Fourth Week of Lent

Lenten reflection:

April 1, 2025

Today, April the First, on many calendars will be marked as April Fool’s Day, an occasion to play practical jokes on one another.  Some have said it is a day to remind us what we are like the other 364 days of the year!  It goes back centuries this tradition of playing tricks or games on others, making jokes, making fun of – in a light-hearted way.  But not always.  To be made to look foolish can be an awful feeling.  One usually doesn’t want to be seen as a fool.   Calling someone a fool was a serious offense to Jesus

Yet St. Paul called himself “a fool on Christ’s account.”  In his First Letter to the Corinthians he is concerned that the new converts are having a difficult time accepting the message of the cross and letting go of worldly wisdom, the insights and strategies that lead to power, success, and honor in Corinth

“. . .Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness for Gentiles, but to those who are called – Jews and Greeks alike – Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (I Cor. 1: 22 – 25)

What is the wisdom of God that may appear foolish to our contemporary culture?

• Perhaps, “But many who are first shall be last, the last shall be first.” (Matt 19: 30)
• Perhaps, “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .” (Matt 5: 3)
• Perhaps, “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.” (Matt 5: 44)
• Perhaps, “Give to the one who asks, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.” (Matt 5: 42)
• Perhaps, “If I, therefore, the master and teacher have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. (John 13: 14)

A prayerful reading of the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of St. Matthew (Chapters 5, 6, and 7) and of the Last Supper in St. John’s Gospel (Chapter 13, verses 1 – 15) may suggest to you how you too can do something foolish for Christ this Lent.

April 3, 2025

We are more than halfway through Lent and draw closer to the celebration of the Paschal Mystery culminating in the Resurrection of Jesus.  This coming Sunday’s Gospel reading from St. John (chapter 8, verses 1 – 11) offers us a challenge and an encouragement as we continue our forty-day journey.

The setting is the Temple in Jerusalem where Jesus has been teaching the people.  Several religious leaders interrupt him by bringing a woman who, they say, has been caught in adultery.  They want to test Jesus publicly.  Will he uphold Jewish Law and agree that she should be stoned, or will he be his usual compassionate self and violate the Law?  Jesus sees through their conspiracy in using this woman to test him and their hypocrisy in accusing only the woman of sin.  Where is the man who committed adultery?  Why is he not accused?

Jesus bends down and begins to write on the ground with his finger and then says to the accusers, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  To their credit, they leave one by one.

Jesus and the woman are alone.  Since no one condemned her Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.  Go and do not sin anymore.”

The challenge: To acknowledge that we are not without sin.  We have flaws and weaknesses.  We tend to see the good in some people (usually like us) and the not-so-good in others (usually not like us).  The challenge: To stop condemning.  To stop gossip by word of mouth or social media.  To stop shunning.  To stop discrimination in its many forms.  The real challenge: To reach out to those who are victims of gossip, shunning, discrimination.  See them as daughters and sons of God, just as you are.

The encouragement: Jesus will not condemn us for our past failings and any in the future.   He will bless us and tell us to sin no more.  He will forgive us each time we acknowledge our failing.  Again.  Again.  Again.

Brother Joseph F. Mahon, FSC, ’62, M.A. ’63

Looking at the art:

A Pietà refers to an image of the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of her son Jesus after he has been taken down from the cross. The word comes from the Italian word meaning “pity” or “compassion.” The visual theme, which has no biblical source, appears to have originated in Germany in the early 13th century. Thereafter it spread to Italy where it flourished in the 15th century early Renaissance. Among the most famous is Michelangelo’s Pietà carved in marble and housed in the Vatican. Our Pietà is unusual in that Mary’s hands are clasped in a gesture of prayer rather than holding her son’s body, and her gaze suggests adoration more than grief. Jesus’s head bears the crown of thorns, and his emaciated torso shows the wound made by the Roman soldier’s lance. Typically, a small format and gilded Pietà like this would be found in the burial niche of a wealthy family who would come to pay respect to a deceased relative and identify with the mourning mother of Jesus. Imagine the gilded panel reflecting the flicker of candles brought into a dark niche and thus heightening the emotional content of a family’s devotion to the deceased.

Reflection

“Pity or Compassion” as Brother Leonard points out the Italian meaning of the word Pietà. This image evokes both feelings in me. Pity at the terrible death that has taken place yet a compassion in Mary’s face that seems to gather up in this tender moment the compassion we are called to as followers of the Lamb.  While it is difficult to see in this piece, we all know the image of Mary cradling her dead son in her lap, as if the sacrificial Lamb has been laid on an altar. Here, Mary’s hands are clasped in prayer adding to the image of sacrifice.  This is the in-between time. Good Friday has ended yet the Resurrection has not taken place.  What must have gone through Mary’s mind? What thoughts must she have pondered in her heart?  A parent’s worst fear is losing a child. Yet memories of an angel telling you that the child you miraculously carry is the Son of God, the one who will save us. Mary is suffering yet holding on to faith in the promise.  How hard to hold her Son and wonder if the promise is true!” Is this sacrifice the end or is there more?  If you watch the Chosen, you know that Jesus is aware of what is happening all the time, a high Christology.  As he spends time with his mother before the Palm Sunday triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, he says something to the effect of “If I could save you from what is to come, I would.”  As Mary offers back to God the child she had so wondrously received, I think that her trust in God, in the promise of the angel, birthed the compassion that we see in Pietà.  How do I live in the in-between times of my life?  How do I fit reality with the promise from Jesus that I am more precious than anything else and that he holds me in his hands never to let me fall.