Lent

Read more about the article Generosity

Generosity

“Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven“ (Mk 10:21)

Possession.  We usually think of Jesus curing the demoniac or movies about exorcism when we hear this word, but there are more layers and meanings than we realize at first glance. Everyone has possessions; simply having things, even a lot of things, is morally neutral.  It’s the value we place on these things in our lives that determines whether we possess things or our things possess us.  Of course, the more things we possess, the greater the challenge not to be possessed by them.  The sheer effort involved in maintaining, insuring, and securing our possessions grows as we accumulate more stuff. 

So where do we fall on the spectrum?  How closely do we resemble the rich young man in the Gospel who wants eternal life but is unwilling to part with his wealth to get it (Mk 10: 17-31)? We must ask ourselves: do we focus on gratitude for what we have been given, or do we focus on accumulating more possessions to elevate our status?  Do we appreciate the talent God has given us (or our ancestors) to amass things of beauty or do we get bored with what we have?  Are we genuinely happy for our friends and neighbors when they achieve what they have worked for or are we envious of their success?  Do we look for ways to share with others or do we assume everyone else wants to take our treasures?  If we are honest with ourselves, we are all in danger of being possessed by our things to some degree, so how do we break free of this?  More importantly, why should we want to? 

Breaking free begins with fasting and almsgiving.  Fasting forces us to focus on spiritual food.  If we cannot fast from a meal for health reasons, then we should fast from other things that occupy our time, for example, electronics, social media or binge watching sports on TV.  The whole point is to replace the time spent on eating (or surfing social media, etc) with prayer.  It is not so much a giving up of something we want, as it is of giving ourselves something better.  Fasting helps us to break free from envy and from our insatiable desires. It also gives us a chance to silence our self-criticism and the criticism of the evil one, who enumerates all our faults, to put ourselves in the presence of God who loves us and wants to heal our brokenness and strengthen our souls. 

Almsgiving gives us a chance to minister to Jesus in His beloved poor.  Jesus tells us, “The measure you measure with will be measured back to you.” (Mt 7:2)  Almsgiving requires us to trust God that we have enough for ourselves and enough to help others.  Almsgiving on a regular basis helps us to cultivate a spirit of generosity which moves us from worrying about our possessions to gratitude for our blessings. 

Once we break free of being possessed by our possessions, something amazing happens – we appreciate everything around us.  For example, I lost my favorite Crabapple tree to an early frost one year, but I always smile when I see the neighbor’s tree in bloom every spring because it is so beautiful. I can take walks and notice the gardens my neighbors have and appreciate their beauty without having to do all that weeding.   I can’t sing well, but listening to the beautiful voices of our choir profoundly touches my soul. 

Most importantly, when we are no longer consumed by thoughts of our possessions, we can focus our thoughts on Jesus. Our fasting and almsgiving enable us to surrender to the Holy Spirit Who assists us so that prayer becomes a joy and fills us with peace. We free up our mental space and our heart space to pursue our relationship with Jesus Who desires to make His home in our hearts. We open ourselves to the greatest possession of all: possessing God and being possessed by Him.

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Read more about the article Return to Me with Your Whole Heart

Return to Me with Your Whole Heart

Even now, says the LORD,
            return to me with your whole heart,
            with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;
Rend your hearts, not your garments,
            and return to the LORD, your God.
For gracious and merciful is he,
            slow to anger, rich in kindness,
            and relenting in punishment. (Joel 2:12-13)

This was the first reading for Ash Wednesday. God speaks to us through Scripture and also through the natural world.  It is no coincidence that Lent begins in the winter and yields to Easter in the Spring.  God uses these cycles to call us back to Him, to deepen our connection to Him.  If we approach Lent the way we approach a garden, we can yield beautiful flowers in the garden of our hearts.

First, we begin with weeding.  The biggest weed is gossip. Weeding needs to continually be looked after just as we need to continually mind what comes out of our mouths. This is difficult for all of us, but we can ask St. Joseph for help with this.  St. Joseph had a major secret – his betrothed was pregnant and the baby wasn’t his.  He was devastated by this, but instead of telling anyone, he kept it to himself, preserving Mary’s reputation.  In the end he found out that he had misjudged the situation, but he had caused no harm to Mary in the process.  Gossip is difficult to overcome, especially when we think we are in the right, but St. Joseph can teach us how to receive the gift of silence.

Second, we must get rid of all the large rocks in our garden.  Some of them are quite big and heavy because as we carry resentment for past wrongs the rocks grow larger and heavier with each passing year.  Forgiveness cannot be achieved alone, so St. Theresa of Calcutta is there to help.  She would often beg for food for the poor.  One day she brought a child into a bakery and asked for bread.  The shopkeeper spit in her face.  She calmly said, “Thank you for that gift for me. Now how about some bread for this child?”  The child received the bread. She understands well how to react with humility and forgiveness in the face of wrongdoing and she can help us get rid of those rocks.

We must then add amendments to our soil so it will be a healthy place for our plants.  Even after forgiving others, some wounds are very deep and still need healing.  Psychologists say that the greatest thing they do for their patients is listening to them.  In our culture listening is a lost art.  How often have we tried to have a meaningful conversation with someone who was constantly checking every alert on their cell phone?  How often have we done that to others?  To heal these deep wounds, we need to take them to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  Spending time with Him in the silence, pouring our hearts out to Him and giving Him time to speak to our hearts when we are silent and listening to Him, allows Him to heal these wounds.  He will ask us to pray for those who caused the wounds, but this is part of our healing process so it needs to be done.

We are then ready to plant our seeds.  Almsgiving and acts of kindness and charity are the best seeds to plant because they are not only planted in our hearts, but also in the hearts of those around us. Water the garden thoroughly with prayer, especially the Rosary.  Gentle pruning is required as well, so we fast to help us get rid of those bad habits that keep wanting to grow back.

Just as flowers need to be fed, our “miracle-gro” is frequent reception of the Eucharist, daily if possible, and Confession. When Easter arrives our daffodils will bring us joy as they blossom and our roses will bring us peace when they bloom.   Those around us will also enjoy the beauty of our garden, but most importantly, Jesus will join us on our porch swing and make His home with us.

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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.

Continue ReadingThe Leper is Healed

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