First Sunday of Lent

With the ashes of ash Wednesday and the call to repent and believe the gospel ringing in our ears  we are at the 1^st Sunday of Lent.  Our Gospel Reading  for this Sunday is all about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness by the devil. In the same way that Jesus went out into the dessert God asks us to go out into the dessert during the 40 days of Lent to undertake this time of renewal. Why do we have Lent every year? Why penance? Why fasting? Why almsgiving? Many people fail to see the connection. “I’m not a sinner when the truth is I AM A SINNER”  So why Lent? Lent is the time for correcting our faults and raising our minds and hearts to God. A time for personal and community conversion of heart and renewal! A time for coming face-to-face with God – our origin, our purpose and our destiny and being changed for the better and forever by that encounter!  The bottom line for all of us during Lent is that we should try to get to know God better by works of faith and charity so that those not too easy to detect lines separating good and evil will become more apparent.  

The Church teaches that prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are significant ways to become closer to God.  The decision for each of us is to determine what form of those three things to make our own this Lent. The temptations, to which our Lord submitted himself, are a source of encouragement and consolation for all of us. If our Lord and master underwent temptation, we cannot and must not expect to live a Christian life without experiencing temptations and trials. The three temptations Satan put to our Lord were suggestions to forget his messianic mission of redemption for one and all of us. He was urged to get all the bodily comforts of life, all the self-glory which men could give him, and all the possessions and power this world has to offer. In the same way all the comforts of life are put before us including the self indulgence and glory which is the exact opposite of our calling as followers of Christ. During Lent we are called not to give in to the temptations of this life instead we are called to renewal of heart mind and Spirit so that we can live in god and god can live in us through faith.   Jesus trusted the Spirit to take him into the desert to be tempted. Jesus knew the Father completely. He weathered the temptations that were presented to him by Satan in the desert. As we begin Lent for this year It is the way, the truth, and the life we seek and we pray to the lord hide not your face. We also  pray that god may give us his grace to make a good Lent as we begin our journey  on the road to Easter joy.

7Th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Next Wednesday with the Ashes of repentance we begin the holy season of Lent. On Ash Wednesday we are called to repent and believe in the Gospel as we place the ashes on our heads. For us the 6 weeks of Lent will be a time of soul searching and a time for renewal of heart mind and spirit as we look forward to Holy Week and the Easter Celebration. This Sunday in our Gospel we are told that we should offer the wicked man no resistance and that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us these are strong words even now in our own time and place. Jesus asks his followers to take a different approach by resisting retaliation altogether. The response to a stronger person who slaps us on the cheek, takes us to court, or demands a service of us is not to resist. Similarly, for a weaker person, such as a beggar or borrower, we are to give him or her what he or she asks for. Those who are called to the Kingdom of Heaven are to go beyond the way the world usually works and serve God’s kingdom here on earth. We must, if we are truly Christian, forgive those who offend or injure us. We must love all people, whether they are friends or enemies.

G. K. Chesterton says : “We are commanded to love our neighbours and our enemies;  very often we find that they are the same people.” . It is very easy for us to love in a theoretical way all people as they never come in contact with us in a personal way and never tread on our feet.  Jesus argues that the love that we his disciples give is not related to the love they receive from others: it is not a social contract or a fair bargain it is unconditional. The disciple loves because that is what the nature of discipleship involves. That means loving your enemy as yourself and doing good to those who persecute you . A disciple is the child of the Father  and look at the Father’s gracious love for us as we are. He does not withhold the sun and the rain from those who oppose him; likewise, disciples must not withhold their love from those who oppose them. The love is offered not because Jesus thinks that it will change the enemy into something else, Love is offered because that is the example and the way of life disciples of the kingdom should follow. Jesus is telling us not to follow the way of the world, which often perpetuates old oppressions and makes new ones as well. Jesus is telling us that we should be agents of real change in the world by acting in unexpected ways. This means that we do not go along with the crowd but rather approach the various situations of life with new and imaginative thinking as befits a disciple of Christ. He wants us to see the world from the top down as God does. And then  by seeing the world the way it really is with all that is good and bad within it we will find that we are in a far better position to change it. True Christian virtue always goes beyond merely what is required. It is always willing to ‘go the extra mile’ in tolerance, love, forgiveness and mercy. It mirrors the excessive generosity of God. The perfection of true holiness is found in acting towards others, including our enemies, as God acts towards us all with love beyond all telling.

