Never Wasted

Never Wasted

By Richard Maffeo

I know your deeds and your toil and your

perseverance . . . (Revelation 2:2)

Sacrifice.

No one knows how its claws can tear the soul like the one who for decades gave up a dream, a life, a goal, a purpose . . . .

Given up.

Thirty. Forty. Years.

Given up to walk instead the walk He charted, only to find at the end of the course what seems ashes and emptiness and loneliness. The hope of something better, the prayers for something precious, the yearning for something beautiful disappear like wisps of smoke in the wind, and the voice on the shoulder taunts:

“What could have been if you’d walked the road you gave up?”

Oh! But like the child who gave his few fish to Jesus and the Lord fed thousands; Like the widow who gave her last pennies to God, and whose story has encouraged millions across the millennia, nothing sacrificed to Jesus is ever useless. No offering ever returns empty. No life or years, no fish or coin – nothing is ever a waste when given to Christ.

He promised it – and He still promises it:

Be steadfast. Immovable. Abounding always in the work of the Lord, because your labor, your sacrifice, your purpose,

and perseverance is not now, nor has been, nor will ever be in vain when done for, and offered to, the Lord.*

*see 1 Corinthians 15:58

It's About the Heart

St. Mark gives us two vignettes in his gospel, each of which makes the same important point for every Christian: God is pleased with what we do for Him when it is all we can do.

The first is of the widow who placed her penny into the Temple treasury. Here is what Jesus thought of that offering: “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:41-44)

A few chapters later, Mark relates another story, this one about a woman with a jar of very expensive ointment. It is likely she’d been saving it for her dowry – if she’d ever marry. She chose instead, according to the custom of the day, to pour it over Jesus’ head as an expression of love.

When some objected to her ‘waste’, Jesus responded: “Let her alone; why do you bother her . . . . She has done what she could (Mark 14:6-8).

Do you see the common theme in these two stories? It’s not at all about how much we place in the offering basket. It’s about doing what we can do, even if what we can do is not a lot in the eyes of others. 

It’s about the heart – and who owns it.

To His Last Breath

(I wrote this last year for Lent. If you didn't see it, here it is again).

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The last seven words (statements, actually) of Jesus as He hung on Golgotha's cross are among the most encouraging of all Scripture. Here is the third of the seven:

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 19:26-27)

Most representations of the crucified Jesus are remarkably sanitized. Rarely have I seen more than a few streaks of red paint around the wounds in His hands, forehead, feet, and side. But that is not at all what Jesus looked like when He died.

It started with flogging. Soldiers tied Jesus’ hands to the whipping post and stripped off his robe. Then one of them swung rock and bone- embedded whips against Jesus’ back, buttocks, and legs, slicing into His flesh until strips of skin hung from his body. Small veins and arteries oozed and spurted blood with each heartbeat and dripped down His back, His thighs, His legs. The pavement at His feet was moist with dirt and congealed blood.
         

Jesus was so weakened by the vicious beating, He was unable to carry His cross along the road to Golgotha. Soldiers forced Simon of Cyrene to drag it for Him. When they got to the top of the hill, they tossed the wood to the ground and threw the Lord onto it. The spikes they hammered through His wrists and feet tore through exquisitely sensitive nerves. Electrifying pain exploded along His limbs.

As He hung between heaven and earth, breathing became an all-consuming struggle. Gravity pulled relentlessly on His diaphragm, forcing Him to repeatedly push against His feet and flex His arms to breathe. Yet, every movement intensified the strain on His ravaged nerves, and each breath forced His bleeding back against the splintered wood, reopening the raw wounds. Every breath, every movement, every moment on the cross inflamed His torture.

It is that picture in my mind of His horrific and bloody death that makes His Third Word – this one to His mother and His disciple – so poignant. And it is there that I so often miss the significance of the moment.

Jesus – his eyes alternately glazing over from dehydration, exhaustion, and throbbing pain, and then focusing on the soldiers gambling for his clothing, and the mob cursing and jeering – at one point His eyes locked with His mother’s.

I have sometimes wondered what she was thinking as she watched her only Son suffer. It must be a parent’s worst nightmare to bury a child, and Mary was living that nightmare. Surely Simeon’s prophecy bit at her memory, “A sword will pierce through your own soul” (Luke 2:35).

