Easter Sunday: The Lord Is Risen! Alleluia, Alleluia!

The Lord Is Risen! Alleluia, Alleluia! 

    Christ has conquered death!

This is the greatest day to be a Christian – a brilliant reminder of the Hope that is in us.

     Let us celebrate with the joyful Easter Hymn, "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today":

Good Friday: Is It I, Lord?

"The Crucifixion", Rubens

    It seems all too easy for us sometimes to see the Apostles, in their bumbling humanity, as almost comic figures. There are a number of times, for instance, when they are arguing over which is greatest (Luke 22:24, Mark 9:33, and others), clearly missing the point of their Master's teaching. We see another example in last evening's Holy Thursday reading from John’s Gospel (John 13:6-10), where Peter just can’t understand what Jesus means when he washes the Apostles’ feet. Matthew shows us yet another instance of Apostolic confusion in his account of the Last Supper.  After the Apostles have assembled for the meal with Jesus, the Lord says a remarkable thing: "Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me." (Matthew 26:21).  Were it not so serious a moment, we might be tempted to laugh a little at the Apostles all frantically asking "Is it I, Master?" (Matthew 26:24).  On the one hand, you would think that they know their own hearts, on the other, well . . . maybe they're on to something.

    As it happens, not all of them doubt.  Peter confidently asserts, "Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away." (Matthew 26:33)  He’s in for a rude awakening:  Jesus gently corrects the man he named “the Rock”, saying "Truly, I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times" (Matthew 26:34). And of course he does. The other Apostles, as it turns out, had a better understanding of their own weakness.

    Yes, it tempting to put a comic spin on the Apostles’ reactions, but that would be a mistake, and not simply because they are holy people to whom we owe respect.  When Jesus says to them, "You will all fall away” (Matthew 26:31), he’s not speaking only to his Apostles, but to all of us who have been his disciples in the millennia since, as well as all those in the years  to come.  They all betrayed him; we all will betray him; I betray him.  Constantly.  That’s why we need the Sacrament of Confession.

    That’s also why we venerate the Cross and meditate on Christ's suffering on Good Friday: because on the Cross Jesus died for us, because of our betrayals, because we fall away . . . because I fall away, not just three times, but over and over again.

O Jesus, Who by reason of Thy burning love for us

hast willed to be crucified

and to shed Thy Most Precious Blood

for the redemption and salvation of our souls,

look down upon us here gathered together

in remembrance of Thy most sorrowful Passion and Death,

fully trusting in Thy mercy;

cleanse us from sin by Thy grace,

sanctify our toil,

give unto us and unto all those who are dear to us our

daily bread,

sweeten our sufferings,

bless our families,

and to the nations so sorely afflicted,

grant Thy peace,

which is the only true peace,

so that by obeying Thy commandments

we may come at last to the glory of heaven.

Amen.

Passion Sunday: Pick Up Your Cross . . .

Passion Sunday     

Today’s liturgical observance is officially called “Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord.”  The name reflects the dual nature of the liturgy, as the Mass is preceded by a procession with palms in commemoration of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, but the readings include one of the Gospel accounts (this year St. Mark’s) of his arrest, trial, and crucifixion.

     My “inner Pharisee” is sometimes tempted to think that this pre-figuring of Good Friday before the fact  is much like the practice of moving Ascension Thursday to a Sunday in order to catch people who can’t be bothered to show up in church on a week day, but that is not the case.  Even if there weren't many people who have jobs that won’t allow participation in the Good Friday liturgy, or are kept away for other reasonable causes, there are good reasons to turn to the events of the Passion before the Triduum, and the practice goes back further than one might think.  Prior to Vatican II the second Sunday before Easter was known as Passion Sunday (as is still the case, of course, in the Extraordinary Rite), which introduced the Passiontide, a two week period of more intense focus on the suffering and death of Jesus; in combining it with Palm Sunday, we have actually moved Passion Sunday a week closer to Good Friday. Christ’s self-sacrifice at Calvary is one of the most important events in the Liturgical Year, and really one of the most significant events in all of human history, so it is fitting that we don't just pass over it in a day or two. Placing the Passion at the center of this Sunday’s liturgy gives the direction for the rest of Holy Week, so that we’re already in the proper frame of mind before we reach the culminating events of Holy Thursday and Good Friday

