God's about to do something in your life!

Image: DioceseSSM

It doesn’t matter if you are 7 years old or 77 years old - God is about to do something in your life. Whether you seldom come to church or come only occasionally -  or every week - God is about to do something in your life.

Perhaps you are a mom or a dad, busy with a thousand things to do and 10,000 things to worry about; perhaps you are a youngster in the third grade; you might be a middle school or high school student; maybe you’re retired; perhaps you live alone; you might be a young single adult; you might be happy or sad, tired or rested; perhaps you are engaged to be married or you may have been recently widowed; perhaps you are separated or divorced; you might be a single parent; maybe you have forgotten about God, or you might think that God has forgotten about you: whoever you are, God is about to do something in your life.

Do you have an idea, a thought, a notion of how God might want to touch your life this Ash Wednesday and in the forty days of Lent that follow?

Don’t doubt for a moment that God waits to touch your heart in the holy season ahead of us. As a matter of fact, no day goes by without the Lord reaching out to touch us, to speak to us, to forgive us, to heal us, to comfort and challenge us.

Lent is a time when we make an extra effort, for 40 days, to listen for God’s word, to ask for his mercy, to open ourselves to his healing touch, and to invite the Lord to enter more deeply into our hearts and lives. At least for a season, we make a special effort to be open to God - and you can be sure that God is ready to take advantage of our seasonal readiness! God is about to do something in your life.

Just what IS Lent, anyway?

Lent is a time for those preparing for baptism (and for the already-baptized) to prepare for the celebration of the Paschal mystery of Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection.

Lent is a season to do some spring-cleaning in the many rooms of our hearts and to ready them for celebrating God’s gift of new life at Easter.

Lent is a season to prepare for Easter by: prayer (with the church and alone); fasting (learning to hunger for God); and almsgiving (works of mercy, especially for the poor). For fasting that leads us to prayer, and for prayer that leads us to serve the poor, let us pray to the Lord...

Lent is a time for getting back to basics: to learn again and to practice for forty days how we should live as Christians every day of the year.

Lent is a time for coming home: coming home to the Church community; coming home to prayer; coming home to God.

Lent is spring training for Christians: a time to get in shape, spiritually; a time to strengthen what is weak within us and tone up the strengths we have.

Lent is a time to make the time to begin to actually do the things we say we want and hope to do - but just never seem to have the time to get around to...

Lent is a time for getting ready to celebrate EASTER! Easter is at the heart of our life as Christians and Lent is the way to prepare for Easter joy!

God is about to do something in your life.

Are you ready?

Lent 2010
2009LentPostCollection

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God's about to do something in your life!

Image: DioceseSSM

It doesn’t matter if you are 7 years old or 77 years old - God is about to do something in your life. Whether you come to church only occasionally or every week - God is about to do something in your life and mine.

Perhaps you are a mom or a dad, busy with a thousand things to do and 10,000 things to worry about; perhaps you are a youngster in the third grade; you might be a middle school or high school student; maybe you’re retired; perhaps you live alone; you might be a young single adult; you might be happy or sad, tired or rested; perhaps you are engaged to be married or you may have been recently widowed; perhaps you are separated or divorced; you might be a single parent; maybe you have forgotten about God, or you might think that God has forgotten about you: whoever you are, God is about to do something in your life and mine.

Do you have an idea, a thought, a notion of how God might want to touch your life in this season of 40 days?

Don’t doubt for a moment that God waits to touch your heart this Lent. As a matter of fact, not a day goes by without the Lord reaching out to touch us, to speak to us, to forgive us, to heal us, to comfort and challenge us.

Lent is a time when we make an extra effort, for 40 days, to listen for God’s word, to ask for his mercy, to open ourselves to his healing touch, and to invite the Lord to enter more deeply into our hearts and lives. At least for a season, we make a special effort to be open to God - and you can be sure that God is ready to take advantage of our seasonal readiness! God is about to do something in your life and mine.

Just what IS Lent, anyway?

Lent is a time for those preparing for baptism (and for the already-baptized) to prepare for the celebration of the Paschal mystery of Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection.

Lent is a season to do some spring-cleaning in the many rooms of our hearts and to ready them for celebrating God’s gift of new life at Easter.

Lent is a season to prepare for Easter by: prayer (with the faith community and alone); fasting (learning to hunger for God); and almsgiving (works of mercy, especially for the poor).  

