Letters from Bishop Bartosic

I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
On the day of our baptism, we were immersed in a mystery. The stamp of three Persons in one God was imprinted on our flesh. 

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. 
The word “father” does not appear in today’s 1st Reading, but “Father” is there, right under our noses. In order to discover him, we are placed in Eden with Lady Wisdom. Who is she? She is “poured forth” prior to creation… so, oddly, she is not part of creation, but also oddly, she is not the Creator. With her we witness the first days of the world. Lady Wisdom plays before God, who delights in her like...wait for it...like a father with his child. God can’t be “father” without offspring: “Lady Wisdom” is a very early appearance in Scripture of the figure of Christ, eternally-begotten of God. “...playing before him all the while,” she invites us to rediscover the innocence of childhood. Creation, and we, depend on a creator who is (astonishingly!) Father in a sense never dreamt of before the Son “poured forth” his life on the cross; before that centurion exclaimed, “Truly, this was the Son of God!” (Mt 27:54) 

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. 
The Son peeks out at us in the 1st Reading; the Spirit peeks out of the 2nd. Do you believe in the passion, death and resurrection? Faith in Jesus gives us peace with God, hope of glory, and fruitfulness even in the midst of affliction because “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

I believe in the Holy Spirit. 
“I have much more to tell you,” Jesus says, “but you cannot bear it now....when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.” He means the truth about God, and so, the truth about ourselves. We are invited into that eternal embrace evoked in the first reading. The Spirit is the bond of love between Father and Son; Christ’s promised gift which allows us to call out “Father!” to God, and be telling the truth. Throughout our lives, we go further up and further in to the great mystery. The Spirit tells us what we need to know, as we are able to receive it. 

 

Most High Lord, Blessed Trinity, rekindle in us faith in the work of your hands, awaken in us the hope of sharing in your glory, teach us how to adore you and to love one another. Let your grace come, let this world pass away. Be all in all. Amen!

 

On May 13, conditions were exactly right for a clear view from the Dan Ryan of Chicago’s entire downtown, cropped just above its midriff by a very low ceiling. Cool. That same phenomenon, but in reverse from an airplane window? Way cool. 

Do you know about the Hustle up the Hancock? It’s a thing. That skyscraper has the best view, IMHO, although its tallest-in-town status is long gone. Once you get to the top, one is so dazzled by the panorama that the grinding, hypoxic climb it took to get there is almost forgotten. 

Almost, but not quite. Each day is like that climb: it has its weight, its mundanity. Thank God. The ordinary stuff is essential to the Christian life. There’s no view without the 93 floors holding it up. “Why are you standing there looking at the sky?” the men in white ask the apostles on behalf of Jesus. They get sent back to Earth. We all must commit to the mysterious tug of forces that govern the world and which largely escape us. Our entire history is like a fine net through which human freedom must make its way, not without getting stuck or wounded. It’s tempting to want to escape the everydayness of life on Earth as if it were a cancer or a defect, as if the encounter with God could be achieved without the slow, sweaty climb. It can’t. There’s no substitute for getting in your daily steps with Jesus. 

Disciples carry in their flesh the heaviness of Earth; we carry it with smiling perseverance until the end. The ascension of Christ is not only his disappearance from this world; it is his promise to be with us every day until the end of time. Since that night in Bethlehem, humanity must not imagine itself abandoned to its fate; never again can the humbler circumstances of our existence be understood as foreign to the will of God and to his plan for sanctification of the world. Only occasionally will we catch a thrilling glimpse of heaven. 

What God willed by giving life to the world, what he accomplishes by paying the price on our head with his own life, and what he brings about by calling us to join him as “the firstborn among many brothers”—these are all elements in the one plan of love. Do we think only a few specimens of humanity are singled out to reach the top? Do we dress holiness in a fancy costume and put it on a pedestal? Does it seem like a dangerous contagion, something exotic, for the sifted few but not for us? No. We are all called to rise. 

Okay, I confess: I’ve never hustled up the Hancock. I take the elevator. But that doesn't work for the important stuff.

“I am going away.”

Where goes he, and why? Well, to heaven, obviously. Holy Scripture speaks often of heaven as the dwelling place of God. It’s in the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven. Although since ancient times it has been clear that the firmament, that thing above us with its galaxies and gravitations, stars, nebulae and black holes, is not the heaven we understand as the home of God; nevertheless, there is no better word or image for the “place” from which comes God’s call to us than that all-encompassing heaven above us, with its unfathomable distances, its beauty, and its mystery. 

More recently, we have discovered the universe within. No less fascinating, no less vital to our survival, and in its way, no less beautiful. Take mitochondria. Mitochondria are the power generators inside us. They are to cells what suns are to solar systems. They’re so small, 2000 of them live in a single liver cell, which is almost three times smaller than the width of a human hair. We would die without the billions of mitochondria in our body. 

With the help of technology, we can peer into the universe above and into the universe within, but God lives beyond the reach of technology; if that were not true, God would not be God. No universe, not even the universe of our imagination, can contain God. In fact, it’s the other way around: the universe is a mote in God’s mind; an idea he has and “puts out there.” As St. Paul says in the First Letter to the Corinthians, “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him, this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”

And why? One thing that has been revealed is that heaven is a place fit for us. Since the incarnate, resurrected Christ ascended to the Father, followed by his Mother, heaven needs to be a place where humans can exist. That wasn’t the case before the ascension. 

