NEVER ENOUGH

In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, August 3, Jesus warns his followers to “avoid any kind of greed.”  I'd like to share with you a reflection that may bring this Sunday’s message close to home.

Do you remember the scene from the movie version of the musical "Oliver!"

where young Oliver is holding out his empty bowl and speaking for a hundred hungry orphans, as he asks from “More?” This is a poignant and powerful portrait of the human condition. There's something about us that is always left unsatisfied. We're forever seeking and striving as if answering some inner voice that keeps nagging, “There’s more!” 

No matter how much we have, our insatiable yearning soon returns. This constant incompleteness is the source of our greatness: all human creativity, all ambition and our accomplishments are a response to this built-in urge to complete ourselves. 

Our attraction to “more” is also however, at the root of one of the major vices in the New Testament: Greed. The Greek word is pleonexia, the word that Jesus uses in the gospel reading today.  Usually translated “covetousness,” or “greed,” pleonexia is a combination of pleos, “more,” and exo, “have.” The underlying idea is “wanting more,” or, maybe better, "being addicted to 'more.'" 

Pleonexia makes it onto several New Testament lists of nasty habits. The long litany of pagan vices at the beginning of Romans, for instance, includes “every form of wickedness, evil, greed (pleonexia), and malice;… envy, murder, treachery and spite. (Rom 1:29)”   In Ephesians it's on a short list of sins that are particularly contrary to the Christian ideal: “Immorality or any impurity or greed (pleonexia) must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among holy ones (Eph 5:3).”

Augustine of Hippo (354 -430 AD)

St. Augustine, with typically brilliant insight, reveals why pleonexia is so deeply rooted in us. For him, all human hungers and all our yearnings of whatever kind are simply different facets of one single deep, inborn desire: the desire for God. For him, pleonexia is one of countless misguided versions of our thirst for God. If Augustine is right, then we don't need to suppress our need for "more" -- in fact, we couldn't even if we wanted to! But what we need to do is to work at keeping our desires directed to their true object. Instead of letting created things be the center of our longing, we try to keep our eyes on God. St. Paul once wrote, "If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.(Col. 3:1-2)" 

This may be a lot easier said than done. One place to start, though, is with the advice in the last sentence from Colossians: "Think of what is above." I know how easily my mind can get filled with concerns about class preparations, ,……., I know how easy it can be -  even in a monastery - to forget what life is ultimately about. 

Our materialistic consumer culture has made pleonexia  into a major religion. Every Sunday practitioners of pleonexia flock not to churches but to shopping malls. They devote hours a day meditating on the offerings on Ebay. In an economy that depends on ever-increasing consumer spending, pleonexia is not a vice but a virtue. Human happiness, we're told, depends on our buying more and more stuff, and consuming more and more goods and services. But no one seems to notice the built-in paradox: no matter how much we have, none of these ever brings final satisfaction-- they always leave us standing barefoot like young Oliver, empty bowl outstretched, still needing "more," wanting “more,” and looking for "more." Our culture accepts this and our economy depends on it.

A century before St. Augustine, the early monastics of the Egyptian desert had another insight into our constant need for more. They realized that once you put God at the center, you stop needing more and more, and in fact, require less and less. Living in caves or simple huts and owning nothing, they got to the point of going without food for days at a time. St. Francis of Assisi, too, turned pleonexia on its head and refused to own anything. 

These extreme examples can be more than just quaint studies in fanaticism. They can be jarring reminders to us Christians who live in a culture that praises pleonexia.  

Their message is a bedrock truth of spirituality for any Christian, from the parent with a house full of children, to the cloistered nun with a vow of poverty, once God truly becomes the center of your life, you need less and less of what the world has to offer in order to be truly content. 

The constant search for created things that preoccupies so many other people doesn't hold any attraction any more. My longings are now aligned in one single direction -- I'm hungry all the time for God.

HURRICANES, EARTHQUAKES, and THE GOSPEL

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments,“You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Romans 13:8-10)

As I was meditating on this text (this coming Sunday’s second reading at mass), I kept thinking about floods (Houston), earthquakes (Mexico) and hurricane Irma, in terms of “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  I kept thinking about a New York firefighter who was interviewed on the radio as he set off for Florida to help with the anticipated destruction -- he was using his vacation time to volunteer his services.

