The Sacrament of Reconcilation - Right There at Jesus' Crucifixion

I reread Luke's account of Jesus' crucifixion last night and found my attention captured by the "Good Thief," the man tradition calls St. Dismas.  Mark's Gospel depicts both criminals crucified alongside Jesus as mocking Him. That means that at some point, while suffering on his cross, Dismas underwent a conversion.  Under those circumstances I do not see any possible explanation other than the direct action of the Holy Spirit.  Dismas was endowed with the ability to look at the Man hanging and dying beside him, and recognize Him as the Messiah!  I don't know how many people were praying for Dismas, but there prayers were answered; and it is a lesson that you and I should never - that we can never - despair of another's salvation.  God can bring literally anyone to faith.  That's the first lesson I took away from Luke's Gospel last night.

The second lesson was one that actually came back to my mind from over twenty years ago - and it is in regard to the Scriptural foundation for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Yes, the obvious places we see it in Scripture remain John 20:21-23 and James 5:14-16; but as my high school theology teacher, Joseph Burns, taught me, it is in Luke's account of the crucifixion that we see Jesus celebrate Reconciliation:

One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!"
But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong." And he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
And [Jesus] said to him, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Lk.23:39-43)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that the Sacrament of Reconciliation consists of four elements (#1448):  contrition, confession, and satisfaction on the part of the penitent, and absolution of sin on God's part.  And yes, Dismas did display contrition, or sorrow for his sin, by asking Jesus to do no more than remember him.  He confessed that he had sinned (making a "general confession") and acknowledged the justice of the (temporal) punishment he was undergoing as a result of breaking the law.  And Jesus absolved his sin in the promise that Dismas would be with Him in Paradise.

We have this same encounter with Jesus, through His priests, when we celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation!  It doesn't get more intense than that.

That Tight-Lipped Jesus ...

So here is a stream-of-consciousness post for you.  Stay with me though, there is a point:

On the drive to work today I was praying the Rosary and meditating on the Lord's Resurrection.  I was thinking of the women at Jesus' tomb.  Nothing could have prepared them for the absolute shock of the empty tomb - and definitely not for their encounter with the Resurrected Jesus.  I was struck how you and I are often so completely in the dark about all of the good things that God is doing behind the scenes, completely surprised when they break out into the light.  God seems to work in silence; He doesn't make us privy to His plans - just shocks us with their awesomeness.

Wait, that's not quite right.  Hadn't Jesus told His disciples, over and over, that He would be rejected by the chief priests and elders and be raised on the third day?  Yes, He had; but they didn't understand.  Jesus had told them exactly what was going to happen.  His crucifixion shouldn't have come as a shock - and neither should His Resurrection!

And here is what Jesus says to you and me.  We should listen closely so that we're not caught off-guard:

“I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (Jn.16:33).
  
Fore-warned is fore-armed.  We will suffer the Cross.  And if we stay united with Him, we will experience His Resurrection.

Guest Author, St. Bernard of Clairvaux

I was surprised by how easy he was to book for this gig!  St. Bernard comes to us this morning from the Liturgy of the Hours, where his twelfth century sermon on the Song of Songs serves as Second Reading.  Bernard's words on Christ's love for us and His Sacred Heart were too powerful for me to not pass along.  (And in a happy coincidence, I was just reading about the Song of Songs as I lay in bed last night, enjoying Christopher West's Fill These Hearts.)  So without further ado, St Bernard:

Where can the weak find a place of firm security and peace, except in the wounds of the Savior? Indeed, the more secure is my place there, the more he can do to help me. The world rages, the flesh is heavy, and the devil lays his snares, but I do not fall, for my feet are planted on firm rock. I may have sinned gravely. My conscience would be distressed, but it would not be in turmoil, for I would recall the wounds of the Lord: he was wounded for our iniquities. What sin is there so deadly that it cannot be pardoned by the death of Christ? And so if I bear in mind this strong, effective remedy, I can never again be terrified by the malignancy of sin.

Surely the man who said: My sin is too great to merit pardon, was wrong. He was speaking as though he were not a member of Christ and had no share in his merits, so that he could claim them as his own, as a member of the body can claim what belongs to the head. As for me, what can I appropriate that I lack from the heart of the Lord who abounds in mercy? They pierced his hands and feet and opened his side with a spear. Through the openings of these wounds I may drink honey from the rock and oil from the hardest stone: that is, I may taste and see that the Lord is sweet.

