"Your will be done." The Passion account reveals Jesus living what He taught. Are we able to walk the talk? Your will be done.

The Palm Sunday Message is:  “Thy Will be done.”

We all know the way Jesus taught His disciples to pray:  “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

We are all comforted in praying the Lord’s prayer.  I learned this prayer I believe when I was six years old and have been praying every day since then,

In today’s Passion Gospel according to Mark, we are forced to watch Jesus do what He teaches, act on what He has told others to do.

From the Gospel account, Jesus began to be troubled and distressed.  Then He said to them.  “My soul is sorrowful even to death.  Remain here and watch.”   He advanced a little and fell to the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass by him; he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you.  Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will.”

As we pray over this passion account and are in very much in touch with the humanity of Jesus in the face of suffering, we need to be to touch with our own experience as well.  Namely, it is miserable to be weak.  It is not want where we want to be -- seen as being weak and defeated, without any power.

Yet, in the Passion account, Jesus enters into human weakness and dwells there – seized, bound, beaten, belittled, hung, and pierced.  Jesus will know the weakness of human suffering and death.  He will put aside all crowns, whether of earth or heaven or hell, and do as he teaches his own.  It is not that Jesus of Nazareth has no will; for, without it, he would not be human.  It is that Jesus of Nazareth puts his will, as he puts his flesh, before the Father and into the Father’s hands.

As we reflect upon the will of the Father, it is not the Father who desires shed blood.   That hunger is ours, we who would not be weak, we who would not serve.  Jesus is not handing himself over to the Father to be killed, but to men and women who call, in every land and in every age, for blood.  But he is handing over the Father his own human will to avoid this pain, and to hand over his human will to retaliate and to hate.  Jesus hands himself over to be crucified, and he will look on those who suffer with him and on those who desert him with eyes and heart and mind that are one with the Father.

He will be abandoned, but he will not abandon others.  Jesus says:  “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise

Jesus was faithful to the will of God to the last moment of his earthly life.  What about us?  As we pray the Lord’s prayer, may we ask for the grace that we, in the circumstances of our own life, will do the will of God on earth as it is in heaven.

Are we willing to risk the cost of having God's laws written on our hearts?

laws From today’s First Scripture reading from the prophet Jeremiah we read:  “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…I will place my law within then and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Jeremiah’s mission was to reshape the people of Israel into something beautiful for God.  In the first chapter of the book we learn that God shaped Jeremiah in his mother’s womb for this important work.  If only Jeremiah’s words could form the people to do God’s work too.  But like clay unresponsive to the hands of the potter, the people of Israel remained unresponsive to the word of God.

Jeremiah uses the expression “new covenant.”  What makes this covenant new is not its content because God still speaks of my law, but the newness of the covenant refers to the place where it can be found.  The old covenant was associated with commandments written in stone.  The people had to match to standards that were outside of them.  But this proclamation from Jeremiah sets the covenant is written in their hearts.  Instead of giving them rules to follow, God wants to infuse their hearts with the fire of divine love.  When the covenant is scripted in their hearts, they will share the very passion of God.

They will experience the presence and the forgiveness of God written in their hearts.  They would be a people no longer commanded by external standards, but God’s love and God’s law is to found with them.  By faithfulness to God’s covenant that is within, we become our best selves, the people we are called to be.

As we reflect on this Jeremiah reading, this leaves us with one question.  Are we willing to risk the cost of having God’s law written on our hearts?  Our covenant with God is written in our hearts.  Our spirituality is part of our DNA.  Yes, we all have demons that can throw us off-center, which can derail us from being our best selves:  our self-centeredness, our greed, our lust, our need for power and control.

If our covenant is written in our hearts, it is not enough to set aside an hour a week to give thanks to God at Mass, or even to tithe 10% of our time, talent, and treasure,  it is not enough to be a part-time disciple of Jesus.  We need to be all in. Everything we say and do is part of our spirituality and our covenant with God.  God is present to us 24/7.


The Letter to the Hebrews then points us to the new covenant.  The new covenant is the mystery of Jesus that is written in our hearts.  The spirit of Jesus is within us, the community of the baptized.

