Category: Blog

Today on the blog we welcome back a regular blogger, our favourite Jesuit, Brother Dan Leckman! 

Although I have not set foot on McGill campus in more than a week, I can imagine the mood these days: the tense looks on people’s faces, the tired bodies dragging around, pushing individuals to stay awake just one more hour. The nights of agony, bleeding into dawns of absolute terror. Hmm…maybe that was just the way I lived exam period, but it certainly did resemble a horror movie at times!! It shouldn’t be too hard to understand why it’s during one such never ending sleepless nights of anguish that I began to pray again! Amazingly enough, despite the fact that I knew so little about God and my faith, I already understood that even in the darkest hours, God’s light could radiate in my life (after all, ‘even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise’. Extra credit points for anyone who isn’t Tim Blais or Holly Ann that can correctly identify the source of that quote! Yeah, even my blog has an exam feel to it. Didn’t see that coming did you!!?)

But let’s move away from my antics for a second here, and stay with this idea of the triumph of God’s light over our darkness. What is our reaction to this notion of having a constant source of light in our life? Do we really understand the full dimension of God’s love for us, and how transformative it is? All too often, Christians answer the same way “Yes, I understand that God loves me, and this is a source of comfort for me. God is my shelter, and I am at peace. I feel renewed in his love.” Well good for you Mr/Mrs holy pants, but tell me: How do you LIVE that renewal? We just spent 40 + days praying with wonderful passages like the one from Ezekiel 36:26, (this whole notion that God is taking our heart of stone and making it into a heart of flesh) which poetically emphasizes how we ought to be transformed in order to more fully receive God’s word, God’s light, and God’s truth in our lives. But how does one live out the idea of that transformation?

The answer we can receive from the Church is dramatic and beautiful: We are called to dedicate every ounce of our being to caring for others. We are called to actively participate in the building of God’s kingdom of justice, and to always have our inner (spiritual) eye on the well-being of everyone we encounter. While many Christian communities hear and live out this call, I feel it’s more accentuated in the Catholic Church through our doctrine of Social Justice, and through the many works of charity and mercy that come from religious and lay people alike.  So it’s not like we don’t have a solid structure to help us with the process of transformation, both spiritually, and physically. And yet, all too often, many of us come back to that original feeling of… comfort, and Inner Peace. Being ‘Zen’ becomes more important than being forgiving, being caring for the other. In short, we become complacent. Not many pontiffs have had the guts to call us out against this modern sin of complacency, but Pope Francis has never hesitated doing so numerous times. His most poignant reference to this great sickness that we have in our Church and in the world came for me, this past Good Friday.

I decided to watch the whole service recently as I was ‘peacefully’ trying to work on my budget for the upcoming month. As I struggled to crunch numbers, I occasionally looked up to see the pretty images from the Via Crucis.  By the end of it, Francis began to recite a prayer that would take completely catch me unaware:

“In you, sold, betrayed, crucified by your …we see our daily betrayals and our ‘unfaithfulness.”

Those words, spoken through the translator, plunged deep into my heart, and awakened something within me. Was it shame, a feeling of guilt for all the times when I felt my unfaithfulness or indifference triumphed over the light of God in my Iife? I wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, it caused me to look up, see his pensive face in prayer as he was reading, and my heart of stone trembled. He continued:

“…In your face, that has been slapped, spat on and disfigured, we see the brutality of our sins.

In the cruelty of your Passion, we see the cruelty of our heart and our actions.

In your feeling abandoned, we see all those who have been abandoned by their family, by society, by people’s attention and solidarity.

In your sacrificed, lacerated and tormented body, we see the body of our brothers and sisters abandoned along the roadside, disfigured by our negligence and our indifference.”

This was incredibly unusual for me to hear anything like this. We often meditate on the suffering of Christ through the suffering of the poor and marginalized in our own world, but how often does that reflection place usas one of the ones abusing our Lord in his Passion. Our liturgy does prepare us during this season, to be part of the crowd that shouts out ‘crucify him’ but it does not prepare us for the consequences of being in that place that rejects the light and love of our Lord. Already, this was too much for me to cope with, but of course, he still wasn’t done!

