“After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.”

On first blush, given all the profound verses in the last chapter of Matthew, this hardly seems the most likely candidate for a post.  But the anniversary of my mother’s death and her birthday both fall in early October, so when I read this chapter for the first time a week ago, those memories drew me here.

The truth is, I have never gone to visit my mother’s grave.  I often wonder, if I admit this to people, will they think me odd or strange?  Will they think that I didn’t love her as much as I should have, or that I don’t care about preserving her memory?

I don’t feel that’s the case at all, and I think this chapter confirms my sentiments.  This is because I am certain that just like Jesus wasn’t in his tomb, my mother is not in her grave.

As her son I am surely biased.  But if my mother isn’t in heaven, then no one is.  Just putting up with me as a teenager had to guarantee her admittance.

While I might miss her on occasion, I don’t mourn her.  I honestly think that to mourn her would be selfish on my part.  If I sincerely believe that Jesus died to make salvation possible, then how can I mourn when death is not death, but simply a transition to a place where the ultimate promise is fulfilled?

When I think of my mother, I am filled with happiness to know that she is with Jesus, rewarded for all the love and kindness that she engendered in this world.  How could I put any personal feeling of loss or emptiness or angst or woe in front of the perfect love that she must now bask in?  How could I wish for her to be anywhere else?

Its not easy to lose a loved one.  But as usual, the Gospels give us the recourse we need to deal with whatever troubles us.

One of the basic tenets of successful prayer is the ability to place yourself in the scene.  I have never understood myself to inadvertently do this before, but after praying over this chapter its clear that I’ve already found my way into this scene, assuming the role of the Marys.  They approached the tomb on the first morning of the week deep in mourning.  But before that morning was over, their mourning had turned to jubilation.

They saw and understood the mystery of the life of Christ.  They knew death had been conquered by Jesus not just for Jesus, but for all.

And I find myself privileged to share some small part of that jubilation when I think about my Mom.  I just don’t feel the need to be at her graveside to do it.

“So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.”

If my assertion about Jesus’ silence is correct, if He is indeed silent because He is preoccupied with praying for His antagonists, how does that translate into the story of Judas, His betrayer?

Matthew 26:24 contains these words:

“But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”

This is a strong condemnation.  But if Jesus was willing to pray on behalf of his antagonists throughout the passion, would he not have also been willing to pray on behalf of Judas?  In fact, would it not be more likely that Jesus would pray for a seemingly repentant Judas than for those who are either ambivalent or openly hostile to Him?

What woe does Jesus speak of?

Is the woe the act of betrayal?

Or is the woe perhaps the inability of Judas to understand and accept that forgiveness is possible if he is willing to seek it?

And would Judas have had to specifically seek it, or would the act of returning the money been enough if he had not proceeded on to suicide?

Sometimes the hardest thing is to have enough courage to accept and acknowledge my failings and to be willing to seek the forgiveness I need.  The tendency is to believe that I am unworthy of forgiveness, or to be so afraid of judgment as to be unwilling to risk an encounter that could end in forgiveness.

Why can the Sacrament of Penance fill me with trepidation as I approach it?

My worthiness is not mine to decide.  I have to be courageous enough to hopefully place myself in God’s hands, faithful enough that I am able to trust in His love, humble enough to let Him decide my fate.

I have to bring my trepidation to Him, and ask that He take it from me.

What would have happened if Judas, instead of going out and hanging himself, had followed Christ to Golgotha?

What would have happened if Judas had laid his guilt and repentance at the foot of the Cross and asked Jesus for forgiveness in those last moments?

Would he have wished he had never been born?

Or would he have been blessed beyond any reasonable expectations?

“And what about Jesus?  Even though He was silent, it doesn’t seem likely He was idle. What was He doing behind that veil of silence while the passion was unfolding around Him?”

Its out of character from my intentions to skip ahead to another Gospel, but an exception is in order here because Luke 23:34 gives more insight into Jesus’ silence than any words I’ve been able to come up with so far.

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

During the passion, Jesus is menaced by antagonists in ways that I barely comprehend.  Anyone who has seen The Passion of the Christ can empathize with the difficulty of describing what that day was like.  The violence and brutality that Jesus endures leaves me feeling so desolate and disheartened that there is nothing in my previous life that I can draw on in order to provide a description.

