There is embedded in us a Trinitarian spirituality.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     TRINITY SUNDAY  B  2024

Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Blessed Trinity.  As Catholic Christians, there is embedded within us is a Trinitarian Spirituality.   We believe in God the Father who is our creator and life-giver.  All is a gift of God.  We believe that God sent his only begotten Son, Christ Jesus, into the world to reveal God’s love for us and to be our Savior and Lord.  We believe in God the Holy Spirit who, on the great feast of Pentecost which we celebrated last Sunday, was sent to us as the Breath and the Spirit of God who will be with us all days until the end of time.  We are the recipients of the gifts of the Spirit that are to be used and shared in the service of one another and the building up of our faith community.

There have been many books written on the dogma, the doctrine of the Trinity – of three persons in one God.  But may our prayer this day not focus so much on doctrine and dogma; rather may our focus be all about the relationships that have been so life-giving for all of us.  So too, a summary of the great mystery of the Trinity is that God is love.  God is revealed as a communion of persons.  The love that is within the union of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is shared with us.  As the Gospel proclaims:  “God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son soi that                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     everyone who believes in Him may not be lost, but may have eternal life.”

Our participation in the life of God is seen in the liturgical greeting that the priest gives immediately following the sign of the cross in every Mass.  “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.” 

This feast day of the Blessed Trinity is not a feast for scholars; it is a celebration for lovers.  We celebrate the mystery of the inner life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the inner life of God is communal, is relational; it is family, in contemplating the Trinity, we reflect on the family of God.  Today is feast of God’s love and mercy.  Pope Francis Writes that mercy reveals the very nature of the Most Holy Trinity.

Two truths illustrate for us who God is.  God loves people, and secondly, God lives in a holy and healthy relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  If we are made in the image and likeness of God, we too are to love people and be engaged in relationships.  This is a beautiful summary of our spiritual journey.

We beg forgiveness for the sins of racism, judgments, gossip, violence, division, and whatever divides us from one another.  We ask for the grace to be brothers and sisters to one another.

Moses is the first person to address us in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  We get to eavesdrop on a homily he preached to inspire his people to strengthen their commitment.  If we listen as heirs of his tradition, we hear him call us to remember our own experience of God.  He took his people through their memories of the Exodus and hearing God’s voice.  That suggests that we too might recall how and when we have been aware of God’s presence, of God’s love, of God’s grandeur.  He’s recommending that we allow this Day of the Lord to claim some of our time so that we can remember and appreciate the ways we have come to know God in our individual and communal lives. 

On this Memorial Day weekend, may we remember those who have given their lives in the service of our country.  We gather in prayer as a grateful nation and a grateful people.  This leads us into the Eucharistic mystery as we gather to give thanks to the Lord our God.

Today’s Gospel describes Jesus’ final appearance to the disciples and his commissioning of them to carry on the work of evangelization.  Jesus said to his disciples: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing time in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” This is a much-expanded vision than the earlier mandate to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

One of Pope Francis’s favorite themes is the commission given to us by the Lord himself is for us to be missionary disciples.  This call demands that we meet people where they are; we accompany people in the journey of life wherever we find people; and we proclaim to them their God-given dignity as God’s beloved sons and daughters.  As missionary disciples we don’t wait for people to come to us, we are commissioned and sent forth to raise people up wherever they are and help them to claim the love that God has for them.

As we celebrate and seek to understand the mystery of the Trinity, we try to explain the meaning of the Trinity in words, but it must be known in the experience of God that goes beyond words.  As we participate in the divine life of God in the sacraments, we share in the love of God.

And so, we begin our liturgy and most often we begin our prayer as we were baptized: “In the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.”  We profess our faith and trust in the God who is love.  

The final sentence of today’s Gospel are the words of Jesus; “I am with you always, until the end of the age.”  The divine presence will remain with the disciples perpetually.  As the disciples of the Lord, may we hear those words of Jesus spoken to us: “I am with you.”

 

Have a Blessed Day.

 

 

In Pentecost, God is born again in a body of believers that is the Church.

