Category: Lent

A “guest post” from Fr. Pat McNulty from Madonna House:

Did Jesus Laugh?

by Fr. Pat McNulty.

When you fast do not put on a gloomy face like the hypocrites do (Mt. 6:16).

It was the loudest doorbell I had ever heard. And when I pushed the little black button a second time, I was certain that every monk turned toward the door in monastic desperation as if to say, “What? Don’t you know this is a monastery!”

Yet when the door opened, there stood a monk with a smile that was put together with his whole face. It was so delightful I didn’t even notice his almost-shaven head and his foot-long beard.

There is something very special about smiling. So much so that science continues its desperate attempt to explain the phenomenon. Some explanations seem fair and some foolish.

One says that smiling, like exercise, releases powerful natural body elements (endorphins) into our system making it possible for us to tolerate pain more easily. That would make most people I know smile more.

But how about this one: smiling constricts the facial muscles and thus reduces the amount of blood flowing to the brain and temporarily cools it down. The cooler the brain, the happier we are. I guess polar bears must be really happy, huh!

But one thing that is generally agreed on is that there are two kinds of smiles. One involves only the lips and the cheek muscles, and the other involves both these and the eye muscles.

They say you can smile with the cheek and lip muscles even when you are not happy or in agreement with someone else, and most people will never know for sure if it’s a real smile or one put on for the occasion.

But once the eyes are involved the person who is smiled upon can tell exactly what we really mean: it’s there in our eyes.

The cheeks and lips may seem to say, “hello” or “have a nice day,” but the eyes express the real message: “Get a life,” or “Get a job,” or “Don’t bother me, I’m busy.”

I didn’t need any scientific explanation to know immediately, from his eyes, which smile this monk was showering upon me when he opened that monastery door. “Come in, little friend,” he said, “What can I do for you today?” And he meant it.

It didn’t surprise me to learn, not too long after, that I had been staring into the face of Fr. Solanus Casey, who is now up for canonization.

Nor did it surprise me to discover over the years that there were lots more like him in my hometown monastery, monks who would never become famous but whose smiles did.

It was in the eyes, and almost all of them had it.

People often ask, “Did Jesus laugh? I mean, you know, a good ol’ belly laugh?”—as if we might finally find something in common with him if he had.

Well, at least we know that he told us not to be gloomy. When you fast do not put on a gloomy face like the hypocrites do (Mt. 6:16). Gloomy means “dismal, grim, dark, long faced, without laughter.” These are all things you can hide with smiling lips and face muscles but not with the eyes.

You can fast for forty days and forty nights from visiting the mall, from TV, from beer, from coffee, gossip, and eating between meals. You can spend ten hours a day in church on your knees, and then smile like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. But in the end the truth is in the eyes.

So this year it comes to me that maybe a good Lenten discipline which would help me not look gloomy when I fast could be that of simply looking into the mirror every day. Every day I could smile and then look into my own eyes and see what message I find. Do I merely “muscle” my way past other people all day, or does my heart join in the festivities?

I might even go a little further with this Lenten fast from gloom and mention a specific name each day as I look in the mirror and try to smile on that person with my eyes. That ought to crack a mirror or two.

But what if it seems hopeless? What if the mirror on the wall tells me that I am not the fairest of them all, that my smile is just my lips and cheeks? Maybe I could ask Jesus to help me want people to see beyond my own pain and sin into a heart that knows Him anyway and wants them to know Him better, too.

Yes, a Lenten fast from gloom could make Lent go very fast indeed—especially for everyone else around me.

But P. S. you didn’t answer the question: Did Jesus ever laugh?

I would say that if Jesus ever laughed, it was intimately connected to his smiling. And his smile could not have been a polite smile like when you hold a door for someone, or a nodding smile when you pass and greet someone in public, or even the kind of smile you give when someone smiles at you and you return the smile.

Jesus’ smile must have opened up his very heart to those who looked into his eyes. When that happened between him and someone else, I imagine they suddenly smiled “out loud” together. And thus was born, I think, a new kind of laughter.

