Christ Trampled Down Death by Death

Both readings at Mass today, Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Lent, offer a paradox.  For Christians with the eyes of faith, paradoxes are not problems to be solved but mysteries to be appreciated.  Today's readings call us to appreciate God's love in a deeper way.

In the First Reading (Numbers 21: 4-9) saraph serpents bring death to the Israelites and Moses is told to "make a saraph and mount it on a pole" so that "whoever looks at it after being bitten will live." The cause of death became the source of healing. A paradox.

This anticipates what we will remember and celebrate next week.  At the Easter Vigil, in the Exultet hymn, we will hear that Adam's sin was "necessary" because it won for us such a great Redeemer. It's a "culpa felix" or "happy fault."  Paul repeats this paradox in 2 Corinthians 5: 21: "For our sake, God made him [Christ] to be sin who did not know sin...."  And, in Galatians 3: 13, he writes: "Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us...."  Jesus suffered and died as a criminal to bring righteousness to sinners.

Even more, he overcame death by means of death.  Throughout Easter, Eastern Christians, both Orthodox and Catholic, sing: "Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death and to those in the tomb restoring life."

In the Gospel (John 8: 21-30) we find another paradox.  Jesus declares: "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM...."  You would think just the opposite!  How can you see the One whom Jesus refers to by the unpronounceable Divine Name--God--in a crucified criminal?  Only with the eyes of faith.

On the cross we see the greatest act of love the world has ever known.  And, since, according to the First Letter of John (4: 8 and 16), God is Love, God is revealed most clearly on the cross. When Jesus is lifted up on the cross, we are called to believe: here is God, here is Love in the flesh!

The Meaning of Ashes

It's Ash Wednesday, the day on which I like to say that the Church puts death right in our face. We tend to avoid any thoughts of death, living as though this life on earth will go on forever. We know it won't, but we don't like to think about its end, our end.  But facing the fact that our life on earth will one day end can give perspective to how we live this life.  It can put us in touch with our end, our goal and purpose. Sin is what ultimately gets in the way of our attaining the purpose for which we were created--union with God and communion with all God's children.  Sin is what disrupts and even negates God's plan for humanity.  Sin is disorder.

That is the title of Mr. Jacob Boddicker's reflection for the Magis Center for Catholic Spirituality. Jacob is a Jesuit scholastic who is finishing his regency--that period of ministry in a young Jesuit's formation between his philosophy and theology studies.  God-willing, Jacob will leave the high school classroom where he teaches and head off to theological studies next year.  I think that his periodic daily reflections reveal the promise that he shows of being a great Jesuit communicator, both in the printed and written word. 

And so with gratitude to God for calling this fine young man to the Society of Jesus, I share his reflection for Ash Wednesday:

Sin is disorder.

Lent is an opportunity for us to repent and re-order our lives to God. The first words of Scripture we hear today reflect this reality: Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning. Why such things? They remind us that we do not live on "bread alone" (Matthew 4: 4) and that it is God who fills us with joy and peace (Romans 15: 13). By fasting, by accepting our deep need for God we return to the natural order of things and find peace for, as St. Augustine has said, "Peace is the tranquility of order." When all is right in the world, when we let God be God, we find peace and plenty for if God is our first desire, we are filled.

It is interesting, then, that so many Catholics who have in many respects turned away from their faith choose this day to return. There is something about the ritual of the ashes and the mark upon the forehead that draws them back. Some say they see it as an opportunity to publically announce their identity as Catholics; some just find the ritual of it to be otherwise rewarding. But what is really happening here.

God has burned down the Tree of Eden in the fire of His love and, scooping up the ashes He puts us in our place, as He did when He planted that Tree in the beginning. He does this through His Church whose ministers trace with the ashes the mark of the New and Everlasting Tree; He does this with the solemn reminder of who we are: "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Ash Wednesday is the day of all days that we remember who we truly are: creatures of God, not gods ourselves as was the first sin. We reject our self-idolatry and publically profess that God is God and we are not; is there any more radical statement we could make in the world today? Let this cross of ashes crucify our pride, and let us not forget the profound and fundamental truth that it proclaims: we are not God but are His creatures, fashioned from the dust of the earth. Yet though our first ancestors ate from the Tree of Eden and died, we are given a new Tree upon which hangs the Fruit of the Virgin's Womb, "the food that endures for eternal life."(John 6: 27) As we fast from the world let us feast upon the goodness of the Lord, who, for love of us, gives His very self as our food and drink.

