While the iron is hot

Last week, one of the folks in my RCIA group asked:  What is Lent?  You can imagine how long an answer came to that question!  The Great Fast, Holy Lent, is more than one-tenth of the year, every year, modeled on Jesus’ own forty days of fasting in the desert, which is how He prepared for His public ministry.  It is the time the Church gives to obeying the command portion of Christ’s one homily.  That would be: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! (Mt 4:17) 

“Repent?”  What does THAT mean?  It means to change what you do, and how you do things.  Lent is not only supposed to be different from the time that leads up to it, but is supposed to have a lasting result in our lives after it is over.  

Of course, the class also asked for some practical examples.  And in case you haven’t completely settled on what your Lent will look like, I share with you something I wrote for this space some years ago, just to take you through the categories and opportunities Lent offers.

Really, if you are over seven years old, don’t settle for the cartoon notion of Lent, e.g.:  “This year I am giving up (insert one: a) chocolate; b) dessert; c) beer; d) other food product).”  Remember: Lent is not a diet.  Lent will leave you leaner, but that’s a side effect, not the goal.  Devise your discipline according to these principles, and you will have many reasons to be grateful.

Seek the silence.  Our days are filled with so much noise -- visual, mental, and social, as well as audio.  All of it, all of it, misshapes our relationships and understanding.  So this Lent, turn it off:  the radio in the car, the television in the home, the web-browser on the screen.  Sure, make specific exceptions for yourself: except when I need to check the traffic and weather together on the eights; except for Downton Abbey (or March Madness); except for ordering Mom’s birthday present online.  But get rid of the noise that becomes constant; the default distraction of hypnotizing visuals; the aimless poking about the web for useless information and harmful stimulation.  Be still, and know that I am God.  (Psalm 46:10)   

Seek the other.  Do not reduce Lent to your personal goal, where you are the principal beneficiary of your new self-control (in your waistline, your budget, or your productivity); make sure you offer something to someone else.  “Giving alms” is indispensable to a good Lent; that includes but is not limited to giving money and other gifts to the poor.  It also means giving time to the lonely, attention to the ignored, and love to the one we have so much trouble loving.  Remember, too, what a gift it is to ask someone to help you.  Life is not solitary; neither is our struggle against sin.  So your Lent should be not private, but personal; and therefore interpersonal.  Seek especially the One who desires your company in prayer.  Let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and favor, and to find help in time of need.  (Heb 4:16)

Seek the cross.  Jesus Christ is never more fully revealed as God than in His death on the cross.  If you would share that divinity, that holiness, share too his cross.   Lay down something that you cannot picture yourself living without.  Give away something you think you cannot afford.  Take up something you think you cannot carry.  Then look at your crucifix, each day.  The real sacrifice of the cross is available at Mass, so go there not only at the usual times, but also some additional time, i.e., every Wednesday near your office, or every Thursday after you drop off the kids.  

If there is some pain or privation in your life not by your own choosing, then Lent gives you something to do with it.  Your illness, your embarrassment or failure; your pain, your mistreatment by a false friend; your devaluation at work.  Embrace it as your Lenten cross, what you and Jesus are doing together this Lent.

So, yes, eat less.   Wear your ashes until they rub away.  Eat fewer sweets and give yourself fewer treats.  Pray the Stations of the Cross on meatless Fridays, and write bigger checks to help folks who need.  Talk less, and pray more.  But that is just the background; this year, take it higher.

Take it seriously, and Lent will be one of the best times of your whole year.  But until Ash Wednesday gets here, have seconds and dessert.  Play some music and see a movie.  Go out together, or invite someone over.  Make for a little Samedi + Dimanche + Lundi + Mardi Gras right here in Silver Spring.  Because it’s not Lent yet, and that’s good too. 

Monsignor Smith

High def

What February looked like this week.  Cloudy sky but clear air, and unseasonably warm.

One of the things I like about February – and there are not many – is the combination of increasingly intense sunshine with clear, dry winter air.  Several times over the past week, on days both unseasonably warm and seasonably subfreezing, I have been brought up short in wonder at a view or vista that I have surveyed a thousand times already, but find newly brilliant and beautiful: lighted with greater radiance and warmth, enhanced in crispness, clarity, and contrast, and extending to greater distance.   I suppose it’s like HDTV – only real.   

One of the things I like about this February is that it’s got no Lent in it.  I know, I know, February brings penance enough of its own; but having these extra weeks before beginning the Great Penance offers a sort of luxury, and it is not one that finds me indulging in all those earthly goods one usually puts aside in Lent.  No, it’s the luxury of time to prepare.  

