Pilate therefore said to him: Speakest thou not to me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee?!  Jesus answered: "You would have no power over me, unless it were given you from above." (St. John 19.10-11) Fear, Shame, and the Illusion of Power So, the gates of the prison of your fear have been flung open ... Clapped in the irons of your guilt, bound to the biting of your flesh by cables of shame ... you now stand before the terrible and uncompromising magistrate ... whose name is Fear. To whomever, to whatever, we are brought, as the part or sum of all our fears – from whom, from what, we have of our own accord, in anticipating the sentence, already imprisoned ourselves for so long as against the day of the punishment to come – serving a sentence even before it is passed .... to whatever it is we are brought at the summit of our fear, we must hear the words of Jesus Christ, the Just One, as He stood before Pontius Pilate: "You would not have any power over me, unless it were given you from above." No one and nothing – not in heaven, nor on the earth or under the earth – has any power over us, except that God permits it for an end to which we are blind. Yes, Jesus is the "Just One", and we are not. The guilt may be rightfully ours. It may not be. But we are one in Him; live, move, and have our being in Him through our Baptism and through the Most Holy Eucharist. Do you think that what is upon you is unknown to God? Do you think he is blind to it? Deaf? Without compassion? Do you think that He loves you not? Can you look upon the Cross and say that? Are you not in His Hand? Are not the very hairs of your head numbered? Can anything come upon you except that He knows it? As Jesus did, commend yourself to the Father – just or unjust, guilty or blameless  ... a thief on the cross or a St. standing before it – we must utter what Jesus Himself uttered at the height of His suffering in the Garden of the Agony: "Non sicut ego volo, Pater, sed sicut Tu. Not as I will, Father, but as You will." God permitted even Pilate, Herod, Caiphas, and Annas ... in the illusion of their power ... to participate in our salvation – however unwittingly. God allowed their pronouncements upon His very Son, His Only-Begotten! They had no power over Christ. They – in the form of the world, the flesh and the devil – have no power over us. Only God does. Why do we fear the fulfillment of God's will in us, by whatever means? It is the best possible thing for us, and those around us – even if we are blind, one and all, to His purpose. Surrender to God, however He comes to you. Do not fear through whom or what He comes – they are His instruments only and can do nothing of themselves. You are His ... and He knows your heart. He knows that you are but dust and ashes ... He will not forsake you ... He will not forsake who comes to Him to do His will. Christ knows your fear. He feared, too. He also knew the victory. And you will know it, too.     With their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, "Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!"  (Numbers 21.5) Of Manna and Men   Lent is the journey out of Egypt. While the taskmasters were hard, there was always food on the plate: the fleshpots of Egypt, even as they were consumed in servitude. Slavery had certainty. However miserable, however squalid, however demeaning, it was possessed of predictability in the assurance not only of hardship but of freedom from gratuitous privation. Slaves did not starve under Pharaoh. To work, they must eat. Pharaoh understood this. So did the Hebrews. And so did God. When called out of slavery to freedom, they had to relinquish a freedom from for a freedom to. A freedom from uncertainty, hunger, and thirst – for a freedom to become a nation of God's Chosen People; a freedom from the sovereignty of Egypt to become a sovereign nation of themselves. In one and the same act, they embraced freedom even as they spurned it. There was, however, a price for this freedom from in order to become a freedom to. It was the price of certainty. And that is no small price. The certainty of food and shelter – the most basic of all that sustains man ... except God. They could trust to Pharaoh to give them their fleshpots, but no freedom. Could they trust to God to give them both? Pharaoh, for all his severity, demonstrated that he could feed them. This God of Moses, on the other hand, has apparently led them to freedom ...  