Fr. Ricardo Martín, a member of the Community of Saint Paul and pastor at Sacred Heart Parish in Racine, Wisconsin, has sent us the following reflection on the outrage caused by the death of George Floyd.
I started writing this on Tuesday, June 2, in the aftermath of the brutal, astonishing death of Mr. George Floyd. Yesterday was a very emotional day, watching news, visiting some areas of Milwaukee, talking to friends about the situation we are all experiencing. In the middle of the day I received a text from Fr. Bryan Massingale, the Catholic priest who directed my thesis at the seminary, with a link to the article he had written for the National Catholic Reporter. My thesis was on Malcolm X, and this was 2003. I do not think many Catholic seminarians have written a thesis on Malcolm X. That race and racism is an issue in our society was evident to me when I first came to the United States, my country of adoption. One of the things I heard yesterday was New York Times op-ed columnist Charles Blow saying that Dr. Martin Luther King was able to be Martin Luther King because there was a Malcolm X.
I hope you do not feel like I am just trying to show my credentials on race. I am only saying that it is a topic that has always interested me. I am who I am, and I believe my biography places me in an interesting position to reflect about this: I definitely look white. But I am a Hispanic. But I am not from Latin America. But I do have a huge accent. I have experienced countless incidents of racial micro-aggressions over the years (I did not even know there were called this way): Americanizing my last name; calling me Ricky Ricardo or Ricky Martin, both destroying my name and my last name at once—which is my family identity, by the way; telling me, “Don’t worry, you speak better English than my Spanish…” only to find out when I innocently ask that the person does not know ANY Spanish! But let us be honest, I have never felt that my life was at risk the times that I have been stopped by a law enforcement agent. Many do not feel that way.
Let me tell you a bit more about my day, because, well, I am also a priest. In the evening, I realized that I had to prepare for Mass for the next day, so I went to read the readings. Leaving Pentecost behind, what would Ordinary Time have in store for us? Part of the day had been discussing with some what is the Catholic Church supposed to do, what could the parish that I shepherd do. So, with that in mind, not feeling really hopeful that I would find much to work with, I turned to the scriptures selected by who knows who, in some pristine office in the Vatican sometime in the 1960s… I started with the Gospel because that is what I normally read first and what I have preached on in 95% of my homilies over the last 17 years. It is a famous one - the enemies of Jesus try to catch him with a question about taxes. My first thought: Would some Christians be cynical enough to think that this gospel text supports the idea that the Church, any church, should keep herself from discussions on politics or race? Most of our people are watching Mass these days on-line. If I preach about racism, will they be “bothered”? Have I disturbed the only place where they could find “peace” and calm? This gospel could be a temptation for us, a community of the Spirit, to fall into our “country club” ways, when church just becomes a socialite experience. Even more hopeless, I went to the first reading. And it was a missile to the gut.
Read it or read it again: “Beloved: Wait for and hasten the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire. But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you await these things, be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace. And consider the patience of our Lord as salvation. Therefore, beloved, since you are forewarned, be on your guard not to be led into the error of the unprincipled and to fall from your own stability. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.” (First Reading for June 2nd, Tuesday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time, 2nd Letter of Saint Peter 3:12-15A, 17-18.)
Now, apply this reading to the news of the day. Written 2,000 years ago and chosen some 50 years ago, this reading shows the power of sacred scripture, that breaks through any convention at any given time: Most of us, Christians of good will, want a new heaven and a new earth, but we cannot just will it to happen. Suffering, disturbance, destruction of old way needs to happen. Years of frustration make that poetic destruction actually take place. And we do not understand the destruction because we do not understand the anger that comes from the constant experience of injustice.
The peace of Christ will be, not wishful thinking but a peace borne of God’s justice, “a new earth in which justice dwells.” There is no other way. We can wish that we could wake up in a better world, or we can fall into believing in conspiracy theories (which are often false and a few times just very partial descriptions of reality.) Or we can embrace the suffering and come out of this better disciples of Jesus.
