Monday of the First Week of Lent
Our two readings today, together with the psalm, seem to focus on instruction – we might even say “rules” or “commands.” In the passage from Leviticus, the LORD gives Moses instructions to give to the people of Israel. Each of these commands begins with a teaching about interacting with others and ends with “I am the LORD.” This indicates that rightness in our actions with others has its source in knowing that God is the LORD. We know that he is holy, and therefore that we who follow him should also be holy.
First Sunday of Lent
I began Lent in right earnest. Ash Wednesday was a great day and so was Thursday. Friday, I put my heart and soul into the mission preparation, into writing my homily for the weekend and worked with the office staff to tidy up the place for the archbishop’s visit this weekend. By one o’clock I was ravenously hungry. I looked into the refrigerator and found left over food from the weekend. I did not think too much of what I was eating and inhaled the food. When the staff asked me what I had had for lunch, like lightening, it hit me. Darn it, it was Friday and I had just gobbled down the left over rice and meat. You should have seen their faces;, but of course, they said that the look on my face was even better. So much for beginning Lent in right earnest. The irony of all this lay in the fact that I was actually writing my homily on the temptations of Christ in the desert.
Saturday After Ash Wednesday
As we close these opening days of Lent and enter into the first full week of this penitential season we reflect in a particular way on our sinfulness and on penance as reparation for it.
Lent is a season of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer—all practices of penance, that is expressions of our sorrow for sin and our commitment to lead a better life. Good practices of penance cause us to reflect more deeply on our own sinfulness and draw us into solidarity with others throughout the world, especially the poor.
Friday After Ash Wednesday
My husband Joel and I have a cookbook titled "The Joyful Fast." It is a holdover from the days when we attended an Eastern Rite Catholic parish, which has different fasting rules than the ones we use in our Western Roman Catholic tradition (for more about this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches#.22Rite.22). I am always struck by the cookbook's title: how can fasting, indeed how can Lent itself, be joyful? The reflection we do on our sins throughout this season makes the tone seem somber and gloomy.
Thursday After Ash Wednesday
Lent has begun, and we will be hearing selections from the Hebrew exodus in the Old Testament. In today’s passage from Deuteronomy, Moses presents the Israelite people with a choice: they can choose either life or death, blessing or curse, the one true God or many false gods and idols. This choice is a constant theme throughout the Old Testament, and the Hebrew people struggle, sometimes choosing false gods, and sometimes turning to God. It is a choice and a struggle that have great consequences. In choosing for God, the people can be assured of God’s protections. In abandoning God, however, the people may face their own destruction and damnation.
Ash Wednesday
At a Scout Sunday Mass recently, I was sitting with a few of the Jewish Scouts in our troop trying to guide them through our liturgy. These young men were very attentive in the liturgy. They saw many connections between our liturgy and the Jewish Sabbath Service. After the Mass, the oldest scout surprised me by asking, “Why is your religion so fear based?” My look must have articulated my question, “Why fear?” The scout answered that between the crucifix and the continuous references to the Lord’s mercy it seemed that our faith is based on fear.
Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
As I celebrate Mardi Gras today with my family and I look ahead to the beginning of Lent tomorrow on Ash Wednesday, I find myself considering and reflecting on the purpose of Lenten practices in drawing Christians closer to God and making us more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. I find myself wondering how I can allow the experience of Lent this year to make a positive difference in my life and the lives of those around me.
Memorial of Saint Perpetua and Saint Felicity, martyrs
Today’s beautiful first reading comes from the book of Tobit. In today’s passage, we witness Tobit attempting to celebrate a Jewish feast in the midst of a foreign land. While Tobit states that he has walked paths of truth and righteousness, there is also indication that he has suffered for his faith as a foreigner in the land of Assyria. This explains the reaction of his neighbors at his decision to bury the dead body of a kinsmen. Such an act will only assign more blame to Tobit as he continues to follow the law of the Lord while living in a non-Jewish kingdom that does not honor the law of the Lord.
Sunday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
I remember a story my father told me when I was a teenager. He told me about this dishonest man who worked for a construction company. He was a good worker, but he often cut corners, traded the good materials for cheaper supplies and kept the money for himself. No one knew anything about this but himself. As he was nearing his retirement, his boss called him and said to him that the owner of the company had one last project for him. He wanted him to design and construct the best house he ever could. The boss told him that this was for a very important person. Money, he said, was not an issue. The man began the project in great earnest. But as time went by, he also saw this as a great opportunity to make some money himself. He cut corners, used cheap materials, and used cheap labor to construct the house. Finally, the house was complete. The owner was very impressed because this was indeed the best house the man had ever designed and constructed. The owner, then handed the keys over the man and said, “You have worked for me for so many years. In gratitude, this home is my gift to you.” The man’s heart sank to the bottom. What could have been the best house he could have retired into turned out to be a cheap imitation.
