Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
   according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my sin,
   and cleanse me from my iniquity.

                                                                     Psalm 50 (51): 1-2

Thus begins the psalm set for today’s Mass. It’s a familiar psalm, the one from which we have the chorus, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” We know it as the psalm David wrote after his visit from Nathaniel, whose reprimand inspired the contrition David expresses. The thing is (and I admit this sometimes troubles me, but I am not concerned with it today), the sorrow over his sin is between David and God. David pleads: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. / O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.”

So I was a little bit dismayed to hear the headteacher speak about Lent, and the Lenten discipline we undertake, with the phrase “make us a better person.” However well-intentioned, I think this is the wrong message for our children, and for us. Jesus did not come that we might be better people; he came that we might have life, “abundantly.” Lent begins with an acknowledgement that we are sinful, and that we cannot make ourselves better. We repent of our sins and ask forgiveness, looking to God to cleanse us, heal us, and renew us, so that we can receive the new life offered to us by Christ’s resurrection. Then will our lips be opened; then will we declare God’s praise.

I liked my son’s interpretation of what the head teacher said. Answering the question, “What is Lent?” asked by the priest this morning, he did say (perish the thought) that the things we gave up or undertook for Lent had the effect of making us better people. But he gave that “better” this gloss: “to make us more like Jesus.” That’s my boy. Amen, son, amen.

Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Since you know the will of God,
         act according to it and you will be blessed.

                                                   .         .         .

It is not a part of the Psalm, I admit, but an antiphon. Still, it struck me deeply, as I have just come from teaching on the sacraments. Maybe at first blush it seems unrelated, but I teach in an ecumenical setting. Occasionally I have to answer for the Roman Catholic view of the Eucharist, not so much the doctrine but the exclusiveness of the table. Transubstantiation bothers people less than the idea that some might be excluded from the Lord’s table.

Sometimes it’s difficult.

At the end of the day, though, what we have to answer for is our own practice. Knowing the theology, knowing the doctrine, places a particular responsibility on me as a teacher and as a Christian. I know why I receive communion in my parish and other Catholic churches, and why I refrain in other settings. I can explain it, though not always to everyone’s satisfaction.

Sometimes it’s difficult, but the antiphon reminded me why listening to my conscience is important. If only I content myself with what, to the best of my knowledge, is the will of God, and act accordingly, I have done what I can. I may be corrected, I may see things differently tomorrow, but today I have to listen to his voice.

Let it be done to me according to His will.

O Lord, I trust in you;
into your hands I commend my spirit.

Not much is known about St Agnes. The introduction that universalis provides suggests that in part this may be beacuse she was only 12 when she was martyred, which seems like a reasonable explanation. That we do not know very much is not important, the writer says; it’s what we do know that matters: that she was willing to die for her faith. And so we should be inspired to take the difficult course, precisely when it is most difficult to do so.

Right.

The thing is, that’s not exactly what Agnes, or any of the early Christian martyrs saw themselves doing. I think about St Stephen, who exclaimed that he saw Jesus. Or Perpetua, who likewise looked beyond the beasts and the sword, to the One she desired to behold in his glory. It seems to me that it isn’t about gritting your teeth and bearing it: Perpetua’s story in particular relates her obliviousness to the pain of the attack she suffered. Rather, she experienced even the blows of the beast as a ‘momentary light affliction’ that did not distract her from the ‘eternal…glory’ she so ardently desired.

It isn’t about us. It is never about us. It is always about him, about Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. We fix our eyes on him, in whose strength we are supported. Perhaps that is why the first reading for today, from Hebrews 5, reminds us that ‘no one takes this honour on himself, but each one is called by God’ and that Christ himself was (somehow, mysteriously) made perfect in suffering. It is not our own suffering, but a participation in Christ’s suffering, that transforms the suffering itself into the delight of St Stephen, St Agnes, and St Perpetua, as they beheld the Lord in glory.

St Agnes, pray for us.

For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not mere men? What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.

This text isn’t from the Mass readings for today, or indeed from any of the Catholic offices, but from Anglican Morning Prayer. But it struck me deeply, possibly because I pray with my Anglican and Methodist colleagues as a Roman Catholic. Little things keep me conscious of the difference, like the version of the Lord’s Prayer we use. Texts like this, though, remind me why I am so happy to teach outside of my own confessional tradition. “Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.” Probably also because the “plant” of my own faith grew from a Lutheran (ELCA) plant and has been nourished by the water of a fairly wide variety of Christian confessions, not without a dash of the charismatic (sparkling water, perhaps?).