     Combining Passion Sunday with Palm Sunday also gives us an interesting and, I think, fruitful perspective on the events leading up to the Crucifixion.  Very many, at least, of the people singing “hosanna” as Jesus rode into Jerusalem were not cheering for the real Jesus but for a fantasy Messiah who, they thought, would be a very worldly savior.   Many of these same people, most likely, were calling for his crucifixion a few days later.  Moving from the Palms to the Passion in the same liturgy helps drive home that reality for us, and our participation in both ends of the process reminds us (or should, at least) of our own complicity in the Crucifixion of Jesus (for more on this point, see my post “Palm Sunday: Who Are Those Cheering People?”).

     Too often we try to take shortcuts to rewards of various kinds without doing the hard work that those rewards require; today we are reminded that if we want Christ as our King, we need to pick up our cross and follow him.

Confession, Jonah, and the Prodigal's Sons

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 21 March 2016 on the blog Principium et Finis. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

I had the good fortune to be able to go to confession the other day. A part of my penance was to meditate on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). My confessor emphasized that the father in Jesus' story, who extravagantly welcomes back his wastrel son, is the true "prodigal". In the context of Sacrament of Confession we can see a clear identification between this father and the loving and forgiving God, with ourselves as the erring son who, having wasted his father's generosity, returns home chastened and knowing that any any kindness he receives will be more than he deserves. "Father", he says, "I have sinned against Heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son" (Luke 15:18).

"The Return of the Prodigal Son" by Jean Germain Drouais (angry son at right)

There is another son in the story, however, the Good Son, who remained faithfully at home and, as he tells his father, “ 'Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command” (Luke 15:29).  Angry that his erring brother is receiving a huge “welcome back” party, while his father “never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends” (Luke 15:29), the obedient son stubbornly refuses to come in and join the celebration.  He is, in fact, still obstinately standing outside the house at the end of Jesus’ parable, and the last thing we see is his father pleading with him “to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:32).

    Thinking about this second son, I was reminded of the story of Jonah.  I had never before considered how closely Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son parallels the last two chapters of the book of Jonah.  In the Old Testament book we see the people of Ninevah, like the Prodigal Son himself, whole-heartedly repent, and in turn receive whole-hearted forgiveness.  Who could object to that?  As it turns out, Jonah could, and does, object:

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said, "I pray thee, LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil.  Therefore now, O LORD, take my life from me, I beseech thee, for it is better for me to die than to live" (Jonah 4:1-3).

"Jonah, Seated Under the Gourd, Contemplates the City"
(Maerten van Heemskerck)

Jonah stays angry, at least as far we can see.  God tries to soften his heart, first with kindness, by growing a large plant to shield him from the sun; next, a harsher approach, in which he kills the plant and exposes the sulking prophet to the ravages of sun and wind.  Jonah’s heart is unchanged: "I do well to be angry,” he says, “ angry enough to die” (Jonah 4:9).  The story ends, as does Jesus’ parable, with the voice of the Father explaining to his angry son why it is better to show compassion for those who were lost in sin:

"You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night.  And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" (Jonah 4:10-11)

In both places, it is left unsaid whether the Father’s kindly words eventually pierce the heart of his unforgiving son.

    Which brings us back to Luke’s Gospel. The parable of the Prodigal Son is the culmination of a series of parables illustrating that, as Jesus says, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7).  He is addressing a group of  Scribes and Pharisees who were grumbling about Jesus, saying "This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2).  The angry son in the parable is obviously intended to represent Christ’s hard-hearted critics.  

