Spring chorus

In recent days, a sustained, swamp-like chorus has been—quite audibly—flowing up the Hill from the valley across IN-545 (across from the Saint Meinrad Archabbey Gift Shop). The area is wetland/woodland converted from farmland several years ago—part of a conservation effort for which Saint Meinrad received statewide recognition). This chorus continues day and night, day after day, and is quite loud (in a good way, I think).

After checking with a few knowledgeable sources, as well as discovering the unfortunate remains of several flattened suspects on the IN-545 pavement, my suspicions were confirmed. They are frogs (or toads—I’m not knowledgeable enough about the various species to identify the specific calls of each one). And by the sounds of it, there are many of them! Since coming to the monastery in the fall of 2006, this is the loudest, most numerous, and most vocally sustained they have been, in my view.

So, the other day, I went across the road to record the critters in concert. The (strictly amateur) video is above (you can’t actually see the frogs—only hear them). Remember to turn the volume up on your computer (although I have discovered that at extremely high volume, it can actually begin to hurt your ears!).

Amazingly, I recorded this video at around 3:30 in the afternoon, on a somewhat breezy day (you’ll hear the wind occasionally brushing into the microphone), a time at which the amphibian chorus is not really at its peak. They are at their best in the evenings and early mornings. Still, the result is distinct enough! Enjoy.

UPDATE: Shortly after I posted the above, the frogs (or toads) took a break, and they have been quiet ever since. I think, perhaps, it got a little too cold for them. Once the temperatures start rising again (and as long as it remains mating season), I'm sure we'll here more from the spring chorus. For now, enjoy the video.-- Br. Francis

Salvation in a snake?

NOTE: Each week during Lent, I am posting a reflection on the Sunday Gospel--a little food for prayerful thought. -- Br. Francis.

***

Snakes seem to arouse within us equal parts fear and fascination. They slither and slide through our collective consciousness as sinister symbols of all things dark and forbidden, creepy and cunning, dangerous and potentially deadly. Although humans are actually more of a threat to snakes than vice-versa, and their useful qualities notwithstanding (e.g., they prey on rodents), most of us loathe them and keep a respectful distance. Yet, it is difficult for many of us to look away from the scaly, fork-tongued, and (for some) elliptical-eyed creatures.

Few of us, perhaps, would attach any redeeming religious quality to serpents. After all, the Tempter is portrayed as a serpent in the Garden of Eden, seducing our first parents into believing themselves “like gods” (see Genesis 3), and tripping humanity into the woeful condition it finds itself in to this day. Religiously speaking, the serpent is notorious as a symbol of evil. The author of the Book of Revelation refers to “the Devil or Satan” as “the ancient serpent” (Revelation 20:2).

And yet, in the Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (John 3:14-21), Jesus makes a peculiar statement regarding serpents. He says to Nicodemus: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” What is that all about?

Window in Archabbey Church.

The short answer is that Jesus was referring to himself symbolically as a serpent offering salvation to all who believe. Strange…why is that?

First, we must take into account the Old Testament incident that Jesus alludes to in the passage. This is Numbers 21:4-9, in which the ancient Israelites in the desert complain bitterly about their lot and refuse to trust in God, who has brought them out of slavery in Egypt and provided for their every need. Serpents come among them, and many are bitten and die. When the people finally repent and cry out to God, Moses (at God’s command) makes a bronze serpent and mounts it on a pole, and “whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he recovered.” The people were saved through a symbol of the very thing that plagued them (of course, they were actually saved by turning back to God; cf. Wisdom 16:5-7). Their instrument of death became the means of salvation.

Although not specifically referred to by Jesus in the Gospel reading, at least one other Old Testament passage regarding snakes is worth mentioning here. In Exodus 7:8-13, God tells Moses and Aaron—who were still trying to convince Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt—to “work a sign of wonder” with Aaron’s staff in the Egyptian leader’s presence. Accordingly, when the time came, Aaron threw his staff on the ground, where it changed into a snake. Not to be outdone, Pharaoh had his magicians do the same. However, something even more curious occurred: Aaron’s staff-turned-snake swallowed those of all Pharaoh’s magicians.

In Jesus’ day (recall that Israel was under Roman rule), the public execution of criminals on a cross—where the crucified suffered a painfully slow, tortuous demise from asphyxiation in front of crowds of onlookers—was the most terrifying instrument of death imaginable. Like the death-dealing serpent in Moses’ day, Jesus was fastened to a pole like a common criminal for everyone to look upon.

