Mar 31 - Wednesday of Holy Week

+ We are on the threshold of the three holiest days of the church year. Tomorrow we celebrate the Institution of the Priesthood and the Perpetual Memorial of the Lord’s Last Supper which we know of as “The Mass”; on Friday we commemorate his life-giving Passion and Death (which was anticipated at that supper); and Saturday evening (and Easter Sunday) we rejoice with the Church as we proclaim Jesus Risen from the dead, and we welcome new members into the Mystical Body of the Church.

 

Our attitude ought to be one of solemn yet joyful anticipation and reflection on such a wondrous display of God’s love and mercy and forgiveness. He did not have to create us in the first place; and he did not have to redeem us when we miserably failed the simple test of loyalty that he gave us in the second place: but he did both: BECAUSE HE LOVES US! May we love him back then and thank him profusely by lives of giving to others, all others, after the example of his own beloved Son, Jesus!

 

Hail to you Jesus:

Lord, King and Savior of the world!        

Mar 30 - Tuesday of Holy Week

+ Our readings today tell of three things: the glory that awaits Jesus for seeing through his task of redemption for the likes of us; and the two types of potentially redeemed: the kind who betray Jesus (like Judas) in a very cold and calculated sort of way: not seeing past their own selfish vision and who never see the error of their ways; and the kind who deny Jesus (like Peter) but who later recant and are forgiven!

 

All of us betray and deny Jesus at times: Jesus who came to be a light to the nations and the glory of Israel. This day of Holy Week let us reflect all day on how easy it is to go “another way,” to choose being “children of Adam” rather than children of God, to bask in “self-made counterfeit light,” rather than the glory of the Lord that we are called to live within. And let us choose to go the harder way with Jesus; to be children of the Father, with Jesus; to be filled with the light and glory which is our inheritance!

 

Hail to you, our King, obedient to the Father; you were led to your crucifixion like a gentle lamb to the slaughter.

Mar 29 - Monday of Holy Week

+ On this Monday of Holy Week, we continue our reflective observance of the events of Jesus’ last week on earth!  Isaiah reminds us in the first reading that Jesus came to be a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon those who live in darkness, this by being a servant of God who was meek and humble, not crying out, not shouting, who was overly sensitive to the needs of all – who brings justice to the nations.

 

In the gospel passage – this suffering servant of the Lord, having arrived triumphant in Jerusalem for the Passover, visits his dear friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. It was Mary here who prophesied the Lord’s upcoming death and burial by anointing his feet with costly perfume. Judas reveals his true nature by complaining that this was a waste of money that could be used to feed the poor – but Jesus tells Judas to leave her alone because there will always be the poor, but there would not always be Jesus present as he was then.

 

Let us continue then this week, in our prayer and in our reading of scriptures - our own study of and contemplation of the prophecies that were being fulfilled about Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Lord, Jesus the Savior of the world - remembering that ALL HE DID, HE DID FOR US AND FOR OUR SALVATION!

 

Hail to you, King Jesus: you alone are compassionate with our faults!        

Mar 24 - 5th Week of Lent - Wednesday

+ The topic of our readings today is an important one: freedom. It seems that Jesus and the Jewish people to whom he spoke were on two different wavelengths, again: this time regarding what it truly means to be free! The Jewish people still see freedom as a national condition that is the goal to be striven for: the children of Abraham are free because they are to be the favored nation of God – among other nations and gods!

 

But Jesus speaks very plainly today: only I can give you true freedom, inner freedom, freedom to be who you are on the inside – and it is from the inside out that you will attain your true status as heirs of Abraham and favored children of God!

 

Most often, freedom comes at a price: such as the price the three young men faced in the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar! But when one is totally engulfed in faith in God – not even lapping flames of any kind – real or symbolic – can disturb you.

 

And this has immediate application and direction as one year later the Corona Virus continues to ravage our country and the whole world – which by the way has nothing to do with Satan, it is simply nature being nature, a virus being its best self! What need do is to protect ourselves by immersing ourselves in FAITH and belief that GOD DOES HAVE EVERYTHING IN CONTROL – even if it seems exactly opposite of what my physical eyes are telling me.