We keep reading: “Be eager to be found without spot or blemish” in your own participation in racial injustice—and since we are at it, on any injustice. In Catholic Morals morals, the best way to be found without blemish is by doing a very good examination of conscience, which helps us to acknowledge and ask for forgiveness for our sins. When we do the examination of conscience, we have to ask ourselves: When did we start to get horrified, when we saw the riots and the looting or when we saw a white knee over a black neck for more than eight minutes? What part of the white woman’s call to the police in Central Park offended you? The examination of conscience is a prayer. However, unlike other prayers, is one that looks first at ourselves, and makes us into part of the solution for the problem we pray for.
Still, do not fall into despair, but be hopeful, as we keep reading: “Consider the patience of our Lord as salvation.” God will be patient with us, especially when we at least attempt to walk the path to truth and justice. If you do your own examination well, do not feel shame. Feel guilt. Shame does not take you anywhere, whereas guilt takes us to a place of forgiveness and reparation.
We keep reading, another hook to the jaw: “Be on your guard not to be led into the error of the unprincipled.” Educate yourself. Read Malcolm X, read James Baldwin. Read Dr. Martin Luther King well, instead of just turning him into a meme or some slogan that really does not capture what he wrote. Do you really think Dr. King was murdered because he preached non-violence? We have done to Dr. King what we have done with Jesus. We have diluted them, so we can consume them as we consume everything else. We just want to make them easier to approach.
And since we are at it, perhaps stop posting sweet stuff and wishful thinking on social media: “The heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire”—nothing sweet in the way the Apostle conveys how God tells us that the world’s transformation needs to happen. Educate yourself, so we can find ourselves without blemish when our day comes. And fall from your own stability: Let faith shake your foundations, like we prayed for during Pentecost.
I am being asked these days: What do we do? I think I have explained where I think we can start, which is by being very honest with ourselves and do a very good examination of conscience. We also need to educate ourselves, there is so much we can read, and watch…but we especially need to listen to other people’s experience. We will need to quiet ourselves, really, when someone with an experience we do not have or with a knowledge we did not acquire tells us something. We always react, we listen thinking about what we are going to answer… We have a right to an opinion, but we also have a right obligation not to answer and simply learn.
We can take what we learn in this area to continue “growing in grace” in other areas, as race is not our only problem. But it is especially pervasive, it is deadly, and our complacency steals our souls. Let us be courageous to discover that we are more racist, classist, sexist than we thought we were. Let us be courageous to admit that at the basis of many of these behaviors, there is fear. Hiding fear has very dangerous consequences.
We need to admit that we are where we are and we all want to get to that new heaven and new earth, but this is no way to take a shortcut. But where is the Good News? That is the good news, actually. Instead of avoiding it, let us submerge ourselves in the ocean of this problem. I believe we can come out of it as much better disciples of Jesus, as much better human beings indeed.
The question of Jesus' identity is key in all gospels. This same key may help us to interpret Holy Week. In the Gospel we would have read in the Palm Sunday procession, the people of Jerusalem wonder, "Who is this?" (Matthew 21:11). The celebration of the Paschal Mystery helps us discern the identity of Jesus and raises a profound question: If this is Jesus, who will I be?
Jesus is the new Passover lamb. His crucifixion begins at the same time when the fires were lit to cook the lamb of the Jewish Passover dinner. Today, Good Friday, we read the version of the Passion according to John. In John, the last words of Jesus on the cross, "It is finished," are an echo of the words with which the Seder ends, the Jewish ritual dinner. Any Jew would recognize the connection at once, both around the end of the first century when they were written, and today.
Understanding the crucifixion and the connection to the Jewish Passover informs us of the deeper meaning of the Paschal Mystery. Holy Week is an invitation for us to live like Jesus lived and to learn to give our lives up for the salvation of others, dying to ourselves the way Jesus did on the first Good Friday. If we live like he lived and die to ourselves like he died, we also will be risen from death like He was, and as he promised his disciples many a time.
