7th Week of OT 2020 - Tuesday - Lover of the World or Lover of God

On this final weekday before the great season of Lent we are asked by St. James: do you want to be a lover of the world or a lover of God?

Loving things, loving earthly pleasure, loving the world more than we love Christ harms our relationship with God and threatens our eternal welfare. St. James certainly echoes the teachings of the Lord in the Gospels who says, “No one can serve two masters: Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon”

Our spirits, James says, tend toward jealousy and envy and covetousness. Part of us, our concupiscible appetites, tends toward wanting and desiring too little of what it does need and too much of what it doesn’t. Too little prayer, too much power, pleasure, and wealth. Too little time kneeling in Church, too much time at the sports arena, the fast food shack, or as a couch potato.
James provokes us to repentance, to help us examine our lives to discover any incompatibility with the Divine Will, any inordinate love of the world, and to repent, to do penance to restrain our concupiscible appetites, and to redirect them to love and serve God.

Between delicious Pączki today, we do well consider and to ask the Holy Spirit to help us identify what parts of us need to be reined in during lent, what appetites need to be suppressed and redirected. One way to identify these areas might be to simply ask, at the end of the day, what kept me from the prayer and service to which I know God is calling me? What earthly attachments keep me from the gentleness and generosity of Christ?

And once identified, to ask the Holy Spirit to help us fast from these things during Lent.

We won’t regret our fasting, in fact, St. James promises that our regrets from indulging our appetites will be turned into joy, our pride and self-centeredness will be transformed into exaltation in the living God.

May we generously turn toward the Holy Spirit’s guidance today, and prepare well for the season of penance, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the Holy Spirit may direct the appointment of a new Bishop for the Church of Cleveland, that he may be a man of true wisdom and understanding and fidelity to the Gospel

That young people may seek Christ amidst all the filth and evils of the world, and for the protection of innocent human life from evil.

For the grace to cooperate with the Divine Will today in all things and in the upcoming Lenten season.

For healing for all those suffering disease, for those afflicted with the Coronavirus, and all who are oppressed by any kind of need, that the Lord may graciously grant them relief, and For the Holy Father’s prayer intentions for this month: that the needs of migrants and victims of human trafficking may be heard and acted upon.

For the dead, for all of the souls in purgatory, and for X, for whom this Holy mass is offered.
O God, our refuge and our strength, hear the prayers of your Church, for you are the source of all goodness, and grant, we pray, that what we ask in faith, we may truly obtain. Through Christ our Lord.