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Learning our Lines and Taking a Bow

Written by John Osterholzer on Saturday after Ash Wednesday

This year’s Lenten blog asks us to look “outward” and contemplate our role among a unified cast of characters portraying Christ’s Passion.  This challenge would have thoroughly unnerved me years ago as a college freshman.  Well-intentioned but ego-centric, my faith could be simplified to: looking “upward” to God, “inward” to self, and “downward” to sin.  Lent was spent considering my personal sinfulness, not the collective sins of my faith community.

My attitude towards Lent changed my first Ash Wednesday at St. Mary’s.  Moving forward to receive ashes, the sheer numbers of parishioners processing with me penetrated my “Lenten bunker”.  Together we forged a common bond further strengthened by the sight of our ash-marked foreheads around campus that afternoon. For the first time, I understood that Lent could be as deeply communal as it was personal.

Viewed through the prism of this year’s Lenten challenge, I recognize the innumerable individuals who served interchangeably as “co-cast members” and “spiritual directors” in the years since that first Ash Wednesday at St. Mary’s.  Their wisdom, inspiration, and instruction helped (and still help) me embrace my role on the stage of life.  I often feel as if I’m still “learning my lines”; yet I’ve come to accept that this is a normal, if not essential, part of God’s plan.

At Lent’s conclusion, we process forward as one community to wash each other’s feet and venerate the cross.  Through our readings on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, we reenact the last days of Jesus’ life and recognize our individual and collective acts of betrayal, cruelty, and indifference.  We poignantly experience our common accountability as the Passion concludes with Christ’s death on the cross.   Thereafter, we all take the stage, united as one cast before God.  Joining hands we deeply bow, not expecting God’s applause and accolades, but in our most profound sinfulness and shame.

Yet to understand the meaning of Easter is to understand that God loves us so completely that the applause comes anyway; ringing forth in crescendo after crescendo.  Tears of joy and disbelief stream down our face; our cheeks hurt from smiling.

Questions for Reflection:
Are you living Lent isolated in a “spiritual bunker”?  If so, what can you do to experience this Lent more outwardly?
In life, we never stop “learning our lines”; who has helped you understand and accept this?
Do you allow yourself to experience God’s applause in your life – even when you feel it isn’t deserved?

John Osterholzer
John has been a parishioner at St. Mary’s since arriving on campus as an undergraduate 26 years ago and is currently a faculty member at the Medical School working primarily at the VA hospital.  He and his wife, Kathy, were married at St. Mary’s and the parish remains central to the faith formation of their three children (Matthew, 13; Danny, 11; and Sarah, 9).
Email: oster@med.umich.edu

Lent: A Season of Abundance?

Written by Andrea Hanley on Friday after Ash Wednesday

Four years ago I found myself at the foot of the cross as Lent began.  It was like the Church calendar and my personal life got together and decided to give me an opening to grace.  My two year relationship had ended and my life and plans were thrown to the wind.  This was not the story I was cast into.  I knew God, and I knew this was not the story I was created for.  God doesn’t allow this kind of pain… or does he?  My heart had been broken open in ways that I was certain it would never recover from.  My life was in fasting mode.  The only thing in abundance was my time available for prayer and reflection.  I became acutely aware of the ways in which I was never in control.

Heartbreak and suffering have a way about them. They settled into my bones in a most excruciating way and caused me to reach out to friends and to God with great urgency—urgency that doesn’t exist in the smoother waters of life.  I solidified relationships in my life and prayed day and night.  My prayers were with hope and despair and every breath in between. “Heal my heart.  Give me hope.”

I say all of this because it is no trite thing to be getting married this summer, to someone else.  To stand on the other side with a heart that is whole and with a person that is deserving of this heart is something I do not take for granted.  In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast,” (Matthew 9:15).  I never understood what that meant, but I feel the closest to it now. To be in a season of abundance in a Lenten season of penance, reflection, refocus, and recommitment is a harder invitation for me than when I had no other options and my heart needed healing and grace in the most tangible way.  How can I fast when there is much to celebrate, as the disciples with their Lord with them, and as wedding guests in the midst of a feast?  In what ways am I being stretched to see Lent as the whole picture instead of the sullen process?  This Lent I pray to embrace the entire Paschal Mystery of life, death, and resurrection in the events of my own life as they have happened, and as they will happen again.

Questions for Reflection:
Are you in a season of fasting, abundance, or somewhere in between in your life?  How is this place a gateway to refocus into the Lenten season?

Andrea Hanley
Andrea is a young professional who has been a member of St. Mary Student Parish for five years. She is a Child Life Specialist at Mott Children’s Hospital where she works preparing children for surgical procedures. She and her fiance, Greg will be married on August 27th of this year.
Email: andrea.mary.hanley@gmail.com

Walking into Lent

Written by Jeff Thiele on Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Talk about blanket of comfort.

