Following on the heels of yesterday's rich Gospel reading, our pilgrimage continues. The song below captures, I think, some of the intensity, texture, and adventure of that pilgrimage – that "Processional" – which our whole life is.
Jesus said to her, "...the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth."
The woman said to him, "I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything."
Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one speaking with you." (Jn 4:23-26)
He is speaking with you too. Let us quiet our hearts to hear him.
The Colosseum is under scaffolding these days. Kind of disappointing for those currently making a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Rome. But appropriate, perhaps, to reflect on as we come to the close of this second week of Lent.
During these first two weeks of our Lenten pilgrimage, the Church's liturgy has had us all making a thorough examination of conscience. Our readings from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Gospels of Matthew and Luke have examined how we relate to God and others: how we pray, how we sin, how we forgive, how we trust in and return to the Lord.
In the coming weeks, our readings turn broadly to the imitation of Christ – our response to the fruits of the examination we have done, made possible by the grace of our Baptism.
As we walk this road, and as we struggle with our own weakness in carrying out our Lenten resolutions, it's good to keep in mind that to some degree or another, we're all under scaffolding in this life – particularly during Lent as we consciously strive to purify our hearts and return to God's grace. Scaffolding can be pretty ugly from the outside. But it shields the expert work going on behind the scenes. It is only when the scaffolding is finally removed that one realizes that what was beautiful before could be even more dazzling and inspiring.
The Spirit is at work in each of our hearts, laboring expertly to make us all the dazzling temples of the Holy Spirit we were designed to become. No matter what scaffolding might currently be shielding our full glory, let us trust that the Master Builder knows just what He is doing – laboring untiringly behind the scenes, eager to unveil the masterpiece He knows we each can become.
[Photo: courtesy of http://www.rvisa.ru/visa/italy/]
On this St. Paddy's Day morning a much-beloved American professor here, Fr. Joseph Carola, S.J., who teaches Patristics (which is the study of the Early Christian writers, or "Fathers of the Church"), preached at the Station Church of Saint Clement. Pope St. Clement of Rome is one of the earliest Church Fathers – in fact, so old that he is called an Apostolic Father. He was martyred, interestingly enough, in Crimea around 99 AD after being exiled there from Rome. Fr. Carola's homily was a beautiful meditation on the theology expressed in the basilica's central mosaic, pictured below. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
A. M. D.
G.
SAINT
CLEMENT OF ROME, LENT 2014
Yearning for God like the deer for running
streams
Reading: Daniel 9:4-10; Psalm 78
(79); Gospel: Luke 6:36-38
At the center of Masolino da
Panicale’s twelfth-century mosaic adorning the San Clemente apse stands the
Cross of Christ revealed as the tree of life. The lignum
vitae arises from a lush acanthus plant whose vine sprawls across the
entire apse. The Latin inscription at
the base of the apse mosaic reads: “We have likened the Church of Christ to
this vine; the Law made it wither but the Cross made it bloom.” Beneath the tree of life and its blooming
branches flow the four rivers of Eden.
Two deer drink from its running streams.
In the bush above those streams stands a third deer contending with a
serpent. Even though Saint Patrick may
have driven the serpents out of Ireland, at San Clemente a snake remains in the
Irish Dominicans’ grass.
[Photo detail: courtesy of Fr. Joseph Carola, SJ]
The story of the deer and the
serpent depicted in the apse mosaic comes from antiquity. In his monumental first-century study, Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder
observes that deer fight with serpents.
“They seek out the serpents’ dens and by the breath of their nostrils
they drive them out despite their resistance” (Pliny
the Elder, Naturalis Historia
8.32.118). In sixth-century Calabria
Cassiodorus applied Pliny’s zoological science to his exegesis of the first
verse of psalm forty-two: “Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my
soul is yearning for you, my God.” Each
year on this second Monday of Lent we begin our Morning Prayer with that very
psalm. Cassiodorus explains that the
deer “attracts snakes with its nostrils; when it has devoured them, the
seething poison impels it to hasten with all speed to the water-fountain, for
it loves to get its fill of the purest sweet water” (Cassiodorus, Expositio
in psalmo 41.2 (CCL 97, 380)). So it
likewise is with Christ’s faithful. As Cassiodorus
continues: “[W]hen we imbibe the poisons of the ancient serpent, and we are
feverish through his torches, we may there and then hasten to the fount of
divine mercy. Thus the sickness
contracted by the venom of sin is overcome by the purity of this most sweet
drink” (ibid.). It is Christ the Lord,
Cassiodorus concludes, who “is the Fount of water from which flows all that
refreshes us” (ibid.). Cassiodorus’s sixth-century
exegesis eventually found its way into the twelfth-century Glossa Ordinaria—a vast patristic scriptural commentary
contemporaneous with Masolino da Panicale’s magnificent mosaic.
