When I saw that today’s Gospel is about fasting, I had three reactions: 1) No, not the fasting reading! 2) Wait— Pharisees fast and disciples don’t: Win. 3) Bridegrooms?

I looked to the first reading from Isaiah for help. Here, the people complain that their fasting and self-affliction goes unnoticed by God. God says if they really want to be appreciated for their fasting then they should: release those bound unjustly, set the oppressed free, share their bread with the hungry, shelter the homeless, and clothe the naked.

Click here to read the rest of this reflection, over at Notre Dame’s Young Alumni Lenten Reflections.

Gen would probably say plugging in better for me would mean plugging in less, which is definitely true. It also means using the Internet and technology in ways that actually make my life and the lives of others better, and in ways that bring me closer to God. This means less Scramble with Friends and more, well, divinely inspired things.

Stay tuned to our Twitter feed (on the right over there…@MillCatholic) for resources and ideas throughout the season, and please post your favorite ways of plugging in well for Lent in the comments.

Here’s a handful of videos for Lent to get things started.

Living a FaithJustice Lent

I work at the Center for FaithJustice, and I was asked to make a short video about Lent for our e-newsletter. In it, I reflect on how I might live a more integrated, holistic Lent this time around.

40 – A Video of Jesus In the Wilderness

This made the rounds last year, but it’s a great meditation to revisit. Jesus’ 40 days just sort of zip by in a sentence when we hear about them in the Gospels, but this video explores what a chunk of time like that alone could be like. It hits on themes of solitude, fasting, quiet, and commitment — good stuff for Lent.

40: The Series

Keeping with the 40 theme, there’s a new Web-only series debuting Ash Wednesday from the Jesuits out in California. The trailer (below) is intense. It seems post-apocalyptic and allegorical and maybe a bit overwrought? But the production values look great and it’s an interesting idea. Episodes will air throughout the season. Check out its Web site here.

David Foster Wallace on Political Thinking in America

Tuesday would have been the 50th birthday of literary giant David Foster Wallace, who died in 2008. An 84-minute uncut interview DFW gave to a German TV station in 2003 appeared online this week. I haven’t sifted through all of it yet, but the first clip I watched includes a great commentary we could apply to Lenten fasting. Listen for his treatment of freedom vs. “a sort of slavery.”

Alexander Tsiaras: Conception to birth — visualized

Friend of MC Jonathan L. posted this earlier today, and it struck me as a great Lenten video. Lent is about conversion, which literally means to turn around. We commit ourselves to turning toward God during the season in preparation for Easter, and one great way to grow closer to God is to encounter creation with wonder and awe. This is wonderful and awesome.

That should get us through Wednesday. What resources, videos or otherwise, help you get in the Lenten spirit? Please share!

I wanted to write back, “For worse! Clearly, for worse! Cancel it!”

Like 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon, I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day. As much as I bemoan the commercialization of Christmas, Valentine’s Day seems to be a 100%-Hallmark Holiday, with no redeeming value. Its portrayal in movies and TV shows displays a sort of immature, mushy “love” that doesn’t look anything like love as I know it.

Not helping its cause is the fact that we really have no idea who St. Valentine was, or if he even existed at all. The conspiracy theorist inside me imagines that about 500 years ago, some bishop who owned a handful of flower shops or had a connection with a monastery that made nice greeting cards decided creating a romantic holiday in the dead of winter with no competing celebrations would be a shrewd business move.

But since I would prefer to not be a spoilsport or cynic, I will grit my teeth and suggest two reasons why I should actually love Valentine’s Day. I’ll see if I convince myself (and yourself, if you’re also a skeptic) by the end. After all, the best way to defend your belief is to consider the good arguments on the other side…

Click here to read the rest of this piece over at the Center for FaithJustice’s blog.

But then, this happened: When I lived in Wisconsin, I taught a fourth grade religious ed class. I was blessed with a great group of kids. My favorites were a pair of twins I’ll call Sammie and Alex. Sammie had Type I diabetes and a host of other health problems. She had been through more than 20 surgeries by the time she was 10 years old. She was about a foot shorter than the other kids, walked slowly, and had a slight speech impediment. She is incredibly sweet with a streak of sass.

Her brother Alex is a devoted caretaker, and genuinely seemed to enjoy coming to Tuesday night religious ed, which means he is likely bound for sainthood.

