Author: Daniel Scofield, MTS

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who was also a man of privilege and entitlement but disagreed with the Sadducees. As Pharisees, he and Jesus had much more in common, philosophically and religiously. In fact, there is reasonable scholarly speculation that Jesus was raised as a Pharisee. And so Jesus’ actions in the temple must have also caught Nicodemus’ attention because here, in the chapter that immediately follows the temple story, Nicodemus has come to Jesus in the night for fear of being seen by other members of the Sanhedrin. Rev. John Forman writes that Nicodemus recognized Jesus as a rabbi and asked him deep and probing questions. Without condemning Nicodemus’ understanding, Jesus invites him—and you and I—into a deeper embrace. Jesus, in our reflection verse, is testifying that those who trust and bond with the Beloved One will not perish, not because we have fulfilled a contractual obligation, but because we, too, have become God’s offspring, children of God. In that way, we receive from God the same family honor and character that God has, and we owe God the same loyalty that blood relatives give to each other. This is the way that God loved the world. God gave the world the only begotten child so that everyone who trusts and bonds with that child may not perish but have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the only begotten One into the world to judge creation but to save that creation through that One. Those who trust and bond with him are not judged, but those who hesitate and are disloyal to him are already judged because they have not trusted in the family name of the only begotten. God has loved us; God loves us and will love us. God loves us not because we have behaved correctly, because we have agreed to a checklist of doctrines, or even because we call ourselves Christians. God loves us because God is love. Loving is what God does, and God’s love abides. God’s love is wild and unconditional, not transactional. God simply delights in loving us because it is the essence of God’s being.  And that is the essence that came to us in the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ, the only Begotten child. Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, author of several of my favorite books on spirituality, has suggested that we are still a long way from trusting and bonding with the Word made Flesh and, in that way, taking on the family name. Fr. Rolheiser writes, “Do we ever really take the unconditional love of God seriously? Do we ever really take the joy of God seriously? Do we ever really believe that God loves us long before any sin we commit and long after every sin we commit? Do we ever really believe that God still, unconditionally, loves Satan and everyone in hell and that God is even now willing to open the gates of heaven to them?  Do we ever really take how wide the embrace of God is?  Do we ever believe Julian of Norwich when she tells us that God sits in the center of heaven, smiling, his face completely relaxed, looking like a marvelous symphony?” These are fantastic questions to be pondering during Lent, because as Rolheiser concludes, “the deep struggle of all religion is to enter into the joy of God.”   As Jesus continues to offer light to Nicodemus there under the cover of night and to us here in the darkness of this Lenten season, Jesus also points to a sobering truth. Even if we have seen the light, we can still choose the darkness. We can choose not to be in relation to God.  We can choose to fearfully imagine salvation to be a limited guarantee for the “there and then” and reject the life-sustaining intimate relationship that God deeply yearns for with us in the “here and now.” Choose life instead. Choose light. Choose love.

