Readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021824.cfm
Occasionally people offer insights about preachers, here is an example, “A preacher is someone who talks in other people’s sleep.” [Fr. William Bausch] I hope and pray that you don’t nap now, even if you need to offer listening to me as a Lenten sacrifice.
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Lent is a Special Time to Pause for prayer, for some solitude and for a look at our discipleship. God saved Noah with The Ark and waters, and God saved us by The Word and the waters of Baptism.
Lent is a New Beginning”!
In her song “How Deep” Eliza Gilkyson sings a powerful and haunting question on life, “Did I let my tears fall at the wonder of it all, but most of all how deep did I love.” Lent calls each one of us to ask, how deep did I love, How deep do I love God? Have I offered God my tears & thanked God for the wonder of it all?
Lent provides us the opportunity to Double-Down as disciples of Jesus Christ, to Receive His Word & allow it to penetrate us to the core. Lent reminds us to Love of God & love of neighbor, as the center of our lives. All three Synoptic Gospels recount Jesus’ desert experience but only Mark offers us this detail about Jesus “being among wild beasts, & the angels ministered to him.” Christ calls us to recognize the wastelands of sin in our lives & refashion our lives with the Kingdom of God as our North Star.
The Scripture Readings for Lent call us to repent. In Hebrew, the word for repentance is to turn, like the turning of the earth to the sun at this time of year or like the turning of soil before spring planting, Our Lenten began on Ash Wednesday with a call to turn away from those things that separate us from God. “Christ is the water that does not drown us but slakes [quenches] our thirst & cleans our sins.” [The Embodied, John Kavanaugh, S. J.] “To serve God well, a person …. has to do those things that God has called him [her] to do.” [Eleonore Stump, Sunday Website at St. Louis University, 2/07/2021]
Lent’s 40 Days seem daunting, so maybe this story can help us:
“One Spring day man was driving home from work, when he spotted a little league baseball game and he decided to stop and watch. As he sat on the bleachers & asked one of the players what the score was. "We’re behind 14 to nothing," the kid with a smile. The man said, "Really, … you don’t look very discouraged." "Discouraged?" the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. "Why should we be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet." [Adopted from We Haven't Been Up to Bat Yet, Brett Blair - Sermons.com]
I offer you this advice for Lent – Don’t Be Discouraged and Choose something that will help you grow closer to God. If it helps continue it after Lent ends. I began my homily with a short vignette, so I want to close with one. George Burns said, “The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning, a good ending; And to have the two as close together as possible.”
I hope I did that today; may your Lent be a blessed one.
May God Be Praised.
*Brother Mickey McGrath’s artwork is available at: https://www.bromickeymcgrath.com/
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