4th Sunday of Lent – 22 March 2020
Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness… Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness; for it is shameful even to mention the things done by them in secret… Awake O Sleeper”! (Eph 5:8-9; 11-12; 14)
In one of our recent weekly parish instructions on The Sacraments narrated by Father Matthew Kauth (St. Benedict Press), we cited a point from the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. In his teaching on sin, St. Thomas points out that the gravest effect of sin is the darkening of the sinner’s intellect. This is to say that the person engaged in serious sin may no longer recognize his sin, as sin. Such a person will even come to favor dark and shadowy things, just as the truth and the light of God will grow to dismay and frustrate him. If this person be of a weak nature, he will simply hide from the light. However, if he be strong, he will try to defeat the light and all those who bear it.
During Lent, in the Daily Office of the Church, we pray these words of Psalm 36: “Sin speaks to the sinner in the depths of his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes. He so flatters himself in his mind that he knows not his guilt… All wisdom is gone”. The psalmist continues: “[The sinner] plots the defeat of goodness as he lies on his bed”. What this means by way of examples is that the one who covets his neighbor’s wife plots the defeat of marriage; the one who plans an abortion plots the defeat of creation; while the one who rises early to purchase all the toilet paper in the store plots the defeat of justice!
Now the remedy for the ignorance and forgetfulness brought on by our sins is found in Psalm 51: “… in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom”. However, it seems impossible that the one who knows not his sin will pray this without an acknowledgment of his sin! So we must pray for him even if he be our enemy (Mt 5:44), believing that nothing will be impossible for God (Lk 1:37).
We place on our bulletin cover for this 4th Sunday in Lent an image painted by William Holman Hunt, entitled The Light of the World (1851). Hunt was a British painter of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood whose Romantic works were chock-full of religious symbolism.
Here we see Christ bringing light to the sinner’s soul. He comes at night indicated by the stars dotted above and behind him. On the ground near his feet are apples fallen from the tree, a sign that this soul has not been vigilant in keeping up with the spiritual harvest. Even the door that the Lord knocks upon has the growth and stubble of spent flowers blocking its entrance. Unkempt vines descend from the roof over the domicile. Thankfully, Jesus, whose halo appears as a harvest moon, has come knocking at this soul looking to enter with his golden lamp of salvific light. He peers out at us as if to say, “Awake O Sleeper”… put away at last your fruitless works of darkness which you keep and store away in the unlit closet of your mind and heart.
-Steve Guillotte, Director of Pastoral Services
3rd Sunday of Lent – 15 March 2020
Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar… Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well… A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (Jn 4:5-7)
There are some conversations in the biblical narrative that will strike us as strange or humorous. For instance, in St. John’s Gospel presentation of the Multiplication of the Loaves after Jesus inquires quite wittily as to how with little funds and in a remote place they are to buy enough food to feed five thousand people, Andrew responds: “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?” (Jn 6:9). First of all, why would one boy have five loaves and two fish and no one else there have even the equivalent of an ancient middle-eastern granola bar? Second, why would Andrew even bring this up as relevant since he clearly believes it provides no solution? More is at play here. We cannot put it past Our Lord to have prompted a boy to show up with loaves and fishes on that day just as on another day he prompts “bystanders” to lend Him a colt for trotting into Jerusalem (Mk 11:4-6).
Today we hear from St. John how the Samaritan woman says to Jesus who has just offered her “living water”, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water? (Jn 4:11) Now bible scholars claim that the Samaritan woman interprets the phrase “living water” as “flowing water”. Fair enough, but if the cistern offers only stagnant water, i.e. non-flowing water, then why does the Samaritan woman mention the cistern at all? The logical response would have been, “where then can you get this living water because you cannot draw it out of this well!”
It is fair to say that anyone of us, in the presence of Jesus, would speak like a simpleton. Even that worldly master of men, Pontius Pilate, was stymied by Our Lord’s wisdom and divine persona. We cannot blame the Samaritan woman for being confused and tongue-tied when her creator stood before her asking, “Give me a drink”.
For this 3rd Sunday of Lent we place on our bulletin cover a work by the French Romantic painter Camille Corot entitled Young Woman at the Well (1870). Corot was most famous for his pre-impressionist landscapes, yet his female portraits still leave observers wondering about the interior thoughts of these women figures.
Here we see a young woman standing near a well. She waits and looks. Let us say that Jesus is approaching her. Her right arm leaning on the well says that she is casual in her lifestyle; her left hand on her hip says that she is stubborn in her casualness. Her expression is not rude but cautious, after all she has had five husbands and lives now with a man who is not her husband (Jn 4:16-18). However, a few moments in the company of Jesus and she is changed; her soul has found its true love. She runs off to her village proclaiming Him to be the Messiah.
Besides this, this woman of Samaria has done the world another service. For we know now that if Our Lord ever asks us for a drink, we are to say simply, “Lord give us the living water that flows from your side.”
