FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

30 MARCH 2025

 

          In the first reading, Joshua reminds his people that God has formed them into a new creation by leading them through the desert to the Promised Land.  Saint Paul builds on the words of Joshua in his letter to the Corinthians and applies them to Christ.  Jesus Christ has formed us into a new creation by reconciling us to the Father through his death on the cross.  As members of this new creation, we are ambassadors for Christ, extending the reconciliation we have received with others.

            This most famous parable of Jesus helps us to understand God’s reconciling love.  We call it the “Parable of the Prodigal Son.”  The word “prodigal” means “recklessly extravagant.”  The younger son is definitely “prodigal.”  He makes a recklessly extravagant demand on his father.  He demands half of his inheritance.  In the ancient world, the inheritance would be given only after death.  He recklessly considers his father dead.  The older son is also reckless, because his job would have been to negotiate the terms of the inheritance with his brother and to talk sense into him.  But he stands by and does nothing.  He seems to be waiting for his father to die to get the rest of the inheritance, with his younger brother out of the way.  However, the most recklessly extravagant person is the father.  He recklessly gives his younger son what he demands.  He risks looking like an old fool to his neighbors.

            The younger son leaves and squanders his wealth on a life of dissipation, recklessly and extravagantly wasting his wealth on himself.  But when the famine strikes and he is stuck caring for pigs (a horrible job for a Jewish boy), he comes to his senses and regrets his actions.  He intends to return to his father as a slave, supporting himself apart from his father’s house.  But the father is filled with compassion.  He rushes out to welcome him back as his son.  Again, he looks like an old fool to the neighbors.  Not only does he embrace him, but he gives his son the symbols of his reckless extravagance – the finest robe, the ring, sandals on his feet, and an extravagant feast.  At this point, the son recognizes the incredible gift of his father’s mercy and accepts the gift of his original sonship.

            As members of the new creation, the Father offers us the recklessly extravagant gift of reconciliation.  Through the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, the Lord invites us to examine our consciences to see how we may have imitated the example of the younger son.  Have we been estranged and rebellious while being absent from the presence of the Lord?  If so, we can honestly confess our sin.  When we repent and make up our minds to change our course, we open ourselves to receive the Lord’s grace of extravagant mercy.  We can share the joy of that gift and be restored to the status of sons or daughters given to us when we were baptized.  Then, we can become ambassadors of Christ, extending that same gift to others.

Or, are we more like the older son, estranged and rebellious in our hearts while remaining in the presence of the Lord?  The father rushes out to meet his older son to answer his angry questions about his brother.  The father does so publicly, again looking like a fool to his neighbors.  He has been estranged and rebellious in his heart while remaining in his father’s presence.  In his arrogance, he refuses his father’s gift of extravagant mercy. 

This parable answers the objection of the Pharisees and scribes: “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  They clearly resemble the older brother.  The Lord has thrown a feast for us in this Eucharist.  He eats with us sinners, whether we are the older or the younger son and invites us to repentance.  Then he sends us out of this Mass to be ambassadors of his reckless mercy to others.

 

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT

23 MARCH 2025

 

          By this time in the Gospel of Saint Luke, people recognize that Jesus is an authentic teacher.  So, they ask a pressing question.  They want to know why those Galileans had been murdered by Pilate.  The common answer was that this disaster is a result of their sin.  Jesus refutes that answer and adds another example.  He mentions the eighteen people who had been killed by a falling tower at Siloam.  No, he says, they have no more guilt than everyone else in Jerusalem.  Jesus refutes the common solution that disasters, either human or natural, are not punishments from God for sin.

            We can identify with these questions, because disasters are still a part of our lives today.  When a disaster happens, we realize how vulnerable we are.  Any of us could have been on that plane that crashed into the helicopter earlier this year in Washington DC.  We could have been in the paths of the tornadoes ripping through the south last week.  We empathize with the victims and their grieving families.  We become more aware that these disasters can happen at any time to any of us.  That is why we were marked with ashes at the beginning of Lent.  More aware of our immortality, we use the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to turn away from sin and become more closely aligned with Jesus Christ.  The ashes are not intended to frighten or make us paranoid, but to move us to repentance.

            The parable of the fig tree helps us to understand the dynamics of the Lord working in our lives.  Even though the fig tree had been growing for three years, it is not bearing fruit.  When the owner of the orchard wants to cut it down, the gardener asks for more time.  The gardener promises to cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it.  He argues that these actions will cause the fig tree to produce fruit.  The gardener is Jesus Christ, and he is working through this Season of Lent to cultivate the ground around us and provide fertilizer so we can produce good fruit.  He gives the tools of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to cultivate that ground.  He the Sacrament of Reconciliation for fertilizer.  Lent invites us to be honest about whether or not we are producing good fruit.  Are the Lenten disciplines enabling us to be more patient, especially those who drive us crazy?  Are we responding to the needs of other people, especially the poor and the vulnerable?  Are we working to overcome chronic behaviors that tear us down?  Can others see a difference in the way we act?  Are we beginning to let go of the anger, resentment, and desire for revenge that tend to consume us?  God is looking for us to produce good fruit.