“…In you, Divine Love, we still see today our brothers and sisters who are persecuted, decapitated and crucified for their faith in you, in front of our eyes or often with our silent complicity.

Let the feelings of faith, hope, charity and sorrow for our sins be ingrained in our hearts, Lord, and lead us to repent for our sins that have crucified you.

Lead us to transform our conversion made of words into a conversion of life and deeds…”

This is not language I usually like hearing. It ‘challenges’ this notion of a loving, forgiving God that I insist upon carrying in my spiritual luggage. Had a more conservative or traditional priest spoken those words, I may have tuned him out pretty quickly. But I know Pope Francis is concerned for our spiritual growth and welfare, and that he wishes to see a church grow in charity, simplicity and mercy. I also understand that he emphasizes ‘sin’ not as something that should produce shame within us, but as something that should encourage us to change. Our sinfulness is an expression of the ways we have turned away from God and others in our world. Consequently, the transformation we are called to is a movement towards God, but also towards others. It’s a long twisty journey with lots of dangerous paths, and I will stumble a lot along the way. However once I understand the depth of my savior’s love for me, how can I not accept to walk this path with him!? How can I turn my back on the light of God? How can I refuse to let that light shine before others as I journey with them with the same great heart that our Jesus carried had? Well, I still will do this once in a while, but I feel that on this amazing evening, I took more concrete steps in allowing my complacency to be replaced by compassion, and affection for the world. I pray that you all have a similar experience of transformation during this Easter season we are still journey with, and that God give you the courage to allow the divine light to enter every aspect of your life!

Today’s blog post comes from McGill Alumni Josiah Henderson-Zwicewicz.

Luke 24:13-35 tells the story of two disciples on the road to the village of Emmaus. At the beginning of the story, the two disciples are sad and confused. They had hoped that Jesus “was the one to redeem Israel” (v. 21); but they have heard that he was crucified, and can only conclude that their hope was in vain. They have heard the reports of the women disciples who had that morning discovered Jesus’ tomb empty, and of Peter and the other men who went to see for themselves. But they cannot imagine what the reason for the body’s absence can be.

As they talk together about these things on the road, the risen Jesus appears alongside them. The disciples’ “eyes were kept from recognising him” (v. 16). Like us, the disciples cannot really understand the resurrection of Jesus or recognise who he is without his help and instruction. What good news it is, then, that Jesus is alive!

Since his ascension, all kinds of people have claimed Jesus’ authority for all kinds of causes. In our churches, Jesus is portrayed by some as an inclusive and free-thinking innovator, and by others as a hard-line traditionalist. In our society, Jesus is portrayed by some as a radical revolutionary, by others as a moderate liberal, and by still others as a family-values conservative. In the academy and in popular culture, novel theories about Jesus abound. Jesus is claimed as a prophet of Islam, of the Bahá’í faith, of secular humanism, etc. In the midst of this profound confusion about Jesus’ identity, the resurrection means that Jesus is able to speak for himself. Because the risen Jesus chooses to reveal himself to and through the Church, the world can do better than guess at who Jesus is and what he means.

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” (V. 27) On the road to Emmaus, Jesus reveals himself to the two disciples through the Old Testament Scriptures. This shows us at least two things: (1) That Jesus sees in “all” the Old Testament “things concerning himself” indicates that the primary purpose of the Old Testament is to reveal Jesus. Even though, superficially, the Old Testament doesn’t even seem to mention Jesus, on his authority the Church claims that it is actually all about Jesus. (2) That Scripture is the first medium the risen Jesus chooses to reveal himself to his disciples indicates the authority that the Bible has in the Church. Jesus gives his own personal authority to the words of Scripture, so that through Scripture we can learn who Jesus really is. In the Church, Scripture is read and preached publicly for this purpose, to inform and correct our understanding of Jesus, and to bring our thinking about Jesus under his own authority. When we read something about Jesus in Scripture, the risen Jesus is telling us that thing about himself.