Matter Matters

I was sharing some thoughts about Easter and Christ's resurrection with a brother Jesuit yesterday and he said "Matter matters." It's true. The resurrection of Jesus and the promise of our own resurrection shows how much the material world matters to God.

Death is the separation of the soul from the body. The spiritual element of the human person, the soul, is what gives life to the material element, the body. However, would it not have been enough for Jesus, after his death, to return to the state he had before the incarnation, before he took flesh in his mother's womb and was born? Why didn't Jesus return to the pure spiritual state he had from all eternity? Part of the answer to that question must be that God loves matter.

It wasn't enough for God to create pure spiritual beings with which he could share his love. It wasn't enough for God to create the angelic spirits. God created a whole material world on which to lavish his love. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, humanity "occupies a unique place in creation" because it "unites the spiritual and material worlds" (#355). We are both spiritual like the angels and material like the rest of the created world. We are spirit and matter. This "unique" creation is meant to continue into eternity. We were not created to die and then exist forever as an immortal soul or spirit while our material bodies decayed and disappeared.

But the Greeks of the 1st Century thought differently. For them matter was evil and the spirit was good. The body was of no consequence and when it died the soul was finally freed to live a good existence unburdened by matter. This is why when St. Paul entered into dialogue with the people of Athens (see Acts 17: 22-34) and told them that the man Jesus had been raised from the dead, many of them "began to scoff." The thought of a body being raised from the dead was ridiculous to them and they laughed.

The resurrection of Christ reveals how important the body is to God. It was not in God's plan for his Son to return to a purely spiritual state but to rise body and soul from the dead. Then Jesus ascended body and soul to the heavenly realm. A living and material body now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven to show us our own future. Christ has blazed a trail for us. Where he has gone body and soul we will follow, if we follow the path he has given us for our life on earth.

Christ is risen! We will rise too! Alleluia!

Loss and Gain

The Apostleship of Prayer has lost (and gained) a friend. A good friend and supporter of ours has died. As I thought about writing this, it came to my mind that while we've lost his presence here on earth, we've gained a friend in a place where his prayers can do even more good.

I wrote about Fr. Richard Tomasek last January when he wrote a message informing family and friends that the cancer with which he was diagnosed in June, 2010 had returned. He moved to the St. Camillus Jesuit community and care center in the Milwaukee area earlier this year and in the process donated all his books to the Apostleship of Prayer's national office. I met with Dick a couple weeks ago when such visits were shortened by coughing. The tumor in his lung had grown to a size that restricted his breathing and led to coughing spells when he tried to talk. In all of this he was strong and peaceful, worried only that the end could be a slow and painful process of suffocation. I couldn't help thinking how much this was like another great intercessor of ours, St. Therese of Lisieux, the second patron saint of the Apostleship, whose tuberculosis also led to her feeling that she was suffocating as she neared the end.

People around the world joined a prayer vigil for him so that in his final hours he would know he was not alone. Word that the end was nearing went out on Friday evening and Fr. Tomasek died at 4:05 PM on Saturday. I was not able to be there but another good friend of the Apostleship, Fr. Rob Kroll, who happened to be on retreat at the Jesuit community of St. Camillus, was there.

As we pray for Fr. Tomasek we also ask his prayers for us now that he has passed on to the Lord. I'm always reminded in these cases of the stories that are told of the early martyrs who, as they were being led away to death, were stopped by other Christians who had not been arrested and who would say to them: "When you get there. Put in a good word for me." Dick--Fr. Tomasek--please, put in a good word for us as we put in a good word for you now and pray that you are enjoying the vision of God.

The following is an obituary that my province sent out a few minutes ago:

Let us pray in thanksgiving for the life of our brother Fr. Richard A. Tomasek, S.J., who was called to eternal life on August 6, 2011. Dick died at St. Camillus in Wauwatosa, WI, after a long struggle with cancer. He was sixty-eight years old, a Jesuit for fifty years, and a priest for thirty-eight years.

Born in Waucoma, Iowa on June 18, 1943, Dick attended grade school and high school in Waucoma and in Lawler, Iowa, before entering the Society at Jesuit College, St. Bonifacius, Minnesota, on August 14, 1961. During his studies he earned a B.A. in philosophy and letters from St. Louis University, an M.Div. from Weston School of Theology, and an S.T.L. in Christian Spirituality from the Gregorian University in Rome. Dick was ordained on June 2, 1973, in Waucoma, Iowa, made tertianship in 1978-79 in Ranchi, India, and pronounced his final vows on August 15, 1980, at Sogang University in Seoul, Korea.