However, those Old Testament episodes mentioned above involving snakes take on fuller and deeper significance with the crucifixion of Jesus. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,” Jesus tells Nicodemus, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Here, Jesus foretells his manner of death, and declares that just as those who looked on the mounted serpent in Moses’ day were saved from death, so those who look to him on the cross (with the eyes of faith) will inherit something far greater—eternal life.

Window in Chapter Room.

To put it plainly, through the Incarnation, the Son of God becomes a human being, and though he is without sin himself, he figuratively becomes sin—your sin and mine—on the cross in order to save us. And he does this out of immeasurable love for his creation—you and me. Just like the pole in the desert with the bronze serpent, the crucifixion becomes the source of Life and Truth for all who are willing to believe. Just as the cunning serpent in the Garden of Eden entwined itself enticingly around the tree of knowledge of good and evil (imparting doom to those who partake of its fruit), so God’s Word made flesh hangs on a cross, the tree of life (imparting eternal salvation to those who believe and partake of its fruit). The curse of Eden is reversed (cf. Revelation 2:7) because Jesus, in effect, becomes the serpent of our sin and swallows death through his own death and resurrection. Evil’s cunning is outdone by God himself, far beyond anything we could possibly accomplish on our own.

St. Paul refers to this incredible mystery when he says, “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” and "Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree'" (2 Corinthians 5:21 and Galatians 3:13; cf. Deuteronomy 21:22-23).

Having Christ referred to as a serpent representing—and “swallowing up”—human sin through the sacrifice of his own life is not something we hear too often, although the imagery is firmly rooted in our tradition. For example, St. Gregory of Nyssa (c.335-395) comments:

The serpent may seem an incongruous symbol for [the mystery of the Incarnation], and yet it is an image Truth himself does not repudiate, since he says in the gospel: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And the meaning is clear. Holy Scripture calls the father of sin a serpent, so what is born of him must be a serpent too; sin must have the same name as its father. Now since the Apostle [Paul] asserts that the Lord was made sin for our sake by clothing himself in our sinful nature, it cannot be in appropriate to apply this symbol to him. If sin is a serpent and the Lord became sin, it must be obvious to all that in becoming sin he became a serpent, which is simply another name for sin.

He became a serpent for our sake, so that he could consume and destroy the serpents of Egypt brought to life by the sorcerers. Once he had done this he was changed into a staff again, and by this staff [the Cross], sinners are chastised and those who are climbing the difficult ascent of virtue are supported.

Likewise, St. Augustine (c.354-430) writes:

Christ's death and our sin were foreshadowed long ago in the desert, when Moses fastened a serpent to a wooden stake and held it on high. We must remember that it was through heeding the voice of a serpent that the human race had incurred the penalty of death, and so it was appropriate that a serpent, fastened to a wooden standard and raised aloft, should prefigure the death of Christ. In that symbol we have an image of the Lord's death by hanging [on a cross].

Christ overcame [the curse of sin and death] by taking it upon his own person. He vanquished death by undergoing death himself, sin by identifying himself with sin, and the ancient serpent by means of another serpent. Death, sin, and the serpent were all included in God's curse, but the cross has triumphed over each of them. And so there is profound truth in that word of Scripture: Cursed be all that hang on a tree [cf. Deuteronomy 21:22-23]. 

Despite the constant cycle of birth and death, the cross continues to be held high above the earth for the healing of all who gaze upon it.

This imagery is often found in Christian art, although not so much in recent times. We have a couple examples right here at Saint Meinrad Archabbey.  In one of the stained glass windows of our church, the “tree of death” in the Garden of Eden (entwined with a snake) depicted in the lower panel of the window is transformed in the upper panel into the Tree of Life, the cross of Jesus. The two trees are fused into one, becoming part of the same reality.

Likewise, in our Chapter Room (where the monks vote on important matters), a large, fierce-looking serpent with an apple in its mouth is shown superimposed over a black cross. Along with these images is the Latin inscription Conversionem morum, one of the Benedictine vows meaning conversion of life (which is an essential response asked of all Christian disciples).

This, I think, strikes at the essence of what the serpent image on the cross has to say to each one of us. Through his crucifixion, Christ turned into a snake (sin), so that by his resurrection, we may shed our sinful ways and turn toward God, in whose image we were created. Christ gives us his life, so that we may be saved from death by becoming his Body, offered up for the entire world.

This Lent, let us all look deep within our hearts at whatever entices us away from God, whatever has snake-bitten us and filled us with venom, whatever makes us serpent-like to one another. Then, let us look to the cross for healing, “keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2), so that Christ may live in us (cf. Galatians 2:20) and crush the head of the ancient serpent.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him
might not perish but might have eternal life."

John 3:16

The power of prayer

Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God. But Christ has willed that it should work no evil, and has given it all power over good.