It must have been something like what happened that day at the monastery door when Fr. Solanus smiled at me: we both started laughing. It was not nervous laugher, and it was not polite laughter.

The laughter flowed through the smile, from the heart, and was visible in the eyes. Suddenly we were smiling together “out loud.”

I remember it with Catherine Doherty, too. Her smile was so profound you knew she was looking into your very soul. At first it was a fearful thing, but then one day you realized she was letting you look into her soul, too, and the fear was gone. And after that, every now and then, unexpectedly, eye-to-eye, you smiled together “out loud.”

Perhaps when Jesus tells us not to be gloomy during our Lenten fast, he is trying to teach us how to smile from the heart so that we notice less and less the other person’s physical condition, social or economic status, woundedness, or personal sins or our memories of the same.

Then perhaps by Easter, we will rise from the gloom-tomb again and suddenly find ourselves smiling together with Jesus “out loud” the laughter of Resurrection.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what does my smile say to them all?

If you read my blog, you know that I enjoy reading Fr. Pat McNulty from Madonna House.  In a very recent article, he talks about experiencing poverty during Lent, discovering how poor we really are.  An excerpt:

Since that first Lent, much has changed in my life: there has been growth, healing, and conversion. But in some deep, deep place in my heart, I know that the real change hasn’t taken final hold yet. And it’s down there in those depths that I need to discover how poor I really am and how to beg for God’s mercy and for the ability to embrace this poverty with new hope and joy.

For I am insufficient unto myself. I, along with all of mankind, am on a restless pilgrimage, a pilgrimage in search of a final fulfillment which those who are truly poor know is theirs only in the kingdom of heaven.

We are all beggars! It’s nothing to be ashamed of. The Son of God was the poorest beggar of all, and it didn’t bother him a bit. It was, he said, his food to do the will of his Father!

But so many of us do not recognize our own poverty and thus cannot figure out why we are always so spiritually hungry.

Poverty?

I don’t love my spouse anymore. That’s poverty.

My child just died without warning in an accident. Why? Why? That’s poverty.

He’s a lousy preacher, but we’re stuck with him. That’s poverty.

My kids don’t have anything to do with God anymore. That’s poverty.

I don’t like this senior citizen dwelling I’m in. That’s poverty.

Why do you not heal me of this sickness, Lord? That’s poverty.

I spent a fortune on my education, and I can’t find a job commensurate with it anywhere. That’s poverty.

I’ve lost my job and I can’t find another one of any kind. That’s poverty.

I don’t want to grow old. That’s poverty.

I can’t stand my neighbour. That’s poverty.

I have no friends. That’s poverty.

Nobody understands me. That’s poverty.

Our poverty is all around us. We are all beggars. And The Beggar we follow has been there, done that, and wears the scars of those wounds. He knows exactly how to teach us to embrace our poverty as he embraced his. Even our need to be taught is our poverty!

Our desire to learn is our begging. And his response is the food that gives us new life.

Lent is a perfect desert-time for us to own our poverty, great or small, to put real words on it, to cry it out, to yell it out, to beg it out, and finally to embrace it as it is, whatever it is, and wrap it up in his mercy.

Then by Easter, after we’ve looked again with Jesus deep into our own personal poverty, the Risen Lord can show us how to reach out even more to one another—whether we are rich or poor.

If you want to read the whole article, just click here.

I guess I’m still catching up with Lent.  .  .  .  Because of our dear friend’s death and her family still being in town and all of our grief and exhaustion, Ash Wednesday remains a blur–except for the oh-so-real words: “Remember, man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  Here is an article by Fr. Pat McNulty from Madonna House on this very topic:

Good News for Dust and Ashes

by Fr. Pat McNulty.

One Ash Wednesday, the ashes on Fr. Pat’s forehead began a change in a young woman’s heart.

“No thanks, I only smoke filters,” she said as I offered her a cigarette. She was smoking filtered Kools. Yuck! I was smoking a real cigarette—Camels.

We found ourselves on the same train. She had boarded in Chicago and I in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I took one of the few remaining seats in that car, the one next to her.