For fasting that leads us to prayer, and for prayer that leads us to serve the poor, let us pray to the Lord...

Lent is a time for getting back to basics: to learn again and to practice for forty days how we should live as Christians every day of the year.

Lent is a time for coming home: coming home to the Church community; coming home to prayer; coming home to God.

Lent is spring training for Christians: a time to get in shape, spiritually; a time to strengthen what is weak within us and tone up the strengths we have.

Lent is a time to make the time to begin to actually do the things we say we want and hope to do - but just never seem to have the time to get around to...

Lent is a time for getting ready to celebrate EASTER! Easter is at the heart of our life as Christians and Lent is the way to prepare for Easter joy!

God is about to do something in your life and mine...

Are we ready? Are we willing? Are we open?

Lent 2010
2009LentPostCollection

Subscribe to A Concord Pastor Comments 

Watch out! God's about to get busy!

God is about to do something in your life!

It doesn’t matter if you are 7 years old or 77 years old - God is about to do something in your life. Whether you come to church only occasionally or every week - God is about to do something in your life.

Perhaps you are a mom or a dad, busy with a thousand things to do and 10,000 things to worry about; perhaps you are a youngster in the third grade; you might be a middle school or high school student; maybe you’re retired; perhaps you live alone; you might be a young single adult; you might be happy or sad, tired or rested; perhaps you are engaged to be married or you may have been recently widowed; perhaps you are separated or divorced; you might be a single parent; maybe you have forgotten about God, or you might think that God has forgotten about you: whoever you are, God is about to do something in your life.

Do you have an idea, a thought, a notion of how God might want to touch your life this Ash Wednesday and in the forty days of Lent that follow?

Don’t doubt for a moment that God waits to touch your heart in the holy season ahead of us. As a matter of fact, no day goes by without the Lord reaching out to touch us, to speak to us, to forgive us, to heal us, to comfort and challenge us.

Lent is a time when we make an extra effort, for 40 days, to listen for God’s word, to ask for his mercy, to open ourselves to his healing touch, and to invite the Lord to enter more deeply into our hearts and lives. At least for a season, we make a special effort to be open to God - and you can be sure that God is ready to take advantage of our seasonal readiness! God is about to do something in your life.

Just what IS Lent, anyway?

Lent is a time for those preparing for baptism (and for the already-baptized) to prepare for the celebration of the Paschal mystery of Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection.

Lent is a season to do some spring-cleaning in the many rooms of our hearts and to ready them for celebrating God’s gift of new life at Easter.

Lent is a season to prepare for Easter by: prayer (with the church and alone); fasting (learning to hunger for God); and almsgiving (works of mercy, especially for the poor). For fasting that leads us to prayer, and for prayer that leads us to serve the poor, let us pray to the Lord...

Lent is a time for getting back to basics: to learn again and to practice for forty days how we should live as Christians every day of the year.

Lent is a time for coming home: coming home to the Church community; coming home to prayer; coming home to God.

Lent is spring training for Christians: a time to get in shape, spiritually; a time to strengthen what is weak within us and tone up the strengths we have.

Lent is a time to make the time to begin to actually do the things we say we want and hope to do - but just never seem to have the time to get around to...

Lent is a time for getting ready to celebrate EASTER! Easter is at the heart of our life as Christians and Lent is the way to prepare for Easter joy!

God is about to do something in your life.

Are you ready?
Lent 2010
Image: DioceseSSM
2009LentPostCollection

Keeping a Holy Lent - 2

Lent: a joyful season?

The Preface is the prayer at Mass that leads to our singing the Holy, Holy, Holy. There are Sunday, weekday, festal and seasonal Prefaces. Preface I for Lent includes these words:

Every year you give us this joyful season
when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery
with minds and hearts renewed.

You give us a spirit of loving reverence for you, our Father,
and of willing service to our neighbor...

Since we tend to image Lent tend as a somber, penitential time, it may seem incongruous to refer to Lent as a "joyful season." Aren't we supposed to refrain from joy until Easter?

Certainly Lent and its disciplines of prayer, fasting and works of mercy can be experienced as a time of spiritual and personal restraint, but Lent is also springtime for the life of faith - regardless of the side of the equator on which you live.

If Lent is a time for our "minds and hearts to be renewed" then it's also a season of new beginnings and opportunities, clean slates and life refreshed. And all of that is certainly cause for joy!

