Jesus opens
today’s Gospel account with a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind
person? Will not both fall into a
pit? This leads us to ask what blindness
Jesus is talking about? I suggest for
our prayer today we see the blind guides that Jesus refers to are people who
don’t know their own need for mercy, who have not experienced mercy, and who
therefore cannot act with mercy.
We see in
our Eucharistic Liturgy how we humbly ask for the mercy of our forgiving
God. The Penitential Rite is part of the
beginning of our Eucharistic celebration.
For us to enter into the mystery of God’s presence among us, we first
acknowledge our need for the healing forgiveness of Good. Then before receiving Communion, we humbly
pray: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say
the Word and my soul shall be healed.”
The
genuineness of our discipleship of the Lord Jesus is dependent upon our
humility and our humble recognition that we need the mercy of a forgiving God,
and we are to share this mercy with others.
The cross of
Jesus is His great act of love for us.
In the cross, we encounter the mercy, the forgiveness, and the love of
Jesus for us.
Please God,
may we always be aware that we are sinners who stand in need of a forgiving,
healing God. As we approach Ash
Wednesday, the ashes to be placed on our foreheads announce that the light of
Christ that is burning within us is dimmed.
It has been darkened by sin symbolized by the ashes on our foreheads.
The invasion
of Russia into Ukraine and the war that is now taking place shows the effect of
sin on an international scale. War is
the result of hearts that are not filled with he merciful, forgiving love of
our God.
With the
ashes that we will receive on Ash Wednesday, we are confessing and announcing
we stand in need of God’s forgiveness.
Further, we commit ourselves to the penitential season so that we will
be reconciled with God and so prepare ourselves for the joy of Easter. The blessed ashes that we receive are blessed
ashes, holy ashes, and they hold the promise of cleansing protection and, most
importantly, the promise of resurrection.
Our upcoming
Lenten journey invites us to become more aware of our inner life, our spiritual
life before God. The Lenten season
invites us to accept the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and self-denial. The purpose of these spiritual disciplines is
to lead us to conversion, to place God first in our lives. In following these spiritual disciplines, we
come to know the Gospel good news. The
Good News is precisely this: it tells us
about a God who gives first, loves first, who loves unconditionally, and who
loves us whether we deserve it or not.
May the
spiritual disciplines of lead us to an image of God who loves us unconditionally. This is the conversion we seek.
What is our
response to this God? We gather in the Eucharistic celebration to give thanks to the
Lord our God. Because of God’s
extravagant love for us, we are grateful, and we seek to share that love with
one another.
The
conversion we seek is to be a Church of mercy.
Our world torn by the effects of war needs to experience the mercy of
God in the world, and in our personal lives we need to encounter a God who
loves us unconditionally and calls us to a Church of mercy, a Church of
welcome.
For the 3rd
consecutive Sunday, the Gospel has been taken for Luke’s account of the Sermon
on the Mount. The last two Sundays we
have been invited to reflect on what to do.
The Beatitudes call us to a way of life in which our values are turned
upside down. “Blessed are the Poor;
Blessed are they who hunger; Blessed are they who mourn.” These people ae most
in touch with the spiritual dimension of life.
They more clearly know their need for God’s grace.
Last Sunday
the Gospel called us to love even our enemies.
That doesn’t come naturally for any one of us. It’s not in our genes. It is only with the grace of God and the
example of Jesus Himself that we are empowered to love our enemies.
This Sunday’s
Gospel tells us how we can live our discipleship of Christ Jesus in which we
are called to love our enemies. Where
the Gospel last week dealt with action toward others, this Sunday’s Gospel
calls to reflect and to reach deeper: to
the wellspring of eternal life that is found in the human heart. Get the heart right, Jesus seems to be
saying, and all else will follow.
The Gospel
theme this week is: Get the heart right
and all else falls into place. Religion,
and above all judgment made in the name of religion, must process from
conversion of heart.
To repeat
myself, God gives first, loves first, loves us unconditionally, and loves us
whether we deserve it or not.
May the
spiritual disciplines of Lent lead us to an image of God who loves us
unconditionally. This is the conversion
we seek.
What is our
response to this God? We gather in the
Eucharistic celebration to give thanks to the Lord our God. Because of God’s extravagant love for us, we
are grateful, and we seek to share that love with one another.
Plain and
simple, the conversion we seek must come from the inside. We need to be aware of our inner life, our
interior if we are to live out the Gospel demands in our outer life. Jesus in the Gospel proclaimed that a tree
cannot bear good fruit unless the core of the trunk is solid. “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor
does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For
every three is known by its own fruit.”
So too, a good person out of the store of the goodness in his heart
produces good fruit, for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.
May our
conversation come from the language of our heart – a heart that has experienced
the merciful love of Jesus. For us to be
a Church of mercy, we need to know that our God calls us beyond our faults to
be immersed in the mystery of His love for us.
May the conversion we experience at St. Joseph’s Church lead us to be a Church
of mercy, a Church of welcome.
May God lead
us to know His merciful love, and may we share this love with one and all.
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