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Read more about the article Blessed Are The Meek

Blessed Are The Meek

…for they shall inherit the earth.  How many times have we read this passage and thought, “Well I am not going to be a doormat.  Meekness is definitely not in my future.”  We forget that words change over time and the modern definition, “overly submissive or compliant,” is vastly different than the original meaning when it was translated from Latin into English: “gentle, kind; humbly patient” (dictionary.com).  We have beautiful examples of true meekness in both the Old and New Testaments: Moses and St. Joseph.

When we first meet Moses in the book of Exodus, he is living as the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter.  He comes across an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave and kills him.  While he is defending the weak, he certainly did not choose the meekest response —  but we are only at the beginning.  When Pharaoh finds out, Moses flees to Midian and stays there, marrying Zipporah and tending her father’s flocks.  The many years of quiet solitude with the Lord allow Moses to nurture his prayer life and transform his soul into the best version of himself.  When God speaks to him from the burning bush, he is ready – after a little convincing.

Moses shows great courage and trust in God when he faces Pharaoh repeatedly and then leads the Israelites across the Red Sea.  Through all the trials in the desert and the complaints of the wanderers, he is patient.  When his father-in-law, Jethro, meets him in the desert (Ex 18), Moses is gracious and humbly listens to and follows his advice.

Time and again Moses demonstrates his compassion for his people.  When the Israelites make a golden calf (Ex 32:7), God tells Moses that He will destroy them and make a new nation from Moses.  Moses asks for mercy and God grants it.  Numbers 12:3 tells us: “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all men that were on the face of the earth,” yet, this does not stop his sister Miriam from putting him down and speaking against him.  God afflicts her with leprosy for her arrogance and Moses, instead of gloating, chooses forgiveness and asks God to restore her.  When they reach the Promised Land, the Israelites refuse to enter it because the current inhabitants look intimidating.  They complain against Moses – I guess Miriam’s lesson was lost on them – and God tells Moses He will destroy them and make a new nation from Moses.  Again, Moses asks for mercy and God grants it.  Moses could take the easy way out, but chooses to rise above hurt feelings and anger.

St. Joseph also could have given in to his hurt feelings when he finds out Mary is pregnant.  He could have had her stoned, yet he chooses to say nothing and divorce her quietly.  Had he gone through with the divorce without stating a reason, the community would have turned against him; his reputation as an unjust man would have made his life extremely difficult, yet he chooses to be merciful to Mary.  These are the actions of a man with exceptional courage and gentleness.

Time and again Joseph is visited in dreams by angels: take Mary as your wife, flee to Egypt, return to Judea.  In each decision to obey there is suffering, yet the gentle Joseph remains steadfast.  Traipsing through Bethlehem exhausted, famished, and parched, he perseveres until he finds shelter for Mary and Jesus.  In the middle of the night he immediately takes his family to Egypt, displaying absolute trust and a willingness to endure any suffering to keep Jesus safe.  This willingness to be self-sacrificing is the heroic virtue that saved the life of the Christ child.

St. Joseph has no recorded words in scripture but his actions speak volumes. He is a model of courage, strength, faithfulness, perseverance, mercy, and trust, but it is his gentleness that draws the Christ child to desire to be held in his arms.  It is next to his gentle heart that Jesus sleeps in peace.

During the Year of St. Joseph, we can receive a plenary indulgence for our ourselves or someone who has died.  See the Vatican website for more information.

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Read more about the article Blessed Are The Merciful

Blessed Are The Merciful

This Lent is different from every other Lent we have ever experienced and we all can sense that we need to respond to Our Lord’s call to repent.  We are sincere in our desire to do better, just as we are every year, but this year we need to go deeper.  Every Lent we work on giving up our vices, sins, and bad habits and succeed for a short time, but then we slide backward.  This happens because we are only pulling out the weeds that are easily visible; we need to dig deep and pull out the roots.  At the root is our lack of forgiveness.  Yes, we do struggle to forgive, again and again, and we keep having to forgive every time something triggers the memory of the hurt and the pain.  We need to get to that place where we can let go of the pain.