The royalty of the Jewish faith arrange to put Him to death because His life is a condemnation of theirs.  The crowd joins in the arrangement, hoping to be rewarded by that royalty for their loyalty.  The politics facing Pilate are somehow too inconvenient for him to do what he otherwise knows to be right.  The soldiers revel in power over another so deeply that their actions are barbaric and even incoherent.

Jesus’ silent endurance as portrayed in the Gospel of Matthew is gripping, but somehow incomplete.  His inner workings are too hidden for me to find the answers I seek solely by relying on Matthew.

But in Luke I find that His silence has purpose.  I recognize in Him a preoccupation so taxing, so intense, and so overwhelmingly urgent that I understand His need for silence.  That preoccupation is prayer, but not prayer on His own behalf.  He is not seeking respite or relief from the cup His Father has presented to Him.

Instead, unbelievably, He prays on behalf of His antagonists.  He seeks forgiveness for those who are literally torturing Him to death.

In that first post I wondered why Jesus isn’t teaching in the face of this antagonism.  But after further consideration, I find that He is teaching.  In fact, what He teaches via His prayerful silence is perhaps the most seminal teaching that He offers throughout His entire public ministry.

Because in that teaching I find out how I am expected to react to my own antagonists.  I find a message about peace and surrender to the Will of God so deep, so compelling, and so breathless that I am left speechless.

Really, I would like to write more about it.  But no matter how hard I try, I have no words to describe the intensity of feeling that arises when I contemplate a sacrifice so extreme that it encompasses even those whose unworthiness seems so clear to a human like me.

How can I ever hope to model that?

“But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge—to the great amazement of the governor.”

As I spent time praying over this chapter, I also found the silence of Jesus a little amazing.  In Matthew’s version of the passion, Jesus only speaks twice.  Once rather cryptically in response to the question, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  And then again to ask, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

My first response was to wonder why He wasn’t giving out warnings?  So many people are engaged in such violent sinfulness in the course of the passion that I wondered why Jesus was passing up this last opportunity to teach?  Why does He not caution them about the potential consequences of their actions?

Then I wondered why He did not simply thunder against them, at least pronouncing a dire fate upon them in a speech reminiscent of an old testament prophet.

But then I decided I had to find some explanation for His silence.

I settled on the notion that there is a warning implicit in His silence that speaks to anyone looking at these events in retrospect.

If you consider the chief priests and elders, Pilate, the soldiers, and the crowd, they do have one thing in common despite their otherwise distinct differences in station and religious outlook.  They are all essentially closed to anything Jesus might have to say.  Despite being in His presence, they are so caught up in their worldly concerns that they are absent from any message that Jesus could offer.

The major point being,

Even if He had spoken to them, they would not have heard.

Their hearts were just too lost, too centered on worldly things like personal power, the politics of the day, or blind obedience for them to have any chance of grasping the spiritual gifts that Jesus was so willing to bestow on anyone who would follow Him.

So Jesus chooses silence in order to pass on a message to those who follow because we too are at risk of becoming so caught up in worldly affairs that our hearts can become lost.  We also routinely place ourselves out of the reach of His teaching.  Our hearts stray, causing us to become essentially absent from His presence, and thus absent from the benefits His presence brings.

Sometimes, it seems words simply don’t suffice.  God has to use other methods to gain our attention.  Here we see the curtain of the temple torn, and an earthquake, and tombs opening to allow the dead to walk among the living.  But even then we see that not everyone has been reached.  We hear the centurion say “Surely he was the son of God,” but the chief priests and elders remain steadfast in their ignorance, asking Pilate to set a guard even in the wake of these greater portents.

Where do I fit in?  How often do I place myself beyond the teaching of Jesus?  How many times when I am absent do I miss even the great portents that ought to refocus me on what truly matters?

And what about Jesus?  Even though He was silent, it doesn’t seem likely He was idle. What was He doing behind that veil of silence while the passion was unfolding around Him?

The Shores of Galilee

I have asserted that Peter represents the sinfulness of all as the initial events of the passion unfold in Matthew Chapter 26.

