Tag Archives: easter

February 17, 2010 · 16:19

Ash Wednesday…Padre Steve’s Lenten Survival Tips to Make this a Happy Lent

“God, deliver me from gloomy saints.” – – Saint Teresa of Avila

 We’ll it is here, my least favorite season of the liturgical year.  As I have mentioned before I do not do well, at the same time it is something that I need to commit myself to observing for the sake of actually wanting a better spiritual life that is not simply a way to make me feel better about life but help me more fully to love and serve God my neighbor with an attitude of thanksgiving and joy.

 Those who know me know that such is not an easy task and that for me no matter how hard I have tried Lent has always been painful.  By the end of Lent I am thankful for Easter not simply because of the resurrection and the promise of redemption, but frankly because I was glad that Lent was over.  In my early days as a Priest I tried to out do others on Lent doing not just Friday but Wednesday as meatless. I have even tried doing opposite of what I was doing and hope that it would work. Last year in the midst of my spiritual crisis I tried to go extra-lean on Lent and that didn’t help either.  Perhaps that was due to my overall poor emotional, physical and spiritual condition as I was trying to climb out of the abyss of PTSD but still, Lent was not very productive for me no matter what I did.

 So this year I’m going to be a good Anglican and find the via media where I actually gain some spiritual benefit, give up something that I can actually succeed at giving up for Lent and add or increase some spiritual discipline that I can succeed at doing not just for Lent but in real life too.  I realize that I can’t overdo it or I will simply give up when something keeps me from doing it and the same time I need to do something not too difficult but not so easy as to be meaningless.  The goal is to have a meaningful Lent that actually does me some spiritual good while not becoming any more of a pain in the ass to the people around me that have to endure me. 

 Today was Ash Wednesday and I had the responsibility for conducting the Protestant service which for me comes straight out of the Book of Common Prayer.  The Gospel lesson from Matthew chapter 6 was Jesus telling folks how to fast not be idiots about it, in other words to “Steveicize” the language Jesus wants his followers to be able to and pray without drawing attention to ourselves and actually look happy about it.  I figure and I assume that Jesus figured out that there were too many gloomy religious people around and that the disciples needed to get a life before he sent them out into the world; of course just like me and maybe you too made plenty of mistakes and at times made a mess of things in their time with Jesus and even after.  The disciples who with the exception of Judas who got hung up on the details all became Apostles still all finished well and most got schwacked by the Romans or others displeased with their message. 

So with this in mind here are a few hints on how to get through Lent, not that I have been successful at doing this but figure that through my failures I might have a few insights in how to navigate the often treacherous season of Lent. 

First there are the spiritual disciplines, like starting simple, go to church, pray every day, even if it is something short and sweet.  If you are a superstar Christian you can go onward and upward using spiritual steroids to improve your performance but I’m not there yet, I just use spiritual steroids to help my soul heal faster.   As Saint Bernard of Clairvaux said:

 “Wherever…thou shalt be, pray secretly within thyself. If thou shalt be far from a house of prayer, give not thyself trouble to seek for one, for thou thyself art a sanctuary designed for prayer. If thou shalt be in bed, or in any other place, pray there; thy temple is there.”

 Now to what to give up:  Most of the time for Americans this involved food, particularly meat on Friday’s and sometimes other things.  I’ve heard of people giving up chocolate or certain delicacies but most of the time it is meatless Fridays and sometimes Wednesdays and there have been some that I have met who have gone on 40 days fasts during Lent.  I can get the meatless Fridays and I am going to give up something that I love that I don’t eat much of normally, like maybe once a week after successful weigh-ins, but really enjoy…I mean really enjoy, the Gordon Biersch Cheeseburger cooked medium rare with everything on it and Garlic Fries on the side. Since there is not a lot else for me to give up being on the Fat Boy program, that once a week treat will be a sacrifice. 

