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     I have just finished a three day Parish Mission at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Westwood. There were about 70-90 people there each night and they were very receptive. A few people came up to me afterwards and were apologetic that so few showed up. I reminded them that most of the people who attend these are already focused on living their faith in a deeper way. That means that I am singing to the choir, but not to the ones who may need it, but do not have the time to come.

       Nevertheless, it is very important to sing to the choir, because since they are in the trneches in the parish every Sunday, and for some every day, they need some encouragement in their faith as well as some guidance on how to spread the faith to the ones who do not come, but who are living very chaotic lives and are desiring to seek peace, but do not look to the Church.

       I also bring with me CD’s of the mission talks and give them away free of charge so that they may have something to give to someone that so they can listen to on their own time. My goal is to entice people to come to Church as the place where they can find peace in their busy lives and directions on how to make sense of this crazy world. I want to explain to people what they are missing by not coming. 

     The Gospel at Mass today reminded us that The Queen of Sheba came to seek counsel of King Solomon becuase his his Wisdom and the Ninevites repented  immediately on the first day of Jonah’s three day trip through Nineveh, but now in Jesus Christ there is someone greater than Jonah and Solomon in our midst. When we come to Christ in the Eucharist and pray in thanskgiving and petition, we come to discover that in Jesus Christ and his Church, we truly have all that we need. We can jump off the chaotic roller coaster of this toxic culture and find rest at the feet of the Lord. The choir can use all the encouragement that they can get to keep singing, even when it appears no one is listening. The Catholic faith is definitely something worth singing about. We never know when someone along the way might be drawn to stop and listen, so the choir needs all the practice they can get.

     The first reading at Mass from the Prophet Isaiah speaks about the Word of God going out and never coming back empty and wihtout effect. Nothing is more powerful than the Word of God. It is so powerful not only because it is spoken through the prophets but also because while in the Old Testament is was only heard, now it is seen in the Word become Flesh, Jesus Christ. Through the mystery of the Incarnation, the Word can now be touched, heard, seen and loved in a way unknown to the prophets. This is the guft God has given to us. The Father has never stopped speaking to us through his Word, and this Word, Jesus tells us everything there is about God. He reveals this not only through his preaching, but in his very divine person.

     Nothing is more powerful than the Word of God to effect life, salvation and holiness, but it is also contingent on one hearing it, seeing it (Him). To see the Word we must slow down and look, to hear the Word we must silence the noise and chaos of life and listen. To feel the Word we need to open up our hearts. The Word is patient because it has one desire, our life with the one who Sent him, the Father.

    The purpose of this season of Lent is to be able to see and hear and touch the word of God, Jesus Christ in a deeper and more personal way, and be seen, spoken to and touched by him. Maybe we can practice this today and see how the Word will effect us.

          Another of the three pillars of Lent is almsgiving.  Christians are taught that generosity is the norm in dealing with others. The first reason for this is that we consider everything is a gift from God, therefore we are simply stewards of what we possess. The second reason is that since love requires more than a thought but real action, then we must share with others not only from our abundance, but our sustenance. For some it is difficult to give and for others it is difficult to receive, but we are commanded to do both in joy.

      As prayer deals with our relationship with God, so almsgiving deals with our relationship with others. One of the things I sincerely believe is that the only way to get to heaven is together, to help others and allow ourselves to be helped. We go to hell all by ourselves and that hell begins on earth. Generosity moves us out of ourselves, while selfishness moves us inward. Almsgiving is not just offering financial or materials resources, but also time in listening to and helping others, because there are poor spiritually or metionally as well as those who our poor materially. The material almsgiving can be easier becuase it is often parting with material wealth, spiritual almsgiving is is need in this lonely world, where people are most and more isolated from true human communication, which is more than simply facebook status reports.

   Almsgiving  reminds us that we are connected to each other and we need each other. If someone wishes to help you today, allow them to give their alms, even is it seems to some insignificant, it will help you. Also, do not forget to reach out today to someone in need, especially those in spiritual need of hope, love and compassion.

     On this first Sunday of Lent, we hear the story of the temptation of Jesus Christ in the wilderness and as well as the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. It is clear form both that the battle ground for souls is in our free will. what we lost through our free will is regained by the human free will of Jesus Christ.

