Like Jesus, in this lenten season, how we being led by the Spirit into the desert to wrestle with our demons and to encounter God?

 

First Sunday of Lent  B  2021

We enter into another Lenten season.  We were marked with ashes this past Wednesday as Lent formally began. These ashes acknowledge that we all belong to the order of penitents.  We all confess that we are sinners, and we stand in need of the Lord’s healing forgiveness.  The light of Christ that is within us has been dimmed by the darkness of our sin.   We acknowledge this reality with these ashes.  We were given the mantra to:  Repent and believe in the Gospel.

The first reading today is from the Book of Genesis and recounts the establishment of the Covenant with Noah and his descendants. 

God said to Noah and to his sons with him:  “See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you.  I will establish my covenant with you.”

Lent is deepening our awareness that we are people who have a Covenant with the Living God.  We are not just people who believe in God.  We are a people sought out by God, a people formed by God and a people with a special love relationship with God.  Only when we are deeply aware of His love for us can we truly accept that the cross is going to be a part of our spiritual journey.

In today’s Gospel, the evangelist Mark says: “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan.  He was among the wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.”

Jesus finding himself in the desert being tempted by the devil was not the result of bad luck or being at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Rather, this was by divine design.  Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert.

Now this isn’t always true for ourselves.  Sometimes we can find ourselves in the desert of disappointment or failure, not led by the Spirit of God’s love but rather they are the result of bad choices we have made.  Our desire for pleasure, power, or greed can sometimes get the best of us and lead us into the wilderness. 

 But with Jesus, he is being led by the Spirit of God’s love into the desert to be tempted by the devil to use his power in ways that are not in God’s plan.  The devil was tempting Jesus to become the Messiah without the cross.  The devil was tempting Jesus to take the short cut to achieve his power as the Messiah.

Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be humbled, to be tested and tempted, to struggle with the forces of evil and thereby fully trust in God’s plan for His life. 

My question for you and for me is what desert are we now being let into by the Spirit of  God’s love to be humbled, to be tested and tempted to validate our faith and trust in Jesus as the Lord and Savior of our lives?  Are you aware that you are being led by the Spirit of God in the ways you experience your Lenten journey today?

 

As with our life being turned upside by this pandemic, as you have grieved the loss of someone you dearly love, as you have dealt with illness in your life and the in the life of a dear family member, as you have been hurt and your confidence has been betrayed, as you struggle with the temptation of pornography, as you have had to deal with more than your fair share of challenges, can you see these experiences as being led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.  Can these life wrenching experiences be example of how you are being led by the Spirit into the desert?

The Stations of the Cross describe the stages of the suffering and death of Jesus.  As we experience the stations of the cross of illness, of death, of brokenness in our own stories, may we too get the help of Simon of Cyrene and be strengthened by the love of Mary our mother.  As for Jesus, our own stations of the cross are our way of discipleship.

 Back to today’s Gospel:  “He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.”  The wild beasts tell us that life is fragile.  The wild beasts symbolize the violence we saw in the halls of Congress on January 6.  There is no escaping the fragileness of the wild beasts in society.  There are also demons within ourselves.  We have an animal side that focuses only on our own pleasure instead of service of others.

Yes, there are demons; there is sinfulness in our lives that we seek to turn away from.  Yes, we encounter Satan in the desert of our inner wilderness.  But that is not the end of our Lenten journey.  The real purpose of our Lenten spiritual disciplines is that we are to encounter God in the desert of Lent.  May we allow ourselves to believe in His love.

The Lenten desert is about wrestling with the demons of our life; but the Lenten season is also about conversion; it is our retreat in which we encounter God with blessed and grateful hearts.  We embrace the spiritual disciplines of lent – we embrace prayer, fasting, almsgiving – so that we are clearly place God as first in our lives.

As the angels ministered to Jesus in the desert, thanks be to God we also have angels that minister to us, that are looking after us – renewing us.  The angels are the graces of our lives – human and divine.  We thank you Lord for all the people of our lives who are God’s messengers, God’s angels to us.  We give thanks for all the people who love us and reveal the face of God to us.

May your Lenten journey be very much blessed.

Jesus stretches our capacity for compassion. He challenges our idea of what is true love.

 

Sixth Sunday in OT B 2021

“Unclean, unclean!”  From today’s first Scripture reading, the leper must cry out:  “Unclean, unclean.”  The leper not only lives with his disease, the leper must also live an isolated, separated life cut off from the community.