 Now since I tend not too eat most things that swim in their own toilet such as fish the whole deal of fish on Friday is something that I don’t observe…now I still go meatless but find alternative ways to do it. In the past I have done bean burritos, meatless salads, meatless pasta usually with a Marinara sauce, pizza with tomatoes, garlic, olives and mushrooms, or something simple like red or black beans and rice, vegetable soup, pea soup, black bean soup and other things like that.  This makes meatless doable.  One year though I had to suffer for Jesus on the USS Hue City as Friday was “surf and turf.” Since the turf was definitely out for Lent I had to make due with Alaskan King Crab or lobster tails.  That was difficult but I did survive.

 I think one of the things that I missed during previous Lenten seasons was the grace of God, somehow in trying to jump through all the Lenten hoops I became so fixated on the actions that I forgot to experience the love of God and the joy that comes with that.  This year will be all about that process and discovering the joy in life that has been coming back to me after my “Christmas miracle.”

 Martin Luther the German reformer wrote something very appropriate about how to approach Lent,a s well as the rest of the Christian life which I think is pretty profound as Lutehr sees the process of the Christian life:

 “‘Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom. 12:2).’ In this way the Apostle describes (Christian) progress; for he addresses those who already are Christians. The Christian life does not mean to stand still, but to move from that which is good to that which is better. St. Bernard (of Clairvaux) rightly says: ‘As soon as you do not desire to become better, then you have ceased to be good.’ It does not help a tree to have green leaves and flowers if it does not bear fruit beside its flowers. For this reason – (for not bearing fruit) – many (nominal Christians) perish in their flowering. Man (the Christian) is always in the condition of nakedness, always in the state of becoming, always in the state of potentiality, always in the condition of activity. He is always a sinner, but also always repentant and so always righteous. We are in part sinners, and in part righteous, and so nothing else than penitents. No one is so good as that he could not become better; no one is so evil, as that he could not become worse.'” (Commentary on Romans, by Martin Luther, Translated by J. T. Mueller, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapid MI 49501, reprinted 1976, page 167-168.)

 On a side note one cool thing about this Lent is that it is happening about as early in the year as it can, thus it will not affect the baseball season as opening day at Harbor Park is the week following Easter.  So anyway with all of this in mind I bid you a blessed Lent and hope and pray that you will come to experience the love of God in a special way this year that impacts you and those around you. Pray for me a sinner.

Peace, Padre Steve+

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February 10, 2010 · 23:32

One Week Warning: Lent Begins Next Wednesday

Contemplating Lent

I have never ever done the season of Lent well.  From Ash Wednesday through Good Friday I pray for it to end.  First I don’t look good in the liturgical color of the season, purple.  I actually prefer the green of Ordinary time or the Red of Pentecost.  However I do have a really cool “cope” (which is liturgical jargon for cape) and stole (liturgical scarf) in purple that I picked up at little religious goods store in Poland back in 1996. I thought it was a chasuble (liturgical poncho) but it is still pretty cool.  Unfortunately I have never had the occasion to wear it in a service despite the color which would not do me well.

However aesthetics aside Lent is my least favorite season of the Church year.  Now I am not adverse to it on principle as I do think that we all need to take stock of our relationship with God and humanity as well as the things that we mess up on a daily basis.  As someone whose spiritual life stays about at the Mendoza line I know that I have a lot that I need to improve in my life.  That is a given.  I would love to be a .300 spiritual hitter than a .215 spiritual hitter.  However I do work at trying to get better.  Lent is a season that reminds me of what a screw up I am, thus like anyone who doesn’t like to be reminded of their shortcomings for 40 days I find Lent a painful reminder of my imperfections.

So with that in mind and knowing that I am not the only person who is in my boat I have to provide some survival tips but those will wait.  Since many readers have little idea what Lent is about let me do some “splainin” as Ricky Ricardo would have said.

Lent is the season of spiritual preparation that leads up to Holy Week and Easter. It is a “penitential season” meaning a season where we examine our lives in relationship to God and the folks that we hang with, sometimes referred to as humanity and seek to receive God’s grace to make amends and to find ways to do better.  One of the ways that Christians have done is to give up certain foods or activities during the season. Others seek to add spiritual disciplines to their lives.