Note, too, how this Lenten Preface reminds us of what God does for us in the season. The Lord gives us a spirit of loving reverence for the Father of us all, inclining our hearts and minds to prayer and the needs of our spiritual lives. And there's more! The Lord gives us a spirit of willing service to our neighbor. That means that the Lord disposes our hearts to be generous in serving and helping our neighbor with our time, our talents, and our financial resources.

This spirit of reverence and service is a gift to us from God - ours for the taking. Of course, just as at any time of the year, it's easy for us to be too busy, too distracted, too self-concerned to even notice the gift of spiritual renewal the Lord hands out to us. And that's why the so-called "disciplines" of Lent (prayer, fasting, works of mercy) are so important.

What we "do for Lent" attunes us to the Lord's presence, inclines us to awareness of God's presence and disposes us to receive what the Lord offers us.

As we noted earlier: Watch out! God's gettin' busy!

And it's time for us to get busy about Lent!

Image source: NetGlimse


Lent 2010

Keeping a Holy Lent - 4

Well, Ash Wednesday is behind us and the First Sunday of Lent is upon us.

How's Lent been for us so far?

Are you among those who have been faithful now for nearly four days to those exercises of prayer, fasting and caring for the poor?

Or did you have a good start that fizzled a bit by the time the first meatless Friday rolled around?

Did you not make it to church on Ash Wednesday and have a feeling that Lent just hasn't got off the ground for you?

The "devil in the desert" in today's scriptures would like nothing better than for you to give up on Lent just because the first few days haven't gone as well as you might have liked.

Well, to hell with the devil!

Start Lent now right now!

Find 10 minutes a day to sit still and remember that God is present...
that's called prayer...

Choose some form of comfort (food or Southern?)
whose absence for 40 days will create an empty space
the Spirit might rush to fill...
that's called fasting...

Reach out to the poor on your own or through your parish Lenten program...
that's called almsgiving...

Find a way to remind yourself every day that you're living in the season of Lent. Something as simple as a post-it on your bathroom mirror with the word LENT on it -- nothing fancy, keep it simple -- just some way, day to day, to remember to pray, fast and reach out to the poor...

Lent is a spiritual spring time (whether you live above or below the equator!)
and it's not too late to plant the seeds of Lent in our lives...
Lent 2010

Lent: the path to Easter - Do you believe?

 

Lent isn't merely a season to "give something up"  Lent is a season to prepare for Easter. In special ways we pray for and prepare those who will receive the Easter sacraments. But all of us, including the already baptized, need to prepare to celebrate the Paschal feast as well.

At the Easter Vigil and at Mass on Easter Sunday, we will be invited to renew the promises of baptism when we are asked:

- Do you reject sin so as to live in the freedom of God’s children?

- Do you reject the glamor of evil and refuse to be mastered by sin?
- Do you reject Satan, and all his works and empty promises?
- Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, 
     maker of heaven and earth?

- Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God?

- Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life?
- Do you believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church?
- Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins?
- Do you look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come?

And we respond: I do, I do, I do!

Do we?

Is this what we believe? Is this what we live?

Do we even understand the questions?

What do we need to do to prepare to answer these questions from our hearts?

For some help in looking at these creedal questions and our response to them, spend some time at this site, offered by Creighton University.

Lent is a good time for us to study these questions so that we can be prepared to answer them with a strong, I do! at Easter. Fr. Bill Reiser, SJ has proposed some additional questions to ponder as we prepare in Lent to renew our baptismal promises at Easter. Perhaps his questions will be food for prayer, fasting and almsgiving this Lent in preparation for Easter:

- Do you accept Jesus as your teacher, as the example whom you will always imitate and as the one in whom the mystery of God’s love for the world has fully been revealed?

- Do you dedicate yourself to seeking the kingdom of God and God’s justice, to praying daily, to meditating on the Gospels and to celebrating the Eucharist faithfully and devoutly?

- Do you commit yourself to that spirit of poverty and detachment that Jesus enjoined on his disciples, and to resisting the spirit of consumerism and materialism that is so strong in our culture?

- Do you accept responsibility for building community, for being a person of compassion and reconciliation, for being mindful of the poor and the oppressed, and for truly forgiving those who have offended you?

- Will you try to thank and praise God by your works and by your actions, in times of prosperity as well as in moments of suffering, giving loyal witness to the risen Jesus by your faith, by your hope, and by the style of your living?