My God, my God, do I need Lent. I would guess that you urgently and intensely need Lent, too, and I hope you won’t find grounds to accuse me of projecting or whatever they call it.  Since we have all been subjected to the same brutalizing circumstances over the past two years, though different afflictions have afflicted each of us in different degrees, I suggest that Lent is the unifying remedy.

Of all our complaints, of all our problems, of all our losses, and of all of the abuse heaped upon us, the one universal is sin, and by that I point today to our own sin.  Responding to danger with licensed self-preservation has unleashed a torrent of selfishness.  Social distancing has left us distant from God and one another.  Resentment is the only sport in which we are all Olympians now.  

Our sad state is to be expected, but not excused.  The surly spite and bitter rancor that laces our lives is predictable, and you will be glad to know, pardonable; but not because it’s no biggie, or not a problem, or worse, because everybody’s doing it.  It is pardonable because Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross by that very spite and rancor, and His merciful forgiveness flows toward us from His wounded side.

To Noah, God promised never again to destroy mankind with a flood, so He redeems us with one: this same flood of mercy, the blood and water that surges toward us from the Cross.  This is the wellspring of the Church’s sacraments, which alone can repair and restore you and me after the damage we have endured and inflicted.  

In this bright, warming light, and cold, clear, dry air, we can see revealed of ourselves what has been obscured too long: all the hurt, and all the hurtfulness of sin that has gained the upper hand in our lives.  In these dragging days of winter’s grudging grip, we can clearly make out the features of our yearning, not only for deliverance from confinement and fear, but also for the communion that we forsook, with God and His friends, our friends, our neighbors, brothers, and sisters.

This gift of high-definition insight, and the luxury of added days, has given me a craving for the grace that only comes in the season we dread, and an opportunity to resolve so to enter into this coming gift of Holy Lent as to allow it to grab hold of me and shake me.  Where will I place myself, to allow His grace to find me?  What tasks will I take up, to allow Him to show what repair He will work on me?  What distractions will I put aside, to allow Him to captivate me?  

As I write this, two months from tomorrow will be Easter, 17 April.  That, too, is in my window of the “ideal” time for the celebration, when the weather and the flowers are most likely to be perfect.  More reliable than fickle spring, though, is the reconciling will of our Father.  If we let Him, if we ask Him, if you and I willingly, eagerly return to Him with sorrow for all we have done and failed to do, then He will knit up all that fear and rancor has unraveled, and we will rejoice in that great days together, as one.  The same God who brings springtime every year with blossom, brightness, and leaf, will work even greater marvels than that in my heart, and yours.  

Monsignor Smith

Our rescuer, the One Who saves us

“Special” is a word I have almost stopped using because like many of the over-used expressions of affirmation or self-assertion in which we find ourselves awash, it has very little meaning.  The saccharine ritual of instructing children that “You are special” has led even the inattentive among them to discern that if everyone is special, then there is nothing special about it.  

This cynicism has crept into our culture with the frequent echo of that so-called “church lady” when people pronounce “Oh, isn’t that spey-shull!”  Undaunted, earnest folks looking to convey something positive still will say that a person is special.

That is not to say that the impulse behind the expression is as devoid of value as the word is of meaning.  People want to say something positive, but they do not know how – or they are afraid.  What is to be afraid of, you may ask? 

To say someone is precious, that is, highly valued, implicitly acknowledges that there is one who values.  To say you are delightful is to acknowledge that the person gives delight to somebody.  To whom?  The delighted one can claim that place by admitting, I am glad that I know you.  To tell a person, “It is good that you exist” is to move beyond the relative to the absolute value of “good.”  Still, the recognition is an interpersonal event that requires a person to acknowledge the goodness in the other’s very being.

This, step by step, moves toward the truth that a person is loved.  This requires and presupposes one who loves; a lover – the lover.  The fear I mention is, I think, a fear of claiming that title, of taking that responsibility.  We acknowledge that the person is lovable; and yes, we are willing to love that they exist; but are we – you and I, regular people in regular relationships – ready to claim the title, the responsibility, the awesome burden of being the one who loves them?    Only rarely, and only cautiously, will we step into that role.  Fear makes us weak, and that weakness has dire consequences.  

This week I read one of the saddest sentences I have ever seen in the supervised interview given by that tennis player who was explaining that absolutely nothing unpleasant had happened to her in the period after she had announced a government official had sexually abuse her, and oh, by the way, she was abandoning her brilliant tennis career.  She said, “Since then, my life has been just what it is supposed to be; nothing special.”