Of course this goes for both Old and New Testament. On the day Jesus revealed himself to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, the New Testament had not yet even begun to be written, but this story does give us a strong hint at the nature and authority of the New Testament.

When Jesus and the two disciples arrive at Emmaus, Jesus pretends he is going farther, but allows the disciples to convince him to stay with them for the night. “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.” (Vv. 30-31) What finally opens the eyes of the disciples to Jesus’ true identity is the sight of Jesus taking bread, blessing it, breaking it and giving it to them. The disciples had seen Jesus do this once before (or had heard about it from the apostles), at his last supper. There, according to Luke 22:18, “he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” By reminding the disciples of his own words and actions (in this case, his words and actions at the last supper), the mysterious stranger reveals to the disciples that he is the same Jesus who taught and who healed in Galilee and in Jerusalem, now risen from the dead. When we remember Jesus’ words and actions by reading the Gospels, Jesus also opens our eyes to see who he really is.

Jesus is alive and continues to reveal himself to his disciples here and now. Because Jesus is opening up the Scriptures to us as we journey through life, we will be able to say with the two disciples in this story, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (V. 32)

When Jesus reveals himself to the two disciples through the Scriptures and through the memory of his own words and actions, their response is to get up immediately and bring the good news to the other disciples, who are still confused about the missing body. So also, as Jesus reveals himself to us through both Old and New Testament, our continual response should be to share with others what Jesus is sharing with us. The risen Jesus reveals his identity to the Church through the Scriptures, and reveals himself to the world (deeply confused about Jesus as it is) through the witness of the Church.

Today’s post comes from our friendly neighbourhood campus minister, Terrel Joseph

Easter is the commemoration of Jesus’ rising from the dead! After 2000 years of Christianity, when most people hear this statement they don’t usually bat an eye. They often say something like, “for sure, Christianity is about the death and resurrection of Jesus, that is common knowledge”, just like Christmas is about a good tempered fat man in a red suit who breaks into peoples homes to leave gifts for their children, and St Patrick’s day is about little green leprechauns hording pots of gold at the end of the rainbow (by the way optical physics has proven that there isn’t an end to rainbows because rainbows are actually perfect circles. They only appear to have ends because of the horizon of the planet). People often treat the resurrection like a myth or folk story, like the recently released movie adaptation of Cinderella. Lot’s of people either like or dislike Cinderella because of the values it teaches children. But the resurrection story is very different from fairy tales like Cinderella. The writers of the New Testament were not telling us a fairy tale that inspired them to be better people, nor were they telling us an abstract myth that revealed some general truths about the world, that you can either like or dislike as you would a fairy tale. Rather, the New Testament authors were telling us about a real historical event that so moved them, that they felt compelled to travel to the ends of the world to proclaim this message. The first Christians wrote about a reality so incredible that they were willing to go to their deaths to defend it this claim.

Ok, well isn’t it true that lots of crazy people are willing to die for silly reasons? Some scholars have tried to argue that the Apostles and early disciples of Jesus must have just been crazy. This is plausible, but then it implies that tens of thousands of disciples of Jesus in the first couple centuries of Christianity were all crazy, and that all modern day Christians have been deceived by a 2000 year old tall tale. Alternatively, the constant tradition of the Christian community from the first Christians to this day is that those first martyrs for Jesus gave their lives not because they were radical extremes deceived by crazy people but because Jesus really did rise from the dead.

So were the first Christians all crazy or did Jesus really rise from the dead? The New Testament scolar N.T. Wright observed that it is practically impossible to explain the emergence of Christianity as a messianic movement apart from the resurrection. The first Christians all proclaimed that Jesus was the long awaited messiah of Israel, who was supposed to deal with the enemies of Israel, restore them to power, and rein as the Lord of the nations. However, there could be no clearer sign that someone was not the messiah, then that person being put to death by the enemies of Israel, or in this case, Jesus being crucified by the Romans. Yet, the first Christians, who were all Jews and very familiar with the prophesy of the messiah, all proclaimed that Jesus was the messiah. This only makes sense if Jesus really was raised from the dead.

