MARCH 2015 | 1

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MARCH 2015

Articles for faith and mission

A Comprehensive Worship Resourcewww.celebrationpublications.org

March 2015 | 44:3

In this issue:LentMiguel Dulick 3

Formation:Spanish/EnglishWords We NeedCatechesisPsalmsFaith and LifeCulture and Worship

6-13

Preparation: Music, Prayers, Planning & Graphics

14-24

Preaching:CommentariesSample homiliesSermon starters Youth homily ideasfor the five Sundays of March 2015

Daily Bread:Homily starters andreflections on the readings of the day

Darkness to LightParadox and challenge in

“this joyful season” of Lent 3

FORMATION

The Joy of Lent Miguel Dulick 2

March Lectionary Themes Patricia and Rafael Sánchez 5

A Chasm of Inequality Gabe Huck 7

Yearning for Real Food Melissa Musick Nussbaum 9

Promise to Remember Denise Simeone 10

Illuminating Conversations Peg Ekerdt 11

Renewing Our Baptism Erin Ryan 12

MARCH 2015 | 2

Lent: from Darkness to LightCELEBRATION FEATURE

Paradox and challenge in “this joyful season”

By MIGUEL DULICK

The liturgy calls Lent “this joyful season,” keeping our eyes on the prize: the Paschal Mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus celebrated in the Triduum — a single liturgy from the sign of the cross on Holy Thursday until the final blessing of the Easter Vigil. Lent, “these 40 days,” reminds us of the 40 years of desert wandering by the Israelites to prepare them for the Promised Land. We make the voyage with Noah on the ark through the Deluge that cleansed (or “baptized”) the world of sin. We repeat Jesus’ own sojourn in the desert, battling the temptations to cheapen his mission. Lent is the great retreat of the church year, a time of conversion paced by a heightened practice of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

Entering Lent, we may feel as if we are in a foreign land, not least because of the challenging Mass readings that we seem to encounter only at this time of year.

Paradoxes of faithThere is perhaps no more chal-

lenging story — disorienting, even repellent in the eyes of some — than the very first reading we hear in March: the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22). A deal-breaker for many an atheist, it should be read in its entirety to experience its full impact. Is this the story of some savage God who orders Abraham to slaughter his own son, whom he “loves”? Or is this a faith so full that in the darkest hour of his life, Abraham, as Jesus says, “saw my day and was glad” (John 8:56)? Lent challenges all of us to see in the dark, you might say, guided by a light that only faith can detect.

The liturgy itself loses no time in closing the circle, citing Paul’s lightning strike from Romans 8:32 of the same sacrificial scene, with Jesus in the role of “Beloved Son,” but this time there is no ram in the

thicket: “God did not spare his own Son but handed him over [the same Greek is used for Judas’ betrayal] for us all.” Dare we take Paul’s hint and say that the Father loves Jesus, yes, but loved us sinners even more?

These are the paradoxes of our faith that thrive in Lent.

TransfigurationWhere I live, Honduras, one of

the most dangerous countries in the world, we could not take a single day’s step through the darkness of 20 murders a day — we don’t count homicides, we count massacres — without the faith that draws us together in the love that “casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). Not unlike Isaac, our children are sacrificed on the altar of America’s addiction to drugs, whose transport from South America corrupts every level of Honduran life. As with ISIS, beheading is a common mode of revenge or intimidation, including women often enough that a whole separate statistic is kept of “femicides.”

So with the apostles, we eagerly accept Jesus’ invitation to ascend the mountain to witness the Trans-figuration (Mark 9:2-10) to encourage us in our Lenten efforts. It is one of the “Mysteries of Light” that Pope John Paul II added to the rosary. The scene, Jesus flanked by Moses and Elijah, anticipates the tableau of Golgotha, promising us the light at the end of the tunnel. The apostles could not grasp its significance at the time, of course, and we may not see the effects of our own “light” right away as we pray more, do more, give more. But let us remember, as many Lenten readings demonstrate, that while in the Hebrew scriptures God never fails to redeem “the just” (like Abraham or Susanna); in the Chris-tian scriptures God’s preferential option is for the sinner (like the tax collector in the temple, or the woman taken in adultery). As Psalm 116 says, “I believed, even when I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted.’ ”

Cleansing the templeThe great theme of darkness yield-

ing to light continues in the Third Sunday, springing from the Ten

— Julie Lonneman

Where I live, Hondu-ras, one of the most

dangerous countries in the world, we could not take a single day’s step through the darkness of 20 murders a day

without the faith that draws us together in

the love that “casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).

3 | MARCH 2015

Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17 to the cleansing of the temple in John 2:13-25). Both are to be interpreted through Jesus, the “exegesis” of the Father (John 1:18). Surely the com-mandments are a kind of light, as Psalm 19 makes clear: “The command of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eye.” So we should focus less on the “nots” and more on the “shalls.” The commandments are not a scolding from above but a covenant of mu-tual commitment. Yet, compared to “Christ crucified,” any law is a poor sign of God’s love, “foolishness” even, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:22-25.

John’s Gospel puts the cleansing of the temple in the first week of Jesus’ Jerusalem ministry, while the Synoptics put it three years later, in his last week. No matter. John himself suggests how Gospel time operates: “When he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered” what Jesus did and said. The whole New Testament (indeed, the whole Bible, as Jesus explains on the way to Emmaus) is dipped in the Resurrec-tion, pointing up each passage with its light. And look at the delicacy of even the enraged Jesus, whipping the sellers of sheep and oxen that only the rich can afford and tossing the tables of the extortionist moneychangers, while simply cautioning those who sell birds for a couple pennies to the poor: “Take these out of here.” He establishes himself — his very body — as temple, altar, Holy of Holies (where the stone tablets of the com-mandments were kept in the Ark of the Covenant). This is the same body that becomes the Eucharist, the root and measure of our whole faith. And these are the “signs” of our Lent, as we struggle with our sad “human nature,” hoping to open ourselves more and more to Jesus, who already knows us so well.