When Jesus predicts Peter will fall away, Peter has the audacity to contradict Him directly, face to face, in a blazing example of human arrogance.

When Jesus maintains his patience and gives Peter a way out despite his arrogance by instructing him to “watch and pray,”  Peter responds by ignoring the call and literally going to sleep.

Then, when Peter does face the test, he finds himself unprepared despite the warnings and instructions he received.  He sins in the most severe way possible, denying that he even knows his Lord and Savior.

He contradicts, confident in his own superiority.  He ignores, comfortable and lazy in false security.  He denies, blind and unmindful of his own actions as the occur.  He is void of all humility.  In these few short hours, Peter demonstrates an entirety of human frailty and sinfulness.

In Matthew, this is the end of the story of Peter.  He is not heard from again, at least not individually.  Fortunately, however, there is more than one Gospel, and the Gospels are meant to be used in conjunction with one another as we decipher the mysteries that God uses to challenge and shape us.

We must go all the way to John Chapter 21 to find a more definite answer about what ultimately becomes of the sinful Peter.  But when we get there, we are rewarded with hope in the grandest possible sense.  In that chapter, Jesus reinstates Peter, not just as one of many, but as the leader of the movement that must follow.

And Jesus does so by using one of His most powerful personal images.  Somehow, Jesus finds that Peter, despite his sinfulness during the passion, is now capable of emulating Jesus in the role shepherd.  Thus he gives him this trinitarian set of instructions on how to proceed.

“Feed my lambs.  Take care of my sheep.  Feed my lambs.”

Other than to know that Peter “wept bitterly” in reaction to his failure, we are left to wonder.  What did Peter do in the time between denial and reinstatement to earn the trust of Jesus?

Wouldn’t it have been nice if the conversion that Peter must have underwent was spelled out as a road map for us to follow?

But its not.  So how do we react to this omission?

Do we contradict God, and say he was wrong to not spell this out for us?  Do we shrug our shoulders at God, and go back to sleep, unwilling to seek what is not easily attainable?  Do we allow contradiction and sleep to lead to denial without ever realizing we are guilty of it?

Or do we perhaps “watch and pray” over what we do have to work with, thankful for the richness of the Gospels as God has seen fit to present them to us, faithful in a belief that we do have what we need in order to persevere and win the same trust that Peter won?

I think the details of Peter’s conversion must be available to anyone willing to seek them.

Peter is a perfect subject for prayer.  Begin with him in his arrogance, disputing with Jesus.  Follow him to the garden and delve into his sleepiness.  Weep bitterly with him after the denial.  Discover for yourself his whereabouts as the trial and the crucifixion unfold.  Stay with him as Jesus lays in the tomb and uncertainty overwhelms.  Watch him as he reacts to the good news of the resurrection.

And in the process discern and experience his realizations about his failures, and the conversion that he underwent in response.  Learn how, with the help of God, a man can take his failures and use them as the foundation for transformation.

And be grateful for the graces that come along the way as you search for and discover what God, in his wisdom, has chosen not to lay out for you in words so that you might choose this wonderful prayerful journey.

Be grateful that God has presented you a path, an opportunity for discovery,  much richer than any experience based in simple reading could ever provide.

“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

This scene follows immediately after Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial, and Peter’s assertion that Jesus is wrong.  Jesus has just asked the disciples to keep watch with Him, and returned to find them sleeping.  At this point, your average leader would run out of patience, take his followers to task, and begin to scream and yell in an effort to make sure He is understood.  Jesus’ own problems are about to unfold, so if He had erupted in frustration it would be hard to blame Him.

But He does not.  Despite the coming hardship, He continues to teach and encourage in the same patient manner that defines his entire relationship with his disciples.  He clearly is breaking from an Old Testament vision of God that would have the people cowering after being chastised for not following instructions, and replacing it with a New Testament theme grounded in unequivocal, unyielding love no matter what failings the people exhibit.

This New Testament theme is critical because it emphasizes free will.  Jesus indicates that we must take responsibility for our lives.  He will not force us onto the right track via intimidation, because that very intimidation would be a violation of the new covenant He came to establish.  The purpose of creation is the expansion of love, and we must be free to choose if we are to fully participate in and ultimately fulfill that purpose.

