Daily Virtue

The term “eternal” in “eternal life” refers not so much to the length of life as to its fullness. To enter eternal life is to become fully alive with God forever, to experience untold joy, serenity, and peace in an eternal embrace with Him forever. Having our communion with God perfected, we will also have our communion with one another perfected. We will be caught up in the great movement of love that is the life of the Trinity. It’s not about houses and seats of honor; it’s about a place in the heart of the God who made us and loves us. It is to become fully alive and perfect as the Father is perfect. To be in eternal life is to imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and, in some way, to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality—this we can only attempt. It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time—the before and after—no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy. This is how Jesus expresses it in Saint John’s Gospel: “I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” – Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Jesus sees the man lying on his mat next to a pool and asks, “Do you want to be well?” The man says yes, and Jesus replies, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.” Immediately, the man is healed. Bishop Robert Barron writes that things heat up at this point in the story. One would expect that everyone around the cured man would rejoice, but just the contrary: the Jewish leaders are furious and confounded. They see the healed man, and their first response is, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” Why are they so reactive? Why don’t they want this to be? We, sinners, don’t like the ways of God. We find them troubling and threatening. Why? Because they undermine the games of oppression and exclusion that we rely upon to validate our egos. In many peoples’ minds, the story of Jesus healing the ill man on the Sabbath was ample justification for God to punish him. You see, their God is vengeful, and since Jesus broke the law, they expected Jesus to “pay” for his transgression. Yet Jesus reminded them and us that God’s ways are not ours. God, who is love, seeks to nurture and care for them and to be in communion with them. Our challenge in this story is to determine how we see God. What is our image of God? Because that image is going to shape everything we do in our life.

We celebrate the feast of St. Joseph today. I am drawn to the very human predicament presented to Him. He has met the girl he has chosen to spend his life with, and during the betrothal period, this woman he has given his heart to betrays him. The character of the man is that even in this troubled state, he chose to divorce her quietly. The most fantastic aspect of Joseph’s story is his “yes” to God. Like Mary’s “yes” to God, it is foundational in bringing Christ into the world. Edward Hahnenberg writes that when a friend wounds you, it can seem impossible to forgive. Keep in mind Joseph never gets definitive proof that Mary is innocent. Instead, he chooses to trust. Joseph decides to let go of whatever hurt, doubt, or grievances he is entitled to carry. Had he not, had he instead held onto these things, bearing a grudge against Mary, it would have poisoned their life together. Instead, Joseph found liberation in letting go. Bishop Robert Barron notes that Joseph realized these puzzling events were part of God’s much higher plan. “Joseph was willing to cooperate with the divine plan, though he in no way knew its contours or deepest purposes. Like Mary at the annunciation, he trusted and let himself be led.”

Our reading today from John’s Gospel is rich in symbolism, with our sight being the metaphor for faith in Jesus and the life of discipleship. Noted author, Richard Gaillardetz, speaks of the journey by which the blind man “comes to see who Jesus is, which is counterposed with the increasing blindness of the Jewish religious leaders. Acquiring sight is all about recognizing the true identity of Jesus and learning to live out of that truth.” The Gospel message today is complemented by Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, which invites followers of Jesus to “live as children of light.” In our Lenten journey, we move alongside those journeying through Christian Initiation that culminates in baptism at Easter, each group learning to see Jesus as the one who gives true meaning to our lives. In these trying and stressful times, we can lose hope in the purpose of our lives and become trapped by the darkness of those thoughts. This darkness can become so pervasive that it shields the light of God’s grace and mercy from reaching us. The key to moving away from our self-imposed darkness is to quiet our hearts and minds to hear God’s voice. The Lord calls us to the light, to the freedom of being unshackled from fear, “Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil…for He is with me always, until the end of time.”

Lent is a time of reflection. Silas Henderson writes that understanding who we truly are within ourselves and before God is an essential element of the life of faith. Henri Nouwen said, “our deepest identity is rooted where we are like other people – weak, broken, sinful, but sons and daughters of God.” What is our deepest identity? Love alone of all things is sufficient unto itself. It is its own end, its own merit, its own beginning, and its own satisfaction. It seeks no cause beyond itself and needs no fruit outside of itself. Its fruit is its use. I love simply because I am love. That is my deepest identity. I am created in and for and because of love. I came forth from a God who is love and share in that divine identity. Without love, I will never know who I am, who God is, or why the universe was created. We should look at the Lenten season as one in which we can reorient ourselves to who we are before the Lord. That may involve facing some hidden elements trapped in our identity layers. It may involve turning our gaze outward to recognize that we, too, need God’s mercy and care, as the tax collector understood.