 

And how we do that is to, believe it or not – sit, and saturate ourselves in silence and solitude – which ought to be easier than ever now that we are still in effect house-bound – sit STILL AND DO NOTHING! DO NOTHING! DO NOTHING – and ENGAGE IN BEING, JUST BEING, JUST being with your true self, and with God – for 20 minutes in the morning, and 20 minutes in the evening! and you will WAKE UP, you will become AWARE of what is really going on! And you will begin to understand the mystery of it all! And what a wondrous mystery it is: to feel calm, and peace and healing in the midst of a roaring whirlwind of disease and death going on all around us, or even in us if we become a victim of the virus.

 

LIVE JOYFULLY IN THE HERE AND NOW – doing NOTHING as often as you can and you will be VICTORIOUS when all is said and done.

 

May we today truly be free, enjoying the freedom of the sons and daughters of God: a freedom consisting of informed consent and cooperation with God who wants to be an intimate part of our lives – if we let him!

 

Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our fathers, praiseworthy and exalted above all forever!    

 

 

Mar 22 - 5th Week of Lent - Monday

+ Today we have the familiar story of Jesus freeing and forgiving the woman caught in the act of adultery. The Law of Moses was clear about such matters, but the “law of compassion” and “love” is meant even to supersede it at times. And the case of comparing one sinful person with another is one such time: “let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

 

We are all sinful people who have no right or business judging, condemning and executing one another—as the golden rule even would also prompt us to do.

 

If God is willing to forgive, as is demonstrated by Jesus’ own actions in the passage; then who are we to show God his business.

 

The first reading tells of another woman, Susanna, saved by another young prophet appointed by God, Daniel, who obviously prefigures Jesus who came to save us. Let us today, like the two women, be saved, let us today be pardoned, let us today rejoice that we are so regarded and favored by God – and let us not be so proud as to withhold such mercy and forgiveness to others.

 

The feast of our redemption is drawing near, let us enter into its mystery with a grateful heart and a willing spirit.

 

The Lord is kind and merciful!

Mar 17 - St Patrick

+ Patrick was born into a wealthy Roman-British family probably in Wales in the year 390. Around the age of 16 he was kidnapped from the British mainland and shipped to Ireland as a slave. He was sent to the mountains as a shepherd; there he spent his time in the fields in prayer. After six years of this life, he had a dream which commanded him to return to Britain; seeing this as a sign he escaped from his duties to the sheep in the pastures. But he was always being prepared to become a shepherd of another kind of sheep. Having left Ireland, he studied in several monasteries in Europe.

 

Patrick became a priest and then a bishop. He was sent by Pope Celestine to evangelize England and then Ireland (he became the second bishop of Armagh). In 33 years, he effectively converted all of Ireland (this being associated to the legend of his “driving out of the snakes” of the land therein). He spoke the language of his new poor flock and taught them using symbols such as the three-leafed shamrock to describe the Trinitarian life of God in Himself. In the Middle Ages, Ireland became known as the Land of Saints, and during the Dark Ages its monasteries were the great repositories of learning in Europe, all a consequence of Patrick’s ministry.

 

Patrick died in 464 in County Down of natural causes. There is just something about the life and ministry of St. Patrick that makes him irresistible even to this day and one of the most popular saints in all of Church history both to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Everyone is Irish on March 17.

 

The gospel passage today tells of the overflowing and abundant ministry of those who trust in God and follow his commands as far as bringing in wandering sheep from all over God’s creation; our churches ought to be full to overflowing – and to the extent that they are not perhaps it is a matter of focusing not so much on the machinery set in place to do the hauling, as in the generosity of the hearts of those who are called to bring the very person of Jesus – living and breathing – to people who are still eligible to have “the devil driven out of them” – like the snakes from Ireland!

 

Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations.

Mar 16 - 4th Week of Lent - Tuesday

+ Jesus’ entire mission was to be a healer, a reconciler, a bridge-builder between heaven and earth. And it did not matter on which day of the week he did these things because there is no greater activity than uniting God with men: bringing the broken life of men into the whole and complete life of God Monday through Sunday. The man in the gospel passage was ill for 38 years, and Jesus cured him in a second! In this case it was the man’s unexpressed faith that moved Jesus: he did not directly put his faith in Jesus and ask to be cured, because he didn’t even know it was Jesus who did it (he simply kept coming back again and again looking for a cure); but once he found out it was Jesus who cured him out of compassion and concern, he told everyone about it. Now because Jesus both cured and told the man to do an “act of work,” carry his mat around on the Sabbath, the Jews now begin to persecute him.

