Browse by Topic: Lent

The parable of the Prodigal Son features a character I can identify with. Saint Maximus the Confessor writes, “Again, he told of how that Father, who is goodness itself, was moved with pity for his profligate son who returned and made amends by repentance; how he embraced him, dressed him once more in the fine garments that befitted his own dignity, and did not reproach him for any of his sins.”

In Luke 15, Christ reminds us of the life-changing love the Father has for us. Reflecting upon my own life, I realize how easy it is to lose sight of this love, especially when we don’t keep vigilant on Christ’s desert path. At times this path appears lined with enormous billboards of temptation. Whereas my journey forward seems lonely and narrow, these temptations can practically seem lit up with the neon of the Las Vegas Strip. Sometimes, I can lose track of how far I’ve already walked –  how much progress I’ve already made. Like Lot’s wife in the Book of Genesis, I feel like turning around to catch a glimpse of the life I’ve left behind.

Indeed, Christ’s words in the Gospel are confirmed by the wealth of my personal experience with sin. First, we learn that disobedience to the will of God inevitably leads to sin and death. This is precisely what the Prodigal Son encounters in the Parable. Departing his true home for the world’s deceptive promises of happiness, and seemingly emboldened by his father’s mercy, the disobedient son enjoys the “good life” for probably quite some time. But where does that lead him? He has to face the consequences sooner or later, and he finds his soul just as sullied as his body is by mud. Confronted by his own misery, he starts the long “walk of shame” all the way home.

But what is the Father’s response? Since his son’s departure, he has not slept well. He has sent emissaries to search for him. He has scoured the horizon daily, waiting for the shadow of his son to appear. “While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.” The shame of the son is covered by the overwhelming love of the Father.

In “The Problem of Pain,” C.S. Lewis says that “if God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had.” Jesus did not give us this parable to tell us about those sinners over there, yonder. This is a story about you and me — that Our Heavenly Father will accept us even when we’ve hit rock bottom. He waits for us in the confessional. All we can do is repent; meanwhile, God supplies the grace to cover our sins and inject life into the soul.

Now, having come face to face with the Father’s mercy, we surely feel that deep desire to return something to the Lord. What could possibly suffice? In Psalm 101, the Psalmist finds himself in a similar position of inadequacy.

“We have in our day no prince, prophet, or leader, no holocaust, sacrifice, oblation, or incense, no place to offer first fruits, to find favor with you. But with contrite heart and humble spirit, let us be received; as though it were holocausts of rams and bullocks, or thousands of fat lambs, so let our sacrifice be in your presence today as we follow you unreservedly; for those who trust in you cannot be put to shame.”

What could I possibly offer to the Lord to repay Him? After going through the possibilities among my material possessions, I am struck once again by the realization that I must daily offer Him my life, inadequate as it might be. It’s not a fair trade for Him, but it’s an exchange that Christ makes perfect.  

I pray for the Lord’s mercy as we approach the final days of Lent. Through the intercession of our Holy Father Dominic, may the Lord continue to mold us into holy preachers, intent only on the salvation of souls.

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:3-5)

Hanging on a wall in the Louvre Museum, you will find Christ Carrying the Cross, a painting by the Florentine artist Biagio d’Antonio. Dressed in red and adorned with a crown of thorns, Jesus is at the heart of the image. He is part of a large procession, making its way up a hillside. Walking behind him, we find Simon of Cyrene, pressed into service by the Roman guards and helping Christ to carry his heavy burden. To Simon’s left, we see a woman clad in brown, her hands clasped together in prayer -- the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose gaze is fixed intently upon her son. He stares back at her, a man of sorrows, his face bruised and beaten, as if to say, “Woman, behold your son.” Around them officials and infantry ride on horseback, directing the crowd, which includes: Mary Magdalene, John the Beloved Disciple, and the women of Jerusalem who weep for Jesus. Finally, almost out of frame, one notices a woman kneeling, holding in her hands a veil with the likeness of Christ’ face upon it. This is Veronica, whose merciful act we reflect on while praying the Sixth Station of the Cross.

The story of Veronica wiping the face of Jesus does not appear in the Gospels, but tradition tells us of a compassionate woman who came forward to wipe the blood and sweat from Christ’s face as he made his way to Golgotha, and how the piece of fabric she used came away with an image of the Lord’s face. Although we are not sure of the woman’s name, she came to be known as Veronica, since the cloth contained a true likeness (vera eikon) of Christ, and the word from which Veronica is derived, berenice, means “bearer of victory.” 

In Biagio’s painting, this bearer of victory is a counterpoint to the figure of Simon of Cyrene. He has been forced to carry the cross, so he looks up and away from Jesus, hiding his face, unwilling to esteem the man who will die for his sake. Veronica, on the other hand, kneels in humility, looking at Christ in the fashion of his mother, blessed to perform a small act of charity in hope of easing the Lord’s suffering. Her example is a reminder that we are to serve God in whatever way we can.