the freedom to die in the desert ... but not because they do not have food, it is simply food not to their liking. With yearning they hearken back to the fleshpots of Egypt – where they would trade their freedom for sweet meats and sensual satisfaction. What is Egypt for you? What calls you back from the path that is often dry and weary, even as it leads to freedom, to the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey? You have emptied yourself of your sin, but have found your freedom bitter. For a while you have persevered, nourished on the Bread of Angels in the most Holy Eucharist ... until you tired of this Food purchased at the cost of your freedom from ... and looking back have longed for Egypt once more, for the fleshpots you could only indulge in through your submission once again to slavery ... the slavery to sin. It is not that God does not provide for us. The Manna is ours, confected for us, held out to us, at the Table of the Lord ... the Bread of Angels descends upon the Holy Altar at Mass under the hands of the Priest – the Very Body, the Very Blood of Jesus Christ Himself! But like the children of Israel, we soon tire of this miracle until we disdain it ... it becomes commonplace, trite, perfunctory, mechanical ... and if we survive the desert of Lent, we soon wend our way back to Egypt.     I hear the whisperings of many: "Terror on every side! Denounce! let us denounce him!" All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine. "Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail, and take our vengeance on him. ... But the LORD is with me ..." (Jeremiah Chapter 20.10-11") Of Pharaoh and Fear   Lent, we had said, is the journey out of Egypt, out of sin. We flee but we are pursued, as God's Chosen People were pursued by Pharaoh's army, reluctant to release the slaves – just as sin is reluctant to let go of us who were once the slaves to sin. We struggle away from it, we flee Egypt, sin ... but it sends out its hordes after us. Desire could no longer keep us in slavery. We broke from the desire and it no longer has power over us. How else, then, bring the fugitives back to the Task Master, to the sin they have spurned? Desire, concupiscence, has failed. If they cannot be lured back to sin through desire, perhaps they can be brought back through fear! Desire or fear, it matters not. The end is the same: slavery once more. Not only is the desert dry, but on its horizon it is endless. It is death. Who would flee the oases of Egypt for death in the desert? Even as it pursues us from behind, sin places this wall before us: and we find ourselves hemmed in on all sides: fear thunders behind us like the very chariots of Pharaoh, and hopelessness looms ahead of us in the desert of our despair, in the nothingness toward which we run for our lives ... even as we see our own bones bleached in the sand beneath us. "Terror on every side!" Who has not known it? That frantic plight between hopelessness and fear? You flee for your life at the cost of your death! Who has found the answer within themselves? None. "But the Lord is with me ..."   Through Him alone have we been delivered of our desires that kept us enslaved to sin. It was not in us. It was in Him. Through Him alone will we be delivered from our fears that would bind us as surely as sin and at same price of death – a two-fold death through sin and the fear that would bind us and deliver us to it. He vanquished our desire for Egypt. He will now vanquish our fear in the desert. What would bind us twice will be vanquished twice! Oh, yes, the storm clouds of the chariots of fear rise in fury behind us! But a Pillar of Fire, towering to the heights of Heaven itself, rises up before us from the nothingness of the desert and it will scatter our fears like chaff in the wind. What would bind us through fear will hurl us to freedom! ... because we have sat in the desert and trusted in the Lord, our God, before Whom the Pharaoh Fear himself flees in trembling ...       "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God". Lamentations of Holy Week   How painfully, how poignantly beautiful are the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah that we sing throughout Holy Week. Who can ever forget their haunting chants, unaccompanied by any instruments, the solo lamenting voices? .... followed by the antiphon,  "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God". These lamentations bring home to the human heart the suffering and desolation man brings upon himself and his people by sin, and how it is visited upon him through war, starvation and death. The Prophet Jeremiah foretold the fall and desecration of the the Holy City Jerusalem and all the suffering his people would experience because of their turning away from God and choosing to serve idols. These laments cry out unchanged through time: they are songs of sorrow that will follow us, that we will hear in our own voices as long as we live ... for they talk of ceaseless things: sin, fall, and its painful, ever destructive consequences. This time of Lent would be a good time to re-read these beautiful laments, to enter into this song of human suffering and to pray it. They serve also as a poignant reminder of what Jesus Christ our Savior came to redeem us from, how he took every human sin that had ever been, is, and ever will be, upon his heart and shoulders. There is no sin or degradation that is not fully known to the