Fr. Mike's Gospel Reflection - March 9, 2025

Lent is a period of forty days. During the Great Flood, heavy rain poured down on the earth for forty days. After Jesus was baptized by John, the Spirit led Him into the desert for forty days.

The forty days of the flood allowed Noah to prepare for the new world that would await him. The forty days of fasting and temptation by Satan in the desert allowed Jesus to prepare for the ministry that he was about to undertake. The forty days of Lent allow us to prepare for the great feast of Easter. We cannot properly approach Easter and joyfully share in the great mystery of Christ’s resurrection unless we prepare. We do this in two ways – we recognize our sinfulness and we take steps to overcome that sinfulness.

Before the flood, God looked over the earth and saw a lot of sinfulness. If we are honest with ourselves, we would also see a lot of sinfulness if we look carefully at how we live our lives. A good examination of conscience helps us to identify sinful behaviors.

When we identify sin, we can confront it and try to overcome it. We don’t overcome anything by running away from it. We have to recognize our demons and then face them. That is what Jesus did in the desert. He faced the devil. By facing our demons, like Jesus did in the desert, we can conquer them.

One way to conquer our demons is to introduce good behaviors into our lives. During Lent, we have the chance to become better people by praying more, doing more for those who are less fortunate, focusing on others instead of ourselves. Our Lenten Outreach program gives us the ability to financially support important charitable causes. Alternatively, entire families can come together to perform good works in support of those in need.

We also pray the “Way of the Cross” during Lent. This is also called “Stations of the Cross.” If you look on the back wall of the church, you will see fourteen images of end of Jesus. We focus on these images to prepare for Easter by reminding ourselves of His great sacrifice. Join us each Friday as we pray the Stations and then have a light dinner of soup.

I wish you all a blessed time of Lenten preparation.

Fr. Mike's Gospel Reflection - March 2, 2025

Praise no one before he speaks, for it is then that people are tested. (Sirach 27:7)

It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt of it. (Attributed to various sources)

These two quotes help us to appreciate the value of sometimes remaining quiet. Yet, we rarely value silence. We are thrilled when our children begin to speak and we celebrate our child’s first words. We are decidedly less enthusiastic about how well our children listen. This tends to be reversed when our children are teenagers. At that point, we would be ecstatic if they would argue less and listen more carefully.

Much of our prayer tends to be us talking to God, often seeking specific outcomes – a better job, a higher grade, a cure, etc. Sometimes, we are simply reading “standard” prayers with minimal attention to the substance. For me, this happens when I recite Morning or Evening prayer in a distracted way. When I catch myself mindlessly saying the words, I have to start over to even know what I was praying about.

Often when we pray, we are totally focused on speaking about ourselves. Yet, true prayer should not be a litany of all that we believe is good or bad. If prayer is a conversation with God, it has to be more meaningful than our mere listing of what we like and don’t like about our lives. We must allow time for God to speak. Of course, during prayer, the time that we are “listening” for God’s response is often filled with silence. That generally makes us uneasy and we feel compelled to once again begin babbling on about our problems, hopes and dreams.

If you went to visit a doctor, rambled on endlessly about your ailments, and then left the appointment without hearing a word from the doctor, your visit would not have been very productive. Yet, that is precisely how many of us engage in prayer with God. We recite rote prayers for some specified amount of time or some specified number of repetitions, but we never set aside time to simply be quiet. The next time that we pray, we may want to remember the excellent advice of Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God.”

Fr. Mike's Gospel Reflection - February 23, 2025

This week’s Gospel is a continuation of “The Sermon on the Plain” in which Jesus lays out many of His expectations about how we should act toward one another. It is more detailed version of “Love one another.” He apparently does not trust his followers (or us) to understand what “Love one another” actually looks like in real life, so he gives some very clear examples.

Jesus immediately gets our attention by telling us to love our enemies and pray for those who mistreat us. That is not exactly what most of us have in mind. It is even more troubling when we realize that He is just getting started. The teachings that follow challenge us to act exactly contrary to how we might instinctively act and He is not just talking about being more courteous to one another in the parking lot after mass (although that would be nice). Jesus makes it very clear that He is a disruptive force; that the same old ideas and actions are not good enough; and, that we need to listen carefully and make some serious adjustments to the way that we think, speak, and act.

Considering that the Jews were hoping that their Messiah was going to free them from Roman oppression, this was not a welcome message at all. I’m guessing that most of them felt angry and betrayed. Yet, if we fail to take His message seriously, we are missing one of the three essential Catholic beliefs about Jesus: He rose from the dead; He is really present in the Eucharist; and, He expects us to love one another. None of these is easy to accept. In fact, His message of love is completely counter-cultural. Yet, He never waivers from His very clear instructions.

What exactly does that mean for all of us? Our Lord’s message today is nearly impossible to follow. Does that mean we should ignore it totally and just go about our lives like everyone else? Perhaps a better approach would be to work harder every single day to aspire to be the kind of man or woman that Jesus describes. We give glory to God in our striving to follow His teaching. Of course, we will fail often, but if we try relentlessly, we will ultimately succeed when we are called to eternal life.