Dick's fifty years as a Jesuit were full of good ministry in many places. He was a teacher - of Latin as a regent at Marquette High in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, of theology at Marquette High (1974-1978), of English at Sogang University (1979-1982), and again of theology at Creighton Prep in Omaha, Nebraska (1982-1991). He served as an associate pastor on several occasions. Above all, he touched the lives of many, many seminarians in his role as director of spiritual formation at the Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio (1996-2004) and the North American College in Rome (2004-2009).

Dick had a gift for making friends of those to whom he ministered. He traveled well, handled foreign languages well, and made the most of modern media to stay in touch with the many people he helped journey through life. Even when his cancer appeared and he was forced to return from Rome to care for his health, he managed a final year of parish ministry in Tucson, Arizona before settling in at St. Camillus to prepare to pass to the Lord he served so faithfully.

To Continue Dying

When I was a student at Marquette University High School some 40 plus years ago, I first met Fr. Dick Tomasek. He was a Jesuit scholastic or seminarian at the time and I remember him playing guitar on one of the retreats we had. Since then he has moved into other ministries including several years as the spiritual director for seminarians at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio and at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. Fr. Tomasek is deeply devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a supporter of the Apostleship of Prayer. He shared this spirituality with the future priests that he helped to form. Last summer he returned to the States and during his annual physical check-up was diagnosed with cancer. He had a tumor on his heart and surgery was performed. Since radiation and chemotherapy for cancer in that area were not recommended, he began a dietary and exercise regimen to fend off any recurrence. He went to work at St. Mark's Catholic Church in Tucson, Arizona.

The cancer has come back with a tumor appearing behind his eye. Surgery was performed and radiation and chemotherapy were recommended. Fr. Tomasek will be returning to the Milwaukee area to begin this next phase of his life.

Here is part of a letter that he wrote to parishioners at St. Mark's:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am immensely grateful for the many Masses, communions and prayers for my recovery. May this true treasury, like an overflowing granary, overflow to your hearts with grace as well! The Lord has rather abruptly invited me to continue dying. Of course, sharing a bit of His Passion is my greatest joy and stirs up my desire for God and folks of heaven, toward which we all journey. All it is a definitive "Yes, FIAT, let your will be done" and eternal life in Jesus gloriously begins! I will be happy to offer my own "prayers, works, joys and sufferings" (from the Morning Offering) for your own immense needs and graces.

Fr. Tomasek is an example of the mystery of "offer it up." Every day is a gift. Every moment can be made a prayer when it is offered to God for particular intentions. Our lives are practice for the final offering that we will make with our last breath.

"You Know not the Hour..."

"You know not the hour...." These words of Jesus were spoken in relation to His Second Coming, but they can also apply to the hour of our passing from this life to the next. I thought of that this week because of Bob.

Bob was my step-brother-in-law. After my mother died the year after my ordination my father remarried. In fact, I presided at his wedding. One of the gifts of a priestly vocation is to be able to celebrate in a sacramental way the weddings, baptisms, and funerals in one's family. It's unusual, though, to preside at the wedding of one's own father. As a result of it, I've become part of another family and, though my father has since died, I remain a part of it.

Last weekend I got a call from Dan, one of my step-brothers. He informed me of Bob's death. I'd last seen him on New Year's Day when my step-family gathered for its annual Christmas celebration. Bob was 75 and was on his way to a health club to work out. According to witnesses, he put on the emergency flashers of his car and began pulling to the side of the road. Before he could finish, his car zoomed ahead out of control, took out several mailboxes, went through a culvert and hit a tree. Bob was dead on the scene. He must have felt the heart attack coming and tried to pull over.

I always enjoyed Bob. He had a beautiful combination of seriousness and humor. We played golf together with Dan and his son once a year. The emails I'd get periodically from Bob were either humorous, patriotic, political, or religious.

At his funeral on Wednesday, I talked about the pain of unexpected death. Though Bob went the way he'd hoped--suddenly and without a lingering illness--it's hard on family and friends who don't have the chance to say "good-bye." His family and many friends showed up at the wake and funeral Mass to do so, but it's not the same. One could say that his life was his farewell. I sensed that he was ready. He'd lived his life well. The love of Rita, his wife of almost 55 years; the love of his two daughters, their husbands, and children; the love of so many other relatives and friends--that love spoke of his love for them. While we didn't get the chance to say "good-bye" during his earthly life, Bob's love for us was his "good-bye." I think he left with no regrets and no unfinished business.

It strikes me: that's the way to live, since we know not the hour.