This is the self-understanding that is expected and demanded by the ideologues who subordinate any and every precious human life to the growth and goals of the ideology.  This is the slogan that must be sung in full throated unison, or it will be wrung from people in the gasp of their dying breath.  This is the song that is being forced from the mouths and minds of more and more of our brothers and sisters, who are, in truth, precious; whose very existence is a great good, who are worthy of love and capable of love.  This is worse than tyranny; this is dehumanization.

This is the power and this is the will that steps in to the highest place when the one who loves is pushed aside.  This is the fate of all who have never heard, or who have rejected, the Eternal Word of Love spoken to them as you and I have heard and continue to hear Him.  

Specialness can be given and specialness, clearly, can be taken away, and the one who was special reduced to less than nothing.  But Love is eternal and undying and bestows on the beloved an identity that cannot ever be reduced, much less removed.  Because you and I are loved by the One Who Loves, we can love, we must love.  We have been given life in order to be able to give life, to rescue souls from tyranny and destruction.  Listen to the Word; speak the Word of Love: It is good that you exist!  You are worthy of love!  I want you to live forever!

Monsignor Smith

The Old Road

It is right there to see, but circumstances rarely let you look closely enough to notice.  As you drive north on Colesville Road, occasionally it is possible to look left or right from your eight-to-twelve lanes of divided highway, and see The Old Road.   Two lanes of sometimes residential, sometimes rolling country road, Old Columbia Pike looks like it would have been a delightful drive.

Driving around rural Virginia this week, I slipped back into my old habit of always looking for The Old Road.  I first discovered this possibility when, as a kid riding with my dad at the wheel, I noticed that on many stretches of divided highway, one set of lanes would be more level than the other, with deeper cuts through the hills, and more fill elevating it across the valleys.  That was clearly the newer half of the highway that had been added to the original two lanes; the part that rose, fell, and curved more dramatically was The Old Road. 

Sometimes The Old Road would have some other rewarding feature.  Out on Leesburg Pike in the countryside beyond Tysons Corner, there was a place as recently as fifteen or twenty years ago where eastbound two-lane curved down into the vale and crossed Goose Creek on an old steel-truss bridge, whereas the westbound lanes stayed straight and high on a concrete overpass.   Now I drive that road often, as my parents live not far from it; no longer through countryside but rather thick development, the ten lanes of Route Seven are so engineered and elevated that I have to search to find any evidence of the creek at all.

New highways move more traffic better, but disguise or even destroy characteristics of the topography through which it passes, and sometimes its history as well.  Old Valley Pike in the Shenandoah, long supplanted by interstate, has several stretches where yet-older-pike can be seen on one side or another.  But I was recently delighted when I left the highway entirely following signs for an out-of-the-way Civil War battlefield; you have to get pretty obscure to find the ones I have never visited.  Across the ravine from the little crossroad we were following, I saw a handsome but abandoned building in the trees, and the pattern of snowmelt revealed what looked like a track or lane winding around the hill.  Maps at the site of the battle revealed that the Pike itself had followed that same roundabout route back in the day, before roadbuilding equipment allowed them to straighten it up the other side of the hill.  

Just south of Staunton, Virginia, heading south on I-81, if you’re alert you can see just off the interstate to your right a beautiful stone bridge with tall, slender arches of remarkable elegance.  It is not very long, so it is easy to miss, and too narrow to have carried much of a road, so I long wondered what it served originally.  After years or even decades of wondering, I did a little research and found it carried a short branch line of a railroad long defunct.  With help from imagery on Google maps and some serious neck-craning searching while driving along the parallel U.S. 11, I found I could track the embankment that stretched several miles through what now is largely pastureland.  Why would I bother?  Because The Old Road reveals something of the history of the land and its inhabitants even when it is not a road at all that has been supplanted by the modern.

The prophet Isaiah tells us that Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plain. (Is 40:4), and that will be a good thing because the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh together shall see.   Modern highway construction techniques accomplish more than Isaiah could conceive in his wildest dreams, and new wide, smooth roads get more of us to where we are going, faster, and more safely too, at least in some ways.  But the Lord Himself reminds us that the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.  For the gate is narrow, and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.  (Mt 7:13-14).  To take our minds off where our car is taking us in that moment, and direct our thoughts rather to who we are and where our life is going, it can help to be attentive to The Old Road. 

Monsignor Smith