Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Lent

  • Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Susanna’s story is one of the most eloquent in the Old Testament Scriptures, in it we see the wisdom of the prophet Daniel, as well as the mercy and justice of God. But sadly, we also see in this story the fickleness of the human heart and the evil and treachery that makes up some of our darker moments.

    This reading calls us to right wrongs, to be completely honest and forthright in our dealings with others, to seek to purify our hearts of any wicked intent, and most of all to seek to restore right relationships with any person who has something against us, or against whom we have something. Our prayer this day is that God’s mercy and justice would reign, and that God’s kingdom would come about in all its fullness.

  • Fifth Sunday of Lent [Scrutiny III]

    Fifth Sunday of Lent [Scrutiny III]

    Today’s readings

    I love when our readings lead us down a path and we have them all figured out, and then out of the blue, we find out they mean something completely else!  So here it is, brothers and sisters in Christ, I’ll just say it: this story about the raising of Lazarus isn’t really about Lazarus at all!  I mean, look at the story: Lazarus is easily the least significant character in the whole episode. Even though he would seem to be the center of attention, he is dead for most of the story, never says anything himself, and Jesus only says three words to him in a five-minute reading. All of these are big red flags that the Gospel writer has been playing a little joke on us and the real story is somewhere else.  I love it when that happens!

    And it might be easy to accept that. Okay, the story isn’t about Lazarus, but it is about how Jesus can raise people from the dead, right? Well, yes and no – it depends on what you mean by dead, I guess. Certainly, Jesus has the power to raise people from any kind of death, we know that, but I absolutely don’t think that simply resuscitating people from physical death is what the story is about. Actually, even though the story talks about eternal life some day, I’m not even sure the story is even about that kind of death and life. After all, Jesus doesn’t wait until some future resurrection to bring Lazarus back to life; he does it now, right before our eyes.  I think we have to look a little harder and find the life that is right here and now.

    Maybe today’s first reading can shed some light on what Jesus was talking about by death. Here the people of Israel are, for all intents and purposes, alive. But they are in captivity in Babylon, so as a people – as a nation, they are pretty much dead. They have no place to worship, they are subject to the harsh cruelty of their captors, and their whole way of life is being systematically exterminated. That’s a kind of death that’s hard to miss. But even now, the prophet tells them, God will open their graves and have the people rise out of them. God will heal their affliction and give them life in spirit. The kind of life God will give to the Israelites is, as the Psalmist says, “mercy and fullness of redemption.”

    So the kind of death we’re talking about here is a death that comes about as a result of our daily living. It’s a death brought on by situations in which we find ourselves. We experience death in too many forms to name. For example: wars have left scars for generations; poverty sucks the life out of families, neighborhoods and nations; conflicts divide Christians and set religions against one another; rivalries and ambition among church people give scandal to outsiders; rancor rips apart families; the innocent are abused, political corruption in poor countries depletes essential resources, and so much more. Jesus comes to bring life to people dead in those situations.

    And there’s also a kind of spiritual death that St. Paul talks about in our second reading today. “But if Christ is in you,” he says, “although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you.” We all experience some kind of spiritual death in our lives and it is so painful to deal with it. Patterns of sin drag us down from our relationship with God. Addictions tear us apart from our loved ones and from our Lord. Indifference, apathy, and even scandal break us away from the human family and from the Church. Jesus comes to bring life to all of us who struggle with sin and experience this kind of spiritual death.

    And he brings life to us in these situations right now, if we will let him. He doesn’t wait until some far-off resurrection time to make it happen. In another place in the Gospel, Jesus makes it clear that life is his primary mission. “I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly,” he tells us. Even so, Jesus is not put off by our death. As embarrassed as we may be about our own brokenness, as dejected and frustrated as we may be about our failure to drag ourselves out of the sin in which we find ourselves, Jesus still comes to us. Martha makes a big point about how Lazarus has been dead four days, as if there were nothing Jesus could do about it. That’s because the Jews believed the soul of a person hung around for three days, and after that he or she was really, really dead. But Jesus was able to raise Lazarus anyway. So it doesn’t matter how dead we are, because our death and our sin are never, never, never more powerful than the mercy of God. Never.