- Do you surrender your life to God as a disciple and companion of Jesus? Do you believe that God is the Lord of history, sovereign over nations and peoples, and that God’s promise to redeem all of creation from its bondage to death and decay will one day be accomplished?

All of these questions, the traditional and the new ones, are offered here for your Lenten reflection, prayer and action. Soon we’ll be renewing our baptismal promises and professing our faith in God. Let us pray for one another that this Lenten season of preparation will find us ready to answer “I do!” with voices and hearts filled with faith.

(You might find it helpful to print this post and keep the questions above at hand for prayer and reflection...)

Lent 2010



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Keeping a Holy Lent - 3

Image source: Essex1

Lent: Getting Ready for Easter!

Lent isn't merely a season to "give something up!" It's a season to prepare for Easter. In special ways we pray for and prepare those who will receive the Easter sacraments. But all of us, including the already baptized, need to prepare to celebrate the Paschal feast as well.

At the Easter Vigil and at Mass on Easter Sunday, we will be invited to renew the promises of baptism when we are asked:

- Do you reject sin so as to live in the freedom of God’s children?
- Do you reject the glamor of evil and refuse to be mastered by sin?
- Do you reject Satan, and all his works and empty promises?
- Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth...?
- Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God...?
- Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life...?
- Do you believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church?
- Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins?
- Do you look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come?

And we respond: I do, I do, I do!

Do we? Is this what we believe? Is this what we live?
Do we even understand the questions?

What do we need to do to prepare to answer these questions from our hearts?

For some help in looking at these creedal questions and our response to them, spend some time at this site, offered by Creighton University.

Lent is a good time for us to study these questions so that we can be prepared to answer them with a strong, I do! at Easter. Fr. Bill Reiser, SJ has proposed some additional questions to ponder as we prepare in Lent to renew our baptismal promises at Easter. Perhaps his questions will be food for prayer, fasting and almsgiving this Lent in preparation for Easter:

- Do you accept Jesus as your teacher, as the example whom you will always imitate and as the one in whom the mystery of God’s love for the world has fully been revealed?

- Do you dedicate yourself to seeking the kingdom of God and God’s justice, to praying daily, to meditating on the Gospels and to celebrating the Eucharist faithfully and devoutly?

- Do you commit yourself to that spirit of poverty and detachment that Jesus enjoined on his disciples, and to resisting the spirit of consumerism and materialism that is so strong in our culture?

- Do you accept responsibility for building community, for being a person of compassion and reconciliation, for being mindful of the poor and the oppressed, and for truly forgiving those who have offended you?

- Will you try to thank and praise God by your works and by your actions, in times of prosperity as well as in moments of suffering, giving loyal witness to the risen Jesus by your faith, by your hope, and by the style of your living?

- Do you surrender your life to God as a disciple and companion of Jesus? Do you believe that God is the Lord of history, sovereign over nations and peoples, and that God’s promise to redeem all of creation from its bondage to death and decay will one day be accomplished?

All of these questions, the traditional and the new ones, are offered here for your Lenten reflection, prayer and action. Soon we’ll be renewing our baptismal promises and professing our faith in God. Let us pray for one another that this Lenten season of preparation will find us ready to answer “I do!” with voices and hearts filled with faith.

(You might find it helpful to print this post and keep the questions above at hand for prayer and reflection...)
Lent 2010

Pope Benedict's Lenten message

Photo: L'Osservatore Romano

From the CNS blog, here's Benedict XVI's Lenten message for 2010 which was released this week but, as you'll see at its conclusion, is dated October 30, 2009! I wish I were that well-prepared for Lent! Although the pope wrote these words months ago, they have a special poignancy (especially the section on sedaqah) after the earthquake in Haiti...

(In the photo above the pope receives ashes in the manner which is customary in many places, including the Vatican: ashes are given on the top of the head rather than on the forehead. Here's a 2009 video showing the pope receiving and giving ashes in this way.)

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI’s message for Lent 2010 was released by the Vatican today at a press conference. Here is the full text:

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

Each year, on the occasion of Lent, the Church invites us to a sincere review of our life in light of the teachings of the Gospel. This year, I would like to offer you some reflections on the great theme of justice, beginning from the Pauline affirmation: “The justice of God has been manifested through faith in Jesus Christ” (cf. Rm 3, 21-22).

