Lenten Blog

We are All One

Written by Bill Sbordon on Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

Lent is time for fasting and deepening our relationship with God. During this time we’ll give up unnecessary (or unhealthy!) things, and maybe say an extra prayer or two a day.

In today’s Gospel (Matthew 6:7-15), Jesus teaches the disciples the “Our Father”. How appropriate that we call God, “Our Father”, and not, “my Father”! We are all children of God. We are all brothers and sisters – and we should treat each other as such. Family members do not look at their own and see someone with lesser value.

It may be difficult to see your value in today’s world. We’re constantly bombarded with commercials, articles, and pictures of what we don’t have. Those reminders show us that there is always someone who is of more value than you, or, that who you are or what you’ve done lessens your value as a human being.

At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us this:

“If you forgive men their transgressions,
your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men,
neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

He stresses the importance of forgiveness. As we are all of the same value to God, neither of us is greater than another, no matter how many times we fall down.

This Lent, we should see the value in everyone around us, and not just those who are close to us. Let’s treat those, young and old, as we would our own brothers and sisters – with love and forgiveness.

Questions for Reflection:
When have you felt of lesser value than others?
What actions can we take to show others of their value when they are down or hurt?

Bill Sbordon
Bill is a young professional and part of the Grad Student & Young Professionals group at St. Mary’s. He graduated from the University of Michigan as an industrial engineer in 2012, and has been a part of the St. Mary’s since 2014.
Email: bsbordon89@gmail.com

Do’s and Don’ts

Written by Christine Convery on Monday of the First Week of Lent

In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky recounts “The Parable of the Onion.” A woman dies and finds herself in Hell after living an evil and selfish life. Her guardian angel recalls that once she gave an onion to a beggar, and God agrees that she may be saved from the lake of fire if she can grab hold of this onion as the angel pulls her out. The woman is nearly saved when the other souls in Hell begin to grab on to her to also escape, and rather than allow the onion to pull them all out the woman selfishly kicks them off and in doing so loses her own grip and her chance at salvation.

It’s a dark and perhaps harsh view of the afterlife, but it matches well with Jesus’ own parable found in today’s readings. I find myself reflecting this jubilee year especially on the Mercy of God, but fail too often to recognize my call as a Christian to live out that mercy. As a child of God I count on my Father/Mother for unconditional love in response to my shortcomings and failures, but children grow up. We learn from a young age the “don’ts”:

You shall not steal.
You shall not lie or speak falsely to one another.
You shall not swear falsely by my name,
thus profaning the name of your God. (LV 19:11)

The more difficult challenge for me is discerning what I should be doing, and the Bible’s advice in this area is typically more abstract, and very few of us get an audible call in the night and instead search anxiously for Vocation. Mercy and its corporal and spiritual works are one concrete example of our universal call to Holiness, to be Holy as our Heavenly Father is Holy. In giving of ourselves, of our time and our possessions, we minister to Christ Himself.  The direct command of Jesus to care for our neighbor is comforting to me as I constantly struggle with decisions and discernment and reminds me to move away from selfishness towards family-hood with my fellow children of God.

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Christine Convery
Christine is a graduate student in the School of Public Health studying epidemiology, as well as a graduate of LS&A.  She served as St. Mary’s first Intern for Retreats during the 2012-2013 academic year.  Christine was named for St. Christine of Belgium, aka Christine the Astonishing, who came back to life at her own funeral!  
Email: converyc@umich.edu

Taking Temptation Seriously

Written by Matt Rejniak on the First Sunday of Lent

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve always imagined the devil as this large goat-man that hides in people’s shadows and whispers bad and hurtful things to them. He tells you that you aren’t good enough, tempts you to break the commandments, and tells you to distrust your relationship with others and with God.

I think that I don’t give Satan enough credit. In today’s Gospel, Satan tempts Jesus not only with the necessities he needs to live or wealth, but also with something more subtle, and in some ways, more dangerous. Satan tempts Jesus with proving himself to be who he says he is. More so, he does so by quoting the tool that Jesus has used thus far to rebuke him, that of Scripture.