Lent begins on the Wednesday following “Fat Tuesday” which is called Ash Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday Christians have themselves marked with a cross from ashes on their forehead as a sign of the reality of their mortality and promise to use the season to return to God, make changes in their lives that will deepen their spiritual lives and their relationship with their neighbor. It’s the whole “which are the greatest commandments?” “Love God and love your neighbor” on steroids.  Unfortunately the whole relationship thing sometimes gets lost as folks get caught in the legalism and minutia or trying to figure out what to “give up” for Lent, which often is like a New Year’s resolution which almost invariably goes bad.  Lent then continues for 7 weeks but only 40 days are actually Lenten Lent as all the Sundays are “feast days” which mean that you can eat all the stuff that you don’t get to eat on Fridays or Wednesdays if your Church or Diocese is a bit stricter than others.  There are also three major Feast Days, Saint Matthias (Apostle), Saint Joseph and the Annunciation. There is also Saint Patrick’s Day which though not a major feast day is often locally observed and of it falls on a Wednesday or Friday is sometimes is allowed by the local Bishop to supersede the fast day.  Speaking of “Fast Days” these are days where the Christian gives up most food except for a couple of very small and simple meatless meals, though some are stricter in their observance of “Fast Days” and actually fast throughout the day, not that there is anything wrong with that.  Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are “Fast Days.” There are also days known as days of abstinence where the individual gives up certain foods or activities. Traditionally meat is given up on Fridays and depending on how strict your diocese is Wednesdays as well. Most people do fish on these days.  I will write more about this later in the week.

I have struggled with Lent for most of my life even as a Priest.  When I made my first confession I asked the Priest who heard it “if they deserved it was it still as sin?” Though that was not during Lent you get my drift.  I admit that I struggle with Lent but over the past few months I have had a rather remarkable spiritual and emotional start to recovering from my case of PTSD.  So as with most things I am not in dread of Lent this year. I will pick reasonable spiritual goals as well as things to abstain from during the season.

So with the warning given enjoy the next week.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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October 18, 2009 · 00:09

MLB League Championship Series so Far, I will wear Short Pants until the World Series is Over and Learning that I am a “Wounded Healer”

So far things appear to be working out the way that I thought that they would in the MLC League Championship Series between the Phillies and Dodgers. I predicted that the teams would split at Chavez Ravine and go back to Philly knotted.  The Phillies took game one and looked like they had game two in the bag with Pedro Martinez shutting the Dodgers out through seven giving up only two hits.  Then the Phillies problematic bullpen took over in the eighth and it went down from there with the Dodgers coming back to win.

The ALCS has been played at the new Yankee Stadium amid the din of a Nor’easter.  The Yankees took game one 4-1 as the Angels quite literally “froze” in the cold and damp weather.  Game two played in even worse conditions has been influenced by the weather and was a superb pitcher’s duel.  The game went into extra innings tied at two and though the Angels went ahead in the top of the 11th as the rain started coming down harder only to have Alex Rodriguez come up big again for the Yankees in the bottom of the 11th with a home run to tie the game.  The game went to the bottom of the 13th when with one out the Yankees scored on a throwing error to win the game 4-3.  It was an amazing game that I could not pull myself away from but will write more about later.

On another note, the weather here in Hampton Roads has been miserable as we also have had some of the residue of the Nor’easter with cold rain, fog and drizzle that has not let up.  Amid this positively crappy weather I am maintaining my vow to wear short pants as long as I can with the exceptions being my uniform and going to church.  This means that I am bundling up from the belt up while keeping my legs bare.  I have never done this before which means either I’m nuts or I’m nuts, but nonetheless I am in this until the World Series is over at the minimum.  Since with the exception of church, work and one social event where shorts were unacceptable I have not worn long pants since sometime in April.  Tonight I had a Norfolk Tides jacket and sweatshirt on.  We’ll see how this goes…

