During my seminary formation, I was able to study in Rome,
Italy for about six months. I attended
classes at the wonderful Dominican School, the Angelicum; every day would take
us passed the Trevi Fountain and the famous Spanish steps, down the same
streets that saints had walked.
In addition to our academic work, my seminary formation involved
some charitable apostolic work. I had
the blessing of working alongside the Missionary Sisters of Charity at a homeless
shelter, in their care for the homeless men and women of Rome. So, every Friday morning, a few of us
seminarians would walk past the Coliseum to the Sister’s homeless shelter: we
would serve breakfast to homeless men, clean up after breakfast, then help the
sisters do the laundry.
Now Blessed Mother Theresa didn’t believe in modern
conveniences, so the clothing and the soiled sheets and towels were washed by
hand on old fashioned scrub boards.
Mother Theresa wanted the sisters to learn how to do small tasks with
great love—which included doing laundry with the love of Christ in your heart. Trying to teach me that same lesson, one of
the sisters had me scrub the baseboards of the homeless shelter with a
toothbrush. While we did our work:
scrubbing sheets, cleaning rooms, we would often pray the rosary.
On the Friday before holy week, a good joy-filled
seminarian, who is now a priest of the diocese of Erie, asked one of the
sisters enthusiastically, “sister, are you ready for Easter?” In a very serious tone, yet without losing
the spark of joy in her own eyes, she said, “No, I still have much dying to
do.”
Here was a woman who never took vacations. She owned nothing, not even her religious
habit was really hers. She didn’t have a bank account, she certainly didn’t
have an iphone—she spent her days washing soiled sheets; after waking up before
sunrise, attending Mass and spending an hour in Eucharistic adoration, she
would bath the grime of the streets of Rome off of poor homeless men. Here was a woman, that if you gave her a gift
of a chocolate bar, she would give it away to the poor in order to bring a
little bit of joy into another person’s life.
Who knows the special penances that she had undertaken for Lent, but you
can be sure it was more than not eating potato chips or drinking starbucks
coffee!
“Sister, are you
ready for easter?” “No, I still have much dying to do.”
On this Laetare Sunday we are a bit like both the seminarian
and the sister from my story. We are
excited about Easter. We exchange, just for today, the penitential purple
vestments for the slightly more joyful rose colored vestments. The hymns are a bit more joyful, to lift our
spirits. We are reminded that all of our Lenten penances—the prayer, the
fasting, the almsgiving--are preparing us for Easter joy.
Yet, we also realize, like the dear sister from my story,
that we all still have much dying to do. During the season of Lent we are to
die to our sinful attachments, we fast, even from good enjoyable things, to
die, in a sense, to earthly pleasures, to show that our greatest joy in this
life is not from food and entertainment, but in God.
We are just over the half-way point in Lent, and we all have
much dying to do. During Lent, we
consider how Jesus fasted and prayed. He
showed us that “man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes
from the mouth of God.” So we fast. We have to die to our belief that our true
happiness can be found in earthly bread—in earthly goods.
During Lent, we consider how Jesus humbled himself to do the
will of the father. He embraced the
cross, he embraced suffering and pain for the salvation of the world. We need to die to our selfishness by engaging
in self-sacrifice and service.
And during Lent, we consider Jesus praying in the desert,
and praying in the garden of gethsemane, and praying on the cross. We need to
die to our willfulness, our need to control, our self-reliance, and learn to
trust in God through frequent Lenten prayer.
Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who was animated by the
Spirit of Joy, was once asked by the sisters, “Mother, tell us how to get Joy;
how does Joy come into our life.” Well,
she said, “you look at the word itself: J-O-Y.
And you let each of those letters stand for a word, in that order: J
stands for Jesus, O stands for others, and Y for yourself; if those are the
priorities in your life, first Jesus, secondly other people, and only last,
yourself, you are going to have Joy.”
If you want real joy, structure every day, every week, based
on those priorities: first Jesus, second, others, lastly, yourself. Having those priorities is absolutely
essential for cultivating the Joy you so desire. "Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls," Mother Theresa said. Our Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and
almsgiving help us to do just that.
This week, as you may have seen in the news, 4 Missionary
Sisters of Charity, the order founded by Mother Theresa, were murdered by
Muslim terrorists in Yemen. These
sisters were dedicated to serving the elderly and decrepit, men and women who
themselves were not Christian. These
women were killed not just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong
time, they were murdered intentionally because of their faith.
The gruesome murder of four of the most beautiful souls on
the planet is a cause for sadness. Yet, in a way there is cause for rejoicing.
These brave and selfless Missionaries of Charity refused to leave Yemen despite
threats on their lives in order to serve those whom the rest of the world has
thrown away. They have done what each of
us aspires to, to serve Christ with our whole lives. If each of us had that sort of courage and
love, this world would be a different place.
There is joy when we see fellow Christians filled with so
much courage and love that they serve Christ even when it costs them their
lives. This is the joy of dying for
Christ. And that is the dying each of us
are called to.
To die to self is to set aside our selfish motivations in
order to focus instead on loving God with everything we’ve got and valuing
others as highly as we value ourselves. Jesus came to heal our blindnesses
which sees ourselves as more important than others. Jesus came to heal our hard-heartedness which
fails to forgive. He came to heal our lives, that we might live, no longer for
ourselves, but for God.
Our small self-denials of Lent are really meant to be a
source of healing for our willful selfish souls that they may seek God’s will first,
above all else.
May we each persevere in our Lenten penances that we can
experience the joy of Christian love for the glory of God and salvation of
souls.
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