Lord of Glory. There is a majesty about these lamentations in their simplicity of expression and their ability to touch us deeply within. We live in a world where a desperate attempt is made to shield the human person from suffering, aging, dying – the world offers us so many false masks to wear, inviting us to join in the dance of false hopes and visions, that will never succeed. Jesus Himself said that we would always have the poor with us, and where the poor are, there is always suffering. These lamentations have the ability to shake us out of our complacency and invite us to look upon the face of suffering in our world today, they are as pertinent now as they were when the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed them! As you reflect and meditate upon the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ during these next few days, perhaps you could also open your Bible and reflect on one or more of the Lamentations. The answer to all this suffering is found in the antiphon, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God". Traditionally in our Holy Week Liturgy, these Lamentations are sung in our community on Good Friday – each one is lamented upon our long and solemn Way of the Cross ... they are such powerful reminders of the utter desolation our sin can bring us and others. In many monasteries, the lamentations are sung during the Divine Office of Holy Week ...  some religious pray them privately, it matters not. What matters is that we are open to their message, that we acknowledge our sin, and repent  – and turn to the Lord Our God.   A Poor Clare Colettine Nun       "At the Name of Jesus every knee should bend ..."   "Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth."   (Philippians 2.9-10) ...before the Most Blessed and Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar   Today you will rejoice upon His Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem ... and cast palm branches before Him in unbridled adulation. Next Friday you will pretend that you know Him. And when next you pass by Him – really and truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar – every single day thereafter, you will not so much as acknowledge Him with the bend of your knee ... You will celebrate yourselves – proclaim in song, in smug assurance, that you "are God's people" – even as you fail to celebrate Him right before you ... Whom a fortnight hence you had crucified. To bend your knee you must first bend your will.       The Curious Faces of Sin   The faces of sin, of course, are many. Anger, greed, lust, pride — we have seen, stood before, the menacing faces of sin and we instinctively recognize them despite all efforts to conceal or disguise the malice they portend. They contort and disfigure the face that leers at us, the face behind which the turbulence of sin implacably roils. We recoil from them in either fear or disgust — and we abhor them. The signature of sin is the same even as the faces change, but it is always inscribed on distinguishable faces, on identifiable persons. The sin, the malice, is personal — that is to say, it infects a personality, an individual to whom we have some manifest connection. In a sense the malice, the evil, is personified; it assumes the personality of another. Avoid the person and avoid the malice, a very reasonable and effective remedy — for us as individuals. There is, however, another and much less clearly defined (but no less pernicious) aspect of sin that we are far less disposed to recognize — despite ample and apparently futile lessons from history. While most of us grasp the existence of our own individual sins — and even more clearly the sins of others — there is little awareness of our own complicity in sins that lacerate us as a people, a society, a nation — even a civilization. This absence of the realization of an evil to which we contribute beyond our individual culpability, this failure to recognize the reality of collective as well as personal sin –essentially a recognition of our complicity in appalling moral enormities —- not through our acts but through our silence — is just as grave in nature (but more far-reaching and devastating in consequences) than most of our personal sins. The sin, as we see it, is not our own. It is not of our making. We do not will it, therefore we are not responsible for it. We recognize the evil. We lament it. But in the end, because we do not enact the evil ourselves, we have no responsibility for it. Now, multiply that by a society, a nation, a civilization, and we begin to understand the nature of collective sin, the sin for which all are responsible but in which no one personally participates ... It might be summed up in three words: "Let it pass. "Whatever the evil, whatever the injustice, whatever the oppression – in whatever form it takes – "let it pass." We do not see — it is inconvenient to see — that when we fail to raise our voice against