Justice: “dare cuique suum”

First of all, I want to consider the meaning of the term “justice,” which in common usage implies “to render to every man his due,” according to the famous expression of Ulpian, a Roman jurist of the third century. In reality, however, this classical definition does not specify what “due” is to be rendered to each person. What man needs most cannot be guaranteed to him by law. In order to live life to the full, something more intimate is necessary that can be granted only as a gift: we could say that man lives by that love which only God can communicate since He created the human person in His image and likeness. Material goods are certainly useful and required – indeed Jesus Himself was concerned to heal the sick, feed the crowds that followed Him and surely condemns the indifference that even today forces hundreds of millions into death through lack of food, water and medicine – yet “distributive” justice does not render to the human being the totality of his “due.” Just as man needs bread, so does man have even more need of God. Saint Augustine notes: if “justice is that virtue which gives every one his due … where, then, is the justice of man, when he deserts the true God?” (De civitate Dei, XIX, 21).

What is the Cause of Injustice?

The Evangelist Mark reports the following words of Jesus, which are inserted within the debate at that time regarding what is pure and impure: “There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him … What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts” (Mk 7, 14-15, 20-21). Beyond the immediate question concerning food, we can detect in the reaction of the Pharisees a permanent temptation within man: to situate the origin of evil in an exterior cause. Many modern ideologies deep down have this presupposition: since injustice comes “from outside,” in order for justice to reign, it is sufficient to remove the exterior causes that prevent it being achieved. This way of thinking – Jesus warns – is ingenuous and shortsighted. Injustice, the fruit of evil, does not have exclusively external roots; its origin lies in the human heart, where the seeds are found of a mysterious cooperation with evil. With bitterness the Psalmist recognises this: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51,7). Indeed, man is weakened by an intense influence, which wounds his capacity to enter into communion with the other. By nature, he is open to sharing freely, but he finds in his being a strange force of gravity that makes him turn in and affirm himself above and against others: this is egoism, the result of original sin. Adam and Eve, seduced by Satan’s lie, snatching the mysterious fruit against the divine command, replaced the logic of trusting in Love with that of suspicion and competition; the logic of receiving and trustfully expecting from the Other with anxiously seizing and doing on one’s own (cf. Gn 3, 1-6), experiencing, as a consequence, a sense of disquiet and uncertainty. How can man free himself from this selfish influence and open himself to love?

Justice and Sedaqah

At the heart of the wisdom of Israel, we find a profound link between faith in God who “lifts the needy from the ash heap” (Ps 113,7) and justice towards one’s neighbor. The Hebrew word itself that indicates the virtue of justice, sedaqah, expresses this well. Sedaqah, in fact, signifies on the one hand full acceptance of the will of the God of Israel; on the other hand, equity in relation to one’s neighbour (cf. Ex 20, 12-17), especially the poor, the stranger, the orphan and the widow (cf. Dt 10, 18-19). But the two meanings are linked because giving to the poor for the Israelite is none other than restoring what is owed to God, who had pity on the misery of His people. It was not by chance that the gift to Moses of the tablets of the Law on Mount Sinai took place after the crossing of the Red Sea. Listening to the Law presupposes faith in God who first “heard the cry” of His people and “came down to deliver them out of hand of the Egyptians” (cf. Ex 3,8). God is attentive to the cry of the poor and in return asks to be listened to: He asks for justice towards the poor (cf. Sir 4,4-5, 8-9), the stranger (cf. Ex 22,20), the slave (cf. Dt 15, 12-18). In order to enter into justice, it is thus necessary to leave that illusion of self-sufficiency, the profound state of closure, which is the very origin of injustice. In other words, what is needed is an even deeper “exodus” than that accomplished by God with Moses, a liberation of the heart, which the Law on its own is powerless to realize. Does man have any hope of justice then?

