Our Florida weather has been getting
a bit balmy, so it's hard to realize other states are struggling with
snowstorms.
And I don’t
know about you, but I have been reading signs more carefully. Here are two that
made me stop and think:
In an office:
After
tea/coffee break, empty the pots and stand upside down on the drain
board.
Outside a
thrift shop:
We exchange anything—bicycles,
appliances, etc. Bring your husband or wife and
get a bargain!
Did I read
these signs right?!
Last Wednesday, we began
our Lenten journey from Ashes to Easter. Lent is a time to renew ourselves, a time
for a change of heart: to become more aware of God’s presence in our daily
life; and to pay closer attention to the needs of one another.
In the Gospel passage,
Jesus is in the wilderness for 40 days, where he overcomes dark or evil forces
of human existence, and then begins his public ministry of preaching that the
kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe in the Good News.
My good friends, this
Lenten season let us examine the course or direction of our own lives. Are we
on the right track? Do we have our priorities straight? If we’re a bit off
course, how can we get back in the groove?
The Church offers three
Lenten practices to help us steer in the right direction: prayer, fasting and
almsgiving.
Let's treat ourselves to
these three ages-old disciplines of our Christian/Catholic community.
•
Yes, re-treat ourselves to prayer. Prayer is an awareness of our absolute dependency upon God, a grateful
response to God for our fragile
lives. Prayer simply brings to consciousness the presence of God that is already around us and within us. Now there are many
approaches to prayer: like the Our Father, the Eucharistic liturgy, and prayers
of silence or petition. All of these approaches are windows or pathways into
the presence of God.
• Second, re-treat ourselves to fasting. Fasting and almsgiving are
Gospel twins. Foregoing food can enable the hungry to eat. Our Lenten fast can
also mean doing without anger, impatience, selfishness, negative judgments
about others, excessive alcohol and addictions of one kind or another. Yes,
doing without whatever prevents us from living a life of discipleship with
Jesus.
And finally almsgiving. In early
Christianity there were no government agencies to provide assistance to the
needy. Almsgiving was seen as an essential
addition to prayer and fasting, not only in Lent, but every day. Let's re-treat
ourselves to sharing what we
have with others. Share our time – stay in touch with friends and loved ones,
the sick, people all alone. Share our talents by volunteering wherever we can.
Share our resources with needy people: how about Catholic Relief Services or
St. Vincent de Paul or Catholic Charities. Share ourselves – smile more often and let others
know that we want them to share our
joy.
So I invite all of us to
re-discover and re-treat ourselves to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, to
refocus during these forty days on what truly
matters in life: our relationship with God and our fellow human beings.
Have a blessed Lent.