            In the first reading, Moses does not look for God.  Instead, God seeks him out and reveals his presence as a fire burning in a bush without consuming it.  Moses throws himself on the ground and hears God speak to him.  God uses seven verbs to describe God’s activities on his behalf.  God has observed the misery of his people.  God has heard their cries.  God knows their sufferings.  God has come down to deliver them.  God will bring them to a land.  God has seen the oppression.  Finally, God will send Moses.

            These seven verbs describe God’s actions through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in our lives, especially during the Season of Lent.  In their journey in the desert, the Israelites did not always trust these verbs.  They often grumbled against God and Moses.  We are also tempted, especially on our journey through the desert of Lent, to complain and grumble.  But the Divine Gardener keeps working with us.  The Lord continues to seek us out and journey with us.  There is a wideness in God’s mercy, and we must open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to allow him to continue to work with us, so that we can bear good fruit.

 

 

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

16 MARCH 2025

 

          Abram had responded to God’s call to journey from his home in Ur of the Chaldeans.  God had promised Abram both a land of his own and many descendants.  However, in the land promised by God, he and his wife had not been able to conceive in their old age.  In the first reading, God enters into a covenant with Abram.  The making of this covenant sounds strange to us.  But it was the way Abram and his contemporaries entered into agreements with one another.  Each participant would bring an assortment of animals, kill them, and cut them in two, placing each half on the opposite side of the road.  They would sit there all day, and then pass through the halved animals.  In sealing the deal, each party was committed to keep the covenant or be split in half like the animals.

            Abram sits by the side of the road all day, as he wards off the birds of prey, representing future threats to the covenant.  At sundown, Abram emerges from a trance to see a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between the pieces, symbolizing the presence of God.  God enters into a covenant with Abram, promising descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the land.  Abram puts his faith in God’s promise to fulfill this covenant agreement with him. 

            Jesus is also on a journey.  He has already passed the tests of the devil in the desert, and he has set his sights on Jerusalem.  He stops to pray at a mountain in Galilee, taking with him Peter, James, and John.  Especially in the Gospel of Saint Luke, Jesus spends time in prayer seeking direction from his Father at crucial times in his ministry.  As he prays, his face changes in appearance.  The answer to his prayer is written all over his face, and he is determined to continue his journey to Jerusalem.  His clothing becomes dazzling white, and he is joined by the two great figures of the faith.  They are discussing his exodus.  Moses had led his people in an exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land.  In the land promised by God, Elijah called his people to continue their journey to the Lord in the spirit of Moses.

            Emerging from sleep, Peter and James and John see this vision of glory.  Peter wants to pitch three tents and remain in this glorious state.  Instead, they hear the voice from the cloud, the symbol of the Father’s presence, say the same thing he said at the baptism of Jesus: “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.”

            As the three disciples continue to journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, they struggle to listen to this voice.  Once they reach Jerusalem, they will fall asleep as Jesus agonizes over what being faithful to the Father’s will involves.  It will involve hanging in agony on another mountain, Mt. Calvary.  His face will not be changed, and there will be no clothing.  He will be surrounded not by two figures from the past, but by two thieves. On that horribly dark day, he will be buried in a borrowed tomb.  But three days later, he will be raised from the dead, fulfilling the vision that Peter and James and John had glimpsed on Mount Tabor.  In his exodus to Jerusalem, he did much more than Moses or Elijah could have even done.  They had been heralds of the Messianic Age.  Through the Paschal Mystery, he will initiate the Messianic Age for all of us.

            As we continue our journey through these forty days of Lent, we pause at this Mass and in our daily lives to take time to pray.  Like the first disciples, we are walking with Jesus on our journey to the new and eternal Jerusalem.  We open our hearts and ears to listen carefully to his words.  We must face obstacles and difficulties and problems.  We too will have to face the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane and eventually embrace our crosses and the cross of death.  But, through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we can discipline ourselves to listen to God’s chosen Son and walk with the same faith and trust that Abraham did.            

 

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT

9 MARCH 2025

 

          In the reading from Deuteronomy, Moses addresses his people who are about to arrive in the promised land.  He tells them that they have become a nation:  great, strong, and numerous.  They have been formed into this great nation by God who had saved them slavery in Egypt and led them through the desert to freedom.  Mindful of God’s role, he commands them to give God the firstfruits of the products of the soil in gratitude.  Moses knew that they would quickly forget God’s role and try to find satisfaction in other things.  He knew that they would repeat their many failures to trust God in their forty years in the desert. 

            Today, Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the desert to be tested, as his ancestors had been tested.  He has just been baptized and heard his Father’s voice from the heavens identifying him as his beloved son, in whom he is well pleased.  After fasting for forty days, Jesus is hungry.  The devil sneers at him to test him.  If he is God’s son, he can change stone into bread.  Jesus resists the temptation and quotes Deuteronomy to insist that one does not live on bread alone.  Next, the devil tempts him to skip his mission of dying on a cross to have all power and glory now.  Again, Jesus resists the temptation and quotes Deuteronomy to say that he must worship God alone.  Finally, the devil tempts Jesus to throw himself from the parapet of the temple to see if God would save him.  The devil knows Scripture and quotes Psalm 91 to predict that angels will catch him.  Jesus quotes Deuteronomy again to insist that he cannot put his Father to the test.