There were lots of stories from Houston about private citizens setting out in their own boats to rescue their neighbors, and others who opened their homes to strangers.

I can imagine what kind of selfless helping has been happening in the Caribbean islands in the wake of Irma.

Wanting to look deeper into the passage, I looked it up in the original Greek as I sat in church (thanks to my Kindle Fire), and my eye fell right away on the word heteron, “the other,” in the opening verse: “the one who loves the other has fulfilled the whole law.” It doesn’t say to love ones brother, or even ones neighbor, but, simply, to love another human being. Okay, cool; we all understand that. By coincidence, today is the feast of St. Peter Claver, the Spanish Jesuit, who spent his entire life helping the newly arrived African slaves as they got off the boat in Colombia.

The question now becomes, to what extent can a principle or command such as "Love one

another" apply to a whole group of people (specifically, a nation)? Does the Lord expect a nation to love “the other?” To the extent that a nation doesn't have a soul or a conscience in the strict sense, it can’t strictly “love” at all. But I remember traveling in Europe in 1976 and having people tell me how grateful they were to America for delivering them from the Germans and sending food and clothing, and helping them rebuild after the war. I believe that we have always had a reputation for being a generous people.

So I was a little uneasy listening to a representative of the United States reminding Americans and the world, earlier this week, that our first principle will always be to put America’s interests first. Granted, “America first” can mean many things to many people, but I must say that, even if it is not shouted at a political rally, it sounds like a cloak for a host of opinions and principles that don’t agree with the Gospel message.

I pray that St. Peter Claver will intercede for us, so that the Lord may show us how we as a nation can continue acting as a generous helper to less fortunate countries around the globe -- after all, “America first” can also mean a lot of beautiful and live-giving things as well, depending on what it is that we want to be first in.  

WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?

GUARDING YOUR REPUTATION

The gospel reading for this Sunday, July 1, 2012, contains two miracle stories: The raising of Jairus’ dead daughter and the healing of the woman who had a chronic flow of blood. http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070112.cfm

What I noticed in studying the gospel passage was how the three main characters chose to disregard possible criticism -- “What will people think?” As someone who was raised to be very cognizant of what other people think of me and my behavior, it is refreshing to see people who manage to pay no attention to the opinion of others when pursuing an important goal.

First there’s Jairus, the synagogue leader. Jesus’ last visit to a synagogue had ended in a plot to kill him (Mk 3:6), but since Jairus’ daughter is deathly sick he comes and throws himself at Jesus’ feet (!), obviously more worried about his child than about his reputation in the synagogue. Good for him!

Then there’s the woman whose flow of blood had left her desperate for twelve years: Her illness had rendered her doubly disgraced in the Jewish community: First, the flow of blood meant that she was constantly ritually impure; and second, she was unable to bear children – the supreme disgrace for a Jewish woman. So she, “impure” as she was, disregarded propriety and touched Jesus’ garment. Once again the conventions went out the window because of someone’s desperate plight.

JESUS AND THE TABOOS

And then there’s Jesus, whose well-know flouting of man-made restrictions would contribute a lot to his downfall. He touched a leper to cure him, he allowed that prostitute to wash his feet with her tears, he spoke to women in public in a society which forbade a husband to speak to his wife in public. And he ate with sinners, another act that made him ritually impure. The list could go on. 

One of the strongest religious taboos in Judaism concerned touching a corpse. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan, and how the priest and the Levite kept walking past the prostrate body of the robbers’ victim? The two men were primarily concerned about touching what might turn out to be a dead body, even if it meant possibly leaving a gravely injured person lying there.

So, Jesus entered Jairus’ house and took with him the child’s parents and a few disciples. And what did he do? “He took the child by the hand.” He didn’t care what people would think about his willingly contracting ritual impurity by touching a corpse. There were more important things afoot.,

DO YOU CARE?

Clearly our society would be better off in many ways without its peer pressure and its taboos both spoken and unspoken. I’ve been thinking about the implications of all this for me. I’d like to believe that at my age and in my life situation I’m not as affected as others might be by the pressure to conform. Leaving to one side the question of giving scandal unnecessarily by behavior that has the appearance of gross impropriety, I wonder how willing I am to do something I believe is right and necessary even if it means that a lot of people might think less of me?