 

This was how it was all meant to play out, so we do not feel sorry for Jesus, but we can feel sorry for ourselves if we do not plug into the healing, mercy and forgiveness that his self-sacrifice for us on Calvary brought about! If we do not always carry our mats of right relationship with him about with us, then we are not worthy of him!

 

As was prophesied in the first reading from the Book of Ezekiel today the water flowing from the side of the pierced heart of Christ is meant to be life giving and salvific as the water that flowed from the temple like a river in the vision of the Prophet. We are meant to live richly and deeply in the love and fruitfulness of God’s sacrifice for us and our salvation. May we turn toward this living fountain and drink long and deeply from it – daily, hourly and moment by moment: for it is our life, our joy and our salvation!

Come! behold the deeds of the Lord, the astounding things.

he has wrought on the earth!

Mar 15 - 4th Week of Lent - Monday

+ As we progress more rapidly now in our Lenten observance, today we pick up the theme of an increased sense of joy in the readings: the joy that comes from belief, the joy that comes from letting God have his way, the way of saving us. If we ever think that God’s ways would be unacceptable or irksome to us we are sadly mistaken, because all God wants is our happiness and our salvation: our qualification to spend eternity with him in a grand and glorious place where we will have fun beyond our wildest imaginations.

 

And so Isaiah speaks of the new heavens and the new earth that God wills to make for his people; and the gospel passage shows how health and well-being will be a part of that creation: and that the entrance key to this magnificent reality is simply faith, belief, trust and consequent loving deeds done to others!

 

Let us seek what is true, beautiful, and good always and not the opposite, so that we may live bountifully and have the Lord always with us!

Mar 14 - 4th Sunday of Lent

 “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light!”  This is the compelling summary of our readings today! The images of darkness and light, blindness and sight are quite apparent and eloquent! Yet the message is so plain and simple: St. Paul tells the Ephesians that “once they were darkness” – because of their inherited affiliation with the origin of the species: Adam, and Eve his wife. Everyone born into the world from then on would participate in that darkness: and how dark it really was! Only a Person of Light could dispel the darkness that enveloped the world. And that Person could be none other than Jesus who was both man and God at the same time – who was Light from Light! Jesus became on Calvary the very depth of the darkness of sin – he became sin – so to destroy sin, all sin – and restore the world to the brilliance not only of light, but of color and beauty and truth and goodness and most of all LOVE!

 

The action of Jesus curing people of their “blindness” during his public ministry was two-ways effective. Yes, curing someone born physically blind is a great thing; but what is even greater is releasing one who is spiritually blind from his enormous load of self-imposed “perspective-handicap.” “There are none so blind as those who will not see!”: goes the modern proverb! And how true it is!

 

So very many in Jesus’ own day were deliberately spiritually blind – they could not and would not “see him” as the Messiah they had been waiting for, for millennia. They could not “see” that he was awaited descendant of King David, whose Kingdom would last forever. They could not “see” that there was a whole and completely different world of faith and supernatural beauty, truth, goodness and love that awaited them if they would only stop being so stubborn!

 

And so, very many, who were right there with him, never did “see” Jesus; and never got to participate in the light of life that Jesus did indeed bring! And so, to the gentiles the apostles were sent to bring the light of life and the radiant Person of the Crucified and Risen Jesus Christ. May we today pray for any who need to turn to Jesus and “see” him clearly, confess belief in him totally, and begin to perceive everything differently from now on! Part of that “any” may even be some of us! It is never too late: “O sleeper, awake and arise from the depths of now self-imposed darkness and have Christ give you light!”

 

I am the light of the world, says the Lord; whoever follows me will have the light of life – eternal life!

