B - Second Sunday of Lent

 Does God test us?  Can we expect God to test us?  And why would God test us?  

We read in the Bible several stories where God tests someone.  For example, in Matthew we read of the woman whose daughter was tormented by a demon and Jesus, after initially ignoring her, finally responds with these shocking words, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”  Jesus tests the woman to see what she does or says next.  And in the story of Jairus’s daughter, who dies as Jesus delays going to her, choosing instead to cure the woman with the hemorrhage.  I suspect Jairus’s faith in this teacher and healer was shaken that day.  Or the story of the testing of Job where Job loses absolutely everything – his many possessions, his social standing, his family, and his friends. 

But each of these stories of testing appear to recede in comparison to today’s first reading.  In Genesis we read that God tells Abraham to take his son to a high place and to offer him up as a holocaust.  A holocaust was a religious blood sacrifice made for the atonement of sin.  One in which an animal was slaughtered and then burned.  God puts Abraham to the test and demands Issac his son be treated as an animal blood sacrifice.  Would Abraham, at God’s command take his own son and sacrifice him?  How does this even make sense since God had already promised Abraham that Issac would be the son who would father a nation.  How could the sacrificial victim father a nation? 

This is a conundrum.  But we read that Abraham had walked with God since his ninety ninth year. And with Abram God had made his covenant, promising that Abram would be exceedingly fruitful, and from the nations he would beget, kings would arise.  Abram, now Abraham, knew death would not, could not, break God’s covenant.  And so, Abraham was prepared to listen, and be tested. Perhaps Issac would rise from the dead allowing God’s promise to be fulfilled. 

A severe test no doubt.  But is this a test we would ever face?  The good news for us is no.  Abraham’s test was unique, such that theologians give it a specific name calling it a ‘covenant ordeal’.  Abraham had a special and unique relationship, and it was that relationship that God tested.  Our testing is different in rank and type.  God may test us to reveal to ourselves our spiritual state, or to demand of us greater humility, or to take us to a place wherein we have nowhere to go but to offer up everything to him.  Our testing is the path of purification, of sanctification, in living out our baptismal promises for our own good and for the purposes of the plan of salvation.  Our testing, should it come, is not a covenant ordeal but nevertheless it might very well be an ordeal.

God does test us, but he never tempts us. And that distinction is good to know.  For in testing we can come closer to the truths of our faith, but in being tempted we are presented with the potential to lose everything that is good and true.  God tests but it is Satan who tempts.  For God creates and establishes that which is good.  But Satan, the devil, is unable to create anything and can only corrupt what God has created.  And of course, what Satan offers may at first appear good but ultimately leads only to pain and death.

Abraham's covenant ordeal was special and unique. It foreshadowed the passion of Christ.  Issac was Abraham’s beloved son.  Jesus is God’s only beloved son. Issac carried the wood of his own holocaust.  Jesus carried the wood of the cross.  The ram was caught in the thicket, and Jesus was encircled by the crown of thorns.   Issac was bound with ropes as Jesus was fixed to the cross with nails.  God stayed Abraham’s hand but his own son he did not spare.  Issac lived to father a nation, but Jesus died to establish the greatest nation of all time – the body that is his Church.

As we walk our Lenten journey, if we are serious, we will be tested and we will be tempted.  God will encourage us towards holiness and the devil will tempt us to take another path.  God desires life but the adversary simply hates you and me and cannot stand our real efforts to draw close to God.  In the desert of Lent, we recognize what is revealed to us in the story of Abraham and Issac, and again in the blazing truth of Jesus’s transfiguration.  Jesus fulfills what the prophets spoke of and shows himself to be fully man and fully God.   In the dramatic battle for our souls our Lord prevails and offers the hard-fought results of victory to each of us. 

As we enter this second week of Lent, we press on, staying true to your Lenten commitments and recognizing God’s good work going on inside each of us.  We resist the devil’s temptations to undermine our efforts.  We draw wisdom and understanding from the story of Abraham and Issac, and we draw strength and encouragement from the Gospel story of the transfiguration. 

Above all else, we hear and obey the words of God spoken on the mount of the transfiguration to Peter, James, and John, and which are spoken to each of us today and every day, “This is my beloved son listen to him.”

Deacon Peter Bujwid
Saint Agnes, Arlington, MA.
February 25, 2024

Lectionary: 26: Gn 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18, Rom 8:31b-34, Mk 9:2-10

 

B - Ash Wednesday

Today, as I am sure you know, is Valentine’s Day and perhaps you have, or are planning to send a Valentine’s Day card.  Or perhaps you will give flowers, or chocolates to your love.   We are surrounded by the symbols of love, red hearts, balloons, flowers, poems, and so on.   But as Santa is to Christmas, and the Easter Bunny is to Easter, so all these signs of Valentines Day find their root in Saint Valentine.   Living during the dangerous first three centuries in the Roman empire, Saint Valentine was a priest or bishop who was martyred for his resolute love of Jesus and of the persecuted Christians of his day.   Under house arrest he healed the blind daughter of the Roman judge Asterius.   The judge moved by this wondrous healing asked what he should do and Valentinus, Saint Valentine, would tell him to destroy his pagan idols, that he should fast and be baptized.  Later, condemned to death by Claudius II, it is written that Valentinus would write to Judge Asteria’s daughter, the one he healed, signing the note, “From your Valentine”.   So now you know in whose footsteps you are following.