Mother Theresa said:  “The biggest disease is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the disease of being unwanted.”  Leprosy was the most dreaded of all diseases at that time because it separated people from their family and their community and thus constituted a “living death.”  The leper was exiled from “healthy” human society.

Even today the very word leprosy has a harsh and intimidating sound to it.

In contrast to living with this stigma and separation from society, the leper in the Gospel account came to Jesus, begging on his knees, saying, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” Jesus is the one who brings healing, who welcomes people into his embrace, and who proclaims a new way of living. Jesus responds, “I do wish.  Be made clean.”

Could there have been more perfect scriptures to prepare ourselves for our Lenten journey?  For each of us, if we honestly look at our inmost hearts and daily lives, must confess at least something, like the Gospel’s leper, that needs to be made clean.  And to each of us, may we hear the words of Jesus spoken to the Gospel leper, “I do will it.  Be made clean.”

Our leprosy is the sinfulness of our lives that separates us from God’s love.  In our Lenten journey, indeed may we turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.

Today’s Gospel prepares us for our Lenten journey of 40 days.  We begin this Wednesday with ashes placed on the crown of our heads.  We are to   “Repent and believe the Gospel.”  With these ashes, we acknowledge that we belong to the order of penitents.  We stand in need of the Lord’s healing forgiveness.  In our Lenten journey, we embrace the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and alms giving.  In turning from sin, we seek the conversion experience of placing God first in our lives.

 We begin this Lenten season by acknowledging our own leprosy that separates us from a fuller experience of God’s love in our lives.  In this Lenten season, may we celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation in a grace-filled way.  I like to think of this beautiful sacrament as whispering into the ears of our merciful and compassionate God the story of our life including the spiritual leprosy of our sinfulness.  In the sacrament of reconciliation, we are not just listing our sins, we are sharing that part of the story of our life in which Jesus is not yet Lord. Then the words of Jesus are spoken to us:  “I do will it.  Be made clean.”  May the sacrament of reconciliation be a component of your Lenten spiritual journey.

As I pray over this Gospel, I can’t help but see the comparison between leprosy and Covid-19.  Similar to leprosy, this pandemic is keeping us isolated and preventing us from being connected to each other as much as we would like.  Those who have the virus need to be isolated, quaranteed from the community. 

But please God, covid-19 doesn’t keep up separated from our merciful, loving God.  God’s mercy and love is the final word in our spiritual journey.

Further, as we pray over this Gospel, we also need to reflect on our attitudes with the people in our lives whom we find undesirable – as lepers in the sense we don’t want anything to do with them.  We want to keep them separated from us.

We live in a world of suffering: suffering caused by diseases, suffering caused by the exclusion of people, suffering caused by greed and jealousy. But rather than just say that is ‘the lot of humanity’ we look towards Jesus who seeks to reconcile and to forgive and to heal. To belong to this parish community is to recognize the mystery of God’s forgiveness and healing made visible to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

We need first to do an inventory to see if there are folks who would feel unwelcome in our Church.  Who, if they walked in our door this minute, would feel the questioning stares of others?

 Jesus stretches our capacity for compassion.  He challenges our idea of what is true love.

Each of us has a great capacity for love, the pity is that it often goes unused.  We have in our power to reach out to those who are suffering the pain of rejection each day all around us.  We could enkindle new hope, we could bring back the zest for living in someone else, and if we do, we mirror dimly the infinite compassion of God.

We ask God humbly for the grace to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and to reach out to those whom society treats as lepers.

To the extent that we are judgmental and prejudge others, whether they are immigrants whom we consider undesirables, whether their sexuality is different than ours, whether their way of looking at religion is different than ours, we are in need of Christ’s healing touch.  We need to be able to see Christ in others, to have Christ’s compassion for the powerless, the poor, the hurting in mind, body, and spirit.  We need to get to the place where we are able to “kiss the leper” of our day.

May we see ourselves as a Church that is a hospital for sinners, rather than a hotel for saints.  We all need healing.  That is what the ashes on our foreheads this Ash Wednesday signify. 

Today we remind ourselves that Jesus entered into this suffering world bringing healing and peace, and that he has called us to carry on this work of reconciling people to one another and to the Father.   May the grace of  this upcoming Lenten season bring us the reconciliation that Jesus offers us, and may we, in the name of Jesus, bring healing and reconciliation into the lives of those most in need.

