O Sacred Head Surrounded

“Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” Deeply distressed at this, they began to say to him one after another, “Surely it is not I, Lord?” – Matthew 26:21-22

Betray – such a horrible word. It is worse when the act of betrayal is against a friend.  It’s no wonder the disciples were completely surprised and afraid. Jesus reveals this to His followers; His friends, that one of them will turn against Him and hand Him over.  Before this we learned (in Monday’s Gospel reading) that Judas Iscariot would frequently steal from the group’s contributions.  To some extent we can see why it was easier for him to slip into an act of betrayal when he was tempted by money, an area of sin that he would indulge in. We know because most of us have experienced this in some form.

How many times have we sinned, betrayed Jesus, in smaller matters only to find ourselves falling for something graver because this sin had become a vice? Or how many times do we find ourselves betraying Christ’s love more often when we have let many “little” sins pile up? These sins do not have to be. Each and every sin that we commit is a choice of betrayal or love. This is why Christ accepted His cross and died on Calvary…so that we may no longer be a slave to sin and be eternally separated from His love. We must remember the suffering Christ – what He embraced for our sake. We must frequently call to mind the unconditional love that God has for us on the cross. We must recall in our minds exactly what our sins have done to Christ: betrayal, scourges, mockery, crucifixion, and death.

What would happen if we were able to picture His marred face, His bruised and scourged body, or the nails driven into His hands and feet every time we were tempted to sin? If we practiced this, certainly we would loathe to betray such a Love! And if we did, surely the sight of Him making this sacrifice for us would send us running to Him to beg for forgiveness which He offers freely.

Tomorrow we are preparing to enter into the holiest of days for our Church. Let us fix our gaze on what Love is and place ourselves at the foot of the cross so we might rise with Him.

I encourage you to reflect on one of the beautiful Lenten hymns that our Church sings as you remember Christ’s Passion.

-Helen Almeter

O Sacred Head Surrounded

O Sacred Head Surrounded

By Crown of piercing thorn!

O bleeding Head, so wounded,

Reviled and put to scorn!

Death’s pallid hue comes o’er thee,

The glow of life decays,

Yet angel hosts adore thee,

And tremble as they gaze.

I see thy strength and vigor

All fading in the strife,

And death with cruel rigor,

Bereaving thee of life;

O agony and dying!

O love to sinners free!

Jesus, all grace supplying,

O turn thy face on me.

In this, thy bitter passion,

Good Shepherd, think of me

With thy most sweet compassion,

Unworthy though I be:

Beneath they cross abiding

Forever would I rest,

In thy dear love confiding,

And with thy presence blest.

Martyrdom

I’d like to think I’d say “uh yea!” when Christ asks, “Will you die for me?” Quite honestly I think about martyrdom. In my fantasy theres always a gunman who asks “Do you believe in Christ?” and I’m like “heck yeah silly head!”Then at point blank he blows my head off. Gory, yea, but it is so quick and painless. There is absolutely no effort beyond the combination of lip movement and a gutteral sound, and at the end, I’m in heaven, which sounds sweet. But, I believe that Christ would say that this isn’t martyrdom at all.

See the guy in my fantasy doesn’t worship God. He wants to be heaven not because Christ is there but because he’d rather not be in hell. The guy in this fantasy knows about all the other martyrs but would prefer a bullet to the cortex because its less painful, and the question? Well that’s just because it’s the easiest way to become a martyr. No suffering, super easy, and it is all about me. So yeah. That’s not martyrdom.

Martyrdom if anything is always selfless, and always countercultural. Note that culture is a relative to the word cultus which means worship.  Every martyr that died, did so because their faith was a threat to anothers culture, and that’s what I mean by countercultural. Currently there are 1.2 billion catholics in the world, because throughout history the catholic church had  developed a culture based on the liturgy and by liturgy I mean the mass and feast days, prayer and so on. Since the worship of God was at the center of culture, despite the corruption and misuderstandings, the church has been able to hold the people together.  

Right now we are in a war between cultures. If we go back to the fantasy martyrdom it perfectly resembles the current culture of man. We fight for pleasure and ease and the individual, all of which are not bad except that we worship these values. For example we deny doing what we believe is right because to take a stand could cause us the pain of losing friendships. What we have to see is that to give in to this culture will cause us a greater pain, the loss of what we desire most, God. 

