EASTER: IT’S NOT JUST HISTORY

There is an on-going debate, unfortunately, among fundamentalists and those who are not about not only the historicity of the Bible but also its factual truth. There are those who maintain, for instance, that Genesis’ six-days-of-creation story are actual fact when, in fact, the creation story is a profound parable whose meaning it would take volumes to explain. I have a volume or two on my bookshelf attempting to do just that. On the other hand it is easy, and simplistic, to say, as some bumper stickers do, that “The Bible says it. I believe it!” Good for them!

The Bible is filled with stated historical facts, many of them truly factual, many others embellished to emphasize a religious point. When we read Exodus, for instance, we are told that 600,000 people made the march from Egypt to the Promised Land over a period of forty years. The actual number is closer to 6,000, perhaps even 600. And did it take forty years when one could actually walk that distance perhaps in forty days? The point the biblical writer wanted to make is that God fulfilled his promise to save his people and, by God, God did – in an extravagant way at that, no matter how short a journey or how long it took.

And yet while the Bible is historical, it is much more than history. It is even much more than religious history. History, if it has any meaning at all other than a record of past events, must be relevant in the present as much as it was when the events remembered took place, if not more so. History is supposed to teach us something. We are to learn from it if only to not repeat the mistakes of the past. We ignore those lessons to our own pain, as history has also taught us.

Thus, in so many ways, the past, history, must be a present reality even if in a different manner and mode than what it was when it first took place. Easter, our remembrance and celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, was a one-time historical event. It happened on a certain date in history even if we do not know the exact date. Yes, there are those who claim it never happened, that Jesus was never raised from the dead. They have a perfect right to deny that the resurrection really happened, like those who deny people landed on the moon. To each his own.

But in truth it does not matter what non-believers believe about Easter. What matters is what you and I believe, More importantly, what matters even more is what we are doing about it, what our personal response is. Each of us needs to ask ourselves a simple question: “Does it really matter to me that on that first Easter Sunday that Jesus was raised from the dead?” And if it does, the next question I must ask is, “So what? What effect does it have on my daily life?”

Those are faith questions that are asked generically by this historical event. But they are answered only on a very, very personal basis. No one can answer those questions for me nor I for another. My response, as every response, will be unique even if those responses seem to be quite the same. But respond we must if we believe that what we celebrate on Easter is much more than an historical event, that, in fact, it is personal.

BLESS YOU, BLESS ME

The first actions of Pope Francis seemed to confound everyone present, from the commentators, to the amassed throng and especially to the members of the College of Cardinals who joined him on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square. He was supposed to bless the people, his new flock, most of the crowd being members of his new Diocese, that of Rome. Inexplicitly he did not. Instead he asked the people to bless him. Imagine that!

 

Perhaps we should, all of us everywhere, even those of us who do not give obeisance to the Pope and, maybe even those who do, especially Pope Francis’ former colleagues in red. We clergy are often asked to bless others. How often, if ever, do we ask others, those whom we bless, to bless us? Like Pope Francis how often do we understand that if we want to do the ministry to which we have been called, we need to have the blessing of those to whom we are called to minister?

That is true, I think, not simply in doing the work of the church. It is true throughout all of our life whether one is a church-goer or not, whether one even believes in God or not. If we are to do our job, whatever that job is; if we are to fulfill our vocations, and we each have many (parent, spouse, child, boss, employee – the list is long, but it is a list), we must be seen as a blessing to the ones over whom we have some sort of authority and responsibility and they must bless our authority and responsibility.

None of this comes easily or readily, even if it is supposed to come with the job. Yes, the Pope is to bless his flock. But the flock needs to bless the Pope if he is to fulfill his calling, his responsibility, and if his authority is to have any meaning in their lives. Again, that is true for everyone everywhere. We cannot be good and effective leaders, however we define and describe that leadership, if we do not bless by our words and actions those over whom we preside. Nor can we fulfill our role effectively unless it is truly seen as a blessing by those over whom we have authority and for whom we have some type of authority. They must bless us in return by what they say and do.

In this life in this world we are to be blessings one to another. We bless the other and the other blesses us. When one or the other deems the relationship not to be a blessing, the relationship is in jeopardy. The more absent the blessing, the more readily the relationship will dissolve. People leave churches and leave the Church because they no longer see it as a blessing to them. And when they do not perceive they are being blessed, they will not bless with their words or their presence in return.

My hope and prayer is that Pope Francis’ example is more than a symbolic gesture but that it is real. It seems so. But I also hope and pray that it is a reminder to each of us, Roman Catholic or not, believer or not, church-goer or not, that if we want this life in this world to be what deep in our hearts and souls we want it to be, then we must bless one another and be a blessing one to another. That blessing is not simply in word, which is important, but more importantly – most importantly – in action, in how we treat one another with love, respect and understanding.