Its only art is to call back the souls of the dead from the very journey into death, to give strength to the weak, to heal the sick, to exorcise the possessed, to open prison cells, to free the innocent from their chains. Prayer cleanses from sin, drives away temptations, stamps out persecutions, comforts the fainthearted, gives new strength to the courageous, brings travellers safely home, calms the waves, confounds robbers, feeds the poor, overrules the rich, lifts up the fallen, supports those who are falling, sustains those who stand firm.

All the angels pray. Every creature prays. Cattle and wild beasts pray and bend the knee. As they come from their barns and caves they look out to heaven and call out, lifting up their spirit in their own fashion. The birds, too, rise and lift themselves up to heaven: they open out their wings, instead of hands, in the form of a cross, and give voice to what seems to be a prayer.

What more need be said on the duty of prayer? Even the Lord himself prayed. To him be honor and power for ever and ever. Amen.

--Tertullian, On Prayer

Awakening

Amid the melting snow in a corner of the monastery courtyard...

As spring awakes

the frozen earth,
so Easter blooms
from Lent's restraints.

Rejoice!
For Christ
will conquer death,
and bring his grace
to make us saints.

Verse from a sixth-century Latin hymn

(which we chanted at Lauds this morning)

God fights for us

NOTE: Each week during Lent, I will post a reflection on the Sunday Gospel--a little food for prayerful thought to go along with our fasting. -- Br. Francis.

***

I recall that, as a child, I was disturbed by a televised depiction of Jesus cleansing the Temple, which we hear about in the Gospel reading for the Third Sunday of Lent (John 2:13-25). If you imagine the scene as it is described, it is certainly startling—especially for an impressionable child. Jesus “made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area … and spilled the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” This is a fierce, angry, violent Jesus—not the image most of us have of him, and not one with which we feel very comfortable.

Yet, there it is, plainly spoken and recorded as the Word of God in Scripture (each of the four gospels mentions the incident). What are we to make of this?

First of all, it should be mentioned that the prevalent, modern notion of Jesus as an easy-going, sentimental fellow who came to bestow a few words of wisdom and generate universal esteem is not scriptural in the least, and highly mistaken. As Jesus himself declared, “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division” (Luke 12:51).

Jesus was human as well as divine. He experienced emotions. He felt very deeply, and this is demonstrated many times throughout the gospels (e.g., John 11:35). Additionally, Jesus is no pushover. He is provocative. In word and in deed, he both amazes and confuses. With repentant sinners and faithful but erring disciples, he is always gentle but firm. But with self-righteous hypocrites and the indifferent, he is confrontational, constantly challenging the status quo. He is mercy and justice personified, and will not stand for corruption, deceit, and oppression. He preaches detachment from the world, self-sacrificial love of God and neighbor, and he calls us to follow his lead:

“For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37).

Moreover, he comes to save us, to fight for us, at the cost of his own life. He was willing to pay the cumulative price of humanity’s misery brought on by the Fall. The Word made Flesh allows himself to be killed by the very creation he spoke into being, so that he may save humanity from the condemnation it chose for itself in turning away from God. He becomes sin (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:21) to save us from sin:

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert [a reference to Numbers 21:9], so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:14-17).

Like an action-hero, this is one tough, righteous dude. Jesus is a warrior who overcomes the forces of evil for those who believe, just as the Lord fought for the ancient Israelites against the Egyptians by leading his people through the Red Sea on dry land (cf. Exodus 14:13-14).

This is what he was doing when he cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem by driving out the merchants and money-changers, charging, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” Here, he professes his identify, asserts his authority, and reclaims his Father’s house from those who dishonored it by profiting from the poor, and by taking presumptuous refuge in external (yet hollow) observances.

Chiefly, Jesus was sending a message to the religious authorities of his time (and ours). They didn’t like this message, to say the least. This incident, more than any other, leads to Jesus’ death. Here was a man claiming to be God and challenging the age-old practices of Temple worship. From the vantage point of the religious authorities, he had to be taken out of the picture. And seemingly, he was—very briefly.

Jesus was fighting for us as worshipers of God in spirit and truth (cf. John 4:23-24). Zeal for God consumed him (a reference to Psalm 69:10), as the Gospel passage for the Third Sunday of Lent states. More than anything, however, he was declaring his intention to replace the mere external observances of Temple worship with his very body. “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” he declares (it is significant that all that transpires around the time of Passover, the feast commemorating the release of the ancient Israelites from slavery in Egypt after literally being spared through the blood of a lamb). On Easter Sunday, Jesus keeps this promise, demonstrating that God intends to save those who believe through his very body—the same body of Christ we share through the sacraments and constitute as the Church.

