Choosing the Lenten Path of Life, Thursday after Ash Wednesday, February 15, 2024

Father Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Memorial of St. Claude la Colombière
February 15, 2024
Dt 30:15-20, Ps 1, Lk 9:22-25

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Throughout Lent, we focus first and foremost on God’s desire to save us and we recognize, as we heard yesterday with St. Paul, that “now is the day of salvation.” This Lent, today, is the time to respond. “God so loved the world,” St. John tells us in his most famous passage, “that he sent his only Son so that all who believe in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” God does not want us to perish. He didn’t even spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all, as St. Paul reminds us in Romans, so that we might not die but have life to the full. But God’s will is not enough, because he chose to make us free. We need to respond to his gift of salvation. Todays’ readings, on our second day in the pilgrimage of Lent, are about the choices we are called to make in response to God’s offer and to the grace he gives us that St. Paul appealed yesterday that we wouldn’t take in vain.
• The choice is framed by Moses in today’s first reading. The Israelites were drawing toward the end of their 40-year pilgrimage in the desert. Moses had led the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, accompanied them through the desert for four decades and now they were on the opposite side of the Jordan from the long-awaited Holy Land. God had told Moses that he would die before crossing, so Moses, in today’s first reading, was finishing a sort of last will and testament, a summary of what God had done for them and taught them. As the long experience of their time in the desert had taught them, God’s wondrous actions were not enough. The ten plagues weren’t enough. Their passing through the Red Sea on dry land wasn’t enough. The manna from heaven, the daily quails, the water from the rock and the theophanies associated with giving the Ten Commandments were not enough. None was sufficient to keep many of the Jews faithful. Many of them complained that they should have remained with their fleshpots in Egypt, others made a golden calf, even Aaron the high priest fell into the clutches of a wavering faith. So Moses wanted to urge them to choose and choose wisely. He framed the decision facing them as it truly was, a decision of life and death: “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. If you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving him, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous, and the Lord, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy. If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen, but are led astray and adore and serve other gods, I tell you now that you will certainly perish; you will not have a long life on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy. I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.” Moses reminded them that the choice for God is a life-giving choice, a choice full of blessing; and that the choice against God — even if it might seem at first a choice that leads to life and happiness — is actually fatal. This is not something, of course, that they recognized. Throughout the desert they complained that they had left their fleshpots in Egypt behind just to perish in the desert by following the Lord. Along the way, many times they thought that the choice for God was a choice for death. But it is a choice for life. And those who sought the counterfeit path of turning their hearts away from God, of refusing to listen, of adoring and serving other gods, never made it out of the desert.
• That’s the choice that faces all of us in Lent as we enter not into a 40-year but 40-day journey. Lent historically and actually is a catechumenate, an ecclesial preparation for baptism at the Easter Vigil or, for those of us who have already been baptized, a 40-day renewal of the meaning of our baptism. Like the Jews, we have been set free from the slavery of sin and death, passing through the waters of baptism like the Jews passed through the Red Sea. We are presently in the desert with Jesus for these 40 days looking with him toward the eternal promised land that is anticipated in the celebration of Easter. It’s a time for us to focus on the graces of our liberation and the choice God has given to our freedom between life-giving fidelity through “loving him, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments,” through “heeding his voice and holding fast to him,” or the path that leads to death under the seduction of bringing life.
• The contrast between these two paths is highlighted in today’s Psalm, which is the first of all the Psalms and the one that in a sense orients the praying of any and every psalm. It describes the “blessed man” who “delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night” as like a “tree planted near running water that yields its fruit in due season and whose leaves never fade.” He receives life and is able to give life from his contact with the “living water” of God. On the other hand, the “wicked” man, the one follows “the counsel of the wicked, … walks in the company of way of sinners, [and] sits in the company of the insolent” is compared to “the chaff that the wind drives away.” There are no roots, no substance, no life. The Psalm says, “The way of the wicked vanishes.” That’s the choice facing us as we begin Lent. The question arises: Isn’t this choice a no-brainer? Who, after all, would consciously choose death over life? It’s like the choice between eating filet mignon or tree bark. In the Gospel, however, we see why the choice, though conceptually simple, is morally challenging.
• Jesus tells us today that the path of life is paradoxically a path of self-denial. Just as he was going to “suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes and be killed” before being raised to unending life on the third day, so “if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
 and take up his cross daily and follow me.
” He gets even more explicit about that paradox: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
 but whoever loses his life for my sake will save.” In order to obtain life, we need to die to ourselves. We need to lose our life for the sake of God and the Gospel in order to retain it. In the choice between self-denial and self-affirmation, we think that the latter is the path of life, but it really is the former. In the path between the Cross and the comfy recliner, we think the latter is the path of life, but it is the former. In the path between following Christ to Calvary and going to a beach resort, we think that the latter is the path of life, but it is the former. The path of life doesn’t seem to be life-giving, and the path of death, on the contrary, does. But that’s what Jesus wants us to grasp. There’s a choice between forfeiting oneself to gain the whole world or forfeiting the whole world to gain oneself. Today as we make the ninth anniversary of the Coptic Martyrs of Libya, who were all beheaded on the beach by ISIS, we see illustrated what the real choice is for life, blessing and prosperity.