On Holy Thursday we reflect about how Jesus lived: loving those who were his own and loving them to the end; in the washing of feet, Jesus invites us to discover life’s purpose and meaning in serving others. In a normal year, we would then stay during the late hours of the night in adoration in a setting that symbolizes the garden of Gethsemane, where share on Jesus’ prayer, a prayer born of his deep love for life.
On Good Friday we reflect about how Jesus died, and we learn to die the same way. We imitate the death of Jesus by dying to ourselves, overcoming the original temptation we all have to place our needs above those of others, to be the center of our own universe.
Who is this? It is Jesus, who today, Good Friday, dies out of love for those who were his, disciples and friends who God had entrusted to him. It is Jesus, who not only dies for his own in this world, but also dies out of love for the human condition, as well—Jesus, Son of Man.
It is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (first reading of Good Friday) who agonizes and pleads with the Father to set aside the chalice that is his turn to drink—the Jesus whose heart was broken long before it was pierced by a spear —betrayed, denied and abandoned by his own, insulted and repudiated by others. The Jesus who dies forgiving himself and others. It is Jesus who dies promising paradise to the crucified thief. In the midst of terrible suffering, Jesus continues to teach and heal. Jesus dies the way he lived.
If this is the Jesus of Good Friday—serving, healing, loving to the end—who are we going to be?
During Lent, Catholics around the world are invited to practice more deeply the observances of Lent: Prayer, fasting and almsgiving. One of the members of the Community of Saint Paul, Fr. Ricardo Martin, is the pastor at Sacred Heart Parish in Racine, Wisconsin. For the last two years, this parish has dedicated its Lenten almsgiving to building two chapels in the territory of La Sagrada Familia Parish in the Dominican Republic, where members of the CSP have worked since 2003. These chapels are not only spaces of prayer, but also serve as places for the people to gather, and from where the CSP runs several educational programs. Both years, two different groups of parishioners have traveled from Racine to the Sabana Yegua, Dominican Republic to learn about work there and to be present for the consecration and blessing of the chapels.
This year, the parish will be aiming its Lenten campaign to the building of another chapel/community center but this time in the area of Independencia, in the province of Cochabamba, in Bolivia. Independencia is four hours away from the city of Cochabamba, driving through a breathtaking section of Los Andes. The chapel will be built in a plot donated by the local community, situated in a central location to serve eight different rural communities, and it will host medical and agricultural programs. To learn about the project and the people it will serve, last February Fr. Ricardo visited the area. This is the video that was produced to explain the project to Sacred Heart parishioners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMKc4vAvZyc
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Still in the Season of Christmas, we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany this weekend. In our faith context, means the manifestation of Christ to all the Nations.
We have been in church many times these last days. We keep hearing all these stories about the birth of Jesus from the two gospels that have them, Luke and Matthew. One of the beautiful things of all these texts in Christmas is to see how the Good News of the birth of Christ has this expansive effect: first, only Mary knows about it; then Joseph; then Elizabeth and Zachariah; then the shepherds (representing the downcast of Israel); and today it reaches all the Nations. Using 21st century language, Jesus goes viral at the Epiphany.
This manifestation of Christ is still happening to us, and it is a matter for us to hear it, and be transformed as the Magi were transformed upon encountering Christ. When the gospel begins, the Magi are looking for Jesus in Jerusalem, in the center of power of the time, and they thought Herod would be of help. But at the end of the gospel, transformed by the encounter with Christ, they realize that they have to avoid Jerusalem and Herod, to return as different people, carrying with them the good news of Jesus.
We can look at the attitude of the Magi in today’s gospel and learn from them how to let Jesus transform our lives:
(1) The Magi were people who were on a journey, who were searching. The opposite of that is our tendency to settle, in life and in faith, and cease the search. Another word for it is complacency. We tend to become people with all the answers instead of people of questions.
(2) In their search, they read a sign–a star. We believe God continues sending us many signs on how to find Jesus. People and events that happen in our lives are messages from God, but we often do not pay attention, in the midst of our busy lives. We have lost the sensitivity to discern signs.