    Scripture, of course, always works on numerous levels, and we can see other meanings in the unforgiving brother as well.  As I meditated on this passage I could see myself in this unlovely figure; as much as I can identify with the erring but repentant son, I can also be the judging, unyielding son who refuses to share his Father’s joy in the redemption of those who had previously fallen. Sometimes, amazingly, I can be both at once.

     In his way, the angry son is the worse sinner.  There can be no doubt that the first son has indulged in serious and destructive wrongdoing, but because it’s so obvious, and the consequences so inescapable, he knows he needs to repent.  The second son appears to be doing all the right things, and in fact he is . . . on the outside.  He is really like (again) the scribes and pharisees, whom Jesus says "are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness" (Matthew 23:27). The appearance of probity keeps him from seeing his own sinful heart, and he willingly removes himself from his father’s house.  Jesus makes the same point with a different parable in Matthew’s Gospel:

A man had two sons; and he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' And he answered, 'I will not'; but afterward he repented and went. And he went to the second and said the same; and he answered, 'I go, sir,' but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." (Matthew 21:28-31)

    This is, I think, a good point to consider as we approach Holy Week.  It may be that the inspired author of Jonah, and Jesus himself with his parable, finish with a open-ended question, because we, in the person of the (self)righteous son, are being invited to give up our stubbornness and embrace the Father's compassion. All of us need to throw ourselves on the mercy of God, Who in his prodigal love for us gave His only Son to suffer and die for our sins.  Who am I to place my judgment over His?

Evangelization, Free Will, and the Spiritual Works of Mercy

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 21 May 2016 . To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.
    

Why evangelize and pray for the conversion of other people? Are we just “pushing” our views on others and thereby impinging on their free will when we do so? This is a question that was recently put by a young non-Catholic Christian to an online community that I moderate. Now, I had never considered that informing or attempting to persuade somebody, much less praying for them, somehow interfered with their ability to make free choices; on the contrary, without free will, such efforts are pointless. Nonetheless, I have heard similar questions from other young people as well. Most young people today (and many older ones as well) have been formed in a popular culture that teaches that simply disagreeing with somebody can be a “microaggression”, particularly if the alleged microaggressor holds more traditional views, and most especially if those views can be traced back to orthodox Christian morality.  Given that, how can we respond to the question posed above?

Instructing the Ignorant: Mariano Fortuny's "St. Paul on the Areopagus"

    The first thing, I think, is to stress that evangelization and prayers for conversion are an act of mercy. How? Since we are all ultimately held accountable for the things that we do with our free will, we try to save others from the consequences of bad decisions, which is to say, sin. It is, of course, merciful to save another person from sin (and, potentially, from eternal damnation). Conveniently, the Church is currently conducting a special Year of Mercy, so we can put it in that context.  More specifically, I think we can profitably look at this question in terms of several of the traditional Spiritual Works of Mercy.

    Let’s start with free will itself. Even though our will is free, that doesn't mean that it isn't influenced by many things.  Not only that, we can't make good choices if we're missing essential information.  Let us suppose, for instance, that a friend is about to dive into a lake that has just been declared unsafe due to high levels of harmful bacteria. Informing him of the danger doesn’t violate his free will; in fact, it allows him to make a truly free choice, because it’s based on the truth, and not on a false belief that the water is safe. If it’s merciful to protect a friend from getting sick in this way, how much more so if we can give him information that can save his soul for eternity? This is the 2nd Spiritual Work of Mercy, "Instructing the Ignorant" ("ignorant" isn't meant as an insult; it simply means someone who doesn't know).

    We sometimes have the right information, but we may also have disordered desires (that is, attraction to sin) that lead us to do things that we know are wrong. Disordered desires such as greed, lust, envy, etc., pull our will away from what we know is right. Consequently, it often happens that a Christian who knows full well that a particular act, adultery for instance, is seriously wrong, follows his or her desires instead. The consequences can be disastrous for such a person and for others involved in his sin. It is merciful to point out these abuses of our will to each other, because in doing so we can sometimes bring a sinner back to right conduct. As an added bonus, we help ourselves as well, as Holy Scripture tells us:

My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and some one brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20)

This is the 3rd Spiritual Work of Mercy, "Admonishing Sinners" (and we are all sinners who sometimes require admonition).

