When placing the ashes on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday, the priest will say one of two things: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” or “Repent, and believe in the Gospel”. Ashes both remind us of our own mortality and call us to repentance. The ashes also call us to be humble and remind us of the humility of God expressed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. The God who created the heavens and the earth, the God who created the universe and everything in it—the stars, black holes, quantum particles, DNA, and time itself—humbled himself to enter into creation to take on our flesh and our sins for our salvation.
In his book “Life of Christ”, Fulton Sheen talks about how hard for us it is to truly understand the humility that was involved in the Word becoming flesh. In the book, he asks you to imagine a human person divesting himself of his body, and then sending his soul into the body of a serpent. The person would need to accept the limitations of the creature’s body, while all the while knowing that his mind was superior and that fangs could not adequately articulate thoughts no serpent ever possessed. However, even if we can get a glimpse of the humility of God becoming man through this analogy, it is nothing compared to the emptying of God to become one of us.
Jesus lived his entire life with humility: from his birth in a trough from which animals fed until the final emptying of himself on the Cross between two criminals. As St. Paul wrote, “he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:7-8).
So, what does humility mean in the context our relationship with God? St. Thomas Aquinas defines humility this way: “Humility means seeing ourselves as God sees us: knowing every good we have comes from Him as pure gift” (SummaQ161). Perhaps as a corollary to this, we could also say that humility means that we need to accept and surrender ourselves to the fact that God is God and we are not.
Jesus tells us that we need to be like a little child to enter the kingdom of heaven, that is, to accept the kingdom of God with the humility and trust of a child. We need to accept that we are completely dependent on God and trust that God always does what is best for us. We need to be willing to submit to God’s plan for us, especially when it’s not what we have planned. We need to accept the fact that there are things we can’t control and that we need God’s help. When we rely more on ourselves than on God, we lose the opportunity God is presenting us to grow closer to him. Jesus asks us to imitate him: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” When we imitate Jesus’s humility, we approach the fullness of what it means to be human. We share in the life of Christ when we are humble as he is humble. Humility is the path that Jesus lays out for us to grow in relationship with him.
In one of his letters, St. Augustine writes, “The way to Christ is first through humility, second through humility, third through humility” (Letters 118:22). As we begin this season of lent, let us approach our God in humility and surrender ourselves to him recognizing that everything in our lives and in the world around us is a gift. Let us share in the life of Christ by sharing in his humility. Let us grow closer to Christ by being humble as he is humble.
As I write this, it’s hard to believe that we are beginning the second week of February. The month of January was an absolute blur to me. With the school year in Kenya beginning on January 6, Florah and I spent the last month paying school fees, buying school supplies and getting shoes and uniforms for the students we support in the HOPE project.
You don’t just write out a check to the school and send it in the mail. Every primary school requires cash payments, which means that every school must be visited in person and in some cases the school fees negotiated. Everything in Kenya is a negotiation. This responsibility for primary school payments falls on Florah. As our current set of HOPE students span thirty-seven schools, Florah had to visit every one of them.
While Florah is responsible for primary school payments, I handle secondary and vocational schools. In this respect, my job is much easier. Not only are there less schools to pay, twenty vs. thirty-seven, but secondary schools don’t require school fees to be paid in cash. Rather, each school has a bank account at local bank, which the money must be deposited into. The twenty secondary and vocational schools which our students currently attend have their accounts in seven separate banks. Sounds much easier, right? Seven banks vs thirty-seven schools. While making payments at the bank is certainly much easier than making payments at thirty-seven different primary schools, it still is not as easy as it appears. Even though the secondary school payments are deposited into a bank account, it is not really possible to pay by check. When you pay for a student, you have to get an individual receipt from the bank for that particular student’s payment. We then give the receipt to the student and the student must then bring the receipt to the school before they can begin classes. If the student can’t produce a receipt, he is sent home. The common alibi that the check is in the mail doesn’t work here. This means that I have to withdraw the cash for the school payments from the bank and then bring cash to each bank to pay into the accounts of the secondary or vocational school for each individual student. Keep in mind that I do not have a car here and so either have to walk or take very crowded public transportation to get anywhere. I don’t like carrying a lot of money around with me, but sometimes I have no choice. I just don’t do it often. Luckily there is one shopping plaza in Mombasa that has most of the banks I need to make school payments. As with most public places in Kenya, you need to pass through a security checkpoint to enter, which is good for me as once I’m inside, I feel pretty safe walking around from bank to bank. On the negative side, this shopping plaza is not close to where I live and not convenient for me to get to. Luckily, I’m able to get all the first term payments done in a few trips (and will be able to get second and third term payments with just one trip each). I also pay some school fees at banks close to where I live, but as there is no single shopping plaza with all the banks I need, I have to carry the cash with me as I walk from bank to bank, which I try to avoid.
