples five barley loaves and two fish into enough for 5,000 men, not counting women and children.  After this miracle, and after the Lord flees from the Jews who wanted to make Him King, because it was not yet His hour, Christ gives the famous Bread of Life discourse, teaching us that if we wish to have eternal life, we must eat His flesh and drink His blood.  Many of the Lord’s followers reject this hard teaching and walk away, but He doesn’t change what He says or even modify it.
    But, the multiplication of the loaves points to something which is coming up: the Last Supper.  Christ gives His Apostles, His first bishops, a new liturgy, connected to the Passover, but superseding it, in which ordinary unleavened bread and wine, which were used in the Passover, becomes His Sacred Body and His Precious Blood.  Christ uses language to assert that this is a new rite for His new Church, and asks that they repeat this ritual in His remembrance.  This is level three.
    But we’re not done yet.  Because the Last Supper points to and intimately connects to the offering of the truly unblemished lamb, the Lamb of God pointed out by John the Baptist, on the cross on Good Friday.  The Eucharist, the sacrament of the Flesh and Blood of our Savior, first preached in John, chapter 6, was instituted on Holy Thursday, but is the unbloody presentation of what happened on Good Friday.  The Precious Blood of the Lamb of God save, not only the first born in Egypt, but all of God’s people in all time and space whom God has chosen.  Death is conquered when Life Incarnate dies on the tree, and Christ gives us a way to access that conquest of death each time we receive the Eucharist in a state of grace.  Level four.

Ghent Altarpiece

    But wait; there’s more!  Because the Eucharist, the re-presentation of Calvary in an unbloody manner on the altar points to the heavenly Jerusalem (connecting us with the epistle) where Christ eternally offers Himself to the Father in the wedding banquet of the Lamb of God, the heavenly worship to which the Mass points.  This is the fifth level.  The beautiful bottom panel of the Ghent Altarpiece shows the Lamb, pierced with blood flowing into a chalice, on an altar, with a cross nearby, with angels and saints around the altar worshiping and singing, which brings together most of those levels in one artistic rendition.  
    In the Scriptures, so many things connect together, and so many Old Testament true stories point to New Testament fulfillment and realities, which themselves prepare us for heaven.  May our Lenten sacrifices keep taking us deeper and deeper into our understanding of what God has revealed, until we hopefully see the final fulfillment in the kingdom of heaven, where Christ lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Cut It Out

 VIII Day of the Octave of Christmas & Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  God, in calling Abram out of Ur in modern-day Iraq, said many amazing things to him.  We hear at the beginning of Genesis, chapter 12, that God tells Abram, “Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”  That, in itself, took a giant leap of faith.  Abram was being asked to leave the fertile crescent, the birth-place of civilization, as scholars call it, for an unknown land inhabited by unknown, and possibly hostile, people.  It’s hard enough for us to pack up our entire life and move to a different place.  Imagine doing it without having a home to which you were going, not knowing exactly where God was going to settle you (and whom you might have to dislodge to stay there), and doing it at the age of 75 years old.

    God also promised Abram, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”  Abram and Sarai (later Abraham and Sarah) were well past the childbearing years.  They had no children.  And yet God promised that he would make of them a great nation.  This must have seemed odd to them.  And yet Abram trusted in God to do the impossible.  This makes Abraham’s almost sacrifice of Isaac much later even more incredible.  God had finally given Abraham and Sarah a son, Isaac, and so perhaps they thought that becoming a great nation could actually happen.  But then God asks Abraham to sacrifice that son, that fulfillment of the promise, that promise of hope for the elderly couple.  And yet, Abraham is willing to do it (though God stays his hand at the last minute).
    Before that, in chapter 17, God appears to ninety-nine year-old Abram (who had conceived Ishmael with his slave, Hagar, but was still childless with Sarai), and says:
 

I am God the Almighty.  Walk in my presence and be blameless.  Between you and me I will establish a covenant, and I will multiple you exceedingly.  […] You are to become the father of a multitude of nations.  […] I will make you exceedingly fertile; I will make nations of you; kings will stem from you.  […] I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land in which you are now residing as aliens, the whole land of Canaan, as a permanent possession; and I will be their God.  […] This is the covenant between me and you and your descendants after you that you must keep: every male among you shall be circumcised.  Circumcise the flesh of your foreskin.  That will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.

