Fr. Roger J. Landry
Putting into the Deep
The Anchor
February 11, 2005
Lent is a forty day uphill pilgrimage with Jesus.
Jesus starts by taking us, on the first Sunday, to a desert mountain where he teaches us by example how to say no to the devil’s temptations.
Next, we climb Mt. Tabor with him, where his Father gives us the secret to life: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him!”
On the third Sunday, we travel with Jesus to the top of Mt. Gerazim, where he reveals himself as the “living water” and inspires us to thirst for him.
We next ascend with him to Jerusalem where he cures the man born blind and speaks about his desire to cure our spiritual blindness.
On the fifth Sunday, he takes us over the Mount of Olives to Bethany, where he prophesies our resurrection by raising Lazarus from the dead.
And on Palm Sunday, we climb the hill of Calvary with him and stand with horror and amazement at the foot of his salvific Cross.
At the start of Lent, Jesus says to us, as he said to Peter, James and John in Gethsemane, “Get up, let’s go!”
Just as he’ll point to Matthew at his customs post in tomorrow morning’s Gospel and say “Come, follow me!,” so he puts each of in his divine cross-hairs and beckons us to leave our customary posts and habits and journey with him along the path he knows we need to trod.
That path is the way of the Cross. It is the way of the grain of wheat. It is the way of true discipleship. “Whoever wishes to be my disciple,” Jesus declared, “ must deny his very self, take up his cross each day and follow in my footsteps” (Lk 9:24).
The Church each Lent gives us practical means by which to work on these fundamentals of discipleship.
We see this, first, in the practices of fasting, almsgiving and prayer. Fasting is one of the most effective means of self-denial; in controlling our desire for food, rather than being controlled by it, we grow in self-mastery, which helps us to deny ourselves in other areas. Almsgiving is a particularly efficacious way of making our daily cross, like Jesus’, an altar on which we sacrifice our lives and goods out of love for others. Prayer is the best way we keep our eyes on Christ so that we may both see the path he wants us to follow and receive his strength to complete that journey.
The Church, secondly, proposes the Stations of the Cross, which parishes across our diocese will be praying communally later today. This devotion makes visible and concrete where Jesus is leading us and reminds us of the reality that His Cross is really our cross and ours His.
This year the Diocese of Fall River is giving us a third means by which to work on these fundamentals: the ancient practice of Lenten Station Churches. Since the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604), Catholics in Rome have had the custom of making a pilgrimage to specific ancient churches on particular days in Lent. There they pray through the intercession of the Church’s saintly patron for the grace to make a good Lent. They also petition for strength on the pilgrimage of life, so that they might follow Christ all the way through the Cross to the eternal Easter.
Bishop Coleman has instituted the practice in our diocese this year so that we might receive the same graces. Since it is occurring within the Year of the Eucharist, it will also be a way for us, as a diocese, to live an intensely Eucharistic Lent, focused on a deeper communion with Christ and with the other members of his Mystical Body.
The practice of the Station Churches, moreover, makes Lent an actual pilgrimage, which reinforces the spiritual pilgrimage of the season. Sometimes we can become so comfortable and stable at our own parishes that we can stop moving spiritually. This is a great danger, for as Archbishop Sheen used to say, “There are no plateaus in the spiritual life: if we’re not moving uphill, we’re sliding downhill!”
The Station Churches help us to keep moving upward, which is the true purpose of every parish. The word parish comes from the Biblical word for pilgrimage (paroikia). Our parish churches are meant to be like hostels on the pilgrimage toward heaven, way stations — “station churches” — that give us nourishment precisely so that we can continue on the journey.
Our diocese has many beautiful such way stations, which provide Christ as nourishment for the pilgrimage of Lent and of life. During these forty days, may you discover many of them and rediscover in them Christ, who continues to say “Get up, let’s go” and is the guide and goal of our journey home.