Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
In today’s Gospel about the man cured of his blindness we see the struggle between belief and unbelief, the expected and the unexpected as Jesus performs an extraordinary miracle. On the one hand we have this man miraculously cured of his blindness by Christ, and on the other, we have the Pharisees. The Pharisees doubt Jesus’ power because they see God only as they want to see Him, rather than as He truly is.
Too often we act more like the Pharisees than the blind man. We refuse to see God working right in front of us because it is not the way we want God to work. Like the Pharisees, we become comfortable with the systems, institutions, and rules we put before us so that when God does something “outside the box” we react with doubt and disbelief, ridiculing the ones who bring us God’s message. This was the struggle of the Pharisees; they confused the message with the messenger. Because of their own expectations and false ideas about God they have judged this man and therefore close their hearts to God, “You were born totally in sin, and you are trying to teach us?”
Today, therefore, we see that Christ desires to come to us in our blindness and that it is only by admitting our blindness and our need for Christ that we can come to be healed, to see clearly, and have life. If we seek to confine Christ, giving Him only certain parameters through which His grace can touch our hearts, then we will turn into the Pharisees and no longer see Christ at work today. This is what our Lenten practices are all about, helping us to deconstruct those things which truly make us blind so that we can see Christ clearly and come to believe in Him.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us thus ask Christ to come into that area of our hearts in which we are still blind and ask Him to heal us. Let us pray for the grace to be able to examine our lives, not out of fear, but in hope; so that by admitting our faults and failings, we can find our merciful Savior gazing upon us with Love, freeing us from our sin and leading us to union with Him for eternity!
Peace in Christ,
Fr. Chris
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Today, I would like to finish our reflection on the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent (Matthew 4:1-11). Our first reflection was concerned with the work of God and the temptation to reduce it to the mere satisfaction of worldly needs. Last week, we looked at Satan's second temptation: to test God as if he were a mere worldly product, thus distorting man's proper relationship with God. In the third temptation, Satan tries to confuse Jesus about God's true identity.
In this temptation, Satan takes Jesus up to a very high mountain, shows Him all the kingdoms of the world, and then promises Him all of these kingdoms if He is willing to prostrate Himself before Satan and worship him as if he were God. This particular temptation is a distortion of the identity of God as the one to whom all worship is directed. Satan is more or less asking Jesus to treat him as if he were something else. Satan is not God. He is merely a fallen angel. Jesus knows this. Jesus knows that Satan is not to be worshipped. This is why Jesus responds with the words, "The Lord your God shall you worship and him alone shall you serve."
This is an all too familiar temptation for us. How often are we tempted to worship something that isn't God? All the time! We put so many things before God: sports, work, money, sex, power, popularity, television, household chores, etc… When any one of these things becomes more important than our relationship with God, when we compromise our faith in order to acquire some other kind of security or worldly pleasure, we have committed a form of idolatry. As Catholics, we know who God is. Yet, for some reason, we continue to live our lives as if He isn't God. Lent is an opportunity for us to change this. It is an opportunity for us to stop worshiping false Gods, and to start worshiping Jesus as the true God.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us ask the Lord during this Lenten season to increase our desire for Jesus Christ and decrease our desire for worldly things so that we do not fall into the sin of idolatry. May God help us to burn with love for Christ, so that we might be the amazing instruments of His glory that He has created us to be. May we have the courage and fortitude to stand strong in the face of temptation and rejoice in the victory won by Jesus' self gift on the Cross.
Peace in Christ, Fr. Will
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Today, I would like to continue with our reflection on the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent (Matthew 4:1-11). Last week, we looked at the Satan's first temptation: to reduce the work of God to the mere satisfaction of physical needs (to turn stones into bread). In the second temptation, Satan tries a different tactic.
In this temptation, Satan takes Jesus to the parapet of the Temple and asks Jesus to test God by jumping off the parapet to see if the angels will really come to his aid and protect him from falling. In this temptation, Satan is challenging the appropriate relationship that man is called to have with God. Satan is asking Jesus to "test" His Heavenly Father to ensure His love for Him. This is an easy temptation to fall into. Haven't we all asked ourselves the following question, "If God really is who He says He is, then why not make him prove it?" The problem with this line of thinking is that God isn't some material product that we can test. He is not something that we create and manipulate. He is a person to be known and loved, not a product to be tested. The second temptation is to reverse the roles of the man/God relationship: to make ourselves the Creator and to make God our creation.