That discloses something about who we are. Made for a place we’re dying to know. Discovery! I am home to billions of organelles called mitochondria which make it possible for my body to run on what I eat. I have never seen one, but an histologist from the 1850s discovered them. The truth about me is better than anything I could make up: invention pales in the face of discovery. The same is true of where Jesus is going. We’ll be at home there to the degree that we have come to believe in a destiny that is God’s free gift, and have responded to the gift by following the giver. 

We’ll just have to take his word for it.

Little things got under my parents’ skin. Leaving toenail clippings on the bathroom  floor. Putting the temple tips of glasses in your mouth. The 1st Reading reports Paul  and Barnabas returning to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch: Luke tells us “They  strengthened the spirits of the disciples and exhorted them to persevere in the faith.” It’s a bit like Father checking in on a couple he married after the honeymoon is over.  Love, and the Devil, are in the details.  
It is in Chapter 13 of John’s gospel that Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. Then, having  heard the chilling prediction that one of them would betray Jesus, Judas sets out into  the night to do the deed. Then happens that of which we just heard: Jesus  commanding us to love one another. There’s a lot going on in Chapter 13.  

The love of Jesus comes from his Father. Jesus calls us to live it in concrete choices  made for the good of our neighbor. This is revealed to the disciples through Jesus’  calling them “my children.” We should allow ourselves to be touched by these words,  for they are words filled with tenderness. However, they also show that Jesus speaks  with authority, for he speaks them in the name of his Father. Love is the Father’s  commandment, issued by the Son, binding on all God’s children. But can the human  heart be commanded?  

It can, by a lover. Someone whose love for you is unquestionably true will command  your heart, and your freedom will be strengthened, rather than diminished, by your  obedience to that command. The Church appears in Revelation today as the beautiful  Bride of Christ. Her teaching on marriage flows from this image of Christ as  Bridegroom. It is the origin of the provocative words on family life to be found in St.  Paul, which are echoed by St. Augustine centuries later, in his prayer, “Give what you  command, and command what you will!”

The reproach of Jesus later on that night (the night he was betrayed) is full of longing:  “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” (reported in the Gospel of  Luke). That detail (a kiss) drove the dagger further into Jesus’ heart. There is deep  sadness tinged with hope in Jesus’ reproach. Maybe Judas will see the absurdity, and  repent.  
Everyone is called to become holy, not by escaping the world but by transforming it  through those little, daily choices to love God and others. Details. It’s in our best  interest to invest heavily in some little things, and to declare war on other little things.  Which are which? What to affirm, what to amend? Ask Jesus. He knows and loves  better than anyone. He is supremely sensitive to the little things. 

In Lisbon for World Youth Day in 2023, Pope Francis called out, “Todos, todos, todos!” God loves every single one of us: todos. Each of us is named and called by God to know and love him in return: todos. Since God loves us so, we respond by sharing the truth of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection with all nations: todos. God wills that todos be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tm 2). 

That shepherd has died. The world awaits news of a new shepherd. If we want to deeply appreciate why Jesus calls himself a shepherd, it helps to recall something that everyone who listened to Jesus knew. Yes, sheep are cute. But for all their charm, there is something else. Twenty years ago some Turkish shepherds took their eyes off their flock while they had breakfast. Bad idea. First one, then nearly 1,500 sheep of that flock jumped off the same cliff, 450 of them to their death. One after another. 

In antiquity, a shepherd was a robust, fearless man who protected his sheep from thieves, wild animals, and from themselves. In the evening, he would corral his flock with the sheep of other shepherds. This allowed the shepherds to rest in shifts. The following morning, the sheep self-sorted upon hearing the call of each shepherd. Each sheep knew one voice. Each knew its man and walked behind him into the new day. 

The comparison is not tremendously flattering. Were Jesus preaching here and now to city-dwellers, he would doubtless choose more familiar metaphors, but the message would be the same: we need to be guided toward the right choice. The options are too complicated, relative to our weaknesses, for us to find our way alone. With Christ leading us, we are not condemned to wander in circles, or in danger of jumping off a cliff. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff comfort me.”

One day we will be held accountable for our choices, for who or what we have followed; on that day we will find that the sheep and the goats play on separate teams. Which team do I join? Do I let the Lord work in my life to prepare me for fellowship with him, or do I resist? When he encountered resistance to Jesus’ basic commandments, our late Pope spoke in words that cut like razors. To be human is to make important choices. Choices have consequences. People can be invited—challenged—to choose well. You can even beg them. But you can’t force a person to choose the right thing. Even God can’t do that. Do we then choose the whole on his terms according to Christ’s command, to follow where he, the Good Shepherd, goes? That’s the question. 

“We gave you strict orders, did we not, to stop teaching in that name? Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and want to bring this man’s blood upon us.” Reminds me of Mary Lou, who once told me that her tombstone would read: “My sins on him, his blood on me.”

The mission of the Church is to bring that man’s blood upon all of us. Jesus bled and died to save the world from sin. He said “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you.” Our mission is to mark every person in the world with the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. 

