We got an inkling of “things to come” with the election of a Pope Francis.  Much fanfare was made of the fact that he is the first pope not from Europe in something like a thousand years.  It’s a big deal that Jorge Bergoglio is from the “Global South”. Some of us remember the 1978 election of John Paul II as the first non-Italian pope in something like 600 years!  My numbers may be off, but you get the point. As with everything else, times are changing dramatically and certainly aren’t what they used to be!

But are we still just tinkering with superficials?  Has our new reality truly sunk into our bones?  Francis is still a first-generation Argentine born to Italian immigrant parents. He looks and speaks like he belongs in Rome.  Similarly, it is easy for me to go to Christ the King in Minneapolis and be proud to see an African-American man among the Eucharistic Ministers or two or three kids of color among a flood of white in the “Children’s Liturgy of the Word.”  I can just as smugly feel content with how “progressive” we are in south Minneapolis.  Despite the election of the first pope from the Americas and the objective fact that our parish truly is exemplary in its faith-justice ministry and populated with bright, generous, committed people of faith it is easy to remain oblivious to a bigger reality.

John L. Allen, Jr. writer for the Boston Globe (recently from National Catholic Reporter) grabbed my attention with a current article titled: Catholicism growing in heart of the Muslim world.  Here is a sample of what he reports:

The typical Christian in the world today isn’t a middle-class white male in Dubuque pulling up to church in his Lincoln Continental. She is an impoverished black mother of four in Nigeria, or a Dalit grandmother in India, or an exploited Filipina maid in Saudi Arabia. They often face hardships that are hard for most American Christians, accustomed to material comfort and lacking any real experience of religious persecution, to fathom.

Whoa!  Despite the “progress” represented with a pope from someplace other than Europe and more serious discussion of changing demographics, my lived experience simply is not consistent with, nor am I really cognizant of, the reality of the church in which I claim to find my home.

Allen cites evidence that flies in the face of conventional wisdom: Catholicism in the early 21st century is growing by leaps and bounds in the heart of the Muslim world.  Acknowledging that Christians are fleeing the Middle East in droves – Christians now make up only 5 percent of the region’s population, down from 20 percent a century ago – the Arabian Peninsula is seeing one of the most dramatic Catholic growth rates anywhere in the world.

The expansion is being driven not by Arab converts, but by foreign ex-pats whom the region increasingly relies on for manual labor and domestic service.  Allen notes that Filipinos, Indians, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Koreans, and members of other nationalities are becoming the new working poor in some of the world’s wealthiest societies.  Allen incisively observes:

Despite the triple handicaps of being poor, lacking citizenship rights, and belonging to a religious minority often viewed with suspicion, these folks are trying to put down roots for the faith, and having some surprising success.

Isn’t that the way it’s really been from the beginning?  Isn’t there compelling evidence throughout church history to suggest this is the way the Spirit of God typically works?  Does this not give fresh impetus to the passage Pope Francis proposed for his Lenten exhortation: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich (2 Cor 8:9)

What is a Catholic Christian from Dubuque – or Minneapolis – to do?

_____________________

You may read John Allen’s Boston Globe article at: http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/03/08/catholicism-growing-heart-muslim-world/LxIiUYwSlro7Zl6ugvVQJM/story.html

Familiarity may well be our greatest obstacle in understanding the Gospel for this first Sunday in Lent – the three temptations of Jesus.  We are easily inclined, and I have preached many a homily from this perspective, to transpose the three temptations to ourselves in an attempt to decipher their analogues in our own lives.  That’s harmless enough, potentially beneficial. However, scripture scholars better versed in all this than me suggest this is not what this Gospel writer had in mind.

Today’s rendition of Jesus’ familiar temptations in the desert is from the Gospel of Matthew.  Although the account also appears in Mark and Luke, Matthew’s gloss suggests he had clear and particular intentions.  Matthew’s underlying  purpose and distinctive proclamation in today’s Gospel is not primarily given as a lesson plan for avoiding sin we’d be wise to adapt to our lives.  Rather, Matthew wants to introduce Jesus as our “new Moses”, one whose mission is consistent with, and a grace-filled manifestation of, the Law and the Covenant God has made with a Chosen People.

