Every Lent, I pretend that I'm going to do daily blog posts on that days Mass readings.
It never happens.
Heck, I'm already a day behind.
So, instead, I'm going to compromise with my procrastination and say that this Lent, I will be occasionally posting some thoughts about the daily readings.
You may or may not find this particularly insightful. It's more of an exercise for me, really.
Anyway, today's readings are some of my favorites.
Deuteronomy 30 is awesome -- and not just because it ends up making Moses sound like a proto-pro-lifer with his argument "Choose life, then,that you and your descendants may live."
If only for a moment, this passage puts us back into the Garden of Eden. It reinscribes that first test onto each of our hearts. You can follow the path of life, or you can be an idiot and screw up everything by thinking you know better on your own.
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.
It's a free choice and it works both anagogically and allegorically. It lays before us Heaven and Hell and reminds us of our agency in redemption. We can only be saved through Christ, but Christ can only save us if we opt into salvation. You can't force a person to experience happiness.
Believe me, I've tried to.
It doesn't work.
And just imagine all those fundamentalists who try to force happiness upon others.
It usually creates a scandal and leads to atheism.
Happiness must be accepted, or else it isn't experienced as happiness.
This passage also debunks the notion that God's salvation can be through a mere verbal acceptance of Him. It has to be lived out in order to flourish and come to fulfillment.
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.
The passage also suggests a certain degree of utilitarianism. Benjamin
Franklin once pointed out that Judeo-Christian morality seemed, for the most
part, just to make common sense in terms of conducting a healthy and
viable society, whether or not it was a Divinely inspired system being
secondary to this truth.
Granted, Moses isn't exactly referring to Christianity...and he was known for the violent suppression of dissent every now and then...but this passage in particular leaves the society free to choose its path. Taken in isolation, this passage reinforces the idea of free will -- virtue, life, and God must be accepted freely, not by compulsion. Refusal to accept God becomes its own punishment -- corporeal punishment at the hands of men becomes completely unnecessary. Utopian plans for societies will never work because the best means of organizing society is sitting right in front of us every day but is largely rejected. The fact of the matter is that we typically choose death on a daily basis. Lent is our opportunity to focus on trying to tip the scale in favor of life.
The Gospel reading, Luke 9, I also love because it really sticks it to all those people who mope about in life saying that they have to "find themselves." Anyone who goes on a quest to find themselves is pretty much doomed to a spirituality-FAIL.
First of all, self-knowledge is a kind of impossible paradox. I don't see how it is possible to simultaneously acquire new knowledge of yourself without actually changing who you are. The second you realize what it means that you are now self-aware, you are going to be transformed into someone else...which means you have to start the process over again to figure out who it was that you were when you figured out who you were...which of course is going to be different than the person you are once you've figured out who it was you were when you figured out who you were.
I'm pretty sure that any attempt at figuring out what I meant in that last sentence counts as your Friday mortification.
It's certainly a grammatical mortification, at the very least.
The way I see it, while you might have certain distinct personality traits that might more or less remain static over the course of your life, you are ultimately in a process of continual change until you die. The question shouldn't be "Who am I?" but "Who can I become?"
I've always taken that to be at the heart of Christ's statement when he says "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."
Forget trying to figure out who you are...instead, think about becoming someone better.
Granted, to get closer to Christ, it might be worthwhile to conduct some limited self-reflection. It would be hard for us to learn how to get closer to Christ without recognizing those areas in our lives where we are furthest removed from him. If I don't recognize my weaknesses, it can be hard to open those problems up to Christ. But I think it's also important to recognize that my weaknesses aren't really "me"...and I think that's where people on a quest for self-discovery often get gummed up.
I'm speaking totally from anecdotal evidence of course, but it seems to me that the voyage of self-discovery often ends with people defending some pet vice by saying, "But this is who I am. This is how I was made. Not doing what comes naturally to me is denying myself."
Exactly. But doing what comes naturally to you is often denying your true self--your destined self--the self you were meant to be.
Our weaknesses and vices aren't really how we are made, though. They are how we are broken.
Christ is the service patch update to the Windows Vista of our souls.
Well, this year I decided I'd do a daily exegesis and you can visit my website at http://dailyexegesis.blogspot.com
That said, I LOVE this:
"Christ is the service patch update to the Windows Vista of our souls." My techno-savvy spouse will love that!
Drop by when you get a chance. I too don't know how long I'll keep this up, but we'll see :-)
Best wishes!
Posted by: Janine | March 06, 2009 at 12:50 PM