As new evangelists if we wish to bring back the catholics who have fallen, we have to build a new culture, a culture of life based on the liturgy. It is the free gift from God that orients ourselves back to the truth. The time to hide our faith is done. This is a culture of life for all and so it must be made known regardless of our own suffering , regardless of the ammount of effort and regardless of ourselves. Martyrdom does not required physical death, only a death that dies to the ways of the world, and if we can do this then we can honestly say yes when Christ asks, “Will you die for me?”

-Dominic Price

Monday of Holy Week

Psalm 27, Monday of Holy Week

The Lord is my light and my salvation.
The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom should I fear?
The LORD is my life’s refuge;
of whom should I be afraid?
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
When evildoers come at me
to devour my flesh,
My foes and my enemies
themselves stumble and fall.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
Though an army encamp against me,
my heart will not fear;
Though war be waged upon me,
even then will I trust.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation.
I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.
R. The Lord is my light and my salvation

The psalm today is one of the many places in Scripture where Jesus acknowledges the trials we face as Christians.  From the beginning of time, people who sought after God had to walk through fires in pursuit of Him.  It is no different today than it was in Old Testament times.  The enemy is still alive and present. He has simply modernized his efforts to thwart our path to Christ.  Instead of our foes being a neighboring tribe, they may be a family member with whom we have a disagreement or an unrelenting boss. He may use an addiction to drugs, alcohol, pornography, or seemingly less obvious foes such as social media. He may use depression or fear to take up the place in our hearts where only Jesus should be.  It is not a matter of if. At some point in our Christian walk, the psalmist tells us , evildoers WILL  come, war WILL be raged upon us.

But as the psalms do so well, this psalm brims with confidence and hope. “The LORD is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear...Though war we waged upon me, even then will I trust. Wait for the Lord with courage!”  In each of our trials, the Lord wants to shelter us, to protect us and rescue us. We just have the difficult task of trusting Him. There truly is nothing to fear if we wait for the Lord to deliver us. While we wait, we can pray that wonderful prayer of St. Michael against evil. We can arm ourselves with the truth and comfort of Holy Scripture.  We can praise Him in our suffering, so that when we come out on the other side, we will know Him better. We can know that in every step of every trial, He is beside us, hurting with us, hoping with us, and ultimately, delivering us from all of our hardships.

This week is Holy Week. Like us, Jesus hurt. He waited for the war that was raged on Him to be finished. He waited on His Father to deliver Him from his pain. He endured torture, physical and the worst, that of being separated from His Father. He is no stranger to pain and empathizes with ours. On Easter Sunday, He was delivered, rescued, redeemed. If we courageously wait on Him, He will deliver us, rescue us, redeem us. 

Entering the Scene

I think today, and really all this week, is a good time to put ourselves into the time of Jesus and evaluate what character we would be in the gospel readings.  For example, on this day, Psalm Sunday, where would you have been as Jesus walked through Jerusalem?  Would you have been in the background wondering whats going on?  Would you be a Pharisee telling Jesus to "order your disciples to stop"?  Or would you have "spread your cloak on the road", "praising God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen"?  In less than a week, however, would you then turn on Jesus and cheer for His crucifixion?  Would you mock Him on the cross and spit in His face ?  Just because everyone else was or because you really wanted to?  Would you love Jesus and believe in Him but fear the Jews and hide in the upper room?  Or would you be at the foot of the cross comforting Jesus's sorrowful mother?  Back to today's readings, when Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper and said "This is my body, which is given for you" And "This cup that is  poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood", would you accept that and see it as it really is?  Would you betray Jesus?  Would you lose focus, arguing about who is greater, and not see the incredibly intimate gift Jesus JUST gave you of His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity?  Do we do this even today?  Lose focus on the true meaning of the Eucharist?  That Jesus doesn't only spill out His blood for our sins on the cross but that He also allows us to fully receive Him into our bodies!!  If we could only fully and completely understand and believe in this miraculous gift of God, imagine just how much we could do with this strength of God inside us.  Just look at the lives of Blessed Mother Theresa and Blessed John Paul II.  These are people who took the power of the Eucharist into the world and used it as it should be used.  How can we use this power?  How has God CALLED us to use it?  Meditate on this throughout Holy Week and ask Jesus to reveal how you can fully accept His sacrifice for you and use the gifts that come from it in your life.  Praise be Jesus Christ, now and forever.

