Palm Sunday

We are entering the holiest week of the year: we celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ!  Easter can be a beautiful time filled with family and travels and preparations and celebrations (and I hope it is for you), but I encourage you, in the midst of all the preparations, to set aside some special time for the Lord.  This Holy Week, for you, will only be as “holy” as you make it – so let’s make it a good one!

(The Triduum is the Church’s liturgical celebration beginning on Holy Thursday with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, continuing on Good Friday with the special veneration of the cross, and concluding with the Saturday night Easter Vigil – one of the most ancient and beautiful liturgies the Church has to offer.  If you have never tried to attend the special Triduum liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil, I would highly recommend you put that near the top of your bucket list.  Have a blessed Holy Week!)

4th Sunday of Lent

I can name plenty of ways that I would be able to grow and improve; I know plenty of  areas in my life that could use some more attention and strengthening; I am a work in progress.  And Lent is about opening myself to be changed and transformed by God, because God wants to work on me as well!  God wants to make me a better me, to make me into the person He has created me to be – both for myself and others.  Paul says in our second reading that we are God’s “handiwork”.  May our Lenten practices and resolutions open us up to the ways that God wants to work on our lives and transform them for the better!

3rd Sunday of Lent

Every time we say “yes” to something, we’re at the same time saying “no” to lots of other things.  When we say “yes” to someone in marriage, we’re saying “no” to all of the other people we could possibly spend our life with.  When we say “yes” to having kids, we’re saying “no” to lots of our freedom and comfort…and sleep.  When we say “yes” to God, when we decide to enter into a relationship with God, that means we are also saying “no” to lots of other things.  But for the sake of that relationship, those “no’s'” are entirely worth it!  I’d invite you today to rethink how you see the rules, regulations and practices God asks of us in the Bible and through the Catholic Church.  Maybe all these little  “no’s” are actually beautiful (sometimes inconvenient and difficult, but beautiful) ways that we can live out our big “yes” to God.

2nd Sunday of Lent

In our first reading this weekend we hear the seemingly troubling story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his only son.  Certain situations in our lives, too, can make it seem like God is distant, cruel or mean.  Yet, in the end, this story proves God’s trustworthiness and faithfulness.  Jesus believed in the Father’s trustworthiness and faithfulness, even it led him to crucifixion and death…but that crucifixion and death led to the resurrection and eternal life for all of us!  Today let us thank God for his faithfulness to us, and ask that we might, through this journey of Lent, become more faithful to Him and more trusting of His ways.

Palm Sunday

We are entering into the holiest week of the year as we join Jesus for his final days of earthly life: partaking with his disciples at the Last Supper, grieving with his followers as he is led to the cross and crucified, waiting in silence as he lies in the grave, and then rejoicing with the whole world as he rises from the dead!  I know this is a busy time – lots of preparation for Easter and family and travels…but in the midst of this week, take some time to join the Father in “paying a visit”, if you will, to the grave of Jesus, so that come Easter Sunday you can experience in a new and deeper way the unbelievable power of the resurrection!

4th Sunday of Lent

A Catholic university professor once asked a group of his students how they would respond if they were to die that very night, appear before God, and be asked the question, “Why should I let you into heaven?”  All the answers had one thing in common: they were all wrong.  The answers revolved around the things we do for God.  But the Good News of the Gospel is that it’s all about what God has done for us!  Jesus Christ came to this earth to carry the weight of our sins, to suffer and die for us, so that we could enjoy eternal life with Him!  Any good that we do…it’s because of what God first did for us!

3rd Sunday of Lent

In the Gospel today, as Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at the well, He proves how God is not slowed down in the slightest by our unworthiness or mistakes or sinfulness: God still thirsts for this woman’s faith and trust. Even though she is in what we’d call today an “irregular marital situation” (married 5 times and currently living with a man who’s not her husband) Jesus still offers to her the Holy Spirit.  Jesus thirsts for each and every one of us, too – God thirsts for souls!  Will you give Him a drink of yours?

2nd Sunday of Lent

In the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John glimpse for a moment Jesus as He truly is, in His radiant glory as God.  The voice of the Father proclaims “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” and Jesus takes the compliment, allowing it to strengthen Him for his coming suffering and death in Jerusalem.  By our baptism, we are made radiant as God’s children as well, and the Father says to us, “You are my beloved child, with you I am well pleased!”  Those words are meant to strengthen us for the struggles in life, not to be pushed out by all the excuses we come up with.  Do you know how to take the compliment?

1st Sunday of Lent

Our readings today present us the with tale of 2 men:  The 1st man – Adam – and the New Adam – Jesus Christ.  Both are tempted by the serpent.  The Old Adam falls and turns away from the Father; the New Adam stands strong in faithfulness to His Father.  This Lent is a journey into the desert with Jesus.  It will be a time of testing and temptation for us just as it was for Him.  In the face of the temptations to come, will we be like the Old Adam, or the New Adam?