Acts of the Apostles portrays disciples who are vigorously dedicated to that holy task in the face of great opposition, all the time. Their about-face is spectacular. What the Holy Spirit can do in the hearts of all-too-human beings! How did they get to be so brave? The Gospel shows us that it was not an easy journey. The disciples needed each other, and in a very special way they needed their leader, Peter. 

Shortly after the Lord’s resurrection, at the end of the beginning of the story, Peter is hanging around as if he had nothing to do. He finally tells the others, “I am going fishing”—and like lemmings the others get into the boat with him. It’s as if Jesus had never asked them to leave their old life behind and become fishers of men. Of course they catch nothing. There’s no life in our old life: no fruit to it. New wine needs new skins.   

Of all the disciples in that boat, it’s the beloved disciple who first recognizes the man on the shore as Jesus. John who stayed close by on Calvary, John who outran Peter on Easter morning on the way to the tomb: it is he who recognizes him and calls out to the others,  “It is the Lord!” 

But John is not the leader Jesus chose. It is Peter who jumps into the water and swims to shore. The others hold their breath. Their leader had denied the Lord three times on the night of his trial. Was Peter's sin irredeemable? With that triple question, “Do you love me?", Jesus probes Peter in a very sensitive spot, cauterizing the wound of Peter’s triple denial. As Peter answers three times, the apostles understand that Peter is forgiven, healed, and entrusted anew with shepherding the Church. From now on, Peter will be the fearless leader from whom we hear in today’s 1st Reading. And the others will follow him. They, and we with them, will “bring that man’s blood upon the entire world.” 

On the Feast of St. Matthew in 1953, the 17-year-old Jorge Bergolio (Pope Francis) met the risen Christ. Coming out of the sacrament of Confession, his heart was pierced. It was the gaze of Jesus on him, and he experienced this gaze as one of tender mercy. In memory of this event that signified the beginning of his total consecration to God, Bergolio chose as his motto the words of St. Bede about the conversion of St. Matthew: miserando atque eligendo: “by having mercy, by choosing him.”

St. Thomas had a similar experience. It is the Sunday after Jesus’ death.The upper room is sealed like a tomb. The disciples hiding there are as good as dead from despair over the death of the Messiah in whom they had placed all their hope. Dead from shame because almost all of them had abandoned the Lord. Dead from fear of the Jews. But Thomas is not there. 

In the heart of this tomb flickers a glimmer of light. Strange news is whispered. This morning, Jesus’ tomb was found open. Empty. Some women said they had met him, risen from the dead: the disciples did not believe them. Their hearts were on lockdown. Trauma does that to you. No heart, no belief. And suddenly Jesus stands there in the midst of them. “Peace be with you.” But Thomas is not there. 

The five wounds that had been inflicted on him, the Risen One solemnly shows to his friends. They bleed no more, they hurt him no more. They are trophies of his victory. By his wounds we are healed. And then: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you!” And then, breathing on them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.” But Thomas is not there. 

When they tell him what happened, he will not believe them. We get him. We must see, we must touch. For many of us, we believe because our parents passed on the faith to us. These days it is clear that this is not enough. Without a regular, personal, persevering encounter with the living Jesus, we will fall away. We encounter Jesus 
differently than in those first days after the resurrection: in Scripture, in private prayer, in a loving family life. But especially, we touch Jesus’ mercy in his resurrected body, like Thomas did, and like the 17-year-old Jorge Bergolio did. 

In the Eucharist we touch Christ. In Reconciliation we allow ourselves to be embraced and restored by him. Our late Holy Father constantly urged us to know the mercy of God, and for that we need a heart. Not a heart like Thomas’s before he saw and believed, but like his heart after he touched the risen Christ. Like the bride in the Song of Songs, let us seek him whom my heart loves. May he envelop us in the river of his mercy. Let us be Thomas, until we cry out like him, “My Lord and my God!”

 

To whom does the Risen Christ first appear? It depends whom you ask! The evangelists give different names. Mark reports that two women named Mary and one named Salome “...went out and fled from the tomb, seized with trembling and bewilderment. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” But it wasn’t because Jesus had appeared to them. All they had seen was an empty tomb, and a young man in white who told them that Christ was alive. If some New Testament scholars are right, Mark originally ended his gospel, the first written of the four, right there at 16:8, with a cliffhanger. 

Does the news ever make you want to turn tail and run for your life? It’s then that you have to remember that you were grafted to the risen Christ at baptism. You entered the Kingdom of God. In his 2024 encyclical, Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis writes: “When our hearts are united with the heart of Christ, we are capable of the social miracle of building the Kingdom of God.” It is easy to be discouraged by what we see happening in the world. Discouragement is nothing new: the disciples were devastated by the news that reached their eyes and ears during the last days of Jesus’ earthly life. But we know something they didn’t know, at least not at first. 

The first words of Mark are “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Mark 16:8, when the women turn tail and run, is the end of the beginning. It remained for these women and many others to have a personal encounter with Christ risen from the dead. The other three evangelists write a whole lot more about that part. The encounter with the living Christ created in these first disciples an penetrating sense of belonging and an acute awareness that, instead of living for themselves, they would offer themselves in service to a mission that would reshape the world forever. 