Therein lies the first point I really need to remember: It’s not primarily about me!  Much of my prayer is really introspective if not navel-gazing.  That’s okay I guess, harmless enough.  One of my Sinsinawa Dominican teachers in grade school told us “prayer is like parting our hair – P, A, R, T!  The four purposes of prayer are Petition, Adoration, Reparation and Thanksgiving.” We are in the picture somewhere with each, but more and more I recognize that prayer isn’t primarily about me, my needs, my aches and pains, my will for the world.  If I really came to know who is this Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel, all my individual stuff would fall quickly into place.  That’s a Lenten meditation I would do well to take with me for the entire forty days!

Another unique twist Matthew gives to his use of the temptations story is his addition of night.  Mark and Luke have Jesus in the desert for “forty days”.  Matthew places him there for “forty days and forty nights.”  If we were doing Scriptural exegesis we would analyze how this gloss enhances Matthew’s presentation of Jesus as the “new Moses.”  Our purpose, rather, is prayer and deepening our spiritual lives during Lent.  Let’s pay particular attention to Matthew’s addition in that light, from the perspective of our prayer – what if we consciously brought “night” into our Lenten awareness?  What does night conjure for you?  Is it filled with worry, restlessness and nightmares? How might this inform our spiritual practice this Lent?  Where is God in all of this? Is night a time of rest, intimacy, dreams?  Where is God in all of this? How does this shape our Lenten prayer and practice?

Another observation about today’s Gospel comes from its placement in the life of Jesus.  All three synoptic Gospels are consistent in placing Jesus’ forty days and nights in the desert at the beginning of his ministry.  The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ inaugural address, but his period of prayer and fasting clearly catapulted him into a ministry of healing, teaching and feeding all who were in need.  Rather than looking backward in our lives with a focus on faults and failings, or applying this Gospel as if it were a lesson plan or Lent were a self-improvement program – let’s keep our eyes squarely on our future. Where is this season of renewal, repentance and reformation meant to catapult us?  What mission does God have in store for us as individuals, families, communities or congregations?  To what brokenness, blindness or hunger are we being sent to respond in our future emboldened with Jesus’ Good News?

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I am inspired by Patrick J. Willson for this reflection: Feasting on the World, Year A, Vol. 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. pp. 45-49.

This is not an easy post to write or to read.  The topic is complex, embedded and painful. Nonetheless, it remains of vital importance and demands serious attention.  Three events have suddenly converged to dramatically change the sort of “kneading bread” that is done on this site.  I am talking about the shameful perversion of power and malevolent clericalism of the Catholic Church.  Clergy sex abuse being only its most insidious expression.

Within the last month, the Archbishop of MSP and former Vicar of the archdiocese lost their legal appeals and are now required to give deposition under oath regarding the manner in which this scandal has been addressed in MSP.  Pope Francis made uncharacteristically defensive and insensitive remarks on the topic of sex abuse in an interview with Italian and Argentine journalists.  The National Catholic Reporter published an editorial this week excoriating these remarks and insisted that the Pope’s considerable personal charm and pastoral charisma no longer suffice for clear and bold leadership on this issue.

These three headlines would be enough to prompt some comment.  However, they are not the three events that have catalyzed these remarks. No, these have been personal conversations that I have shared with three people in which the pain and stain of abuse reverberates decades later.  One conversation was with a woman who was abused as a minor by her parish priest. Another was a daughter who spoke of the devastating consequences childhood abuse from a priest had upon her deceased mother and how this remains a lingering pain within their family.  The third involved a man who was abused by his religious superior decades ago.  All expressed in some personal way how bureaucratic defensiveness and self-protective denial by church authorities, as well as the harsh adversarial nature of civil and church legal processes, have resulted in “re-victimization” erecting a huge impediment to truth-telling and emotional healing.

The editorial in NCR by priest and canon lawyer Thomas P. Doyle rightly observes, “In his interview with Corriere della Sera Wednesday, Francis sounds like he is reading from a script that should have been abandoned years ago.  In that  interview Francis asserts: “The Catholic church is maybe the only public institution to have moved with transparency and responsibility … No one else has done more. Yet the church is the only one to be attacked.” The pope’s fellow Jesuit and major media guru for all things Vatican, had this to say on Twitter: “@ThomasReeseSJ: For pope & bishops to say that sex abuse is worse in society is like a cheating husband telling his wife that other men cheat more.”