There’s a lot of food for thought for me here. What about for you?  

  

   

WHY DO YOU STAY?

This will be a short blog because I’m on vacation visiting my brother, and haven’t had a lot of access to the internet.  

Next week a young alumnus of our school is going to start his period of postulancy as a candidate for Newark Abbey. We get so few new candidates that it’s normal to get all excited about his coming. But over the years I’ve gotten pretty good at balancing the excitement with the sober awareness that the fellow is only starting out, and he or we may discover that this isn’t the path that God’s calling him to follow.

As Director of Formation, I’ll be in charge of guiding him along the way as he tries to become a monk. As you can imagine, this responsibility helps me to reflect more deeply on my own monastic commitment.

First, like the rest of the community, I have “somebody to be good for,” that is, I have to set him a good example by my own way of living. 

Second, I have to unpack and help him internalize 1500 years of monastic spiritual wisdom so that he can live this life in a way that not only makes some sense but also brings him a sense of deep-down joy.

A third part of my job, among many others, is to help him discover reasons to stay. The reasons you come to the monastery can be very trivial, in fact-- God has various ways of getting you in the door. But once inside, those reasons won’t be enough to sustain you, so you need to discover reasons to stay. I believe this is an important skill to practice, because your reasons for staying may in fact change over the years, so you have to keep discovering new reasons to stay. Thomas Merton writes somewhere that the monk’s response to the abbot’s ritual question “What do you seek?” should evolve and change over time. To say “I’m seeking God” isn’t very helpful in discovering why I’m living in a monastery. The monk needs to reflect deeply on what’s going on in his innermost self, in that holy of holies where it’s just him and God. So, if it’s my job to help the new guy to do this, you can see how it forces me to do the same thing myself – which, if course, I’m supposed to be doing anyway.

So, please pray for Tim and for me that we can stay out of God’s way while he discovers what the Spirit is asking of him.

REFLECTION: Try taking a long, honest look at the various things you do in your different roles in life (parent, spouse, employee, etc.) and asking yourself “Why do I do this particular thing?’ “What is it that keeps me doing it?” Do you think those answers have evolved and changed over the years?    

TOO BUSY FOR GOD?

 

In analyzing the forces in our culture that work against a sense of contemplation, Ronald Rolheiser puts “pragmatism” high on the list. The following thoughts are from pages 40 and 41 of his book The Shattered Lantern.

YOU BUSY?

As far back as 1989 a Time Magazine cover story entitled “The Rat Race: How America is Running Itself Ragged” pointed out that time had become the most precious commodity in the world. Parents in 1989 had to make appointments to spend time with their own children, and technology had “increased the very heartbeat of today’s generation.” For many people back then the demands of staying on top of their careers took all their time and energy. That was then. We can see how much worse the problem has become since that time. “In our world” says Rolheiser, “there is simply no time or energy (or even the capacity) to pray or be contemplative.”  

He goes on to argue that when self-worth depends on achievement, then very few people are going to spend much time in prayer or contemplation since these are by definition not utilitarian efforts. They're useless in practical terms, a waste of time. Contemplation and prayer don’t accomplish anything, produce anything, or add anything concrete to life. He notes that we feel better about ourselves when we’re doing something useful.

REFUSING THE BANQUET INVITATION

“We have little time for what is useless and, for that, we are contemplatively the poorer. Caught up as we are in the efficiency demanded by our culture, we often end up like the people in Christ’s parable who refuse the king’s invitation to the wedding banquet (Lk 14:16-24). They did not turn down the invitation explicitly at all; they simply never showed up. They were too busy” (40-41). This interpretation of the parable seems to put the issue pretty starkly. The folks who had been invited had nothing against the king personally, they were simply too preoccupied with measuring land, testing oxen and going on honeymoons to accept his banquet invitation. Doesn’t that describe pretty well the situation of a whole lot of good people these days? They’re simply too busy to respond to the invitation to the Lord's banquet!