What does it mean to be merciful in the religious sense? Medieval theology taught that mercy flows spontaneously out of charity, like smoke from fire. It linked mercy to justice, seeing it as one dimension of justice. This insight is valuable because mercy does flow out of charity and ultimately takes its root in justice. But Fr. Rolheiser writes that it has its own specificity, which can be seen when we examine it biblically. In the Old Testament, mercy (hesed, often translated as loving-kindness) is a quality ascribed first of all to God. Later, the prophets begin challenging the people with it, telling them that God does not want sacrifice but mercy, as God practices. What is implied in this? Biblically, mercy is a word used to describe the feelings and actions that a very loving parent has towards their children. The concept of mercy connotes feelings and actions that are deeply personal, one-to-one, unique, special, tender, and warm. The tender love of a parent for a child dwarfs the demand for strict justice even while never violating it. The church classically taught this through various lists, which tried to summarize what is implied in imitating God’s mercy. The corporal works of mercy: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick, ransoming the captive, bury the dead are one such list. In essence, these lists challenge us to be more holy and God-like through practicing a justice that is more personal, one-to-one, warm, and gracious beyond strict need. The prophets of the Old Testament made this list the acid test for faith. If you did these things, you had faith – and vice versa. Jesus goes even further. For him, as is evident in Matthew’s Gospel, the corporal works of mercy are the criteria for salvation and the measure of how we are treating him – “Whatsoever you do unto the hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, sick, and captive, you do unto me.” Long buried in the thicket, the list of the corporal works of mercy awaits such exploration.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that when he was younger, he was pretty confident that he knew what love meant. After all, we all experience love in some way: being in love, loving someone, being loved by someone. Virtually everyone has known the love of somebody, a friend, a family member, or an acquaintance. The more we age, the more we also begin to know love’s dark side: We fall in love and think it will last forever, but then fall out of love, feel love go sour, feel love grow cold, see love betrayed, feel ourselves wounded by love, and wound others. Finally, even more upsetting, we all find that there are always people in our lives who are cold, bitter, and unforgiving towards us, so it is not always easy to feel love and be loving. Jesus commanded us to “Love one another as I have loved you!” We too easily read that simplistically, romantically, and in a one-sided, over-confident manner. But this command contains the most important challenge of the whole gospel and, like the deepest part of the gospel to which it is linked, the crucifixion, it is very, very difficult to imitate. Why? It’s easy to consider ourselves as loving if we only look at one side of things, namely, how we relate to those people who are loving, warm, respectful, and gracious towards us. But if we begin to look at the skeletons in our relational closets, our naive confidence will soon disappear. What about the people who hate us, whom we don’t like? What about the people whom we avoid and who avoid us? What about those people towards whom we feel resentment? What about all those people with whom we are at odds, towards whom we feel suspicion, coldness, and anger? What about those people whom we haven’t been able to forgive? It’s one thing to love someone who adores you, and it’s quite another to love someone who wants you dead! But that’s the real test. Jesus’ command to love contains a critical subordinate clause, “as I have loved you!” What was unique in the way he loved us? More than any creedal formula or other moral issue, the command to love and forgive your enemies is the litmus test for Christian discipleship. We can ardently believe in and defend every item in the creed and fight passionately for justice in all its dimensions, but the real test of whether or not we are followers of Jesus is the capacity or non-capacity to forgive an enemy, to remain warm and loving towards someone who is not warm and loving to us. That’s the hard, non-negotiable truth underlying Jesus’ command to love, and when we are honest, we have to admit that we are still a long way from measuring up to that. There’s a sobering challenge in an old Stevie Nicks song, Golddust Woman: She suggests that it’s good that, at a point in life, someone “shatters our illusion of love” because far too often, blind to its own true intentions, our love is manipulative and self-serving. Too often, the song points out, we are lousy lovers who unconsciously pick our prey. What shatters our illusion of love is the presence in our lives of people who hate us. They’re the test. It’s here where we have to measure up: If we can love them, we’re real lovers; if we can’t, we’re still under a self-serving illusion.

The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your wounds to your head or your heart. – Henri Nouwen

Fr. Rolheiser writes that part of us understands exactly what Henri Nouwen is saying here, even as another part of us congenitally resists his advice: There’s a place in us that doesn’t want to cry, doesn’t want to feel our hurt, doesn’t want to take our pain to a place of silence, and doesn’t want to take our wounds to our heart. And so instead, in our heartaches and wounds, we grow anxious and obsessive, we struggle to understand, we talk endlessly to others, and we try to sort things out with our heads rather than letting ourselves simply feel them with our hearts. For all of this wisdom he provides, there needs to be some qualification: We must also take our wounds to our heads. Our hearts and heads need to be in sync. The way we take pain to our heads and block healing tears in our hearts is by denial, by rationalization, by blaming, by not simply and honestly admitting and owning our own pain, our own helplessness, our own weakness, and our own inadequacy. When we are brought to our knees by heartache and pain, we shouldn’t try to deny that pain, its bitter strength, or our helplessness in dealing with it. To do so is to risk becoming hard and bitter. Tears connect us to our origins and allow life’s primal water to flow through us again. Moreover, when we take our pain to our hearts and when we honestly admit our weaknesses and helplessness, God can finally begin to fill us with strength. Why? It is only when we are brought to our knees in utter helplessness, only when we finally give up on our own strength, that God can send an angel to strengthen us like God sent an angel to strengthen Jesus during his agony in the garden. That is why it is better to feel our wounds than to understand them and why it is better to cry than to worry.

