Whose Dust Are You Covered In?

As Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen. He said to them, "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men." At once they left their nets and followed him. - Matthew 4:18-20

Capernaum was only recently uncovered by archaeologist in 1838, so unlike most holy sites in the Holy Land, it is one of the few that is not inhabited by anyone aside from the Franciscans who maintain the land and buildings. That Capernaum is now uninhabited is a blessing in a land where many holy sites are hidden amid crowds of people, shops and layers of modernization. The lack of visual and auditory noise allowed me to drink in the atmosphere of the abandoned city, the city in which Jesus spent much of his time and where his apostles Peter, James, John, Andrew and Matthew hailed from.

This was the first site I walked on that Jesus also walked on and I will never forget that first experience. My whole being vibrated with the excitement and knowledge that God walked upon the very same earth that my feet were walking upon.

I walked around the ruins that were built on the very synagogue where Jesus walked, talked, preached and performed miracles. He would have cured the demoniac, preached the Bread of Life discourse, and healed the man with the withered hand there. And just a few hundred feet away, the ruins of the house of Peter still remain. It is believed that the ruins are the house of Peter because ancient graffiti reveal that early Christians revered the spot and made it into one of the earliest churches where they worshiped. For more archaeological information on Capernaum, check here.

When we visited all of the sites in the Holy Land our tour leader, Tim Gray, would give us a teaching.  My trip would not have been the same without these teachings. In all of them, I learned new things that gave my faith new texture and vibrancy.

At Capernaum, Tim told us that near the city a school for studying the Torah was uncovered by archaeologists. The school would have been up and running during the time of Peter, the apostle of Jesus. In that day, young Jewish boys would attend local schools where they would study the Torah. The most promising of these boys would be chosen to continue to study under the rabbi and perhaps one day become rabbis themselves. Peter was a fisherman so we can conclude that he was most likely not one of the most promising students of his time and was not chosen to study the Torah more closely.

In rabbinic literature studying the Torah is one of the most important things that a Jewish person can do. The Talmud teaches that studying the Torah is an even greater mitzvah or commandment than saving a human life, (the most common reasoning being that studying the Torah leads to saved lives as well, just in another way.)

There is phrase in the Mishna that says, "May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi," which reveals again the importance of studying the Torah but also of studying under someone who knows and understands Scripture well. All of these facts provide the background to the part in Scripture when Jesus walks by Peter and says to him, "Come follow me."

It has always struck me as strange that Peter left his boat and immediately followed Jesus. Even if Peter knew Jesus was performing miracles and was a famous rabbi, why would he drop everything right away? Was he really that holy and in tune with God's will for him? The context of Judaism at the time helps me to understand, as Tim Gray suggests, that Peter was following a rabbi, a rabbi who saw something in this rough fisherman that his teachers had overlooked. Peter followed Jesus in the hope and knowledge that this was his only opportunity to be covered in the dust of a rabbi. Little did he know that Jesus was the rabbi of all rabbis.

As I walked around exploring Capernaum, the town covered in dust until little over a century ago, I ask myself the question that Tim Gray ended his teaching with - "Whose dust am I covered in?" If we could literally follow the persons and things in our life that take the most of our time and energy, whose dust would we be covered in? Would it be our TVs? Our iPhones? Our computers? Our obsessions? Our anger? How many people can say that the majority of their time is spent following Jesus? I can't and I live in a convent.

Like Peter, we are called to follow Jesus and give over to him all corners of our lives. We can't know Jesus and continue fishing. We have to take risks and leave behind those things in our life that need to be left behind in order to be covered in the dust of God.

So let's get dirty.

Spiritual Epicenter - Arriving in the Holy Land

View of Jersualm from Mt. Scopes

I never really considered going to the Holy Land. It was always a far away place that I figured I would make it to sometime - maybe.

Before my conversion I did not consider going because it just was not the place to travel if you do not have sufficient motivation. And after my conversion, it just seemed like too much, like something that I should put off as much as possible in much the same way that early Christians put off their baptism until their death bed. It was just not something that I felt I was ready for or deserved.

When my parents invited me to go to the Holy Land, I initially thought, "No way." I did not feel worthy. I also thought, "If I go to the Holy Land, what more is there for me to do?" But I took it to prayer and at one point in front of the tabernacle I heard Jesus say to me, "Come see me. See my home. Understand me." I did not quite understand what Jesus was saying to me but I obediently made plans to join my parents on the trip.

Even though I was pretty confident I had heard an affirmative answer in prayer, serious doubts crept into my mind as the trip drew near. I think humans, despite our constant clinging and grasping at pleasure, have a hard time reaching for what is good or accepting the good in our lives. For me, this comes from the fear that all that is good cannot last, and the belief that there is a limit to the good things that can happen to me. Eventually, I always feel like I am living in a house of cards, the good things in my life have to come tumbling down at some point or reach some kind of limit. These feelings also come from my incomplete understanding of love. Human love is limited and conditional. It runs out, gets impatients and sometimes stops altogether. And sometimes we project our own limitations on God and what we believe His will is for our lives. It is often hard for me to believe that what He wills will be something that I consider to be good. I always expect challenges and difficulties from God but rarely pleasure and fun. It is easier for God to surprise me that way but it also makes for a pretty distrustful relationship. I am always checking my peripheral vision, trying to see what is coming up from behind me to ruin my happiness.