 

 

PENTECOST 2024

We usually think of the great feast of Pentecost as the feast of the Holy Spirit.  Would invite you to enlarge this feast day to be the feast of the Church that has received the Holy Spirit.  We are the Church of the Holy Spirit.   We are the People of God who have received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

In the great Feast of Pentecost, God is born again not in one body that was Jesus but in a body of believers that is the Church.  Pentecost is the Feast of the birth of the Church.  The Spirit of the Risen Christ is in the Body of believers, in the community of the baptized, in the whole Church.

The feast of Pentecost brings to a close the season of Easter because the gift of the Spirit is the inevitable outcome of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The church understood clearly that what happened to Jesus on Easter Sunday was not just an amazing miracle to prove that he really was the Son of God. It was rather the next step in God’s desire to heal, once and for all, the relationship between himself and a broken humanity. Now the outpouring of the Spirit of Jesus means that our relationship with God is fundamentally transformed. So, let’s celebrate of our new life in the Spirit and the birthday of the church as the new people of God.

God chose a young virgin named Mary to bear God’s Son, and Jesus chose a bunch of Galilean fishermen to share in His ministry.  Now God chooses you and me to hear His message of hope and promise and love in this place and inour world this day.

Initially the disciples were locked in the upper room out of fear.  On the Day of Pentecost those locked doors were thrown open; the fear in the disciples was replaced with a Spirit-filled courage and enthusiasm.  They were now fearless proclaimers of the Word of God.

What had changed for the disciples?  They received the Holy Spirit.

The great truth of Pentecost – for the first disciples and for us as well – is that the Holy Spirit has the power to enlarge and expand the human heart if we allow the Spirit of Jesus to grow and enliven us from within.

Some people call this feast of Pentecost as the feast of locked doors.  And so, we ask ourselves what are the fears and anxieties of our lives that keep us imprisoned, that keep us behind locked doors our of fear?

Perhaps our locked doors is that we are divided into liberal and conservative camps.  We have been so committed to our private little wars that we no longer see ourselves as a communion of faith and love.

And so we pray: “ Come Holy Spirit fill the hearts of your faithful and renew the face of the earth.”

And so, we don’t just commemorate the coming of the Holy Spirit on the first disciples on the day of Pentecost.  On this feast we celebrate not just the original outpouring of the Spirit upon the Church two thousand years ago.  We also rejoice in God’s ongoing outpouring of the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is God’s dynamic presence in the Church.  It’s the Holy Spirit who inspires to us live lives of love and service, who encourages when we falter, and who forgives us when we deliberatively turn away from God.  Without the constant presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, we could never live the kind of life that God intends us to live – the kind of life that Jesus lived when he walked this earth.

The Scripture readings call us to a deeper awareness that the gifts of the Holy Spirit call us to a missionary people who seek through the presence of the Spirit to enable us to seek unity among God’s people.

The Church is, in the words of The Second Vatican Council, ‘missionary by its very nature’.  All its members, all who are baptized in the Spirit, are consecrated as missionary disciples of Jesus and called to take responsibility for the evangelization of the world.  A Church that turns in on itself and stops being missionary is no longer the Church of Christ but simply a sodality, a group of like-minded people who simply like each other’s company.  Pope Francis, in his first Apostolic Exhortation, the JOY OF THE GOSPPLE, urges the Church to be true to its missionary calling.  He wants the Church to reach out towards those on the margins and bring healing and hope to the wounded of this world.  He states:  “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.  We need, he insists, a church that knows how to open her arms and welcome everyone.

 

Now you may rightly ask if we are the Church of the Holy Spirit and we believe that the Spirit is God is present among, why is there is so much craziness in our world, why so much pain and hardship, why so much war and acts of terrorism, why is that so much division in our world.  Why do some experience the church as harsh and judgmental rather than witnessing to the love and forgiveness of God.

These realities in our Church and in our world force us to recognize that we are a part of an imperfect Church and are left wondering whether ours is the kind of Church that Jesus hoped for, the kind of Church that Jesus shed his blood for.