Have a blessed day.

You have within yourself the wellspring of eternal life.

 

Fifth Sunday in OT  B   2021

 

Last Sunday night, I wasn’t able to sleep very well.  I’m experiencing a bit of pain from carpal tunnel syndrome in my left wrist.  And so, I got and trying to make good use of my time, I looked at the Scripture readings for the coming Sunday.  As we heard today, that reading was from of Job.

Job says:  “I have been assigned months of misery and troubled nights have been allotted to me…I shall not see happiness again.”  Now we know from the book of Job.  His family, his possessions and even his own physical well-being are removed.  He lost everything.  Job’s faith was being tested “big time.”

There is a message for us in the test of faith that was given to Job.  Job who had once been the recipient of God’s many blessings in his family and in all of his possessions now sees life with different eyes.  Job now experiences misery and darkness. Job is called to trust in the words of the Psalmist: “Praise the Lord who heals the brokenhearted.”

 Have you found yourself feeling like Job?  Now mind you I am not comparing the bit of pain I was experiencing with the misery of Job.  In fact, God with a sense of humor was telling me to get over it.

In reflecting on the hardship of Job, we sometimes can identify with the suffering and hardship of Job.  We are dealing with Covid-19.  Our way has been turned upside down.  There is much economic uncertainty for many people.  We cannot connect with other people the way we would like.  Sporting events and the theatre are significantly restricted.  There is much to get stressed out about.

How do we deal with the stress?  In these pandemic days, there are many  circumstances that push us to the limit, that stress us out?

But before we feel sorry for ourselves again and totally stressed out, we need to look again at today’s Gospel.  It describes a typical day for Jesus in his public ministry.  The whole town was gathered at the door where Jesus was staying.   He cured many who were sick with various diseases, and he drove out many demons.  If we are talking about being very busy, nobody can compare with Jesus. 

Based on our experiences and standards, Jesus must be stressed out.  But was he?  Jesus found a way to experience inner peace.  The source of the inner of peace of Jesus is revealed in the Gospel today:  no matter how busy or exhausted, he would always find time to pray and to be with his Father.  “Rising very early in the morning, he left and went off to a deserted place to pray.” His communion with the Father gave his strength, inspiration and peace.

Prayer was Jesus’ spiritual medication that enabled Him in his public ministry to be so available.  Again, going back to the gospel, after Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law, the Evangelist says:  “The whole town was gathered at the door.”  Talk about availability.  Then Mark tells us Jesus cured many who were sick with various diseases.

How did Jesus did with the stress of always being available?  Notice what Jesus did next:  “Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.”

I recommend your commitment to quiet prayer, just being still in the presence of God.  This will be an inner compass that enables you to continued to be centered – centered in God’s presence – in the midst of the busyness and the stresses of your day.

This I promise – or better, the Lord promises you – will give you an inner compass that focuses us to live in the midst of God’s unending love for you.  As the Lord said to the Samaritan woman in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel, “You have within yourself the wellspring of eternal life.”  And the power of prayer enables you to access this wellspring of eternal life.

One of the great mysteries of life is that we don’t always claim and value and trust the life of Christ that is within us. 

 Do you the distinction between curing and healing?  While cures aim at returning our bodies to what they were in the past, healing uses what is present to move us more deeply into spiritual wholeness and, in some cases, physical improvement.  A very telling event that spoke to me of the distinction between curing and healing.  This was on the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, I was at the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France.  On this major feast crowd in procession at this most sacred shrine.   There were a considerable number of people being carried on stretchers, people in wheelchairs, people with obvious physical illness.  While I don’t know if there any people physically cured on this day, I witnessed powerful spiritual healing seeing the glow, the joy, the faith of these very sick people who come to seek the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes and experience the healing that Jesus offers to each of them.

In fact, it often is in sickness that the healing begins.  I know a parishioner with a considerable cancer diagnosis who tells her spiritual journey has deepened in the course of her sickness in her desire to place God first in her life.  She is experiencing in abundance the inner healing of her soul even as remains physically sick.

In the Gospel healed those who came to him.  Jesus is ready to heal those in need of healing.  IN your prayer today, what is there within you that you wish to bring to the healing Lord?

Have a Blessed Day.