Unlike myths and fairy tales, the events in the New Testament are real events grounded in a very particular time and place in human history. So the gospels can’t be treated like a fairy tale that has some good morals and some bad ones. The fact is, either Jesus was who he claimed to be, or he was a very bad person. Jesus either rose from the dead or he didn’t. It’s not a myth or fairy tale, it either happened or didn’t. But who then did Jesus claim to be? Lots of people today say that they don’t believe that he was God, but that he was definitely a good moral teacher, and as with any other moral teacher in human history, they freely pick and choose which ones of his teachings to believe, and which events of his life to take seriously. This is a nice idea but it doesn’t fit at all with what the gospels writers have witnessed about who Jesus was. Throughout the gospels Jesus consistently claimed to be a lot more then just a moral teacher. Jesus said and did things that could only make sense if he was also divine and these claims and actions are primarily what eventually lead to his execution. The religious and political leaders of first century Israel certainly didn’t think he was claiming to simply be a nice moral teacher, and neither does the Catholic Church today.

So if Jesus wasn’t just a nice moral teacher, but was God in human flesh, what does that mean for Christianity? It means, that Christianity isn’t primarily about being a nice moral person, and then afterwards what specific doctrines you believe that’s more of a personal decision. This is an attitude that a lot of people have today, that all that matters finally is that you are a good person, and then what you believe is a secondary matter. The problem is that this attitude is not at all consistent with the Gospel. The Gospel is that, Jesus really did died for our sins on the cross and rose from the dead, meaning that God’s love is more powerful that anything in the world, even death itself. This is how St Paul could say in his letter to the Church in Rome,

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-39).

How does Paul know this? He knows this for certain because we killed God! We through all of the world’s negativity and violence at God, but God still returned in forgiving love, proving that the divine mercy of God is more powerful then anything in the world. Christianity then is primarily about proclaiming the still earth shattering truth of the death and resurrection of Jesus from the dead and inviting those who hear this gospel to repent, and change. The original Greek for repent is ‘metanoia’, which literally translated means beyond-mind. Because of the reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus, everything we once knew about the world has changed so we need to go beyond the mind we have, we need to change our mind, change our attitude, change the way we live our lives because of this truth. One of these new realities that has changed because of the resurrection of Jesus is the meaning of hope. As Christians we are not superstitions optimists that naively think everything will work out “happily ever after” like in Cinderella. Rather as Christians we can hope in a rational way because through the death and resurrection of Jesus we know for certain that Gods love can turn the suffering and death of one man into the source of eternal life for all. God’s love is more powerful then death itself. This doesn’t explain the problem of suffering and evil in the world, but it does allow us to address suffering in a meaningful way.

Being a Christian is a lot more then just being a good person. Because frankly, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, and peoples of all beliefs can all in principle be good moral people. The most compelling reason to be a Christian isn’t that we are the nicest or most moral people, even if Christian ethics does indeed produce nice moral people. The most compelling reason to be a Christian is because Jesus really did die for you on the cross, and he really did rise from the dead to prove that God’s love for us is more powerful then any of the evil in the world, and that in choosing to place Jesus at the center of our lives, and in choosing to repent and be baptised we too can gradually learn how to participate in God’s manner of loving! In the 2^nd century St Irenaeus of Lyon observed that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive”. And we become most fully alive when we dedicate our lives to learning more and more everyday how to love each other the way God loves! Because love is the source of human happiness! And God’s love is more powerful then death!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Terrel Joseph

Campus Minister

Today on the blog we have a special guest: the Rev’d Jean-Daniel Williams is the Anglican-United Christian Chaplain at McGill. 

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.

Luke 1:26-38

Today Christians honour the Annunciation, the time Gabriel came from heaven to announce to the Virgin Mary the upcoming birth of our Saviour. The liturgical calendar, by trying to commemorate more than 33 years of the life of Jesus, from conception to ascension, within one year, creates odd collisions. Even as we prepare for Holy Week, today we are invited to recognize that Christmas is coming, nine months from today. Clergy take a one day reprieve from the penitential violet robes of Lent and wear the festal white. Jesus, the Son of the Most High, is coming.