The deer and the serpent placed at
the base of the apse mosaic Cross symbolize Original Sin whose seething poison
finds its antidote in the waters of Baptism.
In Adam all men have sinned and stand justly condemned. Our first parents’ sin, which we have
contracted, has been compounded by the actual sins, which we ourselves have
committed. On this account the prophet
Daniel rightly laments: “We have sinned, been wicked and done evil; we have
rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws.” Given our sins both original and actual, we
are like prisoners “doomed to death.”
The Old Law only served to convict us of sin. It could not redeem us from it. But the Just Judge is compassionate and
forgiving. Having heard our cry for
deliverance, God sent His only-begotten Son as an expiation for our sins. From the wounded side of the Crucified Christ
flow the blood and water in which we are cleansed. Christ’s grace restores us. Withering no longer we bloom.
Who of us, however, cannot lament
that the occasional snake still gets into the grass? Baptized and forgiven we recognize our
continual need for an abundant measure of mercy. Since the measure with which we measure we
will be measured back to us, Christ exhorts us to be merciful with others as
our Father has been merciful with us.
For mercy shared is mercy received.
In this overflowing exchange of mercy, we not only bloom but indeed
flourish like the Christ-vine’s ecclesial branches lavishly filling the San
Clemente apse.
On this Friday of Lent, no matter where we are – whether Rome or Fond du Lac, WI – perhaps the best thing we could do is take a few moments to silence the rat race of our hearts and ask the Lord for forgiveness for the ways we have fallen short of our call to be true disciples and witnesses of Christ.
He is rich in mercy, and promises today through the prophet Ezekiel in our first reading at Mass, that "if the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life; since he has turned away from all the sins that he committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die." (Ezek 18:27-28)
One of my favorite hymns, here sung by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, provides a beautiful meditation on the healing power of the Cross, if we will only open our hearts to receive the grace poured out for us there. Below are the lyrics to this hymn, and a photo of the tomb of the Apostles Philip and James the Lesser – two men whose lives were changed forever by their encounter with Jesus Christ, and who are buried in the crypt of today's Station Church.
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.
See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
His dying crimson, like a robe,
Spreads o’er His body on the tree;
Then I am dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me. Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Today's Station Church, the site of the deacon St.
Lawrence's martyrdom, speaks for itself. I leave you with an excerpt from the
North American College's Station Church Guide:
“St. Lawrence, though considered a minor saint by
many today, was once one of the most beloved saints both in Rome and throughout
Latin Christendom, and rightly so. A deacon of the Roman Church in the
mid-third century, he found himself faced with the task of administering the
Church after the arrest of Pope Sixtus II and four of his fellow deacons in the
Catacombs of Callixtus on 6 August 258. Meeting the pope while he was
being led away to prison and execution, Lawrence begged to be able to accompany
him. The pope turned this request down, giving the deacon charge of the
temporal goods of the church, while telling him that the deacon would follow
his bishop in four days time. Lawrence then went forth and gave away the
material goods of the church to the poor in the city. Soon he in turn was
arrested and brought before the magistrates, and when the treasures of the
Church were demanded of him he presented to the authorities the poor, saying
that these were the true treasures of the Church. The Romans, enraged by
this seeming insolence, cast the deacon into a dark prison cell near the site
of today’s church. There, he converted the jailer and his family.
With the authorities only further angered by his success, they condemned him to
be burnt alive over a gridiron set up on the site of today’s station. So
it was that on 10 August 258, that St. Lawrence was burnt alive for his
steadfast faith in Christ. As one final jab at his executioners, he is
said to have remarked to them as his torments neared their end, 'Turn me over,
I’m done on this side.' And so he passed from the sufferings of this
world to the glory of the next.”
St. Lawrence's martyrdom is depicted in a massive
painting behind the main altar. Notice the angel at the top coming almost from
outside the painting to crown Lawrence with the crown of martyrdom!
The site of his martyrdom is marked by this altar
in the crypt of the church:
Let's pray for the courage and zeal of St.
Lawrence! Let's be saints!