Be assured that we are not yet the Church that Jesus hoped for, but we are the Church that Jesus suffered and died for.  As St Paul teaches in his letter to the Romans: ”God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

And so, we pray again and again:  “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and renew the face of the earth.

 

Have a blessed day.

 

 

 

Yes, The Risen Lord is present to us in the struggles of life.

 

Third Sunday of Easter  B  2024

 

Year after year, Easter Sunday celebrates the reality of Jesus’ resurrection as the foundation of our Christian identity.  As St. Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, they vain is our preaching, and vain  is your faith.”

 

And yet, in the resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples, failure to recognize Jesus is a hallmark of his resurrection appearances.  So rather than Jesus they see a ghost, and rather than joy they experience fear.  The evangelist Luke  says:  “the disciples were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost.  Before the disciples were going to become fearless evangelizers, they needed a deep spiritual learning curve.  The meaning of resurrection faith was that Jesus was going to change the disciples “slowness of heart” and fearful misunderstanding into “opened minds” and joyful recognition.

 

Fast forward to our lives and our failures to recognize the presence of the Risen Christ in our midst, the question for us is how will Jesus appear to us in this day and age?  Will we be any better able to recognize him than those first disciples?  Jesus showed his first disciples his wounded hands and feet and spoke “peace” to them.  Could it be that Jesus is showing us his wounded body in the sick and the homeless who need our care, in the immigrants or prisoners who need to be rekindled by our Easter zeal?

In the Gospel account, Jesus stood in their midst and said to them:  “Peace be with you.”  As Jesus noticed the disciples the disciples were startled and terrified, he asked:  “Why are you troubled?”

In wishing us peace, Jesus also asks us why are we anxious, why are we fearful, why is your life shaped by our worries in our economy, why are we dominated by the possessions of our life, why do we give to another person so much power over our lives when it is not life-giving?

The question why are you troubled is often asked in the Gospel of Luke.  Recall the annunciation when the angel Gabriel announced to Mary she was going to be the mother of the savior, and Mary was confused as to what this meant.  Then the angel asked Mary:  Why are you troubled?  Be assured the Lord goes with you.

These words are spoken to us as well in the midst of the questions and fears of our lives:  “Why are you fearful?”  The Lord is with you and the Lord’s gift to you is an inner peace and joy that no one nor any situation can take from you.

 

As we know, what often keeps us from a resurrection faith and hope in the presence of the Risen Lord are the struggles and the messiness of life.  The questions of life often lead to more questions than faith.  Sometimes, we do not experience inner peace as we wrestle with the struggles of brokenness in relationship, with our health, and the disillusionment we experience with failed leadership in the Church, on Wall Street, and in our nation’s leaders.

 

Yet, the mystery of the faith journey of each of us is that we need to look at the messiness and the questions and the disappointments of life; we need to look at this life experiences with faith-filled eyes.  Yes. God accompanies in the struggles of life.  For us to encounter the joy of the Risen Lord, we first need to encounter the crucified Lord in the struggles.

It is the law of spiritual gravity that we need to experience and to trust in Jesus in the wounds of our life so that we may be reborn in trusting and hoping in new life that is God’s Easter promise to us.

Yes, we all struggle in one way or another.  All of us are confronted with touching the wounds of Christ in the struggles of our lives.  In the midst of these struggles, the Risen Jesus speaks these words to us: “Peace be with you.”  Can we experience the love of the Risen Lord in the midst of the struggles of life? 

Will we be any better able to recognize him than those first disciples?  Jesus showed his first disciples his wounded hands and feet and spoke “peace” to them.  Could it be that Jesus is showing us his wounded body in the sick and the homeless who need our care, in the immigrants or prisoners who need to be rekindled by our Easter zeal?

As we reflect on the Gospel, I would highlight two other components of the Gospel story that are also two movements in our spiritual journey.

1.     We are a Eucharistic people.  “While they were still incredulous, Jesus asked them: “have you anything here to eat?”  As for those first disciples, and so too for us, our own privileged encounter with the Risen Jesus is at table on the Lord’s day, in the context of the community’s meal.