Luckily, Abraham was open to God’s will.  Because, put in his place, I think most men would have said, “You want me to do what?  To my what?”  
    And yet this was the sign of those who believed in and followed God.  And this sign of the covenant endured even to the time of our Lord, who, though He was the Lord of the covenant, was still joined to Israel by His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and His foster-father, St. Joseph, in a powerful way that united Christ to Israel as the People who belonged to God, the sons and daughters of Abraham.  Even for those who needed to be joined to Israel, this was a difficult sign.  Indeed, when the Bible talks about God-fearers, it speaks about those who wanted to become Jewish, but who had some issue preventing them from joining.  One can imagine that the thought of circumcision kept any number of adult men converts from becoming fully Jewish and part of the covenant.  God our Savior, who had no need to become part of the covenant, still underwent this sign.
    But the sign had a spiritual meaning in addition to the physical act.  The prophet Jeremiah prophesies: “Be circumcised for the Lord, remove the foreskins of your hearts, people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Or else my anger will break out like fire, and burn so that no one can quench it, because of your evil deeds.”  Circumcision was a physical cutting away.  But God also intended it to be a spiritual cutting away of all that was fallen and of disobedience to God.  The covenant was not only to be part of one’s flesh, but also part of one’s heart, spirit, and soul.  
    Christ Himself, while He was subjected to the covenant as an infant, Himself established a new covenant in His Precious Blood, and a new sign of the covenant was given that had both a physical and a spiritual aspect.  That new sign was baptism.  The water washed one clean of original sin, but it also meant a washing away of all that is fallen from that point on.  It made men and women part of the new Israel, the Church, gathered from all the nations, as a people who belong to the Lord.  
    But think of the humility that Christ underwent in being circumcised!  He who is Lord of the Sabbath is certainly also Lord of the Covenant, and so is not bound to it.  But He allows the cutting of His flesh in anticipation of giving His flesh for the life of the world in His Passion.  He subjects Himself to the Law, though He is the Lawgiver.  And He does the same in His baptism in the Jordan, as John baptizes Christ, though John asks to be baptized by Christ.  
    This is a great model for us when it comes to humility.  How often do we bristle when we have to do something that we don’t think we should have to do?  How quick do we make known our importance, and how we think things should go?  But this is not the example of our Savior.  Like Abraham, Christ, the Son of Abraham, trusted in His heavenly Father, and went where the Father told Him to go, did what the Father told Him to do, and said what the Father told Him to say.  “Like a lamb,” Isaiah prophesied, “he was led to the slaughter, and he opened not his mouth.”  Yet, if we bear one unrighteous punishment, how quickly do we open our mouths to protest our own innocence?
    God does not call us to be doormats, but on the other hand, sometimes He allows the just to suffer unjustly for their own sanctity, their own growth in holiness.  The day after Christmas we celebrated St. Stephen, who was martyred though his only crime was to witness to the fact that Christ was the long-awaited Messiah.  The day after that we celebrated St. John, who, while not a martyr, was exiled to Patmos as a Roman punishment for following Christ; the day after that we celebrated the Holy Innocents, who could not even confess Christ with their lips, though they took His place with their deaths; the day after that we commemorated St. Thomas Beckett, who died at the hands of King Henry II for standing up for the rights of the Church.  These past days of the Octave haven been filled with witnesses who suffered unjustly.  Their witness should spur us on when we have to undergo sufferings much lighter than theirs.  

    I would also add Pope Benedict XVI to those who suffered unjustly, but utilized it for his own holiness.  He was often attacked in the media, was called “God’s Rottweiler,” despite his gentle and humble disposition, and suffered other attacks, simply for holding true to the unchanging teachings of the Church.  Yet I never remember him complaining once about those slings and arrows.
    God promised Abraham that he would become the father of kings and many nations.  Abraham remained faithful to God, even in hard times, even when the sign of that covenant meant the stripping away of flesh.  Christ subjected Himself to the Law, and paid the penalty for our sins, though He Himself was the Lawgiver and free from all sin.  What witness will we give through the new circumcision of the heart, holy baptism, by which we become united to God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Offered and Offering

