Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Lent

  • Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Lent

    Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    Just as the saraph serpent was lifted up on a pole in the desert for the people to see, and thus live, so the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, was lifted up on the cross for the salvation of the world. This fifth week of Lent is the beginning of what we call “Passiontide.” In these late Lenten days, the Church is looking to the Cross, looking toward Jerusalem, knowing that the hour of the Lord, in which he would pay the dear price of our salvation, is near at hand.

    With hearts filled with gratitude, we come to this Eucharist, with our eyes fixed on our Lord lifted up for us, who pours himself out for us again and still. When we see him lifted up, we remember that he is “I AM,” our crucified and risen Lord, and whenever we look to him, we are saved from all that ails us, from our sins and brokenness, and we ourselves are lifted up to eternal life.

    Our challenge in these late Lenten days is to be that icon of the Cross, like the saraph serpent, to whom people can look and find healing and salvation. We have to be the image of Christ crucified so that the world can become whole. Just as many came to believe because Jesus spoke of himself in this way, so may many come to believe because we live it.

    We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you:
    Because by your holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.

  • Sunday of the Fourth Week in Lent (Cycle A / Scrutiny II)

    Sunday of the Fourth Week in Lent (Cycle A / Scrutiny II)

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Liturgy is all about vision and sight and light and darkness. All of these, dear friends, are things that many of us certainly take for granted. Think about it: we don’t appreciate the gift of light until that dark and stormy night when the electricity goes out and we’re fumbling around in the darkness trying to remember where it is we put that new package of batteries for the flashlight. We likewise take for granted our own ability to see. I think of my Aunt Mia, who several years before she passed away lost her sight and had to learn how to see things and how to function in a whole new way.

    When I hear today’s first reading, it always makes me think of my dad. He was the kind of Irishman who never knew a stranger. We couldn’t go anywhere without running into at least one person he knew. But he didn’t just know them, he knew their story. And so if someone were to complain about someone he knew, he would always be able to tell them something good about that person, because Dad saw the best in them. That’s the kind of vision we are all called to have for one another: we need to see the best in them, we need to see Jesus in them.

    So what about this miracle story in the Gospel today. Here’s a question I always like to throw out there: who cares? I mean, it’s nice for that man born blind who can now see, but I mean, he lived two thousand years ago, so what business is it of ours if he can see or not? Why take up so much time with this reading? Well I’ll tell you why we should care: we should care because the man born blind is us, friends. We all have affected vision: none of us sees others or even sees ourselves as God does. So we have to decide today if we are the man born blind who is easily and quickly healed, or if we want to be the Pharisees who, at the end of the day, never regain their sight because, well, they just don’t want to.

    So maybe you’re asking the same question those Pharisees asked, “surely we are not also blind, are we?” Well, of course we are. We are, first of all, born blind. We don’t have a way of seeing the Truth that is in front of us; we can’t acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ and the King of our lives. It takes holy Baptism to cure that born blindness in us. Secondly, we have a kind of blindness that affects us all through our lives. We often lose our vision and wander off the path to life. We are affected by temptation, by cyclical sin and by the darkness of our world. That’s why we have Lent: to realize our brokenness and to accept the healing power of Christ. Lent calls us to remember that we are dust, that we are broken people fallen into sin, but it also proclaims that none of that is any match for the power of Christ risen from the dead, if we just let him put a little mud on our eyes.

    Today’s Gospel then is a kind of journey to clearer vision. We are all born blind, in a sense, and it takes the presence of Jesus to clear our vision. Just as the man born blind was sent to the pool of Siloam, we too are sent to a pool: the waters of baptism, which clears our eyes and helps us to really see. Our Elect, who are here with us today, will experience that in a very literal way this coming Easter Vigil. In baptism, our inherited sin and evil is washed away; the darkness of life is transformed by the presence of Christ, the Light of the World.