He was thinking thoughts of peace, and I did not know it, for who knows the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? But the piercing nail has become a key to unlock the door, that I may see the good will of the Lord. And what can I see as I look through the hole? Both the nail and the wound cry out that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The sword pierced his soul and came close to his heart, so that he might be able to feel compassion for me in my weaknesses.

Through these sacred wounds we can see the secret of his heart, the great mystery of love, the sincerity of his mercy with which he visited us from on high. Where have your love, your mercy, your compassion shone out more luminously than in your wounds, sweet, gentle Lord of mercy? More mercy than this no one has than that he lay down his life for those who are doomed to death.

My merit comes from his mercy; for I do not lack merit so long as he does not lack pity. And if the Lord’s mercies are many, then I am rich in merits. For even if I am aware of many sins, what does it matter? Where sin abounded grace has overflowed. And if the Lord’s mercies are from all ages for ever, I too will sing of the mercies of the Lord for ever. Will I not sing of my own righteousness? No, Lord, I shall be mindful only of your justice. Yet that too is my own; for God has made you my righteousness.

"Does God Want Me to Suffer?"

The first reading for Mass this past Sunday came from one of Isaiah's prophecies about Jesus' Passion.  The first verse read was, "The LORD was pleased to crush him in infirmity" (Is.53:10).  The reading didn't stop there of course, but how many times has the human heart?  "Are you enjoying this God, seeing me suffer like this?"

If you believe in the God worshiped by Jews and Christians, you know the answer is "no."  Isaiah continued,

If he gives his life as an offering for sin,
he shall see his descendants in a long life,
and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him.
Because of his affliction
he shall see the light in fullness of days;
through his suffering, my servant shall justify many,
and their guilt he shall bear.  (Is.53:10-11)

Jesus obeyed the Father, even when that obedience was meant with torture and death at the hands of the powers-that-be.  But His obedience in suffering atoned for the disobedience of our entire race, each of our betrayals of God's love for us.

It was in that sense that the Father was "pleased" to see Jesus crushed by infirmity - because it brought about the redemption of the entire world!  God is not a sadist.  He does not rejoice in pain for its own sake.  No, He rejoices in the saving work He accomplishes, even in the midst of pain.

Baptized into Jesus, each of us is given a share in His suffering for the salvation of the world.  It's what we heard in Sunday's Gospel, when He told James and John, "The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized" (Mk.10:39).  St. Paul made reference to it when he wrote to the Colossians, "I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of His Body, which is the Church" (Col.1:24).

The Epistle to the Hebrews says that "For the joy set before Him [Jesus] endured the cross, scorning its shame" (Heb.12:2).  That joy was eternal union with a redeemed you and me.  If we hope to endure the Cross, it can only be for the joy of union with Him.  The difficult thing is, we don't see how our sliver of the Cross - our cancer, or divorce, or job loss - has any value.  That is the trial of faith.  By faith we look at the situation and affirm that "If God is allowing me to pass through it, then He is able to bring good from it - good for me, good for the Body of Christ" (Rom.8:28).  That is supernatural - literally above our nature.  It makes no sense to anyone outside the Faith.  But what a central truth, the Truth of the Cross, for us to strive to take hold of during this Year of Faith!

Our hearts are united to Jesus' Heart.  In the words of Sunday's second reading:

... let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who has similarly been tested in every way,
yet without sin.
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace
to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help. (Heb.4:14-16)

The Shema and the Sign of the Cross

Gearing up for another radio show with my partner Kevin Vost this Saturday (1-2 p.m. Eastern Time, click to hear EWTN's Live Feed).  Our subject is raising children in the Faith.  Here's a snippet I plan on sharing:

When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment, He responded with the opening words of the Shema, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD;  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Deut.6:4-5).  The Shema was and is Judaism's Creed.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and all Jews recited it both their morning and evening prayers.  Because of Jesus' response to the scribe all Christians are familiar with its beginning, but the Shema is composed of three separate portions of Scripture - Deut.6:4-9; Deut.11:13-21; and Num.15:37-41.

