Fourth Sunday of Lent

God is love. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians lays out what love means. He writes, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (1 Cor 13: 4-8). God is all these things, because He is love.

Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, today's second reading, tells us what that love is able to do for us. God's love has the power to heal and transform. He has reconciled us to Him. He does not want us to be lost and wandering in the desert like the Israelites in last week's readings. He does not want us to squander our lives, and live apart from Him, like this week's prodigal son. He, like the father in the gospel, stands at the gate, day after day, waiting for us.

The power of God's love is transformative. He makes all things new. St. Paul tells us, “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation.” When we seek God, not only do we we seek a new way of life, we are able to find it. Like the father in the gospel, God is always there waiting for us. When He sees us on the horizon, He runs to us, and embraces us. He desires to have us as His own, to bring us into His love, and to change our lives. Like the son in the gospel, we sometimes feel we must grovel our way back. It is much simpler to remember that God is love, and He waits for our return.

Food for the journey (Vol 7)

After a brief hiatus due to travel and visitors, Food for the journey has returned. I pray that just one of these thoughts can touch your heart and awaken it to God's mighty love.


Prayer of the week

I am bending my knee
In the eye of the Father who created me,
In the eye of the Son who died for me,
In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed me,
In love and desire.

Pour down upon us from heaven
The rich blessing of Your forgiveness;
Be patient with us.

Grant to us, Saviour of Glory,
The fear of God, the love of God, and His affection,
And the will of God to do on earth at all times
As angels and saints do in heaven;

Each day and night give us Your peace.
Each day and night give us Your peace.
-Scottish prayer translated from Gaelic and the King's English.


From the saints
We can see neither our own dignity nor the defects which spoil the beauty of our soul, unless we look at ourselves in the peaceful sea of God's being in which we are imagined.
- St. Catherine of Sienna

Quote of the week
To hate someone won't change anything, but to love someone will.
-Mother Antonia

Scripture of the week
Beloved, we are God's children now, what we shall be has not yet been revealed. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure as he is pure
-1 John 3:2-3

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification:

Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself. (2 Cor 5:17-18.)
-CCC 1999

One more thought
The cross is God's way of saying, “I don't hold anything against you.”

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

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I understand why my child cries, because life is hard. And it just gets harder as we get older. We scrape our knees, we have to go to bed before we feel like it, we have to get up too early in the morning. Sometimes even worse things meet us. Our parents get divorced or separate. Our parents stay together and fight. We fight with our best friends. People we think are our friends abandon us. We struggle through the angst and humiliation of junior high school. In high school we've got trouble dating and with grades. We wonder, what am I supposed to do when I grow up? College? Travel? Work? Which college? Which career? How will I pay the bills? Where will I live? How will I survive in this world? What? My mother has breast cancer? What? My father had a heart attack? What? My brother is getting deployed to Iraq? What?

St. John of the Cross wrote of a dark night of the soul. The dark night is a time centered on doubts about ones faith, not believing in God or questioning religion. This time is extremely hard and could result in a total loss of faith. St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Paul of the Cross and Mother Teresa of Calcutta all experienced this dark time of faith and they are considered supremely holy people.

We are called to be holy. Sometimes the journey of life and holiness can take us through dark places: death, illness, disease, war, hurt within families, extreme self doubt. Many of us have experienced times when we though we could not go on living, or we thought God had completely abandoned us, or we didn't see the point of religion, or faith, or believing in goodness at all! But during the entire time, God is with us. He is spiritually bringing us along, gently patting us on the back, wiping away our tears. He is whispering encouraging things in our ears and helping us pick up the broken pieces to become whole again. With patience, our dark nights are times of transformation, resulting in a new, more renewed faith when the light shines again.

The poem "Footprints" by Mary Stevenson describes this situation quite perfectly, when it says, “'But I have noticed during the most trying periods of my life there have only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why when I needed you most, have you not been there for me? ' The Lord replied, 'The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand, is when I carried you.'”