Saved by graceMoving forward, our vision is

expanded still more on the Fourth Sunday. When even a pagan king, Cyrus, is a “messiah” (cf. Isa 45:1), what are the limits of God’s grace? The Babylonian exile transformed the whole meaning of God’s Chosen

People. They are rooted no longer in the Promised Land but in the very heart of God (2 Chr 36). God’s people can be anywhere, an idea just waiting for apostles like St. Paul to take up and run with: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8). And Jesus can be anything. He reaches deep into salvation history to apply to himself an image never before associated with the Messiah: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14). There is simply no limit to God’s capacity

for humility, even humiliation. The feasts of the Annunciation (March 25) and St. Joseph (March 19) waitin the wings of Lent, celebrating Jesus’ entry into our world. Lovely stories, but Jesus chooses for himself the sheer ugliness and repulsiveness that snakes suggest (from the serpent in the Garden of Eden to John the Baptist’s “brood of vipers!”). This gives some real edge to those “JOHN 3:16” signs blandly waved in stadiums and arenas throughout the land: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”

God loved the world! Romano Guar-dini’s groundbreaking life of Christ, The Lord (1954), which covered the entire New Testament, laid the foundation for Vatican II. He notes that nothing seems to have excited Jesus so much as the prospect of the gentile ministry, which would have to wait until after his resurrection, even until after Pentecost. Hints of its future success entice him dearly. You see it when he praises the faith of the Roman centurion (“Just say the word and my servant shall be healed,” Matt 8:5) and when the Syro-Phoenician woman outwits him (“Even the dogs get the children’s scraps from the table,” Mark 7:28). He goes to Caesarea Philippi, at the very extreme end of Palestine (cf. Mark 8:27), to predict his passion, a geographical and ministe-rial tipping point; indeed, his native land is “Galilee of the Gentiles.”

So it is fitting, on the Fifth Sun-day of Lent, that the appearance of some Greeks who come for the Pass-over “to see Jesus” finally trips the alarm. “The hour has come!” Jesus proclaims, prompting this pointed parable: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (John 12:24). Brief as it is, so is Jesus’ Gethsemane in John: “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? ” (12:27).

Maybe by this time in Lent, we feel some of Jesus’ urgency, and some softening of our own heart, as the prophecy of Jeremiah promises (31:31-34). It is ready to be written on by the finger of God. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us of Jesus’ own

CELEBRATION FEATURE

In the Aramaic he learned at his mother’s knee, Jesus cries one last time to “Eloi” for deliverance. Again, si-

lence. The only words come from the centurion, who

utters the first recognizable Christian creed, “Truly this man was the Son of God,” echoing the Father’s own witness at the Baptism

(1:11) and Transfiguration (9:7). Like John, Mark sees

in the crucified Jesus the full revelation of God.

MARCH 2015 | 4

Lent, when “he learned obedience from what he suffered” (5:7-9). As dark as things may get, the lifting, the rising is near at hand when “the ruler of this world will be driven out” (John 12:31). Can we believe just a little longer? It will get darker still, but we will be drawn up and up.

“The light is with you for a little longer; walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overcome you” (12:35).

Creation upturnedThe month of March this year

concludes with Palm Sunday, the feast that turns on a dime from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify him!” Isaiah saw it coming centuries before: “I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting” (50:4-7). Psalm 22 anticipates Jesus’ cry of abandon-ment a thousand years beforehand. The hymn in Philippians completes the picture of Jesus’ cycle from all to nothing — from “form” of God to “form” of slave — and only then his Lordship (2:6-11).

Mark’s account of the Passion (Chs. 14-15) is restrained, almost matter-of-fact, which makes it even more un-nerving. Everything is upside down. It begins with, by Jesus’ own descrip-tion, the “anointing of my body for burial.” The mystery of the loaves reaches its climax in the Eucharist, when Creation itself is turned on its head as simple bread and wine bear a divine presence. Jesus still longs for his apostles’ love, but they are literally useless servants unmindful of their Master’s agony. Jesus grasps for his “Abba,” only to find a silence that calls him to see in the dark. A kiss from Judas, always identified as an intimate companion, “one of the Twelve,” reverses the affection that Jesus expressed for the rich young man (Mark 10:21). Jesus is the perfect witness in his trials, saying just enough to guarantee his death sentence. The Man of the Shroud (which will have its longest display in centuries next April in Turin) is profiled before our eyes with the spitting, the beating, the crowning of thorns, the scourging, the scraping. A

total stranger from Cyrene bequeaths a lasting legacy to Mark’s community, who still remembers him as “the father of Alexander and Rufus.” A parade of fools tells Jesus to make a miracle and they will believe: “Come down from the cross.”

In the Aramaic he learned at his mother’s knee, Jesus cries one last time to “Eloi” for deliverance. Again, silence. The only words come from the centurion, who utters the first recog-nizable Christian creed, “Truly this man was the Son of God,” echoing the Father’s own witness at the Baptism (1:11) and Transfiguration (9:7). Like John, Mark sees in the crucified Jesus the full revelation of God. The Lamb of God, “slain since the foundation of the world,” mounts his throne (Rev 13:8). Thus, Mark continues to personalize even the corpse of Jesus: As one Joseph wrapped Jesus in swaddling clothes, another Joseph “took him down, wrapped him in the linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb.” This anticipates the stunning words of St. Gregory Nazianzen: “The body of Christ is also divine because of its unique union with God” (Office of Readings, Baptism of the Lord). Pope John Paul II further sharpened the point: “Jesus’ body even after

death is indissolubly united to the mystery of his Person” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia #47). Even Jesus’ dead body is divine! Hold your breath — the world is about to turn.

Lent brings us homeSo maybe we are not lost, after all.

Our journey through this “foreign land” of Lent has brought us home to the love of God, who was there all along. The sacrifice of Isaac, the faith of Abraham, can teach us that the way of Lent is God’s initiative. The call is to respond to an infinite love that makes even the relinquishment of all we hold most dear an affirma-tion of God’s goodness.

Pope Francis invented a word for this initiative in Evangelii Gaudium: primerear (27). The English transla-tion, “to take the first step,” is OK, but let me paraphrase: “Taking the initiative with the church, the Lord shows us how to ‘first’ with love; so let us go far and wide to ‘first’ mercy and joy for all the poor and forgot-ten. Let us dare to ‘first’ a little more each day!” (See 1 John 4:19: “We love, because God first loved us.”)

My dear Jesuit friend Fr. John Kavanaugh, whose book Who Count as Persons? concludes with the chal-lenge “if you love the poor, go and make your life with them,” inspired my “mission” in Honduras, imperfect as it is. The late Fr. Kavanaugh sum-marized God’s Lenten initiative this way: “The great truth is, God thirsts for us, even in our sin. It is God’s eternal thirst for us, for our faith, our trust, our love, that is the central mystery of being” (Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent and Easter Week, Ligouri, 2006).

