Day 6, Monday, 22 February An obstacle in a blind person’s way

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 6, Monday, 22 February

An obstacle in a blind person’s way

It is good to be aware of the purpose behind the choice of readings in Lent. Why these readings today? The first is an excerpt from the law written on tablets and given to Israel. (Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18) which lays out in detail how the people were to relate to one another and ends with the ‘catch-all’ command, ‘you must love your neighbour as yourself.’ The second, the gospel (Matthew 25:31-46) written on the hearts of all women and men, invokes a blessing on all people whoever they are, ‘take for your heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world’.

Both readings give examples of relationships, the first telling us what we should not do and the second what we should: ‘Feed the hungry, welcome the stranger’. As we ponder them, we realise their relevance for today. We still have so much starvation, so many migrants. And it is good to notice things we might otherwise pass over. For example, ‘you must not put an obstacle in a blind man’s way.’ I remember seeing a film years ago, made by Luis Buñuel, in which children make fun of a blind man, putting things in his way and laughing when he fell over. It was shocking.

It was shocking because we could so easily understand what an evil thing it was to do. We might say, ‘But they were only children.’ But we know immediately that is no excuse. They should have known better. Then we might say, ‘I would never have done something like that.’ But that is the rub. That is Buñuel’s point. We do things without thinking. Many are harmful, even shocking. In our relationships with one another on the family or the work level. Or on the political or international level. We should know better.

So, we start this first week of Lent examining these readings and trying to get ‘under their skin’. What are they saying to me? Where is the invitation Jesus is making to me? What is the kind of things I do – or don’t do – that I might look at? Where should I know better?

Day 5, Sunday, 21 February

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 5, Sunday, 21 February

It was desirable

The first Sunday in Lent could be called ‘Temptation Sunday’. It is a moment to look at this experience which we have known from our earliest years. The word means ‘to test’. Like Covid vaccine. It has to go through trials before it can be used. Will it produce good results? Or like training. Time spent in training helps a soldier to be ready when the action starts.

So we get this story of the first woman and man. They were tested. Would they take the tough road of growing into the fullness of their humanity? Or would they get drawn away by something that looked ‘desirable and pleasing to the eye’ but which would ultimately diminish them. We know what they chose. It is a story (Genesis 3:1-7) to tell us how the ancients viewed our dilemma, how we refused to grow. We have a name for it: sin.

The Bible tells us of the consequences; the triumphs and catastrophes of our history then - and now. Paul’s letters (for example, Roman 5:12-19) and the gospels tell us how God saw our plight and came to rescue us. He became one of us, flesh and blood like us. He shared our thirst, our hunger, our tiredness – and our temptations (Matthew 4:1-11). He saw through what was ‘desirable and pleasing to the eye’. He refused to take that road.

He took another road, the road less travelled (Robert Frost);

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

Jesus etched it in our memory with the words; ‘Unless you renounce yourself, you cannot be with me.’ You cannot come to the fullness of life. To renounce here is to give up the easy way out. An athlete gets nohere without hours of training. A musician never develops without hours of practice. It is all testing, testing, testing.

 

We fall, we rise, we fall, we rise. Our life is to keep pushing, pushing against the wind that wants to drive us back to the easy road, the one most travelled by.

 

 

 

LENT AND GREEN TEA

 

LENT AND GREEN TEA

As soon as we hear the word ‘temptation’ – and the first Sunday of Lent is all about temptation – various thoughts come to mind. We have our own private versions. And there are known varieties common to all of us. But what we could perhaps look at are the hidden ones; things we are not even aware of. Doris Lessing, in her autobiography, Under My Skin, speaks of the attitudes of most whites to blacks in Southern Rhodesia in the 1940s. Those whites seemed to be totally unaware of the numbing impact of their attitudes not only on black people but, in a different way, on themselves and the possibility of their having a future in the country.

Decades later, we can see all that clearly. But can we allow that we too may be the victims of attitudes we are not aware of now? The media influences us and we can choose those channels of information that reinforce our way of thinking. It can be extremely difficult to wrench ourselves out of views we are comfortable with and face alternatives.