Father Doyle’s editorial in the current National Catholic Reporter was even more scathing:  Unfortunately Holy Father, the Catholic church has not moved with transparency and responsibility. It has done just the opposite. Whoever prepared the pope’s briefing papers on the sex abuse issue ought to be fired. … The victims and people in general don’t need any more proclamations telling them what they already know.  There is only one category of response that is acceptable and that is decisive action. No more secrecy. No more denials. No more self-praise and above all, no more tolerance of bishops who have spent millions of donated dollars and Euros trying to preserve themselves at the expense of their victims.

The rank-and-file Catholic in churches, teaching in our schools and staffing an impressive array of social outreach sees reality for what it is and knows the truth!  Doyle’s editorial reiterates this fact: The survivors of abuse and countless others from the church and from society in general have been waiting for three decades for evidence that the institutional church “gets it.” There not only is no real evidence that it has, but from all appearances the hierarchy will remain on the defensive, hoping the problem will go away.

Doyle concludes: There will continue to be change and progress in the world-wide efforts to bring healing and justice to victims and to force the church to be accountable but the agents of this will continue to be the same ones who have been forging the way since the beginning: the survivors and their supporters.

In this I hear a faint echo of salvation history tenaciously proclaimed in our Scriptures: salvation comes from one who identifies with and indeed becomes poor, humble – and dare I say it – victim!

In this alone lies our ultimate hope.
_______________________________
Thomas P. Doyle’s March 6 editorial in the National Catholic Reporter is available [here].

Sun still unsure of its own potential floated through muslin curtains on the morning of April 6, 2013.  It was Saturday after a typically intense week at the hospital.  Savoring the beginning of an entire weekend off, I indulged the freedom knowing another chaplain would be carrying the on-call pager.  All this made morning rituals more intentional, deliberate, delectable.  Winter remained stingy in yielding its persistent fury but evidence of Spring’s maturing self-assurance was mounting.

Coffee drunk and paper read, I straddled the granite counter preparing raisin bran and orange juice.  An unanticipated brightness washed over me as I sliced the banana atop my cereal.  Yesterday had not offered an end of week let-up in patient visits. This morning I was finally able to attend to the fact that the day before, April 5, had been my mother’s birthday.  Slicing bananas, preparing breakfast, the world’s woes securely held at bay – as she had done so many decades before – I was surprised with her unannounced presence.

Transfixed, I once again became the four year-old impatiently standing next to the kitchen table as Mom portioned out the Cheerios and insisted on pouring the milk.  With skill mastered over many years of feeding a hungry brood, she sliced half of a banana atop my bowl. “Mom, I want the whole thing!” I protested according to every child’s prescribed script.  She knew her lines by heart, “No, Richard.  You can have your share, but you have to leave some for the others.” Again, according to well rehearsed ritual I sulked and ate my breakfast.

A mother’s love washes over you every bit as much at 62 as it does at age four.  Putting the knife down on the granite counter-top, I stepped back and savored the moment.  Yes, I was deeply grateful for this unforeseen intimacy.  I acknowledged my mother’s matter-of-fact and unpretentious love lavished upon an insatiable child. Moreover, I was deeply grateful for a mother who unceremoniously taught me one of life’s most enduring and essential lessons: yes, we are each entitled to have a share but we must leave some for others!  I remain hungry for such wisdom and maternal direction to nourish my body and soul again and again.

Mom always trucked us off to church and would have made sure we got our ashes on Wednesday.  So of course she comes to mind this week.  My conclusion is that Pope Francis has nothing over on my mother!  The pope cited Saint Paul for his pre-Lent exhortation: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). We should remember that Paul was writing to the Christians of Corinth to encourage them to be generous in helping the struggling folks in Jerusalem who were in particular need. Like me, can’t you just see Mama Bergoglio instructing her young son, “Yes, Jorge, we are each entitled to a sufficient portion but we must share with others so they have enough too”?  