But thankfully, despite my misgivings, lack of trust and doubts, I made it to the Holy Land.

Stepping for the first time on the soil of the epicenter of the world, I felt the desire to fall to my knees and kiss the ground. As we drove from the airport to the Sea of Galilee I looked out the windows of the bus and a strange feeling of being at home washed over me. It was a feeling that frankly, I did not expect. I am not Jewish so how can I feel at home in this land that is so far from mine, so different from mine?

It was a feeling that I would explore and absorb and rest in for the rest of my trip.

Next - Capernaum

I Am Not Worthy

(From the movie Jesus of Nazareth, 1977)

When Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying, "Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully."  He said to him,  "I will come and cure him."  The centurion said in reply,  "Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed. - Matthew 8:5-8

In Capernaum, the city of unbelievers, Jesus found one person of great faith. In charge of a hundred men, a man who knows war and bloodshed is the one to see the Healer of all healers and believe.

A pagan calls a Jewish man "Lord." Knowing that Jewish law forbids a Jew to enter the house of a Roman, he says with humility, "I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof."

How many of us feel unworthy to be Christians? Unworthy to be saved? Unworthy to receive Jesus under our roof, in our body's house - in the sacrament of the Eucharist?

Before Catholics receive the Eucharist in the liturgy of the Mass, we echo the words of the centurion, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, only say the word and I shall be healed."

But how many of us believe this?

There are too many blank, bored, and rebellious faces in line to receive Jesus in their hands, as if it is their right, as if He is a snack or part of a meaningless ritual. I include myself in the legions of people who do not always receive Jesus with the proper sense of respect - have I ever had enough reverence to receive God inside my body?

The Eucharist is the most radical belief of all religious beliefs. I have never heard of anything more insane. God coming down from heaven and giving Himself in the fullness of His body, blood, soul and divinity to us, to eat.  And yet, I know that it is true. How do I know this? I feel Jesus' presence in the tabernacle. I hear Him speak to me from the tabernacle. He drew me from a life of sin back to Him from the tabernacle. Religious life sustained for thousands of years on a large scale would not have been possible without Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. I also know that my current way of life (poor, celibate, obedient to my superior and living with nine other people) would be impossible without Jesus in the Eucharist. I'd be gone in a few months.

And finally, I believe in the Eucharist because Jesus told me to.

The centurion showed faith in Jesus' ability to do anything. Do we believe God can do anything?

The centurion returned home to a healed servant, his heart full of joy. What does Jesus have in store for us when we believe that Jesus is really present in the tabernacle and when we receive Him with reverence and faith in the Eucharist?

Falling Stars of Joy

All joy...emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings. - C.S. Lewis

Overnight Jesus turns our sorrow into joy, and like the apostles we can hardly believe it. We almost want to return to the darkness because we know it and it is comfortable.

How do we celebrate this momentous anniversary of God rising from the dead to save us from our sins?

We dress up in white, adorn the churches in lilies and eat chocolate bunnies. Somehow it does not seem to be enough. We feel a burning joy, a peaceful joy that we do not see on the faces of our brothers and sisters who do not know God. But we know even this intense feeling is still just a shadow, a faint glimmer. Our hearts know that the fullness of joy cannot be found in any celebration on Earth, even the celebration of our Savior rising from the dead.

We are a waiting people, catching falling stars of joy from God's hands. God from God, Light from Light. At the end of our lives, through the very evil of death that Jesus has now transformed, we know and hope that we will be united to the glowing source of Light to experience eternal joy. 

We squirm in our seats at the very thought of never-ending joy - we are not even sure we want it or are really ready for it. And it is true, most of us are not ready. But this is why Jesus died, to unlock the gates and over time to make us ready.

Jesus our Savior - make us ready to fully experience your Easter joy in heaven.

Alleluia!

Triduum Meditation

They gave him wine to drink mixed with gall, which he tasted but refused to drink. - Matthew 27:34

When Jesus died on the cross, he gave everything he had and suffered all that he could suffer, he did not even accept wine to dull the pain.  Jesus was like a mother giving birth to salvation without an epidural. He did not die on the cross like a smiling Buddha or an ecstatic martyr. He denied himself his own grace of a peaceful death because he knew the deeper he went into the emptiness - the closer he brought divinity to the evil he was to overcome - the greater the flow of grace would be.

When Jesus says, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" he is not telling us like a grey-haired professor to refer to Psalm 22 to interpret his passion - he is referring us to the Psalm, yes, but the desolation he feels is real. The separation he feels from the Father is as real as the evil that crushes in on him. The cry of his heart is a cry that helps us to see that there is truly no pain that we feel in this life that he does not understand - even the felt abandonment of God.

