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.