This scene captures my personal understanding of the new covenant in a nutshell.  God and Jesus invite me over and over and over again to watch and pray.  And over and over and over again I ignore that invitation and essentially sleep walk through my life.

How many opportunities do I miss every day to expand love because I am not present to God and Jesus (not watching) as I live from moment to moment?  How many opportunities do I miss because I do not consistently use prayer to nourish and enable my ability to maintain that presence and choose lovingly?

The Gospels are full of instructions about good works.  I need to do them.  But the instruction to “watch and pray” underlies that charge.  I must be disciplined to be steady in the choices I make about the works I do, and “watch and pray” is the foundation upon which I build that stability.  Its the first line of defense against the temptation that takes me away from those loving works.

Verse 41 concludes with these words:

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

God has deliberately set up this struggle between flesh and spirit in my life.  It is the defining challenge of my existence.  When I choose to watch and pray and nourish the spirit, love abounds and God is (presumably) pleased.  When I sleepily succumb to the temptations of the flesh, sin flourishes and God is (no doubt) disappointed.

My response to this challenge describes who I am.

Fortunately for me, in this verse Jesus gives the instructions I need to understand how to meet this challenge.  He tells me how to create a mindset that gives me the best possible chance to make correct choices, choices in favor of love and spirit and against temptation.

All my success must be built on the ability to “watch and pray” as my life unfolds.

In Matthew Chapter 26, Part 1, I said I was deviating from my normal routine of only one post per chapter because I thought this chapter had a verse directly relevant to the purpose of this blog.  This verse is what I was referring to.

This blog is about expanding my understanding of prayer, and hopefully sharing what I find with anyone else who encounters it.  The importance of prayer is so clear to me after spending time with this verse that I can not help but shout about it on this screen!

The flip side is it pains me deeply to think (wrongly or rightly) that my culture values prayer so minutely, and seems to practice it so rarely.  This is why I sometimes struggle so much with work and participating in the culture in general.

At times, I just feel so out of place.

As the passion unfolds, its very difficult to take your eyes off Jesus.  Everything that happens to Him and through Him is captivating.  But as I considered this scene further, I found myself drawn increasingly to Peter.

Typically, we think of Jesus’ sacrifice in global terms.  “He died on the cross for the salvation of all.”  What strikes me now is that Peter directly represents that “all.”  While Jesus moves toward the garden, Peter is committing the very sins that Jesus will ultimately suffer for.

Verse 33 reads like this:

Peter replied, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.”

Early in this endeavor I tried to indicate how important it is in a life of prayer to place yourself in the scene you are contemplating.  Do that now for a moment as Peter.

You know that Jesus is Christ.  You believe it completely, without question.  He is not just rabbi,  your teacher, but your Lord.  Jesus is sitting across the table from you.  He looks at you and says “Tonight, you will fall away from me.”

And you respond, “No Lord, you are wrong.  I will not.”

Let me repeat that for emphasis.  Jesus says “This is how it will be.”  And you respond, “No Lord, it will not be like that.  You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Do you find that as astonishing as I do?  Do you think that if Jesus was physically present to you, and told you something about yourself that you did not like, that you would accept His word?  Or would you look Him in the eye and dispute what He said to you?

And in a strange twist, is it possible that no matter which way you answer those questions, you might be guilty of Peter’s arrogance?

Because Peter’s response is the direct result of sinful human arrogance.  We all possess it.  We all manifest it.  We all believe we are better than we are, too good to make this mistake, or that error.  We lack strength precisely because we believe we are stronger than we are.  This leads to overconfidence, and then failure, and we do things we wished in retrospect that we had not done.

We end up weeping bitterly, like Peter, because we were not humble enough to identify our own limitations at the beginning.

What if Peter had responded more like this:

“Lord, I wish this were not so, but if you say this is what will be, then this is what will be.  Please tell me Lord, is there anything I can do in my weakness to avoid this fate?  Can you strengthen me Lord, so that I will not fail you?”

What if, when you sit down across the Gospels from Jesus,  you could be that humble?

Could you then craft a response to whatever Jesus is asking that you could follow through on?

