3rd Week of Lent 2024 - Friday - Return to God and be made whole

One of the most prevalent themes and messages of the Bible is that of returning to God. “Return to God with your whole heart” Joel says. In fact, the call to return to God is the constant call of the prophets.

Through Zechariah God declares, "Return to me and I will return to you.” The call to return is central to the prophet Hosea’s message, as we heard today, “Return, O Israel, to the LORD, your God; you have collapsed through your guilt.”

Hosea wants Israel to recognize that it has stumbled and fallen into spiritual and moral decay due to its disobedience to God. The weight of sin has caused Israel to collapse—like a house whose roof has fallen in, or a body collapsing because it is exhausted and fatigued and sick and burdened or staggering drunk. The call to return to God is the invitation to allow God to raise you up, to restore your strength, to restore the foundations of your house, of your life, to set you back on your feet after you’ve fallen. 

“I will heal their defection, says the LORD, I will love them freely; for my wrath is turned away from them. I will be like the dew for Israel: he shall blossom like the lily.” Notice that the return to God involves healing and a deepened experience of love and freedom, refreshment, renewal, and new growth. Why would we ever deprive ourselves of the benefit of returning to God to be made whole again?

In the Gospel, Jesus speaks to the scribe about the great commandment to love God and neighbor. 

Returning to God allows us to love as we were designed to love. God is the ultimate source of love. When we are in right relationship with Him, we are more connected to His love, which then overflows into our relationships with others. The more we abide in God's love, the more capacity we have to love others.

When we have returned to right relationship with God, the we experience His loving forgiveness and grace enables us to extend forgiveness and grace to others. It allows us to let go of resentment, bitterness, and judgment, fostering reconciliation and harmony in relationships.

Jesus exemplified perfect love through His sacrificial service. Returning to a right relationship with God aligns us with the example of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve. When we prioritize our relationship with God, we are empowered to serve others selflessly, meeting their needs and seeking their welfare.

As we journey through this Lenten season, let us heed the timeless call to return to God with our whole hearts. Just as the prophets of old urged Israel to turn back to the Lord, so too are we beckoned to recognize our stumbling, our spiritual fatigue, and our guilt, and to seek restoration in the loving embrace of our Heavenly Father.

Let us embrace this season of return as an opportunity for spiritual rejuvenation and growth, trusting in God's faithfulness to heal our wounds, to refresh our spirits, and to lead us into a deeper communion with Him. May our return to God be marked by a renewed fervor to love Him with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, thereby fulfilling the greatest commandment and bearing witness to the transformative power of God's love in our lives.

 

31st Week in OT 2019 - Wednesday - Indebted to God's love

In this last section of the letter to the Romans, St. Paul continues to elaborate on the moral and practical implications of the Gospel for Christians. He reiterates today the teaching of the Lord in the Gospel, summing up all the commands of the law into One Great Command: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

St. Paul contextualizes this commandment as a response to what Jesus has done for us in dying for us poor sinners. We have a debt, we owe a debt to God, to love others as we’ve been loved. So not only should we follow the Great Command to love our neighbor because the command came from the lips of Jesus Himself, St. Paul is saying, we must follow it for another reason, we owe it to God. Because we have been loved so extraordinarily loved by God, our lives are to be permeated with love for one another.

So this certainly causes us to reflect, to ask ourselves, “what is the motivating factor in our life?” Self-preservation? Accumulation of comfort? The seeking of novel pleasures? Or Love? If the answer is not love, something needs to change in us.

For Paul, love for others is a response to being loved by God. Many Christians don’t realize how loved they are. They never stop to look at a crucifix. They never consider the sad state of their souls. They live the unexamined life. Many do not consider what they owe to God. Many of us fall into a routine, in which we just go from one event to another, without considering how I am called to allow God’s love to permeate me and motivate me in this moment.

Paul became such a powerful preacher of the Gospel because of his conviction that he was a sinner who was lost, who has been saved by God’s love, who was now in the debt of God. Yet this experience of indebtedness to God became the starting point for a mission of love that changed the world.

May we take this message to heart, that we may be faithful to the great command to love God and neighbor wholeheartedly, to renounce all that keeps us from this love, as our Lord teaches in the Gospel, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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That the love of God and neighbor may permeate the life of every Christian.

