Father Charles Puthota

Years ago, as a young priest studying at Marquette University, I had the privilege of doing a summer French language course at Institut Catholique de Paris, as a way of preparing myself for a European language requirement for my doctoral program. The Jesuits at Rue de Grenelle in Paris generously gave me board and lodging. The French food was out of this world. Staying with the Jesuits, I would walk to my classes through the busy streets of Paris, amazed at the sights of the City of Lights. One of my favorite things was to walk to Notre Dame de Paris. What a luminous, resplendent cathedral! I fell in love with the grandeur and majesty of the church. It mediated to me the mystery of God. Through its towering gothic architecture, magnificent stained-glass windows, centuries-old history, and the fervent faith of those who worshipped there, God became both powerfully transcendent and movingly intimate to me. My experience was not unlike that of Thomas Merton, who as a young man visiting European cathedrals, was deeply touched by the presence of God, a religious experience that eventually led him to faith and vocation.

Alan Paton’s “Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful” is a fictionalized novel based on true events, dealing with the dreadful apartheid era in South Africa. In the story, a black court messenger named Emmanuel Nene visits Robert Mansfield, a white headmaster of a whites-only school, mostly out of curiosity and in admiration of Mansfield’s humanity and inclusiveness. The government comes down on Mansfield and orders him not to allow his white students to mingle with the black students of another school for a football game. Mansfield resigns from his position because for him “it is time to go out and fight everything that separates people from one another, and especially people of one color and one race from people of another color and race.”

This Lenten season, we could do concretely some of the following:

The great American novelist John Steinbeck, a Nobel laureate in 1962 for literature, wrote novels about the plight of the working class, labor unions, migrant farmworkers – all victims of the Great Depression in the 1930s. In his masterpiece, “East of Eden,” he paints a haunting picture of the conflict between good and evil. In the novel, a character named Samuel Hamilton, an early settler in the Salinas Valley, says: “Two stories have haunted us and followed us from our beginning. We carry them along like invisible tails – the story of original sin and the story of Cain and Abel. And I don’t understand either of them. I don’t understand them at all, but I feel them.”

Comparing the 52 Sundays of the liturgical year to a full deck of 52 playing cards, a priest said that on the last Sunday, the Feast of the solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe, the last card of the deck, the King of Hearts, is held up. He went on to explain that Jesus is not the King of Clubs. A club could be a symbol of force and violence, to which Jesus’ values are diametrically opposed. He is meek and humble of heart. Jesus is not the King of Spades. A spade could be used to throw dirt on others or bury the questionable past. Always looking for others’ happiness and peace, Jesus always upholds and uplifts. Even enemies are included in his offer of forgiveness. Jesus’ life is an open book with nothing to hide, illumined resplendently by the love of his Father. Jesus is not the King of Diamonds. Diamonds stand for wealth, greed, and attachment to material possessions. Jesus embraces poverty and simplicity, calling his disciples to detachment and renunciation.