Christ, the Justice of God

The Christian Good News responds positively to man’s thirst for justice, as Saint Paul affirms in the Letter to the Romans: “But now the justice of God has been manifested apart from law … the justice of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (3, 21-25). What then is the justice of Christ? Above all, it is the justice that comes from grace, where it is not man who makes amends, heals himself and others. The fact that “expiation” flows from the “blood” of Christ signifies that it is not man’s sacrifices that free him from the weight of his faults, but the loving act of God who opens Himself in the extreme, even to the point of bearing in Himself the “curse” due to man so as to give in return the “blessing” due to God (cf. Gal 3, 13-14). But this raises an immediate objection: what kind of justice is this where the just man dies for the guilty and the guilty receives in return the blessing due to the just one? Would this not mean that each one receives the contrary of his “due”? In reality, here we discover divine justice, which is so profoundly different from its human counterpart. God has paid for us the price of the exchange in His Son, a price that is truly exorbitant. Before the justice of the Cross, man may rebel for this reveals how man is not a self-sufficient being, but in need of Another in order to realize himself fully. Conversion to Christ, believing in the Gospel, ultimately means this: to exit the illusion of self-sufficiency in order to discover and accept one’s own need – the need of others and God, the need of His forgiveness and His friendship. So we understand how faith is altogether different from a natural, good-feeling, obvious fact: humility is required to accept that I need Another to free me from “what is mine,” to give me gratuitously “what is His.” This happens especially in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. Thanks to Christ’s action, we may enter into the “greatest” justice, which is that of love (cf. Rm 13, 8-10), the justice that recognises itself in every case more a debtor than a creditor, because it has received more than could ever have been expected. Strengthened by this very experience, the Christian is moved to contribute to creating just societies, where all receive what is necessary to live according to the dignity proper to the human person and where justice is enlivened by love.

Dear brothers and sisters, Lent culminates in the Paschal Triduum, in which this year, too, we shall celebrate divine justice – the fullness of charity, gift, salvation. May this penitential season be for every Christian a time of authentic conversion and intense knowledge of the mystery of Christ, who came to fulfill every justice. With these sentiments, I cordially impart to all of you my Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, 30 October 2009 Lent 2010

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

Be careful when you say, "I do!"

Image: NLM

Lent isn't merely a season to "give something up"  Lent is a season to prepare for Easter. In special ways we pray for and prepare those who will receive the Easter sacraments. But all of us, including the already baptized, need to prepare to celebrate the Paschal feast as well.

At the Easter Vigil and at Mass on Easter Sunday, we will be invited to renew the promises of baptism when we are asked:

- Do you reject sin so as to live in the freedom of God’s children?

- Do you reject the glamor of evil and refuse to be mastered by sin?
- Do you reject Satan, and all his works and empty promises?
- Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, 
     maker of heaven and earth?

- Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God?

- Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life?
- Do you believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church?
- Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins?
- Do you look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come?

And we respond: I do, I do, I do!

But, do we?

Is this what we believe? Is this what we live?

Do we even understand the questions?

What do we need to do to prepare to answer these questions from our hearts?

For some help in looking at these creedal questions and our response to them, spend some time at this site, offered by Creighton University.

Lent is a good time for us to study these questions so that we can be prepared to answer them with a strong, I do! at Easter. Fr. Bill Reiser, SJ has proposed some additional questions to ponder as we prepare in Lent to renew our baptismal promises at Easter. Perhaps his questions will be food for prayer, fasting and almsgiving this Lent in preparation for Easter:

- Do you accept Jesus as your teacher, as the example whom you will always imitate and as the one in whom the mystery of God’s love for the world has fully been revealed?

- Do you dedicate yourself to seeking the kingdom of God and God’s justice, to praying daily, to meditating on the Gospels and to celebrating the Eucharist faithfully and devoutly?

- Do you commit yourself to that spirit of poverty and detachment that Jesus enjoined on his disciples, and to resisting the spirit of consumerism and materialism that is so strong in our culture?

- Do you accept responsibility for building community, for being a person of compassion and reconciliation, for being mindful of the poor and the oppressed, and for truly forgiving those who have offended you?

- Will you try to thank and praise God by your works and by your actions, in times of prosperity as well as in moments of suffering, giving loyal witness to the risen Jesus by your faith, by your hope, and by the style of your living?

- Do you surrender your life to God as a disciple and companion of Jesus? Do you believe that God is the Lord of history, sovereign over nations and peoples, and that God’s promise to redeem all of creation from its bondage to death and decay will one day be accomplished?

All of these questions, the traditional and the new ones, are offered here for your Lenten reflection, prayer and action. Soon we’ll be renewing our baptismal promises and professing our faith in God. Let us pray for one another that this Lenten season of preparation will find us ready to answer “I do!” with voices and hearts filled with faith.

(You might find it helpful to print this post and keep the questions above at hand for prayer and reflection...)