One night, when we were talking about the way Jesus cared for the sick and downtrodden, I broke the class up into groups and gave them different Scripture passages to act out. Sammie’s group was assigned this passage from Mark. Somebody had to play the part of Jesus. With a sensitivity surprising for 4^th graders, the group suggested Sammie should take on the role. She did, with gusto, winning a nice round of applause for a convincing: “BE MADE CLEAN!”

Sammie was clearly the class’ best fill-in for Jesus: Jesus the wounded healer who says to the broken – to all of us – I know what it’s like to suffer and I will be with you in the muck.

Today marks the second of two straight sets of challenging readings that deal with pain and illness. We had the story of Job and a fever for Peter’s mother-in-law last week, and two references to leprosy this weekend. They both can cause us to wonder: Why do bad things happen? If God is all-loving and all-powerful, why doesn’t God do something to stop leprosy and Type I diabetes?

Last week, Msgr. Vince, the pastor at my parish, mentioned in his homily the 1978 spiritual classic When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Rabbi Harold Kushner, who lost a son to a rare, incurable genetic disease. The book is beautiful and deeply sad and hopeful, but even if it were not well-written,  Msgr. Vince said that it still would have shot to the top of the best-sellers list because of its title alone. Who hasn’t wondered why bad things happen to good people? Who hasn’t pestered God about it?

I wrestled with bad things happening to good people frequently during college, a common phenomenon among maturing believers whose simple childhood faith suddenly demands justification. Hurricane Katrina hit during my sophomore year, and images of seemingly pointless suffering were shown on TV for weeks. That fall semester, I wrote a term paper comparing Kushner’s book to that of a Christian scholar.

I’ll resist the urge to upload the paper here, and instead jump straight to my conclusion, which was that all of the most common theistic explanations for suffering offered throughout the ages are garbage. It is impossible to square an all-loving God with the list of typical responses to suffering: Like God is like a parent who sends a child for a tetanus shot: it might hurt now, but God always knows what’s for the best.

Or this one: God sends us trials to teach us things, like compassion. Look at all the outpouring of love and support after the hurricane.

Or: God just wanted your loved one to come home to him. He’s in a better place now.

These excuses have two things in common: they are all monstrously insensitive to say to someone in mourning, and they all fail if we want to think of God as all-loving. A loving God just couldn’t and wouldn’t cause such massive suffering to teach us a lesson. No lesson, no matter how important, justifies incredible pain. One of my favorite of Rabbi Kushner’s points is that God does not send suffering, but weeps with us in it.

That idea is comforting, but it doesn’t get to the heart of the problem, which has to do with God’s power. God’s empathy seems insufficient if he has the power to do something – to spin the hurricane out to sea, to zap leprosy with a divine laser, to make sure Sammie’s pancreas worked before she was born.

Perhaps our traditional view of God’s power needs adjusting. It’s popular to think of God as a sort of Super Bowl-ish deity: as strong as the Patriots’ 325-pound behemoth Vince Wilfork; famous like Madonna is famous; in control in the style of a good referee or Giants’ head coach Tom Coughlin; dependable in the clutch in the fashion of Eli Manning; stunningly beautiful to behold like a supermodel spokeswoman. I sometimes think God, like the Super Bowl, is larger-than-life – something distant and unapproachable I will never participate in.

Sure, God is strong, famous, in control, dependable, beautiful, and can seem distant and unapproachable at times.

But to get a sense of what God’s power is actually like, we can take a look at this weekend’s first reading and compare it to the passage from Mark. We’ll see that the Super Bowl is a terrible analogy for how God’s power operates. In the passage from Leviticus from today, we hear how the Israelites dealt with lepers, per Mosaic law:

“The one who bears the sore of leprosy
shall keep his garments rent and his head bare,
and shall muffle his beard;
he shall cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’
As long as the sore is on him he shall declare himself unclean,
since he is in fact unclean.
He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.”

Well, that’s one approach. If that’s where the story ended, we could be tempted to throw up our hands and say, “Thanks for nothing, God. Seems like we’re just supposed to deal with suffering here on our own.”

But then we have the gospel, in which Jesus breaks down the wall of fear separating the healthy from the sick, the powerful from the outcasts. Here is God, in the form of a frail, homeless man, reaching out to touch a leper.

Yes, that touch is miraculous, and the man is healed.

And I don’t want to underestimate the miracle of that touch, but the point of Jesus’ ministry is not how cool he was to be able to bend natural law. There were plenty of other healers and prophets in first-century Palestine.