Members of my family fought and died in two world wars and, growing up, I unquestioningly adopted views about the people they fought. Over the years I have been tempted – that word again – to continue to view the world in terms of ‘them’ and ‘us’. A moment of awakening came when two planes appeared in the sky over New York on 11 September 2001 and attacked and destroyed the Twin Towers. The Americans had allies and sympathisers around the world when they responded by setting out to destroy the perceived enemy. William Johnston, a Jesuit who had spent all his life in Japan, sat down with a group of his students and discussed the event while they drank green tea.

The students pointed out that 56 years earlier on 6 August 1945, another plane appeared over a Japanese city, Hiroshima, and dropped a bomb that killed 100,000 people and wounded a similar number. Both events - in New York and earlier in Hiroshima - the students pointed out, were fuelled by hatred and a conviction that ‘we are right’ and ‘they are wrong’. This attitude, these convictions, are still strong in the world today. We are tempted to cling to them because they are reassuring and any attempt to listen to the other side, to hear opinions different from ours, threatens us. We may be seen as weak.      

The Japanese students, Johnston wrote, pointed out that “Asian thought, on the other hand, was ‘grey’, flexible, tolerant. It stressed ‘both-and’ rather than ‘either-or’”. That is also my experience of Africa thought, if one may speak generally. Kenneth Kaunda saw no contradiction in being a ‘Scientific Socialist and a Christian’ – something anathema to the either-or view.

So, on the first Sunday of Lent we read how Jesus was tempted. The details given need some interpretation but behind them all is the temptation to avoid the truth. Lent is a time to face the truth – about myself, about others and about the world.  

21 February 2021        Lent Sunday 1 B         Gen 9:8-15      1 Pet 3:18-22   Mk 1:12-15

Day 4, Saturday, 20 February

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 4, Saturday, 20 February

Your light will shine

The opening days of Lent are dominated by the words of Isaiah. ‘If you do away with the yoke … your light will rise in the darkness’ (Isaiah 58:9-14). You make a choice and it has good consequences. Your emphasis is on the process not on the result. The poet T. S. Eliot says,

Take no thought for the harvest,

But only of proper sowing.

 

In other words, focus on what you are doing without thinking of what you will get out of it. Pope Francis puts it another way: ‘Time is greater than space.’ Don’t think of owning a big house, a nice car, a lot of money; do what you are doing now with great attention and love and let the results surprise you for they will surely come.

 

Note. I worked for many years in promoting development projects. Our partners, who supported us with funds, liked ‘results-based programmes’. This is understandable because one can be tempted to simply fulfil a programme – you get the money whether it is fruitful or not - without seriously asking what impact it has. But this is not inconsistent with the words of Isaiah – or Francis or Eliot. Ignoring the probable impact is not ‘proper sowing’.

 

Our joy is in doing what we are called to do – no matter what the consequences. We may identify the call as coming from our talents, our vocation or simply God. However we experience it we have a sense that it comes from deep within. From our heart’s desire. That’s the whole point. When the disciples are curious about Jesus (John 1: 37) and want to know more, ‘he turned round to face them and asked them, “What do you want?”’ They did not know what they wanted at that point and fudged their reply by asking him a question, ‘where do you live’. And he replied, ‘come and see’. 

 

Often, we are not clear what we want. I may feel dissatisfied with my life at the moment but am not clear what I can do about it. That is where the invitation comes to us, ‘Come and see’. By the end of John’s gospel the disciples knew where Jesus lives. He lives in the Father and he lives in each of us if we ‘come and see.’ To come and see is to become clear about my own situation in life: where I stand and what I can do. With that knowledge I will soon discover that ‘my light will shine in the darkness.’ 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021 Day 3, Friday, 19 February

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 3, Friday, 19 February

Break every yoke

 

When the Jesuits first came to Monze, Zambia, Fr Joseph Moreau started to train local oxen to pull the plough. They had never before been ‘under the yoke’ and did not submit easily. Moreau wrote, ‘the oxen were fighting for the freedom of their species!’ In the end they surrendered and ploughing was quickly adopted with great results.

 

A yoke, or harness, is useful for ploughing, drawing carts and so forth but Isaiah (58:1-9) is speaking of the ‘unjust yoke’ where a person, or animal, is burdened beyond endurance. As we begin Lent, we are invited to examine the ‘yokes’ in our lives. Isaiah tells us the Lord is not interested in our prayers and fasting if we are all the time ignoring our yokes! In other words, what are the ways we burden ourselves or other people?