I have the duty this weekend and have been in and out of the hospital a number of times.  One of the visits called to mind just how much I am like the people I serve and what it means to have to ask the same questions about God, faith and what it is to be human and a Christian. What got me tonight was a gentleman struggling with his faith, much as I have after returning from Iraq and battling PTSD and other nagging injuries.  Having him ask the same questions that I have wrestled with and having him ask me directly what I thought.  I have learned that I don’t have to “fake it” and try to give the man some textbook answer of how he needed to believe more, read his Bible more, go to church more, pray more or harder.  Instead I was able to be honest that I have wrestled with the same question but somehow the words of the 23rd Psalm speak to me.  “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me.”  The Psalm is very reassuring for me as it is so honest.  Reality is that we do walk through the valley of the shadow of death.  In fact it is a difficult and pain filled world.  That I will fear no evil means that evil is in fact very real but in the middle of this there is an understanding that God is still with us.  It is an understanding that even when life is more like Good Friday than Easter, that God as far away as he may seem is still there.  Maybe that is actually the miracle that most people need, the miracle to know that no matter how bad things suck, and I do use the word “suck” because that is how it is sometimes, especially when there is no “miracle” to be had otherwise.  When I told the man that I had spent the past 18 months wrestling with those questions he opened up and we had a wonderful discussion and prayer.   I am totally okay with this somehow God uses me in my weakness more than when I had all the answers.

Tonight I discovered that  Bishop John Holloway, the medically retired former Ordinary of the Charismatic Episcopal Church Diocese of the Mid-South and one of the early leaders of the Church, his wife Elaine and two youngest children have to leave their home in Thomaston Georgia.  They moved there as a missionary bishop giving up pension and medical from the Methodist Church to follow God’s call into the CEC.  The home is being foreclosed on after the church, which has no pension or insurance plan in most dioceses for clergy and had provided a great deal of money to help pay off debts in the past has had to reduce the money they were providing by half and now according it the Holloways’ son Jared to nothing.  Their home is being foreclosed on and they have to be out by December 1st and if you want to read more go to his blog: http://jzholloway.wordpress.com/  If there is a question as to how the CEC currently handles finaces go to www.cechome.com where the budgets and expenses of every diocese are posted.  There had been great problems in the past in the finacial management of the CEC largely done by people no longer associated with the church, including some former bishops.  I think this is getting better under Archbishop Bates unfotunately the residue and distaste of that era is still out there.

I really don’t know what to think about that except that I did talk to a CEC Bishop about it and hear that there are other parts to the story.  That aside, when the CEC was formed and one of the things that drew me to it was that the CEC was to would be more personal and relational than churches where the bishops did not really know their clergy. I think that is still the ideal in the Church but what Jared is reporting and what I hear from Elaine on Facebook gives me some cause for concern because it deals with a bishop who can no longer function and is completely disabled. Additionally Elaine is a cancer survivor who has exeeded her life expectancy with the disease.  Obiviously things are not good for them and I have to trust that the situation will be resolved in a spirit of love and reconcilliation and that ultimately the Holloways will be taken care of by the church and God’s people.  I cannot say anything else because I do not know anything else, but to say how this grieves me as Bishop Holloway was and I’m sure, even in his greatly de-habilitated and totally dependent state is a gracious and giving man.  I always felt comfortable and safe around him.  He ordained my friend Father Stu King back in 2001.  Stu has left the CEC having been accepted into Seminary and in now working to become a Roman Catholic Priest.  I’m sure that Bishop John would approve and give his blessing.  Please keep the Holloways in your prayers. I have no idea if there is anything that can be done to help them, if there is Jared may know or one could contact the Mid South Diocese of the CEC.