As we make our way this through Lenten season, may we be inspired by Veronica’s kindness, so that we might serve our neighbors in need, and in doing so, serve the Lord himself.

Let me kick things off by being the first to admit that I’ve always been terrible at Lenten penances; as in, the whole process. My idea of a Lenten Friday usually consisted of drowning myself in Starbucks and McDonald’s Filet O’Fish Sandwiches for dinner. (Yes, I realize these sandwiches are mashed-up mystery fish parts from who-knows-where, but they're tasty!)

I mean, will God really love me any less just because I ate an extra sandwich, and a fish one at that? (“Hey no meat right?” and “They’re so small!”)

Thankfully, the answer is "No, he won’t." Actually, He can't. It’s impossible for God to love us any less because He loves us infinitely. It is possible, however, for us not to love God. But I never really “got” that. But through God’s merciful providence and no real merit of my own, the virtues of religious life have forced me to see Lent in a whole new way.

Penance has seemingly been abolished from the everyday Catholic’s vocabulary, having been reduced often times to three Hail Mary’s after Confession. Similarly, I find that many Catholics now treat Lenten penances as some sort of Church-sanctioned New Year’s Resolutions event. Lent is now simply a time to lose weight, quit smoking, or eat Filet O’Fish sandwiches for cheap. Where is God supposed to be in all this?

Because our thoughts tend to dwell on the surface, we often fail to see the deeper spiritual journey that God has willed us to live through the Church. The Book of Exodus tells us how the Ancient Israelites went through this same process in the Desert as they departed Egypt for Sinai. The reality is that God was not simply bringing them out of a physical slavery in Egypt; rather, the Israelites were being brought out of slavery to sin and death and into a true freedom as a people consecrated to the Lord. As we know, this is never an easy process for us.

What is easy for me is to have little sympathy for the Israelites in the Book of Exodus. Many people today often claim that they would have faith if only they could see some proof of God’s existence. Now that’s a completely different problem altogether, but not only did the Israelites in the desert actually possess this luxury, they possessed it in a fantastic way. For “the Lord preceded them, in the daytime by means of a column of cloud to show them the way, and at night by means of a column of fire to give them light…Neither the column of cloud by day nor the column of fire by night ever left its place in front of the people” (Ex 14:21-22). And if that wasn’t good enough for them, there’s that whole tidbit about the Lord dividing the Red Sea in two. Now, the Israelites must have trained in the art of complaining during their time of slavery in Egypt, because in spite of the glory of God practically hitting them in the face, they were like you and me, Certified Professional Whiners^®. “Were there no burial places in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die in the desert? Why did you bring us out of Egypt? Did we not tell you this in Egypt, when we said, ‘Leave us alone. Let us serve the Egyptians?.’” (Ex 14:12) Talk about ungrateful. But isn’t this the chronic human condition? Left to our own devices, we always prefer slavery to freedom, darkness to light, earthly things to heavenly gifts. We would rather live as miserable squatters on this planet than in our true, eternal home in Heaven. And even after we experience firsthand the glory of God in our lives, as the Israelites did when Lord crushed the Egyptians in the Red Sea, we still continue to hand God our Certified Professional Whiners^® business card. Behold Exhibits A, B, and C:

“The people grumbled against Moses saying, ‘What are we to drink?’” (Ex 15:24)

“Would that we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!” (Ex 16:1)

“Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst with our children and our livestock?” (Ex 17:2)

Of course, God never abandoned them, as He never abandons us, and He provided the Israelites with quail, manna from Heaven, and water from the rock. But we’ve heard the rest of this story, and we know that, slowly but surely, Certified Professional Whiners^® are always promoted to Certified Professional Idolaters.^® We end up worshipping the very things (____ ß your sins here) that we are supposed to sacrifice on the altar of God. The Israelites actually did this literally. God had commanded them to sacrifice a bullock on the altar, but as soon as Moses is gone, what do they do? Out of all the things they could have selected, they choose to fashion a golden calf to worship as the image of God. “Come, make us a god who will be our leader; as for the man Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him” (Ex 32:1).

Given our horrible track record as humans, I guess we could always sit here in despair, clutching our now worn-out Certified Professional Whiners^® business card. But God loves us too much to allow that, for He “proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). So what are we to do? St. Paul instructs us to “put on the armor of light… the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh” (Rom 13:12-14). In putting on Jesus, we are to imitate the life of our Lord in order to become alter Christus, other Christs, to the world. But if we are to do that – if we are to reverse our course of slavery to sin during this Lenten season – we must closely examine the actions of Jesus as He was tempted in the desert. Contemplation on Christ in the desert must be an essential part of our own journey of faith. Christ teaches us how to put aside our idols that keep us in slavery – the pursuit of physical pleasures, power, and glory – that prevent us from living in true freedom. Penance – prayer, fasting, and almsgiving – serves as our weapon against these idols, reminding us that God alone is the path to happiness and meaning in our life.