Lent 2010


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Monday Morning Offering - 85

Image: George Mendoza

Good morning, good God!

Well, in 48 hours it will be Ash Wednesday!

I want, Lord -actually I need-
for this to be a good Lent.

I need to start again, with you.
I want to be refreshed.
It's time for me to take a spiritual inventory:
to count my sins and number your countless mercies....

You offer me a season of grace, Lord,
and my heart needs what you so freely give...

I've been here before, Lord,
so many times...

Like New Year's resolutions
my Lenten promises often fade away
before the ashes are brushed from my brow...

So, I offer you my past broken Lenten vows
and pray for your strong arm to keep me faithful this year
to my prayer, my fasting and my outreach to the poor...

I offer you all the false starts of my past, Lord,
and pray you'll walk this Lenten path with me
from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday...

I offer you a lifetime of pious unkept promises
and pray you keep me modest in my pledges
that this Lent I might, at last, be faithful
- if only in a few small things...

I offer you, in advance,
whatever my Lenten failures might be, Lord,
and pray that when I stumble
your Spirit will pick me up, dust me off,
and set me back on the path marked out for me,
the path I pledged...

I offer you my ego, Lord,
and pray I take no pride in being faithful this Lent:
humble me with the strength of your grace
to sustain in me what I cannot do alone...

I offer you the 40 days ahead, Lord,
and pray you help me live and walk this season
just one day at a time...

Walk with me this Lent, Lord,
and remind me each day
that this season is first for you
and only for me that I might grow in my faith in you...

And as I walk this Lenten journey with your Church, Lord,
open me to the needs of my brothers and sisters
who walk beside me, behind me and before me...

One day at a time this Lent, Lord:
you and me, with the Church,
in the grace of your Holy Spirit...
Lent 2010
Amen.

Monday Morning Offering - 135

Image: George Mendoza


Good morning, good God!

Well, in 48 hours it will be Ash Wednesday!

I want, Lord -actually I need-
for this to be a good Lent.

I need to start again, with you.
I want to be refreshed.
It's time for me to take a spiritual inventory:
to count my sins and number your countless mercies....

You offer me a season of grace, Lord,
and my heart needs what you so freely give...

I've been here before, Lord,
so many times...

Like New Year's resolutions
my Lenten promises often fade away
before the ashes are brushed from my brow...

So, I offer you my past broken Lenten vows
and pray for your strong arm to keep me faithful this year
to my prayer, my fasting and my outreach to the poor...

I offer you all the false starts of my past, Lord,
and pray you'll walk this Lenten path with me
from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday...

I offer you a lifetime of pious unkept promises
and pray you keep me modest in my pledges
that this Lent I might, at last, be faithful
- if only in a few small things...

I offer you, in advance,
whatever my Lenten failures might be, Lord,
and pray that when I stumble
your Spirit will pick me up, dust me off,
and set me back on the path marked out for me,
the path I pledged...

I offer you my ego, Lord,
and pray I take no pride in being faithful this Lent:
humble me with the strength of your grace
to sustain in me what I cannot do alone...

I offer you the 40 days ahead, Lord,
and pray you help me live and walk this season
just one day at a time...

Walk with me this Lent, Lord,
and remind me each day
that this season is first for you
and only for me that I might grow in my love for you...

And as I walk this Lenten journey with your Church, Lord,
open me to the needs of my brothers and sisters
who walk beside me, behind me and before me...

Such is my prayer this Monday morning, Lord,
and through the holy season before us...
Lent 2010
Amen

(If you checked in especially for the Monday Morning Offering, please take a moment to scroll down to the previous post for a prayer by Henri Nouwen)

 
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Intro to Fast and Abstinence 101

There are particular days of fast and abstinence in Lent when the whole Church participates in this Lenten practice as a community of believers. But individual Christians are invited to fast in ways that each determines from his/her own experience and circumstances. The following reflections might be helpful to all of us as we consider fasting in the season ahead of us.

Ash Wednesday, February 17,
is a day of fast and abstinence
so it might be good to review what this means now
to plan and prepare for cooking and eating this Wednesday...

Here's what the Lord says of fasting through the prophet Isaiah, Ch 58:

Is this the manner of fasting I wish,
of keeping a day of penance:
That a man bow his head like a reed,
and lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own...
If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted...

Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
He will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose water never fails.