GOING ON A FAITH DIET

I have been on a diet all my life. But, then, we all have whether we realize it or not, which we probably do not. The dictionary’s first definition of diet is “one’s usual food and drink.” Our diet is what and how we usually eat every day of our lives. If you are like me, however, because my “usual food and drink” is not usually healthy, sooner or later I have to go on the second definition of diet, namely, “a regulated selection of foods prescribed for medical reasons,” those reasons being that I am unhealthily too fat.

The Lenten Season, which we are now in the midst of, has often been used by many of us who find ourselves overweight as an occasion, even an excuse, to go on a diet. Thus, whether with or without medical supervision, we go on a diet. We give up certain foods, like desserts – always desserts – and other too-fattening goodies in hopes that we will lose enough weight so that at the end of Lent we can go back to our normal diet – which will mean that come next Lent we will have to do it all over again.

Fasting from (that is, giving up) desserts for Lent can be a spiritual, faith exercise, if done as a means of spiritual and physical discipline rather than as an excuse or reason for going on a much-needed diet to lose weight. To call giving up desserts for Lent a spiritual discipline when it is really a medical demand is a misnomer. And it is wrong. And I am just as guilty as others in misnaming what I am doing when I decline that piece of apple pie with ice cream my mother-in-law sets before me by claiming that I am giving up desserts for Lent rather than being honest and telling her I am too fat and am on a diet, but thank you anyway.

That said, all of us, skinny and fat, in shape or out of shape, can go on a diet during Lent that is a faith diet and that will be beneficial even if it does entail giving up desserts completely or, on the other hand, if we eat desserts in moderation – as we should with all food groups. In fact, a faith diet should be a way of life, in the season of Lent and out of the season of Lent and throughout the whole year, throughout or whole life.

To paraphrase the definition of diet, a faith diet simply means the way we usually live our lives and not something that we do on occasion because our lives, spiritual lives here, are out of shape. If we kept our faith lives in shape all year around, there would be no need to spend a certain period of time, like Lent, to get them back in shape, to get back on a regimented and disciplined faith diet.       

But we don’t, most of us; and so we, hopefully, use Lent to get our life of faith back on track. We try to get back to living a faith diet during Lent and hope that we will remain on it once Lent is over and the rest of our life goes on. In what does a faith diet consist? Well, the admonition on Ash Wednesday says that “self-examination and repentance…prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and…reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” are all part of that faith diet.

That diet is not just for Lent, of course. It is to be part of our daily lives during Lent and all year long, all life long, not to lose weight but to become strong(er) in our faith.

DOES GOD REALLY LOVE ME?

When bad things happen to us – tragedies, unexpected deaths of a loved one, sudden physical ailments or disabilities – we sometimes wonder if God really does love us because what has happened seems to be so undeserved. Yes, we are sinners. But who isn’t? Yes, even though some of our sins may be terrible are they so terrible that what has happened is compensatory punishment from God?

We wonder. We ask. We wrestle with the question about God’s unconditional love and forgiveness and we worry. Oh, do we worry! Our faith is tested as our patience is tried and our questions only increase the longer the pain and the suffering endure. So we ask, even demand, “Do you really love me God?” The longer we struggle, the more we worry and the closer we come to asking ourselves not only “Does God really love me?” but even more we begin to ask ourselves, “Is there really a god at all?”

One of my spiritual mentors, Father Ron Rolheiser who I often cite, recently wrote this when he was speaking about anxiety: “Some years ago, I went on a weeklong retreat directed by Fr. Robert Michel.... He began the retreat with these words: ‘I want to make this a very simple retreat for you. I want to teach you how to pray in a particular way. I want to teach you how to pray so that in your prayer…you will open yourself so that in your deepest self you will hear God say to you: “I love you!” Because before you hear this inside you, nothing will be enough for you…. Only after you have heard these words will you finally be free of your anxiety.’”

Nothing makes our love for another more worrisome than wondering if the one we love loves us in return or loves us as equally. Most of the time we have no doubt that our love for another is being returned. But if or when those doubts begin to arise, we know that our relationship is in trouble. We worry. We become anxious. We wonder if we did something, said something, to put that loving relationship in jeopardy, perhaps even putting it on the road to wrack and ruin.

While that is true in our human relationships, it just as true in our relationship with God even though the one we deem responsible for this feeling of love being lost is ourselves. When we begin to wonder whether or not God really loves us, we also wonder what we must have done to cause God to love us less or at all and then punish us in the process. To deny that we sometimes feel that way or assert that such questions never cross our mind is to avoid the truth. In humanity’s relationship with the divinity, humans always remain human.

As Father Michel said, we have to hear God say to us “I love you” if we want to cease being anxious about life itself and especially about our relationship to God and, thus, God’s total and unconditional love for us. That does not mean that life will now no longer be free of difficulies, that all will be well, that we will no longer suffer pain or hardship, that tragedies won’t happen. That only comes in death. In the meantime, however, it does mean that knowing and believing that God truly loves us is one less thing we have to worry about.