In Hebrew, the figure of seventy times seven means the same as “always.” Therefore, our Lord did not limit forgiveness to a fixed number but declared that it must be continuous and forever. The parable also clearly shows that we are totally in God’s debt. A talent was the equivalent of six thousand denarii, and a denarius was a working man’s daily wage. Ten thousand talents, an enormous sum, gives us an idea of the immense value attached to the pardon we receive from God. During the preparation of the gifts at the Offertory of the Mass, the priest prays quietly: “With humble spirit and contrite heart, may we be accepted by you, O Lord, and may our sacrifice in your sight this day be pleasing to you, Lord God.” Azariah, in our first reading from Daniel, prayed loudly to the Lord: “But with contrite heart and humble spirit let us be received…” As we come before the Lord in personal or communal prayer, our disposition and our moral behavior play a significant part in the effectiveness of our dialogue with the Lord. Humility grounds us in the truth of things; contrition opens our hearts to receive the mercy of God. The Gospel parable about the servant who received God’s forgiveness but refused to forgive in return is deeply disturbing. Of course, we are that servant being offered God’s forgiveness. Hopefully, we are not that servant in withholding forgiveness from those who have hurt us in any way. Jesus adds a zinger—our forgiveness of others must be “from the heart.” A famous line from Erich Segal’s 1970 novel Love Story, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” is not only bad psychology, but it denies what love is all about. The cousins of love are mercy and forgiveness. Every relationship will have its hurts and bruises. These must be tended to as much as a knife wound. If not, an infection will set in, threatening our spiritual life and the life of the community. A humble spirit and contrite heart dispose us well to live authentically with God and with others.

In Hebrew, the figure of seventy times seven means the same as “always.” Therefore, our Lord did not limit forgiveness to a fixed number but declared that it must be continuous and forever. The parable also clearly shows that we are totally in God’s debt. A talent was the equivalent of six thousand denarii, and a single denarius was a working man’s daily wage. Ten thousand talents, an enormous sum, gives us an idea of the immense value attached to the pardon we receive from God. We must force ourselves, if necessary, to always forgive those who offend us from the very first moment. The greatest injury or offense you can suffer from them is nothing compared with what God has pardoned each of us from.

The problem of faith in our time is the problem of unbelief among believers. Faith is no longer believable to, nor livable for, many in our age. Why? Why is Christ known but not really believed in? Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that conservatives blame our present malaise upon lack of prayer and the failure of our age to keep the commandments, pure and simple. If we don’t pray and our moral lives are shabby, how can we expect to have a vital faith?  Liberals point to slow renewal within the church as the cause. We are not really renewed, they argue. We still pray to God, talk about God, and worship God in mythical and medieval images. We live modern lives but try to live an old-time religion. Ultimately, this freezes God out of all the important areas of life. Religion becomes the great art form, and the church becomes the great museum. Social justice advocates submit that the problem is one of affluence. If Christ made a preferential option for the poor and Christianity is seeing life from the bottom, it is, quite simply, impossible to live as affluently and selfishly as we do and still have a vital connection to Christ. There is some truth in each of these, but, in the end, the real reason for the erosion of faith and hope in Christ is something beyond all of these.  What, singularly, are we missing today within Christianity that could make us credible to the world and to our own families? Community. The greatest need in our time is, as Jim Wallis puts it, “not simply for kerygma, the preaching of the Gospel; nor for Diakonia; service on behalf of justice; nor for charisma, the experience of the spirit’s gifts; nor even for prophesies; the challenging of the King. The greatest need of our time is for Koinonia, the call simply to be church. To offer to the world a living, breathing, loving community of the church. This is the foundation of all answers.” When there is a strong experience of community, there is generally a strong faith. RCIA groups, Cursillo groups, marriage encounter groups, social justice groups, charismatic groups, Bible study groups, third order groups. These are pockets of fervor within the church, and it is no accident that all of them are linked to strong community experiences. Christianity, in the end, is a communal endeavor. We believe in it when community works, we stop believing in it when community and family breakdown.  Our primary task today is to live community. If we can do that, then the visible body of Christ, the church, will have an incredible resurrection.

Fr. Daniel Berrigan SJ wrote a little book entitled, “Ten Commandments for the Long Haul.” It was intended as spiritual sustenance, sustaining food, for those who walk the lonely, long road of faith and often find themselves discouraged and running out of gas. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that Berrigan doesn’t offer a quick fix but points out the right direction within which we should be walking and where, at key junctures, if we cast our eyes at the right spot, we might find Elijah’s jug, God’s food for the journey.

1. Acknowledge your contingency, your helplessness. You are a creature, not the creator. Only God is “ipsum esse subsistens”, self-sufficient being. Proper living begins with the words: “I am not God!”

2. Pray, prayers of helplessness, gratitude, and praise. Pray from your weaknesses and helplessness: “Lord, hang on to me lest I slip away from you. Do for me what I cannot do for myself.”