(3) Once they encounter Jesus, the Magi gave him everything. They gifted themselves to the Child: Gold, representing their material wealth; Frankincense, representing their faith, as incense has in many cultures been a sign of our relationship with the Divine; and by gifting him with myrrh, they have given him also their suffering and their eventual death, as myrrh was used in antiquity as an ointment with medicinal effects, also used to prepare a body for the funeral rituals. The opposite happens when Jesus does not change anything in our lives, and we may live faith on the surface, in the rituals and the gestures, in the rules, and not in the whole potential of free individuals following Jesus.
(4) And they were “overjoyed” upon encountering Jesus—a joy that is not a feeling, but a choice we make. We all have problems and difficulties, many reasons and excuses not to be joyful. Does the encounter with Jesus, especially the one we experience when we go to church, fill us with joy? Do we recognize the joy of the Gospel every time we encounter Jesus in the “others”—especially the stranger, the marginalized, the different…
The Epiphany is an explosion of joy and meaning, and its shock wave is reaching us today. We learn from the Magi how to set ourselves to continue the journey that takes us to the Child and beyond–in constant journey of transformation.
Already in the midst of Holy Week, tonight we begin the Triduum with the celebration of Holy Thursday, the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper. There are many ways to approach Holy Week and the Triduum. One of them is considering the different locations, or scenarios in which the Passion takes place. We read the text of the Passion twice during Holy Week: We read the synoptic version on Palm Sunday (Mark, Matthew and Luke) following the annual cycles of the Lectionary (this year we are reading Mark) and John’s version, which we read every year on Good Friday.
The locations of the Passion take us from the entrance of Jerusalem to Jesus’ tomb, going through the house of Simon the leper, the Upper Room, the garden of Gethsemane, the residence of the High Priest, Pilate’s palace and Golgotha. All these places are important, but Gethsemane continues being the place that moves me the most—the place that, in my opinion, gives more meaning to the experience of the Passion.
Following Mark’s account, after the Passover meal, Jesus and his disciples head to Gethsemane. On the way there, Jesus tells his disciples that they are going to abandon him, announces his Resurrection once again, and predicts Peter’s denial. Upon arriving to the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus displays his full humanity. It is in the garden that we witness Jesus’ struggle. Despite being the Son of God, he suffers like a human. We dare to think that Jesus is not suffering so much in anticipation of the physical pain that he is going to endure on the next day; it is a deeper pain, the emotional pain of giving up a full life, of abandoning those he loved. We cannot strip away Jesus’ humanity, we cannot remove Gethsemane from the way to the Cross. The absolute surrender of Jesus to God’s plan makes sense only if we see how Jesus overcomes, once again, the temptation not to be the Beloved Son of God.
To comprehend this last temptation of Christ, we are reminded that after the celebration of Ash Wednesday, we always begin the journey of Lent on the First Sunday with the text of the Temptations. We read Mark’s this year, where the Temptations only take two verses (Mk 1:12-13.) Luke’s is the Gospel that most clearly indicates that, “When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time,” (Lk 4:13) a subtle threat that the devil will come back at an auspicious time. And that moment is Gethsemane.
In Gethsemane, before being taken prisoner, Jesus states that he is dying of sorrow. In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus asks his disciples to pray so that they do not fall into temptation. In the garden the scene of the Transfiguration takes place again (as we see also in Matthew’s account.)
Jesus takes apart the same disciples that he took with him in the Transfiguration—Peter, James and John. Jesus then prays out loud to the Father, whom he addresses as “Abba,” begging him to take away that “cup” from him. He then immediately submits to the Father’s will. Just like in the Transfiguration, the disciples have fallen asleep. Jesus rebukes Peter—whom he calls Simon, he has lost his identity—and commands him not to fall into temptation.
What is the temptation that Jesus experienced? If we realize the parallel with the Transfiguration—which we always read on the Second Sunday in Lent, following the Temptations—if we see that Gethsemane is a parallel with the scene on top of Mount Tabor, we know that the temptation is that Jesus, in possession of his absolute freedom, would choose not to act like the Son of God he is, and would decide not to submit to the suffering of the Cross.
