Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Expectations and Rejection (Palm Sunday)

On Palm Sunday, the people of Jerusalem greeted Jesus with enthusiasm. Five days later they demanded his execution.  How can we account for such a turnaround?

I think the explanation lies in the fact that on Sunday the people weren’t really welcoming Jesus but their idea and image of Jesus. They projected onto him their own desires for an earthly king who would expel the Romans and restore the power of Israel.  They were welcoming an idol of their own making, but it wasn’t Jesus as he truly was.

During the days that followed his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus showed that his identity and mission weren’t what they wanted and that even though his mission was for the people, it didn’t come from them and was not about an earthly kingdom. He refused to play the role that the Palm Sunday crowd wanted, so they turned against him, and the height of their hopes on Sunday was matched by the depth of their anger on Friday.

We aren’t strangers to acting the same way in our ordinary lives, for sometimes we impose on others our ideas of who they should be, and we become angry at them when they don’t play the part we’ve written for them. It can operate between friends and spouses, parents and children, even between voters and those they elect to office.

Holy Week reminds us we can treat God the same, loading our expectations onto him, then repudiating him when he doesn’t do what we want. That’s what happened all those centuries ago in Jerusalem. This Holy Week, let’s ask for the grace to permit God to be God without chaining him to our expectations and demands, letting him instead be the one who Scripture tells us acts in ways different from what we expect and thinks thoughts that don’t match ours, but who always acts out of love and never out of hatred for us.

“We’d Like to See Jesus” (Lent 5)

That’s what some Greeks said to the apostles, as related in the gospel reading for the fifth Sunday of Lent. They may have been the first to voice the desire to see Jesus, but they certainly haven’t been the last.

Isn’t seeing Jesus precisely what non-Christians want the church to help them do? Don’t they want to see Jesus in how we Christians live, in the way we treat one another, in the hope-filled way we engage with society and its problems, in the way we enter into respectful dialogue with those of other faiths or none, and in the way we reach out in generous service to those in need?

And, to be honest, don’t we Christians want to see Jesus, too? Don’t we long to see Jesus, not just witness endless wrangling between “conservatives” and “liberals”? Don’t we desire to see Jesus in our liturgies, hear him in the preaching at Mass, and see him in the lives (and life-styles) of those in church leadership? Above all, don’t we want the church to help us see Jesus in times of doubt, sickness, suffering, and death?

This fifth week of Lent, let’s think about our desire to see Jesus and the challenge we have to make him visible to those around us.

Dusk Arrives

Preferring the Darkness (Lent 4)

When I was a kid, I loved summer nights when the temperature finally went below 90 degrees, a breeze came up, and light from old style streetlights filtered through the leaves of the elm trees on our block. Such nights would find me sitting on our front porch listening to my small transistor radio, just enjoying the dark. Now, on summer nights when I sit in my room with only a small candle burning, smoking my pipe near an open window, and listening to jazz from my laptop, I am as content as I was all those years ago, loving the peaceful darkness.

But that’s not the kind of darkness Jesus is talking about in the reading for this 4th Sunday of Lent. He’s talking about the kind of darkness where thieves and murderers lurk, the darkness that hides evil deeds. He’s also talking about the darkness we live in when we hide our jealousy under masks of false friendship, our greed under the disguise of hard work and thriftiness, our desire to run other people’s lives by claiming we’re only doing what’s best for them. He’s talking about the darkness we create whenever we turn away from justice, truth, and love. Sad to say, some of us prefer that kind of darkness rather than the light of honest living.

During this fourth week of Lent, ask where the darkness might be in your life and how, with God’s help, you may dispel it with the brightness of God’s light.

Igantian Series for Lent, Part Two

To hear the first part of a presentation on the second week of St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, click on Lenten Series at the top of the page.