As with Jesus, may we be led by the Spirit of God's love to trust more fully in God's plan for our lives.

 

First Sunday of Lent  A  2023

 

A young boy was wondering about one of the great mysteries of life:  Where do babies come from.  And so, he asked his dad:  Where do babies come from?  Dad, a bit of a scientist, was looking at this question over the long haul, the process of evolution:  From humans to monkeys to gorillas.  He told his son:  “Babies come from  gorillas.”

The boy a bit mystified, than asked his mom:  Where do babies come from?  She immediately responded:  Babies come from God.  The boy then said to his mom:  Daddy says babies come from gorillas and you tell me babies come from God.  His mom explained:  We are both right.  Daddy’s side of the family comes from gorillas, and mommy’s side of the family comes from God.

  “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.”  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.

What about ourselves?  In the temptations of our lives, do we see our ourselves being led by the Spirit into the desert?  Or 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.  The Lenten journey of Jesus was for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert wrestling with the forces of darkness.

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?

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?

This I know:  God’s loves you with an everlasting love.  You are precious and glorious in the sight of God.  Yet, as with Jesus himself, the cross and the desert are a part of your life and mine.

A fundamental temptation for us is forgetting the Lord and the ways He has blessed us.  All of us wrestle with the Lord a bit on our spiritual journey.  In one moment, we turn our lives over to the Lord.  In the next moment, we are tempted by food or power or recognition.  We can too easily lose our spiritual footing.

The way the tempter dealt with Jesus is how the tempter deals with us – offering us discipleship of the Lord Jesus minus the cross in our life.  The cross is part of who Jesus is, and it is an enduring sign of His unconditional love for us.  The Lenten season invites us to recognize the cross in our spiritual journey.

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 of the Lord Jesus Christ,

Lord, our faith community of St. Joseph’s also is led into the desert to be tempted by the devil.  We would like see more people in the pews each and every Sunday; we would like to have more priests to serve the needs of our diocesan parishes; we would like our youth to be more involved in our faith formation initiatives, and so forth and so forth. 

We would like simple solutions to each of these challenges – perhaps just a simple resolution of the parish council -- preferably without the cross and the accompanying struggle.  May we always remember that we are led by the Spirit into the desert.  This is true of us as individuals and as a parish community.  However, there is a method to the divine madness.  As with Jesus, we need to trust in God’s plan even when we lose a bit of control in the outcome.

You may ask why in the world do we need to choose spiritual disciplines in the Lenten season as our life circumstances provide us with enough desert experiences that are not of our choosing. 

The Lenten journey of our choosing is a quiet, humble, simple journey that was begun with ashes being placed on our foreheads. 

These Lenten disciplines help us to encounter Christ and to live our lives trusting in God’s plan for us.  Discipline and discipleship go together as surely night follows day.  May we value each of the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. 

As disciples of Jesus, our prayer is placing ourselves in the presence of our God.  It is the gratitude we express for the blessings of life we enjoy.  May your Lenten prayer include a desert solitude – simply slowing down, being quiet, being still in God’s presence, and prayer without words.  May our Lenten prayer include the Sacrament of Reconciliation in which we return to the Lord our God.

May we embrace the discipline of fasting to simplify our lives in some way – through fasting from food or fasting from some activity – in order to more fully rely on Jesus being the nourishment that we seek and the moral compass of our lives.

May we embrace the discipline of almsgiving to share what we have been given with those in need.   Our discipleship of Jesus can never be divorced from the needs of God’s poor.

For the desert experience that we choose and for the desert experience that have been chosen for us, may we be led by the Spirit of God’s love to trust more fully in God’s plan for our lives.

Have a blessed day.

 

 

Who is my enemy that I need to love?

 

Seventh Sunday in  OT  A  2023

The fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of the Gospel of Matthew comprise the teachings of Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount – the earliest teaching of Jesus.  Today’s Gospel passage is the rhetorical highpoint of Jesus’s teaching from this sermon.  Listen again to the words of Jesus:

“Offer no resistance to one who is evil…Turn the other cheek…Hand over your cloak as well…love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Yes, to love your enemies is the greatest test of love.  These are kind and beautiful words when they are spoken in Church, but the thing is these words are hardly ever spoken outside of Church.  They are not spoken out on the street or in the relationships of our lives when we have been hurt or betrayed or lied to.