As it was true for the disciples on the way to Emmaus, the Risen Lord is made known in the breaking of the bread.  And so, we gather for the Eucharistic Breaking of the Bread.  We gather to give thanks to the Lord our God for what God has done for us.  We gather to give thanks for the longing that is within us to experience the presence of the Risen Lord in the Eucharist and in the people of our lives

 

2.     The first disciples were to be a missionary people.  Jesus commissioned them “to be witnesses of these things.”  Jesus sends forth the disciples to bear witness.  How often Pope Francis reminds us that we “touch the flesh of Christ” in the wounds of our suffering brothers and sisters to whom we are sent forth from every Eucharist as witnesses of Jesus’ self-sacrificing love.

We seek the grace to be a Eucharistic people who glorify the Lord by the way we witness to God’s love in all that we say and do in the service of one another.

 

Have a Blessed Day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Easter candle needs to be lit in the deep recesses of our hearts.

 

Easter 2024

 

 

Today is the day of Easter joy.   We proclaim the centerpiece of our Catholic Christian faith:  Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead.  Alleluia! Alleluia!  Today we celebrate the reason why we are a people of hope and new life.  Today we cast off fear and make a leap of faith.  Liturgically we light the Easter candle because we believe in the light that comes from the Risen Lord.  This Easter candle needs to be lit in the deep recesses of our hearts.

May we all be aware of how we encounter the Lord on this Easter day  -- as parents who bring their families to this Easter Eucharist, as Catholics who have participated in the other liturgies of Holy Week on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, as Catholics who may have not been in Church since Christmas day, as Catholics who are very distracted by the busyness of life, as Catholics who have recently experienced the death of one you  love or the pain of some significant brokenness in life, or as pilgrims who seek to come to the Lord more deeply in their lives. 

My hunch is that those of us who are gathered today come from all over the spiritual landscape.  Each one of us is unique.  This is not by accident.  It is by God’s design.  We need to dispense with the myth that there is one size that fits all for us as Catholic Christians.  May there always be considerable diversity in the ways each one of us encounters our loving God.  We are a big Church.  There is room for everyone.

In every way possible to say it, the Lord’s Easter message is that all are welcome; all are forgiven; all are invited to the Easter banquet.  Does this mean that anything goes, that our Church is a Church without rules or discipline?   Of course not.   It does mean that the Lord’s love and Risen Life is to be shared by all.  There is nothing we can do to stop God from loving us.  Yes, we do need to open ourselves to the forgiveness and reconciliation and love the Lord extends to us.  And as sure as the sun rises each day, when our hearts are touched by the love of Jesus, we are motivated to share this love with one and all.  

More than ever on this beautiful Easter day, we need to trust and embrace the grace Jesus offers.  The Risen Jesus calls us by name and offers us the grace to walk away from the empty tombs of the fears and the demons of our lives so that we live with Easter joy and an Easter peace.  This indeed is our journey to an Easter faith.

 

On this Easter day the Risen Lord wishes to identify with us and to enter into the experience of the people he loves.  Today God is sending this Easter message to us that the Risen Lord showers upon us the joy and peace that accompanies us as an Easter people.

May we embrace our Easter faith in which we look at life from a transformed perspective.  May we not be focused solely on the challenges we face in these  days; may we be enlivened by the love and the joy of the Risen Lord.  We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

Now on the first Easter day, the first disciples did not exactly experience the Resurrection event with the magnificence of Easter music and Easter flowers and a wonderful sense of celebration.  The first disciples did not immediately proclaim:  We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

For the first disciples, their Easter faith was much more gradual.  The first disciples encountered the empty tomb before experiencing the Risen Lord.  The Easter Gospel speaks of the empty tomb experiences of Mary Magdalene and the apostles Peter and John.  They only gradually came to an Easter faith.

An important truth of our lives is that we discover important things about our lives at the empty tomb. 

Just as the first disciples experienced the empty tomb before they came to a resurrection faith, we need to encounter the empty tombs of our own lives.

As with the first disciples, our empty tomb experiences are the moments of darkness and confusion in life.  As we peer into the empty tombs of the ups and downs of everyday life, we are challenged to see and believe as the apostle John did as he stared into the empty tomb.