evil, to stamp it out as inimical to the good, as irreconcilably contrary to a Law greater than any men legislate (and subsequently amend, discard, or abolish) in courts or seats of legislature, however august, esteemed, and established its venue. Whenever we fail to raise our voice, and simply "let it pass" – we have entered into complicity with that outrage through our silence. We fear to condemn it, to reveal our abhorrence of it ... to act against it ... and in remaining silent we promote it. Unlike individual sin which both confronts us and indicts us in clear and personal terms, collective sin is a much more subtle evil that attempts to elude the responsibility of the individual by diffusing and propagating itself in a social context. It is collaborative sin, sin that is only possible through the collaboration of the many. The Holocaust, slavery, and pornography come immediately to mind. And because it is so subtle it is extremely pervasive. In fact, we come to believe that the more pervasive it is, the less evil it must be. It is essentially morality as distributive, or more simply, morals as mathematics. In effect, "it is legitimized; it has become a matter of open policy, and since a majority are either practicing or condoning it, I myself cannot conceivably be held responsible for it, even if I loathe it. In fact, I have no right to personally object to what is publicly acceptable, and moreover, no legal recourse, should I choose to. So ... I let it pass." We may recognize the evil, but believe that we can abstract ourselves from it and place the fault, the responsibility upon others. We distribute the blame, the guilt, until it becomes so suffuse that it is no longer morally tangible. That failing, any residual guilt can simply be ascribed to some impersonal corporate body, to the vast number – of which we, in fact, are part. This amorphous corporate body populated by real but somehow anonymous persons, becomes our scapegoat when the core meltdown of moral imperatives reaches critical mass and can no longer be ignored without catastrophic consequences to the individual and society at large. We would do extremely well to reflect deeply upon the consequences of articulating morality through numbers. In Mel Gibson's, The Passion of the Christ, a very brief, but memorable moment occurs when, amid the violence of the mob, an old woman stands, looking quizzically upon the scene of personal carnage. She looks with detachment, indifference, neither incited nor perturbed. This is such a frightening vignette that encapsulates our moral indifference in the face of evil. Her indifference, coupled with her curiosity, makes her the metaphor of evil through omission, of complicity through indifference. In this sense, she is a more frightening figure than the soldiers. "Let it pass ... what has it to do with me?" Unknown to her ... everything, both in time and in eternity. Collective sin is malice through mathematics,; and because it is rooted in exponential numbers, it is inherently cumulative. So much so, in fact, that the individual sense of responsibility is diminished by the same exponent through which the collective sin is multiplied. There is a clearly inverse proportion between the magnitude of the distributed number and diminished responsibility. What, then, was your place, my place, in the crucifying of Christ? What is our place and what our responsibility in the starving of a child, in the "therapeutic" killing of a baby in the womb, of the little girl sold into the slavery of prostitution and pornography? Meditating on the Passion, how easily we abhor the weakness, the conspiracy of the crowd – failing to see that we persecute Christ in our brother, our sister before us ... with the same malice that motivated the Immolation of the Lamb ... when we ourselves are the wolves ... Do you still think that you can take refuge in numbers, loose yourself in the crowd? And how long will you continue "to let is pass" — until it comes to your own doorstep? A Poor Clare Colettine Nun       "I have grasped you by the hand; I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, To open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness."                                               (Isaiah 42.6-7) A Dark and Deadly Belief   Blessed words! Hope beyond measure! Hearken! "to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness." How many of us live in the tomb from which Christ called Lazarus! Bound by our fears, our shame, all the sins that we have spun around us like winding cloths upon the dead, binding us to the point of paralysis, throttling our voices, covering our eyes – smothering us to life, we are as the living dead. The mess we have made of our lives! The sins of which we are guilty! The shame that burns on our faces! We dare not approach the exit from the tomb, dare not venture out into the light, but like leprous dead we tie the cords around us more tightly with every passing year ... Is there a fate worse than this? A greater mutilation? A death more terrible? To die before we die? To imprison ourselves in our guilt when God Himself calls us out? The light, we fear, will do more than blind us who are so accustomed to darkness and death – it will reveal us – uncover all our shame, our guilt, our lies, our deceit, our sin! Only that long-cherished and deadly belief is the pain worse than the living death; it is this pain, this mistaken anticipation of greater pain still, that keeps the rock across the exit of our tombs! But what has God told us? "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow." (Isaiah 1.18) You are forgiven! Forgiven! It is past, done, forgotten, erased. They are no more! ... "Behold, I make all things new!" (Apocalypse 21.5) We who live in the dungeons we have carved out of the guilt and sin in our lives; we who dwell in darkness that knows no light because it knows no forgiveness – this week begin to understand that the Light has come! It bids us come forth! It calls us to leave the death we have chosen, to sunder the cables of sin that lacerate our hearts! To throw off the habiliments  ... habiliments of the dead that have no place upon the living. Yes, you were once dead in sin – but no more! If the Son of Man sets you free, you are free indeed! If He forgives, who can condemn? If He remembers no more, who will recall what is no more? Do not look at men! Do not look at those surrounding the valley of death in which you have set your tomb – fix your eyes upon Him Who stands in the middle of it – at the very gate of your tomb ... and calls you out! He sets you free! When you emerge all the burial clothes that you have wound so tightly around yourself will fall to your feet ... and you will step out, and know Life – for Christ Himself calls you forth from the dead! There are two deaths of two deaths. One is holy and one is not. There are those who, for the sake of God, die to themselves for the Kingdom, while yet alive, and live... these are the the holy. And there are those who, for the sake of men, die before they die, never knowing life, and while yet alive are dead. This is the ugliness of sin that mutilates us and brings corruption even to to living flesh! He calls. Do not worry if your are found naked when the shroud falls to the ground: you will be clothed in new life. In  Jesus Christ Himself. – in Whom death is no longer ...     Betrayal and Judas: Paradigm and Inflection   One of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?" They paid him thirty pieces of silver, and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over ..."  (St. Matthew 26.14-25) We betray others – and sell ourselves – so often for such a paltry return, for some trifling personal gain or some fleeting temporal recompense. More often than not we betray others for profoundly selfish reasons, as a means of extricating ourselves from blame, as an act of subtle or less than subtle revenge, for emolument ... in one way or another we are all guilty of betraying the love and confidence of others, of something which has been entrusted to us. The very word itself is fraught with withering darkness. Betrayal means calculated disloyalty to another, the breaking of innocence in the breaking of trust; it is to lead, with purpose, another astray or into error. It has a rich and varied parlance: to sell down the river, to mislead, to stab in the back, to misguide, and all of us have known of its bitter, bitter fruit. Until we ourselves are the victims, we do not fully comprehend the compromising of trust as a tremendously and intrinsically destructive breach between individuals, the effects of which can be far reaching beyond our anticipation, and long lasting, perhaps even irreparable. Judas betrayed Christ. His name has become synonymous with betrayal, infamy. Bt none of us may stand in judgment of Judas. His weakness is within us all. However  reluctant we are to concede the weakness, it intrinsic to our fallen human nature from which none of us can prescind. It is just one deleterious aspect of a deep moral fissure resulting from the Original Sin we inherited from Adam and Eve. The heart of Christ was one of perfect love and forgiveness. Judas knew this. He saw it day in and day out as he walked beside Jesus. He saw it in everything Christ did. Judas' betrayal is, in the face of this, a great mystery, something the Father allowed for His purpose – but Judas's greatest sin was not his betrayal of Christ, but his despairing of God's forgiveness. Both Peter and Judas betrayed Christ. The paramount difference, as most know, is that Judas despaired ... while Peter repented. What is very important to understand is that while Judas is the paradigm of betrayal, each of us has been, at one time or another, an inflection of it. Yes, Judas betrayed Christ. But so did I. So did you. Our betrayal has simply been less publicized, but so often