The 2000-year-old drama reacquaints us with the wound in Jesus’ side, piercing his heart: the drama tears open the veil and reveals a love that is boundless. We. Meet. Him. Even though his love for us proved to be the death of him, God has not written us off. Through us—the members, his Body, the Church—Christ still heals the sick, gives sight to the blind, and raises the dead. A disciple knows this. A disciple is always on the lookout to live this. Easter is the joy of coming home; of becoming what God has always intended us to be, a family. It is the joy the first disciples experienced again, after being scattered in the aftermath of Good Friday. 

When I was Chaplain in Division Nine of the Cook County Jail, I was sent to inform a detainee that his brother had been killed. I remember his youth and his tattoos. As I spoke to him, I learned that his mother had died of an overdose when he was eleven. He was vague about a shadowy father. Some months later, I learned that a woman who overdosed on a bus without identification, whose picture was in the news, was his sister. 

I didn’t ask why he was locked up, and didn’t get to know him well. I pray for those I meet along the way, and as I do, I wonder: was he a good thief, or a bad thief? 

There was a crowd around Jesus on that day in Jerusalem, acclaiming him with the waving of palms. They knew about him, but it’s clear that they did not know him, or the cries of praise would not have turned into howls of hatred. The crowd that a moment ago had acclaimed him would not then have demanded his death. 

Jesus condemned, stumbling, humiliated. Nailed, crucified between two criminals and crying out loudly: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Unnailed, wrapped in a shroud, and laid in a tomb hewn out of the rock. Then comes the silence of the great Sabbath. 

Within this silence you wonder: “Am I a mere spectator, or am I an actor in what is happening?” In the Passion of your King, have you a role? Are you one of those disciples who jockey for a better place at the table? Or rather, are you Peter, boasting to Jesus of your courage and loyalty before ultimately barking at the servant, “Woman, I do not know him”? One day, we are the “good” thief who consoles the shipwrecked Messiah: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Another day, embittered by the intractable hypocrisy of the world, we can claim some of the snarling contempt of the “bad” thief at Jesus’ other side. “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”

Whatever your part in his Passion, rejoice today that your King died for you. It was not for those other people, but for you, too, that he begged, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” In his death on the cross, he took you with him. Along with all those other sinners, and people who can’t win for losing, he brought you to the Father’s side, palm in hand, to acclaim your King. Don’t be left behind. He claims his city: this city is Jerusalem. This city is your heart. Open wide the gates!

Jesus is the only begotten, eternal Son of the Father. Luke points out that Jesus knew Lazarus was going to die, he knew when Lazarus died, and he knew what he was going to do about it. And yet he weeps. Jesus is deeply troubled by Lazarus’ death: he emits a gut-wrenching groan. The word in Greek is splagchnizomai. Luke uses the same word to describe the feelings of the father of the Prodigal when he sees his son, far off, coming home. 

Whatever you might be going through today, or this week, or this year, your God has walked there ahead of you. It did not break him. These are funny times we live in. We think of ourselves as very scientific people. Reasonable. Problem solvers. But we live in a culture enslaved by its feelings. Virtual rants. Road rage. Relationships rising and falling on our feelings about them. It doesn’t have to be that way. As a human being, Jesus integrates the feelings. He has them, but they don’t control him. 

There’s something bigger than his feelings going on here. Jesus knows this was not part of the plan. Toothache. Global poverty. Death. Jesus knows what is responsible for all of it: sin. So he enters into the pain. Today the depth of our Lord’s feeling for human loss is laid bare. Is his cry from the gut in anticipation of the price he will pay to redeem that loss? Maybe. 

St. Augustine notes that Jesus raises 3 people from the dead. There’s Jairus’ daughter. There’s the son of the widow of Nain. Then, there’s Lazarus. He is the only one who is named. Jesus knows everything. What was he weeping about? Because this was his friend. “They get themselves into these situations!” he might be saying to himself, as in another place the gospel reports that Jesus was “deeply troubled,” “for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” He weeps for it; before he became man he knew what sin does to the sinner, but now he knows what it does to humans who love the sinner.

Sin chills the heart. Habitual sin presses down on the human person the way the earth presses down on Lazarus in his grave. So Jesus cries out in a loud voice. He shouts. St. Augustine, who had been a habitual sinner, speaks of himself when he says, “It takes the voice of Our Lord to penetrate the stone heart of one who is resisting, one enmeshed in sin.”

Finally, note that Lazarus is raised by Jesus, but it is for those others standing around to unbind him. They stand for the Church—Christ’s body, weeping for the sins of its members, working to roll back the sad consequences of sin.

The theme of light leading to vision pervades the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Saint John addresses this theme through the story of the healing of the man born blind. For symbolism and hidden meaning, the text is one of the richest of Jesus’ healing stories.

It is only when the blind man recognizes Jesus as Lord that he finally becomes a man who sees. Only those who believe can say that they truly see. This is more or less the overall message of John’s Gospel. At the end of the story, Jesus makes two enigmatic statements, which in light of this miraculous healing we can understand more easily.

The first: “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” In other words, there is a way of seeing the world that the world does not know; and, on the contrary, there is a worldly blindness that can lead to spiritual vision. 

The second, confirming that first statement: Jesus says “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.” This is his response to the Pharisees’ retort: “Surely we are not also blind, are we?” Here, a new element comes into play. Seeing and not seeing is not only a question of the physical senses and of knowledge, but a moral one. We are capable of making choices that lead us into the light, or on the contrary, making choices that, little by little, lead us not only to a distorted relationship with the world and others, but even to becoming darkness ourselves. 