OUTGROWING MY NEED TO BE PRODUCTIVE

But I don’t want to point too big a finger at others either. Even in the monastery, where lots of time is carved out explicitly for quiet prayer, there is sometimes the American temptation to prefer to be doing something more “useful.” As I’ve gotten older the temptation has subsided quite a bit – not because I overcame it but because I outgrew the need to be constantly producing and achieving. I hope that in this present stage of my life I will indeed be able to continue to shed my American attitude toward productivity so as to devote myself more wholeheartedly to the “useless” activities of contemplative prayer and meditation. 

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A BASEBALL IN THE GAP

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What's It Worth to You?

I’m currently teaching a course called “The Wisdom of Saint Benedict” in our high school. The course involves a lot of reflecting on certain topics (e.g. values, greed, community, obedience). The students then post their reflections on a team blog. (By next week I hope to have the routine down for being sure that the writing is corrected and revised before it gets posted. Once I’ve accomplished that I’ll invite you to look at our blog site.) The following is an example of a reflection on values by a student who looked at the person who caught the home run ball that was Derek Jeter’s 3000th hit. Apparently the lucky Yankee fan owes a lot of money in student loans and is about to get married. Suddenly he’s holding a baseball that is worth six figures in the sports marketing world. Here is one student's take on what happened:

Christian Lopez and the 3000th hit ball

Earlier this week, we spent time discussing an avid Yankees fan by the name of Christian Lopez. Christian Lopez was set apart from many other fans at the Yankees Stadium when he caught the ball that happened to be the ball that was used for Derek Jeter’s 3000th hit. The ball was a valuable one indeed, and Christian Lopez knew of this along with many others. Mind you, Lopez had been struggling with certain finances and this ball could have been the end to all his problems. He could have received a six-figure payment if he had sold the ball and lived a debt-free life from then on, but instead he did what most men wouldn’t even consider doing: he gave the ball back to Derek Jeter. He didn’t just give back a baseball; he gave back an end to all his troubles. To do something like this takes a huge amount of sacrifice and consideration for another person’s achievements. Lopez did the right thing by giving the ball to the man who deserved to keep it, and he will always be remembered for the choice he made. Although some would laugh at the choice he made, many can agree that the choice was one most men don’t have the courage to make, and he should be proud that he did it. (Contributed by MW)

I had students do a worksheet analyzing the values at work in this incident. Toward the end of the sheet I asked them to answer the question “What would you have done?” followed by the assignment “In the space below write an email to Mr. Lopez telling him what you think of his action.” I was fascinated to see that a few kids who answered the question with “I would have kept the ball” then went on to “email” Lopez saying “You did the right thing by giving the ball back.” I was struck by the disconnect between what the students said they would have done and what they said was “the right thing to do.”

Someone pointed out to me in a conversation, however, that this is where moral growth and virtue start, with the perceived difference between what I know is the right thing and my practical choice to do otherwise.

Life in the Gap

The gap between who I am and who I’m called to be is the place where virtue resides, the crucible where saints are forged. I keep striving day after day to lessen the gap between who I am and who God intended for me to be when creating me. It’s in this striving rather than in arriving at “perfection” that I become a saint.

This is great news for us imperfect humans! Struggle? That I can do. But “Be perfect?” Well that’s a bit beyond my reach. I pray that I'll keep at the life-long task of lessening the gap in my own life

And I wish those students well, and pray that when they see their actions falling short of the ideal that they’ll keep striving to close that gap.

But mostly I wish Christian Lopez well, grateful to him for the challenge he posed to my students and me that Saturday afternoon. Something tells me that he's destined to lead a very happy life.
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........................Go Christian!
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MARRIAGE IN A TOXIC CULTURE

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On Saturday I said mass and officiated at the wedding of my cousin Emily and her husband Chris. Here's my homily.

A WEDDING HOMILY

I want you to come with me for a few moments this afternoon to visit a lovely German island in the middle of Lake Constance, called Reichenau. Drive across the short bridge with me and onto the island. The first thing you’ll notice on the narrow main street is that we are engulfed in a world of flowers. Every house is awash in bright colored blooms: whether in flower boxes or tiny garden plots, every square foot of land seems aglow with cheerful colors.

Soon, though, we’re driving along a tiny road through fields overflowing with ripening vegetables for which the island is so famous. Again it seems that every available space is being cultivated to produce some beautiful plant or flower. Besides being home to a famous Benedictine Abbey it is truly a garden spot. Reichenau Island is the perfect image of fertile ground.