So, I am very happy to pray together with my colleagues and friends the psalm set for Mass today:

Come, let us bow and bend low;
let us kneel before the God who made us;
For he is our God, and we are the people
   who belong to his pasture,
    the flock that is led by his hand.

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.
Colossians 3:12-15 NASB
 

 
 
‘Do you have children?’ I asked. It was the staff Christmas party, and I’d been talking about the preparations around our house. Just small talk, you know, the conversations with folks you like (if you’re me, anyway), but hardly know. Hence the question. I was wholly unprepared for the response: ‘We had four children, but our eldest child died…’ Four years ago, I think he said, and continued about the other three in a way that directed the conversation toward the living.
 
I thought to myself afterward that it is true, that saying that everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle. There is always more to be known, more experience and complexity than we think. I think this especially with folks my age and older, but I remember my teenage and young adult years vividly enough to recall the anxious and vast interior landscape I inhabited then. It’s only in retrospect that those years are carefree. In the moment–at least I think for many–there are cares enough.
 
Becoming a mother shifted that landscape like a movement along the mother of all fault lines. (No pun intended.) All the geographical features of my inner life had to trade places, and make space for the Big, New Reality: a child. And aftershock follows aftershock, as my heart and mind adjust to the new terrain. Before children, I might have been accused from time to time of wearing my heart on my sleeve. More than once, I have been called a ‘bleeding heart’ liberal. But now? To keep my heart as close as my sleeve would be a great accomplishment: it has left my body and gone outside to kick a football; it naps in the next room; it plays downstairs with tanks and dolls.
 
I cannot imagine living without it; can’t imagine what life would be like were a part of my heart to die. But that’s motherhood, after the example of the Mother of God; that’s family. Sometimes I think I see what it is that is so special about families, why God chose a family to be the space in which to come among us. If I have glimpsed it, I’ve not managed to find the words for it. Something about the way our hearts get parceled out and mingled together; something about the company one so needs in battle; something about the way we learn to bend and straighten, as we must, to make space, to give strength.
 
I know I am a long way, we are a long way, from that familial holiness that Mary and Joseph and Jesus display. Praying for more grace in 2013…

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“Judah is a lion’s whelp;
From the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He crouches, he lies down as a lion,
And as a lion, who dares rouse him up?
Genesis 49:9 NASB
 
. . . . .
 
‘It’s always like that,’ says the magician, Coriakin, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. ‘You can’t keep him; it’s not as if he were a tame lion.’ The lion in question is Aslan, of course, who has just vanished. Someone working on some Bible studies to accompany Rowan Williams’ recent book on Narnia asked this week what passage I might use to illustrate the idea that Aslan is not a tame lion. My first thought (which is apparently the consensus) was to use the description of Jesus cleansing the temple.
 
But this Sunday in church, as I looked around at the images of Christ and watched my own children fidget, as children do, I thought, why not the story about Jesus being found in the temple? What about Jesus the strong-willed child? Not unruly, perhaps; one wouldn’t want to ascribe unruliness to the Messiah, after all. There is, however, a strength of character that might present itself as a stubborn streak, or a tendency to wander.
 
I find myself increasingly resistant to images of Jesus that depict him as nice, anodyne. ‘He went around doing good,’ and that’s pretty much the extent of it. No. I am just not convinced that Jesus came that we might be nice to each other. He came that we might have life abundantly, and he never shrank back from the purpose for which he came. Perhaps he wasn’t an unruly child, but he was at least a tad unpredictable–there was no expectation that he would wander off. If he’d been prone to such things, Mary and Joseph surely would have kept a closer watch on him. (I know something about this, having a daughter who is prone to just this sort of wandering: she keeps you on your toes.)
 
He is not a tame lion. He tries our patience and sometimes frightens us; he refuses to stay in the habitats we build for him. And just when we think we’ve nabbed him (as the disciples did in the breaking of bread after their conversation on the road to Emmaus), he vanishes. ‘Gone!’ said the magician. ‘And you and I quite crestfallen.’ Indeed.

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O shepherd of Israel, hear us,
shine forth from your cherubim throne.
O Lord, rouse up your might;
O Lord, come to our help.
Psalm 80 [79]

. . . . . .