Remember this dramatization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTsRVYq9JOQ of how two American heroines broke through the blindness of one of them? It was nothing short of a miracle. The vision Jesus speaks of is not a natural faculty, but a miraculous gift of God, predicated on our recognition of our natural blindness. Our way of life can positively or negatively influence our capacity for knowledge of reality and discernment of truth. We only see the appearance, the outer shell of things, but we don’t know their name: we don’t know what they mean. Faith offers us the humility to step back from our misleading perceptions. Only God knows how to see things as they are. If we too want to see well, we must enter into God’s gaze upon reality, and that is a gift for which we can ask with confident hope.

This is the upshot of our journey this Sunday: do we want to see clearly? If so, we will allow ourselves to be pierced by the light of Christ which illuminates, purifies and saves us.

This year, St. Josaphat Parish has the great privilege of welcoming Ada and Wyatt into the Church at the Easter Vigil on April 19. We’re celebrating the Scrutinies with them. The Scrutinies are rites of the Church celebrated for those who are preparing for baptism. You are invited to be there at the 10:00 am Mass on March 23, March 30 and April 6.

Although the term “scrutiny” frequently refers to something to be endured, like when your compulsive boss goes over your work with a magnifying glass, the Catholic Scrutinies are rites of self-examination and repentance. They help the ‘Elect’ to uncover all that is weak and sinful in their hearts, so Christ can heal it, not unlike the examination of conscience that all of us should do daily until we die. 

Today, the first Scrutiny proposes the story about the meeting at Jacob’s well between Jesus and a woman from Samaria. “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” she says. She had come looking for physical water, and found instead the spiritual water that she was thirsting for without knowing it. In truth, although the story recalls an actual encounter between a Samaritan woman and the Lord, at a deeper level this woman is us. All of us together. She is the Church. The Lord is her bridegroom—the one who can make her happy. After their spiritual “tryst” at the well, she forgets her water jar in her haste to make him known, and he is no longer hungry! 

Sin’s first trick is to take away our taste for the water that is Jesus. You’ve begun to die of thirst, and the enemy tells you to slake it with poison. Remember, the Devil disguises himself as a friend. Jesus intuits the woman’s backstory, and gently worms his way into her confidence, until she trusts him enough to tell him the truth about herself: “I have no husband.” That is all Jesus needs. By inspiring in her the courage to be honest about her brokenness, the Lord opens her heart and mind to God’s merciful love for her. By the end of the story, she has become a missionary! In this scene from Wim Wender’s “Paris, Texas,” I hear an echo of this famous encounter at the well. 

Spiritual thirst is a “God-shaped hole” (Blaise Pascal) in each of us. Thirst is a good thing as long as we let it lead us to God. Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves spinning our wheels. “...the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Jesus is coming for you, Ada and Wyatt! And for the rest of us, too. Please pray for them, and come to their baptism on April 19!

A couple members of my family are Lord of the Rings fanatics who seem to look upon  our Church and its faith with contempt. It’s ironic, because LOTR could only have been  written by a devout, practicing Catholic. 

J.R.R. Tolkien, the author in question, is the founding-father of 20th century fantasy. He  shows in his essay “On Fairy Stories” that those tales, by their very nature, are a  reflection of our good news; that the Christian gospel is the origin of the fairy tale as a  literary genre. 

Elie Wiesel (who was not a Christian) once said: “God created men because He loves  stories.” Fairy tales amaze us because they awaken in us, through their magic, the  desire to believe that the material world is not only intelligible—science proves that—but that it has meaning that transcends science. In a good story, the world is so made that all the good, the bad, and the ugly can be reconciled into something not pretty, but beautiful. It encourages us to believe in happy endings. These elements are the basis of the biblical story and of faith in Jesus Christ as the world’s Lord and Savior. 

That is the message of the readings today. They tell us to look up! It is a good and  salutary thing to be amazed by the stars, by a promise for the future, by the idea that  one is called. Paul tells us our citizenship is in heaven. Moses and Elijah make an  appearance, discussing with the hero the peril he is going to encounter along the way.  He is revealed to those who thought they knew him, in a scene that probably inspired  the death of Aragorn in LOTR: “Even as he took her hand and kissed it, he fell into  sleep. Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked  on him in wonder.”  

We can get tarnished over time, by the very real challenges of living in a good, but  fallen, world. Tolkien has something to say about that, too: 

Our story begins and ends in joy. “There is no tale ever told that men would rather find  was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its merits.”

We are used to the idea that the devil can tempt us, unless we already believe the lie that he does not exist. But why does Jesus, who is God, expose himself to thoughts  and desires coming from the evil one? Saint Augustine offers this: “In Christ you were  tempted, because Christ received his flesh from you, to offer you salvation.”

It’s important to note that Christ allowed the devil to tempt him. We know that the  devil's wings are clipped by God. It's clearly stated in Saint Paul: “God is faithful and will not allow you to be tempted beyond your strength, but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it” (1 Cor 10:13). 

How did Christ react to temptation?

 

First of all, notice that it does not present itself early on in Jesus’ journey through the desert, but only at the end, when Jesus begins  to be hungry. It’s when we think we have overcome the ordeal, when we think we  “have it in the bag” and relax, that the tempter steps in. 

Second, notice that in order to tempt Jesus, Satan puts on a friendly face.