    We see that light shine brighter and brighter in today’s Gospel. During the course of all the questionings that follow, the man’s vision becomes clearer and clearer. At first he doesn’t know who Jesus is or where to find him. Later on he testifies that Jesus is a prophet and finally, with the help of Jesus’ instruction, after he has been unceremoniously thrown out of the synagogue, he meets Jesus again and testifies that Jesus is the Son of Man and worthy of worship. As he sees more clearly, his faith becomes bolder.

    We make this same journey ourselves. From the waters of baptism, we need to continue the conversation and return to Christ again and again to grow in our faith. We grow in the way that we see Jesus through our lives. Think about it: our faith when we were young is not the same faith that works for us later in life. At one point Jesus is a friend walking with us on life’s path; later on he might be an anchor that helps us in a particularly stormy time of life. Still later, he might be the one calling us to become something new, something better than we think we can attain. Jesus is always the same, but we are different, and Jesus is with us at every point of life’s journey, if we open our eyes to see him.

    Traditionally, today is Laetare Sunday – laetare being Latin for “rejoice.” That’s why we’re wearing these rose-colored vestments today. We are now pretty much half way through Lent, and with eyes recreated by our own trips to the pool of Siloam – the waters of baptism – we can begin to catch a glimpse of Easter joy. It kind of reminds me of the last section of the Exsultet that we will hear proclaimed on the Holy Night of the Easter Vigil. That last section tells us:

    May this flame be found still burning
    by the Morning Star:
    the one Morning Star who never sets,
    Christ your Son,
    who, coming back from death’s domain,
    has shed his peaceful light on humanity,
    and lives and reigns for ever and ever.

    Christ’s peaceful light changes everything. It clears up the darkness of sin and evil, and allows all of us blind ones to see the glory of God’s presence. All of us have, indeed been born spiritually blind. But you know what? We’re not supposed to stay that way, and we don’t have to. Jesus is yearning to enlighten us all that we might go out and be light for others too.

    In these final days of Lent, may we hear the Lord calling to us:

     “Awake, O sleeper,
        and arise from the dead,
        and Christ will give you light.”

  • The Third Sunday in Lent, Cycle A Readings (for the OCIA Scrutiny)

    The Third Sunday in Lent, Cycle A Readings (for the OCIA Scrutiny)

    Today’s readings

    There’s a lot of water in today’s Liturgy of the Word. The Israelites, near the beginning of their forty year journey through the desert, are beginning to miss some of the comforts of home, like water! So when they complain to the Lord, he gives them water in the desert. And let’s not downplay this: it’s pretty amazing – they had water in the desert! And in our Gospel today, our Lord stops along his own journey to get a drink of water from the Samaritan woman – and this whole interaction is less about Jesus’ physical thirst than it is about other kinds of thirst in the story – but more on that in a bit.

    We always have to think about why the Church is giving us these particular readings on this particular day. Why is it that we have part of the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert in our first reading, and the rather strange story of the interaction with the woman at the well in the Gospel today? Well, (no pun intended) whenever there’s this much water being mentioned in the readings, we need to think of a particular sacrament, and that sacrament of course is Baptism.

    Now maybe it makes a little sense. We have our Elect with us today, and they are preparing to receive baptism, as well as Confirmation and Eucharist, the Sacraments of Initiation, at the Easter Vigil. But even that’s not the whole story. Because this reading is for all of us. Lent itself is about baptism, and even if we’ve already been baptized, there’s still work to do. We are still being converted to become more like our Lord every day of our life. That’s what Lent is all about – getting back on the path and going a little farther forward. Lent points out for all of us that we’re still thirsty.

    So what is it going to take to quench the thirst you have right now?

    For the Israelites, it’s hard to know what was going to help them. They’re just at the beginning of their journey and already they’re complaining. They get thirsty and the first thing they do is complain – notice carefully, they complained, not prayed – and tell Moses that they’d rather be back in Egypt in slavery than out wandering around in the desert with nothing to quench their thirst. And it’s not like the slavery they experienced in Egypt was a minor inconvenience – it was pretty horrible and if they missed their quota even by a little bit, they were severely beaten. But sometimes it’s better the devil you know: sometimes we get stuck on what we’ve become used to and have given up yearning for something more.

