Cedric Pisegna - Get Connected
Hi, I’m Father Cedric Pisegna. Welcome to the program. This is the third Sunday of Lent. The gospel is from John.
«Since the Passover of the Jews was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem and he found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as money changers seated there. And he made a whip out of cords and he drove them all out of the temple area with the sheep and the oxen. He spilled the coins of the money changers, overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, 'Take these out of here and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.' His disciples recalled the words of Scripture, 'Zeal for your house will consume me.' At this, the Jews answered him and said, 'What sign can you show us for doing this? ' Jesus answered and said to him, 'Destroy this temple, in three days I will raise it up.' The Jews said, 'This temple has been under construction for 46 years. You’re gonna raise it up in three days? ' But he was speaking about the temple of his body. Therefore when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this and they came to believe the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, many began to believe in his name when they saw the signs that Jesus was doing. But Jesus would not trust himself to them, because he knew them all, and he did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well».
The gospel of the Lord. We hardly ever see Jesus like this. He’s all afluster and full of passion, full of energy, and he’s flipping over tables, he’s got a whip of cords and he’s running around and driving everybody out of the temple. What in the world is going on here? Why is he so upset? Because as I have studied the Gospels, Jesus got very upset with two different things: one was religious hypocrisy when people were play acting and not living their words, and number two, when religion was polluted and what they were doing is they had turned the temple, which, as he said, «My Father’s house, a house of prayer for all people», they had turned his Father’s house into a marketplace, to a place of selling and buying and money and commerce.
And more than anything, Jesus was all about trying to help people to connect with God and they were putting obstacles in the way. This got Jesus in a lot of trouble with the religious leaders. «By what authority do you do this? And who do you think you are? And how dare you do this»? That’s how much he wants us to have something real with God. I want you to think that Lent is a time, a season, of prayer. That’s one of the three pillars of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The purpose of prayer, of course, is illumination, enlightenment. And I go like this because it’s a connection between you and God. And the purpose of prayer: purification, the sanctification of the Holy Spirit.
I’ll talk about that more as I go on here. I wanted to talk about the house of prayer. Of course, we are the house of prayer. We are the temple of God, we are the dwelling place of God. Primarily, what needs to be cleansed and purified is our hearts so that we can make room for God. Symbolically, that’s exactly what Jesus was doing when he was cleansing the temple. He was telling us what kind of a marketplace, what kind of commerce are you doing in your mind and your heart that’s an obstacle between you and God? That’s why Lent is about purification. We need to be purified and enlightened. But also, the house of God is church buildings. Usually, church buildings are quiet. If they’re Catholic, they have the blessed sacrament, a time to come before Jesus and pray.
I think about St. Peter’s Church in Rome, St. Peter’s Basilica. You walk in and Michelangelo’s Pieta on the right and Bernini’s Columns and the bones of St. Peter right underneath the altar. Wonderful place in prayer. The Holy Spirit window up above. If you’ve ever seen it, the light, shafts of light, will come down, so conducive to prayer. And then I think about the St. Louis Cathedral, the beautiful chapel to the Holy Spirit with fire red mosaics. A place of prayer. I remember we had the Chrism Mass there one time before I was a priest, and all the priests come marching in and I was caught up in prayer. It was so powerful. But one other church I wanted to talk about was the Trappist Abbey at Gethsemani, Kentucky. And as you walk into that church, etched into concrete, the words, «God alone». They’re completely dedicated to God. God alone.
And community, of course. One day, it was a Sunday, I went there to worship at Mass. We have a monastery in Louisville, Kentucky. Gethsemani Abbey is probably about an hour south, near Bardstown. I drove there and I went to the abbey and there was incense and there was chanting and there was prayer and we were all sitting there worshiping at Mass and praying. And something came over me and I know something came over me because when I left and I got in my car, I started driving away, normally, you know, I’m a type A personality and I drive pretty quickly and I just wanna get there. I noticed I was going below the speed limit. I was in no hurry. Things had slowed down. I was in Sabbath time. There’s chronos time, chronological time, and there’s Sabbath time that’s transcendent.
It breaks the boundaries. It’s when you don’t think about time as we think about it chronologically. You think about it as quality time. That’s one of the purposes of prayer, to slow us down and to give us peace, to get us in touch with God. Do you see why Jesus was so afluster, why he was so zealous? It said zeal for your house will consume me. It’s because people who had gathered for the Passover from all nations were being distracted and not able to pray. Lent had its foundation, as I told you, the three pillars of Lent, prayer and fasting and almsgiving. Lent is all about enlightenment which means a relationship with God and being illumined, and purification which means being changed by the Holy Spirit.