    And the Tempter would try to convince us that we are not worthy of this kind of mercy and love and forgiveness and resurrection. He may convince us that, like Lazarus, we have a big heavy stone sealing us off from God. Our sins might seem that big sometimes. But Jesus will have none of that: “Roll away the stone,” he says. The Tempter might want us to be so embarrassed about our sin that we become convinced we actually stink of death, that there will surely be a stench. But Jesus assures us that if we believe, we will still see the glory of God and our stench will be dispelled by the breath of God’s Spirit. The Tempter might even make us think that our sins have bound us up so much – like Lazarus in his burial cloths – that we can’t even take a step forward to come out of our graves. But to all of that, Jesus says, “untie him and let him go!”

    The Elect have been hearing special readings at the Masses they have attended these last three weeks.  They are readings about our baptism, and so they relate well to the conversion they are experiencing and the preparations they are making for becoming one with us at the Easter Vigil in less than two weeks.  But these are also readings for you and me, that we might look back at our own baptisms and recommit ourselves to our Lord once again.  Conversion is something that goes on all of our lives if we are attentive to it.

    So these readings have been incredible, particularly the ones from the Gospels.  Each of these readings has been focused around one person who could well have been a catechumen, one of the elect, someone undergoing conversion to the faith.  Two weeks ago, the woman at the well found Jesus to be the source of living water, a water that gave relief to the dryness of her faith. Last week, the man born blind washed in the pool at Siloam and came out able not only to physically see, but also to come to see Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. Today, I think, the Elect one is Martha. She experiences death in the grieving of her brother. But she comes to new life as Jesus attends to her faith and raises not just her brother, but her too, to new life. At the end of it, she goes to her sister Mary – this Mary who in a previous story sat at Jesus’ feet rather than help Martha cook for their guest but now refuses to even come out to see him. Martha has to go and tell the little white lie that Jesus is asking for her before Mary will leave the house. But this is how Martha witnesses to her faith, a faith which is made new and given new life with the raising of her beloved brother.

    We’re all on different places of the journey in these closing days of Lent. Maybe, like Lazarus, we are all bound up, stinking of our sins, and sealed up in the tomb. Maybe, like Mary, we are hurt by all our resentments and refuse to even come out of the house. Maybe, like Martha, we have a fledgling faith and throw ourselves to Jesus asking to be made whole. Maybe, like the apostles, we don’t really get it, but are willing to go and die with Jesus anyway. Wherever we are, whatever our brokenness, whatever our sin, however long we have been dead and buried, Jesus comes to us today and beckons us to rise up and come out and be untied and to live anew.

    And so, maybe in these closing days of Lent, we still have to respond to our

    Lord’s call to live. Maybe you haven’t yet been to confession before Easter. We have confessions before and after next Saturday’s 5:00pm Mass, and then again on Tuesday the 30th at 7:30pm, and we invite you to come and have the stone rolled away and to be untied from your burial cloths. Perhaps in these last days of Lent, you have relationships you have to renew with the new life that Christ gives you. Wherever you find yourself, I urge you, don’t let Easter pass with you all bound up and sealed in the grave. Lent ends just before Vespers or Evening Prayer on Holy Thursday.  That gives us around ten and a half days to take up our Lenten resolutions anew, or even make new ones, so that we can receive new life in Christ.  Don’t spend these days in the grave.  Come out, be untied, and be let go.

  • Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    “Where are you from?”  That’s a question we’ve all probably answered countless times.  Mostly, of course, it’s an attempt to learn something new about a person, to deepen our friendship.  Occasionally, though, the question of where one hails from is used against them.  They may have been lived in a bad part of time, or been raised on the wrong side of the tracks.

    This is the kind of attack the Pharisees are mounting against Jesus in today’s Gospel.  The case against him is coming to a fever pitch at this point, and they are using just about any piece of information to call for his death.  This, of course, leads to the cross for him, and that story will continue to unfold rather vividly as we complete these last couple of weeks of Lent.

    But for us, the gospel asks us to look at how we treat other people.  How do we get to know them?  Do we make judgments about them before we really do get to know them?  What role does information like where a person lives, how much money they have, what they look like, and so on, have in how we treat them.  Or can we possibly see them with the eyes of God, eyes that see the other person’s gifts?

