Thursday after Ash Wednesday 2018 - Threshold Moments

I don’t know if it’s still common today, but it used to be a tradition for a groom to carry his bride over the threshold of the honeymoon suite or their new home. Crossing the threshold marked a transition from one way of life to another.

Some of my favorite scenes in stories and movies are when the protagonist stands at a threshold with an important choice to make: Neo, from “The Matrix” choosing the red pill or the blue pill; Bilbo the Hobbit, literally standing at the threshold of his safe, comfortable home, choosing whether or not he will go on the adventure of a lifetime.

Certainly, a threshold moment in my life, was the day, as a young college student, I chose to visit the seminary for the first time.

We all have threshold moments –times when we are invited to move from one way of living to another. These moments are challenging; change and venturing into the unknown are never easy. So we often pause on the threshold itself, to reflect on what we want out of life, on who we are, one where we want to go, on the principles we must follow if we want to truly live.

Moses, in the first reading, has led the Israelites to the threshold of the promised land. And they have a choice to make, as they enter this new land, will they return to the comfortable life of sin, or will they embark on the new way of fidelity. Fidelity will be difficult. They will have to resist being led estray by the attractive paganism of the land’s current inhabitants. They will have to resist their strange gods, their voluptuous women. They will have to struggle to keep the commandments, statues, and decrees of God.

One way leads to life and prosperity, one to death and doom: “choose life”, Moses says, “heeding the voice of the Lord.”

On this threshold of Lent, we are given a choice, as well. Will we return to the comfortable, or will we embark on a journey which will change us, and convert us.

The Lord invites us to follow him into the desert, to fast and to pray with him, to learn how to surrender ourselves to God like Him, he invites us to deny ourselves and follow Him.

It is a great paradox, but true nonetheless, that the way of the cross is the way that leads to life.
Freely and wholeheartedly, may we embrace our Lenten observances of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, that the life of Christ may well up, spring up in us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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For the whole Christian people, that in this sacred Lenten season, they may be more abundantly nourished by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

For the whole world, that in lasting tranquility and peace our days may truly become the acceptable time of grace and salvation.

For sinners and those who neglect right religion, that in this time of reconciliation they may return wholeheartedly to Christ.

For ourselves, that God may at last stir up in our hearts aversion for our sins and conviction for the Gospel.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

Grant, we pray, O Lord, that your people may turn to you with all their heart, so that whatever they dare to ask in fitting prayer they may receive by your mercy.

August 9, 2017 - St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross - Pilgrimage of Truth

For 40 years, the Israelites were led by God through the desert. God had fed them with manna from heaven, led them with the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. And finally, after 40 years, they get to the edge of the promised land. They go to reconnoiter the land, and they discover…it’s occupied by these giant Canaanites. They are so distraught—they wail with despair; after 40 years, they still didn’t trust God. He had led them and fed them, performed mighty deeds in their midst, brought them safely to the land of promise, and they still didn’t trust Him.

How couldn’t they? Some of us do not make use of the time we’ve been given to be purified of our pride, distrust, selfishness. The story of the Jews is the story of all of us, failing to trust to God even when the beauty of his glory is all around us, the grace of the Sacraments is powerfully transforming sinners into saints, we are being led and fed, and still don’t get it.

For some of us, the journey to discover the Truth of Jesus Christ and to radically conform our lives to Him is a life long journey; some of us make that act of faith early on, some of us make it less than wholeheartedly, some of us never really make the act of faith.

Today’s saint, Edith Stein, who became Carmelite St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross made the journey. An uncompromising search for the truth led her from the depths of atheism to the heights of sainthood.

She was born to a Jewish family in 1891. Her father died when she was very young, and by the time she was an adolescent, she had given up on faith entirely. She looked to philosophy for truth. As a young woman with profound intellectual gifts, she became a pupil of the renowned professor Edmund Husserl in 1913. Through her studies, the non-religious Edith met several Christians whose intellectual and spiritual lives she admired.

In 1921, while visiting friends, Edith spent an entire night reading the autobiography of the 16th century Carmelite nun St. Teresa of Avila. “When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.” She was baptized into the Catholic Church on the first day of January, 1922.

10 years later she imitated Theresa of Avila by entering the Carmelite convent and took the name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  It was 1933, Adolf Hitler was Chancellor of Germany.
Though the Jews were the principle victims of the Nazi’s in World War II, millions of Catholics, including bishops, priests, and nuns were murdered in the concentration camps.  In 1942, the Nazi’s arrested Sister Teresa.  She and her sister Rosa, also a Catholic, were transported to Auschwitz in Poland by boxcar.  One week later, Sister Teresa died in a gas chamber.

At her canonization, Saint John Paul said, “For a long time Edith Stein was a seeker. Her mind never tired of searching and her heart always yearned for hope. She traveled the arduous path of philosophy with passionate enthusiasm. Eventually she was rewarded: she seized the truth. Or better: she was seized by it. Then she discovered that truth had a name: Jesus Christ. From that moment on, the incarnate Word was her One and All. Looking back as a Carmelite on this period of her life, she wrote to a Benedictine nun: “Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously”.

Every human being a responsibility to seek the Truth, to make use of the time we are given, to seek the Truth and to conform our lives to it. May St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross help us to seek and find the Truth of Jesus Christ, and conform our lives to Him, to allow him to lead us and feed us on our pilgrimage to the promised land, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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For all those who wander in atheism, agnosticism, those who are cynical towards Catholicism, for moral relativists, and those who reject the Faith, and all lapsed Catholics, that the Holy Spirit will help them discover the Truth of Christ.

That the Holy Father, the Bishops, especially our future Bishop, Nelson Perez, and all Clergy and Religious will be shining examples of fidelity to the Truth.

That the love of Christ, the divine physician, may bring healing to the sick and comfort to all the suffering. We pray.

For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased priests and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom. We pray.

O God, who know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.