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2nd Sunday of Lent, Cycle C
Parish Mission Saint Clement
Parish, Lansdowne, MD
February 24, 2013
Life: a Journey with No
Tents
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P.
Amato
Rothschild Mansion
During the 1800s, The Rothschild family is
believed to have possessed by far the largest private fortune in the world as
well as by far the largest fortune in modern world history.
A story is told that back then, some tourists
were passing by the family’s famous mansion in London and they noticed that, at
one end of the mansion, the cornices and exterior wall were unfinished.
They wondered about was since the Rothschilds
were the wealthiest family in Europe at the time
The explanation is interesting. Lord Rothschild explained that he was an
orthodox Jew and according to Orthodox tradition, the house of every Jew was to
have some part of it left unfinished.
“Why?” one would ask. The reply was, “To bear witness that the occupant of the
house is like Abraham, in a sense unfinished, a person on a journey with no
lasting home on this earth.”
Life as Circle
That practice helps us to appreciate today’s
Scripture readings.
It helps us to realize that we are all on a
journey. Some ten years ago, I read a
book entitled The Gifts of the Jews by
Thomas Cahill.
One of Cahill’s main points is that up until
the time of Abraham, whom we hear about in today’s first reading, ancient
peoples viewed life as a circle. They
believed that what has happened in the past will happen again in a continuous
circle.
They also believed that everything that
happens in our lives is determined by heavenly powers. Our task is to meditate on the ceaseless and
circular flow of life.
We are to do this until we came to peace with
this fact and with our own death as part of that great circle.
Now, as I said, that was the ancient view of
life, but one of the gifts of the Jews was that Abraham changed this ancient
and venerated way of thinking.
Life as Journey
The background to today’s first reading is
that Abraham has listened to God’s call and set out to an unknown land.
He sets out on a journey and ever since then,
the way to look at human life is as an open ended linear journey.
This change of outlook now means that there
is much more to life than the past simply repeating itself.
Now there is the possibility of a different
future and we have responsibility for creating it.
The Old Testament also reveals that this
journey is not just from one country to another, as it was for Abraham and
Moses.
It is not just an outer journey, a journey
outside me. Instead, it is primarily a
journey within, a journey in to our inner self, in to our center where we will find
God.
It is a journey of becoming one with God and
becoming God-like in the process. It is,
in the final analysis, a journey back to God and to our heavenly home.
A Journey with No Tents
This very same understanding carries right
over into Christianity.
The gospels consistently show Jesus on a
journey to Jerusalem. The gospels also
call us to see our lives as a journey and they add an important caution about this.
The caution is that we have to resist the
temptation to pitch our tents, as Peter wants to do in today’s gospel. Jesus will not let Peter do this because he
knows that there is still a lot of the journey ahead and a lot of work to do.
The question is: how might we “pitch our
tents” today?
We might be doing this when we say things
like: “This is the way I’ve always done
it.” Or, “This is the way I learned
it and have always understood it.”
Statements like these might be saying that we
are pitching our tents and closing ourselves off to learning more or looking at
things differently or doing things differently.
For example, we can “pitch our tents” in the
understanding of ourselves. We may be
inclined to turn off any comment from a family member, friend or a homily that
calls us to examine our attitude or way of speaking about certain individuals
or groups of people.
We can also “pitch our tents” in the
understanding of our faith. We may resist
seeing faith primarily as a relationship with God that involves growth and deepening
of the way see God and of our relationship with God. Perhaps we resist seeing
it as a dynamic reality instead of just a static list of truths, as in “I believe in God, the Father Almighty….”
Conclusion
As Peter is tempted in the gospel, we need to
resist pitching our tents and we need to stay on the journey that is ever
unfolding, ever new and unique.
This is why we have the Season of Lent that
calls us to repentance – to keep us growing, to keep us on the real journey of
life.