1) Hungry? Be good to yourself... 
2) Want to make a difference? Worship me... 
3) Can I show you a short cut? Throw yourself down from the temple... 

Satan’s favorite disguise? That of a friend. As with Adam and Eve, Satan does not  discourage Jesus at all; on the contrary, he proposes a plan better than God's plan. This is the heart of the matter and the heart of the temptation.

 

Consider three strategies for overcoming temptation: 

One: together with Christ, face the hard fact of the desert. I noticed this during the pandemic: the reaction of many was anger… as if to be exiled from our little oasis were some outrageous deprivation of a basic human right. Wrong! A lot of life is a slog. Heaven comes later. Get used to it. 

Two: Never argue with a crazy person. Note Jesus as he refuses to respond personally to the demon. If you know that you will be vulnerable in a particular situation, you avoid putting yourself there; or, if you cannot avoid it completely, you avoid putting  yourself there alone. Jesus responds to the Devil’s chatter with his own quotations from Scripture, neutering the Devil's. 

Three: Look into your heart. See what is happening there. Learn to know yourself in truth; learn how God speaks to you, allowing yourself to distinguish the devil’s attractive nonsense from the true consolation of the Lord. If we persevere through Lent practicing this with courage and humility, the devil will give up (for now), and around us the desert will be changed into a garden.

Ash Wednesday is this week. Be bold! Risk keeps Christianity from becoming bland. “If  anyone would come after me,” Jesus proclaims, “let him deny himself and take up his  cross and follow me” (Mk 8:34). The saints remind us that the love of the Lord  engenders bold dreams for the individual and for humanity as a whole. 

Once upon a time, to claim Christ as Lord was to risk execution. In Lent, we commit  ourselves to a free and loving participation in Christ’s passion. We renew the baptismal  commitment to die with Christ in order to rise with him. Live this Lent! Decide, among  other things, to commit to three traditional disciplines. Three “works” intimately linked  together in the sense that they all aim to set us free. Each one is an exercise in self forgetfulness, through which we empty ourselves of ourselves in order to clothe  ourselves with Christ. 

Fast. Christian fasting evokes the expectation of the Lord’s return. Physical and spiritual  emptiness nurture in us a hunger for the great heavenly feast. When we fast, we bow  before the Lord, recognizing that we are made for him alone. Limiting our consumption  of food and drink also has obvious health benefits, but beyond that, a true Lenten fast  also declares our solidarity with the poor. 

Give alms. Genesis says that all of creation is good: yet Jesus warns us not to be  possessed by our possessions. Use your goods in a more social way, as a means to love  and serve. The call of Lent is radical: “Go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and  come, follow me” (Mt 19:21). Along with the rest of the St. Josaphat community, give  prayerful consideration to supporting Catholic Relief Services and the Little Sisters of  the Poor. 

Pray. Fasting and almsgiving spring from and lead to prayer. Dare to pray more  intensely this Lent. The Gospels show us that “alone time” with the Father was key to  his understanding of himself. We, too, are sons and daughters! Your “yes” to dedicated  prayer during Lent will necessarily mean that you will take the risk of saying “no” to  something else. Our Lenten Lights, on Tuesdays at 7:00, offer you a great way to say  “yes”! 

“Can you drink from the cup that I am about to drink?” (Mk 10:38), Jesus asks. Drink  deeply from what he offers. His cup is deep: full of risk, full of grace. From it flow the  strange signs of holiness. When we drink from it, we begin to die to self, but we also  begin to live a new life.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus presents the demands of Christian life: love your  enemies, do good to those who hate you. To him who strikes you on one cheek,  turn the other cheek. A mountain suddenly seems to have risen before us: a  holiness mountain, beautiful and desirable, but a mountain nonetheless, steep  and daunting. And here we are today at the foot of a wall, ridiculous little dots in  the face of immensity, already convinced of failure. The enemies of Christianity  know this well—always ready to mock the gap between the demands of the  Gospel and our own poverty.  

 

However, it is the Lord who calls us to holiness. As a good mountaineer, he  invites us to study this mountain to find the path most suited to our abilities.  Holiness is not a wall to be climbed by brute strength: it is a path. A path  personalized for us. A path mysterious to us but not to Jesus, who accompanies  us and respects our pace. 

 

This path is the long march of the human race. Today, David is tempted to kill Saul, his madly jealous king and erstwhile protector. But in David’s heart, another voice speaks: Do not kill him! It will take the coming of the Lord himself, in our flesh, for us to understand that every man is the anointed of the Lord; that every human being, even the most deformed by sin, is sacred because of God's love for him/her. 

 

Here is the bewildering paradox: Jesus does not ask us to climb a mountain of  holiness; he asks us to come down. For if there is a mountain, proud and  forbidding, brothers and sisters, it is us. It is us when we refuse to forgive those  who have done us harm, thus chaining them to their fault. It is us when we do  unto others only so that they may do unto us. Jesus went before us. Jesus came  down first. He emptied himself, taking the condition of a slave (Phil 2, 6–8). 

 

He calls us to follow him. Do you see the footprints in front, descending? We  who condemned him, he loved to the point of giving his life. Forgive and you  will be forgiven! He forgave us on the cross, we who nail him there with our sins.  Pray for those who slander you! Today as the Resurrected One, Christ prays to  the Father for us who slander him so often, so that none may be lost but all may  be saved. Yes Lord, I will follow you down. Be praised, you who came to join us at the lowest point to raise us with you to the highest, at the right hand of the Father, in glory.