Unlike Christ, we know that we will inevitably stumble in our Lenten journeys. We may forget that we gave up red meat, or that we shouldn’t have beer on Friday. We may pull out that old business card of ours, and make something other than God the center of our lives. The purification process will surely be difficult. But as we nervously venture into the desert, we should have immense hope: for we will surely find that God, just as He led the Israelites from Egypt, has already preceded us there through his Son Jesus Christ. So as we journey together through Lent, it is my prayer that we put our trust firmly in Christ, and walk boldly with our eyes fixed on Him who enlightens the way before us. 

Typically one thinks of Advent as a time to prepare for Christ's Second Coming, since the readings of that season focus our attention, not only on the coming of Christ incarnate at Christmas, but also on the return of Christ at the end of time. Considering the fact that Lent is a season to reflect on the role of sin in our lives, and its effect on our relationships with God and one another, I believe this, too, is a good time to ponder the mystery of Christ's parousia. In order to do so, I offer part of a paper I wrote on Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" for our Christian Iconography class at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology. The following excerpt deals with some of the artistic and Scriptural sources that influenced Michelangelo as he painted the altarpiece that now inspires so many visitors to the Sistine Chapel in Rome:

Anyone who has seen Luca Signorelli’s fresco of The Resurrection at the cathedral in Orvieto will notice a resemblance to Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. In both works, the dead emerge from the earth with great difficulty, some still buried to the waist, others as skeletal figures half-clothed in flesh. This is no coincidence. In his book on Michelangelo, Howard Hibbard writes that “in the scenes of punishment and damnation, no less than in the scenes of resurrection, Michelangelo was notably influenced by Luca Signorelli’s famous series of frescoes in Orvieto depicting the end of the world” and that “the images of skeletons clothing themselves with flesh and of the torments of the damned are surely indebted to Signorelli.”¹ Art historian Antonio Forcellino agrees, noting that Signorelli’s work had a profound impact on Michelangelo, particularly in regards to the demons at the bottom right of the painting. He states that, “while Giotto in Padua and Buffalmacco in Pisa depicted devils as creatures alien to the human world, Michelangelo followed the example of Signorelli in the San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto and the sculptures on the façade of that cathedral, where the devils are depicted as a slight degeneration of men and the angels.”² In addition to Signorelli’s influence, Forcellino asserts that, “Michelangelo was undoubtedly very impressed by the depictions [of the Last Judgment] in the Florentine Baptistery and the Cemetery in Pisa, both of which were distinctive for their aggressive and monumental emotive force,”³ while Hibbard points out that Michelangelo’s portrayal of Christ, “is like an antique hero-god…developed from the figure of Jupiter in one of the Cavalieri drawings.”⁴

Although it’s clear that Michelangelo owes a great deal to Signorelli and Cavalieri, one cannot assume that Michelangelo’s imagination was stirred by the work of these artists alone. Literary sources, such as Sacred Scripture, also played a role. For example, the seven angels blowing trumpets beneath Christ’s feet are a reference to the Book of Revelation, according to Ascanio Condivi, one of Michelangelo’s biographers.⁵ In chapters 8, 9, and 11 of the Book of Revelation, the author – who tradition holds to be John the Beloved Disciple – has a vision of seven angels with seven trumpets. As each angel blows its trumpet, a different disaster strikes the earth. Despite the fact that Michelangelo doesn’t show each of these disasters, he alludes to them by depicting the angels as heralds of the apocalypse, and not just ministers of God. Naturally this is not the only Scriptural allusion in Michelangelo’s work. Throughout the fresco one notices that, “the angels fight to release the souls that have been saved from the grip of the devils. And, to their great satisfaction, the devils fight to push the ‘iniquitous souls’ down to their eternal damnation.”⁶ While many scholars typically associate this illustration as being reminiscent of “The Judgment of the Nations” found in Matthew 25:31-46, in which the Son of Man separates the people like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, Forcellino is describing a scene which could very easily be associated with Matthew 13:24-27, as well. In “The Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat” we find a landowner who lets the weeds and wheat grow up together until the time of the harvest, at which point the reapers gather up the wheat for storage in the landowner’s barn, while the weeds are separated out to be burned in the fire. In addition to these illustrations from the Gospel of Matthew, Hibbard points out that Michelangelo’s representation of the bodily resurrection, i.e., his “skeletons clothing themselves with flesh,” is an artistic citation of Ezekiel.⁷ He is, of course, referring to chapter 37, when Ezekiel is told to prophesy to a valley of dry bones. After Ezekiel speaks to the bones, they rise from their graves, come together, and are covered in sinew and muscle, flesh and skin. Finally, Hibbard suggests that Michelangelo’s depiction of Christ, whose appearance is more like that of Apollo the sun god,⁸ is probably based on a particular description found in the Book of Malachi. Hibbard believes that “the equation of Christ with the sun of Justice (cf. Malachi 4:2) may have influenced Michelangelo’s conception.”⁹