Jesus died this way, suffering so much, because he could not do it any other way. In the way Jesus dies, he teaches us about himself, about Love.

Love does not love because he will receive something in return. Love does not love just enough to do the job and then hold back. Love does not love until it is too hard or too ugly to love. Love loves with everything he has, he empties himself until there is nothing left to give. Love dies for those he loves, whether it is one person or one million - the number does not change the sacrifice. I believe Jesus would have died in exactly the same way, feeling the same pain, if it had just been for you. Love cannot scale down or back away. Love does not avoid any sacrifice for his beloved - Love knows that experiencing pain is the only passageway to giving new life.

In dying on the cross Jesus opened the doors to heaven for us. The way he died shows us how to follow him to true joy on earth and ultimately to heaven. If there were another way, Jesus would have shown us. We must die to ourselves to follow our Savior. We must empty ourselves in love until the emptiness overwhelms us. We must experience the silence and despair of the tomb to experience the resurrection.

Do we think we can avoid the cross of suffering to find resurrection joy? Jesus did not, and he asks us to come and follow him.

I will follow you Jesus, wherever you ask me to, because I know that it will lead to my own joyous resurrection. 

Save Me from Mediocrity

Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. - Blessed JP II

 We are nearing the Holy Triduum, when we remember in a special way the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We live in a culture where very little is considered a sin, if we even use that word at all anymore. In some churches I have noticed pastors completely avoid the word, as if we have evolved beyond thinking about our sinfulness. If that is the case, we might as well stop calling ourselves Christians, because Jesus did not die for the righteous, He died for sinners.

So, how does this blindness affect our understanding of Jesus' death on the cross?

For my part, I am sure that modern culture combined with my own sinfulness prevents me from fully understanding and appreciating the death of Jesus. But I know that the only way I can understand my sinfulness is to move closer and closer to God, (the difference between His goodness and who I am becomes clearer).

And for this reason I am grateful for Lent which has been a solid kick in the pants for me. Jesus helped me to see during these forty days that sin is not just what I do, although this has a huge affect on my soul, it is also who I am - inside and out, what I think, and what I don't do. And Jesus helped me to see that there is a lot to work on.

In the Catholic Church we pray the confiteor at the beginning of every mass which includes these words, "I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do."

What do I not do? I think I was too overwhelmed by my endless exterior sins to even go there before. And I have a sneaking suspicion that many people are like me and only want to focus on their exterior mortal and venial sins, and sometimes this lasts for their whole lives. But I am learning that true holiness does not begin until we start to focus not only on our exteriors but also on our thoughts, our insides, as well as the endless "what ifs" - the countless promptings of the Holy Spirit that we ignore every day. Jesus wants to transform us from the inside out, He does not want to make us into modern day Pharisees, looking good on the outside, while rotting on the inside. The outside of us is just the beginning. This was one of Jesus' main messages in the Gospels.

It may seem like too much to think about but consider this...

Jesus did not just die to save us from hell, He also died to save us from mediocrity.

The Church teaches that the grace of Jesus' death not only saves us from eternal separation from God for our continual disobedience to God, it also gives us grace to become holier, to become saints. The first grace of heaven we can never merit in any sense of the word. God's grace is always completely generous, coming from His gratuitous love but we can receive graces to become holier through what we do, because God chose to save us this way out of pure generosity. In other words, God wants our cooperation in the work of the Spirit and like a Father rewarding His toddler for eating all her food, out of His love and nothing else, He rewards us for our good actions.

What does this all mean? It means that God's plan of salvation was not to just die for our sins so we would avoid eternal separation from Him, it was also to provide us with the grace we need to become holier every day, to become more like Him, so that we will be prepared to see Him in heaven. We are all called to be saints, every single one of us. And on this road to sanctity, we will begin to understand the gravity of our sins in a real way and enter more deeply into the mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection.

So this Holy Week, join me in this prayer, that we may become saints. Jesus make us more like you every day. Let's become the saints He made us to be.

We can do it, with God's grace, and here's some inspiration:

Tis the Season

Lent is a great time to take advantage of the gift we have in the sacrament of Reconciliation. We can prepare our souls through reconciliation by increasing the grace of Baptism or reigniting the fire of the Holy Spirit if we have committed mortal sin.

Reconciliation allows us to begin again in Christ. It is the very death of Christ that gave us the beautiful graces of this sacrament. The forgiveness of sins and the grace that comes from Jesus' death on the cross is given to us in the sacraments of Baptism and Reconciliation.

Reconciliation helps us to admit that we are sinners in a society where it is easy to lose our sense of sin. But if we are not sinners, then why did Jesus die for us? A good way to thank Jesus for dying for our sins this Lent is to show Him that we are really repentant and desire His grace; grace He is ready to pour out on us through this sacrament.

What is a little embarrassment compared to the joy we feel when God forgives and heals us?

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