God carries us through all of the hard times, and through every dark night. It is for this reason that God told Paul," My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." When we can no longer rely on ourselves, we tend to rely fully on God. It is our job to remember God's words in the hard places. We are strong because during our weakness, we allow the Master of the Universe to guide our lives with his love and strength. We should also remember Paul's anthem, "for when I am weak, then I am strong." and make it our own.

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

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The second reading urges us to go further in our faith then we had before. We may have come to mass today, we may have prayed, worshiped and loved our neighbor. But do we give freely of what God has given to us? We need to take from our abundance and give to others, and when others have more, they shall give to us. Abundance is not always in the form of money or goods, it can come in the form of love and compassion. Even a child knows this rule. When they see someone sad, they have innate ability to feel the sadness and comfort their neighbor out of the abundance of their love.

God made us to be everlasting. In the garden of eden, we were made to live forever. Desire, want, and greed, prompted by the serpent drove mankind to take from the forbidden fruit and death was the punishment. However, if we are born again in Christ, then we are free from death. Should we not also be free from desire, want and greed? If we have much, let us give it to those who are in need. If we have little, let us share what we can when we can. If we always shared what we had, then those without would not need to desire, want nor feel envious of what others have. They would know that if their neighbor has something that they would like, they only need to ask, and that neighbor will share with them.

Last week, we examined God's might and power over all creation, and placing our trust in God's providence. We also had the opportunity to sign letters to our congresspersons regarding policies that would fight worldwide poverty. After the 6 o'clock mass, there was another opportunity to address poverty. A man was standing outside of church with a sign that asked for help for him and his children. He had lost his job and could not pay his rent. His older daughter was at the exit of the parking lot. It is challenging to see people begging, but especially outside of our church, and especially when we had just been asking others to help fight poverty. How did we respond as a community to this man and his family? Did they go home hungry that night? Did they lose their apartment? I don't know. What I do know is that God has showed us the ultimate sign of generosity. God has asked us to respond accordingly. Our abundance must meet the needs of others.

In the Gospel, Jesus performed many miracles, and we are challenged to do the same. Giving of ourselves can help make miracles happen. This week, I leave you with a prayer written by St. Teresa of Avila, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours, yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion is to look out to the earth, yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.”

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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In Job, God describes his mighty works of bringing forth water to the earth and marking its boundaries. This reading provides an illusion to both the creation story and to the great flood of Noah's time. After the flood, God promised not to destroy the world again with a flood and he marked his promise with the bow in the sky. This was the first covenant that God ever made with mankind.

Water has the ability to bring, renew, and destroy life. By the waters of baptism we die to our fleshly lives and are born again into our spiritual selves. As the second reading tells us, whoever is in Christ is no longer a man or woman or child, but a new creation in God. Our old selves of fear, worry, doubt and shame should have passed away and we should trust in God's providence. The love that Christ has for us should bring us comfort and strength because we know Christ not as an earthly man, but as our Savior who loved us enough to die for us. As a baptized believer in Christ, we are born again into this spirit and should be free of fleshly cares.
However, to trust in God is not always easy. We have to put away our own thoughts and desires so that we can follow God's. We cannot view the world as the world views it – with fear and worry. We must view the world as God sees it – with love and the greater plan in mind. At times, our faith allows us to do this.

In the Gospel of Mark, earlier in the day the disciples had heard many parables from Jesus regarding faith taking root and growing (the parable of the sower, the seed upon rocky ground, and the mustard seed parables). The storm was an opportunity for their seeds to take root and bloom, but the seed did not take root and their faith in Jesus faltered. They weren't able to trust him, they feared their destruction in the storm. Even though they doubted and were afraid, Jesus acts to calm the seas. He shows his authority over nature just as God did in the creation stories, just as God did for Noah's family, and just as God described his power to Job.

Anxiety can keep us from the true peace that Christ offers us. Faith in God's providence can bring calmness into our lives. When we fear the world around us, we remember the words of the apostles, but have faith as we cry out to the Lord, “Do you not care that I am perishing?” Ask and you shall receive. The Lord will provide for your needs. Trust Him.