ANNOUNCEMENT OF LENT 2002
Escuela Catekumenal
Provinces of
Camarines Sur and Albay
OPENING PRAYER
INVOCATION TO THE HOLY SPIRIT
Proclamation: Hebrews 9:1-14
Theme: LENT – THE CHRISTIAN YOM KIPPUR
I.
JEWISH YOM KIPPUR – Day of Atonement (See Ex. 26:33,
Lev. 6:14, Heb. 9:2) or equivalent to Muslim “Ramadan”
A. Origin
1. Exodus Event – 40 years of
Desert Sojourn
Why did God bring Israel in to the desert?
1.1
To learn discernment through the wisdom of the Lord.
“The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord” (Sir. 1:14, 20). To scrutinize the word “fear” in the
Scriptures, there is something that comes ahead of fear, which is “to live as
foreigners.” Hence, in the desert, it is possible that Israel will learn to
live as foreigners, to uproot themselves, not to settle down so that they could
do nothing but to rely completely on God for the bread that comes from heaven
(for the word of God). Thus, they will live in the “today” (=give us today our
daily bread”).
1.2
To submit themselves to the Torah (=the Shema): “To
love God with all their heart (temptation of miracles = prayer); to love God
with all their strength (temptation of bread = Fasting); to love God with all
their mind (temptation of idols = almsgiving).
The Torah is:
a.
To love God with all their mind is to understand the
meaning of suffering;
b. To
love God with all their heart is to accept the true way, the way of the Law,
that leads to life; and
c.
To love God with all their strength, with work, does
not allow Him to be represented with works of art, with statues and images. To
work with their strength is to earn money. Religiosity is something useful for
worldly people, because people tend to make use of religion in order to better
their life. They wanted to have mute images and statues from which to ask what
they wanted by means of rites and sacrifices. Israel must learn to love God with
all their strength and to understand a religion which they cannot use for their
benefit, for their advantage.
B.
The meaning of Yom Kippur – Atonement for the sin of
Apostasy (See Ex. 32), which was after the 40 days of fasting for the
Israelites:
1.
Moses’ 40 days and nights on Mt. Sinai
in order to receive the Law from God;
2. Israel
took to idol-worship and self-indulgence (1 Cor. 10:6-10).
C. The
Feast of Yom Kippur: After 40 days of fasting:
1.
The Blood of expiation brought by the High Priest
inside the Holy of Holies; a curtain hangs between the Holy Place and the holy
of Holies, and the High Priest enters it only once a year, i.e., only on Yum
Kippur;
2. Escape
goat -
II. The
CHRISTIAN YOM KIPPUR
A.
Origin – Jesus Christ, our escape goat in His act of
redemption.
1. Desert
temptation – 40 days and nights of fasting;
2. When
under temptation of the devil, he submitted to the ‘Shema’ – to love God with
his whole mind, whole heart and whole strength.
3.
Jesus Christ CRUCIFIED is the christian Shema – the
lamb of expiation bought with the coins of the two poles of the Cross – has
accomplished our redemption, expiation and atonement as the Eternal High Priest
of the New Covenant (Heb. 9);
4.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (= the emergence of
His Mystical Body, the Church) is the justification of mankind. The Apostles
saw the resurrected Christ for 40 days, after which came Pentecost.
The
resurrected Christ” With the Resurrection, Christ superseded the OT (In the OT,
there is the sacred and the profane, and the Temple where God was worshipped and
glorified.) With Jesus Christ, there appeared the Church, the Risen Body of
Christ. In the Church, there are no temples, no altar, no priest, and no
sacrifices. Only the liturgy of Jesus Christ, risen and living in heaven,
interceding with the Father. And now we are taken up in His liturgy as head of
his Mystical Body, the Church.
B. Lent
(Cuaresma, from Lat. Quadragesima,” or 40th)
1.
Early Church (an Archetypal Church):
Everything was centered on the Resurrection. They celebrated the Jewish
Passover in their homes with the Christian Eucharist. Later, the Resurrection
feast was celebrated both with Baptism (=the fish) and the Eucharist ( =the
bread). The Resurrection was not something anesthetic or moralistic religion
but a genuine PASSOVER, a passing from this world (from the flesh ans from
slavery of the Devil through the long process of Baptism) to the Father
(through the celebration of the Eucharist as the heavenly liturgy). Hence, from
Passover (Baptism) to Eucharist (Thanksgiving for the continuing gift of
redemption) or FROM FASTING TO FEASTING.
2. In
the Constantine
Church (the Church from 313 A.D. onwards), Lent was 40 days and nights of
Penance and conversion.
2.1. In the 3rd
and 4th Century A.D., there appeared the HOLY WEK CELEBRATION, as a
way to reproduce theatrically and hysterically the deeds of the Lord Jesus.