Letting go of the pain is not easy.  As bad as it is, it is ours and we therefore hold onto it.  Sit with that a minute because I am pretty sure you have not thought about it quite this way before.  The hurts we have experienced, whether physical, emotional, or psychological can run very deep.  When we refuse to let them go, it is like keeping a vicious dog chained in our yard near our front door.  Every time we go near the dog it bites us.  We should get the dog out of our yard, but we don’t.  We keep letting it bite us and injure us every time we go by.  We have anxiety about leaving the house, but we still keep the dog.  Even worse, it keeps our beloved Jesus on the other side of fence when he really wants to be invited and welcomed into our home.  Yes, our lack of forgiveness creates a barrier so that Jesus is unable to dwell in our hearts (He respects our free will) and bring with Him His peace.

There are so many different reasons how and why we got here, but there is one path out of this pain.  We need to take our suffering to Jesus.  Confess our sins and our lack of forgiveness.  The Holy Spirit can bring us graces to help us.  Spend time in Eucharistic Adoration every week.  It is in the silence that Jesus comes to us to heal us.  This takes time, so carve out an hour a week for a new habit.  Meditate on the Sorrowful Mysteries.  What was Jesus experiencing and how was He feeling?  He has experienced every suffering that we have ever had so He understands.  If we offer up our suffering to Him and join it to His suffering on the Cross, our suffering takes on redemptive value, and like Jesus, our Heavenly Father will send us angels to help us in our suffering and our own St. Simon to help us carry our crosses.  The cross doesn’t go away, but we will be at peace and be given the grace to let go.

Once the vicious dog is gone, we can transform our hearts into an inviting garden. We find it easier to replace bad habits with good habits.  Our prayers and Lenten offerings really become magnified and our prayers are more fruitful.  A heart that gives mercy is also more open to embracing the mercy that Jesus offers us.  When Jesus emerges from the tomb on Easter Sunday, we too will emerge as a better version of ourselves, ready to receive the renewal of the gifts the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

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Read more about the article The Leper is Healed

The Leper is Healed

In today’s Gospel, Jesus heals a leper.  In Biblical times, leprosy was incurable and highly contagious. It was considered a punishment for sin.  People believed that what was on the inside was manifested on the outside.  The leper was therefore not shown mercy, but cast out from society.  When Jesus approaches the leper and touches him, this is the first human contact the leper has had in years.  The leper has lived apart from family and friends and has not received a human touch let alone a hug for a very long time.  Jesus reaches out with compassion, mercy, and love and touches him, healing first his broken spirit and then healing his body.

In our society today, leprosy is more widespread than ever and far more damaging because it is on the inside where we don’t readily see it and we are insensitive to the damage it causes because we have lived this way for so long.  Jesus comes to us this Lent to heal us of our leprosy.

Our leprosy is a disease of the heart.  How many times have we been rejected from family and friends because we don’t conform in some way to who they think we should be or how they believe we should think?  How many times do we feel the need to “fit in” because we are afraid that others won’t like our real selves?  How many times do we have judgmental thoughts or say unkind things about others because they are different from us?  Each of us has been both the leper and the one who has treated another as a leper in some way. This is precisely what Jesus wants to heal in us and He will heal us if we approach Him with faith.

Jesus knows everything about us; we cannot hide our flaws, idiosyncrasies, or sins from Him.  Yet when we were in sin He died for us.  Even in our most unlovable moments, He still loves us.  More than anything else, this fact should give us the courage to look deep inside ourselves because He will heal everything we don’t like seeing if we ask Him.  He awaits our approach to give us His mercy, the same mercy He had for the lepers of biblical times.  His mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation completely restores us and cleans even our darkest corners.

He wishes to heal our woundedness from being treated as a leper as well.  Just as He touched the leper, He touches us in the holy Eucharist.  He places Himself in our hands.  This isn’t a figure of speech.  God Himself descends from Heaven and transubstantiates – changes – the bread and wine into Himself.  We have the incredible gift of being able to touch Him and be touched by Him every day of our lives.  How many wounds He can heal if we trust Him! This Lent He invites us to be reconciled with Him.  He waits for us with mercy, ready to forgive.  He waits for us with love and compassion, ready to heal.  We don’t have to be lepers anymore.  The fulness of Easter joy awaits us if we simply ask Him to touch us.

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Read more about the article What is Lent?

What is Lent?

From the Question Box: Why do Catholics have Lent and why do you fast?