We are more familiar with the Beatitudes according to St. Matthew than St. Luke. You hear them at funerals. In Matthew, the Beatitudes are the prelude to what is called the “Sermon on the Mount”—because that’s where Jesus does his teaching. In Luke, from whom we hear today, Jesus comes down from a mountain, stopping on a flat piece of land, where he teaches not only his disciples but also a great multitude of Jews and pagans who had come from all over.

Jesus comes down from this mountain, as Moses once came down from Sinai, to meet the people of God and to communicate to them what he had received from his Father. He is not alone, he is accompanied by the Twelve. Together they form the seed of a church sent to bring the Gospel to the Jews but also to the non-Jews, an important difference for Saint Luke.

Another important difference: In Matthew, Jesus speaks generally: “Blessed are the poor.” Saint Luke, on the other hand, carefully notes that Jesus raises his eyes to his disciples at the moment of speaking. In Luke, Jesus gets personal: “Blessed are you who are poor.” The poor are there before him, listening.

Sounds nice, right? But wait: another difference is that Luke’s account includes four curses that you don’t find in Matthew. Is Jesus still addressing his disciples when he pronounces the curses? The text does not tell us that he turns his gaze away from those he loves. The curses also are personal. Woe to you who are rich! Woe to you who are filled now!

There’s no doubt that at the wedding feast, the poor, the little ones will have first place. There’s a beatitude for the poor, for those who are hungry, for the afflicted. The materially poor, the physically sick, tug at Jesus’ heart.
But! There is a whole world to evangelize. What about the poor in faith? The poor in virtue? Do they tug at Jesus’ heart? Perhaps, for Jesus, you couldn’t be any poorer than pagan. To be excluded from the Chosen People. “Oh, there are all kinds of poverty,” says an old nun to a young noblewoman ready to give up all, and join: “including the most miserable. And with that kind you will be filled.” It’s in George Bernanos’ “Dialogues of the Carmelites.” Giving away our money doesn’t make us holy. It takes a sensitivity to one’s own poverty, whatever shape it takes. That will make others’ poverty, whatever shape it takes, tug at our heart.

The world on February 16, 2025 may be an opportunity for conversion for us. Yes, the poor can rejoice, because Jesus sends them brothers and sisters to raise their eyes to them, see them, love them, and supply their need.

First you get caught. Then you are sent. That is one way to look at the entire sweep of what we call Salvation History. The truth of the human person is that after years and years of practicing the faith, we can find that our relationship with God has scarcely developed beyond where it was when we were children. It can stay in the shallows. In Scripture we hear the voice of the Lord saying, “put out into the deep!” A richer relationship with God, rooted in the Scriptures, breaks open and expands our capacity to know the majesty, the beauty, the glory of who God is. That’s how we get caught.

There are two time-tested ways of signaling your willingness to be caught. Getting familiar with them is a lifelong process. In Lectio Divina, you engage deeply with a passage from Scripture in order to better absorb the story. You read it twice. If you’re lucky enough to be reading in a group, you share the impressions made on you by what you read, allowing others to glean something new and perhaps unexpected. You glean something from those others, too. Lectio Divina helps its practitioners to uncover a personal connection to what they’re hearing or reading, to discover what the Lord is saying to them.

Another approach, Ignatian Contemplation, calls you to use your imagination and memory when you engage with a passage from Scripture. St. Ignatius asks you to place yourself in the scene: what sights do you see, what sounds do you hear? What would Jesus have said to you, had you been there? What would you have said? What side conversations might be going on? The engagement of the imagination in one’s faith life is extraordinarily freeing, but not simple. It takes a lot of faith to believe that God can be found in all the details of life. “Jesus cares about each and every thing I do,” a young priest once said to me. Throughout the gospel, a faithful heart draws Jesus, the living Word, closer. He speaks directly to that heart.

St. John the Serene (9th c) says of Jesus, the Light of the World: “When this light begins to shine upon the man who sat in darkness and the shadow of death, in the darkness of evil and the shadow of sin, he is shocked.” All three of the protagonists in today’s readings were frightened by the “deep water” of an intimacy with God of which they had not previously been aware. With God’s grace and Jesus’ assurance, Isaiah, Paul and Simon can persevere precisely because they acknowledge the fact of their sinfulness in the presence of holiness (I had something to say about this last week in my column). Not to worry! Jesus says, the moment Simon notices his weakness. The Lord jumps in: “Do not be afraid,” he says, “From now on you will be netting men.”

First you get caught; then, you are sent.

 

We celebrate the Presentation of the Lord this weekend. Forty days after his Nativity, Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple to do what the Law prescribed. A priest named Simeon was on duty there. When he saw the baby with Mary and Joseph, he knew that this, at last, was the long-awaited Messiah. He uttered the prayer we know as the Nunc Dimittis: “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace...” (Luke 2:29)

What a thrill it must have been for Mary and Joseph to have their son recognized by a priest they had never met, and by Anna. Yet it was just one of many signposts along the way, in between the difficult parts (like giving birth in a stable), pointing to their boy as the Son of God. The signposts confirmed for them that their entire story was securely held in the strong hands of the Father. Nevertheless, a shadow surely fell across their faces when Simeon turned to Mary and said “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted – and you yourself a sword will pierce...” (Luke 2:34–35).