“Lent” comes from an old version of “lengthen,” the short days of winter stretching out to the sunny days of spring, the darkness of death blooming into life. For the love of God!

CELEBRATION FEATURE

Miguel Dulick lives in a mountain village in Honduras, Central America. Originally from St. Louis, he holds degrees from St. Louis University and Weston School of Theology, Boston. Contact him at michaeldulick@yahoo.com.

So maybe we are not lost, after all. Our journey through this “foreign

land” of Lent has brought us home to the love of

God, who was there all along. The sacrifice of

Isaac, the faith of Abra-ham, can teach us that the way of Lent is God’s initiative. The call is to

respond to an infinite love that makes even the relin-quishment of all we hold most dear an affirmation

of God’s goodness.

5 | MARCH 2015

Para muchos, la expresión “cadena de favores” les hace pensar en el li-bro de Catherine Ryan Hyde o en la película del mismo nombre del año 2000. Pero la idea de estas palabras puede remontar al año 317 a.C., a una obra de teatro de Menander llamada “Dyskolos,” es decir el “Gruñón o Cascarrabias.” La trama central es el favor que alguien hizo a un gruñón; ese favor se fue contagiando e incitó a otros a también hacer actos bondado-sos. Siglos más tarde, en 1784, Benja-min Franklin hizo referencia a esta idea en una carta a Benjamín Webb: “No pretendo darle esta suma; sólo se la presto a usted. Cuando usted … se encuentre con un hombre honesto que esté en semejantes apuros, usted debe pagarme a mí prestándole ese dinero a él. … Espero que este dinero pueda pasar por muchas manos. … Es un truco mío para hacer mucho bien con un poco de dinero.”

Ray Bradbury, en su libro El vino del estío (1957), pone esta idea en la-bios del personaje principal, Douglas Spaulding. El Sr. Jones, un ropavejero, había salvado la vida de Spaulding; entonces éste se pregunta: “¿Cómo puedo agradecerle esto al Sr. Jones?… ¿Cómo pagarle?... Pues no puedo sólo pagar. ¿Entonces qué hago? Pásalo al siguiente … mantiene esa cadena de favores en movimiento. Mira a tu alrededor, encuentra a alguien y pásale el favor.”

La expresión “pásalo al siguiente” fue popularizada por Robert A. Hein-lein en su libro Entre planetas (1951): “El banquero metió la mano entre los pliegues de su túnica, sacó una sola nota de crédito y le dijo: ‘Primero, come; una barriga llena estabiliza el juicio. Hazme el honor de aceptar esto en signo de bienvenida al recién llegado.’ El orgullo de Jones decía ‘no’; pero su estómago decía ‘¡Sí!’ Entonces Jones tomó el dinero y dijo: “Eh, ¡gracias! Usted es muy amable.

Le pagaré tan pronto como pueda.” A lo que el banquero respondió: “En vez de eso, págale al siguiente, a algún otro hermano que lo necesite.”

A medida que avanzamos y me-ditamos en la Cuaresma, esta cadena de favores, de “pagar al siguiente,” puede motivar nuestros esfuerzos. La Cuaresma es un tiempo de reconocer y arrepentirnos de nuestros pecados, de agradecer haber sido perdonados y recordar las segundas oportuni-dades recibidas. Pero sobre todo, la Cuaresma nos ofrece la oportunidad de enfocarnos en Jesús que vino para mostrarnos el amor del Padre, curar nuestras heridas, perdonar nuestros pecados, y enseñarnos a vivir nuestra fe de manera más auténtica.

El 1 de marzo recordamos la transfiguración de Jesús, cuando los apóstoles vislumbraron el fulgor de su gloria. Pero lo más importante –para ellos y para nosotros– es escuchar la voz que identifica a Jesús como su Hijo y nos dice: “¡Escúchenlo!” El 8 de marzo, somos testigos de la rever-encia que Jesús tiene por la casa de su Padre celestial. Su conducta en el templo reta nuestra propia actitud, particularmente durante nuestras asambleas eucarísticas. ¿Es nuestra celebración alrededor de la Mesa del Señor la cumbre hacia la cual todas nuestras otras actividades se dirigen y la fuente de la que todo nuestro poder fluye (“Constitución sobre la Sagrada Liturgia” 10)? ¿O es sólo una obligación que cumplimos por cumplir o a regañadientes? En la liturgia estamos verdaderamente en la casa de Dios, Jesús está presente y se nos da como alimento para nuestro viaje por la vida. Renovados por el Espíritu, alimentados con el Pan y la Palabra, avanzamos en nuestro caminar para vivir y amar hasta que

el llamado de Dios y nuestra fe nos unan para siempre.

Los evangelios de los domingos restantes de marzo apuntan al gran don que Jesús hace de su propia vida y muerte. Se entrega para ser levantado primero en la cruz y después en su gloriosa resurrección, y así llevarnos a todos a Él y a Dios, el acto que salva a los pecadores.

Aunque es imposible corresponder a tan magnánimo regalo, quienes hemos recibido tal bendición somos llamados a continuar esta cadena de favores, a pasarlos al siguiente con actos de bondad, amor y compasión. Nosotros, habiendo conocido la gracia del bautismo y nuestra pertenencia a Dios, somos llamados a dar com-pañía y ánimo a quienes están solos. Nosotros, que tenemos un sustento suficiente y hasta comida sacramen-tal, somos llamados a saciar el hambre y la sed de los demás. Nosotros, que tenemos buenos vestidos y casas confortables, somos llamados a dar cobijo a los desamparados y a vestir al desnudo. Nosotros, que vivimos en una tierra de oportunidades y de tanta libertad, debemos dar la bienvenida a los emigrantes y a los refugiados que, huyendo del terror y del estrago, buscan asilo. Nosotros, que estamos fuertes y sanos, debemos visitar y cui-dar a los enfermos. En lo que somos y hacemos, no debe haber ni perjuicios ni preferencias de género, edad, etnia, estatus social o raza.

Todo esto no son meras palabras en un papel, ni tampoco son sugerencias. Jesús afirma que la medida que usa-mos para cuidar y preocuparnos de los más pequeños de Dios, es la misma me-dida que decidirá nuestra eternidad (Mateo 25:31-40). Esta Cuaresma, al ponderar en los dones generosos que Dios nos prodiga, no podremos hacer otra cosa sino pasarlos al siguiente y al siguiente y al siguiente.