What makes Jesus different is that his power is defined by selflessness and boundless compassion. The same all-powerful God who embraced lepers also washed the feet of his apostles, said you’d be able to recognize him in the hungry and thirsty and prisoner, spent time with almost every brand of reject, and was executed naked in front of scores of onlookers. The miracles are important, but only in the way they get your attention and highlight Christ’s broader mission – his mission to show that small, quiet, steady, subversive acts of love are how God’s power manifests itself in the world. When we choose to act out of love and not of fear, as Jesus does in tonight’s reading, we participate in the life of God. We don’t need a cannon of a right arm or a blazing 40-yard dash to play. We’re in the game, just as we are, with all of our gifts and shortcomings and idiosyncrasies. And God, the head coach, says to each of us, “I can work with this.”

Many types of traditional human power were on display last Sunday night during the Big Game, but what blew me away that weekend was a momentary encounter with God’s sort of power a few hours before the game started.

Last Sunday, I took four high school students to a local nursing home for our monthly Mass and visit there. Two of the four students were cousins I’ll call Rachel and Celia, gals who come to literally everything I organize at the parish where I serve as youth minister (God bless them).

After Mass, we floated among the residents and spent time chatting with them. It’s a fairly challenging population at the home we visit, and Celia and Rachel are shy to begin with. The three of us sat with a woman I’ll call Carol who could sort of have a conversation, but whose encroaching dementia was obvious. After a few minutes of talking, Carol let out a loud cough, reached into her mouth, and dropped a bullet of mucous on the table.

My stomach turned, and my immediate thought was to yank Rachel and Celia away. But we sat there for a beat, and then Carol said, “That wasn’t a very nice thing I did just now.” I managed a weak smile. Celia and Rachel, however, instantly replied: “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal.” We sat there and kept talking for a few minutes, and then we helped pass out snacks.

That was godly power Rachel and Celia showed Sunday afternoon, impressing me much more than football players ever could. A linebacker’s powerful tackle could knock the wind out of me and maybe crack a rib, but the power of fearless compassion changed my heart, which is a transformation much more lasting and important.

Still, at the end of all this, I have no explanation for why bad things happen to good people. But to think of our God acting with “Rachel and Celia power” and not “Super Bowl power” is comforting somehow. Perhaps it helps me to hope that ultimately, God, who is love, will win. If we are to believe the Gospel, such a victory celebration will not resemble the Giants on the podium. It will be more like the joyful embrace between a healed leper and his friend who wasn’t afraid.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours.

//

Three days before Christmas is not a good time to be driving around southern New Jersey – or any other suburban place, surely, where the ratio of people to malls is alarmingly small.

Routes 38, 70, 130, 73, 42, 41, 295, 76, 676, 168, and 30 were jam-packed this morning, even after rush hour. I know this because I sat on most of them, and heard about the other one or two on the radio.

Then, three things in succession destroyed any scintilla of Christmas cheer that had survived the highways:

1) The shopping center parking lots, which represent the very worst in civil engineering, especially in terms of stop-sign placement or lack thereof, and can inspire me, an otherwise not-maniacal person, to be anything but civil; and

2) The hour of waiting around in Target for a specific employee to show up, who is for some unintelligible reason the only person authorized to turn on a certain computer, punch a few keys, and facilitate a cell-phone trade-in; and

3) The impish 12-year old with a winter hat on indoors and cartoon headphones on his t-shirt who, encouraged by his mother, loudly cut in front of me while I politely waited for the finally-arriving staff member to get settled at his kiosk. The kid’s mom, whose name I committed to memory as if I would track her down someday and TP her front lawn out of spite, forgot her ID in the car, which she needed to show the employee (whose droopy eyes and speed of movement were reminiscent of Eeyore) in order to finish the deal. This required them to walk to the parking lot from the back of the store, pick up the license, and return to the electronics section, during which time the employee was unable to process my request, because what computer this day and age can do two things at once?

Before you roll your eyes, I admit it: this is an especially ugly litany of first-world complaining, and it probably served me right for heading into Cherry Hill on December 22nd in the first place.

I’m conscious enough of this ugliness to be embarrassed that it felt so good to summon up the day’s fading frustrations for this writing. I bore the minor inconveniences as they happened with a series of weak smiles, but now I can fight back! With karate chops of prose!