Mar 11 - 3rd Week of Lent - Wednesday

+ It is essential for us as Christians – especially because of our Jewish spiritual roots – to be conscious of our participation in the Law of God! While most everyone gets a negative feeling when the word “law” is mentioned: actually, as far as God intended it, “law” is not meant to produce such an effect: in fact, it was meant to produce quite the opposite one. For the Jewish person was meant to understand law not as a restriction, but as a boundary for free positive action! It was not so much to be a restrictive regimen as a framework so that the people could know they were doing right, good, and proper things to show their love for God: God gave us this gift, then, so that we would always know how we stood with him!

 

Because this was the intent of the Law, when Jesus came, he made it very clear that he had not come to abolish it, but to fulfill it: to show by his own life and works exactly what it all entails – especially the joy and the peace and the forgiveness that can come from it. He did this by summarizing it all in one word: LOVE! Law is love! Love me! Love my Father! Love one another as we love you! Lay down your lives for one another – in ways great and small as I [will do] for you – and you will not be worried about “rules, regulations and prescriptions” – you will simply be experiencing a fullness of life, and a freedom that you never thought possible!

 

May we today find happiness in knowing that law leads to life and love and freedom and joy and peace – and that obedience to it (in all its manifestations) is the absolute best way to glorify the Giver of it – the One who loves us all so very, very much! God our heavenly Father!

 

 

Your words are Spirit and life; you have the words of everlasting life!

Mar 7 - Third Sunday of Lent

+ Our readings today have to do with the spiritual dynamic of “law which leads to freedom.” It is true that God created his people in love, to be his friends, to spend an eternity of bliss with him in an amazing union of glory! But in our fallen state (due to the sin of our first parents), we were forced into seeking the freedom, which God always had and has in mind for us, by a roundabout route: to be free, we must obey law, his law that he instituted for the very purpose of fr0e.3

2eing us as total persons from what separates us from him and one an                                                                                                                other! And so we read in the Book of Exodus today that God gives Ten Commandments, laws, rules for those who wish to enter into a relationship with him: why? not to restrict them, but to offer them the freedom to make their own choice of whether to trust God enough to go along with these dictates (which they cannot help but sense are for their own good), or to choose their own standards and rules that will just never go well, or feel completely right – and end in a lot of chaos and confusion!

 

The point of the law, then, was to liberate and lead to freedom and not to enslave, by any means. Law, as our Psalm today (19) tells us, ought to be trusted as a source of wisdom: it says this so gently and beautifully, “the law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul; the decree of the Lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple: it is more precious than gold, than a heap of purest gold; sweeter also than syrup or honey from the comb.”

 

Jesus, who is a sign of the power and the wisdom of God, in the gospel passage, speaks to us of the ultimate freedom to be won for us by his being raised up: he does this in a very dramatic way as he, who is consumed with zeal for the house of his Father, quite angrily and with a great show of displeasure overturns the tables of the moneychangers who made a spectacle of themselves as they translated the money brought by the poor people to pay for their sacrificial offerings to the Lord in the temple! It was not because they were there that Jesus was so angry, but it was because they were not paying attention to what was really going on in the temple and with the people: they were there to line their own pockets, to make a sideshow of things and to distract the people from their true purpose in being there!

 

Jesus also takes this dramatic moment to turn the entire validity of the temple itself topsy-turvy (which needed to be done sooner or later): from now on, Jesus proclaims, you must put all your focus and attention on ME, for I AM THE NEW TEMPLE, and when it is destroyed by Crucifixion, in THREE DAYS I WILL RAISE IT UP! This was not only an unheard of agenda, but Jesus most clearly establishes himself as the new temple, the new worship, the new ark, the new law and most importantly of all, the one who has the authority to do these things: HE ESTABLISHES HIMSELF UNDENIABLY AS GOD HIMSELF!

 

Jesus was certainly irrevocably in line for the Cross now, he has ramped up the stakes against him a hundredfold: and he does it in a very profound, radical, determined and unforgettable way! Everything is now different because of Jesus: and this is what we hear about, ponder, reflect on and celebrate each time we come to this place: the new temple of the new people of God (of which we are a part); with reverence, and awe, with undivided attention and devotion we engage in the marvelous program of worship that has come down to us throughout the ages, (which has recently been reformed in language), which is the cause of our joy, our hope and our peace! Let us continue now our Lenten journey with even more praise, thanksgiving and love for God who does so very much for us!

 

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.