El culto y la vida para el mes de marzo 2015Cadena de favores – pásalo al siguiente

FORMACIÓN: LA PALABRA

Patricia Datchuck Sánchez y Rafael Sánchez Alonso han provisto de comentarios y homilías a Celebración desde 1979.

PATRICIA DATCHUCK SÁNCHEZy RAFAEL SÁNCHEZ ALONSO

“Mira a tu alrededor, encuentra a alguien

y pásale el favor.”

MARCH 2015 | 6

When we hear the phrase “pay it forward,” many among us may think of the book by Catherine Ryan Hyde or the movie by the same name that was in theaters in 2000. But the idea behind those three words can be traced to a play by Menander in 317 B.C.E. called “Dyskolos,” or “The Grouch.” This ancient play’s key plot element hinged upon a favor done to a curmudgeon, which then became contagious, prompting others to perform acts of kindness. Centuries later, in 1784, Benjamin Franklin referenced this idea in a letter to Benjamin Webb: “I do not pretend to give such a deed; I only lend it to you. When you … meet with another hon-est man in similar distress, you must pay me by lending this sum to him. … I hope it may thus go thro’ manyhands. … This is a trick of mine for doing a good deal of good with a little money.” In his book Dandelion Wine (1957), Ray Bradbury gives voice to this idea though the main character, Douglas Spaulding. Spaulding’s life had been saved by Mr. Jones, the junkman, and he was speculating: “How do I thank Mr. Jones?… How do I pay him back?… You can’t just pay. What then? Pass it on … keep the chain moving. Look around, find someone, pass it on.”

The actual term “pay it forward” was popularized by Robert A. Hein-lein in his book Between Planets (1951): “The banker reached into the folds of his gown, pulled out a single credit note. ‘But eat first — a full belly steadies the judgment. Do me the honor of accepting this as our welcome to the newcomer.’ His pride said no, his stomach said yes! Jones took it and said, ‘Uh, thanks! That’s awfully kind of you. I’ll pay it back, first chance.’ To that, the banker replied, ‘Instead, pay it forward to some other brother who needs it.’ ”

As we move prayerfully through

the season of Lent, perhaps the “pay it forward” concept might help motivate our efforts. Of course, Lent is a time for us to acknowledge and repent of our sins, and it is a season to remember and be grateful for the gifts of forgiveness and second chances. But, most of all, Lent offers us an opportunity to focus on Jesus, who came among us to show us the Father’s love, to heal our wounds, to forgive our sins and teach us how to live our faith authentically.

At his Transfiguration, which we remember on March 1, Jesus’ apostles experienced a glimpse of his glory; but even more important for them and for us was the voice from the cloud, which identified Jesus as Son and then told us, “Listen to him.”

On March 8, Jesus’ reverence for his Father’s house and his ac-tions within the temple precincts challenge our own attitude toward worship, particularly toward our eucharistic gatherings. Is our prayer together around the Lord’s table truly the summit toward which all our activities are directed and the font from which all our power flows (“Constitution on the Sacred Lit-urgy” #10)? Or is it an obligation we grudgingly fulfill? Surely, at liturgy we are truly in God’s house. Jesus is present as food for life’s journey. Renewed by the Spirit, fed by bread

and word, we go forth to live and to love until God’s call gathers us together again.

For the remaining Sundays of March, the Gospels focus on the greatest gift we are given in Jesus: the gift of himself in life and in death. Jesus surrendered himself to be lifted up on the cross and then in resurrected glory so as to draw all unto himself and to God. Through this salvific act, sinners are saved.

Although such a magnanimous gift can never be reciprocated, we who are so blessed are called to pay it forward with acts of goodness, love and compassion for others.

We who know the grace of baptism and of belonging to God are called to offer encouragement to the lonely.

We who are sustained by sufficient food, and even sacramental food, are called to tend the thirsts and hungers of others.

We who dress well and enjoy com-fortable homes are called to shelter the homeless and clothe the naked.

We who live in the land of oppor-tunity and who are accorded every freedom are to welcome immigrants, refugees and all who seek asylum from terror and harm.

We who are hale and hearty are to visit and tend to the sick. In all we are and all we do, we can have no prejudice or bias regarding gender, age, ethnicity, social status or race.

These are not mere words on a page. They are not suggestions. Jesus cited the way believers care for God’s least ones as the means by which eternity shall be decided (Matt 25:31-40).

This Lent, as we ponder the gifts that God so generously lavishes on us, we cannot help but pay it forward.

Lectionary themes for March 2015Pay It Forward

FORMATION: WORD

Patricia Datchuck Sánchez and Rafael Sánchez Alonso have been collaborating to provide Lectionary commentaries and homilies for Celebration since 1979.

PATRICIA DATCHUCK SÁNCHEZ and RAFAEL SÁNCHEZ ALONSO

“Look around, find someone, pass it on.”

7 | MARCH 2015

By GABE HUCK

I discovered recently that I had almost forgotten Sexagesima Sunday. Along with its companions, Septuages-ima and Quinquagesima, Sexagesima Sunday disappeared from the Roman Rite when the reform of our calendar was mandated by Vatican II.

The line to the cashier in a favorite secondhand store has customers pass by bins of used DVDs, CDs and LPs. Having found a pair of jeans in good condition I hoped would fit (no try-on room) I was in that checkout line when I saw, crammed in with operas, sym-phonies and musicals, a boxed set of Gregorian chants sung by an Austrian choir: three unscratched LPs.

Later I Googled the information on the record labels and quickly found not only that eBay sellers were asking 10 times the $3 I paid, but that The New York Times had reviewed these very recordings favorably in July 1964 (the month LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and I turned 23). The recordings began with “Ad te levavi animam meam,” “To you, Lord, I lift my spirit,” the first sound of each year’s Advent.

When I put the needle on the first band of Side 3 and heard that urgent “Exsurge, Domine,” “Rise up, O Lord,” I remembered how I had waited each year for that Introit of Sexagesima Sunday, waited for its text and its chant. Somehow these had so startled me when I first paid any attention: Exsurge, quare obdormis, Domine? Exsurge et ne repellas in finem. Quare faciem tuam avertis, oblivisceris tribu-lationem nostram? Adhaesit in terra venter noster. Exsurge, Domine, adjuva nos et libera nos.

