Goats, Sin, Expiation, and Peace

Ever surprised by stuff?  On Monday I read something in the Bible that I don't recall ever having read before.  It's in the book of Leviticus, chapter 16.  The Israelites (well, at this point the chosen people- Israel had not yet come onto the stage) are roaming through the desert more than half-lost but exhibiting incredible faith in the Lord who brought them out of Egypt.  Every day was a testimony to this faith.  Of course, we all know that over the course of those many nomadic years their faith wavered and they experienced ups and downs, high and very lows.  It's a constant dynamic that we all experience in our own lives, a movement from happy, blissful faith to the shadow lands of wondering where God has gone, pendulum-ing between light and shadows, robust professions of faith and little admissions of internal incoherence, riding the wave of blessings and tasting the bitter fruit of struggle and doubt.  It is a dynamic of sin and restoration, of hope and frustration, offense and reconciliation.  And there we come to it.  After their many offenses, the people would confess their sins and receive God's forgiveness, making peace with him.  By the end of this sojourn in the desert, God must have been like "story of my life, right?"  I am the same way- I mean, like the Israelites (not God!).  Really, we are all like that.  I wanted to share this passage from Leviticus mentioned above:

20 “When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat.21 He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. 22 The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness.

That's what I do not recall having ever read before.  Cool, right?  I like it because of the symbolism- it's like the penances we receive when we go to confession, a small offering that works!  And it is efficacious not because of the offering itself but because of the contrition and sentiments of the one performing the penance, the act of reparation.  You know, it is easy to say, "gee whiz, going to confession and enunciating my sins to a priest is penance enough."  Hey, no one is denying that.  It is tough.  But the additional penance is an important element, it is like that goat that Aaron sent off into the wilderness.

Aaron (I think) praying over the goat.... #scapegoat

During that same prayer session I read this:

Psalms 90:12
Teach us to number our days,
    that we may gain a heart of wisdom.


In this context of sin, confession, and reconciliation, I think that it is most fitting to include this petition for wisdom.  I know that in my personal prayer I ask for the gift of wisdom almost not at all (by the way, we have class on the wisdom books of the Old Testament this semester- that should bring up my average).  Hopefully prayer and meditation on Sacred Scripture will augment our desire and petitions for wisdom.  Life is short, fleeting, things come and go so quickly- like for Moses and the chosen people in the desert, it must have seemed like forever but then all of a sudden, one day, it was over and they were in the promised land.

For that reason, I want to encourage everyone to go to confession this Lent.  Go to sacramental confession.  Reach out to someone you have hurt or that has hurt you.  Look to make peace.  Peace is much needed in our world today.  Let us pray the word of St. Francis: Lord, make me an channel of your peace.

To conclude I will share these beautiful lines from Origen which were also present in the liturgy of the hours that day:

From a homily by Origen on Leviticus...
"God taught the people of the old covenant how to celebrate the ritual offered to him in atonement for the sins of men.  But you have come to Christ, the true high priest.  Through his blood he has made God turn to you in mercy and has reconciled you with the Father.  You must not think simply of ordinary blood but you must learn to recognize instead the blood of the Word.  Listen to him as he tells you: This is my blood, which will be shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.

There is a deeper meaning in the fact that the high priest sprinkles the blood toward the east.  Atonement comes to you from the east.  From the east comes the one whose name is Dayspring, he who is mediator between God and men.  You are invited then to look always to the east: it is there that the sun of righteousness rises for you, it is there that the light is always being born for you.  You are never to walk in darkness; the great and final day is not to enfold you in darkness.  Do not let the night and mist of ignorance steal upon you.  So that you may always enjoy the light of knowledge, keep always in the daylight of faith, hold fast always to the light of love and peace."

It's Lent. Why not go to confession?  Why not go again?

Find the readings of the office for that day here: http://divineoffice.org/lent-w04-mon-or/?date=20160307

My Hopeful Christmas Reflection

It has now been a number of years since I last spent Christmas at home.  It is such a special time for everyone.  Going to bed on Christmas Eve, having trouble getting to sleep, waking up so excited, the magic of seeing the tree lit up with presents strewn about beneath it, wearing your pajamas, being together with loved ones...

Christmas in the seminary is beautiful too- the decorations start going up around the house in the days just before Christmas, there is a strong liturgical awareness which fosters a conscientious spiritual preparation, the special Christmas Eve dinner that we have together in our religious family, and then, on the feast of the Epiphany in January, the exchange of gifts.

As the years have gone by, I have noticed more acutely the absence of the external elements to which I became accustomed growing up at home.  There were times when the Advent preparation became more of a question mark for me, an unknown.  It has invariably been an externally busy time (#BlackFriday) in which I hear much about "preparing spiritually" to celebrate the Lord's birth.  That oft-cited "spiritual preparation" was often reduced to poetry in the background of the bustling and rapidly-passing days and weeks of Advent.  This year I asked myself, what are we supposed to do during Advent to actually, in fact, prepare for Christmas?  What is Advent supposed to be for us?  What is Christmas supposed to be beneath the surface of those traditional, cozy external elements?