On this Friday in Lent I am grateful for the half of the banana I did not get!  I am indebted to parents who somehow made sure we had what was sufficient but never so much we thought we didn’t need to share.  I love a mother who pretended she actually preferred chicken wings when she had a family to feed and in so doing opened the Eucharist to me.

Isn’t this what Lenten fasting and abstinence is meant to kindle in us?  Lent is not a self-improvement program or about spiritual perfection – Lent is our school of love.

Thanks, Mom, for “mothering” God to me.  This Lent I can only hope to do as much and as well.

During these early morning hours the house is quiet and dark, except for the whoosh of the furnace pushing off winter chill.  So early, Jeb the Dog remains content, nestled in his kennel.  Pouring a second mug of French Roast helps me get in touch with myself, caffeine rewarding a familiar routine.

This morning I am feeling the warm reassuring presence of my big brother.  Not the iconic hero of my youth but the reformed Jerry, the mature man, the less imposing elder transformed – not defeated – by Alzheimer’s.  It is not grief, though his funeral last July is still fresh in all of our memories.  This morning, this day, right now, I feel profound gratitude that he remains my big brother.  In his earlier years he could appear to be a know-it-all – a deeply ingrained trait common among the males of my family.  Age, catalyzed by thirty years working a 12 Step Program, transformed him into the go-to-guy for me and so many others.  The young Jerry would have craved this role, his older “redeemed self” attempted as best he could to deflect, diminish, dismiss it.

It’s not been an easy winter!  The very idea of “spring-forward” this Sunday amid the harshness outside suggests more that we’ve all collectively endured a psychotic break with reality!  Closer to home, we have had just too many deaths this winter – many of our parents’ generation but also friends in their 50s and one as young as 43.  People who are especially dear to us struggle with addictions, parenting, careers, debts, you name it.  As is often true, T.S. Eliot says it best:

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter…

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation…”

Amid it all, savoring coffee, hearing Jeb the Dog upstairs shaking off a winter sleep, there is the warm reassuring presence of my big brother.  The “redeemed” Jerry had a mantra he seemed to incessantly prescribe for all the world’s ills – “Life on life’s terms!”  He used to drive me nuts!  How could anything be so univocally diagnosed, treated and resolved?  Now, from the perspective of early morning darkness I find myself again acknowledging his sage advice and grateful for the consolation of his reassuring presence.

Jerry’s mantra brings me back to my deepest spiritual  roots and what Ignatius of Loyola referred to as the First Principle and Foundation.  In essence, Ignatius observes that we are much better off if we hold ourselves in a sort of balance, or in equilibrium, as far as we are able before everything that life deals us.  Why?  Because everything, literally everything, holds the potential – through God’s merciful grace – to bring us to fuller life.  Our only desire or choice should be whatever disposes us more and more to God’s deepening life within us.

Ignatius claimed this as his Principle and Foundation.  T.S. Eliot escorts us through rough terrain to much the same conclusion in The Journey of the Magi.  My big brother tried as best he could each day he woke up to Alzheimer’s to accept life on life’s terms!  This transformed him!

Jerry had another refrain which he was equally wont to say: “Works if you work it; doesn’t if you don’t!”  Sage wisdom from the go-to-guy in my life and the lives of many!  I need to work his program.  “Love you, bro!”
___________________
T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Journey of the Magi can be enjoyed [here].

Regulars may recall that I’m part of a three Tuesday evening program at Wisdom Ways, Storying & Re-Storying.  Last evening was our second gathering, the one I was most eagerly anticipating because of our topic: Finding Words for Grieving, Dying and Death.  No, I am not frozen in grief.  But, I have had my share.  As Ruth Coughlin so aptly put it, “All you need to do is go through it once, just once, to get it.”  Julian of Norwich suggests “we stand in the mingling of belief and despair” all our lives.

My sister, Karen died of a horrific sinus cancer at 58 in 2005.  She is one of five siblings to have died.  My parents are gone.  Surely, life has dealt me my fair share of other hurts and losses which I have had to grieve.  But none is as lingering, persistent and deep as the loss of Karen.  I do not know why.  I no longer try to explain it.  I live with it.  Even last night, my eyes welled with tears.