 

 

 

May our Easter faith in the presence of the Risen Christ within our hearts fill us with an Easter joy.   Allow yourself to be loved by the God who goes with us in this pandemic crisis.   Be assured that with the eyes of faith the vaccine we most need is found in our solidarity with the Risen Lord and in our solidarity with each other as a community of faith.

We are an Easter people.  This means that are not buried in the tomb of our sins, evil habits, dangerous addictions or this pandemic crisis.  Our Resurrection faith gives us the Good News that no tomb can hold us down anymore -- not the tomb of despair, discouragement or doubt, not that of death.  Instead, the joy of the Risen Lord fills our spirit.

May we listen as the Risen Lord calls us by name and welcomes us into the joy of sharing in His Risen life. 

Whenever and wherever we trust and hope in the light that comes from the risen Lord, our spiritual darkness fades away.   May you too be very much in touch with how the spirit of the Risen Lord lives in your family and in our parish family.

We cannot celebrate Easter in one day; we will not come to faith in one Mass.  AS God’s Easter people, we make the journey together over the course of a life time.  Whenever and wherever we trust and hope in the light that comes from the risen Lord, our spiritual darkness fades away.  As surely as the dark of night gives way to the dawn of day, the Lord’s gift of Easter joy awaits you.

Have a blessed day.  Today is our day of Easter joy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son so that we might have eternal life.

 

Fourth Sunday of Lent  B  2024

 

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.  The image of God that today’s Scripture reveal is a God who is relentless in reaching out to lost humanity.  God never gives up on us.

On this Laetare Sunday, halfway through the Lenten season, the Church invites us 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 prayer 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 their spirituality 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 -- The Table of the Lord.  The Altar is the Christian Temple.

We are challenged in this Lenten season to ask ourselves if we have been faithful to discipleship of the Lord Jesus 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 our relationship with God? 

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 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 is 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.  I leave with a suggested mantra for the day:  WE ARE FORGIVEN.  WE ARE NOT LUCKY. WE ARE LOVED.

Have a blessed day.

 

 

Who or what are the money changers in the temple of your heart?

 

Third Sunday of Lent  B  2024

In today’s Gospel, Jesus throws the money changers out of the Temple.  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 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 both in our personal spirituality and in our celebration of Sunday Eucharist.

 

First, in our personal spirituality, 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, or is it our inability to focus on what is really important in our life?  

 

This gospel passage illustrates the anger of Jesus.  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.

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.    

  

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

In our Lenten journey, we seek to repent and be faithful to the gospel.  We pray that our spiritual disciplines lead us to the conversion of knowing Jesus more deeply in our hearts and to glorify the Lord in the way we live our lives.

Secondly, 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 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.  I sometimes hear the comment:  “Father I don’t get anything out of Mass.”  Do we gather at Sunday Eucharist to get or to give?  Should our focus be on our desire to give praise and thanks to our God?   I wonder if there is 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, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist,  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 the Risen Lord.  As believers and followers of Jesus our own bodies are also temples of the Holy Spirit.  God dwells not only in this building, but also 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.

 

Have a Blessed Day.

Here I am Lord. I come to do your will.

 Second Sunday of Lent B  2024

 

 God did the unthinkable. 

The God who had led Abraham from his homeland, the God who had given Abraham the promise of a land and progeny beyond counting said, “Take your son Isaac, the one you love, and offer him up as a holocaust.”  In effect, God was saying, “You gave up everything based on my promise, and I gave you the son who would fulfill that promise.  Now, do you love me enough to give it all back?”  Unlike Job from whom God took everything away, God asked Abraham to give it back freely, to sacrifice everything he had hoped for and all he had received in willing obedience to God. 

Abraham’s trust in God enabled him to walk before the Lord in the land of the living.  The land of the living for Abraham as well for ourselves is always the concrete circumstances and situations we experience from day to day.  Initially God told Abraham:  “Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you.  I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you.”  Indeed, Abraham was faithful to the call of God in his life.  He gave up his past.  In today’s account, Abraham was being asked to give up his future as well in sacrificing his only son Isaac.   What is being asked of  Abraham is hard to reconcile with our notion of  a loving God.