    If we don’t try to see other people with those eyes, who knows if we aren’t sending our Lord to the cross, yet again?

  • Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    At the heart of our practice of prayer has to be trust in God. We don’t – or shouldn’t – need signs to convince us of God’s love and care for us.  But don’t we do that all the time?  Aren’t we just like those Galileans looking for a sign?  We might be hesitant to take a leap of faith that we know God is calling us to make, but are looking for some kind of miracle to get us off our behinds.  We might know that healing in a certain situation will take some time, but we want God to descend, wave a magic wand, and make it all go away.

    But just as the royal official trusted that Jesus could cure his son, so we too need to trust that God in his goodness will work the best for us, in his time, in his way. Isaiah tells us today that God is about to create a new heavens and a new earth, where there will always be rejoicing and gladness. But how hard is it for us to wait for that new creative act, isn’t it?  We just really want to see that big picture now, please, we want to know what’s on God’s mind and where he’s taking us.  But that’s not how God works is it?

    It can be hard for us when we look around for blessing and don’t see it happening on our timetable.  We forget, sometimes, that a big part of the grace comes in the journey, even when things are really painful.  The Psalmist says, “O LORD, you brought me up from the nether world; you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.”  Notice how he does not say that God shielded him from going to the nether world.  But the nether world was not the end of the Psalmist’s story.

    We don’t know where God is taking us today – or any day, for that matter.  We have to trust in our God who longs for our good, just like that royal official.  And we have to believe in the power of God to raise us up, just as he raised his Son from the dead.  We all long to celebrate our Easter Sundays, but our faith tells us that we have to get through our Good Fridays first.

    Feel free to remind me of this homily on my next Good Friday.

  • Fourth Sunday of Lent [C]

    Fourth Sunday of Lent [C]

    Today’s readings

    At the heart of it, Lent is about two things.  First, it’s about baptism.  That’s what the participants in our RCIA program are reflecting on these days, and two of them are preparing to be baptized at our Easter Vigil Mass this year.  And baptism leads us to the second purpose of Lent, which is conversion: forgiveness and reconciliation and grace.  Baptism is the sacrament that initially wipes away our sins and gives us grace to be in relationship with Jesus Christ, who leads us to the Father.

    Jesus paints a picture of a very forgiving Father in today’s Gospel, so this story is of course perfect for Lent, when we ourselves are being called to return to God.  Now, I don’t know about you, but when I heard this story growing up, I was always kind of mad about what was going on.  I guess I’d have to say that I identified myself with the older son, who tried to do the right thing and got what seemed to be the short end of the deal.  But that’s not what the story is about.

    We of ten call this parable the parable of the Prodigal Son, but I don’t think that’s right because I don’t think the story is about the son – either son – at least not primarily about them.  And the word “prodigal” does not mean what we think it means.  I think when we hear that word, we think prodigal means “wayward” or something, because we are relating the word to the younger son’s actions.  In fact, the word “prodigal” means something like “wildly, rashly, incredibly extravagant.”  It’s related to the words “profuse” or “prodigious.”

    So the prodigal one here, I think, is the Father.  First of all, he grants the younger son’s request to receive his inheritance before his father was even dead – which is so presumptuous that it feels hurtful.  Kind of like saying, “Hey dad, I wish you were dead, give me my inheritance now, please.”  But the Father gives him the inheritance without ill-will.  Secondly, the Father reaches out to the younger son on his return, running out to meet him, and before he can even finish his little prepared speech, lavishes gifts on him and throws a party.  So it is the Father who is prodigal here, not the son, not either of the sons.

    There is a tendency, I think, for us to put ourselves into the story, which is not a bad thing to do.  But like I mentioned earlier, it’s easy to identify with the hard feelings of the older son sometimes.  But let’s look at these two sons.  First of all, I’ll just say it, it’s not like one was sinful and the other wasn’t – no – they are both sinful.  The younger son’s sin is easy to see.  But the older son, with his underlying resentment and refusal to take part in the joy of his Father, is sinful too.  It’s worth noting that the Father comes out of the house to see both sons.  That’s significant because a good Jewish father in those days wouldn’t come out to meet anyone – they would come to him.  But the Father meets them where they are and desperately, lovingly, pleads with them to join the feast.