2.2. Then, Holy
Week was lengthened to replace that lost Catechumenate (=long period of
preparation for Baptism in the Early
Church);
2.3. Penitential character of Lent. When masses of people (mass baptism
was then in practice, then practiced by infant baptism) entered the Church
without the benefit of a long Catechumenate, the Church had to impose a 40 days
period of Penance. Thus, the Order of Penitents appeared; first, during Holy
Thursday, then moved to Ash Wednesday, when public sinners were imposed with
ashes. Now, not only public sinners were imposed with ashes, but everybody
(ministers and people alike) had to wear ashes on their foreheads on Ash
Wednesday as a sign of “conversion and belief in the Gospels.” Because of this
Penitential character of Lent, its character became sad and somber, and people
afflicted their bodies with penances and sacrifices (See Col. 2:23). Whoever
committed a mortal sin, has harmed the Church. Therefore, in order to spare the
Church of further harm, not to be guilty on account of public sinners, the
Church imposed a Penance on everybody. Everybody was then considered a public
sinner, needing conversion and the imposition of Penance during this period.
2.4. For the Constantine Church, Lent was a summary, the relic of what
used to be a Catechumenate. As proof of this, look up the gospel readings for
the Cycle A of the four (4) Sunday liturgies of Lent:
1st
Sunday – Temptation (For Firs Step);
2nd
Sunday – Transfiguration (For Shema);
3rd
Sunday – Samaritan Woman (Initiation to prayer I)
4th
Sunday – Resurrection of Lazarus (Election).
3.
Reformed Church
of Vatican II – Because
God wants to reform His Church, hence we have rediscovered and recovered the
CATECHUMENATE.
That Catechumenate is not
something sad, because we are happy since God is with us (presence of mind).
Just as an
example: Very few people are here tonight, few have been called, because the
Catechumenate, though it starts with a large group, will end up on its caravan
with a small group who will finally enter the Feast, the Rest and the Promised
Land. Many die in the desert, and many will be taken away or will be caught by
the Devil, to be returned back to Egypt, because the 40 years of Israel in the
desert and the 40 days of Jesus’ fast in the desert are a PARADIGM, an image of
the Christian Initiation, of the preparation which God is doing in the
Catechumenate (=school of faith).
We therefore
have to experience life in the desert once more, to be brought back to the
desert during this Lent. How? By means of simply observing fast, prayer and
almsgiving. The sufferings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ were his
ways of fulfilling in his flesh the Shema. All these were celebrated in the
Christian Passover, the pass over from Baptism to the Eucharist (FROM FASTING
TO FEASTING).
The
Catechumenate therefore has directions, a way, a desert to travel and stay. We
have been set free and put in the desert on a caravan, in a community, and God
has a direction in our life. We already had been pulled from the slavery of our
selfishness, our ego, from the slavery of the Devil, because the Devil uses our
ego to make us fall.
Why did God
bring us into the desert (the Catechumenate) like the Israel of long ago? To learn the
faith, THE CHRISTIAN SHEMA (=to love God with our whole mind, our whole heart,
and our whole strength).
3. a To love
God with our whole mind (=to know the meaning of suffering). Suffering has a
redemptive value. For example, the sufferings and death of a chicken killed
during your birthday is meant to redeem your life for the next coming year to
convert your illnesses, bad luck, financial losses, and even from the danger of
an occurring death.
Redemption is
to atone for the sins of the flesh, the world, and the Devil (idols) (= or to
atone for the temptation for bread, miracle, and idol worship) in order to love
God with our whole mind, whole heart and whole strength.
Hence, we
also have the gift of discernment, to discern whether we are doing the will of
God (= the laws of Nature) or the will of the Devil ( = the unnatural laws of
artificiality and violence).
Discernment Faith Vision of God Fear
“To love as foreigners”
What is
really meant by being a “christian”? To be “foreigners,” to be parishioners
(=pilgrims, foreigners), which is to say “not to be rich, not to settle down,
not to be attached to things, to money, or to people, as the Psalm says, “a
rich man who lives in abundance becomes like an animal, he does not understand
anything.”
Acquisitiveness,
which is part of the spirit of free enterprise (laissez faire) syndrome, blurs
one’s vision so that one can no longer see life as a link and a solidarity with
the rest of humanity” (Prof. Amable Tuibeo, “Philosophy: An Introduction).
Yes, to have
the gift of our understanding, of discernment, one has to live as foreigners,
as travelers, in the fear of God, living in the “today” of God (=”If today you
listen to His voice, do not harden your hearts” or “You are my Son, TODAY I
have begotten you”), knowing precariousness, poverty, or not settling down and
despising everything.
“The greatest
courage is the courage to let go.”
Whoever is
still attached to anything, or to someone, is no longer free, he is weak, a
slave already. Whoever owns something, he defends it and he makes enemies with
those who try to take it away.
Hence, to be
free, give everything away to the poor, to those who suffer from lack: “Go,
sell your goods, give the money to the poor, then come and follow me” (Lk.
18:22).
The Lord
Jesus wants you to sell everything in the sense of getting detached from
anything, from anyone, in order to live with them freely, and to freely serve Jesus
Christ (to live with freedom).
In view of
Baptism, you are called to rule, to be kings, and not to be slaves of anybody,
or of money. Because you are rich and still attached to your money, then you
are not free, you are still slaves of yourselves.
Why are some
people still attached to money?