Scripture tells us: “There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven: a time for giving birth, a time for dying; a time for planting, a time for uprooting what has been planted.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)  We look to nature and the patterns that God created to understand the rhythms and cycles in nature and in our lives.  These cycles have a spiritual element as well as a physical element.  Just as God created cycles with day and night, the seasons, birth–life–death, our spiritual journey has a cycle as well.  God gave a time to plant and a time to harvest, and He also gives us a time for spiritual planting and spiritual harvesting.  Thus the cycle of Lent precedes Easter.

In our journey to become closer to God, we are often as consistent as the waves on the beach; the tide comes in, the tide goes out.  We experience the push and pull of having worldly demands as well as spiritual demands on our time.  There is a continual battle between our wants and our needs.  The gift of the seasons of the Church (and I mean all Christianity here) is therefore another sign of God’s great mercy and compassion for us.  He gives us the seasons in the Church to focus on different aspects of our spiritual progress.  Just as He gives us day to work and night to rest, He gives us Lent to really focus on drawing nearer to Him.

Lent maintains the Biblical patterns God set forth in Scripture.  Moses fasted for 40 days when he was with the Lord receiving the 10 Commandments (Ex 34:28). The forty days of Lent repeat the pattern of Jesus’ 40 days in the desert in which He fasted and prayed at the beginning of His public ministry (Lk 4:2-4). Lent is the time of spiritual planting through fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. 

 Jesus instructs his disciples how to fast in a way that is pleasing to God: “When you fast . . . wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others you are fasting . . . and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” (Mt 6:16-18) Jesus models for us the incredible power of fasting when the disciples fail to cast out a demon and turn to Jesus who casts it out and explains, “This kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 17:20)  In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke gives numerous examples of the disciples fasting to know the Will of God (Acts 13:2), for spiritual strength before a great undertaking (Acts 13:3-4), and for spiritual growth and wisdom (Acts 14:23).  While Catholics often fast throughout the year, the Church calls us to be united in our fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Lenten prayer amplifies our spiritual growth by looking deeply at Jesus’ suffering starting at Gethsemane.  Contemplating His sacrifice makes us grow in gratitude for the gift of salvation and grow in our understanding of His love for us.  One of the most important Lenten practices to assist us in this is the Stations of the Cross.  The community comes together, usually on Fridays, and meditates on the Gospel passages that center around Jesus’s walk to Calvary and His crucifixion and death. In this contemplation we are touched at the core of our being by the depth of His Love, and we are encouraged to see the need to become holier ourselves — because God calls each of us to be holy. – “Be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2) “Thus He chose us in Christ before the world was made to be holy and faultless before Him in love.” (Ephesians 1:4) 

When we desire to become holier, we examine the areas of our lives in which we fall short.  Realizing that we cannot do this alone, we ask for His assistance and enter into prayer that will lead us to these graces.  We also offer up little sacrifices such as abstaining from meat (the Orthodox Church does this as well).  These practices increase our sensitivity to the needs of those in our world who need our service in order to experience the love of God in their lives.

The third tool of Lenten practice is almsgiving.  In looking to serve the needs of the poor, we are responding to His call.  What He desires from us is mercy and compassion.  Focusing on the needs of others and bringing the love of Christ to them through our ministry is how we also meet Christ.  In seeking to bless others, Our Lord in turn blesses us; in sharing His love with others, He increases His love in us; in being the face of Christ to others, we encounter Christ in them.  The measure we measure with is measured back to us.  “Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap; because the standard you use will be the standard used for you.” (Luke 6: 38)  By reaching out to others in love, we live our Christian faith, grow in love, and are better prepared to receive the graces and gifts of the Resurrection.

The joy of the Resurrection is as necessary in our spiritual cycle as eating is to the farmer.   Just as God does not ask the farmer to toil without ever being able to harvest his crop, He does not ask us to continually focus only on Our Lord’s sacrifice. The joy of the Resurrection is a spiritual joy, a gift that God gives us.  The Easter season lasts 7 weeks and culminates in the Feast of Pentecost.  This spiritual joy which blossoms from our labor nourishes and strengthens us to continue our journey. 

The Resurrection is central to the Christian faith and sets it apart from all other religions.  In no other religion does God Himself die for His people.  In no other religion does God then resurrect Himself.  It is this celebration which Catholics relive at every Mass.  The Lenten and Easter seasons deepen our connection to and involvement in the Mass and ultimately lead us to a deeper relationship with Jesus in the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith.

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