As we anticipate the holy season of Lent this coming Wednesday, may our reflection on the ministry of Jesus lead us to deepen our holy longing for God in our lives.  May we respond to the Church’s call to conversion as we put on Christ and as we express our solidarity with people in need.

Questions to ask ourselves:

How can I work toward reconciliation instead of retaliation?

Who do I need to love?

Who do I need to pray for?

Who is my enemy that needs to be loved?

 

The first Scripture reading from the Book of Leviticus tees up today’s Gospel message. “The Lord said to Moses:  “Speak to the whole Israelite community and tell them. ‘You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart.’”

 I think of the saintly Nelson Mandela who was wrongly imprisoned and abused for 27 years.  When he was elected the President of South Africa following his imprisonment, what did he do?  He invited those who imprisoned and tortured him to first row seats for his presidential inauguration.  He declared that I would be the loser if I could not forgive those who imprisoned me.  I would suggest that Nelson Mandela could only have experienced healing and forgiveness in his heart by the grace of God.

By telling his followers to turn the other cheek, Jesus calls on them to resist tendencies toward punishment.  Implicitly, Jesus introduces the idea of reconciliation rather than retaliation.  Jesus does not want his followers to be abused and taken advantage of, as the passage might suggest.  When Jesus says, “Offer no resistance to one who is evil,”  He does not mean to do nothing in the face of injustice.  Jesus insists that his community reject and work against retaliation by focusing on love.

Jesus advocates love over hate.  Loving our enemies is the greatest test of love.  For some of us, this requires spiritual heart surgery.  The truth of our lives is we are sinners.  We profess during the penitential rite of each Eucharist that we stand in need of God’s healing grace.  There are areas in our life in which Jesus is not yet Lord.  Of course, we sin.  But thanks be to God that our God is patient.  God is loving.  God is forgiving.

But as St Paul reminds us – we are temples of God because God’s spirit dwells in us. Though our Baptism we have been made holy and are on the way to perfection.  How can this be?  God’s spirit and God’s life is within us.  We are God’s beloved.  The holiness of God and the perfection of God is within us.  We need to surrender to the love of God that is within us.

As we are about to come again to Ash Wednesday, the entry point for another 40 Day journey toward Easter.  We are signed with the ashes of repentance, of our awareness of our limitations, of our need for conversion.  We willingly embrace Lenten spiritual disciplines so that we can prepare ourselves for the grace of conversion, for the joy of Easter.

The Season of Lent isn’t just about doing without or giving up something; the real meaning of Lent is the Church’s annual call to conversion.  It involves a change of mind-set.  We seek to put on Christ and to live by the values of the Gospel.  It is to move the focus away from self-centeredness and to become God-centered in our life perspective.

As we engage in the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and self-denial, we seek to develop some spiritual will power.  But to delve into the deeper meaning of our Lenten spiritual disciplines, may we pray again over the Lord’s Sermon of the Mount in today’s Gospel. 

The first requirement of discipleship of Jesus is to love  -- even to love our enemies, to strive for reconciliation rather than retaliation.

For us to love our enemies, to offer no resistance, to turn the other cheek and to share our cloak with someone in need, we seek the grace of the Word of God that is spoken as ashes on placed on our foreheads this Ash Wednesday:  “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.”

The message is we are all one family under God.

Consider this, whenever we sin we are disconnected from God and become His “enemies” (James 4:4), but His love for us does not go extinct (Romans 5:7-10). He keeps looking out for us with his love as the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-31). On the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ showed love to his executioners  when he tearfully prayed for them: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing?” Don’t you think that those enemies of yours do not know what they are doing and need your love?

Today’s message of love is a very tough one; it is at the same time the only way. To bring the message closer to us, we are encouraged to love without limits. Your enemy deserves more love and compassion from you than anyone else. To love is not a choice; it is rather a grave instruction. In the Gospel of John (13:34-35), our Lord Jesus presents a new framework for love as he says:

I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

From the passage above, we learn that love is a normative prescription for our Christian life. Furthermore, it gives those who embrace it an identity “by this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

In the words of the great mystic, St. John of the Cross:  “In the evening of life, we will be judged by love alone.”

Have a Blessed Day.