   In the end, of course, none of us exercises our free will perfectly, and none of us can save ourselves: that's why we needed Christ to die on the Cross for us.  For that reason we "Pray for the Living and the Dead" (the 7th Spiritual Work of Mercy). When we pray for the living, we are asking God not to override their free will, but to give them the Grace (His help and support) to freely use their will in accord with His Will, and not according to their disordered desires. We also pray for the dead in Purgatory who are being cleansed of the consequences of the misuse of their free will, that God’s mercy might ease their passage into His Presence.

    We hear a lot less about the Spiritual Works of Mercy these days than we do about the Corporal Works of Mercy.  That’s a shame, because in the midst of the greatest material prosperity that this world has ever seen we have a vast sea of spiritual suffering. The world is full of people, including me and you, whose choices are hampered by ignorance, whose desires are disordered, and who are desperately in need of prayers. Answering their needs isn’t an imposition: it’s an act of mercy.

    

Brokenness, Evil and Hope

Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some . . .  in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street.    G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

    The reality of Evil is one of the great universals, one of the greatest facts of human existence.  The recent mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is just the most recent reminder that there are always people who feel the need to visit inexplicable pain and suffering on their fellow men and woman.

The Temptation of Christ, Ary Scheffer

     Naturally, we want to find a solution, a way of stopping these things, and it’s certainly possible to offer better protection, at least, to some innocent people. There will be, as there should be, discussions of what public policy measures should be taken to protect innocent lives, and it is to be hoped that such discussions can help prevent or limit similar attacks in the future (a possibility that is more likely if such discussions are conducted in a reasonable and objective way, and don’t become a vehicle for exploiting the latest tragedy to push a political agenda).

     Even if we do find a way to offer more protection to school children, however, or come up ways to shield other vulnerable people, there will always be another Nikolas Cruz, and another after that, looking to inflict unprovoked, senseless wickedness on humanity at large.  The problem goes back to original sin, as Chesterton points out in the quote at the top of this post. No public policy or law can ever fully protect us from the murderous rages of our fellow men and other manifestations of moral darkness; the Evil will be with us until the last of us returns to our Maker, as it has been with us since our first parents first heeded the sinuous whispers of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.   

     Not that this is news: our fathers in faith knew it 3,000 years ago.  In Psalm 10, for instance, we see:    

            In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;

let them be caught in the schemes which they have devised.

 For the wicked boasts of the desires of his heart,

and the man greedy for gain curses and renounces the LORD.  (Psalm 10:2-3)

Not only that, it is clear that the wicked often seem to get away with their misbehavior, and sometimes even appear to flourish:

His ways prosper at all times; thy judgments are on high, out of his sight; as for all his foes, he puffs at them.

He thinks in his heart, "I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity."  (Psalm 10:5-6)

To us fallen people in a broken world it does often appear that crime pays, and that vice is rewarded. It can leave us wondering what role a supposedly just God plays amid the carnage. This, in fact, is an argument often put forward by unbelievers (generally known as The Problem of Evil): if God is good and loving, why does he allow such horrible things to happen to good people?

     This argument makes a certain amount of sense, but only if we believe that this world is all there is. If the problem is something beyond us (such as original sin and the resulting loss of grace), it is only reasonable that the true solution lies beyond us as well, just as a God capable of creating this universe must necessarily operate outside and beyond it.  Psalm 10 looks to this God, not the strawman policeman god of the atheists’ objection:

Thou dost see [Lord]; yea, thou dost note trouble and vexation, that thou mayest take it into thy hands;

the hapless commits himself to thee; thou hast been the helper of the fatherless.

