February 24, 2010

On intimacy and righeousness

By Msgr. Edward Buelt, J.C.L.

This is the second column in a Denver Catholic Register series reflecting on Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 Lenten message, “The justice of God has been manifested through faith in Jesus Christ.” Read the pope’s Lenten message online at www.archden.org/lent.

What is intimacy?  The human heart cries out for intimacy, but it hardly knows for what it cries.  Intimacy is not sex.  It is not being close to another nor even the total knowing of and being known by another.  Intimacy is rightness of relationship, being in a right relationship with the other.  In the Bible, intimacy is called “righteousness.”  When Jesus at his baptism commanded John his baptizer to “give in for now.  We must do this if we would fulfill God’s righteousness” (Mt. 2:15), he revealed the restoration of intimacy between God and man, of that right relationship which had been “rifted” by Adam and Eve and is daily “rifted” in our own personal sin.  Yes, every human heart cries out for right relationships.

The holy season of Lent is upon us.  If one takes these 40 days seriously, Lent is not an easy month and a half.  In Lent one is commanded into the desert wilderness, so that exposed and vulnerable to God he may heal the rifts that have destroyed our right relationships “in the city,” that is, with Him, with oneself, with the other and the community, and with creation.  This is the key to Lent.  One cannot be in a right relationship with God if one is in a wrong relationship with another.  Intimacy with another is impossible if one is not in a right relationship with God.

We begin Lent by presenting ourselves to the Church to be marked on our foreheads with a cross of ashes.  It is a simple ritual, whose meaning and power is remarkable.  In the book of the prophet Ezekiel, God commanded his messenger to mark with the Hebrew letter tav (written as a “T” or “+” or “X”) the foreheads of they “who sigh and groan over all the abominations” being committed in the holy city of Jerusalem.  God will save only those whom he sees with this mark (Ez 9:4ff).  For our part, we have been saved by the cross of Christ.  Now in Lent, as a sign of our sorrow over our sins and abominations, God’s messenger marks us with the sign of Christ’s cross, that God may see us so marked and be merciful to us. 

It puzzles me to see people outside of church that day wearing their ashen cross as a sort of badge of honor, even with a certain sense of pride.  It perplexes me, too, how few people are able to explain to others why they are so marked, able perhaps only to mutter a few words about it being the start of Lent and that this is what Catholics have always done.

To wear an ashen cross is to be liberated.  In the Old Testament, tav became the seal of God’s ownership.  So an ashen cross on the forehead of a Christian becomes the sign of one’s desire to belong to Christ and to be in right relationships—with God, with one’s self, with others and with creation.  On Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent, one is marked with an ashen cross imposed by the blackened thumb of the priest, deacon or minister.  On Good Friday, at Lent’s end, we pray that the diffused light of God’s justice and mercy imprint the cross on our minds and hearts.  Then on Easter with Jesus let us rise from the tomb and the waters of baptism, that God’s righteousness may be fulfilled and intimacy with God restored. 

“The justice of God has been manifested through faith in Jesus Christ” (Rom 3:21-22).  

Msgr. Edward Buelt, J.C.L., is pastor of Our Lady of Loreto Church in Foxfield. He has a licentiate in canon law degree.