Perhaps I tried to translate this into English in those days, to go beyond the rather unpoetic English of the hand missals. I knew it needed an English that matched not just the words of these final verses of Psalm 44 (missals then said Psalm 43), but matched the sound of that chant probably composed over many years by many singers. The ICEL translation of 1994 comes

closer than any I found or made three decades earlier:

Wake up! Why do you sleep, Lord?Wake up! Do not reject us forever!Why do you hide from us?Why ignore how much we suffer?

We grovel in the dust,clutching at the ground.Wake up and help us.Rescue us!

What’s going on? Is this some bit of primitive bargaining, some tribal ritual for times of drought and fam-ine? Why such physical lamentation? The Latin seems so, and the Hebrew before it was likely more so: Our bellies cleave to the ground! “Belly” is venter in the Latin, the same word translated “womb” when we pray the Hail Mary. “Clutch” in the ICEL translation (often “cleave” elsewhere) is rendering the Latin adhaesit, which is, as our ears will tell us, the root of “adhesive.”

Is this text like the despair of Psalm 88, grabbing at strong verbs in the ICEL translation to express how many ways we hurt?

Your torments track me down,your rage consumes me,your trials destroy me. All day they flood around me,pressing down, closing me in.You took my friends from me,darkness is all I have left.

These texts, abrasive as they seem to us, are as essential to our vocabulary as words of gratitude. The title Pope Francis gave to his letter, “The Joy of the Gospel,” is about a joy that can only come from the pope’s acquaintance with what made some psalmist write down these angry, despairing laments. Francis washes and kisses feet that ache on Holy Thursday. He unexpect-edly tells the motorcade to stop so he can walk alone to Israel’s separation wall, lean on that wall and pray. Could this be done without deep groans and lamentation? Is this what flows from the joy of the Gospel and asks, “Why do you sleep, Lord?”

Can Lent be Lent for us in these times unless we make such lamenta-tion integral to our lives and ritual? We rehearse our baptized responsibility to intercede for the world God so loves, and to lament with and for that world, ourselves included. I mention here two causes for such lament in 2015.

One. I brought up the separation wall (sometimes called by Israel the “security fence” and sometimes called by Palestinians “the apartheid wall”). Do we know enough to lament as Francis did? Do we know its height and length? The effects its builders intended? Its example (the one built on the U.S. border with Mexico)? Because the United States government consis-tently supports Israel both financially and politically, what responsibility do we U.S. citizens have? What have our U.S. bishops had to say? What have they done to educate people about it? Why are we Catholics not talking about this wall or the apartheid system it has come to represent? “Holy Land” pilgrimages still abound. Does anyone return from those pilgrimages to tell about a wall? (Note a possible first step at www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1403881.htm.)

Two. Perhaps as never before, we Americans are being tested: Can our striving toward political equality, and equality before the law, survive the economic free-for-all that puts more of the wealth into fewer hands? We can easily lament the lot of the poor, but in the world as it is, that won’t do. Basil, bishop of Caesarea, spoke the language of the prophet Amos the best he could 1700 years ago. His notion of “belongs” might come as a surprise to many of us: “The bread in your cupboard be-longs to the hungry. The coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money you put in the bank belongs to the poor.”

Basil’s lament, to our ears, is about the way that the dominant economic system, the one we take both for granted and for good, would reject

Lenten meditations on wealthA Chasm of Inequality

FORMATION: WORDS WE NEED TO HEAR

MARCH 2015 | 8

FORMATION: WORDS WE NEED TO HEAR

that word “belongs” as heresy. Why? Because the system we tolerate seems clear: Anything and everything is to be owned individually (and corpora-tions are every day being considered as “persons”). We’re so used to this that our imaginations stop short when searching out an alternative. I buy, I sell, I own. Therefore I am. One can even own rights to the air above and to what is below the earth’s surface.

Property: owning land and rights and whatever else — a sacred right or a failed idea? I’m thinking of senior year of high school and our very fine teacher telling us how Tennyson used the sound of the hooves of a galloping horse to satirize what was happening in Victoria’s kingdom. The poem is “Northern Farmer: New Style,” and the poet wrote in the farmer’s English as he tells his son that “love” is no reason to marry. The poem begins:

Dosn’t thou ’ear my ’erse’s legs, as they canters away? Proputty, proputty, proputty — that’s what I ’ears ’em say. Proputty, proputty, proputty — Sam, thou’s an ass for thy pains: Theer’s moor sense i’ one o’ ’is legs, nor in all thy brains.

Tennyson wrote the poem in the 1860s even as Karl Marx was research-ing and writing Das Kapital in the British Library. Both of them feared what the reign of “proputty” would do to humankind.

And here we are in the age of Thomas Piketty, whose careful schol-arship puts flesh and bones on what is deeply wrong when “proputty” is given free rein. While I’m still not sure I can handle Piketty’s 600-plus pages of Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press, April 2014), I have tried to learn from reviews what Piketty’s research sup-ports. Let me suggest several of these available online: Timothy Shenk discussed fourrecent books, including Piketty’s (The Nation, May 5, 2014): “Europe’s per capital growth dropped to just below 2 percent from 1980 to 2012; the United States’ was even slower, coming in at 1.3 percent. Meanwhile, the link between rising GDP and falling inequality was severed, with the largest gains from di-

minished growth flowing to the richest of the rich — not even to the 1 percent, but to the one-tenth of 1 percent and higher.” See: www.thenation.com/ar-ticle/179337/thomas-piketty-and-mil-lennial-marxists-scourge-inequality. Paul Krugman reviewed Piketty’swork in The New York Review of Books (May 8, 2014), saying, “Piketty has transformed our economic discourse; we’ll never talk about wealth and inequality the same way we used to.” See: www.nybooks.com/articles/ar-chives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age. John Cassidy, in The New Yorker(March 31, 2014), recounted the paths that led Piketty to and through the research for his book, then discussed some symptoms. For example: “In the nineteen-fifties, the average American chief executive was paid about twenty times as much as the typical employee of his firm. These days, at Fortune 500 companies, the pay ratio between the corner office and the shop floor is more than two hundred to one, and many CEOs do even better. In 2011, Apple’s Tim Cook received three hundred and seventy-eight million dollars in salary, stock, and other benefits, which was sixty-two hundred and fifty-eight times the wage of an average Apple employ-ee.” Cassidy concludes: “Piketty has written a book that nobody interested in a defining issue of our era can af-ford to ignore.” See: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/31/forces-of-divergence. Jesuit Matthew Carnes, in America(August 18, 2014), observes: “Notice, though, that Piketty’s indictment of capitalism’s tendency toward inequal-ity is not axiomatic. It does not claim that capitalism inexorably produces inequality. Rather, his critique is em-pirical, and for this reason it is perhaps even more disturbing. It shows that for nearly all countries and nearly all periods over the past three centuries for which we have data, capitalism has produced highly unequal concentra-tions of wealth. This has been true despite variation in levels of state intervention and regulation, differ-ences in leaders and partisan politics and even levels of corruption.” See: http://americamagazine.org/issue/culture/how-rich-get-richer.