Break thou the arm of the wicked and evildoer;

seek out his wickedness till thou find none.(Psalm 10: 14-15)

     Of course, saying “it’s all in God’s hands” can sound like an evasion, an airy dismissal of brutally concrete suffering and injustice.  One of the reasons why pictures such as the photos of anguished parents and other loved ones that came out of Florida last week are so effective is that they put actual human faces on the tragedy; there are no corresponding photographs of Godly Wrath in the hereafter.  It is therefore all too easy for doubters to mock our prayers and dismiss altogether the reality of divine retribution.

Joel Auerbach/AP photo

     Sometimes, however, we can catch a glimpse of the bigger picture through the material clutter of this world.  For instance, I was especially struck by one in particular of the news pictures from the Florida high school shooting, a heart-wrenching photo which showed two anguished women embracing at the scene of the crime.  One of the women was distinguished by a large cross of ashes on her forehead.  The killing took place on Ash Wednesday, and the woman in the picture had quite clearly been to church that morning to “get her ashes” and to be reminded that she, along with the rest of creation, would someday return to dust.  The fact of our own finitude in this world and the ultimate destruction all our works is also part of the message of Psalm 10:

            The LORD is king for ever and ever;

the nations shall perish from his land.

O LORD, thou wilt hear the desire of the meek;

thou wilt strengthen their heart, thou wilt incline thy ear

to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,

so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more. (Psalm 10: 16-18)

“The Nations”, that is, all that seems most solid and powerful in this world, “shall perish”, and “man who is of the earth” can strike his terror for a mere instant before he’s gone.  What’s really solid and powerful is The Lord, the Champion of the meek, the fatherless, and the oppressed, and he is “King for ever and ever”.  For that reason the ashes we wear on Ash Wednesday are a sign of Hope.  Along with the powers and princes and bullies of this world, the pain and suffering of this world will also turn to dust and be gone. 

     Even more, these Lenten ashes, palm ashes imposed in the Sign of The Cross, give us a reason for hope greater than the human author of Psalm 10 could know. These ashes remind us that the God who is above and beyond did more than just incline his ear,

but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:7-8)

     The Cross points to the Infinite God who took on our limited humanity, and took all our pain and suffering on his own shoulders.  Not only does He truly accompany us in our misfortunes, He makes even the most horrendous of the injustices we suffer in this world a pathway of Grace, a path to Him. This is why we call those who suffer and die in his service martyrs, from the Greek word for "witness". They witness with their lives that God truly blesses us in our suffering.

     Again, the point is not that we shouldn’t work against particular manifestations of evil in this world.  It would have been a much better thing if the Florida shooter had been stopped, better still if he had never conceived the desire to destroy innocent life.  It’s just and appropriate for us to work to prevent such things from happening again.  The point is that we can never realistically hope to make this world a place completely free from evil: The Fall has given us a propensity to sin, and the father of sin will be with us until the end. Our true Hope lies in Heaven.

What's Up With Chocolate and Lent?

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 6 March 2016 . To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

To Give It Up Or Not . . .  

What’s up with the chocolate?  As I was driving home from work last week I passed a church with a signboard out front that said, “Lent: Give Up Chocolate, Not Hope.”  I kept thinking about it all the way home, both because I think the folks who put up the sign were trying to make an important point, but also because they were (inadvertently, no doubt) undercutting their message at the same time.  I had decided to to write about it, and took a picture of the sign Sunday on my way to an event at a Catholic church (not my parish church).  When I got to the church, as I was running through my thoughts on the first sign, I saw a second sign, or really a notice on a bulletin board in the hallway: “Don’t Give Up Chocolate For Lent.”  Hmmm . . . one tells me to give up chocolate, the other says the opposite. Well now, should I or shouldn't I? What's a person to do?