Jesus gathered His rapidly waning strength and, in the language and culture of the day, fixed His eyes on hers and spoke tenderly, “Woman, here is your son.” And to John, He said, “Here is your mother.”  In 21^st century language, He said, “My dear mother, My work is nearly done. John will now take care of you.” And to His beloved disciple He said, “John, I am counting on you to take care of My mom. Treat her as your own mother.”

St. Paul would say decades later, “Whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8).  St. James would write, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress . . .  (James 1:27).  And speaking to those who thought themselves religious, Jesus responded, “Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God) —  then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God” (Mark 7:10-13).

Despite his nearly incomprehensible agony, Jesus continued to do what was right and necessary. In one of His last acts in life,HH He made certain His parent would be taken care of after His death.

True religion is not simply attending Mass, receiving the Sacraments, devoting ourselves to prayer and the study of the Scriptures. True faith requires we take care of others – and especially our parents, if they are still alive.

Are we tender toward them? Patient toward them? Do we treat them with dignity and respect? Do they need financial help? Do we often call or visit? Do we model the Christian lifestyle they taught us and lived before us during our years in their home?  St. John, in his third epistle wrote: I have no greater joy than to hear of my children walking in the truth (3 John 4). Oh, how great a joy it is for aging parents to know their children walk in Truth.

To His last breaths, Jesus took care to take care of His mother. How ought we who follow in Christ’s footsteps behave toward our parents?

Mutually Exclusive Choices

I deleted this post because the Lord convicted me AGAIN that my job is to build up, and not tear down.  I hope this time I have learned my lesson.

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The One in the Middle

The Second Word of Jesus on the Cross:

Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.

(Luke 23:40-42)

Two men hung between heaven and earth, nailed to crosses on either side of the One in the middle. Two men, thieves, struggling against death, knowing it was only a matter of hours before death sunk its talons into their flesh.  

One thief, even in the midst of dying, joined his voice to the crowd as they mocked, cursed and blasphemed the Stranger in the middle. 

There is a lesson in that thief for all of us, for we also always have a choice to join the crowd, to follow the popular, the politically correct, the praised. We always have a choice to enter the wide gate toward the broad way, or the small gate and the narrow way. We always have a choice to turn from the Savior. We always have a choice to believe His words or reject them.

But the other thief would have none of the mockery. What are you doing? He rebuked the first thief. “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.”

And then he did what everyone must do at some time in their life. Rather, he did what everyone must do over and over and over again throughout their life: He acknowledged his sin, which is nothing less than agreeing with God that we are wrong in what we have done, and He is right for requiring of us something better. It’s called being humble before God. It’s called repentance.

Repentance does amazing things in and for our soul. It lifts us to where Jesus hangs between heaven and earth, face to face with His nailed and bloodied body – brutalized because of our sins. As the Hebrew prophet Isaiah foretold centuries earlier, He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5-6). 

Repentance frees us from ourselves. It frees us from our arrogance that binds us to eternal death. Repentance teaches us humility and unveils for us our fleeting mortality – and our desperate need for an eternal savior. Yes, repentance even brings us into an intimate relationship with the King of Glory, a relationship reserved only for the penitent.

So the good thief turned to the One no longer a stranger in the middle and pleaded, “Jesus, remember me when you come into Your kingdom.” The dying man recognized Jesus had a kingdom and Jesus was Lord in His kingdom.

And the thief wanted to be there with his Lord.

“Jesus, remember me when you come into Your kingdom.” The man spoke less than a dozen words. But short prayers from the heart are far more efficacious than long soliloquies without humility.

Jesus, remember me.

Yes, Jesus is Lord of His kingdom, but the critical question I routinely ask myself is this: Is Jesus lord of my kingdom? Am I on the throne of my heart, or is He? Do I daily seek to follow in His footsteps, to go where He wants me to go, to stay where He wants me to stay, to willingly do His bidding . . . or am I more likely to go my own way, on my own path and through doors of my choosing?

Jesus, remember me.

Oh, how the King loves to hear our plea born in a penitent heart – and it is always true, what He said to the penitent thief, He promises also to us: Truly I say to you . . . you shall be with Me in Paradise."