What complicates matters for first term secondary school payments (there are three terms in a school year in Kenya, which runs from the beginning of January until the end of November), is that students who are beginning secondary school (the first year of secondary school is called Form 1) often don’t know until the last minute where they are going to school. Other students don’t know whether they will go to secondary school or vocational school. In Kenya, the fate of a student solely depends on standardized exams. The exam that students take after completing primary school is called the KCPE, which stands for The Kenya Certificate of Primary Education. A student’s score on the KCPE exam will dictate what schools a student will be admitted to. Students take the KCSE at the end of November, but the grades don’t become available until after Christmas. Students express their interest in schools they would like to potentially attend, and once the KCSE exam results are available, a determination will be made as to which school a child will be offered admittance to. Students are then issued Calling Letters which confirm their acceptance into the school, spell out the fee structure for the current academic year, and give a list of all the books and school supplies that a student is required to have. We provide all the required supplies to our HOPE students. However, there are often multiple rounds of placing students in schools as some students may opt to attend a private or other type of school, rather than the government schools (equivalent to a public school in the US) that our HOPE students attend. The schools will then offer open slots to other students. All of this means that paying secondary school fees is a moving target. As much as I want to just get everything done, I have to wait until the dust settles. Actually, I can’t even really wait until the dust settles, but need to pay fees as each student learns his own fate. Because of all this reshuffling, some students will start classes several weeks after the school term has started. However, we want those that are ready, to start classes as soon as they know what secondary school they will be attending. As a result, the fees end up being paid in dribs and drabs.
This also complicates the buying of school uniforms and school supplies as they are specific to each school. In Kenya, all schools require uniforms—both government (public) schools as well as private and religious schools. School uniforms are essentially all the same and differ only in color, with each school having its own combination of colors and sometimes a logo. Typically, school uniforms are custom made by tailors who measure the students and then make the uniforms using the required colors for the school the student will be attending. This is predominantly how students get their school uniforms in Kenya and how we supply uniforms to our HOPE students. Out on the street, you will find many tailors who make custom clothes. As you can image, these tailors are very busy at the beginning of the school year. In January, we paid school fees and provided uniforms and school supplies for 131 students. This includes eleven students who are new to HOPE.
After having taken a break for the month of December, tutorials are now back in session on Saturdays. Florah handles one location and I run tutorials at the other. Things will remain like this until April when there is a break between the first and second terms. During this three-week period, we will run three tutorials per week. It will also again be time to pay school fees for second term. However, this is a much easier proposition than first term. Perhaps that’s just wishful thinking!
As I stated earlier, it’s hard to believe that January and one week of February are in the rearview mirror. This means that we are a mere three weeks from the beginning of Lent. Wasn’t it just Christmas?
As most Catholics do as Lent approaches, I’ve begun to think about my Lenten resolutions. When most Catholics think of Lenten resolutions, they think of giving something up. However, when giving something up, what we really need to ask ourselves is how does this sacrifice help change me and lead me to grow in my love of God. Sacrifice doesn’t do anything for God or make us any worthier of his love or forgiveness. God already loves us without limit. Jesus has already died for our sins. Forgiveness is ours for the asking as God is infinitely merciful and forgives without keeping score. Rather, I view sacrifice like going to the gym. Sacrifice helps us to build up the muscles we need to do God’s will and resist the temptations that try to pull us off course. Like going to the gym, sacrifice also helps to clear our minds of the 101 important things we can’t stop thinking about and focus on what’s really important. I don’t like fasting at all, but have come to realize what a blessing it can be. Like going to the gym, sacrifices like fasting can only be appreciated after you’ve completed them. Although I used to love going to the gym in the morning, it was sometimes hard to get out of bed. However, I always knew that I would be glad I went to the gym rather than stay in bed once I was finished with my workout. So, I think it is with sacrifice and giving things up. No one likes to do it, but if done with the intent of using it in a way to grow closer to God, we get way more out of it than we put in. What I want to focus on in my Lenten Resolutions is how I can, through the grace that God constantly showers each of one us, prepare myself to receive the risen Christ. I want to shed the things in my life that either leave no room for Christ or prevent me from deepening my love for him.
When I was at IBM (it’s hard to believe that I’ve now been gone sixteen months), I worked in technical sales for most of my career. As with most sales organizations, we had a selling process that included a cost benefit analysis of the solution we were proposing. A cost benefit analysis is a decision-making tool used by pretty much all organizations to determine whether or not to proceed with a major expenditure. It is to determine whether a planned expenditure is “worth the price”. In a cost benefit analysis, you add up all the positive factors that an expenditure is expected to provide and subtract the negative ones. You do this over a certain time horizon, say three years, and include both initial investment costs as well as ongoing costs into the equation. The net result is then used as an input to the decision-making process. The tricky part is quantifying the positive and negative factors and in many cases is as much art as science. However, as long as you document all your assumptions, people can come to their own conclusions as to the validity of the analysis. As the IBM solutions we were trying to convince the customer to buy were major expenditures and so they would need to cost justify the transaction, we were more than happy to provide our input to the cost benefit analysis to “assist” the buyer in the evaluation process.