Statistics for the United States abound. Consider just two (cited by motherjones.com/richest): “For ev-ery dollar earned by a family in the bottom 90 percent, a person in the top 0.01 percent earns nearly $1000.” And: “Since 1980, the average real income of the 1 percent has shot up more than 175 percent, while the bottom 90 percent’s real income didn’t budge.” That’s inequality within the nation. The nation itself, with 5 percent of the world’s people, has 25 percent of the world’s wealth. That too is inequality.

I am arguing for the importance of the issue and for Lenten lamentation. How well informed (and well formed) are we and our church communities by more than a century of reflection on church documents? How well in-formed are we of the Basil-to-Francis articulation of the Gospel in relation to equality? Pope Francis is not naive about economics; he’s paid attention in his own home country and beyond. He shows us what is lamentable in our world and calls for radical change. But do we speak the language of lament? Do we have the right in our lives and liturgy to prioritize such economic violence to the earth and its peoples?

Consider a Huffington Post item from April 28, 2014:

Pope Francis took a hard stance against inequality on Monday in a tweet sent from his official Twit-ter page: “Inequality is the root of social evil.” … The Pontiff ’s warning comes months after he called unfettered capitalism “a new tyranny” and urged global leaders to fight growing income inequality in his first major writ-ten work as pope. He laid out the platform for his papacy [Evangelii Gaudium] last November, attack-ing the “idolatry of money” and calling on politicians to guarantee all citizens “dignified work, educa-tion and healthcare.”

Here are these two laments for our world but also for our distracted selves and distracted churches: one image a separation wall, one a chasm of in-equality. How shall we speak of them?

Gabe Huck lives in New York City. Contact him at gabeandtheresa@gmail.com.

9 | MARCH 2015

By MELISSA MUSICK NUSSBAUM

In her book How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life, historian Ruth Goodman writes of the role hunger played in everyday life for most of Great Britain’s mid- 19th-century inhabitants. She says, “Large numbers of people woke up famished and spent their working days — and much of their working lives — in a state of semi-permanent wanting of food.”

She tells of the effects of the potato famine, most severe in Ireland, but felt throughout the British Isles. Hunger was everywhere, but Goodman notes a curious fact. Wherever people de-pended solely or chiefly on potatoes, or any one food source, the suffering was intense. Goodman writes of “whole families found dead upon the floors of their bare homes.”

In the rural south of England, laborers and farm workers still had food. They subsisted on bread, with whole families eating “little more than a pound-weight loaf of bread each day.” But though a foodstuff was being chewed and swallowed, there weren’t enough nutrients in it for health.

Those southerners fortunate enough to have beer to supplement the bread benefited from the scant ad-ditional vitamins and calories. Good-man argues that the skeletons from these starvation belts reveal people whose average height was two inches shorter than the average recorded among Britons of the Middle Ages.

But where the potato- or wheat-dependent economy had other food sources, such as oats (for porridge) and milk and root vegetables in the north of England, or fish along its coasts, people fared much better, lived longer and had stronger and healthier children. Even so, what we now call food insecurity, though less devastat-ing than true famine, left its mark, both physically and emotionally, on the people.

Reading Goodman’s book, I keep thinking of the famine that rages in our culture. It’s insidious, because it leaves no external marks. Indeed, we starving are tall and stout, with straight white teeth and glossy hair. We look well. We live long lives and we eat whatever we want, when we want. But we are so hungry. I think Goodman’s description of Victo-rian England, with one important qualifier, applies to us as well: “Large numbers of people woke up famished and spent their working days — and much of their working lives — in a state of semi-permanent wanting of (real) food.”

We are hungry for quiet. We are hungry for rest. We are hungry for community. We are hungry for won-der. We are hungry for innocence. We are hungry for real bread and living water.

I recall a conversation with my daughter when she was an under-graduate at Notre Dame. She was explaining the attraction of cloistered religious life for what was, to me, a surprising number of her friends and fellow students. She said, “Our generation has tried everything. We’ve tasted everything and bought everything and gone everywhere. The only freshness left is found in silence and poverty, obedience and chastity. That is the unexplored frontier.”

As the Easter Vigil approaches, I think of the catechumens who come each year to the font in my parish. They would never describe them-selves as starving, not when people in

places like Sudan and Haiti die each day from physical malnutrition. They would not presume to compare their losses to those. But they will describe themselves as hungry. They speak of a hunger for which they had no name. They speak of attempts to feed that hunger or ignore it or silence it. One of the delights of their journey to the font has been learning a name, the name, for their hunger. They speak of a hunger for the Eucharist.

And I realize, with joy and with gratitude, that we who come to the table of the Lord are like the blessed laborers along England’s northern and eastern borders. We are not wealthier or smarter or more virtu-ous, but we are near to a source of life and health and strength. Like the root vegetables that grew so freely in the ground or the fish that teemed in the seas in England’s north and east, the body and blood of Christ is right at hand, blocks away from my house, every day. I do not understand the grace that brings me to the Eucharist. I do not understand why, fed, I still go looking, on television or in the stores or online, for the “little more than a pound-weight loaf of bread each day” that neither nourishes nor satisfies.

But I know the catechumens who wait and pray and study and hunger each Lent reawaken my hunger for the One who will become in me “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

I watch them kneel before us as the season begins. Their humility and need brings my own head low. How can I have been so casual about the feast before me in the midst of famine? I hear their prayers, and I know again the longing of the Samaritan woman at the well: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty.”

Eucharist is the feast before usYearning for Real Food

FORMATION: CATECHESIS

Melissa Musick Nussbaum is a regular columnist for Celebration. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colo.: mmnussbaum@comcast.net.