Let's Drop Our Stones

How often are we like the persecutors, waiting for someone to fall? Or how often are we trying to live a life for Christ and be examples to others while they wait for us to fail or condemn us for doing good and being submissive to Christ and His Church?

I think it's safe to say that we've all experienced being on both ends of this spectrum. 

Even though we stumble and fall, how awesome is it to know that God is always with us, always there to welcome us into His arms no matter what. We have the comfort of His eternal, unconditional love. 

But we then should return this love to God. We owe it to Him, and it's the very least we can do. One of the best ways to love Christ is to love those around us here on earth. It pleases Him to see us do good for others. Instead of waiting for others to fall and being there to point our fingers or say to ourselves, "at least I'm not like THEM," we should look for the good and pray for those who are also on the difficult journey to Heaven. Let us not be like the persecutors in today's readings, ready to cast a stone, but be like Christ and love and have mercy on our brothers and sisters. 

-Amanda Kepshire

It's Never too Late

The theme that the Church sets for us in the readings today is “covenant.” These pacts or bonds are woven through the old testament- God forming agreements with his people. In this particular covenant, God promised great things to Abraham and his people. He promises descendants, a line of kings, and land. However, at the end of the first reading, God reminds Abraham of the people’s pledge: “On your part, you and your descendants after you must keep my covenant throughout the ages.” (Gen 17:9)

Our God is a loving Father. He desires union with us. In the Old Testament, he promised land, descendants, and kingdoms. He now, through Jesus Christ, has formed a new covenant with us in which he offers us salvation! It is precisely now, at the close of Lent, when we should assess how our Lent has been. What are those small “covenants” we have formed with God over the last 40 days? Have we been faithful? If not, why?

As we know, in the Old Testament, God had to renew his covenant with Israel numerous times. In the same way, now in the New Testament, he renews his covenant with us in the Sacraments, especially in the Mass, and when we are repentant in Confession. It is never too late, whether in the shortfalls of our disciplines of Lent, our habitual sin, or broken relationships, to renew our covenant with our God. In these last days of Lent, how can I offer my own preferences, my sacrifices- to complete the great journey of Lent? Our longing is for that Easter Day, when Christ rose- for the cross was not the end. After all, it is NEVER too late to renew our relationship with God. He waits.

-Andy Day

God Is With Us

Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil;

for you are at my side.

He guides me in right paths

for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk in the dark valley

I fear no evil; for you are at my side

With your rod and your staff

that give me courage.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus explains to the people the power God has over evil.

“Jesus spoke to them again, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”

When I was younger, I took these kinds of scriptures to mean that if I followed Jesus, if I did what was right, no ill would ever come to me. If I followed the rules, God would keep me safe.

But we know, as we get older and wiser, that bad things do happen to good people. Maybe not all the time, maybe almost never. But there are times when we, the people who follow Jesus and love him, will suffer. Or we will watch other people suffer, we will watch people we know and love walk through the “valley of the shadow of death.”

The truth is that the peace and light that Jesus promises doesn’t mean we will never suffer, but that our suffering will never be more than we can endure. Somehow, even in the face of tragedy and sadness, Jesus is there. The peace he brings is all we need. Whatever it is -- a small inconvenience, a great injustice -- Jesus is there for us, offering whatever comfort we need.

And Jesus knows suffering. As we will witness during Holy Week, Jesus faced almost unbearable fear and suffering -- and he didn’t want it! He begged his father to let the cup pass, if it was at all possible.

But it wasn’t. His suffering had to be endured, for the sake of us all. And because of that, Jesus did what he needed to do.

Jesus knew suffering. He understands it. He doesn’t claim that it is easy or fun, but what he promises is peace and grace to endure whatever we must. In the end, none of it is more than we can handle, because Jesus is there with us, holding our hand as we walk the way.

-Rachel Swenson Balducci