Feast of Saint Joseph: an example of perseverance and responsibility

Holy Land Christians celebrate the Solemnity of St. Joseph on March 19th. Tekton Ministries, dedicated to St. Joseph, would like to share this reflection from our Holy Land partners.

Feast of Saint Joseph: an example of perseverance and responsibility

Lent Day 17 - Carry Your Own Cross

Jesus summed up his teaching with a word that must have been gut-wrenching to his first century audience: "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." Now, his listeners knew what the cross meant. It meant a death in utter agony, nakedness, and humiliation. They didn't think of the cross automatically in religious terms, as we do, for they knew it in all of its awful power. 

Yet Jesus places this terrible image at the foundation of the spiritual life. Unless you crucify your ego, you cannot be my follower. 

But how should we take up our own cross? It requires not just being willing to suffer, but being willing to suffer as Jesus did, absorbing violence and hatred through our forgiveness and non-violent love, thereby transforming it. 

We turn to Jesus on his cross and carry ours in imitation--loving what he loved, despising what he despised. We "come after him" through own sacrificial love.  

"We turn to Jesus on his cross and carry ours in imitation--loving what he loved, despising what he despised."

- Father Robert Barron  

Lent Day 16 - Turning Over Your Tables

From very early on, Christian theologians and spiritual writers made a comparison between Jesus' cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem and Jesus' cleansing of our hearts and bodies. St. Paul refers to the body as a "temple of the Holy Spirit." Your self, your body, your whole person is meant to be a temple, a holy place where God dwells and where prayer and union with God is central. It's a beautiful image: rightly ordered, we become temples of the Holy Spirit. 

This image leads to an important question: what goes wrong within the temple of our souls? The same thing that went wrong with the Temple in Jerusalem--what's meant to be a house of prayer becomes a den of thieves. All kinds of distractions came into the Temple, money changers and corrupt influences, those who turned people away from worshiping God. 

Today, we should ask, what distractions and corruptions have come into the temple of my heart and body? 

Lent is a terrific time to allow Jesus Christ to make a whip of cords and come into the temple of our hearts, and, while there, to turn some tables over, to flip things upside down if he has to. 

What would Jesus chase out of your heart if he had a chance? If you let him in, with all the wonderful fury displayed in the Gospels, what would he cleanse?   

"What distractions and corruptions have come into the temple of my heart and body?"

- Father Robert Barron  

Lent Day 15 - Your Life Is Not About You

In Jesus' last temptation in the desert, the devil led him to the parapet of the Temple and invited him to throw himself down, confident that the angels would support him. What was at stake here was the aggrandizement of the ego. What was the Temple but the place where God himself is worshiped? It was the high-point, the summit of Israelite life. To put oneself there was to place one's ego at the center of everything. 

In many ways, this is the very essence of sin; this is what, in a certain sense, all of us do. We make ourselves into God, which is to say, the center of the universe. We really believe that everything revolves around us and our needs, fears, and expectations. Everything ought to serve us. 

But one message at the heart of the Christian faith is this: your life is not about you. It is about God and God's purposes for your life. And so Jesus affirmed: "You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test." God tests people all the time in the Bible, but he himself should never be tested. 

A good Lenten question to ask is this: Are you the center of attention? Do you allow God to test you? 

"One message at the heart of the Christian faith is this: your life is not about you."

- Father Robert Barron  

Lent Day 14 - Disciplining Our Bodies

When it comes to our bodies, Catholics are not dualists or Puritans. We don't think that the flesh is, in itself, sinful or problematic. However, we do know that the desires of the body have become, through the fall, disordered. They are no longer consistently subordinated to reason and, consequently, these desires can appear in exaggerated form or assert themselves disproportionately. 

Thomas Merton once commented that the needs of the body--food, drink, sleep, and sex--are like insistent children that demand to have their way. Just as children have to be disciplined lest they come to dominate the household, so the desires of the flesh have to be curtailed lest they come to monopolize all of our energies. Merton said that we fast from time to time precisely to allow the deeper spiritual hungers to surface and be satisfied. The use of bodily discipline is thus a vivid reminder to oneself that the pleasure of the body is not one's determining and ultimate good. 

This is not unique to Catholicism. Stop and consider for a moment the activities that go on every day in the typical gym. People labor away on stationary bikes, elliptical machines, and treadmills; they sweat their way through pull-ups, push-ups, and deadlifts. In all sorts of ways, they discipline their bodies so as to overcome the natural tendency toward laziness and self-indulgence. More to it, these same people most likely deny themselves all sorts of pleasurable foods, resisting cravings. 

All of this punishment is in service of a healthier body. Why can't we apply similar techniques to produce healthier minds and spirits? 

Today, discipline your body in some small way. Maybe give up snacking between meals, only drink room-temperature water, or pray an entire rosary while walking. These simple bodily disciplines will undoubtedly strengthen your soul.  

"The use of bodily discipline is vivid reminder to oneself that the pleasure of the body is not one's determining and ultimate good."

- Father Robert Barron  

Lent Day 13 - The Portable Monastery - "Take the time."

What is prayer? Saint John of Damascus said, "Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God." When someone asked Thomas Merton to reveal the one thing he should do to improve his prayer life, Merton responded: "Take the time." 

During Lent, we must consciously take the time to raise our hearts and minds to God. We seek communion with God through friendship and conversation. But how do we do this in our busy lives? 

One thing I often recommend is praying in the car (or in the subway, bus, train, etc.) For those of us distracted by a thousand things, and who are constantly on the move, the car can be a bit like a monastic cell. It encloses you within a quiet, meditative space conducive to prayer. Also, as an added bonus, when you treat your car as a monastery, traffic becomes a welcome opportunity for more prayer and silence, rather than a cause of frustration. 

Now, I understand this will be easier for some than others. For example, mothers of young children may have a difficult time cultivating a quiet space. But to the extent that you're able, consider turning off the radio today. Put away your phone. Use your travel time to raise your mind and heart to God. 

Maybe you pray the Rosary, or perhaps you converse with God about your day. But whatever you decide, take the time. Turn your car into a monastery.  

"Turn off your radio today. Put away your phone. Use your travel time to raise your mind and heart to God."

- Father Robert Barron  

Lent Day 12 - A New Pitch of Existence

In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul writes, after meeting the Risen Lord in a vision, "I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil. 3:8). 

Paul encountered the risen Jesus Christ, and in light of that knowledge, everything else in his life seemed like rubbish, like a total loss. Paul became elevated to a new life, a new vision, a new pitch of existence. All his accomplishments and the great things he inherited seemed like nothing compared to this life that was opened to him in the resurrection from the dead. 

What does the Resurrection mean? It means the elevation of this life to a new pitch, a new perfection, a new beauty that we can't even imagine. 

Imagine a fish who spent his entire life under the sea, and then is hooked by a fisherman. He's pulled up out of the water and for one moment he glimpses this world of light and color that he had never imagined possible. Then he wriggles off the hook and falls back into the water. 

"I saw that world up there," he would tell his fish friends, "which I never knew existed! Yet now, compared to that, this ordinary world seems like nothing to me." 

That's what Paul is communicating to the Philippians in his letter. And that's the new vision, the new pitch of existence, we're moving toward this season of Lent.  

"What does the Resurrection mean? It means the elevation of this life to a new pitch, a new perfection, a new beauty that we can't even imagine."

- Father Robert Barron