      The devil plays the human race like a cheap fiddle. He knows that the key to moving us to sin is to get us to consider doubting God’s love for us, and even getting uus to question whether we even need God. Once he gets our attention, the devil them brings out the next weapon, self- pity. We begin to feel sorry for ourselves because we believe that some legitimate pleasure or action is being denied to us, which makes us begin to feel entitled to do what we want to do. Once this happens, we begin to seek an idol that will satisfy what we want and the devil is more than happy to fill us with suggesions, whatever our weakness may be.

     Once we settle on the idol we indulge in that obbject or activity to gain some sort of pleasure or excitement. It lasts very briefly. This brings us to effect sin has on us, namely guilt and possibly despair. We have gone from the Garden of Eden to the garbage dump and have no one to blame but ourselves.

   During Lent, you might want to consider things that make you doubt the goodness of God or whehter you even need him. You might also want to examine the feelings of self-pity which come along with goals that we not achieved. If we pray for the gift of faith and a clear vision whenever we experience the tempatation to doubt, we will hopefully realize that we have no right to feel sorry for ourselves, but grateful that God is with us always and will never lead us astray.

     If you are a baseball fan, you know that this is the time of year that Baseball teans go to Florida or  Arizona to get ready for the 162 game season. They work on the basics and fundamentals of the game so that they will be prepared for the long season ahead.

     Lent is in an analogous way spring trainig for the soul. We are not in a season, but in life and the world is busy working on us and pulling us in different directions and we need to start over with the basics once a year to be better prepared to carry on with our lives. The Church tells us that the basics are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. I have found in my experience that all three of these need further explanation. Today I will talk about prayer.

      We are told to pray, but have we ever been taught. many of us endured the catechetical and doctrinal dark ages of the 1970′s and 80′s and have been formed or malformed on how to pray. I bleieve that the basics of prayer consist of three parts: recollection, thanksgiving and petition.

    Recollection is the practice of quieting oneself down so that we are silent enough to hear God’s voice and receive his love. It appears that silence is a very uncomfortable thing for many people. It takes practice. We have to build up a tolerance for silence, sad to say. But once we are silent, we can begin to sense the stirring of our hearts and recognize our life with God.

    From recollection one moves to gratitude, because we are able to see the gifts we have and the abilities and opportunities that have been presented that we did not deserve, but have been freely given to use. It is a recognition of our spiritual wealth.

     In gratitudue we also see that we cannot do things without the help and intercession of others, so we can then petition or request from God the neccesary things to serve him well in this life and grow in the love of him and the love and service of our neighbor.

     These are the three basics. Once we have mastered these, then we can move on to more advanced ways of prayer that have their starting point in deeper silence. But let us first work on becoming silent and grateful and aware of our needs. We have to crawl before we can walk.

Tonight I spent most of the evening taping a 45 minute CD on the Eucharist and Sanity that I hope to copy and give away at different parishes over Lent. I believe with all my heart that the most sane and most human thing we can ever do is celebrate the Holy Eucharist. People are looking everywhere for answers to their chaotic lives and many avoid the obvious, the Mass. That is the pureness of sanity and reality because we do what comes from our true human nature, as revealed to us by Jesus Christ. In the CD I say that The Mass restores our sanity in three ways: It makes us remember who we are: sinners who are raised to the dignity of Children of God by the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It also “RE-MEMBERS” us in the sense that as life continually tries to pull us apart, the Eucharist reassembles us and cleanses us and heals us and makes us who we were truly created to be: saints. It also calls to mind the necessity of sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Christ and our sharing in that sacrifice by lifting up our sin-filled wounded and broken hearts to the Lord that he can restore us to sanity again. Lastly, I speak of the effects of the Eucharist as giving us silence, clarity, strength, courage and confidence that God will not allow is to be destroyed but to be renewed. The Mass is not an opportunity for entertainment or distraction, but rather it is the fullest encounter of the reality of God’s love and presence this side of heaven. I hope the feeble attempt at expressing this great mystery may let someone who is wallowing in the insanity of this life return to Christ and the Eucharist and find the joy that God wants him or to her have.

The Franciscan Jacopone daTodi whom some believe authored the Lenten hymn Stabat Mater wrote that “Love is nailed to the cross and he will not come down.” That has lead some to say that it was not nails that fixed Christ to the cross, but his love for us. During his passion Satan used the people mocking him to tempt him “Come down from that cross and then we will believe you. However, Jesus proved his divinity by staying on the cross. As Catholics, the crucifix takes on particular significance. The crucifix is a more powerful image for us over a cross because it reminds us of a statement that Blaise Pascal once made, “Christ is on the cross as long as there is suffering in the world.” No one suffers alone.