I got thinking about cost benefit analysis as I saw something recently that referenced the Ford Pinto. The Ford Pinto was a subcompact car that Ford rushed to market in the mid 1960s to address the growing competition of foreign imports. To provide adequate trunk space, a design decision was made to locate the gas tank behind the rear axle of the car. This design left the Pinto highly vulnerable to fires, or worse yet, explosions in the event of a rear-end collision. Although initial crash test analysis performed by Ford indicated there was a problem, Ford was determined to get the car to market and not lose more market share to foreign imports. Reports of the number of deaths due to fuel tank fires resulting from rear end collisions involving the Ford Pinto range anywhere from 27 to 180. As these reports of fuel tank fire related deaths emerged, Ford conducted further crash tests that reaffirmed the danger in the car’s design. However, Ford executives made a conscious decision not to modify the design of the Pinto as in doing so would hurt corporate profits, even though the cost of the fix to retrofit the Pinto was only $11 per vehicle. Ford’s decision was based on a cost benefit analysis. On the positive side of the equation, Ford would save $11 per vehicle by not implementing a fix. On the negative side of the equation, Ford estimated that each victim would cost them $200,000, which is the number they used to estimate the cost of settling victim lawsuits. In other words, Ford put a $200,000 price tag on each human life. The cost benefit analysis concluded that spending $11 per car to fix the faulty design was not cost justified even though their own conservative estimates showed that the current fuel tank design would directly lead to at least five hundred deaths over an eight-year period. When Ford internal documents, which detailed this cost benefit analysis and the fact that many people would die as a result of the fuel tank design become public, the public outcry was enormous. Fortunately, the Federal government stepped in and ordered a recall. Otherwise the number of people killed as a direct result of the fuel tank design would have been much higher.
The reason I bring up cost benefit analysis is that it got me thinking about how would I fare if God did a cost benefit analysis with me. What if God took this type decision making approach in our relationship? What would the result be if God added up all my positive factors and subtracted all the negative ones? Would the analysis show that I’m “worth it”? What would be the net result? The thought is kind of scary and humbling.
Luckily, we don’t need to worry about any of this. A cost benefit analysis is completely antithetical to how God operates and is completely incompatible with who God is. God is love and his transactional currency is love. Love is willing the good of the one who is loved. Love is not calculating or self-referential. Love does not keep score. Rather, love is the giving of ones very self. God loves us unconditionally. As God is love, he can do nothing other than love. Love is the one thing you can only have if you give it away. And the more you give away, the more you have. How do you put that into a cost benefit analysis?
A few weeks ago, the Gospel for the day was Jesus’s famous parable of the sower who puts down seed on various types of soil. I subscribe to daily Gospel reflections by Bishop Robert Barron. His reflections are short and sweet, but always give me something to think about. However, I was particularly struck by this reflection. As is true for me, Bishop Barron says that most people interpret this parable by focusing on the different types of soil and applying them symbolically to ourselves. However, in the reflection, he suggested that we instead focus our attention on the sower, which he believes is at the heart of what Jesus is teaching.
In the reflection, we are asked to imagine a crowd of farmers listening to Jesus tell this parable: a man goes out to sow and he throws the seed on the path, on rocky soil, on thorny soil and finally on good soil. The original hearers of this tale would have rolled their eyes at the ridiculousness of this farmer. Who throws seed down on a path, on thorny soil or on rocky soil?
God is like this crazy farmer. He sows the seed of his word and his love not only on the receptive sole, but also on the path, on the rock and on the thorny soil. Our God showers his graces not only on those who will respond, but lavishly pours out his love on those who are least likely to respond. God’s love is irrational, extravagant, embarrassing, unreasonable, completely over the top.
This is our God and I’m sure glad that he is like that crazy farmer. I’m eternally thankful that God doesn’t look at me through the lens of a cost benefit analysis. How blessed are we that God loved us into being? How blessed are we that God wants to share his love with us for all eternity? For our part, all we need to do is accept this undeserved and unwarranted love. As I stated aboe, this is what I’ll be focusing on this lent. How do I empty myself so that can better accept the love of this crazy farmer who so much wants to lavish love on me?
Please consider donating to my HOPE ministry project, which provides educational assistance to orphans and other vulnerable children, particularly those impacted by AIDS, in Mombasa, Kenya. The work we do makes a real and lasting difference in the lives of the children we serve. Your financial support can change the life of a child. The project is self-funded and is completely dependent on the generosity of people who are willing to help.