• This is why living a good and holy Lent is so important. Lent is meant to help us to make the choice for real life, to help us to walk in the footsteps of Christ, to plant ourselves in his living water in the midst of the desert so that we may grow to eternity. But we need to make the full and conscious choice for life, which requires the full and conscious choice to deny ourselves, pick up our Cross and follow Christ. The three Lenten practices, when we choose to live them generously, are all geared to do this. All three teach us self-denial: fasting denies the dominion of our lower appetites, almsgiving denies our selfishness, prayer denies our egocentrism. Each, in a sense, is a Cross that leads to our self-death, because to many it may seem that giving into our cravings, spending what we have on ourselves, and using our time for our own pursuits actually constitute the path of life, but they’re not. And these three practices help us to follow Christ in his own fasting, his giving of himself to the point of death, and his prayer. For this process of communion with Christ and the life he comes to give us to occur, however, we really must choose bold resolutions that can help facilitate these spiritual fruits, rather than soft ones that, even if we keep them, won’t really lead to the crucifixion to the worldliness that is necessary in order to experience the life that Jesus wants to give.
• To persevere in living this way, we not only need God’s grace and personal resolve but the help of others. That’s why the saint the Church remembers today is so important. St. Claude la Colombière (1641-1682) is is most famous for his having been for a short but crucial time the spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, to whom Jesus appeared to reveal the mystery of his Sacred Heart. Even though she had been receiving apparitions of Jesus, there was so much she didn’t understand. St. Claude was the one who was given to her to help understand her sufferings and how they are meant to be related to the mystery of Christ’s human and divine love shown on Calvary. The feast of this great spiritual direction is a good day for us to ponder the importance of spiritual direction in general, both the spiritual direction we receive and that we’re called to give to others, passing on to them the light God has given us so that they may walk less in darkness. It’s a feast on which to pray for our spiritual directors and to ask God’s grace to become apt spiritual guides for others. St. Margaret Mary said of him, “His gift is to lead souls to God,” and would that that be able to be said about each of us: that we help others to see God and the way God is working in their life, that we help them choose life by embracing Christ on the Cross. We know what happened with St. Margaret Mary. As she had been receiving apparitions from Jesus, she eventually confided to her superiors and various priests came in to examine here. Some thought she was crazy. Others thought she was possessed. They hurt her quite a bit and their evaluations caused her huge problems in her community. The priest theologians who were called in were not properly trained to help her. Finally, God sent her St. Claude, who was able to be Jesus’ instrument to tell her that she wasn’t a freak, that she wasn’t being diabolically played, but that this came from the Lord. And then he helped her fulfill what the Lord was asking of her. Here’s what she wrote in her autobiography: “In the midst of all my fears and difficulties my heart, … I was made to speak to certain theologians, who, far from reassuring me in my way, added still more to my difficulties, until at last Our Lord sent the Rev. Father de la Colombière here. I had already spoken to him in the beginning of my religious life. My Sovereign Master had promised me shortly after I had consecrated myself to Him, that He would send me one of His servants, to whom He wished to make known according to the knowledge He would give me thereof, all the treasures and secrets of His Sacred Heart that He had confided to me. He added that He sent him to reassure me with regard to my interior way, and that He would impart to him signal graces from His Sacred Heart, showering him abundantly over our interviews. When that holy man came and was addressing the community, I interiorly heard these words: ‘This is he whom I send thee.’ I soon realized this in the first confession on the Ember days; for, although we had never either seen or spoken with each other, the Reverend Father kept me a very long time and spoke with me as though he understood what was passing within me. …  I opened my heart and made known to him my inmost soul, both the good and the bad; whereupon he greatly consoled me, assuring me that there was nothing to fear in the guidance of that Spirit. … He further taught me to value the gifts of God and to receive with respect and humility the frequent communications and familiar converse with which he favored me, adding that I ought to in a continual state of thanksgiving towards such infinite goodness.… But as this infinite Goodness did not wish that I should receive any consolation without its costing me many humiliations, this interview drew several upon me, and the Reverend Father himself had much to suffer on my account. For it was said that I wanted to deceive him and mislead him by my illusions, as I had done others. He was, however, in no way troubled by what was said, but continued nonetheless to help me, not only the short time he remained in this town, but always.” As we are now marking the 350th anniversary of the apparitions of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary (from December 27, 2023 through June 16, 2025), we give thanks to God for how St. Claude helped guide her and we thank the Lord for those figures he has placed in our life to guide us so that we may choose life by giving our life for Christ and the Gospel, and bear fruit in every season.
• Today, with Moses, Jesus and the Church place before us this choice between life and death, between a blessing and a curse, between the fruitful tree and the chaff. Mass is the time that we lose our life for him who lost his for us. God so loves the world that he gives us his only Son continuously in our participation in his life-giving death and resurrection in the Eucharist, as we opt to lose our life with him so as to be saved by him forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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