This is the first year that I have been praying the Liturgy of the Hours during Advent and it shed lots of light on these questions of mine.  I was really impacted by how hopeful the Advent liturgy is.  "Come and save us, Savior of the world!  Come Lord, do not delay.  I will come to save you."  Countless such expressions are present throughout the season's liturgy.  It made me think and reflect on hope: it reminded me that I am a sinner; I am the one, today, who needs a savior; it reminds me that our savior was born 2000 years ago; it reminds me that our savior will come again in glory at the end of time to call the just, his friends, to their eternal reward.  As the Jews of the Old Testament looked forward to the coming of their savior, so, too, we look forward to our Lord's coming again.  So, I believe that Advent is to be an exercise of hope, and hope founded on our Savior's promises, rather than the merely superficial expectation and preparation of a party.  There is always that eschatological dimension which recalls that we live in the Christian era, namely, the time of the Church, situated between the life of the savior, his incarnation, birth, death, and resurrection, and his definitive second coming at the end of the world.

nativity scene here at the seminary

So, what is the Advent message?  Hope!  Dare to hope.  I was speaking to a priest recently who shared with me that he was cautiously optimistic about some upcoming changes.  With human things, a "cautious optimism" is often  the best we can muster.  The hard knocks of life tend to teach us this.  But with God, as one of the newly ordained Legionary priests recently said in the homily at his first Mass, we frequently find that we have hoped for too little. Allow yourself to hope!  Challenge yourself to hope! How?  Perspective: like Simeon in the temple, who rejoiced when he met the infant savior in Mary's arms, we too must remember that reality goes far beyond this world, beyond our problems here and now, beyond struggle, misunderstanding, poverty, hunger... yes, even beyond death.  Eternity awaits and our savior will come again to claim those who have waited for him.

Christmas. Exercise hope.  Contemplate the mystery, the incarnation, God coming to us like this...  Then reflect on how he speaks to us today- indeed, he speaks to us still!  But in a world of so much movement, when so many things in our lives are screaming for attention, we really need to carve out time for silence.  In the Old Testament, God spoke to Elijah in the gentle breeze that followed the earthquake.  To be sure, we do not need to wait for earthquakes, but creating prayer time, fighting to defend it, and then actually spending that time with God is absolutely essential.

God will speak to us.  We are truly desperate for him, for our savior.  He has come to us. We have every reason to hope!

nativity scene in St. Peter's Square

On the Lenten Journey

We are in the third week of Lent. It is entirely possible that you feel like me- worried that I have already lost some time and that Easter will be here before I know it  and that Lent will have passed me by and I will have accomplished nothing.

Know what I mean?

Don't worry. Lent is a journey. If you have felt this, I would say that it is a good sign; it is evidence that the Holy Spirit is present and inviting you to go deeper, just like he led Jesus into the desert (Matthew 4:1). Does that sound familiar? So keep your chin up. Lent is a journey and it's better to start your preparation for Easter now than on Holy Thursday. Pray. Listen. Follow the Holy Spirit's inspirations. Try to correspond to what he is telling you and communicating to you.

If he is asking you to give something up, start scaling back your intake of social media or of food, your time on Netflix or playing video games- whatever it is for you.

If he is asking you to give more, see how you can serve your neighbor, how you can reach out, how you can spend more time in prayer or in prayerful reading of sacred scripture or of some other spiritual book. See what will help you most.

Lent is a time to go to the desert. It is a time to encounter God, a time for renewal. We are made for God. When we take him seriously, he does not disappoint. As Fr. John Bartunek, LC wrote in his book The Better Part, "If we truly know him, we will delight in serving such a Lord, and we will go out of our way to be worthy of him."

Weezer and Biblical Contemplation of God

On their latest album Everything Will Be Alright in the End, the band Weezer, from a certain perspective, delves into the depths of the contemplation of God based on Sacred Scripture. On this album, the song "Da Vinci" spoke to me of the reality of sacred scripture and its divine inspiration. 

Caravaggio's "Inspiration of St. Matthew"

Simply put, we are unable on our own to comprehend and express the reality of God's love, mercy, and awesomeness. As Rivers Cuomo sings, "Even da Vinci couldn't paint you; Stephen Hawking can't explain you; Rosetta stone could not translate you, I'm at a loss for words." Our efforts to explain and understand the wonder that is God inevitably reach the point of words falling short, of slowly entering a state of silent admiration. This is not to say that God is not rational, but only that, without his having revealed himself to us in Sacred Scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ, we would fall far shorter than we actually do in our knowledge of his reality. What is actually contained in the Bible has been the source of endless study, writing, prayer and reflection through history. Rivers sings, "I tried to write it in a novel; I wrote a page but it was awful," and then, "I wish I could explain who you are, but when I try I never get far." That's why we turn back to the sacred page! "Now I just want to sing your gospel." Let's go back to the inspired word of God and get to know him as he reveals himself to us.

Given the general aims and messages of rock and roll, I deem it safe to say that this was not Weezer's intent. Nevertheless, I do see myself, by means of this interpretation, fitting into a long line of Christian tradition that has "baptized" pagan symbol after pagan symbol. I hardly want to label Weezer as pagan or opposed to religion. I simply accept that these themes are generally absent from their productions.

* All quotes from Weezer are based on my listening to the song and may not be the official lyrics. I have not taken the time to research that, but then, I really did not see the need to.