    So, both sons are sinful.  But remember, this is a parable, and so the characters themselves are significant.  They all symbolize somebody.  We know who the Father symbolizes.  But the sons symbolize people – more specifically groups of people – too.  The younger son was for Jesus symbolic of the non-believer sinners – all those tax collectors and prostitutes and other gentile sinners Jesus was accused of hanging around with.  The older son symbolizes the people who should have known better: the religious leaders – the Pharisees and scribes.  In this parable, Jesus is making the point that the sinners are getting in to the banquet of God’s kingdom before the religious leaders, because the sinners are recognizing their sinfulness, and turning back to the Father, who longs to meet them more than half way.  The religious leaders think they are perfect and beyond all that repenting stuff, so they are missing out.

    So again, it’s good to put ourselves in the story.  Which son are we, really?  Have we been like the younger son and messed up so badly that we are unworthy of the love of the Father, and deserve to be treated like a common servant?  Or are we like the older son, and do we miss the love and mercy of God in pursuit of trying to look good in everyone else’s eyes?  Maybe sometimes we are like one of the sons, and other times we are like the other.  But the point is, that we often sin.

    But our response has to be like the younger son’s.  We have to be willing to turn back to the Father and be embraced in his mercy and love and forgiveness.  We can’t be like the older son and refuse to be forgiven, insisting on our own righteousness.  The stakes are too high for us to do that: we would be missing out on the banquet of eternal life to which Jesus Christ came to bring us.

    For us, this Lent, this might mean that we have to go to confession.  Even if we haven’t been in a long time.  We have confessions at 4pm for the next two Saturdays, and on Saturday the 27th, we also have confessions at 6pm.  We also have our parish penance service on Tuesday the 30th at 7:30 … those are all on the front of the bulletin.  Lent is the perfect time to use that wonderful sacrament of forgiveness to turn back to the Father who longs to meet us more than half way with his prodigal love and mercy.  So don’t let anything get in the way of doing it.  If you haven’t been to confession in a very long time, go anyway.  We priests are there to help you make a good confession and we don’t yell at you, don’t embarrass you – we are there to help you experience God’s mercy.

    We are all sinners and the stakes are high.  But the good news is that we have a Prodigal God, who longs to meet us more than half way.  All we have to do is decide to turn back.

  • Friday of the Third Week of Lent

    Friday of the Third Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  Some people – Catholics included – see the things that we Catholics do as external, and superfluous.  And indeed, when we do these things in perfunctory, rote kind of ways, then we are definitely missing the boat.  But all of these things can be manifestations of our desire to love God more.  In Lent, we fast, give alms and pray.  Our fasting can be our desire to rely more on God’s care for us.  Our almsgiving can be our desire to be one with God who is close to the poor.  Our prayer can be a manifestation of our hunger for God.  When we do these things with love for God, they aren’t mere externals; they are part of our living faith.  And when they are done with that kind of love, we are truly not far from the kingdom of God.

  • Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

    Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Scriptures address another one of the ways that we fallen human beings tend to avoid the truth. Sometimes, when we are confronted with the truth, we attack its source.  If we cast doubt on the one bringing us the truth, then we don’t have to follow his or her words, right?

    The prophet Jeremiah takes the nation of Israel to task for this in today’s first reading. These are a people who have heard the truth over and over. God has not stopped sending prophets to preach the word. But the Israelites would not listen: in fact, most often, they murdered the prophets. They preferred to live in the world, and to attach themselves to the nations and their worship of idols and pagan gods. They had been warned constantly that this was going to be the source of their demise, but they tuned it out. They “stiffened their necks,” Jeremiah says, and now faithfulness has disappeared and there is no word of truth in anything they say.

    Some of the Jews are giving Jesus the same treatment in today’s Gospel. Seeing him drive out a demon, they are filled with jealousy and an enormous sense of inadequacy. These are the men who were religious leaders and they had the special care of driving away demons from the people. But they chose not to do so, or maybe their lukewarm faith made them ineffective in this ministry. So on seeing Jesus competent at what was their duty, they cast a hand-grenade of rhetoric at him and reason that only a demon could cast out demons like he did.

    We will likely hear the word of truth today. Maybe it will come in these Scriptures, or maybe later in our prayerful moments. Maybe it will be spoken by a child or a coworker or a relative or friend. However the truth is given to us, it is up to us to take it in and take it to heart. Or will we too be like the Jews and the Israelites and stiffen our necks? No, the Psalmist tells us, we can’t be that way. “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

  • Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent

    Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    How many people have we condemned to prison?  I mean this, of course, in a figurative way: how many have we condemned to the prison of our disfavor because of past hurts that we refuse to forget?  Forgiveness is a process, and it may take some time to truly forgive and forget an egregious offense.  But we have to be willing to take that first step, to ask God to help us to forgive, to count on him to help us to be merciful.  Because God has forgiven us much worse.  Our sins are incredibly offensive to God, but he forgives us all the time.  How could we do any less?

  • Third Sunday of Lent [Scrutiny I]

    Third Sunday of Lent [Scrutiny I]

    Today’s readings

    NB: This homily is based on the readings from cycle A, which was read just for the Mass of the Scrutiny.

    Last year about this time, I got the flu – bad.  It was one of those rare occasions when I was so sick, I couldn’t even get out of bed.  I had a fever, chills, aches and pains, the whole deal. When it was at its worst, I was trying to drink a lot of fluids, which is pretty much the only thing you really can do when you have the flu. So I drank a lot of water, but as time went on, I got sick of drinking a lot of water. So I supplemented it with tea, of course, but I even gave myself permission to do something I don’t do very often, and that was to drink some soda – 7up mostly. And that tasted good, the 7up, but because it’s sugary, sooner rather than later I’d be thirsty again, and the only thing that really helped was – water.

    I thought about that experience as I was preparing today’s homily, because this set of readings, which are being used just for this Mass because of the Scrutiny we will pray in a few minutes with our RCIA Elect, these readings are all about water. Whenever we see this much water in the Sunday readings, we should always think of a certain sacrament. Guess which one? Right, baptism. And so we’ll talk about that in just a minute, but before we go there, let’s take a minute to get at the subject of thirst. That, after all, is what gets us to water in the first place.

    The Israelites were sure thirsty in today’s first reading. After all, they had been wandering around the desert for a while now, and would continue to do so for forty years. At that point, they were thinking about how nice it would have been if they had just remained slaves in Egypt, so that they wouldn’t have to come all the way out here to the desert just to die of thirst. Better slaves than dead, they thought. The issue was that they didn’t have what they thirsted for, and had not yet learned to trust God to quench that thirst. So Moses takes all the complaining of the people and complains to God, who provides water for them in the desert. Think about that – they had water in the desert! And they had that water for as long as they continued to make that desert journey. They never ran out, they didn’t die of thirst, God proves himself trustworthy in a miraculous way. The end of the reading says they named the place Massah and Meribah because they wondered, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?” Can you imagine that?  God had led them out of slavery in Egypt with great miracles and signs, and is guiding them through the desert with a column of cloud by day and a column of fire by night.  Is the LORD in their midst or not?  Obviously, the answer was “yes.”

    Which brings us to the rather curious story we have in the Gospel reading. If we think the story was all about a woman coming to get a bucket of water, then we’ve really missed the boat. This story asks us what we’re thirsting for, but at a much deeper level. Did Jesus really need a drink of water? Well, maybe, but he clearly thirsted much more for the Samaritan woman’s faith. Did she leave her bucket behind because she would never need to drink water again? No, she probably just forgot it in the excitement, but clearly she had found the source of living water and wanted to share it with everyone.

    In the midst of their interaction, Jesus uncovers that the woman has been thirsting for something her whole life long. She was married so many times, and the one she was with now was not her husband. She apparently couldn’t find what she was thirsting for in her relationships.  She was worshipping, as the Samaritans did, on the mountain and not in Jerusalem as the Jews did. And every single day, she came to this well to draw water, because her life didn’t mean much more than that. She was constantly looking for water that would quench her, and yet she was thirsty all the time. Kind of reminds me of having the flu.

    And all of this would be very sad if she hadn’t just found the answer to her prayers, the source of living water. There is a hymn written by Horatio Bonar in 1846 called “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” that speaks to this wonderful Gospel story.  We’re going to hear it in a few minutes as part of our scrutiny, but I want to focus on the words of that hymn because they relate to today’s Gospel story:

    I heard the voice of Jesus say,

    “Behold, I freely give

    the living water; thirsty one,

    stoop down and drink, and live.”

    I came to Jesus, and I drank

    of that life-giving stream;

    my thirst was quenched, my soul revived,

    and now I live in him.

    And that’s exactly what happened to the Samaritan woman. She drank of the stream of Jesus’ life-giving water, and she now lived in him. She couldn’t even contain herself and ran right off to town, leaving the bucket of her past life behind, and told everyone about Jesus. They were moved to check this Jesus out, initially because of her testimony. But once they came to know him as the source of life-giving water, they didn’t even need her testimony to convince them; they too lived in him now.

    Today’s Scriptures plead with us on the subject of conversion.  The Israelites were wandering through the desert learning to trust God, being converted from the Egypt of their past sinful lives to the Promised Land of God’s inheritance.  The Samaritan woman was being converted from the stagnant water of her own past life to the living, life-giving water of new life in Christ.

    Remember that I said earlier that, whenever you see this much about water in the readings, the point is always baptism.  Conversion is necessary before baptism can happen.  And that’s what brings us here today. Lent, if we give ourselves to it, is totally about our baptism and our need for life-long conversion. For those among the Elect, that’s quite literally true. Our elect have been walking the desert journey to come to God’s promise just as the Israelites did. And they, like the Samaritan woman, have come to know the source of life-giving water. Just four weeks from yesterday, they will stand before us, have water poured over their heads, and receive what they have been thirsting for all this time.

    But the rest of us, too, find conversion and baptism in our Lenten journey. Lent, as is often pointed out, means “springtime” and during Lent we await a new springtime in our faith. We await new growth, we look for renewed faith, we recommit ourselves to the baptism that is our source of life-giving water. We have what we are thirsting for, and Lent is a time to drink of it more deeply, so that we will be refreshed and renewed to live with vigor the life of faith and the call of the Gospel. These Lenten days take us to Easter and beyond with water that we can pour out in every time and place where God takes us. The life we receive in baptism can revive a world grown listless and jaded and make it alive with springs of refreshment that can only come from the one who gives us water beyond our thirsting, that follows us in our desert journeys, that springs up within those who believe.

    The Israelites wondered, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?” As we see the waters of baptism refreshing our Elect, and as we ourselves are renewed in our own baptism, we can only answer that question with a resounding “YES!”  So – is the LORD in our midst or not?

  • Friday of the Second Week of Lent

    Friday of the Second Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    So in today’s first reading, Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers.  What a foreshadowing this is, isn’t it?  It certainly foreshadows Israel’s slavery in Egypt that led to the Exodus, but it also foreshadows the selling of Jesus into the hands of his executioners by one of his own brothers, Judas Iscariot, and, of course, ultimately by all of his brothers and sisters, namely you and me.  We must never forget that Jesus paid the price for OUR sins.

    But, it also foreshadows our own slavery too.  We too have been sold into slavery to sin, enticed by the power of the evil one.  The chains of our slavery to sin might look like always needing to be right, constant self-pity or self-doubt, blaming others instead of taking responsibility, criticizing others constantly, refusing to move on from the pain of our past, taking joy in the misfortune of others, giving ourselves to endless worry, putting others down, using stereotypes and participating in racism, refusing to forgive, thinking of oneself over others, and the list goes on.  You know the chains that bind you to sin.

    As the Psalmist tells us, the King eventually freed Joseph from his chains and put him in charge of his household.  Lent is about allowing our King, Jesus Christ, to break the chains of our slavery to sin, and accepting the discipleship responsibilities he gives us.   We are never forgiven and just left alone: we are forgiven and sent on mission.  That’s why Jesus told Peter to go feed his sheep after Peter said, “Lord, you know that I love you.”

    As we continue the prayer of Mass today, we offer those chains to Jesus, asking him to break them, and accepting the gift of discipleship for the honor and glory of God.  Remember the marvels the Lord has done!