Resting on the eve of Lent (some may call it Fat Tuesday), my heart was astray. For some reason, the word “paczki” seemed to aggravate me, my mind was swirling and I had a difficult time feeling any sense of peace within myself. The time of day reached ten o’clock and I was truly ready to go to bed and get rid of this day I was having. Although upon arriving home, I was greeted by my very much still awake roommates, which I normally would absolutely love but at this point put me more on edge. I questioned what was happening with me at that point.

So I laid down into a bed of empty, swirling thoughts that I knew were just put in my mind to make me feel uncomfortable. My mind went to what Jesus perhaps might have felt upon entering the desert – uneasiness, angst, sadness… Knowing that Jesus might have been feeling this way eased me enough to let my dreams take over.

I woke up the next day with a small headache, but I could tell the headache was truly of the body, nothing else. Getting up felt different. While walking into the kitchen a blanket of warmth was simultaneously spread around me, a sign from God that today I would be okay with what I felt last night. I went about my day wearing this spiritual blanket across my shoulders, keeping me calm and in an ambient state of constancy about what my actions were, where my mind was and where I was headed. After receiving my ashes, I leaned back in my chair and felt a connection to those around me – we are all entering a journey, one that will push us into spiritual and emotional discomfort. However, I feel at peace with myself and with those around me, a peace that has blanketed itself over the entire Church, that tells us to go forth and be secure in who we are and where our journeys might take us this Lent.

Suggestion for Prayer:
Take some time in silence to become aware of God’s peace inside of you.

Jeff Thiele
Jeff is a junior studying Biomedical Engineering with a minor in music at U of M.  Although he’s being taught how to think analytically, his creative side seems to dominate all that he does. He believes that connecting spiritually and emotionally to other people via expression is essential to all humans and hopes that, through his role as a retreats intern here at SMSP, he can relay his lessons learned and thoughts on life to other students in new and interesting ways.
Email: jsthiele@umich.edu

Companions on the Journey

Written by Colleen McClain on Ash Wednesday

You are the visible face of the invisible Father.

As I reached the station of the crucifixion, I hesitated before picking up the hammer.  Written on the small piece of wood in my hand were the crosses I carried with me that day—emotional, physical, spiritual burdens.

This “Journey with Jesus” had been deeply personal—sitting silently in the desert; contemplating His transfiguration before me; coming face-to-face with my own brokenness in the Last Supper.  Finally I, and several other parishioners, had arrived at the last station in the courtyard.  Was I ready to place my crosses, intimate as they were, before the Lord and my companions?

I glanced at the wooden pieces affixed before me and took in their rawness. Even among the few gathered that day, the burdens I carried were hardly mine alone.  Each of us had been broken in remarkably similar ways; so too had Christ before us.

Today, we join Him and each other on the Lenten journey.  We examine our hearts; we take up our crosses; we go forth to these forty days cast as a common humanity.

The dust that I am and to which I shall return feels easily lost to the slightest breeze.  Yet I imagine Jesus in our midst as we celebrate Mass today, pushing us ever-so-gently together, reassuring us that not one of us carries the cross in isolation.

That swept together into the Body of Christ, awash in God’s mercy, this very dust will ground us in the most profound of ways.

Dust forming the earth on which we will stand at the end of our journey, at the foot of the cross.

Dust from which distractions are milled away, allowing the desire for a heart that is changed and pure to grow.

Dust as the ashes that mark our foreheads in humility, as we go forth in solidarity with the St. Mary’s community and the entirety of the Body.

St. Paul reminds us in today’s readings that we are ambassadors for Christ.  I pray that I might find the strength to raise my eyes outward as I look inward this Lent; to sincerely gaze into those of friends and strangers alike—ready to find eyes full of hope or fear, hearts struggling with their own crosses yet ready to say a prayer in return for me.

Together we will be tempted in the desert; together, witness Him transfigured; together, break bread in memory.  And with space in our hearts and lives for God to enter in, together we will be transformed. For today, it’s the first step that matters.

Behold, now is a very acceptable time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.

Suggestion for Prayer and Questions for Reflection:
Read Pope Francis’s Prayer for the Jubilee Year of Mercy.  How will you be Christ’s visible face in the world this Lent?
How will you make space in your heart, and in your life, for this Lenten journey to change you?  Who will walk with you on this journey?

Colleen McClain
Colleen is a PhD student in the Michigan Program in Survey Methodology at the Institute for Social Research.  When not at ISR, she can still usually be found on Thompson Street—serving with the GRAD/YP and Small Church Community leadership teams or the noon choir at SMSP—or taking up residence at a coffee shop a few blocks away.
Email: colleen.a.mcclain@gmail.com