Father
John
J. Lombardi
Like a few billion other people this year my
family and I tuned in a couple weeks ago for "the
Game"-the Super Bowl (I slightly feel like I'm
making a confession). I planned my arrival for "the
Game" when I thought I would meet the least
resistance to the usual pre-game hype and hoopla, but,
when I arrived at my folks it still was lingering-the
drama (trauma for many, esp. my Mom!), and
announcements, music, lights, cheering, excessive liquor
commercials and sensual sensations, and general
bloatedness of decorum. My brother said, at the height
of splashing cheers, lights, noise and bombast--
"indulgent excess." "Exactly," I
thought.
I read an article
recently-regarding Christmas-and the thesis seemed
bristly true from a secular point of view: Christmas,
really, is about excess-- money, gifts, parties,
capitalism, commercials, food and festivals-all adding
up to indulgence.
Back to football, (for
a moment). I went for the second half to a family's
house and was surprised to find all eight of them in Mom
and Dad's room watching the game (Mom was sick, in bed).
It was, actually, a great finish-dramatic, traumatic and
tantalizing. After much angst (and some snoring kids)
when the Patriot's won it on a field goal, we all
breathed a sigh of relief, not only for the underdogs,
but also for ourselves: like the rest of the cosmos we
couldn't have gone through much more excess-a
melodramatic overtime---that would have been a kind of
"athletic purgatory." We were thankful for
being spared the drawn out drama-how many more au
courant commercials, tantalizing time-outs, and
philosophical commentator analyses could we all take,
not to mention?
When watching the
"warm-up" for "the Game" and all the
additive-hype- didn't you just want to strip it all away
and say, "Let's get to the game itself!"?
Lent, like that feeling
and question above, is a time for pruning and purifying
the excess in our lives so we can get to God Himself-and
so, He can get to us. Whether it is food or drink,
clothes or spending, addictive behaviors, gossip or
anger-we all have some excess in our lives that is, like
the Super Bowl hype-preventing true union with the
Blessed Trinity.
For many Americans it
is an excess of things to do-"multi-tasker" is
the buzzword describing a person who wants to do
voluminous things in a given time or day…For
"video-excess" look at the TV screen: today
you can't simply watch one image on it; now there are
"scrolls" and "announcements" at the
top and bottom of the screen to fill our drive for more…Then
we fall into the temptation of the "You are what
you own" syndrome and spend exceeding amounts of
money on lifestyle possessions and wardrobes. For
technological excess consider how many things, gadgets
and electronic games families and children own and
seemingly need.
It seems we just have
too much in our lives and culture and are mired in it. A
favorite descriptor of our times, and which happens to
be a magazine article, is: "BURNED OUT AND
BORED." The writer describes how many Americans are
seeking more and more in life -new thrills, more
acquisitions, different and more fulfilling lifestyles,
and want of more money. And the more we get, the more we
want, and this then fuels more wanting and getting and
thus perpetuating higher thresholds of fulfillment, and,
unless a radical shift occurs, the vicious cycle never
stops.
Lent is a time to
analyze this enslaving cycle toward excess in our lives,
to "arrest it" and then begin to
"disarm" it. First, we can do this
negatively--by pruning and denying the reckless desires
within, and second, positively, by replacing these with
sacred desires (St. Augustine).
A Dominican priest once
said, wisely, "The spiritual life is not one of
addition, but of subtraction."- stripping away the
unnecessary material things in our lives, the mental,
inner attitudes (negative and wrongful thoughts), and
the wanton appetites that propel us blindly. This is why
the image and reality of the DESERT is so important in
our spiritual life: we must go out there, into the
"wilderness of challenge"-releasing the
seemingly-needed things of life along the way so we can
travel across the spiritual expanse, and enter into the
sweaty, toiling and perspiring process of purification
to pilgrimage more freely toward That Oasis of
Refreshment--God Himself-Whom alone can give true life.
We all need to subtract
(strip away), simplify (focus) and sanitize (make holy)
our outer and unregenerate lives (cf. Eph 4:22ff) so
Christ can dwell in us and use us as His instruments…
MEDITATIONS:
- Take a note from
Nature: God has stripped the trees and plant
kingdom, much of the environment around us of some
natural beauty and external adornment; in the
bareness we can penetrate to the inner nature of
things-what a particular tree really, more
intimately looks like; what a horizon manifests
without encropping leaves;
- What THOUGHTS, WORDS
or DEEDS are excessive, overlade with self, sin or
faultiness that I need to correct, purify
- How have I not
considered, by my excessive worry, pre-occupation,
others in my life-family and friends
- How have I neglected
the poor, sick and dying because of my excessive
self-concern?
- THE ATMOSPHERE OF
LENT: Our Glass Chapel is sparingly decorated. For
Lent all Catholic Church's atmosphere's inspire us
toward a spirituality of "LESS IS MORE",
so as to focus on the Liturgy itself and pruning our
own souls for God's glory.
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other Sermons by Father John J. Lombardi