6th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This weekend we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes on Saturday as well as the world day of Prayer for the sick. We remember  in a special way all those who are sick in the places where we live as well as all those caregivers who look after them.  Following two Sundays of discipleship training we come to the discipleship that is the  easiest to understand. It is about compliance, about rules and regulations. The First  reading from Sirach sets the theme very clearly. “If you choose to keep the commandments, they will save you: if you trust in God you shall live. Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.” That is a clear statement about will-power, choice. There seems to be nothing about using our heads to think, to discover meaning, nothing about growing spiritually, nothing about forming our personal characters. Just show me the rules, give me the commandments, let me know what behaviour is expected and I’ll choose life.

Stick to the letter of the law and we’ll be saved from an eternity of damnation and that’s what the pharisees in the Gospel for this weekend were all about keeping the rules and regulations.  In the Gospel reading for this Sunday Jesus tells us that he has come to fulfil the law not to abolish or replace it.  When he introduced the New Law of the Kingdom of God Jesus said something that was absolutely shocking to those heard what he told them that the holiness of the people had to surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees. How could anyone be holier than the Pharisees who were supposed to be holy men”!  They dressed well, they fasted said their prayers loudly for all to hear. Jesus explains, our external actions must be a reflection of what we are really like. If what we do is not a reflection of who we are, then we are hypocrites. Hypocrite, is the word that Jesus uses over and over to describe the Pharisees. They were considered the righteous and holy ones who in truth were neither righteous or holy in so many ways.  Jesus’ challenge was not only to his followers, but to the Pharisees and scribes as well.  

Their religious faith was to go deeper than exterior works – the right motives were supposed  to support the right behaviour. His demands are high indeed!  They seem impossible to achieve. The Pharisee spent a lot of time and energy fulfilling the Law like so many people today the law was more important than compassion. They were of the middle class and unlike the desperately poor, who were most of Jesus’s followers, the Pharisees had the education and leisure to pursue the purity of observance. What chance did the illiterate, overworked and burdened poor followers of Jesus have? For that matter, what chance do we have in fulfilling these teachings? Jesus’ demands are more radical; his vision sharper; his expectations greater in regard to  looking after his  poor illiterate, overworked and burdened followers. When we see our own record of doing good against the demands of Jesus in the Gospel, we all come away feeling helpless. Our own efforts look so shabby against the clear unambiguous demands of the larger vision that Jesus had.

May we be courageous in taking up the challenge that Jesus vision gives each one of us today that is the call to live our lives so that everyone will see that we are faith filled people who live our lives with the compassion of God for those around us in our hearts and that we are not afraid to show it.

5Th Sunday in Ordinary time

In this weekends Gospel  passage Jesus speaks again in the present tense, “You are the salt of the earth.You are the light of the world.” It is very common these days, upon entering a church or religious institution, to see the community’s “Mission Statement” prominently posted. Usually, such a statement is the result of a prayerful dialogue by the community to arrive at a description of its identity and mission in the light of the Gospel. Jesus’ mission statement to us, his followers, fits the requirement of a brief, focused and easily remembered summary of our task. Even those who don’t read much scripture can quote today’s teaching, “You are salt of the earth….You are light of the world.” Jesus begins to describe the task for his disciples by using two images. We are to affect the world the way salt and light affect their environments.

 Salt seasons food, and in Jesus’ world, it was used as a preservative. It kept food from spoiling. Light removes or pushes the darkness back.  Even one lighted match can be seen at a distance on a dark night. With the salt image comes a warning. “But if salt loses its taste…it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” that means that if we loose our ability to show we are people who believe in Jesus then we will be trampled underfoot by the faithless secular world We must change what needs changing in ourselves and the world around us to be the salt of the earth that brings the saltiness of faith to other people. Remember the saying, “If it were a crime to be a Christian, would they have any evidence to convict you?” Would the charges against us  be upheld and what exactly would we be convicted by?

 The danger for the church and us  its members  is that, being in the world, we can take on worldly ways and lose our “saltiness” of faith. As salt of the earth we are called to draw out goodness in the world by supporting what protects, nourishes and enhances life, while rejecting what limits or destroys it.  If we cannot bring about better conditions through  everything we do and say  then Jesus is right, we are salt without flavor and useless for his purposes of passing on the good news. In this Gospel reading Jesus urges those who had just heard His teaching on the Beatitudes not to “light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket.” No, “your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” We need always to look outward to those who are looking for light, as well as to those who have given up hope of ever finding it!  As we hear the challenging call that  Jesus gives us we can feel what those first disciples must have felt  we are not large or influential enough to affect the world and resist the powers that “run the world’s affairs.” On our own, that’s true. But remember we are not on our own.  Through Word of god and the Sacramental life of faith we are formed and reformed by God. We strive, with God’s grace, to live out the gospel mission statement to be salt of the earth and the light to the nations as we go forward in faith and hope.