Our church grew and flourished by means of the martyrs – those willing to give up everything so as not to deny the truths of the faith – the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

My friends, we should celebrate St Valentines day, the flowers, cards, poems, chocolates are all quite lovely, but we should also be rooted in the truths of our faith, and in touch with the sacrifices the martyrs offered.  Our faith is one where the rubber meets the road and certainly is not one of pie in the sky, as some would propose.

Lent is an Anglo-Saxon word that means lengthening – the lengthening of days as we approach spring.  By it we begin to move beyond the darkness of Winter and prepare for the Light of Christ – the new dawn.  This preparation should be one where, the rubber meets the road, where we find the strength of the early church to plumb the depths of our Christian practice and to be willing to share it sometimes even at a cost.  This is our chance to take on more seriously the Lord’s instruction to be “Holy as I am Holy”.  And as Matthew tells us, to be “perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”.    We gather as a community to begin this Lenten journey.  And it is a journey since our destination should be a 40-days journey away from where we started.  Though formed into a single community we are each to take our journey personally and seriously.  The Gospel tells us how we are to do this and how this journeying is to change us.   By almsgiving we are to change how we relate to others and particularly the poor.  In prayer we are to deepen our relationship with our creator and God – the one who formed us in our mother’s womb.  By fasting we are to grow in the understanding of ourselves.  By these means we seek to make amends for our sins, to make penance, and so prepare to enter a new life.  These are three principal ways of conversion that enable us to become Holy.

This Lent think about the early church and the profound gifts they have passed on to you at such a price.  Diligently walk the Lenten journey frequenting the sacraments often.  If you have not been to confession in a while, go, since it is beautiful, and you will know that beauty. Rush to communion for this is the bread of life – Jesus fully present under the appearance of bread – this sacrament of love and a pledge of future glory.  Pray, fast, give alms, since by these we are continually converted and so ready ourselves for Easter – the promise of healing, peace, and a new life in friendship with God. 

Deacon Peter Bujwid
Saint Agnes, Arlington, MA.
February 14, 2024

 

Lectionary: 219, Jl 2:12-18, Ps 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 14 and 17, 2 Cor 5:20—6:2, Mt 6:1-6, 16-18

B - Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

As we go about our ordinary and everyday tasks and activities, as we commute to work or school, shop for groceries, or go on vacation, visit the doctor and so on, there is one thing we can be assured of, that we will not meet ourselves. We will not encounter ourselves in the other.  Certainly, there are doppelgängers, those who may look very much like us, and there are identical twins, but there is no such thing as a true double, another you.   We are not mass produced, churned out by some machine, to be similar, interchangeable, disposable.   Rather we are each fearfully and wonderfully made as Psalm 139 tells us.  Each of us is hand crafted as by an artisan who knew exactly what he wanted, and so lovingly made us in the wombs of our mothers.  

This uniqueness extends to our natural and spiritual gifts, and so by way of our very being we declare, each in our own way, the glory of God.  You and those sitting around you are profoundly beautiful; whether man, woman, short, tall, rich, poor, sick, or healthy, each is unique, each is beautiful, each deeply loved by their maker.  

Unlike the beautiful hand-crafted objects created by man, we, however, are not to be hang up on the wall as if in an art gallery, and we are not to be placed on a piano, as if a treasured family heirloom.  Rather we are to take what is special and unique about us and we are to set it running, set it going, set it in motion.   God invites us, by means of our gifts, to fully participate in life, and in the plan of salvation, as much needed agents for that which is true, good, and the beautiful.  And it is in our vocation that our special and unique gifts and talents find their ultimate and aggregate expression.  As one we are the body of Christ, the church made up of many parts.  As individuals no one else can do what we are each called to do, at home, at work, at school and in the kingdom.  Are you being called to the married and family life, the religious life, to the clerical life, to the life of service to those less fortunate? Are you called to provide material succor or to assail heaven with prayers and petitions on behalf of others?    Are you called to be a healer, or a teacher, or a builder, a fireman, or a fisherman?  For those struggling to find that vocational call Saint Ignatius of Loyola lays out a practical path to hear the voice of God.  For those who resist the vocational call we have the story of Jonah who fled God’s call to go and preach repentance to one of Israel’s fiercest enemies – the Assyrians.

Once we have a sense of our vocation, the next step is to act, to move, to go forward since the Spirit guides a soul that is moving and cannot for the one that is stubbornly reticent to do so.  In our gospel reading Simon, Andrew, James, and John each quickly responded to Jesus’s invite.  When asked to join him they did so immediately.  They like us did not know exactly the full nature of their calling, of their vocation, but trusting God they responded.  

The economy of salvation finds a vital and unique place for each of us both in the world and for the world.  Truly what we do well is done for the purposes and glory of God, and what we leave undone remains undone, since our Lord has given the unique task of your life, and my life, to no one else.  Saint Paul in his letter to the Corinthians warns us that time is short and we are to make the best use of it while we are able.  To spend it only on the affairs of the world is vanity, meaning it is passing and has no eternal value.  So, Paul encourages us to invest our time on things eternal; to preach God’s word by way of speech and example, to point out sin for the good of the other, and to share the gospel news of forgiveness, healing, and eternal life.  This we do in every vocation.

Jesus called his first disciples to a new life of possibilities, entrusting them with his Word and the work of salvation.  His call to us today is no different – let us not tarry in responding, or fear where the road may go.  Recall God’s words to the prophet Jeremiah, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”.      

Deacon Peter Bujwid
Saint Agnes, Arlington, MA.
January 21st, 2024

Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Psalm 25:4-9, 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, Mark 1:14-20