3. Welcome and accept the present moment. Don’t let the busyness, pressures, and heartaches of life steal the present moment from you. It’s the only place you will experience love and joy.

4. Give yourself permission to be inadequate. Don’t be too hard on yourself and, especially, on others. Everyone falls short. You’re loved as you are. Fear not; you are inadequate!

5. Be sufficiently loving and critical, both at the same time. Your loved ones, your church, and your community need you to be loving and critical, both at the same time. Pull the new as well as the old from your bag.

6. Be post-ideological, post-personal-history, post-conservative, post-liberal, post-naive, and post-sophisticated. Be non-classifiable. Admit that the right and left have both run out of imagination. See both as phases to pass through. Forgive your past.

7. Bless what’s good and beautiful, even as you stand where the cross of Christ is erected. All that’s good and beautiful has God as the author. Honor it before speaking any word of challenge to the world. Imitate Christ.

8. Be shockingly “Catholic” – earthy and wine-drinking. Bask in the goodness of life. We have divine permission to be happy. Jesus scandalized people with his capacity to enjoy life. He drank wine and let his heart be warmed by friends.

9. Accept aging. All that dies brings rich new life, even our own bodies. Aging needs to be defined aesthetically. Aging is an art form.

10, Serve the right God! God radiates love. Don’t serve any other God than this One. Don’t bow to any molten calf created in the image and likeness of our own tensions and bitterness.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that all around us, we can see nature teeming with everything: prodigal, fertile, overabundant, wasteful. Why else do we have 90% more brain cells than we need, and why else is nature scattering billions of seeds of virtually everything all over the planet every second? And if life is so extravagant, what does this say about God, its author? Dictionaries define “prodigal” as “wastefully extravagant and lavishly abundant.” That certainly describes the God that Jesus incarnates and reveals. God, as we see in both nature and in scripture and know from experience, is over-generous, over-lavish, over-extravagant, over-prodigious, over-rich, and over-patient. If nature, scripture, and experience are to be believed, God is the absolute antithesis of everything that is stingy, miserly, frugal, narrowly calculating, or sparing in what it doles out. God is prodigal, and so are the chances God gives us. Sr. Margaret Halaska once captured this wonderfully in a poem she entitled Covenant:

The Father knocks at my door, seeking a home for his son:
Rent is cheap, I say
I don’t want to rent. I want to buy, says God.
I’m not sure I want to sell,
but you might come in to look around.
I think I will, says God.
I might let you have a room or two.
I like it, says God. I’ll take the two.
You might decide to give me more some day.
I can wait, says God.
I’d like to give you more,
but it’s a bit difficult. I need some space for me.
I know, says God, but I’ll wait. I like what I see.
Hmm, maybe I can let you have another room.
I really don’t need that much.
Thanks, says God, I’ll take it. I like what I see.
I’d like to give you the whole house
but I’m not sure –
Think on it, says God. I wouldn’t put you out.
Your house would be mine and my son would live in it.
You’d have more space than you’d ever had before.
I don’t understand at all.
I know, says God, but I can’t tell you about that.
You’ll have to discover it for yourself.
That can only happen if you let him have the whole house.
A bit risky, I say.
Yes, says God, but try me.
I’m not sure –
I’ll let you know.
I can wait, says God. I like what I see.

The parable in today’s gospel of the wealthy landowner who sends his servants out to collect the produce from his tenant farmers is a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when we try to build things on our own— even the kingdom of God. At the same time, it is a great consolation to know that the Lord is not stymied by our rejections. One might think this is just another example of Jesus facing off against the scribes and Pharisees, the religious authorities of his day. But there is something there for all of us, regardless of our canonical station in life. We, too, can get it wrong, can reject what should be embraced, can drive off messengers whose messages we don’t like. Our hope, finally, is only in the Lord, who makes a firm foundation for our lives, even out of something we initially rejected. The father in the story fails to fathom the deep resentment his tenants hold against his family. “They will respect my son,” he assumes, but they do not. The greedy tenants kill the man’s beloved son to gain his inheritance. Bishop Robert Barron notes that when God sent his son to us, we killed him. “This is the insane resistance to God’s intentions, which is called sin. One of the most fundamental spiritual mistakes we can make is to think that we own the world. We are tenants, entrusted with the responsibility of caring for it, but everything that we have and are is on loan.” That brings us appropriately back to our Lenten journey and the sobering reality that our lives are not about us.