This Letter to the Hebrews points to the mystery of Jesus within us and also the shocking truth that “Jesus learned obedience through suffering.”  Jesus had to struggle to live his vocation.  As a man Jesus become conscious of fulfilling his Father’s will through suffering, the cross, and the crucifixion.  Jesus revealed God’s merciful love for us and became the source of eternal salvation to all who believing in Him.  Jesus had already gone to the heart of the human struggle for meaning, and by his suffering he learned obedience.  In the mystery of the Incarnation, Jesus was fully man and experienced the suffering of humanity.

In the Gospel, Jesus describes his own paschal mystery with the imagery:   ”Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless a grain of what falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”  The grains of wheat need to die to be reborn.  Jesus died out of love for us and rose to again in His risen life so that we share in the Lord’s eternal life.  Thanks be to God.

Jesus explains in the Gospel that his moment of glory is about to arrive, and does not hesitate to say that he knows what it will cost.  He then teaches his disciples what it means to hate the life this world offers.  We are left with the question can we abandon the love of this world for the sake of life in God.  Can Pope Francis, Mother Theresa, and the martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero be mentors for us to teach that the covenant of God’s love that is written in our hearts is our pearl of great price.
Modern humanism has embraced the notion of personal perfection through education, exercise, diet, travel, and aesthetic beauty.  This gives us the lifestyle that passes for a full, satisfying life.  What else is there?

Jesus shocks us with the paradox he is about to embrace:  death on a cross.  Jesus reveals God as the One who empties his heart into the world even as it rejects the divine offer of reconciliation.  God’s unconditional love transforms enemies into friends, cleanses the heart of selfishness and restores the center of balance to a world disjointed and disoriented by human self-centeredness.

In the parish email this week to prepare us for this Sunday’s gospel, we see Lent is a way of preparing ourselves so that the seed of faith may be planted in us and then multiplied to feed others.  Like the grain of wheat, we must experience dying to ourselves in Lent so that we can then know the miracle of life.  Our Gospel question of the week is:  in what ways have you been dying to yourself in order to experience life in Christ?

It is time to unleash the Good News contained in this simple passage from John 3/16 and allow it to change our lives.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

This is a Gospel within the Gospel….the famous John 3/16.  The core of the Gospel’s Good News is that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son to this real and very imperfect world…so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  God’s plan for us is not eternal death but eternal life.  It is time to unleash the power of the Good News that is contained in this simple passage and allow it change people’s lives.

On this Laetare Sunday, halfway through the Lenten season, the Church invites to reflect on God’s love for the world, and to be joyful because of it.  The Church invites us in the middle of this penitential season to rejoice?  Why?  Because God loves each and every one so much that he gave his only Son.

Even though all of us know the weakness of sin in our lives, God’s love for us is without end.

Today in the first Scripture reading we see the effects of the weakness of sin very dramatically with the Israelites.  The situation depicted is one of the darkest chapter in the history of God’s chosen people.  The Jews fell away from their attachment to the Temple worship and practices, the nation suffered; the Temple was destroyed and many were exiled into Babylon as servants and slaves in what is called the Babylonian exile.

How could lax religious practices lead to the fall of a mighty nation?  Simply put, without meaningful religious practices the Jews lost a sense of who they were.  In their behavior they compromised their way toward defeat and destruction by letting themselves believe that religious discipline did not matter.

Thankfully, thankfully God did not give up on the Israelites.  At the end of the sacred book of the Chronicles, we hear God calling His people to put their Temple back as central to their lives.

Through the Old Testament Book of the Chronicles we can visit our own faith history and thus are challenged to examine our own “Temple practices,” our own attachment to the center of our Faith  -- our Altar.  The Altar is the Christian Temple.

We are challenged in this Lenten season to ask ourselves if we have been faithful to the Table of the Lord or if we have fallen into a malaise of half-hearted spiritual practices?  Have we polluted our Temple – our Church – by having forgotten reverence?  Do we remember who we are, or do our spiritual practices suggest we have forgotten?

At this halfway point of the Lenten season, may we do a spiritual inventory of our Lenten spiritual disciplines.  We do this inventory in the light of God’s unending love for us.  Yes, the Lenten season invites to reflect on who we are as the disciples of Jesus and the priority we place on who God is in our lives.  Pope Francis calls us out of a life of spiritual indifference and seeks to immerse ourselves in the joy of the Gospel.  Why?  God so loved the world that He sent His only-begotten Son for our salvation.