In the first writing exercise I fumbled around with the conundrum that is grief…

Ponderous absence
Dense hole
Smothering nothingness
Fulsome emptiness
Glaring void
Impenetrable hollowness

If only I could pack enough imagery around the experience it would take shape – meaning, perhaps.  That is my unrequited hope. “All you need to do is go through it once, just once, to get it.”

I was given the beginnings of two poems.  The first…

Stays with you.
Doesn’t go.
…
Stay with it.

The most profound gift of the evening was the second poem.  I am certain it will be ruminating with me throughout Lent.  Here is a first flush:

The angel said, “He will save his people from their sins.”
Greatly troubled, she replied, “A childless mother?”
Demanding: “How can this be?”

“NO!” she shrieked, quaking.

And the curtain in the temple was rent.

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I dedicate the second poem to Katherine, who gave me the image of the “childless mother.”

Julian of Norwich: “The mingling of both well-being and distress in us is so astonishing that can hardly tell what state we are in.  But the fact is, that is part of being whole.  We stand in this mingling all our life.”

Cited: Grieving: A Love Story (1993) by Ruth Coughlin.  New York: HarperPerennial, pp 8-9.

Jackie is a friend whose family I have admired for about fifteen years.  Sadly, they have endured too many tragic deaths.  She has lost her mother and both sisters to breast cancer.  Her husband died within the last couple years from ALS.  Jackie is a strong woman of faith.  As a teacher in a Catholic high school she is precisely the sort of role model we would want for our kids.  She walks the talk!

I was grateful to have run into her at a recent fund raiser for Loyola Spirituality Center and for the chance to have coffee yesterday.  Hearing stories of her family’s loss and personal grief, I imagined this is what Gethsemane feels like; this is what standing at the cross looks like.  There was laughter, funny stories, sharing of photos and fond recollections too.  But there was no disguising the truth of our lives.  We were sharing our stories – sacred stories.

Jackie is working-up a one-week unit on church history for a class she teaches and asked, “Who are the great people of faith my students need to know about?  What are the really important stories?”  It would be easy to defer to the obvious, the familiar, iconic figures long dead.  But is that what taps the imagination, idealism and energy of adolescents?  Yes, it does!  But aren’t they moved more by surprise, the unexpected, the contemporary?  In a culture where fully one-third of young adults claim no religious affiliation and many students at church-affiliated schools come from “non-practicing” families, Jackie’s question takes on fresh urgency.

I eagerly shared my personal favorite without a second thought – Christian de Cherge and the Trappist monks living among a Muslim nation.  The ghastly story of their kidnapping and death in 1996 was popularized by the movie, Of Gods and Men [trailer].  A gripping biography, The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love and Terror in Algeria by John W. Kiser (2002) is available on Kindle.  Christian Salenson’s 2009 Christian de Cherge: A Theology of Hope (2009) ranks among the most significant books I have read in the last ten years.

Christian de Cherge lived in Algeria for a few years when his father served as a French army commander.  He returned, as a seminarian, to fulfill his military obligation.  It was then that he met Mohammed, a devout Muslim and father of ten children. The friends shared many conversations about God.  Once when accosted by rebels, Mohammed defended Christian as a Godly man and a friend of Muslims.  The thugs withdrew but Mohammed was found the next morning near his home with his throat slit. This Muslim’s ultimate sacrifice transformed the young seminarian’s faith and propelled his lifelong pursuit of Christian-Muslim understanding and dialogue.

This “dialogue” was much more than talking and certainly no esoteric theological disputation.  Rather, the dialogue came of itself, the fruit of living together with Muslims over a long period of time. …We avoid theological discussions because they lead to intellectual sparring that gets in the way of getting to know one another.  All the little daily gestures of goodwill speak for themselves.  Sharing our water, a piece of bread, a friendly handshake says much more about what we can do together than do theological tomes (Kiser 67-68).  Aren’t we all capable of and called to such dialogue?