These commandments, above all others, are presented today in Jesus’ response to the scribe. Bishop Robert Barron writes that law is finally about love, and the love of God and neighbor are inextricably bound to one another. Why are the two loves so tightly connected? Because of who Jesus is. Jesus is not just a human being, and he is not just God. He is the God-man in whom divinity and humanity come together. Therefore, it’s impossible to love him as God without loving the humanity he created and embraced. In The Art of Loving, Chiara Lubich writes that to love your neighbor as you love yourself, you must take it literally without qualification. In other words, not just general advice. The term “as” means precisely that. So, if I or someone else is in a particular situation, we must each experience it as though it were our own. Because when we start acting that way, people are struck by it; they are amazed and want to know what is happening. That allows us to explain why we treat our neighbors in that way, serving and reaching out to them. Many of those who ask about this then feel that they want to begin to try living that way themselves. That is the secret of evangelizing through what we do and how we act, not merely by what we say.

During Lent, we apprentice to Jesus in his forty-day sojourn in the desert. The Spirit drives holy people into the desert because it is the place where the divertissements disappear. The action arrives at the end of the Lord’s fast because a decision follows clarification. Jesus provokes the stark choice: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” This clarification leads Jesus to begin his mission; immediately after the temptations, he gathers his disciples around him and commences the ministry that will reach its culmination only on the cross. The Lenten lesson is learning to rid ourselves of divertissements, going a bit hungry and thirsty, and purposely running on empty so that the great questions may be asked with clarity. Let us allow the devil to come, tempting us with the love of pleasure, the ego, and power. For in passing through temptation, we reach decisions. And in the desert with Jesus the Master, let us realize that we too are people on a mission because decision brings about identity.

Today’s reflection verse comes from the beginning section of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has symbolically established himself as the new Moses, giving a law upon a mountain. Spiritual Director Terri Mifek writes that those who see Jesus as a radical social reformer interested only in bringing about change will find the first half of today’s reading challenging. Those who find comfort and security in following the letter of the law may find the last half of his statement mystifying. In our search for a meaningful and relevant spirituality to our time, it is easy to get caught up in factions that emphasize one extreme or the other. But in Jesus, we can see a beautiful balance of embracing what is good and challenging and what is not yet fully aligned with God’s will. Jesus exemplified discipleship in modeling the incarnational life through his interactions with humanity in tangible, visible ways so that we could also become his hands and feet to one another. We must be in communion and community with him to manifest this incarnational expression of Jesus. Christian spirituality is always as much about dealing with each other as it is about dealing with God. The greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor. It takes our daily effort to live out these commandments, enabling us to reach our ultimate fulfillment in life, being the light of the love of God to the world.

We live in the age of the “therapeutic culture,” where only our own truth and feelings matter. It is a culture that has a “religion without grace.” Hence, our culture sees forgiveness more negatively than positively. It sees forgiveness as allowing oppression to maintain its power, thus permitting the cycle of violence and abuse. The moral pressure to forgive is seen as a further burden on the victim and an easy escape for the perpetrator. Fr. Ron Rolheiser asks, “Is this logic correct?” From a purely emotional point of view, he says “yes,” it feels right; but it is wrong when scrutinized more deeply. Vindictiveness will only produce more vindictiveness. Only forgiveness can take violence and hatred out of a relationship. Jesus sees forgiveness as the most important of all virtues, as it decides whether we go to heaven or not. When Jesus teaches us the Lord’s Prayer, its words tell us that if we fail to forgive others, God will not be able to forgive us. Why? Because, to sit at the banquet table of eternal life, only those willing to sit down with everyone can take a seat. God cannot change this. Only we can open our hearts sufficiently to sit down with everyone. If there is a litmus test for Christian Discipleship, it is our ability to forgive from the heart.

The psalmist today speaks to a longing for God. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that everything that is beautiful and attractive, however earthy and sexual, is contained inside of God. God is the creator of all that is beautiful, attractive, colorful, sexual, witty, brilliant, and intelligent. All that we are attracted to on this earth, including the beauty that allures us sexually, is found inside of God, and our attraction and longing for it here on earth are, in the end, a longing for God. But we never really understand this. If we did, we would, like the saints and mystics of old, become obsessed with God instead of being obsessed only with what we find attractive here on earth. Some of us are obsessed with beauty, some of us are obsessed with finding a soulmate, some of us are obsessed with sex, some of us are obsessed with truth, some of us are obsessed with justice, and some of us are obsessed with the energy, color, and pleasures of this world. But very few of us are obsessed, or even much interested, in God, who is the author of beauty, sexuality, intimacy, truth, justice, energy, color, and pleasure. Why aren’t we more interested in the One of which these things are only a pale reflection?