I want you to hold on to that lovely image for a moment while I to turn to a less pleasant topic: Divorce.

No one here needs to be reminded of the tragic statistics -- they are only too well-known to us, and to some of us in a very personal way. I want to suggest that a lot of the difficulties married couples experience today come from the godless atmosphere of our culture of materialism, of ego-centrism, self-gratification. That kind of atmosphere is hardly helpful to anyone working on any kind of serious human relationship. In fact, I submit that many of the principles that drive our culture are actually TOXIC for human relationships.

Where can a married couple turn for some help? Where can two newly-weds find fertile soil for a lasting, happy marriage?

I suggest that we now return to that image of the fertile island of Reichenau with its abundant crops and fertile fields, and contrast it with the image of the moral wasteland that we inhabit in our present day culture. Materialism, ego-centrism and godlessness are hardly fertile ground for growing lasting relationships.

We heard some helpful ideas for counteracting these toxic influences when we listened to today’s Gospel reading from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, the “Beatitudes.” In these few sentences Jesus takes all the world’s treasured toxic tenets and poison principles and turns them upside down! He makes them into principles of life-giving wisdom.

Let’s look at just three of these beatitudes and see how they can point us toward a happy marriage even in today’s culture.

The first beatitude on the list reads “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

A world that praises fierce independence and self-sufficiency, (“I’m my own independent person beholden to no one”) seems to me to be a pretty toxic place to grow a relationship of mutual trust. We’ve all seen that marriages rooted in “me-first” are doomed from the start.

But Jesus says in the gospel “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” the anawim, God’s poor in the Old Testament, people who know that they depend on God for everything.

A marriage based on the humbling admission that “There is only one God and it isn’t me” is planted in fertile soil and will have every chance of flourishing and bearing fruit.

The second beatitude I’d like to consider this afternoon is: “Blessed are the meek.”

A world that rewards aggressiveness and in-your-face confrontations, competition, and pointing out the weakness of others is obviously a toxic place to grow a relationship of simple trust and mutual help.

But Jesus in the gospel proclaims “Blessed are the meek.” He’s not suggesting we should be doormats, but is calling us rather to have a realistic, healthy sense of our own frailty as creatures. This awareness of our own human weakness makes it possible for us to put up with the weaknesses and limitations of our spouse. A marriage based on that kind of humble self-awareness will have a good chance of flourishing.

The third and last beatitude I’d like to consider this afternoon is “Happy are you when you hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

A world that sees pain and discomfort as enemies to be avoided at all costs, that has a horror of any kind of unpleasantness for any reason, is a toxic environment in which to grow a marriage.

Jesus contradicts that toxic idea with “Happy are you when you hunger and thirst for righteousness.” There are things, he says, that are worth suffering for. There are times in a marriage when you will have to put up with unpleasantness, inconvenient demands on your time, disagreements, and illness.

We can learn a lesson from the flowers that fill the fields of Reichenau: Flowers don’t just happen. Weeds happen, but flowers demand a lot of work, a lot of tender attention. Those vegetable gardens require weeding and watering and work under a hot sun. But the hard work makes sense because of the goal: the bounty of the harvest or the beauty of the flowers. It’s like that with a good marriage, too: it requires constant attention and sometimes even hardship and inconvenience and self-sacrifice. But that’s part of the deal. It’s like raising flowers!

Let me make a closing remark about beatitudes.

In Old Testament a “beatitude” was in the present tense, as in, say, “Happy is the man who trusts in the lord because his life is filled with blessings.”

Jesus, however, does something extraordinary by changing the beatitudes into PROMISES. “You will inherit the kingdom,” he says, and you will be satisfied or comforted or filled. But not necessarily HERE and NOW. The beatitudes are promises from God.

This afternoon is a time for promises. Jesus is promising blessedness through the beatitudes, and promises to give you all the grace and strength you need to make a beautiful marriage.

And you, Emily and Chris, your solemn promises to one another are, of course, the heart of our celebration today.

As for the rest of us who are here to witness your wedding, we promise you that we will be there for you in those hard times that are bound to come. We promise to remind you of Jesus’ promises in the beatitudes that you heard today.