In imagining this sacred event, I have two contrasting images in my mind. On one hand, there is Mary as I see her through the lens of two thousand years of Christianity. The powerful holy matriarch, the saint of saints, the Mary Queen of the World, like Montréal’s Catholic Cathedral. Yet in the moment of this Biblical story, Mary was likely, by today’s standards, still a girl. A bright, a holy young woman, surely, but by worldly standards, meek and lowly.

When the angel Gabriel appeared to her, it is tempting to imagine radiant light shining round him. Indeed, sometimes that is how Biblical angels appear, as the angels to the shepherds when Jesus was born. But sometimes they appear ordinarily human. The Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us, “Some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” (13:2). It is unclear from this passage which sort of angelic visitation Mary experienced. But imagine a pure and innocent young woman when a man appears in her presence and says, “Greeting favoured one!” Of course she was perplexed. Of course she wondered what kind of greeting that was!

In the course of the narrative, Mary is described as favoured, perplexed, ponderous, afraid, and overshadowed. The profound sacredness of this moment did not mean it was a simple experience of something like “reverence.” It was complex and confusing. Those moments when God breaks into our ordinary lives and calls us to do His work will not necessarily be easy. I appreciate Mary’s holy example to us in this moment. Mary’s holiness did not come in what emotions Mary did or did not feel. A wide range of emotions are valid. God’s plans for our lives can be surprising. They can be terrifying.  And we are allowed to be surprised. We are allowed to be terrified.

Mary was sinless even as she was perplexed, ponderous, and afraid. None of those feelings undermined her favour, because in the end, she said to the Lord, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

The world depended upon Mary’s yes on the holy day of the Annunciation so long ago. And God’s world today still depends on those of us who follow Jesus, those of us who admire Mary, listening for what we are being called to do and similarly responding, “Here am I.”

Today’s reflection comes from our Diocese’s Lay Evangelizer (coolest job title in the world!) Corey Jolly. Read and then follow the link to the video reflection. The Diocese of Montreal is presenting video reflections every week, so check those out on their youtube channel. 

Jesus, getting angry? What’s that all about? In this Gospel reading for the 3rd Sunday of Lent we see Jesus’s passion for us. We see his zeal for our well being. He leaves no doubt that he desires for us to be cleansed so that we can be the best version of ourselves and truly shine. What are are dirty spots in your life? What needs cleaning? What in your life needs to be thrown away and done away with? What’s stopping you from being the best version of yourself?

We thank Katerina Leung for today’s Lenten Reflection!

This week I learned some humbling truths. In the way Christ works consistently in my Life, I learn my lessons in seasons – often everything that is revealed to me is related to a single focus. The current focus for me relates to my Lenten promise. I vowed to work on one aspect of myself that, until recently, I considered as only a weakness and never a strength: vulnerability.

Of the small lessons, Pope Francis’s homily today (Monday March 9) helped me tie this into the neat little reflection I share with you today.

God works in humility, not spectacles

The Pope noted that “one of the three temptations of Jesus in the desert” was to create a spectacle. Satan invites Him to cast Himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple so that, seeing the miracle, the people might believe in Him. “The Lord, instead, is revealed in simplicity, in humility,” he said.

I often think that a grand gesture of charity or witness is the only ones worth making. But really, my abstinence of a particular foodstuff cannot right the damage of arguing with my Mom and certainly the former cannot be more pleasing than avoidance of the ladder. And yet, sometimes saying “I’m sorry” and choosing to see what is right in her claims seems harder than never having [insert food here] ever again. And with clarity, the Lord reminds me in that small voice in my heart that I’d be eternally more satisfied at my last moments on earth cherishing a loving relationship with my Mom than the pride of knowing I could “live” without [insert food here]

“It would do us good this Lent,” the Pope said, “to consider how the Lord has helped us in our lives, and how the Lord has led us onward. We will find that the Lord has always done this with simple things.”