I also found that a friend, the sister of our dear friend Dr Helen Linkey who taught at Marshall University who battled breast cancer for two years before succumbing to it in 2005 has found a lump in her breast. She is going in for a biopsy which is expected to find cancer. Maryellen occasionally comments on my website and her news was included in her comment to my post from last night at https://padresteve.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/war-remembrance-and-healing-a-chaplain-officer-and-historian-makes-his-way-home/

Please keep Maryellen in your prayers also. Anyway, it is time for me to try to get to sleep.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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April 12, 2009 · 14:40

Alleluia! Memories of Easter…Past and Present

easter-2002-on-hue-cityEaster aboard USS Hue City CG-66 off the Horn of Africa 2002

I find Easter to be an interesting time.  I tend to get reflective and while I do joyfully say “Alleluia! Christ is Risen!” I also tend to be somewhat subdued.  By nature I am reflective person, I like to watch, observe and think.  I am not into big Easter productions and extravaganzas. I prefer much more simple expressions of the Risen Lord.  I think that Jesus would go along with me on this as he spent that first Easter walking with friends, who failed to recognize him, and then breaking bread, he celebrated the first Eucharist after the Resurrection at Emmaus.

For me my most memorable Easters have been connected with my life in the military.  They have almost always been simple affairs, and most involving the liturgy somehow.  I think the first Easter that I remember was at Cubi Point Naval Air Station in the Philippines, it was seeing the Chaplains in their Summer White uniforms that still stands out to me today.  I remember a Easter Sunrise service at Naval Station Long Beach and looking in wonder at two “mothballed” carriers of World War II vintage, the USS Boxer and USS Princeton moored near the site of the service on the waterfront.  When my dad was in Vietnam and we had been made unwelcome in a civilian church, we attended Mass at the Quonset hut that served as the Chapel on the little Naval Communications station.  In my senior year of high school I made a cruise on Navy ships to and from Pearl Harbor Hawaii.  During the week at Pearl I made the trip to the Arizona Memorial on Easter Sunday.  For some reason that experience reverberated as loud as any church service I have ever attended.  When I was a young Army Officer running from God and hiding in the Chapel, the Deity Herself patently used the events of Holy Week to “rend my heart” so to speak.  I left the Good Friday Tenebrea service praying that Easter would come.  Our good Lutheran Chaplain, Lee Rittenbach had driven home the reality of Jesus’ death so well that I really started to understand what the disciples went through.  When Easter came I learned to say “Alleluia! Christ is Risen!”

After that I went through kind of a spiritual desert as far as Easter was concerned.  In seminary I was attending mega-churches which did nothing with Holy week, and made a big evangelical production of Easter, complete with overly loud and insipidly shallow “worship” music and laborious preaching.  I have to say that these big productions were more of an ordeal than a celebration for me.  During seminary we were going through sickness, financial disaster, loss of our home, cars and struggling to survive working multiple jobs while being a full time student.  How we got through seminary I will never understand, other than that the Deity herself provided for us through a lot of wonderful people.  The “happy talk” at church, the prosperity Gospel, focus on signs and wonders seemed to reflect almost a gnostic other worldly view of life that I did not see in the Scriptures.

Academically and from a theological point of view Easter began to rally take shape for me.  Reading the Church Fathers as well reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, Emil Brunner’s The Scandal of Christianity, Alister McGrath’s The Mystery of the Cross, Hans Kung’s On Being a Christian and Jurgen Moltman’s The Crucified God brought me to greater understanding of the connectedness of Easter to the Incarnation and the Passion.  One of my professors, a kindly gentleman named Yandall Woodfin, made a comment in his Philosophy of Religion class:  “We do not do Christian Theology without coming to grips with the reality of suffering and death.”  That comment was at first offensive to me because my mega-church pastors all focused on the Resurrection.  Death to them seemed to be a bother. One pastor said in a sermon how he did not do visits to the sick.  When asked by someone how sick they had to be for him to see them, he stated “You don’t want to be that sick.”

However, what Dr. Woodfin said planted a seed in me.  This went from an academic question, to daily reality during my Clinical Pastoral Education Residency at Parkland hospital.  Doing various Holy Week services there, in the midst of the amazing amount of pain, suffering and death in that gargantuan Medical Center brought into focus and made real what Dr. Woodfin said.  At Parkland there was no avoiding death or suffering, and what Dr. Woodfin said was right.  We don’t begin to do Christian theology until we we deal with suffering and death.  Easter and the Resurrection don’t happen without the Incarnation and Passion of Jesus.  Easter disconnected from the reality of suffering and death is nothing more than a “happy thought” or escape that avoids the the great Mystery of Faith: Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again.