‘Hear us.’ What more is there to pray, when the world is upside down? Darkness has visited–death has invaded. Hear us, author of life; rouse up your might, you who have triumphed over the grave. You are the One who makes all things new, help us.

I confess that my geography is not that good; I don’t know whether I am halfway between Connecticut and Syria. But I do know that whether I look to the east, or I look to the west, I see parents grieving the loss of their children. I see violence–terror on every side–and I cannot believe that any of us is safe. The world appears to me as a place of suffering and pain. Why there, O Lord? And why the children?

I am a theologian by inclination and by training; I know that’s not one we can answer. I pray for those grieving, and those standing beside them: ‘O shepherd of Israel, hear us, shine forth from your cherubim throne.’ Speak peace, speak comfort, and bring light where it seems darkness has overtaken us. ‘O Lord, rouse up your might; O Lord, come to our help.’

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I, the Lord, your God,
 I am holding you by the right hand;
I tell you–do not be afraid;
 I will help you.

Do not be afraid, Jacob, poor worm,
 Israel, puny mite.
I will help you–it is the Lord who speaks–
 the Holy One of Israel is your redeemer.
                                                 Isaiah 41

‘Do not be afraid…puny mite.’ These words fall on anxious ears today. Some days I find it easy to identify with the ‘poor worm’ or ‘puny mite’–today is one of those days. I should no longer find it odd that on the days when I feel most crushed, most empty, that I am least likely to stop by the well and drink. Against my desire to keep striving, I pause. And I am struck in these verses by the repetition of two things: the reassurance that it is the Lord who is speaking, and the admonition ‘do not be afraid.’

I am a small and weak creature, though some days I may deceive myself into thinking otherwise. But it is precisely in realizing this truth about myself–poor worm–that I am reminded that my size and strength are not at issue. The Lord speaks, and speaks the truth: ‘I am holding you by the right hand’ and there is nothing to fear. Whatever it is that speaks fear is not the Lord speaking, for the Lord speaks peace and courage, the Lord speaks help and comfort.

Come, Word of God, and speak light into my darkness.

The trust you have shown
shall not pass from the memories of men
but shall ever remind them
of the power of God.
Judith 13: 19
 

 
My first encounter with the Virgin of Guadalupe was historical and cultural rather than religious. Since I grew up in Southern California and studied Spanish, I was bound to come across the “legend” of Juan Diego and the appearance of the virgin. That account of the event has always been dominant in my memory–but today I saw it a bit differently, thanks to the verse from the book of Judith.
 
The trust Mary showed, the confidence that made it possible for her to say yes to the angel Gabriel, isn’t her possession at all. If Mary is an example for us of discipleship, what she shows us is that the grace of God always precedes the opportunity to say yes. It is the power of God that makes obedience possible. And the experience of Juan Diego, as it is remembered this month, should remind us of the power of God. The fact that Juan Diego encountered the Blessed Virgin is not about Juan Diego, or even about Mary. The miracle of the imprint and the roses is about God, still reaching through our disbelief and fear.
 
Deo gratias.

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Strengthen all weary hands,
steady all trembling knees,
and say to all faint hearts,
‘Courage! Do not be afraid.’
                            Isaiah 35

Courage! I am struck by the admonition to courage, partly because it seems to me that what the weary hands need is strength, or even rest. Perhaps, though, that says more about my own tiredness than it does about this bit of Isaiah 35. The verse above is from the famous bit (to my mind, anyway): the eyes of the blind will be opened; the ears of the deaf will hear; the chains of the lame will be broken, and streams will flow in deserts of fear. So it will be when God’s kingdom comes.

But why courage? I suppose that I have always read this verse in Isaiah 35 with its echo in Hebrews 12 in mind. There the strengthening is paired with making level paths for the feet of the one who is lame, so that ‘what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather may be healed.’ To keep on the road when it seems impossible to go any farther requires courage as well as strength, though, doesn’t it? We need faith that God will heal, will provide, will give rest and peace in the midst of turmoil and difficult work.

And my road is not actually as hard as all that: When I think of the martyrs, I am often reminded of the verse from Hebrews 12, which exhorts us to persevere, as we have ‘not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.’ Today’s ‘others’ include a St Edmund, St Eustace, and St Swithin–all of whom were Catholics martyred for their faith on this date (St John in 1610, the others in 1597). May perpetual light shine on them, even as their light marks the way forward for us.