He concluded, “This is how the Lord acts: He does things simply. He speaks silently to you, to the heart. Let us remember in our lives the many time we have felt these things: the humility of God is His style; the simplicity of God is His style.”

Pope Francis’s word reminded me of what Dr. Robert Di Pede shared at the Newman Lent Retreat. He invited us to reflect on what the “desert”, the “wild animals”, and the “angels” were in our lives for Lent based on Mark 1:13 {and he remained there for forty days, and was put to the test by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and the angels looked after him}. Of the “angels”, he offered considering what brought us comfort, who could we turn to during Lent and in other times of trials, and what Graces has God already offered us in dealing with the “wild animals” (the temptations and trials). For me, those were all the times a particular Scripture passage would pop into my head when I needed it most – and believe me, I’m no good at remembering my Scripture passages. The very first was “The Lord is my Shepherd, there is nothing I shall want” {Psalm 23:1}. In the simple act of breathing, I can see how this is true. And through each breath, God provides all the other needs that come from that act. And for those moments when sadness, despair, dread, guilt, or longing and loneliness have threatened to swallow me whole, I heard “deep is calling on deep” {Psalm 42:7}. And in those moments, I need to ask, “Do I trust that God can fulfill that aching empty void?” And slowly, I started to realize I didn’t need to look ahead to know that answer. If I merely decide to glance back, I’ll see many moments deserving of yet-unprofessed gratitude and I realize that He has already filled it – many times over.

So the simple ways the Lord reminded me of His Goodness today: the gentle yet profound realization that the newly born baby laying in the warming table next to his mother and surrounded by nurses is in fact a new unique person – a human! A big soul in a teeny body! – whom I had the utmost privilege of sharing her first breath with! In the discomfort of listening in on gossip while waiting for my nurse which prompted me to leave and then witness another birth. In the reminder to remember that Christ is present and eager to hear me share my thoughts on the day with on the tiring journey home from the hospital. All the times a particular Scripture passage would pop into my head when I needed it most – and believe me, I’m no good at remembering my Scripture passages

And even in the liturgical celebration, in the sacraments, what is beautiful is that which manifests the humility of God, and not the worldly spectacle. It would do us good to journey through our life and to consider the many times the Lord has visited us with His grace, and always with this humble style, the style He calls us, too, to have: humility.”

I used to be truly angry with God that I had yet to wake up to His Plan for me written on my ceiling because all I could see was my hopeless dread-filled stumbling. Especially during my co-op placement days, I clung to the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the daily Eucharist. And as I wrote this, I realized that God was revealing that Plan to me through the Grace of those Sacraments – slowly softening the hardnesses of my heart and healing the wounds I inflicted on it. In the liturgy, He revealed His Beauty and Creativity and Love and concern for me – enough to get me through the day. And as the days spent with Him grew in number, the words of Psalm 84:10 slowly started to become my own: Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.

I once read, “True humility is truly knowing who God is and who we are” [paraphrased] – to know first and foremost the Greatness of the Love of God for humanity (including His Beauty and Greatness) and to see in a personal way how great that need for His Love is, how great my need for His Love is (the “who we are” part). And today, in a real way, I saw that. Hanging back from witnessing a birth for the time with the baby’s mezzo-sopranic cries rounding out a happy scene, it struck me. The gentle yet profound realization that the newly born baby wriggling in the centre of comparatively larger warming table is in fact a new unique person – a human! A big soul in a teeny body! – whom I had the utmost privilege of sharing her first breath with! And this very little human girl, crying for all her worth in the warming bed in his birthing centre room in this hospital in Montreal of a province amongst thousands of provinces in this laughably insignificant planet in the infinite universe – is in fact, a beautifully created singly unique big soul in an equally masterfully created tiny body – who Jesus, whom I love, has died for and would die for (even if she was the only person on earth to die for). And that’s enough for the world to keep turning.

