READING BACKWARDS

 
     There are so many episodes in the New Testament that don’t seem, when the events occur, to make much sense.  It’s hard, at the moment, to see a purpose for what happens.  
 
     Just considering Lent, we could ask:  was it really necessary for Jesus, after the baptism, to be “driven” (Mark 1:12) into the desert to be tempted/tested/tried by Satan?  
 What in the name of all things holy just happened on the top of Mt Tabor?  Moses and Elijah—really?  Blinding light?  Voices from heaven?  Then being told, “Don’t talk about this…” (Mark 9:9)?
 Why did Jesus bother to engage the Samaritan woman in dialogue?  That kind of public behavior is “not on,” as they say.  He didn’t really expect her to give Him a drink, did He?
 If neither he nor his parents sinned (John 9:1-3), why was this man (and so many others) born blind (or, for that matter, crippled or deaf or mute or leprous or…)?  How many years had he been reduced to sitting and begging (I wonder if his parents couldn’t afford to keep him…)?
 Why did Jesus delay when He received word about Lazarus’ illness?  Why break the hearts of Martha and Mary?  
 
 I think that at least a part of the answers to all these questions involves a production of trusting faith.  For Jesus, it is a reinforcement of His faith in His Father through the temptations; for Peter, James, and John, it will produce a stronger faith in Jesus than they had before; the Samaritan woman’s faith leads her from outcast to evangelist; the blind man, once healed, turns in trusting faith to Jesus, the Son of Man; Martha confesses her faith in Jesus even before Lazarus is raised, and this miracle produces faith in many others.
 
 So, it seems that events occur, it takes a reading in retrospect to produce in us an “aha moment.”  Jumping ahead a few weeks, we can see the same realization dawning on the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:30ff):  “Weren’t our hearts burning…?”
 
 This is the story of our own lives, as well—so often we are immersed in difficulties, situations that seem to have no other than a sorrowful outcome, losses and alienations that we were convinced never should have had to happen.  And yet, given the perspective of the distance of time and looking back, there is sense and growth and benefit, after all, and we find ourselves able to say “Thanks be to God” for the grace.  CS Lewis wrote to a young friend after the friend’s wife died and referred to the event as “a severe mercy.”  And ultimately the friend came to see the truth of Lewis’ insight.
 
 The rest of Lent gives us the chance to do our own “review of life” to see places where sorrow has touched us and to see where growth and grace have come to us through those places.  Perhaps our prayer can be that of Dag Hammarskjold in his spiritual diary, Markings:  “For all that has been, thanks; for all that will be, yes.”  Happy reflecting.  And never forget the greatest of all retrospectives:  the Resurrection that makes sense of Gethsemane and Calvary.                                                                                                                   -Fr. David