Abraham’s response to all of this was:  “Here I am Lord.”  But we know that the near sacrifice of his son Isaac was ultimately not asked of Abraham.

The story still can remain an enigma and a little troubling for us, does it not.

But we know very well this story of Abraham in the OT prefigures the death of Jesus.  What God would not ultimately ask of Abraham, God freely gives.  Indeed God the Father sacrifices His son Jesus, His only son, the one whom He loves.  When we look upon the crucified Jesus, God did the unthinkable out of love for us.  While it is almost unimaginable for us to think the God would ask Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, may we ponder that God did the unimaginable out of love for us and for our salvation.  He gave us His son Jesus who was to be crucified on the cross.

May we embrace our Lenten journey in the context of God’s unconditional love for us.  In our Lenten journey and in our life journey, can we say “Here I am Lord” when we face the challenges of life that call us to give up our past and perhaps our future as well.  What is God asking of you this Lent?

Has the Lord ever asked the unthinkable from you?  As we reflect on the Living Word of God, may we be aware that God questions us in the Scriptures in the same that God questioned Abraham.  What is it that we are meant to see.  What is it that we cannot see?  At least, not yet?

In this Lenten season as you seek to embrace the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, perhaps the Lord is speaking to you about moving out of your comfort and embrace this disciplines more significantly as your commitment to place your relationship with Jesus as the North Star of your life.

In the Scriptures today, the story of Abraham is coupled with that of the Transfiguration. In one way, the two accounts move in opposite directions.  In the story of Abraham, the account opens in darkness and moves to light.  God tests Abraham’s faith but stops his sacrifice.  The Transfiguration satrs in light but points to darkness.  Christ is transfigured on Mount Tabor, but only to prepare to go down the mountain for his coming sacrifice on Calvary.

In the Gospel account, Jesus led the apostles Peter, James, and John up a high mountain apart by themselves  He then was transfigured before them and his clothes became dazzling white…from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”

In the experience of the Transfiguration, the apostles were given a glimpse of the risen Lord in his transfigured glory.  Then came the voice of God the Father, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”  In our own journey of faith, and we each have a unique journey.  My journey is not yours and your journey is unique to you, but the common denominator we all have is the words spoken by God the Father at the Transfiguration:  “Listen to him.”  Our journey begins and ends with Jesus.  We are to listen and to respond to His call in our lives. 

In the Transfiguration account, Peter wanted to stay up on the mountain.   He said to the Lord:  ‘Rabbi, it is good that we are here.  Let us make three tents.”  But the Lord had other plans for Peter, James, and John.  They were to come down the mountain and journey to Jerusalem where Jesus was to suffer and to die.  They were called to be the disciples of the crucified Christ as well as the risen Christ.

The Gospel invites us to reflect on how are we being called to see with new eyes?  What is clouding our view of the transfigured Christ?  How does the world look different through Jesus’s vision?  Does our identity and our purpose need to be transformed?   Most importantly, what is the cross in your life that identifies you as a disciple of the crucified Christ as well as a disciple of the Risen Christ?

Spiritually speaking, I need some speed bumps in my Lenten journey to slow me down and to make me more conscious of my need for conversion and more radically trusting in God as Abraham did.  Perhaps this describes your Lenten journey as well.  For sure we have our own plans for the Lenten season, but the question is how can the Lord catch our attention and invite us to  ‘Listen to Him’ and His plans for our Lenten journey?

Sometimes the spiritual speed bump given to us is not of our own choosing – when you are confronted with the unthinkable in your life.  Perhaps, just perhaps, the Lord is calling you to a deeper relationship with Him as was the case of Abraham, our father in faith.

We need to speak to the Lord in prayer and then to listen to the Lord in prayer.

St Paul in the second Scripture reading says:  “If God is for us, who can be against us?”  Paul ends this beautiful meditation with the words:  “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities…nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

 May our Lenten journey confirm us in our conviction of faith that there is nothing that will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Have a Blessed Day.