What is going to catch our attention? What is going to shake us out of the busyness of life that keeps us from focusing on what our relationship with God?  I can easily lament about the problems that exist  across the globe but what keeps me from delighting in the spirit of Christ that lives in the spirit of each one of us?

I can be very successful in my career, in my business.  But have I lost touch with my soul in the process.  My family may have accomplished much in the way of achievements, but do we have time as a family to pray together, simply to be with one another.  The psalmist tells us:  “Be still and know that I am God.”  Are we too busy for any stillness in our lives?

As St Paul tells us in his Letter to the Ephesians, “God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ -- by grace you have been saved….For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.”

St Paul was vividly aware of the grace in his own life.  He was in touch with his own conversion story.  He wanted the Ephesians to also know in the depths of their hearts that they were God’s handiwork.

In one way or another, we all need to have the conversion experience of the apostle Paul.  Our experience probably won’t be as dramatic as Paul’s, but we need to experience the love of God in our hearts.

As always, Jesus, in the Gospel offers both comfort and challenge.  Jesus said to Nicodemus:  “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  The lifting up signified not only crucifixion but also exaltation, more precisely, the exaltation of us all to eternal life through Jesus’ death by crucifixion.  Jesus transforms a sign of condemnation for sin into an instrument of healing.  The cross is both a symbol of the suffering that will a part of our spiritual journey, but it is also the symbol of the love of Jesus that brings us eternal life.

What is the cross but the revelation of a God loving enough to suffer death without revenge, powerful enough to overcome death.

Jesus has come into the world to reveal our sins so that they may be forgiven.  As we live in the light of Christ Jesus, we become more aware of what is not of God.  In the light of God’s love, we all humbly, as we do in the penitential rite and as we did in being marked with ashes at the beginning of Lent, acknowledge that we are all sinners.  There is no place for pride or arrogance or judgmentalism in the spiritual life – we are all sinners.

On this Laetare Sunday, we make bold to rejoice that we are loved and forgiven sinners.  We go forth from this Eucharistic banquet, this feast of forgiveness, courageous and cheerful.  We all are loving and joyous ambassadors of God’s unconditional love, starting, of course, with the least likely person for me to reach out to.

Does our anger flow from our spirituality or the lack of our spirituality?

Have you ever had such a bad day that you have reached your limit and can take no more?  Someone or something has thrown you off your game and you are stewing to yourself.

Jesus had such a day – one day in Jerusalem.  He reached his limit and blew.  He threw the money changers out of the temple.   He made a whip out of cords and drove them out of the temple area and overturned their tables and said:  “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house, a marketplace."

Today’s Scriptures invite us to consider the anger that comes from an all-loving God.  We are not used to seeing this side of Jesus.  It would seem that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, had lost his cool and is acting out of anger.  But His behavior does not come from a rush of blood to the head, but from zeal for His Father’s house.

This gospel passage raises questions about anger.  Most of us were taught that anger is a negative emotion and therefore wrong.  At our best, we are to count to ten and hope the anger in us subsides a bit.

Jesus is raising the question of justifiable anger.  When is it ok to say enough is enough, and we need to stand up for what is right.

Does our smiling and compassionate Pope Francis give us an example and challenge with considerable passion to share what we have with those in need.  With some anger he speaks about the inequality of income between the rich and the poor.

What do we do with our own anger?  Is it part of our spirituality or is the result of a lack of spirituality?  The saying:  he is an angry young man.  This usually the person is a bit off-center.

Now mind you many times our anger throws us off center and there is nothing virtuous about that, but on the other hand there is appropriate and justifiable anger that should not be swept under the rug.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus literally upsets the temple customs of his day and then invites the people around Him to change their idea of where God’s true dwelling is soon to be found.  Rather than a holy place of prayerful encounter with God, the temple precincts had begun to resemble a marketplace, and Jesus’ actions registered loudly and clearly as a prophetic protest against the exploitation of the temple and the people of Israel.  Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple.  Jesus is clear about “His Father’s house” being a place of prayer and covenant, a place where God dwells.

As this Gospel is proclaimed in our hearing, we are prompted to wonder what the returning Jesus may find needs cleansing or replacing in our personal spirituality and in our celebration of Sunday Eucharist.  What attitudes, preoccupations, or desires do you bring to your prayer and life that Christ would “drive out” if you would let him?