As the Easter Vigil approaches, I think of the catechumens who come each year to the font in

my parish. They speak of a hunger for which they

had no name.

MARCH 2015 | 10

By DENISE SIMEONE

If we let ourselves listen closely, we can hear our deepest yearnings in each of the responsorial psalms of the Lenten Sundays in March. Our desires, our hopes, our longing to be faithful to God’s word and message can be gleaned from the songs we remember and sing.

We begin the month (Second Sunday of Lent, March 1) with a promise: “I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living” (Psalm 116:9). In verses not heard today, Psalm 116 begins with the psalmist acknowledg-ing love for the Lord because the Lord listened and offered salvation from agony and death. Stumbling, helpless, lost, the psalmist cried out, and this is where this Sunday’s verses begin. We pledge our allegiance to God and recognize how precious each life is in God’s eyes. We pledge our willingness to serve because we have been freed. We promise to call upon the name of the Lord as we walk in God’s ways. Lent is still new, and we are confident we can remain faithful on this jour-ney. Like the disciples who see Jesus transfigured in today’s Gospel, we are exhilarated in following the Messiah.

The refrain of the responsorial for the Third Sunday of Lent (March 8) comes from John’s Gospel: “Lord,you have the words of everlasting life” (6:68). It is an interesting refrain between the verses from Psalm 19, which praise the law and precepts of the Lord. God’s commands are trustworthy, right and true; they give wisdom, refreshment, enlighten-ment, clarity. God’s commands are just, “more precious than gold, than a heap of purest gold; sweeter also than syrup or honey from the comb” (v. 11).

The last verse of Psalm 19 pro-claims: “Let the words of my mouth be acceptable, the thoughts of my heart before you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer” (v. 15). Only in God can we find the words of everlasting life. Only God can offer a promise of

that magnitude both precious and sweet. Now it is our turn to offer our word and speak from the heart as we recognize our redeemer.

If we think that we will never have to face the sufferings of sin and dark-ness in our own hearts when we turn from God’s ways, then the first read-ing and psalm sung on the Fourth Sunday of Lent (March 15) remind us of the potential cost if we do not remember our promises to be faithful.

As related in the first reading from 2 Chronicles, the Israelites have been captured as spoils of war and made servants in Babylon. Their failure to be faithful to their part of the covenant with God has led to this. We hear almost all the verses of this familiar psalm: “By the streams of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion” (v. 1). Despite their captors’ demands, the captives have come to remember that their place is in Jerusalem with their God. All else can be sacrificed — hands, tongues, voices, songs — nothing else matters but remembering their God: “Let my tongue be silenced, if I ever forget you!” (Psalm 137:6). As we continue our reckoning during our Lenten journey, we may find ourselves ex-amining what we would be willing to sacrifice so we can remember.

Like a movement in a symphony, Psalm 51 follows on the Fifth Sunday of Lent (March 22). One of the seven penitential psalms, it pleads for recon-ciliation from the chaos wrought by sin. Wash me, cleanse me, have mercy and blot out my sins — this is how the psalmist begins, and then places all before God: “Create a clean heart in me, O God” (v. 12). Now cleansed, we want to abide in God’s presence, filled and renewed by God’s steadfast spirit. We want a clean heart so we might express that joy to others who have also wandered away. We should cling tightly to this hope as we listen to Jesus, in the Gospel, acknowledge that his hour is near.

Crying out in darkness and an-guish; forsaken, rejected, deserted, desperate, dreadful, alone — these are the words of the passion of Jesus. We know the movements leading to the crucifixion so well that sometimes we stop listening to the lengthy Passion passage on Palm Sunday (March 29). Yet we need to let the words of the psalm echo over the final days of our Lenten prayer: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Psalm 22:2). This is an intense responsorial full of the passion and agonizing feelings behind abandonment. This psalm was an important reminder to the early communities of the depths of Jesus’ suffering and death, and the Gospel writers drew on the images in it: mockery and jeering, casting lots and dividing garments; let God deliver and rescue him. The early dis-ciples did not want to forget the saving depths of God’s love as they promised: “I will proclaim your name” (v. 23). Now the invitation is offered to us. Will we promise to remember?

The early disciples did not want to forget the saving

depths of God’s love.

Promise to RememberThe Psalms of March

Denise Simeone is a writer and consultant skilled at group facilitation, long-range planning and mission development. Email: denisesimeone@hotmail.com.

FORMATION: SCRIPTURE

11 | MARCH 2015

By PEG EKERDT

Every year for the past 20, Steve Engler, our parish director for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, has welcomed those who come to us to ex-plore the Catholic faith. Steve listens and guides, affirms and instructs, and with his team nurtures a community that moves from inquiry to proclama-tion of the good news within a matter of months. In a regular and sustaining rhythm, the grace of good teaching and the power of magnificent ritual form not only this yearly group of seekers, but the entire people of God. All of us.

So it is in this season of Lent that we come upon the rituals of the rite that we call the scrutinies. The RCIA folks celebrate these rituals as a means to reflect on the “mystery of sin, from which the whole world and every per-son wishes to be freed” (RCIA #142). All who grow in understanding of this mystery then long to be “filled with the spirit of Christ who is liv-ing water, the light of the world and the resurrection and the life” (#142).

There is, however, a footnote to all of this: The scrutinies are not intended only for the elect —the new folks, if you will. They are intended to form all of us. These public rituals for the third, fourth and fifth Sundays of Lent invite every one of us to admit our need for living water. They beg us to examine and acknowledge our personal and corporate blindness. And they ask us to open our hearts to instill within us a genuine desire for new life in Christ.

This past year, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston gave an interview to Norah O’Donnell for the CBS pro-gram “60 Minutes.” The result was a remarkably candid conversation that left many grateful for the honest exchange while some wondered why the cardinal of Boston had taken to the secular media to air the church’s dirty laundry. Nonetheless, many agreed with the cardinal’s assessment of the

investigation of American religious women (“It’s a disaster”) and the car-dinal’s admission that the convicted bishop of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese could not teach religious edu-cation in the Boston archdiocese — or in any diocese, for that matter.

Then the interview turned to a discussion of the role of women in the church. Given the pain of many Catholic women who feel that the teaching on women’s ordination is an unfair rejection, this final exchange provided a disappointing conclu-sion to an otherwise illuminating interview.