After Parkland my understanding of Easter grew as I was immersed in the liturgy, began to observe the liturgical year, and occasionally “clandestinely” attend Anglican churches during Christmas and Easter. During this time Judy became Roman Catholic, something that accelerated what was already going on in me.  During my formation process and following my ordination to first the Deaconate and then the Priesthood, the understanding deepened as I saw how the Gospel in Word and Sacrament. As an Army Reserve chaplain serving on active duty I experienced the life of a parish pastor at a small base in central Pennsylvania.  There I saw how the how the liturgical year and life are so intimately connect.  In life and death, in sorrow and joy, in good times and bad, the Holy Spirit touched people.

Easter became even more part of my life when I became a Navy Chaplain and left the Army in the “rear view mirror.”  Here I began to see how wonderful Easter is when you do not have all the “smells and bells” “praise teams” or great music or facilities.  It goes back to simplicity.  On Easter Sunday 2001, I was on the USS Frederick, LST 1184 with my Marines going from Korea back to Okinawa.  It was on Frederick 23 years before that I had first felt the call to be a Navy Chaplain during the trip to Pearl Harbor.  In 2002 I was deployed on USS Hue City CG-66 at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. Off the Horn of Africa we had both sunrise services as well as a morning Eucharist on our flight deck. While with the Marine Security Forces I spent an Easter celebrating Eucharist on the fence-line adjoining Communist Cuba.  I now have come back to critical care hospital ministry in my ICUs.  Here we live Good Friday every day.  For me Easter is not just a nice thing to observe, but a necessity in life.

This morning I attended the early Mass with Judy at Ascension Catholic Church.  I love the church, though it is a bit big and busy for me now after Iraq.  So I found me a corner near the choir where I could sit with my back against the wall, an emergency exit to my left, and where I could observe what was going on.  Yes I was having a PTSD moment, but I got through it with the help of the Deity herself and a little ant-anxiety medication.  But the really cool thing was seeing a man who was one of our patients on the ICU a couple of months back.  A man who almost died on us several times, and his wife.  We had grown close during that 2 1/2 weeks and he made it through.  He looked great this morning.  We all hugged and talked of how good God is before Mass, exchanged the Peace and then spent some time together after Mass. That was really cool.  What a way to celebrate Easter.

Life and death, pain and suffering, healing and resurrection.  Alleluia, Christ is Risen. The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia!

Peace, Steve+

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April 6, 2009 · 22:59

Holy Week Superstitions

Holy Week is a funny thing for me.  While I generally look forward to Easter, I always have a sense of foreboding.  I think this actually goes back to childhood.  Family members dying around the time, major events and crisis’s that unfold.  My dad was in Vietnam during Easter 1972 when the North Vietnamese launched their offensive.  So I guess that I’m somewhat superstitious. This week a dear friend lost her father to cancer.  My own parents are not in great shape. My dad lost 7 pounds this month and weighs under 120 pounds.  He is doing worse and worse.

I was talking with one of our attendings today who reminded one of the nurses what weekend was coming up.  She asked why, and he said, think about it, something bad almost always happens around Easter. I patently concurred with the good doctor. My experience in other hospitals always involved really tragic events. It seems that something tragic always happens, a mass murder, a series of tornadoes that wipe out whole towns, fires that kill families, Tsunamis and other events.  This week there has been a killer earthquake in Italy.  I am not alone in the way that I feel. Snopes.com even has a page devoted to Easter superstitions.

So with a twinge of anxiety I face this week.  I do look forward to what this week means. Maunday Thursday, Good Friday and Easter.  I will celebrate each, but at the same time I feel strange. I hope that this is just a bit of PTSD and nothing more.  May everyone experience the joy that Easter  should bring and I pray that no disasters overtake anyone this year. Peace, Steve+

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