Fifth Sunday of Lent

A simple request - We want to see Jesus - but it requires a radical commitment. We must die to yourselves, uniting our life to the life and death of Jesus Christ, who frees us from sin and death for an eternity with His Heavenly Father. It means killing every inclination that leads us elsewhere, of putting to death all selfish desires and empty, false causes of happiness. It means nourishing that which leads us to deeper faith, hope, and love, of embracing the Lord.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

God loves us… This is the simple truth of the Gospel, a truth captured in today's Gospel. Sometimes, we can forget this love, take it for granted, or reduce it to meaninglessness. But God so loved us that He sent his Son to redeem us. No other god, no other religion makes such a claim! God, the Only God, sent His Son to die for us. Salvation is in Him alone! He desires us to come to faith in Him.

Third Sunday of Lent

Jesus cleanses the Temple, to restore it to its proper use for the worship of God. Over time, perhaps because of the renovation process that Herod the Great began and Herod the Tetrarch continued, sellers and money changers moved into the temple. While they provided a good service to the pilgrims (after all, who always has the proper offering or coins for the sacrifice?), it was not the place. Jesus corrects this.
IN our lives, there might be things, as good as they initially started out, that are equally out of place, preventing us from fulfilling our proper purpose. May the Lord cleanse our hearts!

Second Sunday of Lent

Jesus Christ reveals to Peter, James, and John His divine nature veiled by His Human flesh as a foreshadowing of what is to come. While Christ is to die on the cross, He will be raised from the dead because He is divine. This foreshadowing is one that is frequent - it is how God the Father, who wrote the history of salvation, gives hints of how he is going to save us, gave prophets and seers the glimpse. It is seen in the first reading as Isaac, bound and laid on the altar and nearly sacrificed, Is this not a foreshadowing - the Father will provide His only Begotten Son, who will carry the wood of the Cross, and be attached to it. The Father will raise Him up again, and through His Son, Salvation will be given.
The Father speaks to the apostles with a message for us, too: this is my beloved son - listen to Him!

First Sunday of Lent

Jesus enters the desert, a place of testing and desolation. He enters society, prepared for his ministry, proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is at hand, and that there is need for repentance.
Note, in this short passage, we have perhaps the best explanation of formation for those responding to a vocation. They are taking out of the world into seminaries or houses of formation, ministered by angels, and among the savage beasts (like the formation staff and the others in formation), and they leave prepared for the ministry.
This Lenten season can be such a time for us, too.

Ash Wednesday

We begin the season of Lent, and as we do, we are invited to ask the Lord what He desires us to be free of or properly order in our lives so that we can love Him above all else. Note that in the Gospel, the hypocrites do good things, but for the wrong reasons - they do it all for fame. If we do it for our personal health, simply the arm feelings, or for any other reason other than the Love of God and the denial of self because of that love, we have failed.
May this season of penance, prayer, alms, and fasting by one that helps us find freedom in God.

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus forgives a man because of the faith of his friends. This might strike us as odd, and in a way, it is, but this man was perhaps most paralyzed by sin. He was unable to come to Jesus Christ on his own, and so his friends bore him to the Lord, tearing up the roof so that Jesus could heal him. THat is true faith.
If we forget this miracle, we might forget the important role we have in carrying our friends and neighbors to the lord in their paralysis. We must be men and women of faith, knowing that the Lord wants us to be free from sin, and bring them to Him in our prayer.