The articulate and thoughtful cardinal seemed hamstrung by his comparative inability to answer O’Donnell’s probing questions about the status of women in the church. The cardinal tried the usual re-sponses: Jesus didn’t ordain men and the most important member of the church is a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary. He suggested that not everyone needs to be ordained to do something important in the church. And in a desperate attempt to salvage a conversation going awry, he stated the obvious: “Men cannot be moth-ers.” Well no, but no man is asking to be a mother.

In the end, it seemed that even the

cardinal recognized the inadequacy of his responses as he offered this: “If I was founding a church, I’d love to have women priests.” Yes, there was more to the interview than what was aired in the program, and no, the cardinal was not suggesting a change in doctrine. But if he was founding a church? Women would be ordained.

The scrutinies are upon us, and the images of scripture call us back to those founding days and what Jesus intended for his fledgling community. We hear the founding principles of Je-sus’ ministry as we acknowledge our need for living water. We surrender to grace and examine the sinful patterns of our lives. And we stand with Mary and Martha at the tomb of Lazarus in awe of Jesus’ promise of eternal life for all who believe.

But before we leave these scrip-tures and move into Holy Week, we return to stand one more time on a hot and dusty day at high noon at a well where a lone Samaritan woman comes to draw water. We watch as the woman prepares to fill her buckets. A man slowly approaches the woman at the well. In defiance of custom and law, he speaks Truth to her and then sends the woman back to her world, now commissioned to proclaim the good news.

Does it make you wonder, too, if somehow we have misinterpreted what Jesus intended? Perhaps Jesus was founding a church that included the leadership of women. Perhaps hu-man prejudice impaired the commu-nity’s ability to see what he intended. Perhaps Jesus did intend for women to proclaim and to preach, and to stand with their brothers in caring for the community. Perhaps if Jesus was founding the church today, he would ordain women.

Illuminating Conversations

FORMATION: FAITH AND LIFE

The scrutinies call us to examine what Jesus intended

Peg Ekerdt is a pastoral associate at Visitation Church, Kansas City, Mo., where her work includes pastoral care, adult formation, marriage preparation and spiritual direction. Email her at peg@church.visitation.org.

MARCH 2015 | 12

By ERIN RYAN

During the Easter season, we renew our baptismal promises as we are sprinkled with holy water during Mass. At my church in North Carolina, the priest usually asks us —

Do you reject Satan?And all his works?And all his empty promises?

— before going on to ask us if we believe in God the Father, Son and Spirit, and the rest of the creed. “I do!” I say, along with the congregation.

There’s another formulation of the renewal of promises, and that’s the one my priest used at the church I attended in Kansas City years ago:

Do you reject sin so as to live in the freedom of God’s children?Do you reject the glamour of evil and refuse to be mastered by sin?Do you reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness?

I found it easy to reject sin. Who wouldn’t want to live in the freedom of God’s children? I enthusiastically renounced Satan. Satan is mean.

But I always paused on that second line. I know that I am not immune to the glamour of evil.

Let me tell you how I know.When I lived in Kansas City, I didn’t

have a car. I walked everywhere: work, church, etc. There were a lot of home-less people on the sidewalks in that part of the city, and I got to know some of them by sight. One guy would often hang around a convenience store at the end of my street. I greeted him sometimes when I was going here or there, and he told me his name was Ricardo. He always asked me for money but I never gave him any. I didn’t carry cash.

One Sunday I was on my way to a coffeehouse. I had just been to church and heard an uplifting homily about Jesus’ compassion and was feeling very positive about humanity. On my walk, I encountered Ricardo. He

remembered who I was. We said hello.Suddenly, two sinister-looking men

came up to me and asked if I had any money. I said no, I didn’t carry cash. They retreated. Ricardo continued to chat, and started telling me about fighting in the first Gulf War. He pre-tended to aim a gun, made shooting noises, and said he had been made to kill women and children. He kept pointing at his graying pate and say-ing how the war had messed him up in the head. Then he asked me for money.

After Ricardo’s terrible story, I was moved. It happened that day that I did have some cash; I’d brought with me a small store of quarters that I was planning to use on a few cups of coffee.

When I dug out my coin purse, immediately the two sinister guys jumped out of the shadows and ac-cused me of lying for saying I didn’t have any cash.

These guys looked so angry I really thought they were going to hit me. Ricardo told them to leave me alone. A fight threatened to break out, with me in the middle, and when the two men left, I was terrified to the core. Ricardo seemed to know them and told me they were “crackheads.”

Now that he had defended me, Ricardo kept saying I was his friend, even calling me an angel. He tried to follow me home. I lied that I had to go to the grocery store first, stayed in there for a while until he went away, and then took a roundabout way back to my apartment.

The incident had shaken me to the

core; for weeks afterward, I would barely go outside. In the end, it all came to nothing. I only saw Ricardo once after that, and he didn’t even remember me — but that night, I hardly slept, afraid someone had followed me and was going to break in. I found a long rod of metal with sharply pointed ends (it had been a piece of a picture frame) and put it next to my bed as a weapon.

Along with being scared out of my wits, I also felt stupid and naive. I shouldn’t have stopped and talked to Ricardo, I told myself. I never would have gotten into that mess in the first place. Maybe the three men were in league with each other. Was that whole Gulf War thing just a story to get my sympathy?

As I lay there, a vulnerable woman living in a first-floor apartment, I tried to get over my sense of helplessness by imagining this: Ricardo, or one of the other guys, broke into my house. He thought he was sneaking up on me — but I took my weapon and impaled him through the chest. Ha! In that vision I felt powerful and triumphant against my fear. No one could hurt me.

Just that morning I had pledged to follow a nonviolent, healing savior. I knew I shouldn’t have thoughts like this. But I kept envisioning my vio-lent revenge anyway, over and over. I wasn’t “rejecting the glamour of evil.” I was reveling in it. I savored and took pleasure in those violent images.

During Lent, I examine my con-science, find the dark things that are hidden in my psyche, and drag them out into the light, where they can be transformed by the One who is Light. This, I think, is what the scrutinies ask me to do.

Because when Easter comes, I want to be able to reject the glamour of evil without any reservations.

Renewing Our Baptism

FORMATION: LITURGY, ART & CULTURE

Erin Ryan is associate editor of Celebration. She lives in Charlotte, N.C. Email her at erinryan45@gmail.com.

During Lent, we prepare to make an honest response