Receiving Upon Giving

We are dust, and unto dust we shall return.*  So we are reminded today on Ash Wednesday, at Mass when we step forward and each one of us has a cross of ashes made on his or her forehead.  

And so begins Lent, our more intense period of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, over the course of about the next six weeks, between now and Easter Sunday.  Today at Mass the priest noted that in Lent, we are not only entering into a practice of more frequent penance in atonement for our sins.  During Lent, on Good Friday, we especially remember our Lord Jesus dying for us on the Cross to save us from our sins.  To contrast with our Lenten penance, today the priest pointed out that we are also anticipating the triumph of our Lord Jesus over death through His Resurrection on Easter Sunday.  

As we enter this period of intensified prayer during Lent, we may examine how we approach prayer.  As Pope Francis has inquired of us, in our prayer do we only ask God for things and thank God for things?  If we are focused on what we want, we are likely to experience difficulty in receiving what God wants to give us.  If we are preoccupied with what we want, we are less likely to be adoring and praising God and always rejoicing** out of gratitude for whatever God gives us.  Yet if we are excited about whatever God has in store for us, we practice another approach.  

I heard about such a different conception of prayer yesterday when I drove with someone else to pick up some items which were being donated to the Catholic Worker House.  As we traveled to, and later back from, our donor's home, my passenger was sharing with me how she has come to view prayer.  She described that when she is sitting down to read the Bible, she feels like she is receiving a gift.  It seems to her like she is opening a present, not knowing what is inside.  She suggested that when you aspire to truly receive God's Word into your heart, you do not know what God is about to give you: you do not know how God is about to transform you, if you have truly opened your heart to God.  You are not aware what specific spiritual blessings you are about to receive.  

Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, explained, "Our God does not want to know what we want, but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be able to receive what He is preparing to give us."  How can we prepare ourselves to receive what God wants to give us?  As Jesus tells us in today's Gospel reading, "When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret."***  By sitting motionless in silent solitude, we still and quiet ourselves alone, having removed ourselves from distractions.  We are well-positioned to listen to what God wants to say to us.  We are situated to receive what God wants to give to us.  

We receive what God gives us when we let go of our own desires.  We give up our desires also through fasting.  We tend to conceptualize fasting as giving something up.   Often we give up certain food during Lent, though sometimes people fast from social media during Lent.  Someone can fast from anything.  We are to fast from all things which separate us from God.  When we fast, really we are going beyond giving something up and are doing more than trying to live in greater simplicity.  When we fast, we tell God that we are willing to, and are trying to, subordinate our desires to His will.  As we fast, we show God that we seek to be submissive to His will, and thus obediently open our hearts to what He wants to give us. 

When we give something up, we receive something back.  When we die to ourselves, when we die to our desires, when we set fire to our desires and aim to reduce our desires to a pile of ashes, we try to humble ourselves.  God gives grace to the humble.****  

When we give up what we have out of love of our neighbor, we humble ourselves for the sake of love.  So it is with almsgiving.  When we give to those who are needy, we step out of our comfort zone to help others in their discomfort.  When we give out of our comfort, we are able to comfort the afflicted.  Saint Basil of Caesarea has said that the extra coat which is hanging unused in our closet belongs to the poor shivering impoverished person who has no coat.  Out of our comfortable wealth of unused property, we can comfort people who do not have what we have.  We can easily give them what they need but we do not need since we have more than we need.  

We can give away what we have to help others.  We can give up to God what we have.  We can give up, meaning that we can surrender.  We can give up ourselves to God.  We can surrender ourselves to the will of God.  In return we can receive from God the gift of simplicity.  We can receive back from God the amazing gift of total dependence on Him.  Realizing that we are to turn to God for all we need, then we are in a position to receive from God the gift of awareness of who we truly are.   

* Genesis 3:19 

** 1 Thessalonians 5:16 

*** Matthew 6:6 

**** 1 Peter 5:5; James 4:6 

Dying To Ourselves

How do we die?  Everyday we decide how and when we die.  Each and every day we are confronted with the dilemma whether or not we will die on a particular day.  At every single moment, we are forced to choose whether we are going to die to ourselves.  Do we die to ourselves, to our own desires, so we can live for our neighbor, so we can selflessly serve others?   

We find our prime exemplar of dying for others in Jesus.  In today's Gospel, we hear that 

Jesus and his disciples set out
for the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
Along the way he asked his disciples,
"Who do people say that I am?"
They said in reply,
"John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others one of the prophets."
And he asked them,
"But who do you say that I am?"
Peter said to him in reply,
"You are the Christ."
Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.

He began to teach them
that the Son of Man must suffer greatly
and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed, and rise after three days.
He spoke this openly.
Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
rebuked Peter and said, 

"Get behind me, Satan.
You are thinking not as God does, 
but as human beings do."*   

As humans, we think of ourselves.  We aim to survive.  We strategize how we can get ahead in life.  We scheme how we can accumulate wealth; we plot how we can protect ourselves.  We look out for ourselves.  If we think at all about others, so often they are an afterthought.  After we have planned for our own protection, usually then we see how we can help others out of the surplus we have, from our carefully established place of safety and security.  