And we need prayer to do both. We need prayer to be able to come to a deeper illumination with God. That’s why we have this beautiful reading during Lent. And we need prayer to be purified. Purification happens when we change personally. I think about the 12-step program. If you know anything about the 12 steps, the 11th step is about prayer. And they describe prayer as being conscious contact with God. It’s not just ambiguous, you’re aware of God. And in a way, that’s exactly what prayer is. It’s a new awareness, a new awakening to the presence of God in your life. And as you’re watching this program, I’m hoping and praying that you will come to a new awareness of God. Prayer isn’t just for monks. It’s not just for priests. It’s not just for the Pope. It’s for people in prison, it’s for people out on the streets, it’s for you and for me.
«It’s a house of prayer for all nations,» Jesus said. God wants all people to come to know him in a personal way. I love what the prophecy says that one day we will all know the Lord «just as the oceans cover the sea. Everybody will come to know the Lord». And oh, what a day that will be. Lent is all about coming to a new awareness, so in the 12-step program, what we have is conscious contact in order to be purified, if you will, from an addiction to come into a recovery from an addiction, to change bad habits, to overcome lust or anger or any of the deadly sins or gossip or whatever it is, we have to rely upon a power greater than ourselves. We can’t do it by ourselves.
We can change a little bit, but the bottom line is, is we cannot have lasting personal change the way we want it, significant personal change, without God’s help. I think about a mother connected to their baby with an umbilical cord. The umbilical cord lends nutrients and moisture, liquids, to the baby because the baby can’t live on its own. Same way with prayer. We can’t really live on our own. Remember what Jesus said? He said, «I’m the vine and you’re the branches. Remain in me, connected to the vine,» and otherwise the branch would just wither and die. But when you remain in Jesus, there’s this flow, this anointing, this enduement, this sap, if you will, that flows to us. And it provides spiritual nutrients, new ability, new power, to be able to face an addiction, admit it, and come into recovery. To be able to face sinfulness and be purified from it. To be able to face your own selfishness and narcissism and go beyond it.
There is unlimited power in prayer and I want you to tap into that. You are believers, most of you, and even if you aren’t, you can come to believe through prayer. That’s what happened to me. I was just a young man and 18 years old, going on 19, and came to the Scriptures and this is what I read. I didn’t know where to start. Matthew 7:7, and it said: «Ask and you shall receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened». Jesus was teaching about prayer on his Sermon on the Mount. And I received that word and I began to pray, and as I began to pray, faith welled up in me, belief. I began to believe in God more deeply, such that eventually I had an experience with God, an experience in the Holy Spirit. And it all started with prayer.
Prayer is the life blood, the vehicle. I love what David the Psalmist, he said, «My soul thirsts for you, my soul yearns for you, like a deer for running streams». Prayer is a welling up within, this desire, this hunger, this thirst, for more. It’s a love relationship with God. During the pandemic, a lot of people couldn’t go to church. And what they were doing was making little chapels or a house of prayer, if you will, a little place, a seat with a candle, with a stool, a little table, put your Bible on it, put some books that you read, maybe a journal. It’s a little place that they carved out for prayer. And it’s important that you find a place and make your house a house of prayer.
I remember one time I was praying and it felt like I was on the surface, like, I wasn’t going deep. Like, I was saying the same things over and over again. And you know, I’m a religious and I’ve been in this for a long time and that happens. There are ups and downs with prayer, ups and downs. Sometimes it’s like a rollercoaster ride. And I could sense God telling me, «Cedric, in order to get deeper, if you wanna go from the superficial to the supernatural, you have to practice. You can’t just do it sporadically, every once in a while».
And while I pray every day, there can be more. Early in the morning. And part of that practicing was this: and it breaks through the veneer. It breaks through the superficiality. Part of the practicing was praising, thanking God. That’s the will of god for us in Christ Jesus, right from 1 Thessalonians 5:18 that we give God thanks in all circumstances. So, what I do is, oftentimes, I will be praying and I don’t feel like anything’s happening and then I just stop and remember, this comes from Romans 8, the Holy Spirit helps us, intercedes. I’ll take a deep breath… «Pray through me, Holy Spirit».
«Lead me, guide me, control me». And simply spend time praising God, thanking God, worshiping God, acknowledging his presence, being in his presence. And as that happens, it’s supernatural. The veneer starts to break down. You pray for God to soak your mind and your heart in Christ Jesus and you become filled with the fullness of God. Don’t always feel it, but as you do it and as you practice it over and over, every day, it’s important to be consistent, to persevere in prayer. Remember what I said about Lent. Lent is a season. It’s not just a day, it’s not just a week. It’s a long time. And it’s a minuscule season of our entire life. In a way, it’s a facsimile of what we should be.