    For the woman at the well, there’s a lot stacked against her and there is no reason Jesus should have been talking to her. In fact, the disciples, when they return and witness it, aren’t really sure what they should make of it. Because in that culture, nobody talked to Samaritans – they were outsiders and considered the scum of the earth. And for a man to speak to an unaccompanied woman was unthinkable. But Jesus knew she was thirsty – see it wasn’t about his thirst at all: rather, as Saint Augustine tells us, Jesus was thirsting for her faith.

    It’s a pretty weird conversation, to be honest. But in talking about her five previous husbands and the Samaritans’ practice of worshiping on the mountain, Jesus was pointing out how her own search for something to quench her thirst was so far pretty futile. She was looking for love in all the wrong places. The five men she was married to represented a history of failed attempts at finding love. And the guy she was living with now represented the fact that she’d pretty much given up any hope of ever finding true love. But the fact that Jesus knew all this without her saying a word about it woke her up a bit. And so then they go on to talk about how the Samaritans worshiped. They were looking for God on the mountain, but the thing is, the God they were looking for is the same Love that she had been searching for in her relationships, and he was standing right in front of her now.

    So what about you? What is it that is finally going to quench the thirst you have right now?

    Are you going to stay in the slavery of your former way of life, or do you want to journey on to the Promised Land? Are you going to continue to be content with failed or broken or impure relationships, or are you going to refresh them with Living Water? Are you going to continue to leave God up on that mountaintop where he doesn’t get in the way of your daily life, until you need something? Or are you going to look him in the eye and ask him to give you what you really need so you’ll never thirst again?

    Because for the Israelites, it wasn’t really water they needed. They needed a renewed relationship with God. And the woman at the well didn’t need those guys who weren’t leading her to right worship. She needed Living Water. In fact, she became so convinced of it that she left her bucket behind – that bucket that symbolized her former way of life.

    We’re all on a journey. The journeys of our Elect don’t end at the Easter Vigil when I pour water over their heads – it just starts there. All of us together are journeying on to the Promised Land of eternal life. And the only way we’re going to get there is by drinking deeply of the Living Water and allowing the One who gives it to us to lead us. And to get started on the journey, we’re going to have to leave Egypt, and our buckets, and our broken relationships, behind. No matter how hard it is to do that.

  • Friday of the Second Week in Lent

    Friday of the Second Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    In the readings this week, I’ve been noticing a lot of foreshadowing. How many of you know what foreshadowing is? It’s a literary device that you seen in the early part of some stories, that gives us a hint at the end of the story. Usually you don’t notice the foreshadowing until you get to the end. I think we see foreshadowing in both of today’s readings. These readings remind us of what Lent is all about. During Lent, we remember that our Lord, who came down from heaven to earth to save us from our sins and re-connect us with the love of God, paid the price for our many sins by laying down his own life.

    Back when I was much younger, for my birthday my family took me to see the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Our drama club here at Saint Mary’s performed that musical several years ago. The story goes that Joseph’s jealous brothers ended up selling him into slavery in Egypt, but that in Egypt he became a powerful and talented government official who ended up saving many people, including his own brothers, from starvation during a famine.

    In the story, you can see many parallels between Joseph and Jesus. Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt; Jesus came to take away our slavery to sin. Joseph’s own brothers plotted to kill him; Jesus was killed by us, his brothers and sisters, by our sins. Joseph fed the known world at that time by storing up grain for the day of famine; Jesus fed the multitudes, and us, with the bread that comes down from heaven. Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver; Judas was given thirty pieces of silver to hand Jesus over to death. Joseph, in many ways, was a foreshadowing of Jesus.

    In our Gospel today, Jesus tells a parable which is a foreshadowing of what will soon happen to him. The vineyard owner, God the Father, is looking for the fruit of the harvest. That harvest should be our faith. Instead, the people of old beat and murdered the prophets who came to give God’s word, just as the messengers of the vineyard owner were beaten and murdered. And finally, when God, the vineyard owner, sends his own Son, he was killed too.