God thinks not how we think.  God wants us to rely not on ourselves, but on Him.  He wants us to give of ourselves.  He wants us to give, and to keep on giving, not counting the cost.  He wants us to set aside our concerns about how we will live, and to depend solely on Him.  

God wants us to trust in Him.  We are to share what we have with those who need it.  We are not to hoard.  We are not to have so much that we have excess resources which we never use.  

Today I heard a story from a worker about an interaction he had today reflecting this very approach to life.  He is employed in a homeless shelter.  A homeless man showed up at the shelter, asking for some food and for some socks as well as a shirt, because he was wearing a ripped shirt.  The worker heated a plate of meat and vegetables for the man, and also gave him a bag of snacks.  He found some new socks and gave them to the man.  

However, when the worker looked for a shirt in the facility's clothing supply, he could not find one in the size which the man had requested.  So the worker thought of a few shirts of his own which he had happened to bring with him to work.  He checked and saw that one of his own shirts was the size the man wanted.  Although the worker picked up a shirt which used to have sentimental value to him, he gave it to the homeless man.  

Later in the afternoon, in a different storage area where he works, the worker saw a pile of shirts, including in the size which the homeless man had requested.  The worker explained to me that he did not regret giving his shirt to the man.  "He needed it; I don't.  It had been sitting in my drawer for months without me wearing it.  Now he's using it: I saw him wearing it before he left the shelter."  

We are to share what we have with those who are poor, as Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, who co-founded the Catholic Worker movement, urged when they would quote Saint Basil.  Saint Basil of Caesarea said 

When someone steals another's clothes, we call him a thief.  Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not?  The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.  

If we are not using something, by definition we do not need it.  Someone who does not have a coat needs the one we are not using.  

When we consider divesting ourselves of possessions, it becomes easier to imagine when we realize that we have pieces of property we are not even using.  It is easy to get rid of excess baggage when we realize that it is just weighing us down.  

It also becomes easier to let go of things when we see Jesus in our neighbor.  We become able to love our neighbor when we recognize Jesus in our neighbor.  Jesus is in our neighbor, yet He is particularly and especially present in those who are in dire need.  

Jesus has told us that whatever we do to the least of those among us, we do to Him.**  Jesus also explained that when we clothe the naked, we are aiding Him.***  

When we offer a piece of clothing to the poor person in front of us, we are extending a hand to Jesus.  When we extend ourselves to the indigent, we are reaching out to Jesus.  

Sometimes we do not recognize Jesus in our neighbor.  Then we find it more difficult to give of ourselves.  In that case, we can stretch out our hand to our neighbor little by little: we can give of ourselves a little at a time.  Dorothy Day said, "It is by little and by little that we are saved." 

My mind hearkens back to one particular day when I used to live at the hermitage with the monks I so love on the Big Sur coast here in California.  We were sitting listening to a Franciscan friar speak to us about how Saint Francis of Assisi had gradually divested himself of all of his belongings.  The Franciscan priest explained that even Saint Francis, a great saint who lived in extreme poverty, begging for alms to survive, had not unloaded all of his resources in one fell swoop.  Even Saint Francis let go of his physical property by little and by little.  

Dorothy Day was quite fond of Saint Therese of Lisieux, who boldly yet simply asserted that she would get to Heaven through her "little way."  She sought to live her life through offering little acts of love to her neighbor.  

For the vast majority of us, we will get to Heaven through making such choices to give through little acts of love.  Most of us will take the path to Heaven by being lovers in this little way.  
Of course we will hear stories of momentous change in people's lives, laced with dramatic overtures through monumental choices affecting huge numbers of people.  Today at Mass I heard about how Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto relinquished his will over to God, to accept the position, even higher than that of cardinal, to which he was called.  When he realized he was going to be elected pope, he began to weep.  In the end, the other cardinals convinced him that God was calling him to be pope, and so Cardinal Sarto became Pope Pius X, as he said, "I accept the Cross."  He not only became pope, but eventually was canonized as a saint.  

Even those who are elected pope struggle.  We do well to remind ourselves that humans always find it difficult as they strive to do the will of God.  Not only popes are called to be saints.  

As Pope Francis has directed us, "We are all called to be saints."  We can be sanctified, that is, we can be drawn closer to God, in all situations in our lives, even in the tiny, seemingly insignificant little trifles cropping up in our lives.  We can make many little acts of consent to God, assenting each and every day to God and to how He asks us to give of ourselves.  Little by little we can die to ourselves.  In tiny little steps we can give up our own desires and turn more and more to loving our neighbor.  As we open our hearts more and more to our neighbor, we open our hearts more and more to God.  As we love our neighbor more, we love God more and more.  We become more and more who God has always meant us to be, praising Him and glorifying Him through all we do.  We become who God, through all eternity, has always meant us to be.  We become love.  

* Mark 8:27-33 
** Matthew 25:40 
*** Matthew 25:35-36