Isaiah 58:1-9
                                          
What fills up my thoughts, words and actions – my own agenda or God’s interests?  My own interests include saving face, saving my own skin, and saving money at all costs, not to mention my plans, possessions and complaints. God’s interests are quite different.  Isaiah lists a few: loosening the bonds of injustice, undoing the thongs of immoral servitude, letting the oppressed go free, sharing (breaking) bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor home, covering those who are stripped of clothing and dignity, and getting along with ‘family’, both extended and nuclear. This Lent will I be consumed with my own, puny and pecuniary, interests or will I be aligned and actively involved in heart, mind, soul and strength with the interests of God? Help me serve not my own but your interests, O God.
                                                                              
Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.   (Deuteronomy 3:19)
Love is a one-way street.  It always moves away from self in the direction of the other.  Love is the ultimate gift of our selves to others.  When we stop giving we stop loving, when we stop loving we stop growing, and unless we grow we will never attain personal fulfillment; we will never open out to receive the life of God.  It is through love we encounter God.
 St. Teresa of Calcutta  (Where there is Love, there is God, p. 26)
 
 
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Soli ad gloriam Dei

Luke 9:22-25
                                        
Jesus, as the Son of God, denied his right to rule the world that he had created and chose instead unflinching obedience to the love and truth of God.  This resulted in great suffering and eventually the loss of his life by rejection, torture and crucifixion.  As a human being I deny myself by denying my right to always be right, my right to hold onto resentments in my being, and my right to always be comfortable and satisfied. This requires that I, like Jesus, am unflinchingly obedient to the love and truth of God, by loving my enemies and my neighbours, by living within a ‘righteous’, if uncomfortable, life style, by speaking the truth when asked, and by forgiving those who trespass (my boundaries) against me.  Such obedience to the way of Christ can, and will at times, result in suffering.  It could happen that I am stripped of my own human rights in order to stand in solidarity with Jesus and through others who are dis-enfranchised from mainstream society. It may also mean that I am rejected by many individuals and perhaps even all institutions. It could even mean that I lose my life in this world.  That’s OK.  As my life has unfolded, particularly over the past two decades, I am realizing little by little, that all the greatest things in life – the sweetness of prayer, the freedom of fasting, the contemplation of the mysteries of creation, and the deep joys of unselfish love – are not only free but are life-giving in a way that nothing I can purchase with fame or fortune can be. As I learn this way of the cross I rely on Christ’s counsel that as I lose my life for his sake, that is,for his over-arching redemption of the world, I gain more and more Life and Love, Light and even Laughter.  This season of Lent, will I willingly give up my ‘rights’, and unflinchingly take up the challenge of the cross, no matter how heavy, how hard, how uncomfortable, it is for me, and follow Christ Jesus?  Holy Spirit of Jesus, teach me how to deny myself, take up my cross and follow you.  
                                                                              
Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.   (Deuteronomy 3:19)
 
Listen and attend with the ear of your heart.
St. Benedict
 
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Soli ad gloriam Dei

 
Psalm 51 & Matthew 6:1-18

One of the most frustrating aspects of human character is its leaning towards fickleness and acedia*. With good intention, how often do I set out for myself exercises and disciplines to ‘get back on track’, or to ‘do better’ – and within days, if not hours, slip up ‘just once’, and then forever. It takes patience and perseverance, not to mention discernment and self discipline – and detachment and sheer strength –to fight acedia and maintain a spirit that is always open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and willing to just do it. Forty long days of Lenten fasting, praying, and giving of alms lie before me. Will I allow God to sustain in me a willing spirit that helps me live beyond the quick sands of acedia with all its despondency and despair, into the lively salvation of Christ Jesus? Holy Spirit of Jesus, sustain in me a willing spirit. 
                                                                              
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)
 
Act as if every day were the last of your life, and each action the last you perform.  
St. Alphonsus Liguori
 
* See THE NOONDAY DEVIL: ACEDIA, THE UNNAMED EVIL OF OUR TIMES
byDom Jean-Charles Nault
 
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Soli ad gloriam Dei
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

James 3:13-18 & Mark 9:14-29  
 
We live in treacherous times. Laws, leaders, and legislatures, not to mention the Church, are being distorted and stretched beyond recognition, while human life becomes more susceptible to super-bugs and systemic collapse.  Despair seems to be our inevitable future – or is it? In times like these, the appropriate response is not despair but repentance, that is mourning the distance beween us and God, and collectively and individually turning back to our deeply spiritual roots. Through repentance, we turn back to God and allow him to purify our hearts, minds, souls and strength so that we, like the disciples, can cast out this kind by prayer and fasting, and by doing so, allow the fire of the Holy Spirit of God to burn away all that is impure, and all that is not holy truth and holy love.  As the season of Lent approaches, let us (let me) examine [my] very being  and repent so that I am free to fully live into the purposes and plans of the Holy Spirit of God, despite the failures and foibles of human kind.  This year will I participate fully in the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting and charitable giving and so enter into the purifying (if unnerving) designs of God? Flame of the Holy Spirit, purify my thoughts, words and actions.   
                                                                              
The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are True, and righteous altogether. (Psalm 19:9)
 
Act as if every day were the last of your life, adn each action the last you perform.  
St. Alphonsus Liguori
 
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Soli ad gloriam Dei

1 Peter 5:1-4 & James 2, 14-26
                                           
As adults, we have the responsibility to be an example of all things good to others so that when they follow our words and actions they live into their heritage of truth and love as children of God. The one pointed life lesson Jesus gave us one week before his death was to wash the feet of his disciples, commanding his followers to ‘do as I have done to you.’ By this, Jesus pointed each of his followers both then and now, in the direction of service. What does service Jesus’ way look like?  Service as a follower of Jesus means providing constant, humble, open-hearted, and quiet acts of kindness to others with no thought of return. As an adult, do I ‘Lord it over others in my charge,’ like the bosses of this world,  or do I conduct my life as an expression of service to those around me, as Jesus did during his time on earth? Holy Spirit of Jesus, help me be an example of service to others.
                                                                              
Those who walk blamelessly and do what is right... shall never be moved.   (Psalm 15:1,5)
 
Listen and attend with the ear of your heart.
St. Benedict
 
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Soli ad gloriam Dei