On Food - Sunday Gospel Reading for the Third Week of Lent

The Gospel reading for today is one that I have grown to love this Lent. It is one of the passages that I had been praying over through lectio divina. It is the one about the Samaritan woman at the well. That story is so rich--it touches on inter-religious dialogue, sin and conversion, material vs. spiritual focus in daily life, the source of salvation, authentic worship, gender relations, and evangelization, just to mention a few.

However, I want to focus on food.

"Rabbi, eat something." But he told them: "I have food to eat of which you do not know." At this the disciples said to one another, "You do not suppose anyone has brought him something to eat?" [The disciples had previously gone to the nearest town to get food.] Jesus explained to them: "Doing the will of him who sent me and bringing his work to completion is my food." (John 4:31-34)

I have used Jesus' reply to help me when fasting becomes difficult. I often joke that my day is "connecting the dots" between meals (I am half Italian, after all). Whether we are fasting or simply focusing too much on our worldly cares that day, it is good for us to remember what Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Matthew:

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" (Matthew 6:25)

"Therefore do not be anxious, saying 'What shall we eat? or "What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well." (Matthew 6:31-33)

The disciples, like us, are focused on the material. They had a job to do--get food. Jesus says he has food they do not know about, so they stay at the material level and think someone gave Jesus food before they returned with the food (which probably made them feel irritated, thinking, "Well, why did we trudge all the way to town to get food then!"). This is very much what the Samaritan woman did in her conversation with Jesus, until at the end of their encounter she leaves the water bucket and forgets the material entirely, having been transformed by her encounter with Jesus.

But eventually Jesus gets his message through our rather thick heads: we should derive our spiritual nourishment from helping to bring about the kingdom of God. If we do God's will and and strive to bring his work to completion, we will help further the kingdom of God on earth, and that will be our food. But we need to remember that this meal comes with a drink, and that drink is in a cup that we do not want but nevertheless need to accept:

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him, with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something. And he said to her, "What do you want?" She said to him, "Command that these two sons of mine may sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom." But Jesus answered, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?" They said to him, "We are able." He said to them, "You will drink my cup...." (Matthew 20:20-23)

Then in the Garden of Gethsemane, after Jesus leaves Peter and the same sons of Zebedee (James and John), he prays to the Father:

"My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." (Matthew 26:39)

Sobering thoughts for this Lent. But we know that faithfulness leads through death to resurrection. And we have food and drink available to us each day to remind us of our hope: the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.

This Is My Body, Given Up for You

We don't hear a great deal about "mortification of the flesh" these days. Certainly there have been abuses of that practice in the past. I won't be resorting to flagellation in my Lenten bag of tricks. However, one of the practices I started last year and am doing again this year is ending my shower with cold water as long as I can stand it (which isn't very long). This year, I meditate on Christ's words, "This is my body, given up for you." I try to make Christ's words my own as I offer up my body and its minor suffering to him. This is unquestionably the Lenten practice I like the least--which probably means that it is the most spiritually productive for me. Further illustration of its efficacy came while I was thinking about someone at work who I do not get along with. As I was reciting Christ's words, it suddenly became clear to me that he died for this person, too. I thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. and his poem, "O Deus Ego Amo Te" ("O God I Love Thee"):

Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me
Didst reach thine arms out dying,
For my sake sufferedest nails and lance,
Mocked and marred countenance,
Sorrows passing number,
Sweat and care and cumber,
Yea and death, and this for me,
And thou couldst see me sinning:
Then I, why should not I love thee,
Jesu, so much in love with me?

Why do these things? Why engage in such mortifications? Because, as Fr. Richard John Neuahaus says in his book, Death on a Friday Afternoon:

Forgiveness costs--it must cost--or else the trespass does not matter. Is such an intuition primitive? Yes, primitive as in primordial, as in that which constitutes our moral being in the world (p. 24).

Thanks to The Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN radio network (and originating here in Cincinnati) for talking about some applicable remarks by the agnostic sociologist of religion, Rodney Stark. In an interview with Mike Aquilina, Stark tells us that true religion costs us something:

Mike Aquilina: You say that Christianity succeeded in part because of its high moral standards. Today, however, many churches are lowering the bar to make religion more popular. How would you analyze their efforts?

Rodney Stark: They’re death wishes. People value religion on the basis of cost, and they don’t value the cheapest ones the most. Religions that ask nothing get nothing. You’ve got a choice: you can be a church or a country club. If you’re going to be a church, you’d better offer religion on Sunday. If you’re not, you’d better build a golf course, because you’re not going to get away with being a country club with no golf course.

As Fr. Larry Richards points out in his CD, "The Mass Explained," the mass cost Jesus his life; it should cost us our lives. Lent is about giving our lives to Christ, who gave his life for us.

Stephen Crane and Lent

Stephen Crane, best known for his novel, The Red Badge of Courage, also wrote poetry. His poem, "I Walked in a Desert," has some implications for our Lenten journey:

I walked in a desert.
And I cried,
"Ah, God, take me from this place!"
A voice said, "It is no desert."
I cried, "Well, But --
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon."
A voice said, "It is no desert."

We should not wish ourselves out of our time of trial, our passage through the desert. If we see this time with the eyes of God, we have a different perspective. We see that suffering can open up other horizons for us. And anywhere we are, there God is, and we are not alone, not deserted.

Lenten Thoughts - Accidie

Jason Fisher has a fascinating blog called Lingwë: Musings of a Fish. While Lingwë is not a religious blog, Fisher does write about the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Of particular interest for my purposes today is his entry on accidie. In reflecting on Lent, I appreciated Fisher's reference to St. Thomas Aquinas, who said that accidie was a torpor mentis (a "torpor of the mind"). Lent is a time to rouse us from our mental and spiritual complacency and reinvigorate our relationship with the Lord.

A while back I talked about St. Anthony of the Desert and the Desert Fathers. Accidie figures prominently in their recorded sayings. Here is the first saying from St. Anthony, found in Sr. Benedicta Ward's The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (pp. 1-2).

When the holy Abba Anthony lived in the desert he was beset by accidie, and attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, ‘Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved?’ A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent to correct and reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him, ‘Do this and you will be saved.’ At these words, Anthony was filled with joy and courage. He did this, and he was saved.

Lent is a time to be reassured that God wants us to draw closer to him, and that the ways to do that, while challenging to be sure, are not extraordinarily complex. And God is there to help us.

In St. Anthony's vision, making God the focus of our lives is the way to him. To modern minds, St. Anthony's vision looks like a division of the day into what is oriented toward God (prayer) and what is not (work). However, that is not the case. St. Anthony is being shown that prayer and work are two sides of the same coin. If we do it right, work has a spiritual dimension. Pope John Paull II, in his encyclical, Laborem Exercens (On Human Work), wrote that through work man contributes "above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family." The last section of the encyclical concerns "Elements for a Spirituality of Work" (24-27). The motto of the Benedictines is ora et labora - pray and work. In The Practice of the Presence of God, it is said of Brother Lawrence: "That with him the set times of prayer were not different from other times; that he retired to pray, according to the directions of his superior, but that he did not want such retirement, nor ask for it, because his greatest business did not divert him from God" (Second Conversation).

The plaiting of the rope that St. Anthony does is a metaphor for the intertwined nature of prayer and work when they are united for the greater glory of God. Proper work and prayer take us out of ourselves, out of our torpor of mind, and direct us toward God. May our Lent follow such a path.