Prayer is something that’s our life blood. I wanna talk about prayer as being an awareness of God. If you’ve had spiritual experiences, it’s not like God comes down to us from up there somewhere. It’s more what happens is there’s a new opening to the presence of God who’s already there. It’s an awakening, a new awareness. And that’s what we’re trying to do in prayer. That’s exactly what happened to me at that monastery, that trappist monastery. God was already there, but as I worshiped and as I smelled the incense, as I praised, I became more aware of God. What we do is, in the monastery, we have a tradition. We, after every meal, we clank a glass and we say, «Presence of God». And when we say, «Presence of God,» everybody stops talking, and we remember that we’re in God’s presence.
I love Psalm 139. Psalm 139, written by David. It’s a Psalm that talks about how close God is to us. It says: «Whether we sit or when we stand, God knows it all together, even before we speak a word, God knows what that word is gonna be». So, in other words, the next word that you’re gonna speak, you don’t even know what it is, but God already knows it. That’s how close to us God is. And what we’re trying to do in prayer is tap into, become aware of, and come to know the presence of God around us. God is omnipresent. That means he’s everywhere present. There is no place that you can be that God’s not there. Some of you are watching from prison. God’s right there with you in your prison cell. God is in that prison. And if you’re in a tough situation, God’s there with you too. If you’re in a great situation, a great marriage, God’s with you. Our role in prayer is to calm down, to get slow, and to listen, to be in the presence of God.
Let me talk to you about listening. We’re used to speaking and saying all these different words, but I have to tell you that prayer, the majority, a lot of my prayer is simply listening. That’s exactly what Jesus was doing in the desert. Let’s go back to the first week of Lent. We see Jesus in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. And he’s not totally speaking. The majority, I think the vast majority, of time, he was listening. By the way, Jesus was a person steeped in prayer. At his baptism, he was praying and he received the Holy Spirit. At his transfiguration, the Gospel of Luke tells us he was praying and he was transfigured. Prayer changes things. He even prayed on the cross.
Have you ever tried praying as you’re suffering? And God will inhabit your prayer, give you meaning in your suffering. My point is, is that Jesus was silent. He was transcending. He was communing with God in prayer. I think it was, I know it was, Saint Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism, he said, «Listen with the ears of your heart». We don’t only have ears here. We have ears right here, in our heart. And in silence and don’t be scandalized by silence, I’ve discovered that silence is the language of love. We don’t always have to be speaking, but God is aware that we are consenting to his presence when we’re quiet, when we’re spending time in silence.
I’ve been to monasteries and convents. There are thousands of people who live in contemplative prayer, and they know the love of God. They know that they don’t always have to say anything, simply be in his presence. And one thing that is very important, the first reading that we have at Mass on the third Sunday of Lent has to do with the Ten Commandments, has to do with the Scriptures. When we listen to the gentle voice of God in our hearts and when we listen to the Scriptures, to the Bible, we can also hear God speaking to us. And there are so many lessons, so much enlightenment, so much illumination, that comes from the Bible.
I think about, they had this big synod years ago in the Catholic Church, probably about seven, eight years ago as I film this. And the synod was a gathering of bishops from around the world with the Pope. And it was a synod about the Word of God, about the Scriptures. And during that synod, they had all kinds of presentations from Jewish rabbis and from priests and from poets and from writers, novelists. And one of the cardinals got up and said this about the Scriptures. He said, «The Scriptures is a love letter from God, directly, personally, to you and me». And everybody… everybody clapped. That’s a great way to put it.
What is the Scriptures? What is the Bible? It’s a love letter from God to you. I know it’s hard to understand it all. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense, but there’s a lot in there that you can understand. When I read the Scriptures, prepare for homilies, it’s amazing how you can hear the clear voice of God echoing through the Scriptures. God’s voice echoes in our conscience. Another place that I find in prayer is simply reading a good spiritual book. Sit there in your favorite chair or your prayer spot, and you read and it’s not like you hear the voice of God, but you hear the voice of God.
I heard the saying one time that you live one life if you don’t read, but if you do read, you live a thousand lives. And that’s a beautiful saying because the truth is that God works through books and through the Scriptures and in silence and in prayer. Jesus is in the temple in Jerusalem. I studied in Jerusalem, and now they have the Wailing Wall there.
Many people go up to that Wailing Wall and they put their prayer petitions in there and Jesus was telling us that the temple, the church, the house of God, is a place of prayer for all people. And why was he so upset? It’s because they made it into a marketplace, because prayer is the life blood of a disciple. During Lent we get in touch with the basics, what really matters. And prayer is one of the pillars, one of the foundations. However you wanna pray, there are many different ways to pray. I am hoping that you will carve out time, practice it, persevere, spend a little bit of time in silence, and you will sense the voice of God.