Thus, we begin Lent.  Sharing our stories – sacred stories.  Recognizing that we are gifted, blessed and grateful, we console one another standing at the cross of one who paid the ultimate sacrifice of human love.  We share coffee, a piece of bread, a warm embrace saying much more than any theological tome.  Our time, our lives, our loves, a world of sorrow – called to conversion.

Yesterday I was on the receiving end of a one-two punch.  Admittedly, I need one of these from time to time.

For decades I have recognized a core character fault: I have a propensity to hide behind a mask.  I have playfully referred to this disguise as my “carefully-crafted, polished public persona.”  At one time it was even a “carefully-crafted, polished priestly public persona.”  In certain roles it can take on specific traits such as in  my “carefully-crafted, polished pastoral public persona.”  Though I’d like to believe I am eligible for an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role, I suspect family and good friends recognize when I flee behind my protective self-defense.

The Enneagram is a model for better understanding human personality distinguished for its system of nine interconnected personality types.  I have been aware of it for decades but it never really captured my interest or fascination until last year.  During my 12-month chaplain residency it provided one of those infrequent but life-altering “Oh, my god!” moments of self-recognition.  Those who use the system only need to know I am a “Three, with a Two wing” and you have all you need to know to have me figured out.

We “Threes” really like our masks and will always try to be in control of our situation, public image, even other people if we are able.  I need to continually attend to this character flaw lest I become truly obnoxious!  One helpful tool is a daily EnneaThought emailed by the national Enneagram Institute.  The one that accompanied early morning coffee yesterday packed a particular punch:  Notice if you are cultivating a professional friendliness or energetic perkiness that substitutes for real intimacy and connection. Can you be more real? Am I really so obvious? The message carried quite a wallop – Punch One!

About an hour later one of my favorite blogs, Creo en Dios! arrived in my emailbox.  My dear friend, Susan Stabile, had spent the day before with the Dalai Lama visiting MSP for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Forum sponsored annually by Gustavus Adolphus College.  Susan paraphrased the Dalai Lama’s opening remarks:

“…when he was young, he thought of himself as first Tibetan, then Buddhist, then Dalai Lama, but that now, he sees himself first as a human being. His earlier way of thinking was one that emphasized difference, and created an attitude that leads to anxiety and pretension. The more we emphasize difference, the more we create a we/they mentality that excludes and makes universal compassion more difficult. Seeing oneself first as a human being – as one of seven billion other human beings – reminds us that we are, first and foremost, related to each other.”

Punch Two!  The coincidence of this second message left me dazed, wabbling, nearly down for the count!

Through the rest of the day a long favorite Scripture passage gently echoed though my consciousness:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness. (Philippians 2)

All this was really too much – a one-two punch reminder for this “Three” to drop masks and my polished persona.  Be real!

Picking myself up off the mat, I feel invited to enter more deliberately into this much-needed season of Lent.  I need and invite your help along the way.
___________________
I invite you to read Susan’s entire post [here].

More than ten years ago, I was drawn to a display in the Minneapolis Institute of Art gift shop containing only exquisite items seemingly selected precisely because of their eye-catching beauty.  I was especially drawn to a collection of small pearl and gem studded silver cases.  Only a closer inspection would satisfy my aesthetic curiosity. A tastefully understated card reminded me that these works of art were mezuzah cases.  You may know that a mezuzah is a piece of parchment with verses from the Torah, Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21. These verses comprise the Jewish prayer Shema Yisrael, beginning with the phrase:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶ Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. ⁷ Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸ Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, ⁹ and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.   

Observant Jews affix a mezuzah to the doorframe of their homes to fulfill this mitzvah (Biblical commandment). I remain envious of this practice for the way it expresses the disposition of their hearts.  Only my conviction that to co-opt the practice would be disrespectful and pretentious kept me from splurging on a mezuzah for my front door.

Near these exquisite items were other superbly crafted boxes with the Hebrew צדקה carefully imprinted on each.  Most were wood or ceramic, not nearly as precious or exceptional as gems and silver.  Of the five or six there for inspection, I was immediately drawn to the hexagonal piece adorned with delicate, hand-painted blue and pinkish-orange “forget-me-nots.”  Lush green and metallic gold leaves supported the flowers all set on a neutral cream base and covered with a protective coat of varnish.  A coin slot in the top introduced me to the ancient practice of tzedakah boxes.