    The people of Jesus’ day missed the foreshadowing, they missed the parallels, they didn’t get that God was continually reaching out to them to gather them in faith. But we know the story, all of it, and we can’t be like them. We have to be ready to hear the truth and act on it, to see Jesus in other people and respond to him; to hear the Word he speaks to us and live that Word in faith each day.

    God loved us so much that he gave us his only begotten Son; we have to treasure that gift and let it make us new people. That’s what Lent is all about, friends. Lent means “springtime,” and it has to see new growth in us, so that we can be a vineyard of faith to give joy to the world.

  • Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Caiaphas had no idea how prophetic his words were. Actually, as far as the intent of his words went, they were nothing but selfish. The Jews didn’t want to lose their standing with the Romans. As it was, they had an uneasy peace. The Romans pretty much let them practice their religion as long as there wasn’t any trouble. But they knew that if everyone started following Jesus, the Romans would give preference to the new way, in order to keep the peace. The religious leaders couldn’t let that happen, so they began plotting in earnest to kill Jesus, planning to find him when he came to celebrate the upcoming feast day, which they were certain he would attend.

    It’s a time of high intrigue, and for Jesus, his hour – the hour of his Passion – is fast approaching. That’s so clear in the Gospel readings in these last days of Lent. In just a few hours we will begin our celebration of Holy Week, waving palms to welcome our king, and praying through his passion and death. It is an emotional time for us as we know our God has given his life for us, the most amazing gift we will ever get. It is also a time of sadness because we know our sins have nailed him to the cross.

    But, this is where the significance of Caiaphas’s words brings us joy. Yes, it is better for one person to die than the whole nation. God knew that well when he sent his only Son to be our salvation. Jesus took our place, nailing our sins and brokenness to the cross, dying to pay the price those sins required, and rising to bring the salvation we could never attain on our own. Caiaphas was right. It was better for one person to die than for the whole nation to die. Amazing as it seems, that was God’s plan all along.

  • Thursday after Ash Wednesday

    Thursday after Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings

    “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
    and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

    You know, in my life, I’ve found that that quote is very easy to accept until a cross actually presents itself. Then, when the cross shows up, there’s an overwhelming sense of despair. But Lent is supposed to teach us how to take up the cross. The fasting, almsgiving, and prayer that we have taken up, or are about to take up, don’t mean anything unless we give them to Jesus and ask him to help us with the cross, whether it’s the cross we are currently bearing, or a cross in the future. It’s like going to the gym and training our muscles so that we can do our work and care for ourselves and our loved ones. Faith is like a muscle: it has to be trained so that we can have it in our times of need.  How will our Lenten penance help us to take up our crosses?

  • Thursday of the First Week of Lent

    Thursday of the First Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    During this first week of Lent, our Liturgies of the Word are teaching us about the Lenten disciplines: fasting, almsgiving and prayer.  On Tuesday, we heard the Lord’s prayer, and today we hear the prayer of Esther and Jesus’ injunction to persistence in prayer.

    I love the story of Esther, and as I often tell people, you should read the entire book of Esther from the Bible (it’s not very long).  It reminds us that we need a Savior.  Esther’s adoptive father Mordecai was a deeply religious man.  His devotion incurred the wrath of Haman the Agagite, who was a court official of King Ahasuerus of Persia.  Mordecai refused to pay homage to Haman in the way prescribed by law, because it was idolatry. Because of this, Haman developed a deep hatred for Mordecai, and by extension, all of the Israelite people.  He convinced King Ahasuerus to decree that all Israelites be put to death, and they cast lots to determine the date for this despicable event.