            In our forty-day journey through Lent, we face the same temptations that tested Jesus and his ancestors.  Like his ancestors, we can easily forget that God is the source of all that we have and are.  The devil tests us with the same three temptations.  Instead of putting all our trust in God, we are tempted to put our trust in sensual gratification.  We fall into gluttony and lust trying to fill our deepest hungers.  The devil wants us to rely on power and riches instead of trusting in God’s care and providence.  He lies to convince us to yearn for an ostentatious display of pride and vainglory, instead of being humble enough to admit God’s power.

            The Holy Spirit has led us into this desert of Lent to help us resist the lies of the devil.  The Lord has given us the tools of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer as remedies to each temptation.  To combat the temptation to see sensual gratification as the ultimate way to fill our longings, the discipline of fasting can help us embrace the remedy of self-control.  To fight the temptations for power and riches, the discipline of almsgiving helps us practice detachment from material things.  Almsgiving helps us to avoid creating fake needs for ourselves and consider the authentic needs of others.  To fight the temptation to be prideful and full of ourselves, the Lord has given us the remedy of prayer.  We can use Scripture, not as the devil used it, but as Jesus himself used it, to humble ourselves before God and rely on his grace.          

            At Easter, we will renew the promises made at our baptism to reaffirm our conviction that Jesus Christ is at the center of our lives, and that we will orient our lives with that conviction.  As a fully human person, Jesus resisted the temptations of the devil and emerged from the desert determined to do the will of his Father.  As the eternal Son of God, he won our salvation by dying on the cross and trusting his Father’s promise that death would not prevail.  The Holy Spirit gives us the strength to recognize the lies of the devil, to embrace the remedies given through the Lenten disciplines, and to emerge from this desert of Lent at Easter renewed in our faith and determined to live as beloved sons and daughters of the Father.

 

 

EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

2 MARCH 2025

 

            When I was pastor of Saint Jude Church in Fort Wayne, a retired priest lived with us.  Father Traub lived to be 100 years old.  While most people eat so that they can live, Father Traub lived so he could eat.  He loved to eat and was very messy about enjoying his food.  He would attach a bib under his chin and chow away.  One day, a parishioner took us to our favorite rib joint.  As you probably know, eating ribs is always messy, especially if the sauce is good.  The waiter wrapped a big bib around each of us, and Father Traub dove into his ribs and sauce.  By the middle of the meal, he had sauce everywhere – on his hands, all over his face, and even dripping from one of his ears.  He looked across the table and said to our host, pointing to the corner of his own mouth: “Mary, you have a little sauce right here!”  It was hilarious.

            I always think of that dinner when reading today’s Gospel.  Jesus reminds us to remove the wooden beam from our own eye before pointing out the splinter in the eye of our brother or sister.  It is always easier to see the faults of others.  Jesus is telling us, his disciples, that we must look to ourselves before seeing the imperfection of others.

            The Season of Lent gives us a perfect opportunity to do that.  On Wednesday, the ashes on our foreheads mark us as disciples committed to spend forty days doing some kind of penance for our sins.  Church law requires very little of us during Lent.  We must fast and abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and to abstain from meat on all the Fridays of Lent.  Those simple expectations allow us to design our own Lenten observance, adapting the ancient disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to our own individual lives.

            Lent provides an excellent opportunity to spend more time in prayer.  Be sure to take one of the Little Black Books in the back of church.  Each book contains a daily reflection to help with your prayer.  Please consider going to Mass a couple of times during the week, or praying the rosary, or reading the daily Scripture readings for Mass.  You can find them easily on line.  Maybe you can spend ten minutes in meditation every morning.  You might also take advantage of the Sacrament of Reconciliation sometime before Easter. 

            There are many forms of fasting.  Most people fast from their favorite food or drink, or from eating between meals or enjoying a favorite snack.  Several years ago, I decided to fast from coffee.  After Lent was over, my Associate Pastor advised me never to do that again!  We can fast from television or social media.  Fasting from hours wasted on our phones can become a wonderful way of giving ourselves more time to be involved in more intimate communion with the Lord and with others in person. 

            Finally, almsgiving provides an opportunity to remember those less fortunate than we are.  Especially in today’s political environment, Catholic Relief Services desperately needs our help in feeding the hungry of our world.  Our soup kitchen and Saint Vincent de Paul Society provide needed services to the local poor.  We can donate time or funding to either of these efforts.  We might go through our closets to look at articles of clothing that we have not used in the last year.  As Saint John Chrysostom insists, the clothing we do not use actually belongs to the poor.

            Lent is all about baptism.  During Lent, we make our final preparations for Catechumens to receive the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist at the Easter Vigil.  Along with them, Lent gives us a chance to reflect on the ways we fail to live our baptismal promises.  Through these Sacraments, we become brothers and sisters in Christ.  We are responsible for one another.  But that responsibility begins with removing the wooden beams from our own eyes before helping others to see the splinters in theirs.