In other words, God wants not merely external worship, which is bound to corrode and corrupt in and of itself. Instead, he desires an honest relationship with each of us—lived from the heart. Externals are not ends in themselves (nor are they to be excluded!), but are to flow outward from this inner space reserved for God alone—the Spirit dwelling within the sanctuary of our souls (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:16).

God’s zeal for us strives to drive away all that prevents us from entering into a true relationship with him, so much so that he claims each person’s heart for himself. He destroys our “false temples” and raises instead the Body of Christ, of which we are all members as baptized Christians, to be with him in heaven forever.

You might say that Jesus “takes the bullet” for us, and draws us to, and through, himself into a transformed state of being that death cannot touch. In a sense, it’s similar to the heroic self-sacrifice made by Clint Eastwood’s charter in the climactic scene of the movie “Gran Torino” (only on a much grander scale, obviously, and with an eschatological perspective; for an eight-minute video of Fr. Robert Barron’s commentary on this precise point as it relates to the movie, click here).

This is what Jesus was doing as he cleansed the Temple. He was inviting and guaranteeing his eventual fate—so that, in turn, we might be saved from what separates us from God. And he does it with zeal, which is nothing less than passion—intense love for humankind. As a human being, God fights for us—to the death—in order to share his divine life with us.

This is an adult Jesus, for mature audiences only. This requires putting aside “childish things” (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:11), and learning to accept this immense zeal, passion, love that God has for us. This is difficult to do. Even the first disciples, as the Gospel passage indicates, did not understand at first what Jesus was doing. More to the point, we all find it difficult to allow ourselves to be the one in need of saving. It’s much easier to cling to externals, remain indifferent, or to operate under the illusion that we are in control.

This Gospel passage—this Lent, this faith of ours—reminds us that God fights for us. Victory is assured—but only if we embrace it. May Christ turn the tables on our souls, so that his zeal may become ours, now and forever.  Believe it or not, God thinks we’re worth it.

Presence in the present

O my God,

When I look into the future, I am frightened,

But why plunge into the future?

Only the present moment is precious to me,

As the future may never enter my soul at all.

It is no longer in my power to change,

correct, or add to the past;
For neither sages nor prophets could do that.
And so what the past has embraced
I must entrust to God.

O present moment,
you belong to me, whole and entire.
I desire to use you as best I can.
And although I am weak and small,
You grant me the grace of your omnipotence.

And so, trusting in your mercy,
I walk through life like a little child,
Offering you each day this heart
Burning with love for your greater glory.

St. Faustina Kowalska

Getting Through the Hurt

"By his wounds, you have been healed."

1 Peter 2:24

NOTE: The following is the introduction from the new Pathways book Getting Through the Hurt, which I edited for Abbey Press Publications (I also authored one of the chapters therein). This book, originally published as individual titles in the Abbey Press Catholic Perspectives CareNotes series, focuses on the particularly difficult circumstances of life that many of us face from time to time. I thought the introduction might also serve as a meditation appropriate to the Lenten season. -- Br. Francis

***

We all know and strive to accept the fact that life presents each one of us with our share of difficulties from day to day. Unfortunately, however, sometimes there also are particularly painful or unsettling circumstances in life which seem to get the best of us. Addiction, divorce, grief, and the anger that arises from feeling unloved and unwanted: these wounds, and so many others, cut very deep. They leave scars which may never entirely heal, and must be struggled with over the course of a lifetime.

The good news—from the Christian perspective—is that we are never alone during such trials. In the cross, God comes to meet us in the person of Jesus. He takes on our suffering, provides it with meaning, and leads us through it to the promise of resurrection. When Jesus rose from the tomb, his wounds were still present—but they had been transformed in a manner that strengthens our faith. “Take courage; I have conquered the world!” he tells us (John 16:33).

With Jesus, we also will prevail—and often through those very difficulties which seem to overwhelm us at times. Getting through the hurt in our lives asks us to claim our wounds, unite them with Jesus, and allow God’s grace to pour in and transform them into the means of discovering new life.

Ultimately, God asks us to trust that his goodness will secure victory over all distress, division, and death. This is the theme presented by the five chapters of this book—originally published by Abbey Press Publications as individual titles in the Catholic Perspectives CareNotes series. In them, we are reminded that having faith does not mean that we will not have troubles, even particularly painful ones at times. However, faith does provide us with the assurance we sometimes need, the endurance to continue our journey, and the wisdom to see and experience God’s saving grace in even the “darkest valley” (cf. Psalm 23:4). May this little book help guide you along the way.

--Br. Francis Wagner, O.S.B.

From: Getting Through the Hurt

© 2015 Abbey Press Publications