Finally, we pray that your married life will be as life-filled and fertile, as beautiful and abundantly satisfying as that little garden spot of Reichenau. We pray that the toxic tenets our culture will not touch you, but that you will have a life based on the beatitudes, a life together that is blessed with a love that is selfless, abundant, fruitful and satisfying, until the day when the Lord calls you home to be with him and to fulfil his promises, and when both of you and all of us will share the fullness of his joy and beauty in heaven.

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....................Reichenau Abbey

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LENT FOR TROUBLED TIMES

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One side effect of our current economic problems is that many people have been forced into triage, reconsidering their priorities; deprived of financial security or unable to afford certain accustomed material amenities, they have rediscovered that other world of important non-material values that usually gets buried beneath the piles of possessions or crowded out by concerns for the passing things of life.

Another effect of the imposed hardships of our current economic situation is that they offer us an opportunity to reconsider the spiritual purpose of Lent.

LENT IN TROUBLED TIMES

Our current economic woes may have some of us scratching our heads trying to figure out what to do for Lent: if Lent is a time for “giving things up,” what happens if I’ve already had to give up many pleasures and amenities or even been deprived of my job or my 401k?
If Lent is simply a time for doing without
If Lent is simply a time for cutting back
If Lent is simply a time for practicing austerity
then many Americans have been in an involuntary Lent for two years.

So if we are already doing the austerity part, we need to look deeper to find other purposes and practices for Lent. The good news is that a deeper look at Lent will reveal a whole complex variety of other approaches to the holy season.

THE LENTEN PILGRIMAGE GROUP

This is the place to plug one of my books. Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey through Lent takes exactly this deeper approach Lent by looking other practices in addition to “giving things up for Lent.” There are people who re-read this book each Lent, using its forty daily meditations set in various countries as their itinerary for a spiritual Lenten pilgrimage toward Easter. This year our “pilgrimage group” already includes members in California, Florida, Pennsylvania and England. Please get a book and join us!

THE REVEALING HISTORY OF LENT

[I used this adaptation of the Introduction to Pilgrim Road in one of the very first posts on this blog a year ago, but it bears repeating here.]
Originally Lent was a period during which the catechumens (candidates for Christian initiation) prepared for their Baptism, which would take place at the Easter vigil. Before long, however, all Christians began observing Lent as the Church's official season of preparation for Easter. It was a forty-day period characterized by prayer, introspection, almsgiving, self-denial and the exercise of virtue.Unfortunately, during the Middle Ages, as popular Christian spirituality began to emphasize the sufferings of Christ, the rich variety of Lenten practices was reduced to the single dimension of penitence: fasting, abstinence from meat, and “giving up” certain things. Even though recent scriptural theology and liturgical reforms have helped restore many of the forgotten aspects of Lent, many Christians still see the season almost entirely in terms of the narrower, single-dimensional view.

BENEDICT OF NURSIA ON LENT

Saint Benedict's Rule for Monks, written in the Sixth Century, which still provides us Benedictines with wise guidance for living, has a lot to offer to Christian lay people as well. Benedict's perspective on Lent, then, dates from an era when the observance of Lent was still marked by a rich variety of purposes and practices. Chapter 49, "On the Manner of Keeping Lent," is worth quoting in full:

The life of a monk ought to be a continuous Lent. Since few, however, have the strength for this, we urge the entire community during these days of Lent to keep its manner of life most pure and to wash away in this holy season the negligences of other times. This we can do in a fitting manner by refusing to indulge evil habits and by devoting ourselves to prayer with tears, to reading, to compunction of heart and self-denial. During these days, therefore, we will add to the usual measure of our service something by way of private prayer and abstinence from food or drink, so that each of us will have something above the assigned measure to offer God of his own will with the joy of the Holy Spirit. In other words, let each one deny himself some food, drink, sleep, needless talking and idle jesting, and look forward to holy Easter with joy and spiritual longing.Everyone should, however make known to the abbot what he intends to do, since it ought to be done with his prayer and approval. Whatever is undertaken without the permission of the spiritual father will be reckoned as presumption and vainglory, not deserving a reward. Therefore, everything must be done with the abbot's approval.
-- Chapter 49, "On the Manner of Keeping Lent," RB 1980: The Rule of Benedict, edited by Timothy Fry, ( Collegeville MN, Liturgical Press, 1981) p. 172