For the strength to be faithful to all of the Lord’s commands and the grace and humility to repent of our failings.

That during this National Vocations Awareness Week our young people may respond generously to the call of the Lord to serve the Church.

That we may be attentive to the needs of the sick, the poor, and the despairing in our midst.

We pray in a special way during this month of November for all the faithful departed, for those whose names are written in our parish book of the names of the dead, all deceased members of St. Ignatius of Antioch Parish, and our deceased family members and friends, deceased clergy and religious, for the repose of the soul of Bishop Richard Lennon who will be buried today, for those who fought and died for our freedom and for X. for whom this mass is offered.

O God, you know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

August 23 2019 - St. Rose of Lima - A life of penance

St. Rose of Lima was a third order Dominican, the patroness of South America, the first canonized saint of that continent. She is also one of the patron saint of gardeners. Born in Lima, Peru in 1586 she worked even as a child to help support her family, growing flowers and doing embroidery and other needlework.

She was physically very beautiful, but consistently refused offers to marry, for she took a vow of virginity, and at the age of 20 became a third order Dominican and undertook serious penances and mortifications, modeling her spirituality after the extraordinary third order Dominican, St. Catherine of Siena. Rose lived a mostly secluded life, but also labored often amongst the poor and sick natives and slaves. She died at the young age of 31.

She has been given the title St. Rose of Penance, and wrote on the importance of penance for all Christians, saying “Without the burden of afflictions, it is impossible to reach the height of grace. The gift of grace increases as the struggle increases.”

To do penance and to labor for the Gospel even when those labors bring suffering upon ourselves, is to enter into the divine life, for Jesus himself embraced suffering on the cross for the salvation on our souls.

And When we hear in the Gospel today the command from the lips of Our Lord to love God and love neighbor, remember, love is not just a sentimental feeling. Love is the embrace of hard work for the good of others, it is the willingness to suffer for the one you love. So we should not shy away from the difficulties of living and spreading the Gospel, the difficulties of the works of charity, the self-sacrifice, the discipline, the fasting and penance, for they are opportunities to show our love and grow in love, as we are commanded to do.

St. Rose said, “No one would complain about his cross or about troubles that may happen to him if he could come to know the scales on which they are weighed” by God, the graces obtained when we embrace our cross with faith.

Listen again to the powerful collect for the st. rose today: “O God, you set St. Rose of Lima on fire with your love, so that, secluded from the world in the austerity of a life of penance, she might give herself to you alone; grant, we pray, that through her intercession, we may trad the paths of life on earth and drink at the stream of your delights in heaven.” For the glory of God and salvation of souls.
 
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For an increase in vocations to the consecrated religious life, and that our consecrated religious may continue to be a shining and burning light in the Church.
That the carrying of our crosses and penances may bring about deep conversion for ourselves and others.
That the young students of our school beginning classes this week may know the love of Christ in their families, that each school family may seek to practice right religion to the honor of God.
For mercy and peace for all those who suffer: for the sick and diseased, for those undergoing surgery this week, for the destitute and despairing, for all victims of war, violence, and abuse, and for those who will die today and the consolation of their families.
For the repose of the souls of our beloved dead, for all of the poor souls in purgatory, and for N., for whom this mass is offered.
O God, who know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

5th Week of Easter 2019 - Friday - A Heart Which Sees And Acts

One of my favorite Papal encyclicals of the last 20 years, is the first encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI titled “Deus Caritas Est”, God is Love. Holy Father chose to wrote the first encyclical of his pontificate on the subject of Christian love, WHY Christians are called to love, WHAT is Christian love, and HOW Christians are called to love.

The first question “why” is pretty clear to us. We are called to love because God is love and we are made in God’s image. The Gospel today answers that question too, we are called to love because Jesus has commanded us to. All of the commandments of the law are summed up in the command to love God and love neighbor.

The Holy Father then answers “what is love” by reflecting on the different concepts of love from theology and philosophy, eros, philia, and agape, and their relationship to Christ’s teaching. 

He then answers “how Christians are called to love” by showing how Christian charity is carried out in the different spheres of society, in politics, in what is often called “social justice”.