The 7 capital sins are all interrelated:
Pride – the
proud man is avaricious (=greedy); the avaricious is lustful (=always desiring
fro affection, for the pleasure of the flesh, for recognition and promotion in
work, and the enjoyment which money can give); the lustful is always angry
(=because he has infinite desires and expectations which he could not meet and
therefore will want to get them from others by force (see Jas. 4:1-3); an angry
man is glutton (= an angry man tends to eat too much); a glutton is envious (=
he desires the goods and the happiness of others); and the envious man is
slothful ( = lazy, always avoids any heavy work).
Do you want
to break the chain of these sins in your life? Attack pride with humility.
People are always restless because they are proud. Start being humble, because a
humble person always forgives others even before they ask his forgiveness. No
need to approach one who is humble in order to apologize or ask forgiveness
because a humble person understands you and has forgiven you already even
without asking him.
Humility is
truth: the truth is that we are all sinners, we all have shortcomings, because
we failed to reach the mark ( = perfection)! The humble person understands you
even if you get angry at him because he also gets angry himself. There is no
need to apologize to a humble person because he knows that he is worse than
others. The humble person lives in the truth and the truth is that we are all
sinners, and Jesus Christ really gives us his life to free us fro this state.
To overcome
this temptation of idolatry, we need to give alms to the poor (= those
oppressed (inaapi), downtrodden, the marginalized sectors of society, the
exploited workers in our workplaces, in factories, stores or shops, and in our
own households (= those who bring us wealth. Wealth is equals to savings
multiplied by time).
To love God
with our whole mind is to accept being rejected, because we do not understand.
Almsgiving –
is against the temptation to settle down, to be rich. Give away one’s goods, to
uproot one’s self, to start walking again like strangers, like foreigners, like
a parishioner (=pilgrim).
Death, our
birthday to eternity, our DIES NATALE, is waiting for us. We are walking towards
death. All of us must die, that is why many of us become ill or fall into
sickness, many die and must die. All (rich and poor alike) in society will
someday end up in a cemetery.
Our life has
a direction – a PASOVER. The day of death is our last Passover – to pass from
the world to the Father, to take sheaves along with us (=people who will be
saved).
3. b To love
God with our whole strength is not to worship one’s work and labor. Loving God
with our whole strength does not allow him to b worshipped with work of art,
with statues and images (i.e. symbolized by the
Golden Calf). To work with one’s strength is to earn money. Religiosity
is something useful for worldly people because people make use of religion in
order to improve their lives financially. They wanted to worship mute images to
ask for things or money so that these cannot complain. Israel must learn to love God with
their whole strength and stand a religion which they cannot use for their own
advantage or benefit.
The fact that
man has made himself as God, or a god, by freely using his free will out of
envy of the devil. Because if God is wonderful in His works of creation, as
uncaused and afinal cause of all things, the greatest marvel is that he has
created us freely. Life is something enormous because everything is holy! So
much so that whoever has the holy spirit dwelling in him, knows that man’s life
is a liturgy. Your life is a liturgy, and it has a ritual book, the Psalter,
where your whole life has been written down. Now God wants us to live our lives
as in a temple. Your life could not be a life of holiness because, as
christians, you are called to be holy. What does it mean to be holy? To climb
the cross with Jesus Christ in loving God with our whole strength in the
Church. In the church, there are no temples, no altars, no priests, and no
sacrifices. Only the liturgy of Jesus Christ, risen and living in heaven,
interceding with the Father. And now, we are taken up in His liturgy as head of
His Mystical Body, the Church.
Fasting – The
fast of Good Friday through the whole of Holy Saturday until communion of the
Passover Vigil if always a sacramental fast. Its purpose is to help our bodies
to partake better of the great joy of the Paschal banquet, in the Resurrection
of Jesus Christ. Fasting is a way of waiting in order to truly experience God’s
immense joy. It is an act of mortification, of dying to sin which enslaves, the
Devil, which makes us suffer.
4. c
To love God with our whole heart is to accept/embrace the true way, the way of
the Torah, that leads to life. Life is to accept and embrace our life history.
The
temptation of Miracles is actually a temptation to reject our history. History
is an ongoing evolution between the IDEAL na dthe REAL, between God and the
world, between idealism and materialism, between heaven and earth, between mind
and body, between spirit and matter, between mind over body, between thought
over being, the spiritual over the physical. The law of hierarchy or of
Evolution – the lesser will become the greater: “the last will become first,
the first last.”
LAW (the will
of God or the laws of Nature). Nature swims between the ideal and the material,
the material being the manifestation below of the ideal above. I AM that I AM,
or I am below the manifestation of the I AM above. There is therefore no
contradiction between the above and the one below, as in the extension, the
part, of the other since there is only one consciousness.
For
christians, Christ crucified is the bridge that united the two originally
irreconcilable principles (origin) of the ideal versus the real, to make
everything one in himself as the new man (Colossians), by regenerating old
humanity into a new humanity through baptism.
To fight the temptation against
MIRACLE is through prayer, to admit that others are better than you, that there
is another one and that you are not God. Prayer destroys PRIDE because we learn
to humble ourselves when we pray.
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