Lent Is A Season Of Hope

I should mention that the first sign appeared outside a non-Catholic Christian church, but I think that the good point it was making is perfectly catholic, that is, that Lent is a Season of Hope.  I don’t mean hope in the secular sense of the word, which often refers to little more than desperate wishful thinking.  Christian Hope is the confidence that, however bad things might be in the here and now, we know that Christ will triumph in the end.  The sacrifices and penances of Lent actually serve to reinforce that Hope, by helping us to detach from our hopeless reliance on the things of this world (pleasure, power, politics, money, and even family and friends - not to mention comfort foods like chocolate). In fact, the best sacrifice is when we give up something good, because even the best things in this world are insufficient. Our own best efforts are insufficient without God’s help. It’s no accident that God-Made-Man Himself was put to death through the cooperation of officials of the greatest religion and officers the most advanced government the world had yet seen; “Unless the Lord has built the house, they labored in vain who built it” (Psalm 127:1). The small austerities of the penitential season serve, at least in part, as a reminder that we don’t really need things, but we do need Christ.

Body And Soul

That’s where I think sign number one is in danger of sending a mixed message.  To my ears, at least, it sounds almost dismissive of the idea of sacrificing something concrete for Lent, as if it’s saying, “If you insist on giving up something go ahead, but it’s not really important; all that really matters is your interior disposition”.  Again, I don’t know if that’s what’s intended or not (one can only say so much on a roadside signboard); I certainly hope not, because while the interior disposition is the more important, the external action helps to form and direct it.  We are both body and soul, and as Christians we worship God made Man, so our faith is incarnational and sacramental. Unlike angels, who are pure spirit, we need to apprehend abstract realities through physical signs (I discuss this idea at greater length in a number of other posts, most fully in my post "Mozart, Herbert, John the Baptist, and Why We Can't Be Angels"). Therefore, giving up something without the proper interior disposition is pointless, but maintaining the proper disposition without reinforcement from the world of created things is, in the end, contrary to our nature, and therefore very difficult (which is why Jesus gave us a visible Church and Sacraments).

Maybe I Shouldn't Give Up Chocolate . . .

Here’s where the second chocolate sign comes in.  “Don’t Give Up Chocolate This Lent” is the slogan of Catholic writer Matthew Kelly’s “Best Lent Ever” program this year. His website explains:

Lent is the perfect time to form new life-giving habits and abandon old self-destructive habits. But most of us just give up chocolate. Then, when Easter arrives, we realize we really haven't grown spiritually since the beginning of Lent.

Lent is not just about giving things up, like chocolate. Lent is about doing something—something bold to become a better husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter, friend, neighbor, etc.

I don’t think that Kelly is actually opposed to giving up chocolate per se: in his book Becoming the Best Version of Yourself, he relates (very powerfully) how he broke his own chocolate addiction, and uses that as an example of how we can let things other than God become our master. This is, in fact, the purpose of the tradition of Lenten sacrifice. In promoting The Best Lent Ever, however, Kelly is using the giving up of chocolate to represent something else: here it represents the very different problem of going through the motions of a nominal sacrifice without really experiencing anything deeper.

What's A Person To Do?

    It’s interesting that both slogans are using apparently contradictory messages to make the same (good and true) point: that giving up chocolate (or coffee, or watching sports, or whatever) is not enough, that truly experiencing what the Season of Lent is meant to teach us requires much more.  They both also have the effect of seeming to trivialize the value of such sacrifices. To be fair, Kelly’s program offers plenty of other concrete ways of living out Lent, such as daily meditations, inspirational videos, etc.  I suspect that the slogan was chosen since it catches the eye precisely because it is so contrary to expectations.  The problem is that many more people, unfortunately, will probably see the slogan than will look into the program. Let's hope it doesn't encourage people to forego Lenten sacrifices altogether.

    As I said before, what's a person to do? Perhaps there’s no way to fit the both/and nature of a good Christian observance of Lent into a catchy slogan. Is there some pithy way we can say “Lent: Give Up Chocolate to Remind Us That Our Hope Is In Christ Alone”?  Or, “Don’t Give Up Chocolate For Lent If It Doesn’t Help You To Grow In Christ”?  However that may may, chocolate is not the issue: we can, in good conscience, either give it up or not. Whether we participate in Matthew Kelly's well-received program or follow some more traditional Lenten devotion, however, we should observe this most important penitential season both in body and in soul: let's allow the Word to become Flesh in our own lives.