“The Christian's program” writes Benedict, “the program of Jesus—is “a heart which sees”. Christians are to attune their hearts to the heart of Jesus, and thereby develop a heart which sees what is needed, and acts accordingly. Jesus saw the need, the greatest need in the universe, the need for human redemption, our salvation from hell became God’s highest priority. He saw our need, and acted accordingly, laying down his life, embracing the cross and death for us, to save us. There is no greater love than his for us.

So, the Christian heart, attuned to Christ, through an encounter and recognition of his love, for us, for me and you personally, also sees the needs in the world, and acts accordingly.

Love, is not simply an emotion, or a feeling. Our Christian call to love isn’t simply to go through our neighborhoods and have fluffy feelings about everyone. Rather, the call to love, is a call to be attentive to need, and to act accordingly, to lay down our lives to bring Christ’s mercy into the lives of others, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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God the Father was glorified in the death and resurrection of his Son. Let us pray to him with all confidence.

God the Father bathed the world in splendor when Christ rose again in glory, may our minds be filled with the light of faith.

Through the resurrection of His Son, the Father opened for us the way to eternal life, may we be sustained today in our work with the hope of glory.

Through His risen Son, the Father sent the Holy Spirit into the world, may our hearts be set on fire with spiritual love.

May Jesus Christ, who was crucified to set us free, be the salvation of all those who suffer, particularly those who suffer from physical or mental illness, addiction, and grief.

For all of our young people beginning summer vacation, that they may be kept safe from all physical and spiritual evil, and be kept in close friendship with the Lord Jesus through the faith lives of their families.
That all of our beloved dead and all the souls in purgatory may come to the glory of the Resurrection.
O God, you know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the desires of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our lord.

3rd Week of Lent 2019 - Friday - Love God with your WHOLE heart

So many of the Lenten themes run throughout our reading from the prophet Hosea this morning: returning to God, pleading God’s mercy, God’s healing, God humbling the proud, leading the wise, and causing the sinner to stumble.

Yet, all of those Lenten themes can be summed up in the word’s offered by the Lord in the Gospel this morning: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Put simply: Lent exists so that we can experience God’s love for us and we can love others better.
God so desires the transformation of our hearts so we can experience all of the love he has for us, so that our hearts can in turn be free to love others with that same sort of love. To paraphrase Hosea again, God wants to heal the defects in our hearts, so that we can be loved more freely—more deeply, more fully.

Our sins have made us afraid of God’s love.  “Well, if I let him in, he might see all of me, he might see my secret sins, he might see the resentment I hold on to, some of the grief I’m not ready to let go of, some of the hurt that I’m not ready to be healed of.”  We are afraid to be encompassed in the consuming fire of God’s love, for we know that God’s consuming fire will change us.  We are afraid to trade anger for forgiveness, lust for purity, selfishness for selflessness. We are afraid to change, but we need to remember that the change God wants for us is always for the better, He has our best interests in mind, and he always provides the grace and help and aid for doing what he asks of us.

The Lord desires so much to heal from our sinful defections, and disordered desires and attachments, addictions, vices, and bad habits.  He so wants to transform our hearts so we can experience all of the love he has for us, so that our hearts can in turn be free to love others with that same sort of love.
At this point in Lent some of us begin to pull away from the prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to which we’ve committed. Yet, God wants to heal our hearts through those Lenten penances, again, to trade the love of things, of power, of wealth and fame, for the love of the Divine, love of service and penance, and self-forgetfulness for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That love of God and neighbor may mark the life of every Christian.

That all families will recommit themselves to fervent prayer this Lent so as to grow in greater love and holiness.  We pray to the Lord.

That this Lent we will be faithful to fasting and to all the ways that the Lord sanctifies us.  We pray to the Lord.

For generous giving for the needs of the poor, the hungry, the homeless, those who are sick, unemployed, victims of natural disaster, terrorism, war, and violence, the grieving and those most in need.  We pray to the Lord.

For all those who have died, for all the poor souls in purgatory, for those who have fought and died for our country’s freedom, and for [intention below], for whom this Mass is offered.  We pray to the Lord.

Mercifully hear, O Lord, the prayers of your Church and turn with compassion to the hearts that bow before you, that those you make sharers in your divine mystery may always benefit from your assistance.