Giving- Do you still not understand?

Tuesday’s Gospel, the day before Lent began, functioned as a bellwether for these forty days of Lent. It’s so for two reasons: a meditation and a homily.

Tuesday’s Gospel reading was Saint Mark:

Mark 8:14-21

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Jesus enjoined them, “Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” They concluded among themselves that it was because they had no bread. When he became aware of this he said to them, “Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear? And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?” They answered him, “Twelve.” “When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?” They answered him, “Seven.” He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

Tuesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Jennifer Ristine’s meditation explains this Gospel passage that has always eluded my grasp. Our Lord is warning us against two extremes: the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

“They represented two extremes: those who maintained rigidity in human laws at the expense of being open to mystery, versus those who opened themselves to all practices and lack adherence of any revealed truth. Both groups believed they were justified in their beliefs and actions; one group was justified by its law-abiding actions, the other was justified by personal whims. Both created their set of beliefs for justification and salvation according to their self-defined standards, independent of an objective truth. Both faltered in authentic faith and failed to recognize the visitation of their Lord. Jesus prompted the disciples to faith when he saw they failed to recognize him. He reminded them of his two miracles of the multiplication of the loaves (a sign of his universal salvific intent), and that he is the way to all righteousness and justification.

The two extremes are prospering in our 21st century. Catholics and Protestants mirror the culture that is tearing itself apart, as those rigidly ensconced in human law deride their whimsical opponents. Father Eric Ritter’s Tuesday morning homily cut right to the heart of it:

DO YOU STILL NOT UNDERSTAND?

Demons expelled, the deaf healed, the dead raised to life, and the multiplication of loaves and fish to feed thousands. And yet, we, just like the twelve apostles, still do not understand. Our corrupted reason blinds us to Him in whom all our being rests. The Holy Church provides three palliatives to our intrinsically disordered natures: give some of your food to the hungry, fast, and pray.

Give some of your food

It’s Lent. We’re invited to enter the desert with Jesus through the three pillars of alms, fasting, and prayer. Each year, we’re allowed to join Our Lord’s final three-year ministry and better equip ourselves to carry the cross Jesus has fashioned for each one of us without complaint, perhaps even with joy. It’s impossible to do it without grace: Giving- Do you still not understand?

Years ago, during Lent, John and I felt called to “give some of your food” to the homeless in Reno. We lived in Wellington, Nevada, then about a ninety-minute drive from Reno. It was a cold morning, and we found a coffee-and-donut shop where we bought about fifty coffees and beautiful donuts. Then we drove to where the homeless camped and gave them out. On the way home, after ten minutes of silence, John asked what I was thinking.

Overwhelmed, their hands were so cold, there are so many of them....

My husband’s reply was to tell me the starfish story:

One day an old man was walking along the beach in the early morning and noticed the tide had washed thousands of starfish up onto the shore. Ahead, he spotted a boy gathering up the starfish, then one by one tossing them back into the ocean. He approached the boy and asked why he spent so much energy doing what seemed to be a waste of time. The boy replied, “The starfish cannot live if they are left out in the sun.”

Then the old man gazed out as far as he could see and responded, “But there must be thousands of miles of beaches and countless starfish. You can’t possibly rescue all of them. What difference is throwing back a few going to make anyway?” The boy bent down picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled, and said, “It made a difference to that one!”

The old man leaned over, picked up a starfish and joined the boy throwing starfish into the water.

The Starfish Story

We learned about the folks who lived in what was called “tent city” in Reno. And found that the fundamental problem of chronic homelessness lies in drug and alcohol addiction. Hence, my conclusion that handing out cash to addicts is not only irresponsible but may be close to evil, whether the check comes from the government or from me. Because of their mission to sobriety, work, and faith, I supported the Reno Gospel Mission with monthly donations for most of the twenty years we lived in Northern Nevada.

I have no illusions that our actions in Reno, central California, or here in San Antonio will end addiction and its resulting homelessness. But those men and women whose faces we see and hands we shake appreciate our gifts. Moreover, we see them as persons rather than as a category of homelessness. And we remember them.

I hope too that our gifts of food, time, and money can reach the addicted sister, niece, and brother-in-law whom I could not help while they were alive.

Saturday after Ash Wednesday Reading 1 Isaiah 58:9b-14 Thus says the LORD: If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday; Then the LORD will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land. He will renew your strength, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails. The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake, and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up; “Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you, “Restorer of ruined homesteads.” If you hold back your foot on the sabbath from following your own pursuits on my holy day; If you call the sabbath a delight, and the LORD’s holy day honorable; If you honor it by not following your ways, seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice— Then you shall delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will nourish you with the heritage of Jacob, your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Fasting

And so it begins. 

The great season of Lent.

A prolonged time to get serious about our lives. Our hearts. Our minds. Our habits. Our friendship with God. Our prayer. Our relationships with others. Our concern for the poor and those who go without what many of us take for granted. 

Personally, I’ve been waiting for this season for a long time. No, not waiting for, eagerly longing for. I don’t know about you, but I need Lent this year. 

How might we best enter into this season of grace, especially the first half, which is something like an extended examination of conscience, before we start to focus on preparing for the celebration of Jesus Passion and Resurrection?

Test Me O God

Our first sin was to break the one rule of the garden. “Do not eat of the tree of life and death.”

But the beautiful serpent, how magnificent Satan must have been, how alluring to persuade Eve to do what she knew not to do. And then persuading Adam to eat of the death-giving fruit. Our fasts then are in reparation for the disobedience that infects our reason and will.

Father Dolindo Ruotolo–Creator of the Surrender Novena–speaks of fasting as detox. At least that’s how Elie G. Dib, translator of Servant of God Ruotolo phrases it. Quite accurately because Father Dolindo exhorts: 

We, who know how to submit to much more painful diet restrictions when they are imposed by our doctor for bodily health, we who can renounce meat, pasta, sugar, salt, wine, smoke when we are diabetic or when we are suffering from arthritis or nephritis, will we be ashamed not to perform such a mild fast?

And “Are we not the true diabetics of the soul, we who waste all God’s sweetness into our senses and diffuse the false sweetness of the world into our blood?…Are we not suffering from nephritis, we who cannot cleanse ourselves of evil, and we sediment it into our inflamed kidneys?”“

   He came to put a harlot above a Pharisee, a penitent robber above a High Priest, and a prodigal son above his exemplary brother. To all the phonies and fakers who would say that they could not join the Church because His Church was not holy enough, He would ask, ‘How holy must the Church be before you will enter into it?’ If the Church were as holy as they wanted it to be, they would never be allowed into it! In every other religion under the sun, in every Eastern religion from Buddhism to Confucianism, there must always be some purification before one can commune with God. But Our Blessed Lord brought a religion where the admission of sin is the condition of coming to Him. ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are ill.
 
– The Wisdom of Fulton J. Sheen (Archbishop)