+ + +

In the same spirit, the following advice is convincing and compelling as we face a Lenten fast:

Lent is a season that calls us:

to fast from discontent and to feast on gratitude;
to fast from anger and to feast on patience;
to fast from bitterness and to feast on forgiveness;
to fast from self-concern and to feast on compassion;
to fast from discouragement and to feast on hope;
to fast from laziness and to feast on commitment;
to fast from complaining and to feast on acceptance;
to fast from lust and to feast on respect;
to fast from prejudice and to feast on understanding;
to fast from resentment and to feast on reconciliation;
to fast from lies and to feast on the truth;
to fast from wasted time and to feast on honest work;
to fast from grimness and to feast on joy;
to fast from suspicion and to feast on trust;
to fast from idle talk and to feast on prayer and silence;
to fast from guilt and to feast on the mercy of God.

(Based on a version often attributed to William Arthur Ward)

+ + +

Still not convinced? Spiritual writer Thomas Merton fillets some of our standard Lenten practices with a very sharp blade:

Such exercises as fasting cannot have their proper effect unless our motives for practicing them spring from personal meditation. We have to think of what we are doing, and the reasons for our actions must spring from the depths of our freedom and be enlivened by the transforming power of Christian love. Otherwise, our self-imposed sacrifices are likely to be pretenses, symbolic gestures without real interior meaning. Sacrifices made in this formalistic spirit tend to be mere acts of external routine performed in order to exorcise interior anxiety and not for the sake of love. In that case, however, our attention will tend to fix itself upon the insignificant suffering which we have piously elected to undergo, and to exaggerate it in one way or another, either to make it seem unbearable or else to make it seem more heroic than it actually is. Sacrifices made in this fashion would be better left unmade. It would be more sincere as well as more religious to eat a full dinner in a spirit of gratitude than to make some minor sacrifice a part of it, with the feeling that one is suffering martyrdom.

-Thomas Merton in The Climate of Monastic Prayer

+ + +

The reflections above speak to our individual choices regarding fasting in Lent. Here are the laws regarding our communal fasting as a Church:

ASH WEDNESDAY and GOOD FRIDAY*
are days of FAST and ABSTINENCE

What does that mean?

On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday,
Catholics over 14 years of age
are expected to abstain from eating meat on this day.
Catholics 18 years of age
and up to the beginning of their 60th year
are expected to fast on these days:
taking only one full meal and two other light meals,
eating nothing between meals.
(liquids between meals, however, are allowed).

*Holy Saturday is a day of fast for the elect,
those who are to be baptized at the Easter Vigil.
While fasting is not required of all the faithful,
this is an ancient tradition on this day and a great way
to support those who are to be baptized.

All the FRIDAYS of Lent are days of ABSTINENCE

What does that mean?

Catholics over 14 years of age
Are expected to abstain from eating meat
on the Fridays of Lent.

+ + +

Health concerns and “doctor’s orders”
should take precedence over the practices of fast and abstinence.
Fast and abstinence should never jeopardize one’s physical health.

DISPENSATIONS?

Pastors often receive requests from parishioners asking to be “dispensed” from fast and abstinence for particular social occasions. Of course, it is precisely on such occasions that the self-denial of fast and abstinence might be most meaningful. Such a “dispensation” is not a pastor’s to give. The Church tells us that in this matter individuals have freedom to excuse themselves but that, “no Catholic will lightly hold himself/herself excused from so hallowed an obligation as this penitential practice.”

2009LentPostCollectionLent 2010

Pause for Prayer: SUNDAY 3/10

Weaving by Astrid Monique

(Today: a poem by William Stafford followed by my reflection designed to help us pause for prayer...)

The Way It Is
There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

- by William Stafford

Lent is a time for naming
the "thread you follow..."

Most of us lead lives of many threads.
Some are stronger than others,
some are of our own making,
some are woven into the fabric of our being
with or without our permission...

With or without our permission
the Spirit weaves
the thread of God's grace and design
into the cloth of our being, our lives...

God's thread in our lives does not change:
it's pliable yet strong, it hems and mends,
it tucks and tailors, it stitches and sutures...

Lent is a time, a season,
for naming the thread we follow
the thread God sews into our souls...

Lent is a time for finding again
or perhaps discovering for the first time
the thread of God within,
the thread we must hold fast...

The Way It Is
There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

Lent 2010

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