    Meanwhile, Esther, Mordecai’s adopted daughter, is chosen to fill a spot in the King’s harem, replacing Queen Vashti.  Esther, however, never had revealed her own Israelite heritage to the King.  She would, of course, be part of the extermination order.  Mordecai came to Esther to inform her of the decree that Haman had proposed, and asked her to intercede on behalf of her own people to the King.  She was terrified to do this because court rules forbade her to come to the king without an invitation.  She asked Mordecai to have all of her people fast and pray, and she did the same.  The prayer that she offered is beautifully rendered in today’s first reading.

    Esther knew that there was no one that could help her, and that it was totally on her shoulders to intercede for her people.  Doing this was a risk to her own life, and the only one that she could rely on was God himself.  Her prayer was heard, her people were spared, and Haman himself was hung from the same noose that had been prepared for Mordecai and all his fellow Israelites.  Next Wednesday evening, in fact, is the beginning of the Jewish feast of Purim, which is a festive observance of this very biblical story.

    God hears our own persistent prayers.  We must constantly pray, and trust all of our needs to the one who knows them before we do.  We must ask, seek and knock of the one who made us and cares for us deeply.  Prayer changes things, and most of all, it changes us.  It helps us to rely on God who gives us salvation through Jesus Christ, the One who shows us how to ask, seek, and knock.

  • The Third Sunday of Lent (Scrutiny I)

    The Third Sunday of Lent (Scrutiny I)

    Today’s readings
    Note: At this Mass, we were celebrating the First Scrutiny with the Elect preparing for baptism at the Easter Vigil, so readings from Cycle A were used, as per the Rite.

    We have with us today, three young people who are seeking to receive the Easter Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and First Eucharist, at the Easter Vigil this year.  Because they are old enough to be of what we call “catechetical age,” they do not receive infant baptism, but instead prepare for the sacraments in a similar way to adults in our RCIA program.  These children have been preparing for the last two years, and we have accepted them back at the beginning of that as catechumens, an order of people preparing for the sacraments.  Two weeks ago, they were sent to the Cathedral in Joliet to be chosen by Bishop Hicks to receive these sacraments, and now we call them the Elect.  Today they are with us to undergo a special ritual called the scrutiny, in which they are called to repent of sin and its hold on them, and receive a blessing which is a minor exorcism, giving them grace to open their hearts to receive these Easter Sacraments.  Today we continue to support them with our prayers, and through our own ongoing conversion of heart.

    Because of the scrutiny today, we have special readings, which are different from those we would ordinarily hear on this particular Sunday of the Church year.  Today’s readings focus on the theme of water, which sets our hearts on baptism.  Whenever we hear about water in the readings as we do today, we think of baptism.  And so, appropriately enough, on this day of our first scrutiny, we think of the waters of baptism that will flow over the Elect and wash them of their sins, bringing them into the family of God’s chosen people.  What a glorious thing that is to think about!

    Our readings today tell us just how important water is to us.  In the first reading, God has led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, and now they are making their way through the desert into the promised land.  This is kind of how our spiritual lives are like: God never wanted us to linger in darkness and sin, so he made a way for us out of all of that.  Traveling through the desert of our lives, God provides for us so that we can make our way to the promised land of heaven.  And see how he does provide for the people!  When they complain that they are thirsty, God gives them water in the desert, which is impossible.  But nothing is too hard for God, and he gives them water so that they won’t faint from thirst in the desert.  Water sustains us and gives us life.

    In our Gospel reading, Jesus asks the woman of Samaria for a drink of water.  Now Jesus was being really bold here, because men in those days did not speak to women who were not accompanied by another person, and Jews never, ever spoke to Samarians, and certainly never used something that they used, like a bucket or a cup to drink from.  But Jesus says to her anyway, “Give me a drink.”  But here’s the amazing thing.  Jesus wasn’t so much thirsty for water as he was for her faith.  He wanted to provide water for this woman, who has been bogged down by where life has taken her.  He wants to get her through the desert of her life, to the promised land.  “Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst,” Jesus says to the woman, and this stirs up her faith.  She responds with eagerness: “Sir give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty…”  And then she goes into town, leaving her water bucket behind, turning away from her past life, and tells everyone about Jesus, and they come to believe in him.  Jesus was thirsty for their faith.