Quotations (in italics) taken from http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/03/09/pope_francis_gods_style_is_humility,_simplicity/1128062

Today’s post comes from our favourite Jesuit brother Dan Leckman! 

We all have vivid memories of spiritual conversations or events that really marked us in our faith journey. Alright, alright, maybe we don’t all have those vivid memories, but I sure as shootin do!! One of them that stands out for me came in early 2007, when I was starting my application to enter the Jesuits. Back then, I spent a week with a community located in Montreal’s NDG area (in fact, right next to Concordia’s Loyola campus, a campus whose origins are very Ignatian. Concordia doesn’t have much to brag about, but its Jesuits roots should be one of things it does brag about!!–and if there are any Concordia students reading this…remember that I tease because I love!!). Most of the men I met in that community would have a profound impact on my life, showing me what it was to be a Jesuit, and making me feel right at home with this community. For some reason, what I remember most from that week with them was a conversation I had with a priest that left me a little uneasy.

It was a Sunday morning, and I was accompanying him to a local parish where he was filling in for the local priest. That morning, the gospel text he was ‘meditating’ on was from Matthew 4, the temptation of Christ in the desert. Though his reflections on the text to the congregation was pleasant and theologically sound, he shared rather different words with me on our way to the parish: “I hate commenting on this passage. It obviously is one that is fictional. It never happened the way Matthew described it. “

In theory, I have very minor objections to using this line of thinking when it comes to reading any Biblical text. If we read scripture with some degree of ‘resistance’ or questioning, this could help us not get bogged down in a literal reading of the Bible (which is not always the best way to read the Bible!). This line of thinking may also push us to do a little more research around certain scripture passages that are a little more complex (at least, I would hope that if a good theologian wants to say ‘this didn’t happen,’ they then will still do their best to try to explain what the significance of the passage is for us today!). Nevertheless, I do have one problem with this approach, especially with regard to this passage from Matthew 4: It’s dismissive of the core spiritual value behind the account. It’s as if we’re saying “oh, don’t waste your time praying with this text. It’s meaningless.” Yes, I get that many scholars to this day continue to debate whether this account is historical, a parable, or a myth, and that it may be easier for us to simply focus on the imageries of this event, rather than the historicity of it. However, I think it’s important we look at one basic truth around this event: Jesus went to the Desert alone for a period of 40 days. Why? The way I see it, the human aspect of his nature was very conscious of the weight his mission would carry. Consequently, in order to ‘prepare the way of the Lord,’ in order to prepare himself for work that would change the course of history, he wanted to cut himself off from the world. This way, there would be no distractions, and he would be able to live a perfect communion with his Father.

I think most Christians would have no issues around this aspect of the account (they may doubt that he really lasted 40 days without food or water, but this is just healthy doubt that we all must contend with at some point, and not a comment on the validity of the events!) It’s what comes after that confuses many of them and makes them more spiritually rigid. Did Satan really approach Jesus this way, and tempt him? Did he really ‘carry him’ to the top of a high mountain, or to the parapet of a synagogue?

Valid questions. Here’s my own question: Does it matter? He was tempted, and he stood his ground. His responses to sin and temptation become our own models of hope, as we confront the oppressiveness of our own personal sinfulness, and that of our society at large.

Through this passage, we’re also reminded that during this Season of Lent, we need to journey to our literal, or metaphorical desert; whether it’s a spot of absolute silence close to your heart, or whether it’s a book, or scripture passage that will allow you to transcend the stress that you’re probably carrying on your shoulders, the objective is simple: Find that spot (a cottage in the woods, chapel, a sweet spot you have on Mount Royal) or go to that book or passage, and let your ‘desert experience’ take hold of you. Allow all your worries and concerns that take up all this space in your head be silenced, and above all, make room for a holy communion between yourself and the divine. Share this moment with Jesus, and if you find your mind wandering, hear the words that Jesus is telling you in that moment. Because after all, above all the things we do during lent, the most important thing we can do is to develop a closer relationship with Our Lord and Savior, to journey with him in his passion as he journeys with us every day.