In the Transfiguration, the voice of God tells Jesus’s disciples, “This is my Son, the Beloved.” It is a confirmation of Jesus’ identity that is connected to his baptism, when the same voice proclaims the same message in a baptism that, as Jesus is free from sin, could only be of identity. Thus, this is Gethsemane: a new, last temptation of identity (as all the Temptations really were about!) The Son of Man overcomes in an instant the temptation of not being who he is by not submitting to the Cross.
Holy Thursday accounts and recreates this experience in the Adoration that follows the celebration of the Eucharist. From the end of Mass until at least midnight, we prostrate ourselves before the real presence of Jesus, who has been tossed about for an instant between his love for life and his people and his love for his Father. In Gethsemane, Jesus realizes that both are the same love. It is the Jesus that for an instant begs the Father to strip him from his identity. It is in overcoming this last temptation that fills with meaning and profound love the decision to submit to the Cross.
It is Gethsemane that brings us closer to the human Jesus, human like us, tempted but firm, who suffers, but who loves like we are called to love. It is in Gethsemane that we are shown what we are capable of becoming—of being!—when we feel like children profoundly beloved by the Father.
It is with Gethsemane at heart that we approach and understand the Cross, the absolute submission to the love of God and love of neighbor. With Gethsemane at heart we understand the beauty of the Resurrection that awaits us on the other side of Passover.
May you have a blessed Holy Week.
Ricardo Martín
Ash Wednesday inaugurates a new season of Lent. Lent can become an anecdote, a missed opportunity, if we do not become very intentional about it. The forty days of Lent are an invitation to change.
When Jesus calls us to “metanoia” he is not only calling us to “repent” (as we will hear when a cross of ashes is drawn on our foreheads), but also to change. Metanoia means change, change of heart, conversion (if you prefer a more religious language.) Repentance seems to be only one step in the process of change, and it connects directly with sin when we may be asked to change things that are not necessarily sinful. Repentance also seems to reflect about the past, a past action, and change is a reference to a hopeful future.
Change is difficult, we know. It is especially difficult if we do not count on God’s grace and we only trust our human power. To help us further, the Church gives us the three Lenten observances. They are wonderful tools to begin and develop our own metanoia. They come directly from the gospel that we read today: prayer, fasting, and giving. We need to be intentional about these three practices if we want them to be fruitful.
The kind of prayer described in the gospel today is a silent, individual prayer. It is not a prayer of intercession, when we ask for something; or a prayer based on formulas that we all know. It is a prayer of quieting ourselves and our minds to be able to listen to what God is trying to communicate to us. We will have to be intentional about it, find a time and a place, and enter into a rhythm during the season.
Fasting is a symbol of an attitude, and out of the three observances, the one we may misunderstand the most. Fasting begins with the realization that we do not need that much, that we have to empty ourselves of the obsession with the self and our perceived needs. If we are just about the dry observance of the rule, fasting only applies to two days during the season: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. But fasting applies to the whole season. We need less of everything. We need a radical emptying of our own needs, so we make room for God and others.
Fasting in modern times has been adapted into some “Lenten give-up.” It may be good, especially if we see it just as a symbol of a deeper change (I read some place that Lent should be less about giving up and more about giving out!) It is certainly not about “giving up something and then patting ourselves on the back for our self-control” (as a friend of mine put it).
Lent, and the change that Lent invites us to initiate is much more than giving up chocolate or sweets. Ask someone who loves you what you should really give up. I guarantee you they will not say chocolate.
Fasting is connected with the last Lenten observance. The origin of (alms)giving is that we save money with what we give up in material terms (the chocolate, for instance) and then we give this money to the poor. So our giving up is not self-serving; our sacrifice does improve someone else beyond ourselves. There is a lot of change needed in the way we consider and treat the poor, and we may be far from trusting God’s promise that when we give sacrificially we receive all kinds of blessings. We need change in the way we give, also—and more about that during Lent.
A cross of ashes will be stamped on our foreheads as a sign of our willingness to enter into this season of transformation. We prepare ourselves for the upcoming celebration of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ, by praying for God’s grace to transform us into individuals more like the Jesus who lived and died for us. Happy Lent!!