I sometimes notice that I fall into this temptation in my life. On some days, as I do my evening examen, I find the moments that I saw my own sinfulness the clearest were moments where I should have been my best at. Moments where the gifts I was given by God were used to further my own pride and interests, moments where I take the wrong path because I know better than everyone else in my life.

As we enter more deeply into Lent, let us pray that the same Spirit who accompanied Jesus into the desert will give us the strength to resist temptation and the grace to use our gifts for the greater glory of God.

Questions for Reflection
How are you feeling tempted in your life right now?
How have you used your gifts in a way that falls short of their intended purpose?  How might you better use your gifts for the glory of God?

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Matt Rejniak
Matt is one of St. Mary’s Campus Ministry Associates for the 2015-2016 academic year.  He works with the special events team, RCIA and liturgy.
Email: mrejniak@smspnewman.org

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

Take the Risk

Written by Abby Braun on Good Friday

“ My soul is sorrowful even to death.  Remain here and keep watch.” –Mark 14:34

I didn’t answer the first time the phone rang.  It was 11:00 p.m. on a weeknight and I was getting ready for bed, so I let my friend Sara’s call go to voice mail.  When she called again two minutes later, I knew it was important so I picked up.  Sara had just learned that her dad, who was in the middle of what was supposed to be a relatively minor heart surgery, was probably going to die before we saw the sun rise again.  She called to ask for my prayers and also to ask for something more tangible of me.  Would I travel home to Philadelphia with her (we were both living in St. Louis at the time) and spend the week with her and her family as they walked the difficult road of burying her dad?

I often think about that week that I spent with my friend Sara. Sitting in the funeral home for hours while people filed through to pay their respects and say goodbyes.  Standing in the cemetery on a crisp fall day, holding my friend’s hand. Lots of tears and laughter and meals and stories shared. It was a week of profound grace for me.  Sara asked me to go with her because my own father died when I was in high school, so she knew I understood something about what her heart needed without having to say anything.

Certainly that was part of the grace of that week for me, that I was able to offer love and my simple presence in a way that was helpful to her and her family, because I had been there.  But the other grace – the one that has stayed with me even more – was the fact that my friend took the risk to invite me into one of the most sacred, most painful, most vulnerable moments of her life.  It was an act of courage on her part, to ask so much of me.  And in the end, that act of courage and vulnerability was remarkably transformative for us both: our lives and our friendship were blessed and enriched beyond measure because of it.

That week is on my mind in a particular way as we keep watch this Good Friday and walk with Jesus through his own suffering, death, and burial. I have often been inspired by the witness of the disciples who stay with Jesus to the bitter end, when all hope seems lost.  But as I heard the Passion story last Sunday, with ears fresh from having fumbled through another Lent, what hit my heart most was the image of Jesus in the garden, admitting to his friends that he is sad and afraid, asking them to stay with him.  How vulnerable he must have been, admitting this to the ones he had been leading, asking them to give what he knew they could not give.   And yet that did not stop him from taking the risk to be fully human and to share his whole self.

All of this leaves me asking myself the question, am I willing to be like Jesus and my friend Sara, to take that same risk, to share my whole self and invite others into my own darkest hours?  Am I willing to walk the long road with Jesus, and also to ask him to walk my long road with me? After all, that’s the only way we get to the resurrection. Now is the time, right?

Questions for Reflection:
When have you been invited into a vulnerable place in someone else’s life?  How did this experience transform you?
What are the dark places in your own life and your own heart right now?  Ask Jesus to enter into those places with you.

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Abby Braun
Abby has served as a campus minister at St. Mary’s since 2012.  After studying theology at the University of Notre Dame (BA ’05) and Pastoral Ministry at the University of Dayton (MA ’08), Abby spent four years as a Campus Minister at Saint Louis University where she met her husband, Bob.  She is especially grateful to be a part of a Jesuit Parish that serves a University community.  Abby works part-time at St. Mary’s and spends the rest of her days at home/toddling around Ann Arbor with her one-year-old daughter, Eleanor.
Email: aabraun@umich.edu