Benedict's treatment of the holy season was written during a time of violent economic, social and moral upheaval, and was written for monks who never ate meat and who were used to physical deprivations and fasting as part of their monastic regime. But for our purposes we may note that it also reflects the sixth century's notion that Lent is an opportunity to "add to the usual measure of our service," not just by bodily mortification, but by drawing closer to God in prayer, by trying to root out bad habits, and by practicing virtues. In the Chapter "On the Daily Manual Labor," he directs that during Lent each monk be given a book to read, and that more time be allotted for reading. Benedict's attitude and approach toward Lent reach back to the days of the catechumens who would "look forward to holy Easter with joy and spiritual longing." It is significant that the only two times the word gaudium, "joy," appears in this sober Latin document are in this chapter on Lent, where it refers to the anticipated joy of our goal, "holy Easter."

Other Lenten Helps from Benedict

Besides reflecting the sixth century theology of Lent, Chapter 49 also reveals some general characteristics of Benedict's Rule which might be helpful for any Christian to keep in mind. First, there is the primacy that he always gives to interior attitude and disposition over mere externals: his Lent is marked more by inner transformation than by outward observances.
Second, we see here an instance of his well-known sense of moderation: the abbot is to make sure that the monks do not go to extremes in their Lenten observance.
Third, the Rule repeatedly challenges the monks to deal honestly and humbly with their own imperfections, and so during Lent they are to “wash away the negligences of other times."
Last, there is Benedict's emphasis on community: Lenten penance in the monastery is a communal exercise, to be celebrated by “the whole community;” no individual may engage in any "private" Lenten practice without the abbot's command.

When Benedict says that “the life of a monk ought to be a continuous Lent,” he is offering an insight that is useful for any Christian: whatever we do in Lent (including prayer, holy reading, and acts of charity) is really what we ought to be doing during the rest of the year as well. Thus the lessons drawn from our Lenten pilgrimage should be helpful any time of the year.

I have to admit that it took me some time to get comfortable with the idea that there could be more to Lent than simply penance and mortification. I felt as if I were trying to wriggle out from under the hardships of the season. Perhaps Benedict with his calm moderation and his emphasis on interior transformation and community would make a good choice for "patron saint of Lent?"

During the coming weeks I hope to share with you some of my reflections on the keeping of Lent. I pray that the Spirit will guide each of us on our Lenten pilgrimage and give us a deeply meaningful experience of God’s love during this holy season.

P.S. I'm preparing to give a Lenten day of recollection in Convent Station NJ on Saturday March 13, 2010.

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Black Friday and the Kingdom of God

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This image came to me at 6:30 this morning, the day after Thanksgiving. Actually it's two images.

DOOR BUSTERS

The first image is of those thousands of people lined up in front of the closed doors of the stores that will open at 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. today. For weeks the merchants have been whetting the appetites of bargain-hungry shoppers with promises of the delights in store for the lucky few who are there when the doors open. The true believers started lining up last night, so devoted and single-minded in their purpose that nothing can discourage or distract them from their set goal -- to get first shot at the coveted consumer items, and maybe even get one of the free gift cards awarded to the first fifty shoppers to enter the store.


GATE BUSTERS




The second image comes from the liturgical readings of the past couple of weeks: the final breaking in of the Kingdom of God when the Son of Man comes riding on the clouds. The picture in my head was of throngs of Christians pushing up against the gates of heaven, true believers so devoted and single-minded in their purpose that nothing can discourage or distract them from their set goal -- the coveted rewards promised to those who enter the Kingdom, rewards prepared for them from all eternity. Why does this second image seem so improbable to me?

Well, there's no chance that I would ever find myself in a mob of impatient shoppers waiting in the middle of the night for some store to open its doors. (My abbot wouldn't give me permission anyway.) But experience shows that it's equally unlikely that I would be found in that other throng -- the focused, passionate, single-minded Christians who are willing to suffer all sorts of privations in order to enter the Kingdom.


A "BLACK FRIDAY" LESSON

The devoted midnight shoppers of Black Friday can serve as an inspiration to me and to most of us Christians who don't seem very willing to suffer the inconveniences entailed in getting on line in the middle of the night and waiting in joyful hope for the gates to open and welcome us in to the Kingdom.



.............Happy Black Friday!