As I sat down, she politely whispered, “Excuse me, but you’ve got something all over your forehead.”

That “something” was ashes from the Ash Wednesday Mass I had just come from. They became the stimulus for a very nice ride together on Amtrack.

We eventually ended up in the dining car for coffee and a cigarette, and we talked about the weather, politics, the latest movies, the Chicago Bears, and finally, ashes and God.

My “Kool friend” was in her late twenties, a beautiful and intelligent young lady. She had the job of her dreams and the man of her dreams too—though, as I found out later, he was already married and had a family.

“I used to be a Christian,” she said, “but it never really took, I guess.”

“Oh, it always takes,” I said. “We just have to catch up to it.”

“I guess so. I don’t know much about your Catholic faith, but I have always been intrigued by your Ash Wednesday thing. How does it go?”

“Remember, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.”

“Yes. That. Don’t you think it is a bit of bad news to be talking about God and dust? Isn’t religion supposed to be good news?”

“Well, if we don’t begin with the truth, if we filter it all out to suit our own purposes, then it’s not real news anymore, is it, let alone “good news?’”

“Yes, but…”

“Many people don’t believe in the extent of their own mortality until they see it with their own eyes. They do not believe they are totally involved with and dependant on a God who could return them all to dust forever in a flash and leave them there if he wanted to.”

“That doesn’t sound like good news to me.”

“The extent of our own mortality—dust thou art—and God’s loving presence mixed in with all the ashes, through Jesus Christ, is the Good News!”

“Meaning?”

I think we were both surprised when the conductor called her Ohio stop, because the time had passed so rapidly. We returned to our primary seats and, as she gathered her things together, I quickly wrote out my phone number and address on a book of matches I had taken from the dining car and gave it to her in case she wanted to talk more.

The train stopped. I helped her with some small luggage. She thanked me. I smiled and said to her, “Excuse me, but you’ve got something all over your forehead.” She quickly brushed it, looked at her hand, then at me. She was still laughing as she made her way up the aisle.

I’m sure people in the car wondered why the man with the Roman collar and the smudge mark on his forehead was waving to the young lady through the window as the train pulled away from the station. But I knew her repentance had begun.

It was almost two years later when I heard from her again, though I had not forgotten the incident. In fact, she had come to mind on the Ash Wednesday after that.

Her father had died since we had met, and because his long battle with cancer had left his body in such an appalling physical state, her mother had had him cremated. This had deprived her and her siblings of that final closure with their dad, which body-funerals can provide.

When they gathered for the scattering of the ashes into the winds over the Atlantic Ocean, she was devastated. He had been her best friend, and now he was just ashes thrown to the wind. “Why would God do that?” she asked.

We wrote to each other a few times off and on over the next year or so. She eventually returned to the Christian faith, met a young man at church, and they had set the wedding date. (Now why did that not surprise me?)

I was unable to be present for the wedding, but I sent her a special gift, my favorite crucifix, and I attached a piece of palm to it. I wanted her to have them.

And I reminded her that from such a simple Palm Sunday “thing” comes that powerful Ash Wednesday “thing” that had pointed her ever so gently toward repentance. “Excuse me, but you’ve got something all over your forehead.”

To this day when I receive ashes on Ash Wednesday, I cannot help but wonder how our chat would have turned out if I had taken my cue from the more cool, filtered Ash Wednesday blessing, “Repent,” etc. etc. vs. the real one, “Remember, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.”

I don’t think the filtered version would have done it for this young lady. What she needed was the shock of real ashes leading to repentance.

And I believed it then as I believe it now: if you don’t get the “unto dust” part of Ash Wednesday first, you’ll never really get the “repent” part either.

P.S. She stopped smoking because her father had died from smoking-related causes. I asked her to pray that I could stop too. And if I knew where my “Kool” friend was today, I could let her know that this old “Camel” finally made it.

After frolicking with death by smoking for about forty years, I was finally able to stop about ten years ago. Till then I guess I imagined I was ready to return to dust anytime God wanted. But on second thought, I think I realized I needed more time to repent. Actually a lot more time!