 Fourth Sunday in Lent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves in Tabgha in the Holy Land, which was itself founded around AD 350, there is an ancient mosaic dating from around the year 480 in front of the altar where there are two fish and four loaves.  Now, if you were listening carefully to the Gospel, you would know that the multiplication of the loaves and fish involved “five barley loaves.”  So what’s with this ancient mosaic?  Did they simply run out of space?  Was the ancient artist ignorant of the account?  
    In reality, the ancient artist not only knew his Bible, but also knew his theology.  There are four loaves in the mosaic because the fifth loaf is the one on the altar, being consecrated into the Body of Christ.  St. John the Evangelist had this connection between the multiplication of the loaves and the Eucharist as the rest of John chapter 6 goes on to contain the preaching of our Lord about how He is the Bread of Life, and that we need to eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to have life.  
    The Eucharist is the new covenant that our Lord established between Him and us so that we could have salvation and be in right relationship with God.  This is made clear in the words of institution over the chalice: “Take this, all of you, and drink from it.  For this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the New and Eternal Covenant: the mystery of faith: which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  God promises to be our God, and we promise to be His People, in this Sacrament of Sacraments, which itself points to Good Friday, as Christ shed His Blood on the Cross.
    St. Paul takes up this idea of covenants in the epistle as he sees an allegorical interpretation of Genesis and the stories of Isaac and Ishmael.  Ishmael, as the son of the slave Hagar, represents the old covenant, the Law, while Isaac, the son of the free-woman, Sarah, is the new covenant of the Lord.  
    Does St. Paul mean that God has abandoned the Jews and the covenant He made with them?  No.  The Apostle, after spending chapters explaining how the law does not save, writes in his Epistle to the Romans: “I ask then, has God rejected his people?  Of course not!  […] For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”  Even though the law does not save, God does not reject His People, His Chosen Ones.  
    But God has fulfilled what the Old Covenant was meant to prepare for: salvation through Christ.   And that salvation is made present for us in the Eucharist each time we come to Mass.  Christ offered Himself once for all on the cross, but wanted us to have access to the power of the sacrifice, just as the Jews had opportunity to connect themselves to their sacrificial offerings that were made in the Temple.  When a Jew would offer sacrifice, certain parts of the animal offerings were for God, to be burned up on the altar, while others were reserved for the priest, and still others were given back to the people.  So when Christ offered Himself in sacrifice to the Father, the priest (that is I) receives a portion from the bread and wine you have offered, and you also receive a portion of your sacrifice that God gives back to you.  But unlike the old covenant where the sacrifice remains the same, the bread and wine that we offer to God through my hands is transformed by God into the Body and Blood of Christ so that you and I receive better than what we offered.  
    But it is not simply bread and wine that we offer to God.  The boy gave five loaves and two fish to Christ in the Gospel, which was all that he had.  We, too, are called to offer all that we have to God in this Mass, and unite it to the bread on the corporal and the wine in the chalice.  Sacrosanctum concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council teaches, “But in order that the liturgy may be able to produce its full effects, it is necessary that the faithful come to it with proper dispositions, that their minds should be attuned to their voices, and that they should cooperate with divine grace lest they receive it in vain.”  Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council expands on this idea of the laity’s participation in Mass when it states:
 

[Christ] also gives them a sharing in His priestly function of offering spiritual worship for the glory of God and the salvation of men.  […] For all their works, prayers and apostolic endeavors, their ordinary married and family life, their daily occupations, their physical and mental relaxation, if carried out in the Spirit, and even the hardships of life, if patiently borne–all these become “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Christ”.  Together with the offering of the Lord’s body, they are most fittingly offered in the celebration of the Eucharist.

Even in this pre-conciliar form for the celebration of the Mass, you are called to bring to the Apostles, and their assistants, the presbyters (i.e., me) what you have so that it maybe offered to God for the salvation of you and of all.  Any reading of the best minds of the Liturgical Movement before the Council also bears witness to this.  
    So what are you bringing to this Mass?  What are you offering with me, in addition to the bread and the wine?  As I am saying the Canon silently, are you offering to God what has happened since the last time you came to Mass?  Are you giving God the joys your family brings you, and/or the frustrations you experience when they push your buttons?  Are you offering the “atta-boy” or “atta-girl” that your boss gave you for accomplishing a task excellently, and/or the lack of drive and fulfillment in the job which pays the bills but does not utilize your gifts and talents?  Are you praying silently to God thanking Him for the game that you won, and/or giving him your broken heart that was torn when your young love dumped you?  
    These parts of life, and many more that I did not mention, are all part of the sacrifice that God desires.  These ups and downs are meant to be spiritually united to the oblation that I offer, which is itself united to the one, acceptable, perfect offering of Christ on the Cross, re-presented for us in an unbloody way on this altar.  As we continue our pilgrimage this Lent, as we walk with our Lord toward Good Friday, may the joys and sorrows of our life be fitting gifts to God, so that may not only share in the Death, but also the Resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen.