Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: faith

  • Monday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

    Monday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    This whole Gospel story can be a little bit jarring, I think.  I was particularly struck by what the messenger said to Jesus when he asked him to come to the centurion’s house: “He deserves to have you do this for him.”  Yeah, right, as if any of us is ever worthy of God’s mercy!  To his credit, the centurion must have heard of this, because he hurries to Jesus to set things right: “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof.  Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you; but say the word and let my servant be healed.”  And what he says also explains why he sent a messenger to come to Jesus instead of coming himself.  For his part, Jesus is impressed with the man’s faith: “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith,” he says.  And so the healing of the man’s slave takes place at once.  It’s an interesting exchange, to be sure.

    We have the privilege, every time we gather for the Eucharist, to echo the centurion’s faith.  The new revision of the Mass has us say, just before we come to the Altar for Holy Communion: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.  But only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”  And saying those words out loud is so important at that moment in the Mass.  Unless we truly believe that Christ’s Body and Blood are sufficient for the healing of our souls, unless we truly know that we are completely unworthy of God’s mercy, then we don’t have the faith necessary to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord.

    But when we do enter into that moment of Communion with hearts open in faith, everything changes for us.  True healing can come about, and we can return to our daily lives and find our souls healed with the grace that prepares them for whatever this world brings them.

  • The Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time [Cycle B]

    The Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time [Cycle B]

    Today’s readings

    One of my favorite things to do when I have spare time is to read a good mystery novel.  My mother passed her love for that genre on to me, and to my sisters.  I always used to love Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and I’ve read and re-read my favorites from them many times.  I also love to see mysteries played out in movies and on television, and some of my favorite shows are dramas along those lines.  The thing that I’ve learned about mysteries as a genre is that the best of them are the stories that keep you guessing; they aren’t solved all in the first six pages.

    During these Ordinary Time Sundays of the year, the Church presents two main topics for our edification and our growth in faith.  One of those topics is instruction in discipleship; how do we live as disciples and what does it look like?  We’ve been hearing that throughout the summer.  The other topic is what we are seeing today: and that is instruction in who Jesus is.  And this is where the mystery begins to play out.  Just when the disciples (and, truthfully, we ourselves) think they have Jesus all figured out, it turns out they don’t really get it at all.  Jesus is like an onion in some ways, every new clue just peels away one layer, and there is always more there to be discovered.

    In the first reading, the figure speaking is commonly referred to as “the Suffering Servant,” a figure that is later identified with Jesus.  Whoever the figure is, he or she has incredible faith.  One might expect that faith to be rewarded, but it’s not.  Instead, his back is beaten, his beard is plucked, and his face is buffeted and spat upon.  Yet, he continues to have faith, setting his face, knowing that he will not be put to shame.  Maybe you have met a person who has gone through incredible trials like unemployment, family strife, or serious illness, and has remained faithful.  If you know a person like that, perhaps you have sensed a bit of Jesus working in that person.

    In the second reading, St. James tells us that our faith must be living, or it is not faith at all.  He has seen far too many people who will say nice things to people and claim to have faith, but refuse to help alleviate anyone’s real needs.  “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well” are nice-sounding words, but are, of course, meaningless when spoken to people who have serious problems: no place to live and keep warm, and little if anything to eat.  James’s faith is one that sees the great mystery of Christ’s presence in those who are in need.  We have the same challenges today, of course.  There are many who are needy among us, and we disciples are called to a living faith that reaches out to those in need.  Perhaps you’ve had the opportunity to work at a soup kitchen or a shelter, or go on a mission trip.  If you’ve done that, maybe you have seen the face of Christ in those you’ve served.

    The Gospel continues the theme of mystery by asking the question point-blank: “who do you say that I am?”  The people of Jesus’ time, the disciples included, were constantly trying to figure him out.  Peter seems to have figured out one of the clues: Jesus is the Messiah.  But he totally misses the boat on just what kind of Messiah Jesus is to be.  When Jesus talks about the necessity of his suffering and death, Peter just can’t wrap his mind around it.  Jesus’ response to Peter is that to really know who Jesus is, Peter needs to think like God, not like a human being.  The strangeness of this mystery is so great that it applies not just to Jesus, but also to anyone who would want to follow him.  Disciples like us must take up our cross: if we wish to save our lives, we must give them away.  This is a very great mystery indeed.

    The real mystery to this mystery of who Jesus is, is that the more we find out about him, the more we find out about ourselves.  Because we too are called to be suffering servants: all of our good efforts won’t always be rewarded in this life.  Sometimes standing up for what is right will lead to scorn and abuse.  But we do it nonetheless, knowing that ultimately, we will never be put to shame.  And we too are called to have faith that is living, faith that reveals itself in the works we do.  We can’t claim to be people of faith if we don’t give of ourselves and extend ourselves in service.  Faith that never says yes to the call of Jesus is not faith at all.  Faith that is only evident one hour a week is not faith at all.  And finally, we are called, by the very words of our Savior, to take up our cross and follow him.  Following him will ultimately lead us to glory if we do it faithfully.  But following him will also lead us to the Cross.  Yesterday we celebrated that mystery in the feast of the Triumph of the Cross.  Yes, we will suffer in this life, yes we will die, but that death will release us to the glory of the resurrection, if we embrace it in faith.

    The psalmist sums it all up for us today.  Yes, the suffering in our lives leads us to experience the cords of death that encompass us.  We often fall into distress and sorrow.  But when we embrace that suffering and call on the Lord, we will find ourselves freed of death and able to walk before the Lord in the land of the living.  We who have embraced and remembered and celebrated the mystery of Christ’s presence in our lives, in our Church and in our world, can approach suffering with great faith.  There’s a contemporary Christian song that says “sometimes he calms the storm, and other times he calms his child.”  God won’t always make our tears and pain go away.  But he does promise that we will never go through them alone.  We will probably never completely figure Christ out this side of the Kingdom.  The disciples didn’t and we won’t either.  But when we enter into the mystery, we can keep turning the pages and finding more and more clues.  When we enter the mystery, we can look forward to the great unveiling of the solution when we enter our heavenly reward.

  • The Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time [B]

    The Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time [B]

    Today’s readings

    Many of you know that recently I have been working on losing weight and getting healthy.  That’s been going on since January, and it’s starting to see some good results.  And the recipe, as any doctor or nutritionist will tell you, is easy: eat less and be more active.  Easier said than done, of course.  But I’ve been following the doctrines and precepts of my diet for the better part of this year.  Just recently, I knew that it was having an effect on me.  One day, I had some free time and I thought about how nice it would be to have a nap.  My very next thought was, “Oh, but I should go out and have a good long walk first!”  I also have started to think about food differently: some things while momentarily yummy aren’t all that satisfying, and they’re just going to cost me more time in the gym.  As I’ve noticed myself beginning to think that way, I realized that lifestyle changes had happened in me, and that was good.

    I say all that not to pat myself on the back, but because I think it is a parallel to what the Church is teaching us in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  This year I’ve learned that following the rules of the diet was nice, but making lifestyle changes is going to give me real results.  Similarly, the readings today teach us that following the rules of our religion is nice, but it’s not until we let our faith take hold of our lives that we are going to see real results in our walk with the Lord.

    In our first reading today, Moses is exhorting the people to carefully observe the laws that God has set before them.  This wasn’t supposed to be some kind of scrupulous, daunting observance, but rather a response to God’s love and care for them.  They had been led lovingly through the desert and were about to take possession of the Promised Land, the land promised by God to their ancestors.  And so as they obey the law and take possession of the promise, they give witness to the nations to the greatness of their God and the wisdom of the people.

    But as time went on, the observance of these laws got a bit messed up.  People had given up true observance of the law and the love of God, and got caught up in the appearances that came from rigid observance of the rules of the law.  They missed the spirit of the law, and even used the law as justification to do whatever it was they wanted to do.  Our readings give us two responses to that issue today.

    The first response is the response Jesus gives to it in today’s Gospel.  Here he has yet another altercation with the scribes and Pharisees.  They begin to quiz him about his disciples’ habit of not washing their hands before they eat.  Now before all you parents start siding with the Pharisees, they weren’t talking about cleaning dirt off their hands before a meal.  They were talking about a ritual custom of washing, not only hands, but also jugs and other things.  These rituals probably began as something the priests did before offering sacrifice, much like the hand washing that is done in the Eucharistic Liturgy before the Eucharistic Prayer.  But in the case of the Jews, this practice seems to have become something that ended up obliging everyone, and the Pharisees were keen to see that it was done faithfully by everyone, along with the other 612 laws they were required to practice!

    So what Jesus was criticizing here was empty, meaningless ritual.  Non-observance of these meaningless things, he says, do not make a person impure.  Those demanding that people obey these human laws are themselves disobeying the law of God, Jesus says.  So he illustrates the problem by making the point that real impurity comes from a much more fickle source: the human heart.  The real problem is that people don’t purify their hearts.  Because from an impure heart comes all sorts of foul things: “evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.  All these evils,” Jesus says, “come from within and they defile.”

    The second response comes in our second reading from the letter of Saint James.  Saint James attacks people’s rigid observance of the law at the expense of the poor.  Those who dwell on the mere observance of the law are missing its point: and that is that we are to love as God loves.  So if one wishes to be pure in one’s observance of religion, one should be a doer of the world and not just a hearer.  Pure religion involves caring for widows and orphans and all those who have been marginalized, and to keep from being corrupted by the world and its influences.

    I think James underscores Jesus’ point that missing a miniscule point of the law does not make a person unclean or irreligious.  Instead, missing the whole spirit of the law and becoming corrupted by the world is what does that to a person.  We have to be honest, I think, and acknowledge that this kind of issue was not limited just to the people of Israel: it can be our issue too.  We too have to admit that we are guilty of that horrifying list of sins that Jesus spells out for us today.  And the way we’ve gotten there is by not giving our faith a chance to really sink in, to become a lifestyle change like in my diet, to take hold of our hearts.

    There’s a positive and negative way of getting at that, and it’s the simple formula of the spiritual life: do good and avoid evil.  Avoiding evil can be tough, because there are so many traps out there, so many obstacles to the spiritual life, so many occasions for sin.  Maybe it means we need to stop watching so much television.  Or spending too much time on the internet.  Perhaps some relationships we have are not healthy and need to be ended.  Maybe we’ve been paying attention to the wrong advice.  We generally have to be on guard as to what goes into us, knowing that, as the Act of Contrition says, we need to avoid whatever leads us to sin.  So, whatever it is that needs to be rooted out, it needs to go.

    The opportunities to do good are just as numerous as those to do evil.  We just have to perhaps respond to more of these opportunities.  Perhaps we need to pray more.  Or to read the Scriptures or other spiritual books more.  Maybe it would be good to spend more time with our families, to pray together, or watch a good movie together, even to have more meals together.  Or maybe it wouldn’t hurt to do a bit more apostolic service: shopping for the food pantry, teaching a religious education class, helping with a parish event, looking in on a sick neighbor.  I know those things can be hard to do in our busy lives, but they’re never going to be a waste of time or effort.

    As we continue our prayer this morning, maybe we can all reflect on our response to the life of faith.  If we can make a resolution to change one small thing and bring that as part of our offering of gifts this morning, who knows if our whole life of faith won’t change in a positive way!  Today the Psalmist is very clear about the fact that working on interiorizing our faith every day comes with a reward: The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.

  • The Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The story goes that one day, Saint Teresa of Avila was wheeling a cart across a bridge over the river. At one point along the bridge’s passage, a wheel of the cart got stuck in the planks, and Teresa had to wrestle the cart to get going again. In the struggle, the cart tipped over, and its entire contents spilled out and into the river. As she looked at all her stuff floating down the river, she said, “Well, God, if this is how you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few of them!”

    I am guessing that we have all had at least one time in our lives when we have felt like Saint Teresa in that moment.  I confess that I have had a week like that: my mother was without power in her house from Sunday to late Thursday, my aunt has had to go to a nursing facility at least for a month, I have a friend of the family who is at the end of his life, we have had a number of funerals over the last couple of weeks, and the heat has certainly taken its toll on staff relations.  So I can just imagine how Saint Teresa felt with all her stuff floating down the river.

    Not that I’m Saint Teresa, mind you; I can only aspire to her level of holiness and her friendship with God that made such a conversation possible.  But I know how an accumulation of nastiness can drain one’s reserve of faith.  And it’s a great danger.  Last week’s Gospel showed how the faith of two people led to great healing: Jairus’s daughter was resuscitated from the dead, and the woman with a hemorrhage was cured after twelve long years.  But today’s Gospel shows us how a lack of faith prevented Jesus from doing much in the way of healing at all.

    And so today, maybe we can take away two role models for having faith when it seems hard to do.  Saint Paul struggled with a “thorn in the flesh” – whatever it was for him – and remained faithful.  Saint Teresa grappled with the frustrations of daily living and remained a very holy woman.  May they be our intercessors when our reserve of faith is waning and the heat of the day is overwhelming.  And as the Psalmist models for us: may we be those who keep our eyes fixed on the Lord, pleading for his mercy.

  • The Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I spent a good bit of time visiting people I know in the hospital this week.  My godmother had some serious surgery, which she came through quite well, praise God, but it looks like she will be recovering in the hospital a bit longer than she would like.  I also visited with one of our family’s long-time neighbors who has contracted a disease that the doctors aren’t sure how he got and don’t quite know what to do about.  And so as I hear about the miraculous healings of Jairus’s daughter and the woman with the hemorrhages, I find myself thinking, “how nice for them.”

    And I’m sure many of us have similar reactions.  How often have we had to watch a loved one suffer, and think, why can’t God heal him or her?  The very first words of today’s Liturgy of the Word reach out and grab us: “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.”  And perhaps we already knew that.  Perhaps we know that God does not intend our death or our suffering, but the really hard thing for us is that he permits it.  Why is that?  Why would God permit his beloved ones to suffer so much here on earth?

    That’s a question for which I would love to have an answer.  I think maybe it’s one of those things we will finally understand when we get to heaven and see the big picture.  But for now, it can be a real stumbling block.  I would suggest that today’s readings are offered to us not to make us feel bad when we don’t experience immediate healing on our terms and timetable, but instead to remind us of the many ways God does heal us.

    I’d like to take a minute to talk about some of the things that unite the two stories that we have in the Gospel.  First, we have the story of Jairus.  And I’m struck by how impatient I would be if I were him.  The story tells us that Jesus had just returned from the other side of the lake where he was for a time ministering to the Gentiles that lived there.  I’m thinking that Jairus had to be waiting for him to return the whole time, watching his daughter get sicker and sicker.  Then, while he and Jesus are rushing to his daughter’s side, they are detained by the whole incident of the woman with the multiple hemorrhages.  If I were Jairus, I’m pretty sure my head would have exploded.  But it turns out that Jesus has time enough to heal them both, and probably even Jairus as well in some ways.

    So again, I think there are some aspects of the two stories that link them together.  The first, perhaps strangely, is the number twelve.  The woman with the hemorrhages suffered for twelve years, and Jairus’s daughter was twelve years old.  This is not coincidental.  The number twelve has biblical significance.  When we hear twelve in Scripture, we might think of the twelve tribes of Israel, or even of the Twelve Apostles.  Matthew’s account of the feeding of the multitudes mentions that there were twelve baskets of leftovers.  In these contexts, the number twelve stands for a kind of universality, encompassing all people or the whole known world.  The twelve tribes took up residence all over the holy land, which was the whole world for the ancients.  The Twelve Apostles were meant to bring the Gospel to the whole world, and the twelve baskets were meant to feed everyone in the world.  So the number twelve in the contexts of these two healings alert us to the fact that Jesus intends healing for everyone in the whole world.  That’s what he came for, and that’s why he was out expelling demons at the other side of the lake, in Gentile territory, in the Gospel passages preceding today’s reading.

    The stories are also linked by desperation.  I’ve already spoken of how long Jairus was waiting for the healing of his daughter, and how he had to watch her get sicker and sicker.  But the same was true of the woman with the hemorrhages – that’s plural by the way, not just one hemorrhage – because she had suffered for twelve long years at the hands of many doctors.  For both of them, those with power have been unable to do anything, and the time for healing is now or never.

    Another way the stories are linked are by un-touchability.  The woman with the hemorrhages was someone that could not be touched, or the person touching her would have been ritually impure: unable to worship with the community and an outcast, just as she was.  Jairus’s daughter became untouchable when she died.  Anyone who touched a dead person would be similarly ritually unclean.  But Jesus touches them both, because nothing can be an obstacle to his love.

    The final thing that links them is faith.  We might say that what brought Jairus and the woman to Jesus was desperation, as I’ve outlined earlier.  But Jesus recognized their faith, and if it weren’t for faith, no miracles would have happened.  That occurred in Jesus’ hometown: no miracles could be accomplished because of their lack of faith.  But that’s clearly not an issue here.

    And this is perhaps the most salient point of today’s Liturgy of the Word.  I’ve known so many people who have been through a lot: either medically, or emotionally, or these days especially financially.  And the ones who have survived have credited it to their faith.  Maybe things didn’t turn out exactly the way they would have preferred.  Perhaps real healing took way longer than they would have liked.  But all of them would tell you that their faith made them positive that God was present with them, and helped them to know that, however things turned out, they would be okay.

    I am struck by the Eucharistic imagery at the end of today’s Gospel.  Jesus comes to the home of Jairus and finds his daughter asleep in death.  He reaches out to her, touches her, and raises her up.  Then he instructs those around her to give her something to eat.  We gather for this Eucharistic banquet today and Jesus comes to us, finding us asleep in the death of our sins.  Because we are dead in our sins, we can hardly reach out to touch our Lord, but he reaches out to us.  He takes our hands, raises us up, and gives us something to eat.

    We come to the Eucharist today with our lives in various stages of grace and various stages of death.  At the Table of the Lord, we offer our lives and our suffering and our pain.  We bring our faith, wherever we are on the journey, and reach out in that faith to touch the body of our Lord, taking him into our hands.  We approach the Cup of Life, and whatever emptiness is in us is filled up with grace and healing love, poured out in the blood of Christ.  As we go forth to glorify the Lord by our lives this day, all of our problems may very well stay with us, remaining unresolved at least to our satisfaction.  But in our faith, perhaps they can be transformed, or at least maybe we can be transformed so that we can move through that suffering and pain with dignity and peace.  And as we go forth into the week ahead, perhaps we can hear our Lord saying to us the same words he said to the woman with the hemorrhage: “go in peace, your faith has saved you.”

  • Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    In these days after the Ascension, the Liturgy calls us to turn and find our hope and security in God.  Certainly this was difficult for the early disciples, who tested Jesus to see if he was who he said he was.  They were satisfied with what they found, and said they believed in him.  But Jesus here speaks an essential truth of the spiritual life: it’s easy to believe when things are going okay.  He prophecies that they will all be tested, and indeed they were, and were scattered, and had to come to belive in him all over again.

    The same will be true for us disciples in our own lives.  We can make an easy enough profession of faith when we are well and things are going smoothly.  But the minute some kind of challenge enters our lives, we have to decide if we are believers all over again.  It’s not easy to believe in the ascended Jesus – he is not immediately visible to our sight.  But, even though he is unseen, he is still very much with us.

    He may be in the heaven of our hopes, but he also walks among us.  We have to look for signs of his presence everywhere we go.  And we will find those signs in moments of joy, times of inspiration, words from others that uplift us.  Jesus didn’t disappear from our lives when he ascended into heaven; he promised to be with us until the end of time.  We are sustained by the hope that we will join him one day in the place he is preparing for us.

    The world may very well scatter us and give us trouble; Jesus said as much.  But we can take courage in the fact that Jesus has overcome the world and has not abandoned us.

  • Monday of the Third Week of Easter

    Monday of the Third Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Well, it doesn’t take long.  Just on Saturday at Mass, we heard about the selection of the first deacons of the Church, including Saint Stephen.  And now, today we hear of his persecution and impending death sentence.  The life of faith certainly has its ups and downs, doesn’t it?  I am sure we can all relate to that at some point or another in our lives.

    So they drag Saint Stephen before the Sanhedrin, and make all sorts of false claims against him.  Actually, Stephen is in good company.  He is brought to the same place where his Lord Jesus, and later Peter and the apostles, have gone before him.  And just like all of them, even with all the lies and accusations flying around him, he is at peace.  The source of his peace, is of course, his Lord who has already traveled the Way of the Cross, that same Lord who now fills him, as the first line of the reading says, with “grace and power.”

    We too, will be tested in this life because of our faith.  It can and will get us into trouble if we let it.  But we too can rely on that same grace and power if we unite ourselves to our Risen Lord.  As the Psalmist says today, “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.”

  • Monday of the Second Week of Easter

    Monday of the Second Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    One of the great things about being Catholic, I think, is the celebration of Easter. We do it up right, and keep doing it for fifty days! In fact, just yesterday we completed our celebration of Easter Day, which lasts for eight full days. It certainly makes sense to us that the joy of our salvation should be celebrated with such great festivity, and we shouldn’t be so eager to toss the lilies out of the church.  Today we begin the second phase of our Easter celebration. Having completed the Octave of Easter, we now begin the preparation for the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the first Apostles, and later to each Christian.

    We have in our Gospel today the emergence of the interesting figure of Nicodemus. He was a Jew, and one of the Pharisees. But he found Jesus and his message compelling, so a few times in John’s Gospel we get to hear from Nicodemus. Even though the rest of the Pharisees flat out rejected Jesus, Nicodemus knew that he couldn’t reject him so quickly. There was something to this Jesus, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it.  We don’t know if he never fully, publicly accepted Jesus, but he definitely took many steps on the way.

    Today Nicodemus and Jesus speak about being born again, born of the Spirit. This for us is a process of accepting the Gospel in faith, and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and then living as a people reborn. Although we can point to our Confirmation day, and even the day of our Baptism as days when we received the Holy Spirit, the process of accepting the Gospel in faith and living as a people reborn in the Spirit is one that takes the better part of all of our lives. What we celebrate with joy today is that we are on that journey. Because of the Resurrection of Our Lord and his gift of the Holy Spirit, we can now live according to the Spirit’s direction in our lives, confident that that Holy Spirit will give us the gifts and courage to do what we are called to do. The Apostles did that in today’s first reading, and now we must do the same.

  • Men’s Ministry Lenten Breakfast Talk: How Do Men Observe Lent?

    Men’s Ministry Lenten Breakfast Talk: How Do Men Observe Lent?

    Last night, I was in church for the Living Stations.  The junior high kids were leading it and they did an awesome job.  They even got me to shed a few tears along the way.  I’m half Italian: we just do that!  But what was it that got to me and caused those tears:

    1. 1. That the kids took it seriously and were very reverent and prayerful?
    2. 2. Was it the story of salvation, in awe and wonder that God would send his Son to die that horrible death for me?
    3. 3. Or was it that I was hoping and praying those kids are being touched by the meaning of what they were doing?

    And the answer is yes, all of that:  As the father of this big family, my heart is moved in all of those ways and more.  That’s what fathers do.  And so I’ve been reflecting on Lent and what that means for men.  How is it that we men observe Lent?

    Maybe I should ask, how is it that we men should observe Lent?  Because I know that we live busy lives, and we can scarcely give Lent a second thought if we’re not careful.  But that does nobody any good: not us, not our families, not our communities or workplaces.  If we want to be the best we can for all of them, we have to let Lent permeate who we are and what we do.

    And it’s a quandary with which I’m familiar.  When I worked in my pre-seminary days, if I didn’t put prayer on my to-do list – literally – there would be no prayer.  And when there was no prayer, I was not at my best at work, I was not at my best with anyone.  Lent gives us the opportunity to take stock of this and turn it all around.

    Reading: Isaiah 64:4-7

    I probably don’t have to pound home that point from Isaiah: we have become like unclean men.  The opportunities to go wrong abound, don’t they?  We intend to be men of integrity, but business is complicated.  We intend to love our families into heaven, but we’re tired, we’re busy, and we just don’t always have the patience.  Our sins abound, and we don’t intend that – we so wish we could turn back to God once and for all.  Would that he might meet us doing right.  Maybe that can happen this Lent.

    Here’s a question to think about – we will discuss it later, but for now, just think:  have you ever had a really significant Lent: a time when you felt a new springtime in your faith, a time when you grew as a man and really came to know the plans God had for you?  If so, when was that, and what was it that got to you?

    (Pause a minute or two.)

    I think Lent encourages at least five manly traits, and I want to reflect on those a bit.  Then I want to take a look at the three habits that Lent demands of us.  Finally, without stomping too much on Dr. Muir’s presentation coming up, I want to take a brief look at three men of Lent and reflect on what they model for us.

    So first: five manly traits that Lent encourages.

    First, Lent encourages us to be men of prayer.  Yes, men of prayer are men who pray, but not just men who say prayers.  Men of prayer are men who:

    • • pray first and often
    • • look around them and see God’s hand at work
    • • are grateful for their gifts
    • • look for an opportunity to worship
    • • experience the sacraments
    • • teach their families how to pray, how to have a relationship with Jesus
      • o We never go alone to the kingdom … we are supposed to take everyone with us, especially our families!

    Second, Lent encourages us to be men of faith.  Men of faith know that God is with them in good times and bad.  Men of faith have that relationship with Jesus that helps them to relate well with others.  Men of faith are courageous, and tenacious, and confident, but they are never arrogant.  Humility marks men of faith because they know the source of their strength.  This is not a false humility that makes them doormats for everyone who wishes to take them on.

    Third, Lent encourages us to be men of charity.  This might not mean what you think it does.  It’s not primarily about giving money to the poor, or even doing good things for other people.  Yes, these are acts of charity, but what I mean by being men of charity takes us to the Latin root of the word, caritas.  Caritas is a kind of self-giving love, a love that looks for the good of others, a love that sometimes finds its expression in works of charity, but is always characterized by putting the other one first.  Men of charity are men who have a strong, burning love for God that translates into the way they love their families, spouses, children, co-workers, employees, everyone God puts in their path.  Men who exhibit this charity certainly do not overlook another’s faults, but gently and firmly corrects them because he knows that setting the person right is what is best for them.  Charity sometimes means saying no, or not yet; it means saying do this even though you don’t think you want to.  Think how often God does that to us!

    • • Example from my life: my parents urging me to go on a retreat or be part of a group.

    Fourth, Lent encourages us to be men of integrity.  Men of integrity exhibit what we generally refer to as “character.”  These are men who do the right thing even though someone isn’t breathing down their neck or micromanaging them.  Integrity is what we all want to say that we have.  But integrity is definitely difficult to always achieve.  Because integrity means walking away from a lucrative business deal because it doesn’t feel right.  Integrity means setting priorities for yourself and your family that are probably counter-cultural, like saying no to sports or activities that make it impossible to go to Mass or to spend adequate time with our families.  Integrity means we are as good as our word, that we can always be relied on to do the right thing.  God does not want to be a micromanager: he wants to set us on the right path and have us walk it every day.  Men of integrity do that.

    Finally, Lent calls us to be men of grace.  This doesn’t mean we are able to burn up the dance floor, it means rather that we are aware of God’s action in our life, that we live by that action, and that we spread it on to others.  Grace says that everything we have is a gift, no matter how hard we think we’ve worked for it.  Grace says that we are sinners, men who have committed sins and are guilty of every possible offense against God, but even so we are loved and forgiven and called and blessed.  Grace says that God is infinitely greater than our sins, that there is no way that we can fall so far that God can’t reach us, that he longs to pull us up out of the waters of death and give us life that lasts forever.

    The truth of grace is this:  on one day in time, let’s call it December 25, of the year zero… (footnote Fr. Larry Hennessy).

    Men of grace are aware of their sinfulness and bring it to the Sacrament of Penance on a regular basis; they are grateful for the gift of forgiveness and celebrate it at the table of the Eucharist.  Men of grace enthusiastically pass the faith on to their families, keenly aware of their vocational responsibility to help their spouse and their children get to heaven.  Men of grace witness to others by being men of prayer, men of faith, men of charity and men of integrity!

    Another question to think about – of the five manly traits, which do you find most present in your life?  What do you think got you there?  Which do you find least present in your life?  What do you need to do to pursue it?

    So now, three Lenten habits: fasting, almsgiving and prayer.

    Fasting helps us to:

    • • give up what we truly do not need
    • • let go of things that keep us tethered to the world, to our own self-interest
    • • find in our hunger that there is nothing we hunger for that God can’t provide.

    Almsgiving helps us to:

    • • realize that we are not the center of the universe, and also we are not alone
    • • see other people as God sees them and love them as God does.

    Prayer helps us to:

    • • find God in the midst of our business, brokenness, despair
    • • have a relationship with God that sees us through good times and bad
    • o Joke about the guy who was going through a hard time and looked at the Bible randomly for some help
    • • see God’s work in our lives

    A question to think about:  What’s your Lenten plan?  How will you implement fasting, almsgiving and prayer in your life?

    Men of Lent

    Peter: Matthew 14:22-33

    • o A man of fledgling faith
      • ♣ courageous, tenacious
    • o A man of grace
      • ♣ fallen and forgiven

    Paul:  Philippians 1:19-26

    • o A man of converted faith (his past)
    • o A man of grace (knows who is in charge, where he is being led)
    • o A man of charity (is concerned about others, and fruitful labor)

    A question to think about:  Which of these men inspires you most?  Why?  What can you take from his life to create a powerful life-changing Lent?

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The women in today’s Liturgy of the Word give us contrasting views of the spiritual life.  In our first reading, the women give us the example of what not to do.  Solomon, known for his wisdom and dedication to God by building the temple, is soon seduced by the foreign women he had married to abandon God.  They entice him to abandon the worship of the one, true God in order to worship and adore their so-called gods.

    Marrying into the families of the foreigners among them was a real problem for the Israelites.  When they did this, they were soon led astray and picked up the pagan customs of the world around them.  It’s kind of a metaphor for what can go wrong in our spiritual lives.  If we keep our eyes on Christ and follow the way he has laid out for us, we can progress in our devotion.  But the minute we start looking at other things, we can soon be distracted from the straight and narrow.

    On the other hand, we have the wonderful Syrophoenician woman in the Gospel.  She knows exactly where to look for salvation and she persists in it.  When it seemed that Jesus was not interested in helping her daughter, she persisted because she knew that Christ alone could heal her daughter and expel the demon.

    Once again, there’s a deeper message here.  I don’t think any of us believes that Jesus wasn’t interested in healing the woman’s daughter.  I just think he knew her faith and wanted to give those who were in the house where he was to see that faith.  The story gives us, too, the opportunity to asses our own faith in God, not looking to other things or foreign gods to bring us salvation.  If these women teach us anything in today’s readings, it’s that we need to be focused on our God alone.