no less notorious. For this reason, the consequences of betrayal and the endemic nature of betrayal through sin, should be kept in our minds and hearts. It is a necessary remembrance, for it will assist us in resisting sin – which is always a betrayal. resist the terrible sin of breaking the trust of another human being, and at the same time, what one is really doing is breaking a child's trust, for we are all, each of us, despite the masks and pretences that we wear, we are each children, vulnerable and fragile. Trust, to be trusted, to be found trustworthy, is not simply conducive to love, but enhances love, enabling it to grow beyond all the uncertainties that would would otherwise impede it, constrain it...... it is the nurturing of a beautiful bond between persons. This point is well illustrated in the story of the father who placed his young son on a table and urged him to jump into his arms. While apprehensive of the height, the trusting child nevertheless flung himself toward his father  –-- who let the child fall painfully to the floor. "Let that be a lesson, son. Trust no one." It is very likely that the child never did. We must never be that parent, that spouse, that friend. For everyone who leaps in trust to our arms ... is a child. Broken trust can be healed through the renewal of trust. It is possible. All things are possible with God. But if the breach has been deep, the journey to renewal may be long and arduous – and that is all the more reason why we should reflect well upon our words before we speak and give thought to any act in anyway that may damage that innocence implicit in trust. If truly you can find no occasion within yourself in your dealing with men,  know that you do with God. How often we betray God. All of us. Every time we sin. How often! ... and how are we requited? We encounter His great love and mercy ... His forgiveness. Having been dealt with mercifully, can we do less to those who have betrayed us? Whatever their purpose, our purpose is Christ – in Whose love, by Whose love, we are bound to requite them as Christ requited Peter ... and you ... and me ... A Poor Clare Colettine Nun     HOLY THURSDAY "I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also." (St. John 13.15) The Bread of Angels ... and the Sons of Men   And so, my son, you come to me this day and tell me what my heart has ever known ... You wish to be a Priest. How my heart thrilled when you spoke these words, and how it suffered, too. You are my son ... one with my flesh. You are a heart in my heart. You are loved beyond measure. You have yet come to count the years, as I have, and how they diminish, turn upon turn – how swiftly they pass as a fragrant summer breeze through an unchanging Cypress at the edge of time. They pass, my son, and you know not where. You have counted neither by pleasure nor by pain, for the days and youth are endless before you ... and the Finger of God has rested upon your heart. Already you have seen beyond that Cypress shade that gathers all winds, to the stillness of God in unquenchable light that stirs your soul into sacred silence. You have heard the voice of God. Somehow you have seen the whited and the shimmering fields that dance uncut and gathered not to God. And now He sends you, my beloved son, at the noon of youth, into the field He sowed and you must reap! The secret anointing that comes from on High has been poured out upon you. Angels in alabastered albs have gathered round you, but only you have heard the whisper of their unseen wings – that will tremble at your very side around the Altar of the Living God, when under gentle hands you will make present God to feckless man. My son! My son! That path of thorns! Cruelly crowned will you accept this christening of the Crucified? Be unto men another Christ, bless, heal and sanctify ...? Accept the scorn of a disbelieving world? Pronounce remission of the searing sin? Confect the very Body of the Immolated Christ? Make, too, this wine, the very Blood of God? My son! My son! Flesh of my flesh will you, too, raise your hand to heal ... and bless the lost, the blind, who will come to you to find the face of Christ ... to hear His voice within your own? Son of my flesh, you are more the son of God! What he has chosen; what you have chosen ... too, I choose ... accept my blessing still. Hands I once kissed in utter infancy ... will they now bless me in my gathered years? Your children, how will you number them? Of grace you will so far exceed what would spring forth from all your fertile years! Go, my son, and be father to the fatherless, beneath your consecrated hands bring Jesus Christ to men ... be Christ unto them in all your words, be Christ unto them in all your ways. Behold, my son, the whitened fields! In joy go forth and gather them! Put forth your hands and multiply ... the Bread of Angels and feed the sons of men. Go with my blessing who first was blessed by God ... in thee!