Seers like Simeon can’t be tamed. We should never expect a prophet to be tame. The Presentation resonates in the hearts of parents who have sick children, or who discover in their child some special need or developmental delay, or who are victims of even more tragic circumstances. The news is not always good. Of course, one need not be a parent to know the shock of the piercing sword. Many good people have experienced it, often without a moment’s notice. But signposts led Mary and Joseph not just up to, but also through those difficult parts. Our metastory tells us that good can come out of anything, even something catastrophic. One beautiful, classic rendering of this theme is Sheldon Vanauken's autobiography, A Severe Mercy. Vanauken’s “Simeon” was the English writer, C.S. Lewis, whom he met while studying at Oxford. Every Christian struggling to reconcile the fact that bad things happen in the lives of good people should read that book.

Remember the end of today’s verse: “...so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” The idea of redemptive suffering is just that—an abstract idea—until the sword pierces your heart. Do you trust God with everything? In every circumstance? Mary’s pain was the world’s salvation. For those who have known the piercing of the sword of tragedy, it may take a long time for peace to return, or for anything to make any kind of sense. But Christian faith gives direction to suffering, or it is not the faith of Christ.

Want to explore the faith a bit more, to see what I’m talking about? Consider attending our winter-spring Alpha course; or if you have already done so, consider helping out on the Alpha team. More information on that in today’s bulletin.

I was astonished. In the course of a conversation with my mother, I had mentioned the fact that I didn’t get into Notre Dame University. We were speaking together maybe 30 years after I had received the rejection letter. It wasn’t the fact that she remembered the essay, or her casual use of the word “dumb” to describe it. Mom was always right about things like that. It was because when all was said and done, she had let me send in the application as it was, without forcing me to change it. She had let me fail. 

There is something of that—something of the bird fledging her chick—in today’s Gospel. They have no wine. The Lord’s response to the Blessed Mother is rich: there is a kind of divine indignation in it; the same indignation one hears in his reply to her 18 years earlier (Luke 2 41-51): Why did you search for me? Did you not know I must be in my Father’s house? (Who are you to tell me, the Only Begotten Son of God, what to do?) But today, we also hear very human apprehension, absent from the earlier exchange. “My hour has not yet come.” It is the hour of his Passion that the Lord references here. He’s not ready to become famous; not ready to begin the cat-and-mouse game with the Scribes and Pharisees, which will lead him to Calvary. Jesus is 30 years old and not ready to leave the nest. Mary will have none of it. She leans over the Only Begotten who has just tried to shush her, and says to the servants, Do whatever he tells you. What an act of love—to fledge your child. 

What an act of love on the part of the Lord: to submit himself to that very human experience. Jesus has a lot to learn about life on earth, if he is to go deeply into it. Like, for instance, the fact that 12-year-old human children shouldn’t stretch their wings too much, too soon. Like the fact that, on Earth, wine at weddings is not an insignificant detail that can be easily dispensed with. Like the fact that we are susceptible to the temptation to sit on the sidelines forever. These last 3 years of his life will teach him a lot about how to love with a human heart. Here at the beginning of the year, let’s recommit ourselves to watching and listening to him. 

On today’s feast one year ago, Pope Francis queried the crowd gathered for the Angelus in the Piazza San Pietro: ...am I aware of the immense gift I carry within me through Baptism? Do I acknowledge, in my life, the light of the presence of God, who sees me as his beloved son, his beloved daughter?

It’s an important question. Baptism puts us into relationship with God and with each other. Meet your brother Tomás Diaz: he is a Texan, a theologian and an educator. In an article in The Lamp, Diaz introduces himself as born with a genetic disorder that has wasted his voluntary muscles. Weakness defines my life, he writes, going on to make the extraordinary declaration, and that’s not a bad thing.

Diaz describes a last-minute decision to live on campus during his freshman year in college. His frightened parents moved in with him, showering and dressing him, until a friend stepped in and his parents stepped out to watch from afar. As my disability entered into the lives of others, he writes, those lives were given the opportunity to change, to transform. The parent knows this intimately – children are born and they must (sometimes against all odds) become strong. The very weakness of these little growing persons makes the parents’ strength. The children, and their littleness, give birth to the parent’s greatness. I became such a little thing, a kind of midwife of the strength in my teachers and friends.

Dependence bringing to birth the strength of those around us: Diaz could be talking about Baptism. Christening makes us dependent upon Christ. In Baptism, what is ours becomes his, what is his becomes ours, up to and including his dependency. Chief among the things we know about Jesus, thanks to the Gospel, is his awareness of dependence upon the Father: Son is both who he is called to be and what he is called to do. We are truly Christ-ed, to the degree that he not only permits us to call his Father, our own; in fact, he teaches us to do this.

So, a Christian cannot understand herself without reference to Christ. Nor can she understand herself without reference to her neighbor, those others who belong to Christ: those who, through him, with him, and in him, have also become sons or daughters of the Father and therefore, her brothers and sisters. Each one with his or her weakness, but:

Of course, the “he” written above refers to the Christ: but we know the Messiah is depending on the members of his body to carry his work forward.