We Christians of course have a Creed, two actually - the Nicene and the Apostle's Creed.  Each time we pray however we Catholics profess the Creed in miniature when we make the sign of the Cross.  Reread the words of the Shema quoted above and look at what we profess when we make the Sign of the Cross:

                1                         2                            3

We touch our:	Signifying that through the Cross of Jesus we enter into the inner Life of the:	And we have been empowered to do so with:
Forehead	Father	all our mind
Heart	Son	all our heart
and Both Shoulders	and Holy Spirit	and all our strength

That's the Gospel in miniature, our Christian Shema!  So lets make it the first thing we do after opening our eyes in the morning, and the last thing before closing them at night.

 

We Don't Think The Way God Does

Today's Gospel reading really struck me:  From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, "God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you." He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do." 

God's "end game," pure and simple, is for us to take on the image of Jesus.  This means that many of the experiences we dread - like getting caught with our hand in the cookie jar, or whatever that translates into for adults - appear very positive to God; that correction brings us one step closer to having us with Him for all eternity.  In truth, it's useless to try and run from the Cross; God is going to take us through it whether we want to or not, so "Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed" (Heb.12:13).

Mocking the Crucified

Two thieves crucified with Jesus - they both began with taunting, but one underwent conversion. The thought had never occurred to me before though - why would anyone hanging on a tree muster the strength to mock someone else? And the only answer that came back was my answer for why I watch (and almost always mock) reality television - in my heart of hearts, my comments make me feel superior/clever/funny and, if only for a couple of moments, give me an escape from my problems (cross). It's all a sham of course: if I were on television, with people observing my daily foibles - I would provide them with a motherload of mistakes.

There has to be a better way to deal with our crosses, and I think that second thief, called Dismas in tradition, shows us how- acknowledge where we are and then ask Jesus to keep us in His memory (His Heart). Handling it that way is redemptive; just ask Saint Dismas.

Seeing Ourselves in Simon of Cyrene

"And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry His cross. And they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha" (Mark 15:21-22).

Carrying Jesus' cross. It is the only time we hear of this Simon throughout the whole of the New Testament. Sit with this man's action a moment though...He assisted Jesus in bringing about the redemption of the world. Scourged and beaten, Jesus needed Simon's help to make it to the top of Golgotha to complete His sacrifice. I know there is great depth here, and I'm only scratching the surface; but even a scratch has to be of some value:

Only God knows what went through Simon's mind when he was pressed into that service. He was on his way home from work when the soldiers forced him into position. Had he seen Jesus before, heard Him? Did he recognize Him there on the ground, under the cross? Scared for his own life, Simon lifted the hundred pound beam onto his shoulders. Surrounded by Roman soldiers, he was probably too scared to be repulsed by the blood-smeared beam. Did he try to make eye contact with Jesus, or did he just perform the task given him? What was his reaction when the Lord prophesied to the women of Jerusalem? Did he witness Jesus being nailed to the cross, see the horror on His Mother Mary's face? Was Simon there throughout the Lord's hours on the Cross? Did he hear Jesus' final words, see the blood and water gush from His side? Or did he run to his family as soon as that beam left his shoulder? Only God knows.

What you and I know for certain is this: something happened to Simon. When Mark wrote his Gospel for the Christians in Rome, Simon's sons were among them (Mark 15:21). Simon came to Faith; he knew that Jesus had been raised and, he communicated that to his sons. How did Simon come to faith? Perhaps he heard stories that the Man he had helped had been raised and was appearing to His followers. Personally, I think Jesus paid him a visit. The Lord is never outdone in generosity– for Simon to have shared so intimately in the Cross, it makes me suspect that he shared intimately in the joy of the Resurrection as well.

It wasn’t Simon who redeemed the world, but his exertion and discomfort while carrying the cross did assist Jesus in making His redemptive offering. Even though all the value and power of the sacrifice flowed from the Lord, Simon truly participated in, truly shared, a part of Jesus’ Passion. I believe St. Paul described this reality, open to you and I as well, when he wrote, “in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (Colossians 1:24). The grace and power flow from the Lord alone, and yet we truly participate in His offering – His one offering, reaching out to redeem past, present, and future (Heb.10:10, 9:14).