In other words, what needs to be driven out of your inner temple for you to have zeal for God?  From what do you need to repent in this Lenten season?  As we pray over the Gospel, can we listen to the echo of the confrontation of Jesus that addresses the temples of our present day lives?   Who or what are the moneychangers in your Temple?  Is it greed, an excessive preoccupation with our possessions, is it the way we deal with the setbacks in our life, can we let go of an anger we feel toward a particular person, is it our inability to focus on what is really important in our life?       

Jesus purified the Temple.  During Lent He invites us to purify the temples of our hearts.

What kind of cleansing does Jesus wish in do in the celebration of our Sunday Eucharist?

Perhaps Jesus would suggest there is room for improvement in having more lector training, would he suggest that the homilists are a bit long winded at times, or the choir music could be reviewed and improved?

Or would Jesus be convicted that there are bigger fish to fry in evaluating of our liturgies?

Would he point out the discrepancies between the prayers we say and the way we live our life?   Do we walk our talk in witnessing to the love of the compassionate Jesus?  He might ask if we come together to be entertained or to be edified.  “Father I don’t get anything out of Mass.”  Should our focus be on our desire to give praise and thanks to our God?   Would he see a direct connection between God’s predilection for the poor and our own?  Would he see us translating this concern for the poor into generous giving and authentic service toward God’s least ones?   This needs to be the defining characteristic of ourselves as a Eucharistic community.

But the dramatic action of Jesus – driving out the merchants and moneychangers – is not the most shocking feature of this Sunday’s Gospel.  Not only does Jesus cleanse the Temple, he declares that he himself replaces it.  The place of God’s presence among His people is not a building but ‘the temple of his body.’  In Jesus we encounter the living God.  The real priority of our lives is our covenant relationship with God.  Our relationship with God is measured by how well we pattern our lives after Jesus in dying to ourselves for the good of others so that we might rise with him.  As believers and followers of Jesus our own bodies are also temples of the Holy Spirit.  God dwells not primarily in this building, but rather in us who are the living Temples of the Spirit of Jesus.  May we always reverence the presence of Christ that we experience in our sharing with one another.

Like the first disciples, we sometimes have a hard time listening to God's plan for our lives.

“Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.  And he was transfigured before them…Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him...From a cloud came a voice, ‘This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him.’”

In the Transfiguration account, Jesus appeared with the law giver, Moses, and the great prophet, Elijah, of the Old Testament.  Moses and Elijah represented the best of the Old Testament.  But the clear message is that Jesus is more than a lawgiver and a prophet.  He is the Beloved Son. 

To this point, the disciples have not been able to grasp his predictions about his upcoming suffering, death, and resurrection.  They have not listened.  The voice of the Father to the disciples was to listen to Jesus.  They have balked at the future Jesus is insisting on. 

The Transfiguration account affirms Jesus as the Father’s beloved Son, and he is to be listened to.  The privilege of witnessing Jesus’ transfiguration was for the purpose of confirming Him as someone to whom they must listen.  They must open themselves to what Jesus is saying about His suffering and death.

Although at the center of this story will be a transfigured Jesus, it is more a story about what it means to be a disciple that it is a statement about the Jesus’ identity.  May we ponder the wisdom of this statement:  Say not, “I’ve been to the mountain.” Say, “I’ve returned to the earth and am walking toward Jerusalem.”

The real action of discipleship is not to be experienced on the mountaintop.  They were there but a brief moment.  The real commitment to discipleship happens on the journey to Jerusalem in which the disciples are to share in the suffering and the cross on the road to resurrection and new life.

The grace of the Transfiguration encourages the disciples in the struggle to allow Jesus to show them the way.  The disciples value the Transfiguration glimpse of the Lord’s risen glory of Jesus so that they can better understand the teaching of Jesus upon His upcoming suffering, death, and resurrection.

We too need to acknowledge that we have a hard time listening to the voice of God in life when the cross and suffering are involved.  As the first disciples, we sometimes balk at the plan of God for for lives.  Indeed, we need precious transfiguration moments in which God's love is revealed to us in ways that enable us to persevere in the journey when we are called upon to be disciples of the crucified Lord.