    Water is a powerful thing on earth.  It can be dangerous: we’ve all heard sad stories about people drowning in Lake Michigan or on raging rivers, or even in backyard pools.  But water most often is wonderful: it cleans us, refreshes us, sustains us.  Our bodies are about sixty percent water, more or less, so we need water to keep us living.  Today we see that water can be powerful in our spiritual lives.  Water can wash away our sins, and we call that baptism.  We look forward to that wonderful day with our Elect on the evening of Holy Saturday.

    What we need to see in water is that it is a symbol of the fact that God gives us what we need, when we need it.  He gave the Israelites water in the desert, which is amazing.  He used water to awaken the Samaritan woman’s faith.  He provides refreshment for us on our spiritual journey, and he washes us clean with the waters of baptism.  We are all thirsty for something: the Israelites were thirsty for God’s help in the desert, Jesus was thirsty for the Samaritan woman’s faith.  We are thirst people too, and we can only quench that thirst by being washed clean in the waters of baptism, and growing each day in our faith.

    Even those of us who already have been baptized need to hear in these readings that we have to open ourselves to being quenched in our thirsts by God.  We can’t be going back to Egypt when things get rough: that only leads to the slavery of sin.  We have to be resolute and make our way through the desert of our lives, depending on the providence of God to build up our faith, so that we can make our way to the promised land of heaven. That promised land is where we are all expected.  Life is our journey of getting there.  The only way to make it is to drink deep of the Living Water that is Jesus, and allowing him to lead us to heaven.

  • Friday of the Second Week of Lent (School Mass)

    Friday of the Second Week of Lent (School Mass)

    Today’s readings

    Today’s two readings remind us of what Lent is all about.  During Lent, we remember that our Lord, who came down from heaven to earth to save us from our sins and re-connect us with the love of God, our Lord paid the price for our many sins by laying down his own life. 

    Probably some of our students remember the story from the first reading because, just two years ago, we staged a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  We know that Joseph’s jealous brothers ended up selling him into slavery in Egypt, but that in Egypt he became a powerful and talented government official who ended up saving many people, including his own brothers, from starvation during a famine. 

    The parallels here between Joseph and Jesus are many.  Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt; Jesus came to take away our slavery to sin.  Joseph’s own brothers plotted to kill him; Jesus was killed by us, his brothers and sisters.  Joseph fed the known world at that time by storing up grain for the day of famine; Jesus fed the multitudes, and us, with the bread that comes down from heaven.  Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver; Judas was given thirty pieces of silver to hand Jesus over to death.  Joseph, in many ways, was a foreshadowing of Jesus.

    In our Gospel today, Jesus tells a parable which is a foreshadowing of what will soon happen to him.  The vineyard owner, God the Father, is looking for the fruit of the harvest, which is our faith.  Instead, the people of old beat and murdered the prophets who came to give God’s word, just as the messengers of the vineyard owner were beaten and murdered.  And finally, when God, the vineyard owner, sends his own Son, he was killed too. 

    The people of Jesus’ day missed the foreshadowing, they missed the parallels, they didn’t get that God was continually reaching out to them to gather them in faith.  But we know the story, all of it, and we can’t be like them.  We have to be ready to hear the truth and act on it, to see Jesus in other people and respond to him, to live the Word he speaks to us and live that Word in faith each day.

    God loved us so much that he gave us his only begotten Son; we have to treasure that gift and let it make us new people.  That’s what Lent is all about, friends.  Lent means “springtime,” and it has to see new growth in us, so that we can be a vineyard of faith to give joy to the world.

  • Ash Wednesday

    Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings

    Someone reminded me that last year, I proclaimed that Lent to be the “Lentiest Lent that ever Lented!”  Certainly we have just been through a very Lenty year, with the specter of a pandemic, the sadness of racial injustice and social unrest, the frustration of political rancor, and all the rest.  The arrival of Lent again, already, well, it almost seems unfair, doesn’t it?