The Penitent Apostle Peter

In the last several posts, I have been rummaging through questions related to how the demands of everyday life impact my personal relationship with God.  I have been lamenting the fact that I crave so desperately to live a life where I am always present to God, but I find that the demands of my culture seem to deflect me from that purpose at every waking moment.

In Matthew Chapter 26, I find I’m in pretty good company when it comes to this struggle.  The last verse of the chapter, verse 75, reads like this:

Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: “Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.

I find the words “Then Peter remembered” particularly striking.

Granted, Peter was embedded in the greatest historical events man has every seen.  But on the other hand, he had the benefit of Jesus’ direct presence, in the flesh, to help him through those events.  So even though I am inclined to cut him some slack based on the momentous circumstances, I still find it astonishing that he would forget what Jesus had forecast for him just a couple hours before this verse takes place.

But I also empathize with him.  I understand from experience how life can overwhelm, and push us out of touch with that which we most want to be in touch with.  Peter was likely much better prepared than I am to maintain contact with God as these moments occur.  But in the end, he remained human, and fallen, and thus vulnerable to the failures inherent in that condition.

His moment was much greater than anything I encounter, but I also find myself empathizing with his reaction to it.  When I stop for recollection, I don’t literally “weep bitterly,” but I do often feel despondent about my inability to maintain constant contact with God.  There are often times when all I want is to be separated from everything that distracts me from my relationship with God, which in turn allows me to rest in His healing  presence.  I don’t know if that is what Peter initially sought when he “went outside,” but it seems improbable that he did not ultimately seek that type of solace as he dealt with his failure.

I have tried for the most part to avoid multiple posts on a given Chapter, but this time there is another verse that I think correlates very closely to the content of this post, and also to the purpose of the blog.

So I will be making another post on Matthew Chapter 26 next.

“….. if the purpose of work is not the earning of money, what is the purpose of work?”

Matthew Chapter 25, in verses 35 and 36, has another answer for this question.  Or, if you accept the premise that work can be defined in terms of love, perhaps these verses give a practical definition of what the work of love looks like when put into practice.

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Feed the hungry.

Give drink to the thirsty.

Accommodate the stranger.

Clothe the naked.

Care for the sick.

Show compassion to the prisoner.

In general, serve “the least,” for they are a legitimate embodiment of Christ here on earth.

Work is a major component of our lives.  In this society, it is very difficult not to be obsessed with it.  If you aren’t, you run a serious risk of getting run over, and of losing the ability to provide even the most basic needs for your family.

But how many of us are engaged in these most basic tasks directly in our work lives?

How many of us instead treat these activities as secondary, as something to be done in our spare time, as that small part of our lives that fall under the heading charity, even though Jesus tells us quite clearly in this Gospel passage that salvation hinges on how well we recognize and follow through on our opportunities to serve?

Should the work of our lives be about accumulation, so that we might give some small portion away?

Or should it be about achieving salvation, and thus directly about the service Jesus speaks of here?

How literal is the instruction of Jesus to the young man in Matthew 19:21?

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

If we choose salvation as our focus, can we achieve it by embracing the current work paradigm of American society?

Or is a different paradigm required, one that better embraces the Radical Love that is embodied by Christ on the Cross, the greatest example of service that we can possibly reference?

“Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.”

It never ceases to astonish me how profound each verse of the Gospels can be, even verses that at first are skipped over easily.  I have been thinking a lot lately about how different the world would be if individuals could pause long enough in their hectic lives to consider the love of Christ seriously, and how much greater the difference would be if they could commit themselves to showing the face of that love to their fellow man on a daily basis.

And yet, even though this verse contains the word love, I had to read this Chapter a dozen times before these words became the ones I settled on for consideration in my prayer.

In our modern world, just about every organization feels the need to have a mission statement.  As I consider this verse, it occurs to me that the mission statement of a Christian might just be found here.  Its not the verse itself, but its converse, that I think could used.

It might read something like this:

“I am unequivocally committed to keeping the love of Christ ablaze in my heart, and each day I will make this love apparent to every person I encounter in an unmistakable way, trusting that Jesus will surely use me, little by little, to decrease the wickedness in the world, and thereby advance His Kingdom.”