But typing a few short paragraphs angrily that my big-box nemeses will never read is not the noble act of cosmic justice I wish it were.  So this needs a quick change in tone if there’s any shot at redemption for us, we the complainers and the line-jumpers and the weary employees and the parking-lot ragers:

On my way back to the apartment, the neighborhood streets were narrowed to one lane by vehicles parked on both sides. I barreled down them with regard for nothing but getting the hell out of the car. Soon enough, of course, I cut off someone approaching from the other direction who had the right of way– an old man in a beat-up painter’s van.

He pulled to the side and let me pass. Sheepishly, I waved an apology.

Smiling, he waved back.

Then I smiled, too, and a great Jayhawks song came on the radio. The outside temperature gauge read 61, so I rolled down the windows – on the winter solstice! – and sang my way home.

That fellow traveler’s injection of a bit of good will into the universe made up for the whole damn sorry lot of us. The day’s crowded busyness could not have been any more enjoyable for him than it was for me, but something moved that man to raise five fingers and smile instead of the singular middle one and glare.

I’ll consider the moment a teensy Christmas miracle. Because whenever a sign of generosity invites us to stop blindly consuming and recognize good in another person, we encounter the same truth that was revealed in the Christ child’s birth in a dark world 2000 years ago: that despite conditions insisting otherwise, not all is lost.

But I don’t feel like any more words. There have been too many words and slideshows, retrospective TV programs and concerts. The unending media coverage of 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks replays loud and jumbled in my head like a frantic fever-dream.

So where new words seem pointless, a handful of old words read at churches all over the world today prove chillingly timely and a little foreboding.

Today’s first reading, from Sirach:

Wrath and anger are hateful things,
yet the sinner hugs them tight.
The vengeful will suffer the LORD’s vengeance,
for he remembers their sins in detail.
Forgive your neighbor’s injustice;
then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.

And the Gospel reading, from Matthew:

Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
“Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive?
As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times…”

Then, at the end of Jesus’s following parable about a servant who does not forgive another’s debt, after his own debt had been forgiven:

“…His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant!
I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,
as I had pity on you?’
Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers
until he should pay back the whole debt.
So will my heavenly Father do to you,
unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”

The readings for today were set long ago, without 9/11 in mind, but the radical challenge they present hits home on this anniversary.

Not only does discipleship require forgiveness when transgressions seem unforgivable, but failure to forgive elicits the wrath of God in a unique way.

In a speech tonight, President Obama said that no one who would do the country harm would be able to escape “justice,” at our own hands. When is it justice, and when is it revenge?

I have more questions:

What does God think of our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and covert violence in neighboring countries? How does God feel about the summary execution of Osama bin Laden? What will I, as a silent consenter to all of it, have to say for myself when I meet God face to face? Will I be held accountable? Will I be cut some slack? Am I misapplying the Scripture because I see everything through the lens of my own time?

Who knows. But today’s readings must give us some pause. At the very least, they reminded me on this solemn day that when reflecting on things like terrorism and death and war and memory, question marks are important.

Here are some examples:

Had religious experience at grocery store.

I’ve been blessed with second chances.

I still make coffee for two.

As typical (lame) Church workers, this led us to wonder how people would write Jesus’ six-word memoir.

We asked some of our friends for their six-word memoirs for Jesus. Many sent us a slew of six-word memoirs, so we pared it down to one response per person. We made a list of about 35 responses below. 

Check them out and and come up with your own. If you feel so moved, share it in the comments section. Enjoy!

Never threw one stone. Liked riddles. / John Bradley

Stay calm, have faith in me. (Turned water into wine. How cool!?!?) / Howie Brown