Saturday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
The scriptural readings for today focus on the notion of authority. This is an interesting subject to reflect upon precisely because our society is becoming increasingly distrustful of many traditional forms of authority. In many instances, “authority” seems to mean the domination of the will, as the power of one person (or small group of people) coerces the wills of other people for arbitrary reasons. In our world, we often encounter the misuse of authority and so we may view all authority through this lens. Today’s scriptural readings can perhaps help us to better appreciate the enduring importance of authority and the great responsibility that authority brings with it.
Friday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
Once I had the misfortune of being in the middle of a fight between two good friends of mine. The one friend felt that that the other had ignored her at a cocktail party and so she took to making small jabs at him in conversation whenever she could. I kept trying to soothe things over by trying to give alternate explanations of what could be going on. She interrupted him in the middle of a conversation, he wasn't feeling well, he hadn't heard her and it was loud. But in her mind the slight turned into much larger proportions than anything that I or other friends could understand.
Thursday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
We are so used to seeing the many things and people around us, that we often take them for granted. After all, how many of us wake up and greet the world with amazement, as though we are surprised by what we see? Perhaps, hopefully, there are some. But many of us no doubt groggily roll over only to slump out of bed to our familiar surroundings, so that we may begin our regular routine of coffee, breakfast, showering, teeth-brushing, dressing, etc.
Wednesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
What’s in a question? There are so many different types of questions. There are open ended, closed, rhetorical, inductive, deductive to name a few. Questions can be helpful in gaining information like when children often ask the “Why?” But questions can also be used as tools to inflict pain like “like why did you do that?”; or “is that really necessary?” In these last cases, the questions maybe to gather information however they could also question authority. These can be what we call “loaded “questions.
Tuesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
I’ve been thinking lately that the advice given in the Bible about how to live seems opposed to much of the advice that we are given by our 21st-century, Western culture. We are told by the world to pursue wealth, success, and power but justice and wisdom are not put forth as things worthy of our time or energy. The readings today emphasize the need for human beings to pursue the latter qualities if we are going to find favor with God.
Monday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
When we look at our readings for today, there are at least two possible responses. One is to respond to Jesus’ words as did the rich young man. We can go away sad and discouraged, thinking that we will never be perfect enough, that we will never be willing to perform the heroics that will make us truly holy. We might read that first reading from the book of Sirach and think that we will never be able to give up sin. After all, who among us has not struggled with some sin, purposefully amending that we will never do it again, only to fall once more? Indeed, these words may incite discouragement among us.
Sunday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
When I have conversations with people about God, the very first question I ask them is how they imagine God. I even try to probe the specifics; what does God look like? Do they imagine God to be male, female, or spirit? What qualities do they associate with God primarily? Is God smiling, frowning, angry? What does God do on a day to day basis? Although, most people cannot be sure of the answers, it gives me an insight into the kind of relationship I can expect people to have with God. In today’s gospel Jesus offers a new way to imagine God.
Saturday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
As we come to the end of James’s letter that we have been following for some time now, we see that St. James wraps up the letter with an exhortation to his fellow Christians. What we notice about his ending plea is that all things are to be brought to God – sufferings, good spirits, sickness, and sinfulness. This is, however, not possible by ourselves. In order to pray in our sufferings (Jas 5:13), we have to learn how to pray. In order sing a song of praise (Jas 5:13), we have to have been taught such a song. The role of our fellow Christians becomes even more obvious in the last two: the role of presbyters (priests) and our fellow Christians is made explicit (Jas 5:14, 19).
Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
In our era of Facebook, the concept of "friends" is interesting to ponder. Some people on Facebook "friend" anyone who requests a friendship with them; others are much more guarded, and "friend" only people who they really know well, because of privacy concerns. Either way, more than one cultural commentator has said that social networking seems to be changing the way we see our relationships with each other. We generally have looser connections with each other, but we have connections to more people. I think it is somewhat strange, actually, that I know more about what a good friend from my high school days who lives in another state is doing this morning than I do about my next door neighbors.
Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
We all have probably experienced procrastination. For me, the desire to procrastinate was likely to hit right as I sat down to write a paper for a class in college. It was amazing how much I could get done when I had a paper to write. I’d talk to my parents on the phone, clean my whole dorm room, do my laundry, check my email countless times, and of course chat with my roommate. I did always get the paper done. But there are other areas of our lives where procrastination really can be crippling, making our task so much more difficult than if we were just to do it immediately as we should. If we think of cleaning a bathroom, for example, it is much easier and quicker to do it regularly than only annually. Soap scum comes off…but when it’s an inch thick it becomes no easy task.
Memorial of Saint Polycarp, bishop and martyr
Driving anywhere can be tough in winter weather between accidents and slick spots. Obstacles can come out of nowhere it seems. Now, as glimpses of warmer weather are appearing, the dreaded orange barrels are starting to come out of their hibernation bringing new challenges for smooth sailing. When talking about driving, we would like to get from point A to point B obstacle free. It seems logical then, that in our faith journey, many of us desire to be unencumbered by suffering or frustration as well. It is fascinating that today’s readings mostly suggest that roadblocks are spiritual opportunities to stop and ask a question, like “Why Lord?” Or “how are you using these events to transform me?”