Tzedakah [tsedaˈka] in Classical Hebrew – thus the צדקה‎ painted on the exterior – literally means justice or righteousness.  Tzedakah is different from charity because tzedakah is an obligation and charity is typically understood as a spontaneous act of self-chosen generosity. In Judaism, tzedakah refers to the religious obligation to do what is right and just.   Unlike philanthropy or charity, tzedakah is a religious obligation which must be performed regardless of financial standing because it is grounded in care for the community and concern for the common good.  This practice seemed something I could respectfully adopt and the flower-festooned box has occupied a conspicuous spot in our home for more than ten years. Our favorite distribution of its contents is to give the coins, and a random bill from time to time, to a friend who in turn gives them to her synagogue for their pre-school education program.

Today in many Catholic churches around the country, folks will be encouraged to pick up a Rice Bowl for their kitchen table where coins can be collected and we can be reminded of the scandal that is world hunger.  We do this as expression of our three-part observance of Lent: prayer, fasting and alms-giving.

It is truly right and just for Christians to remember the devout traditions grounding our religious practice and to express respect for our observant Jewish neighbors on whose strong shoulders we continue to stand.

Three local college students were tragically killed last evening when their SUV slid out of control on an ice caked highway and was broadsided by an oncoming truck.  I am still trying to reconcile a self-congratulatory report that Wells Fargo was the nation’s most profitable bank in 2013 with the news this week that 203 local Wells employees are losing their jobs because of a downturn in mortgage refinancing (remember the old business model where people were more important than profits?).  Last night I bought a sympathy card to send to the family of a woman who died at age 43 from mental illness.

Such troubling stories provide the context from which I read the Gospel we’ll hear in church tomorrow:  “…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”  Excuse me!  Does anyone here remember the Great Recession of 2008-9, Hurricane Sandy or see the blood-letting in Syria or the Ukraine?

It’s so easy – and futile – to get caught up in subjecting our Gospel to such reality testing and miss the point.  Obviously, there must be something more going on!  The only sense I can make of it is the complete opposite of simply dismissing the text as irrelevant.  Rather, we need to go deeper, think more broadly and look more carefully.

First, remember the big picture!  It’s important to remember that Jesus’ teaching is given as part of his Sermon on the Mount.  We can “proof-text” virtually any opinion we want if we simply pull a verse out of context in the Bible.  We can misunderstand, if not misinterpret, Scripture’s meaning if we hear stories isolated from their original setting.  Sermon on the Mount… Jesus is addressing those who are quite aware of their need, anxieties and vulnerability.  He points out that we cannot live with divided hearts.

Jesus invites any who would listen to a life – a full, human life – of discipleship. Rather than an admonition, Jesus expresses empathy, understanding: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Therefore I tell you…”  For personality types like me, we might not even make it to the either/or, God or money part.  Serve?  I want to be in control and pretend that I can go from disposing of one challenge after another.  It takes me a while to allow Jesus’ words to penetrate my hardened self-sufficiency.  What a burden it is to think I need to be God!  Jesus’ counsel: “Give yourself a break – don’t pretend!”

Perhaps the school of hard-knocks is the only teaching that will bust through human arrogance and self-sufficiency.  Last week I painfully endured a PBS special on the manifold scandals in the Catholic Church, clergy sex abuse being only one.  As reprehensible as the facts appear to be, this is the Church I love.  I am ultimately hopeful because hard-knocks have taught me this is likely the excruciating price the Catholic Church must pay to break the shameful perversion of clericalism!

I pray this weekend that our bishops truly hear the Word of God: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and [power]. Therefore I tell you…”  Perhaps this needs to be one of every Catholic’s primary prayer intentions during Lent.

We should remember Jesus is now preaching to us this weekend – inviting we who are quite aware of our needs, anxieties, painful tragedies as well as our primordial will to power – to even deeper discipleship.  Jesus points out what our lives confirm — we cannot live with divided hearts!  We have ultimate confidence because we may rest assured Jesus’ heart is singular in proclaiming a God who is caring, compassionate and, thankfully, the one in control.