I am here for you always. / Lori Boccuzzi

Died for you. Keep in touch. / Katie Scarlett O’Hara Calcutt

I would do anything for love. / Lenny DeLorenzo

Tried my best…Love changed everything. / Melody Duffy

Let me wash how I wish. / Isaac Garcia

Bring good news to the poor. / Colleen Gibson

I died so you could love. / Kathleen Glackin

Sent to save. Condemned. Will return. / PJ Glackin

I am. Continuing to cause change. / Jana Hambley

Behold, I make all things new. / Kathy Haninger

Friends were fishermen, prostitutes, tax collectors. / Gen Jordan

Taught love; only seemed to fail. / Paul Kollman, CSC

Loved you unto death, on cross. / Nic Kovatch

Started out carpenter. Significant career change. / Mike Laskey

Radical service, radical love. Follow me. / Jonathan Lewis

Humble to death on a cross. / John Paul Lichon

Loved unto death. Restored friends’ life. / Patrick Manning

From manger to resurrection, for you. /  Bethanne Mascio

I came so they could live. / Anne Milne

Teaches, cries with us, the poor. / Paul Mitchell

I hang where others do not! / Kevin Moran

I came. I loved. I rose. / Kevin Mohan

Love each other. It’s that simple. / Katie Muller

Love is all that I require. / Widian Nicola

Stranger in a strange land. Going home. / Michael O’Connor

I came, I died, I conquered. / Anthony Paz

That you might have abundant life. / Michael Rossmann, SJ

I loved you, I still do. / Jaclyn Senior

Born poor so you’ll be rich. / Aimee Shelide

To make them know My love. /Ellen Voegele

For you I give my everything. / Anna Waechter

Taught God’s love, was crucified- resurrected. / Leora Wallace

I love you. Go do likewise. / Lindsay Wilcox

Life in Communion. Miracles. Inviting Resurrection. / Felipe Witchger

Here are two more from folks who already have memoirs listed above, but since both fit well with Pentecost themes, we’re sending them with you as a Pentecost blessing:

- Jonathan Lewis

- Isaac Garcia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His goal was to “bridge the polarized gap between ‘Red and Blue State’ groupthink,” arguing that our commonly assumed political divides are silly and deeply flawed, especially from a Catholic perspective.

An approach to politics inspired by the Gospel as opposed to the other way around can and should lead a Catholic to hold views that don’t fit neatly into the traditional Left-Right spectrum (pro-life and pro-comprehensive immigration reform, for instance). We’re not quite red, we’re not quite blue…we’re more like magenta.

In Charlie’s absence, MC will take it upon itself from time to time to report on some interesting magenta news. We think this is a fitting enterprise for us because so many of our Catholic (and non-Catholic) peers are a sort of magenta in their political expressions. We’re more likely to be pro-life than our parents, but also more in favor of comprehensive immigration reform that is better at “welcoming the stranger” among us.

Two bits of magenta caught our attention this week:

1) Indiana congressman Joe Donnelly announced that he will run for Senate in 2012. Donnelly is a Catholic, pro-life Democrat. His immigration position could use some magenta-izing, but it’s an interesting development within a party that has been so traditionally pro-choice. Bob Casey and Ben Nelson are the only current pro-life Democratic Senators; Donnelly and Virginia candidate Tim Kaine could potentially double that number in 2012. Donnelly is more firmly pro-life than Kaine. (There is, of course, magenta on both sides of the aisle; see former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel’s opposition to the Iraq War or current House Rep Chris Smith from NJ’s staunch human rights defense for some good examples.)

2) In response to President Obama’s call for comprehensive immigration reform on Tuesday, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles called on the President and Congress to take action. It’s strong enough to be included here in full:

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Migration, today urged the President and the Congress to work together to enact comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

Archbishop Gomez made his remarks following an address on immigration reform delivered this afternoon in El Paso, Texas, by President Obama on immigration reform.

“The president and Congress can no longer wait to address this important issue,” Archbishop Gomez said. “In the absence of comprehensive reform, many states and localities are taking the responsibility of enforcing immigration law into their own hands. This has led to abuses and injustices for many U.S. families and immigrant communities.”

The USCCB has consistently advocated for comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration policies that secures U.S. borders and gives undocumented immigrants the chance to earn permanent residency and eventual citizenship.

Archbishop Gomez said that any comprehensive reform must include a path for currently undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship. He repeated the bishops’ call for an end to federal enforcement policies that are harmful to families.

“Our current policies are breaking up families in the name of enforcing our laws. That should not be. We should be reuniting and strengthening families — not separating wives from husbands and children from their parents.”

Archbishop Gomez said that immigration reform is long overdue and requires bipartisan cooperation and leadership.

“Congress and the President have a responsibility to come together to enact reform that corrects this humanitarian problem, respects the dignity and hard work of our immigrant brothers and sisters, and reflects America’s proud history as a hospitable society and a welcoming culture.”

Gomez is a member of Opus Dei, and is clearly traditionalist in his approach, what some would call solidly conservative. But the above statement and Gomez’ consistent defense of the rights of immigrants show how tricky it can be to fit Catholics into the American political spectrum.