 

Jesus often tells the Pharisees they are more interested in how they appear than in how they are. ‘These people honour me with their lips while their hearts are far from me’ (Matt 15:8). Do we find ourselves saying prayers, reading the bible, going to Church and the rest, but not being awake to what we are doing? We burden ourselves by paying attention to the wrong things. The Pharisee in the temple spends his time congratulating himself for his way of life while the tax collector beats his breast and cries, ‘Lord, have mercy on me a sinner’ (Luke 18:9-14). 

Day 2, Thursday, 18 February

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 2, Thursday, 18 February

A Choice.

Lent wastes no time in getting to the point. It is a matter of choice. We go right back to Deuteronomy (30:15-20) written 3,000 years ago: ‘I set before you life and prosperity, death and disaster. … Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live in the love of the Lord your God …’

 

Maybe it is not so simple. I cannot choose because my circumstances do not allow me. Yet, I can always choose – no matter what the circumstances! I am thinking, for example, of people in prison I have met. They cannot choose to walk out the door. But they can choose how they will live the time that they are inside. They can choose to be hopeful, helpful to others, cheerful, patient – always ‘singing in their heart’. Or they can choose to be miserable, counting the days, nursing a grudge against someone and full of self-pity. The former can be happy, even in prison, while the latter choose to be unhappy!

 

The gospel draws us deeper into the mystery of human life. Happiness is not accumulating things, getting my own way, dominating others. Happiness is in getting out of myself and being there for others, ‘renouncing self and taking up my cross every day’ (Luke 9:22-25). Happiness is the opposite of thinking of myself and my property, my reputation, my pleasure, my, my, my! Happiness is in ‘emptying’ myself, ‘losing my life’.

 

I think we have all grasped it at times: the joy we have in giving a present, doing a job for someone without looking for payment, reaching out to someone in trouble. There are many times in which we glimpse what Jesus means by ‘losing one’s life’.

 

We have this power to choose. Everyone has it. It is the most beautiful thing about human beings. Choosing well is what makes us more human, makes us grow as people, helps us build a better family, make a better society, create a better world.

 

Enjoy the day!

RETREAT IN LENT 2021 Day 1, Ash Wednesday, 17 February

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 1, Ash Wednesday, 17 February

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 opens the season of Lent. It recalls the three traditional ways we can live this season:

·        helping others especially the poor, ‘your left hand must not know what your right is doing’

·        prayer, ‘go to your private room and pray to your Father who is in that secret place’

·        fast, ‘so that no one will know what you are doing’

The emphasis is on intimacy, secrecy and sincerity. This is a matter between you and God. You are cut off from the gaze of the world. What you do is the real ‘you’. There can be no pretense, no show. You are alone, as if you were on your own in a prison cell! Your relationship is now stripped down, laid bare. ‘Simon Peter, do you love me?’ Jesus wants the truth. The question is repeated a second time. And a third time. Peter is distraught; ‘Lord, you know everything, you know I love you’ (John 21:17).

Peter helps us. There are other instances in the gospel where he is shaken. When he sees the catch of fish, he is shocked and cries, ‘leave me, Lord, this is too much’ (Luke 5:8). Again, he reacts to Jesus’ words that he would ‘suffer grievously’ in Jerusalem in horror, ‘No, no! Let that not happen to you!’ And Jesus says to him sharply, ‘Get out of my way; you are an obstacle in my path’ (Matt 16:23). And when Peter’s courage collapses completely and he denies ever knowing him, Jesus turns and looks on him with love and understanding (Luke 22:61).

So, on this first day I can try to be honest with myself. I can try to get behind all the outward show I put on when I am with others. We wear masks on these Covid days but, in another way, we are always wearing a mask, always hiding our true self from others – and even from ourselves.

So I desire to know myself as I am known by God and come before him with truth and honesty. 

-o0o-

 

People like receiving ashes. I wonder why? The practice surely comes from the book of Genesis (3:19): ‘you are dust and to dust you will return.’ One day, I will be a handful of dust!