Do you speak Jesus?

Learning the language of Jesus requires listening, practicing, making mistakes – and patience!

Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger

Lent is a pilgrimage, a journey together to a holy place. 

Like all pilgrimages, Lent requires some preparation. What am I going to take with me, what will I leave behind? With whom will I go or be in contact, and whom will I leave to themselves or to the care of others, if only for a time? What is my final destination, where will I stay along the way, and by which route shall I get there? 

As applied to Lent at least, many of these questions require little research or preoccupation, since the structure of Lent is fairly clear and simple. It begins with Ash Wednesday. We are all pretty familiar with the ritual of the imposition of ashes and the regulations for Latin Catholics. No meat that day for everyone 14 and older. For those 18-to-59, only one main meal and two other light (meatless) meals. All Fridays in Lent are meat-free (abstinence) and Good Friday is also a fast day like Ash Wednesday.

The four Sundays of Lent offer well-chosen Mass readings, worth meditation even before we attend the Sunday Mass. They are followed by the two weeks of Passiontide, the second of which is Palm Sunday, the door into Holy Week. The Easter Triduum or “three days,” also known as the Paschal or Sacred Triduum, picks up the journey where Lent leads us, from sundown on Holy Thursday to sundown on Easter Sunday. Its high point or central focus is the cross or, more precisely, the one who ascends it, Jesus Christ himself. It is not at all an oversimplification to say that the entire goal of the pilgrimage is “Jesus and Him crucified,” as St. Paul would describe the meaning of our faith (1 Cor 2:2). 

Any Lenten pilgrimage, anything we do or any person we meet along the way, in order to achieve its purpose, must somehow bring us closer to Jesus, must speak his language. So I would pose, first of all, the question: “Do you speak Jesus?”

How do I know I speak “Jesus,” how do I learn to? The answer is quite simple. Jesus speaks the language of God, which is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:7-21). Love is a funny word, however. It can mean many different things to different people. Philosophers, poets, painters, sculptors and composers have all given us renditions of what love looks like. All of these fabrications, of course, are a kind of language, productions that reveal something of the artisan and, to the extent that they are true works of art, a creation of lasting or universal value in which many others can find beauty and inspiration.

Jesus, who is God’s love incarnate, speaks the purest language of love, which culminates on the cross, the supreme act of self-sacrifice, the gift of all that he is — for all of humanity. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55). Paul may be making the prophet Hosea’s words his own to describe the triumph of love over sin and death (Hos 13:14) . 

Throughout the Lenten pilgrimage, it is customary for us to want to let go of those things that blind us to the vision of true love, most of them the creature comforts we cling to that obscure the purification of love. A very moving passage from a Gospel read a few days before Ash Wednesday describes an encounter of Jesus with a rich young man (Mk 10:17-27). The Marcan account begins with Jesus himself starting on a journey, a pilgrimage. The rich young man runs up to him, like someone trying to catch a train. He has all sorts of questions for Jesus, but it soon becomes clear he wants Jesus to tell him he is okay exactly where he is and with all the wonderful things he has done. How does Jesus respond? 

Not surprisingly, Mark tells us the language Jesus speaks is love (“Jesus, looking at him, loved him”). Jesus then tells him the one thing he is lacking is that he has so many possessions, which he must let go of in order to have “treasure in heaven.” What is so ironic here is that Jesus is himself the “rich” one who gives up everything. He wants to invite the rich young man into his company, but suddenly the man’s face falls and he walks away sad. The disciples are stunned by this and the famous saying Jesus then utters about the danger of riches – like a camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle. Impossible for man, but not for God! All the more reason why we want to stick with Jesus and learn his language.

That is what the Lenten pilgrimage is all about, the language school of Jesus. Like all language learning, it requires listening, practicing, making mistakes – and patience! Many of us have already decided the things we are going to give up during Lent. Some of us might actually keep up our resolve. I wish everyone the very best of good discipline and perseverance in the observation of these practices. If anyone falls down in some way, I pray that he or she may not become discouraged! Often those slips and falls happen when we rely too much on ourselves. That is why it is best, as on any pilgrimage, we share our journey with companions so that we can support and encourage one another.

If our focus moves away from Jesus and Him crucified, if we become more conscious of what we are giving up than the One whom we seek to be with, then surely we will lose our footing. Taking a little break on Sundays is perfectly fine, as a runner on a long race stops for water. Traditionally, Sundays were not observed as days of required fasting, though there is nothing wrong with doing so. The important thing always is to keep our focus on Jesus, on speaking his language, which is always “good news.” I often think of evangelization or “gospel-ing” as being “good news.” This is what Jesus is. This is what we must become.