You and I are in Simon's position, you know. Our Lord allows His Cross to be laid upon us. It is never the type of Cross we would choose for ourselves either. No, it’s a weight we struggle under; and like Simon, we’re pressed into service. It may be the loss of a job, an illness, or abandonment by a spouse. It is always an opportunity to enter into Jesus’ offering though. For when we press on with continued faith in God’s love for us, we take on the image of the Son:

Although he was a Son, [Jesus] learned obedience from what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him (Heb.5:8-9).
Consider him…so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted…It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons…for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness (Heb.12:3,7,11).

The very next verse in Hebrews is of special interest to me: “Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.” You see, God is going to move us forward; we are going to take on the image of Jesus. We can dig in our heels and persist in anger over how “unfair” our lives are, how “cruelly” we are being treated; but it won’t stop the process. God loves us right now, exactly as we are; but He loves us too much to let us stay the way we are! He will settle for nothing less than our obtaining that absolute “holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb.12:14).

St. Paul understood that this holiness is obtained by embracing the Cross shoulder-to-shoulder with Jesus. “For Jesus’ sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:8-11).

The Cross creates intimacy between Jesus and the soul of the disciple. If we will put ourselves in Simon’s place – beneath the weight of the Cross, shoulder-to-shoulder with Jesus, our hearts pounding alongside the Sacred Heart – then we will experience the unmitigated generosity of God: we will come forth from our tombs in the splendor and power of the Risen One! Because of our union with the Sacred Heart in His Passion, our bodies and souls will participate in His Resurrection. The Cross will be transformed from an occasion of suffering into the insignia of an enduring, Divine Love – His by nature, ours by participation.

Hot N Cold

"Someone call the doctor
Got a case of a love bipolar...
'Cause you're hot then you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in and you're out
You're up and you're down
You're wrong when it's right ..."

Katy Perry's lyrics always give me something to think about. (My first post was a reflection on her "I Kissed a Girl.") This evening I find them to be a perfect segue for discussing those words from Jesus two posts back, ""I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth" (Revelation 3:15-16). Everyone holds up signs reading "John 3:16;" but why not Revelation 3:16? I ask that rhetorically. It's easy to see why not - most Christians prefer a caricature of Jesus to the actual Person recorded for us in Scripture. We prefer an imaginary Jesus, who forgives our failings but makes no demands. The imaginary Jesus never gets upset - unless it's at religious bullies, and they've got it coming, don't they? He came to relieve suffering (because pain, not separation from God, is the ultimate evil) and to teach us that if we'll just be "tolerant" enough of everyone else's opinion (translation = truth does not exist in fact, but is what we individually believe it to be), peace will finally come.

That is NOT the Person we find in the New Testament - or in any kind of historical research on Jesus of Nazareth. "Caricature Jesus" isn't the type of guy that gets nailed to a Cross! (And calls his followers to join him.) The real Jesus is a passionate lover, who forces us to make a decision, "He who is not with Me, is against me" (Matthew 12:30); "Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth, but the sword" (Matthew 10:34). No, not a sword of physical violence, but of Truth/Reality:

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 12:12-13)

Jesus is like the doctor who has to tell the patient he has cancer; hiding the gravity of the situation, denying the need for aggressive treatment, wouldn't be doing the patient justice.

Recently, a friend of mine (also Catholic) got very excited when she found out I had a blog. I don't think that excitement lasted very long though; when we next spoke she diplomatically told me, "I don't agree with you on many things." She didn't elaborate; and my sense was that it wasn't the right moment to ask her to either. From little things she's shared in the past though, I fear her disagreement has to do with Jesus' s teachings regarding sexuality; and that makes me terribly sad. We are supposed to be in a real, life-giving relationship with Jesus of Nazareth, our brother and God. We can't pick and choose what parts of His message we are going to live by. That's like picking which part of the marriage vow you're going to honor. Oh, plenty of people try to do it...and thus our 50% divorce rate. Hot or cold - thinking that you can exist as "lukewarm" is self-deception. I'm not saying this as someone looking down from a summit; I think I've blogged enough about going to Confession to prove that that isn't the point. Christianity is Life-giving, it gives Divine Life; but only when we fully surrender ourselves to Jesus. We come, broken as we are, sinful as we are, and allow Him to embrace us - embracing Him in turn. We ask for, and receive, the help of His Holy Spirit. And then we have the ability to Love and Live the Reality, the Life that Jesus (the real Jesus) proclaimed!

If you're reading this, please pray for me. Please pray for my friend too - a beautiful, smart, young woman looking for her heart's passion.