2nd Sunday of Lent – 8 March 2020
The LORD said to Abram: “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s
house to a land that I will show you… Abram went as the LORD directed him. (Gen 12:1; 4)
Faith is trusting in what another person tells you is true, because that person is trustworthy. Every fruitful act of faith requires at least one person who is trusting and another person who is trustworthy.
However, faith is not solely reliant upon trust. Faith requires some prior knowledge. For example, when a man from out-of-town whose car is running near empty asks you where the nearest gas station is, the only way the man will be able get to the gas station (imagine for now his smart phone has no signal) is by trusting you whom he believes to be trustworthy. However, for you to be trustworthy you must know exactly where the nearest gas station is. Without that knowledge you could not be considered
a trustworthy reference for those urgently needing to fuel up.
Thankfully, God knows all and can be completely trusted. Abram understood this about God in his meeting with God. Perhaps it is also the case that Abram was selected out of all the people on earth by God because Abram was the most trusting person on earth: the most discerning and the most guileless; the most believing and the most hopeful.
Now Abram didn’t need to stop and ask and trust someone as to where to find water for his nearly exhausted camel. Abram was already in the “land of his kinfolk”. Abram appears to have had a call to trust, a desire to trust already planted in his heart. This “vocation” was just waiting to be called out by God. When God did call, “Abram went as the Lord directed him.”
On this 2nd Sunday in Lent we place on our bulletin cover a work by Russian Symbolist painter, Mikhail
Nesterov entitled Elder or Abraham, Servant of God. Nesterov was an artist but not untouched by politics. He painted many religious works throughout his career, but under the new Communism he was no longer allowed to publicly paint religious works.
In the work we examine today we see a familiar theme of Nesterov: a wise elderly man standing by a scenic river in deep meditation. Nesterov’s first famous work, The Hermit (1889), is also a river scene (possibly the Volga), as is his painting of Leo Tolstoy. Here we see Abram leaning on a staff. Is he bent over by age or by prayer or both? Is
he on the bank of the Euphrates after his call by God to leave the land of Ur or is he on Jordan’s bank before he separates from his nephew Lot? In either case he is certainly in the presence of the unseen God.
Abram is painted here in white as one who has been in the presence of God. In Symbolist fashion the water of the river means more than water. It serves as the threshold dividing the figure of Abram from the thick Impressionistic forest of the unknown land that Abram is about to
embark towards. On the other side of the bank we spy a path. It is the way that God has made for Abram.
God also has made a path for each of us. Will we listen; will we trust; will we “go forth”?
-Steve Guillotte, Director of Pastoral Services
1st Sunday of Lent – 1 March 2020
Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! (Mt 4:8-10)
Every mountain high or low, every valley shallow or deep, every water narrow or broad belongs to the Lord God who created them all and keeps them. Nations encompass mountains and valleys, hills and flatlands, lakes and rivers and in their sovereignty claim these as their own. This is not a bad thing as national sovereignty maintains the diversity and unity of peoples and provides security against evil tyrants (unless such tyrants claim their own unjust sovereignty).
The devil is an unjust tyrant. In the myth behind The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien proposes that the leading angel who rebelled against God wanted to make his own creations and to be called “Lord”. Melkor, meaning “mighty-rising”, was the name of this preternatural spirit. He might have also been called “pride-rising” for as majestic as Melkor was he could not temper his desire for power; a power that wished to contend with and overthrow the One and only Lord God.
As we begin the season of Lent we enter into a season of anti-pride, a season of humility and contrition. We strip away all our self-given titles of honor especially those that set our will against what is good and graceful in the Lord. We examine our consciences, the evil things we have done in the past, and strive to enter the future with humility, temperance, gentleness and charity. We pray, we repent, and we give; all with the express purpose to put off the pride that brought us to death and to put on the faith and hope that brings us to new life.
As we celebrate our 1st Sunday in Lent we place on our bulletin cover an illustrated work by the Limbourg Brothers entitled The Temptation of Christ (late 14th Century). The Limbourg Brothers painted in a style known as “International Gothic” because it is said to have spread throughout Western Europe; or “Late Gothic” since it flourished before the Early Renaissance. The important thing to note is that it was a transitional style just as the Gothic period was an advancing period. Thus we see in these illuminated manuscripts (and in statuary of that time) the breakout of emotion, postures that step out toward the observer, and expansive landscapes, all features to be carried over to the proto-renaissance.
On our cover we see the beautiful colors of medieval illumination presenting a landscape that will release the deepening perspective of the Renaissance. There stands Jesus atop His creation tempted by Satan who has presumed lordship over the earth. On the weathervane to Jesus’ left is a rooster indicating the denial of Christ and the penance needed to overcome this. Swimming in the moat are swans, symbols of God’s grace. In the bottom right Jesus is the Lion of Judah chasing the Beast up the Tree of Knowledge.
All temptation is a solicitation to sin. We would have no Lent leading to Easter if the devil had convinced Jesus to sin only once. Jesus triumphed and so the redemption of man was established on earth and still carries on today.
-Steve Guillotte, Director of Pastoral Services