    And this Lent seems more unfair with the directive that we cannot trace an ashen cross on people’s foreheads due to the pandemic.  Instead, today, we will sprinkle them on your heads as you bow in penitence.  But it seems like it’s just another thing they’ve taken away from us, that the virus has stolen from us.  Unless we, people of faith that we are, change our outlook.  If we look at this as an opportunity to receive ashes the way most non-English speaking countries in the world have for ages, then we can see this as an opportunity for Church unity.  If we seek to still witness to our faith even though we can’t point to our ashes, then we can see this as an opportunity to strengthen our Christian witness every day.  I get it: it’s still another thing we’ve lost this year, but if we activate our faith and let God give us new opportunities, then maybe this can be the moment that we get out of the funk we’ve seemingly been in for the last year and become a Church and a people who truly live for Christ so much that the people around us who don’t know Christ get curious about who he is.

    In every day and age, times are tough.  Sometimes it seems times are tougher than others, and if this isn’t one of them, I don’t know what is.  But the only way we can get through that, honestly, is by being people of faith who entrust their times to the providence and love of God, who is most merciful.  Lent, friends, gives us the opportunity to do that, as it always does, through fasting, almsgiving, and prayer.

    Fasting can take on a whole lot of forms.  It’s not the same thing as going on a diet for Lent.  We should certainly give something up, something that will be uncomfortable, something we will miss.  It should, ideally, be something we have given greater place in our lives than we have to God.  In fasting, friends, we learn that there is nothing we hunger for that God can’t provide, and provide much better, if we let him.  Fasting makes us remember that God is trustworthy, that his love for us helps us in ways we can’t even imagine.  So perhaps we will give up a favorite food or a television show, or a video game or social media.  Maybe we will give up the necessity to always be right, to always get our way, to always get the final word.  Maybe we will give up deep-seated resentments, or unjust attitudes toward others.  Maybe we will give up just living for ourselves and taking care of “number one.”

    Almsgiving, too, can look different in every person’s life.  We are told that giving alms covers a multitude of sins, because giving alms shows love that is unencumbered by our ability to control things.  When we make a donation, when we give to a person in need, we let God decide exactly how that gets used.  It’s a way of freely giving of ourselves.  So maybe we will make a donation to the parish or to another charity; but almsgiving for us might look like giving of our time: helping to teach a religious education class or read to students, or looking in on an elderly neighbor or bringing them a lovingly-prepared meal.  Maybe giving alms for us looks like foregoing the daily Dunkin’ run or Starbucks stop and using that money to give to someone in need.  When we give of ourselves, we see God using us in ways we never even considered.

    And finally, prayer.  We’re supposed to be praying every day, of course, and I think most of us do.  But there’s always the need, I think, to grow in our prayer lives.  That’s certainly true for me.  Maybe our prayer has become rote, or stale.  If that’s true, Lent is a great time to shake things up and do a reset.  I always tell people who say that their prayer life isn’t going anywhere to try something new.  Maybe the Rosary, or Divine Mercy, or if you’ve been doing those, maybe some centering prayer or prayerfully reflecting on a book of Scripture during Lent.  It could be coming to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, even if we’re doing it drive-up style for now.  It could even be as simple as zealously digging out a five minute break in the day to sit and be silent, looking at a religious picture, or listening to some inspirational music.  Whatever it is that we haven’t tried, it might be worth trying and see if we find it helpful.  Whatever leads us closer to God is always a grace, and God uses different experiences to speak to us all the time.  Try trying something new!

    Lent isn’t all about the ashes.  There’s a lot to it: fasting, almsgiving, and prayer.  But in another sense, it is all about the ashes: how will we quiet ourselves, humble ourselves, do penance, and come closer to Jesus?  I hope your experience of ashes, and of Lent, this year enlivens your life with Christ in ways you never imagined.  I pray that this forty day retreat moves heaven and earth in our parish, in our community, and in our homes.