In the movie, Prince Caspian, Peter asks Lucy a challenging question: "If Aslan was going to help us, wouldn't he have proven himself to us already?" Lucy's response is profound: "Maybe it isn't Aslan who needs to prove himself to us, maybe it is us who need to prove ourselves to Aslan." In this scene Peter has fallen prey to the second temptation of Christ. He has fallen into the trap of making himself the Creator and God the creation to be tested. The only way to know and love God is to approach Him as He is and as we are. We must approach the Lord as humble creatures desiring to know our beautiful Creator. We fall into this temptation when we pridefully make demands of God as if He owed us something. The truth that we must come to understand is that everything we have is a gift from God. He owes us nothing. Rather, we owe him everything.
Brothers and sisters, let us not distort our relationship with God. May this season of Lent be a reminder for us that God is not a product to be tested, but a person to be known and loved. May our spiritual practices this Lent help us grow in humility so that we can come to know the greatness of Jesus Christ.
Peace in Christ,
Fr. Will
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
In today's Gospel (Matthew 4:1-11), Satan tries to tempt Jesus by challenging Him over three important topics: the work of God, man's relationship with God, and the identity of God. For the next three weeks, I would like to use my bulletin letter to review these three significant temptations and how they connect to our lives.
The first temptation deals with the issue of the true nature of the work of God, and is presented in the suggestion that Jesus should turn stones into bread. Jesus has been wandering around in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights and hasn't eaten a thing. We can imagine that Jesus was very hungry. Satan tries to convince Jesus that if He is the Son of God, then he should satisfy His hunger by transforming the stones around Him into food for Him to eat. This seems like a very logical thing to do. After all, isn't the quickest way to a man's heart through his stomach? Yet, Jesus doesn't fall into Satan's trap. Jesus recognizes that His real "hunger" is not for food, but for souls. What Jesus longs for most is not the satisfaction of worldly desires, but the restoration of man's relationship with God. Jesus knows that He did not come into the world merely to bring about worldly satisfaction. In other words, the true nature of the mission and work of God is not merely to feed the hungry stomach, but the hungry soul. This is why Jesus responds to Satan with the words, "One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God."
We fall prey to Satan's trap when we reduce the faith to mere charitable works. We fall into this specific temptation when we think that if we do some charitable work like feeding the homeless, that we have satisfied the Gospel demand and that God will now turn his eyes away from our own sinfulness. The Lord, first and foremost, desires the sinner to repent of his own sinfulness. This is why the words spoken to us as we received our ashes on Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) was, "Repent and believe in the Gospel!" Once we have experienced the mercy and forgiveness of Christ, then the repentant sinner is called to do charitable works in His glorious name. The social teachings of the Church and the Gospel demand to live them out find their origin and strength in an encounter with the love and mercy of Jesus Christ. We must never forget that the work of God is primarily (not secondarily) the forgiveness of sins. If we do one thing this Lent and nothing else, we should make sure to go to confession. It is the most important thing that we can do.
READ MOREDear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Too often we find ourselves overly preoccupied with worldly things. How many times have we found ourselves saying things like, "I can't be happy without this career, without this particular relationship, or without this level of income?" We become so sucked into the things of this world that we become slaves to it, and lose our freedom to love God with all our mind, heart, and soul.
In today's Gospel (Matthew 6:24-34), Jesus reminds us of the important truth that we cannot live for God and worldly things at the same time. Otherwise, we will end up loving the world and not God. A preoccupation with worldly things distracts us from the spiritual life and causes us to fall into sin.
In the Gospel, God is not telling us that we should never be concerned with food, clothing, or shelter. Rather, God is telling us that our concern for such things should always be set in the context of our first and most important concern: our love and complete devotion to God. Food, clothing, and shelter are means to an end. They serve as sustenance and support for our mission as disciples of Christ. When we make the acquisition of wealth the focal point of our life, the love of God fades into the background until it can no longer be found. We cannot allow the worries of the world to cause our love and devotion for God to fade away. Nothing should separate us from having a strong spiritual life in Christ.
READ MORE