I think one can also say that Christ is on the cross as long as there is someone who is still feels unloved in this world or rejected or persecuted. This is important to keep in mind in light of the Gospel passage from we heard at Mass. Take up your cross daily and follow me. To take up the cross means to bear ones own burdens as well as the burdens of others and to do that we must love. We cannot sustain this out of sympathy or guilt, only love. Love truly is our greatest cross, and the more we love the greater the cross becomes, but the mystery lies in the reality that the burden becomes lighter because we realize that we are only to bear our own crosses and those of others because Christ is bearing them with us.

Everyday provides us with a new lesson in love to learn, a new test in how much we love, and a realization that our love for God or other will never be full in this life. That thought ought not make us despair or become neurotic. It ought to inspire to seek new ways to express that love through prayer, acts of generosity and reparation. St. Teresa of Avila reminds us in her autobiography that we will ultimately be judged on not how much we knew or how much we believed, but rather how much we loved. Maybe that can become for us a daily measure of whether we have grown closer to or farther away from God. The Crosses that life gives us always presents more opportunities for holiness. Lets not pass them up, but hold on to them, realizing that Jesus is holding onto them with us.

We begin another season of Lent today. It is an annual examination we take to see how far we have progressed in our relationship with God and how far we still have to go. I have wondered why we start Lent in the middle of the week rather than on a Sunday. I believe the reason is that it allows us to transition into a penitential life slowly and gradually.We human beings do not like quick changes and we are more likely to stick with things if we kind of ease into it rather than abruptly begin them.

Lent is more like a walk than a run, or a marathon rather than a sprint. We did not get where we are over night and I think it would be foolish to think we can change overnight.In these transition days, I would encourage people to look at their Lenten penances both in terms of what they give up and what they take on. If we have drastic goals, the odds are that we are not going to make the distance, much less the weekend or even tomorrow.These days can allow us to test things out so that by Sunday as we hear the story of the Temptations of Jesus, we can be better equipped to deal with the changes we are trying to implement in order to be more fully alive to the action and grace of God.

I am finishing up taping my 4 CD Lenten talks entitled “Christ or Chaos: How life in Christ helps us overcome the Chaos in our lives.”Most of us are living chaotic lives and we may think it is normal- something that is just part of being in the post-modern world. I think that this is a lie. A chaotic life is simply a life in which God is in the back seat, (or maybe even in the trunk) and we are trying to drive by ourselves to a destination that we can never reach on our own. That approach to life makes us angry, frustrated, fearful and very tired. Christ gives us the better way. He gives us the truly human way. It is the way of Love, but the cross there and we can not avoid it or drown it our with all the distractions we make for ourselves.

My advice for the end of this first day if Lent is look at what you have decided to do to help you love God more and get prepared for the great feast of Easter. See if your penances are going to work out. Don’t give up on changing something this season or give into the easy way. Go through the chaos you are dealing with and you will come out on the other side with a better view of yourself and God, and how much he wants to you really find and experience joy.

     As we prepare to celebrate the coming of God as man, I have the hope that this may help you be prepared in your heart for such a gift from God:

 Homily Text:

     People like to search for things. When we were growing up, we played hide and go seek. then, as we got older, many went in search of the perfect person to marry and the perfect job. Now, many of us today are looking at ads for the perfect deal. This time of year, many of us go in search of the perfect gift. It is quite a challenge especially when looking for something for someone who appear to have everything.

     So we start to investigate the person to whom we want to give the perfect gift: what does he or she talk about? What are they looking at? What do they seem to be needing all the time? We want this gift to be something that they will cherish, use and make their life better. Hopefully, whenever they use this gift, they will think of us with love. That seems to be a pretty tall order!

     It used to be easy when we were little. we could make something for mom and dad out of popsicle sticks , or a coffee mug out of clay that we would paint especially for them. It might even be a hand made ornament. As we get older and look for a gift for that special person in our life, it may be a gagdet if he were a man, or gold or diamond jewelry if she were a woman. the gif is mean to express somehting very personal: the love in our heart for them.

     On this Christmas Day, we really do receive the perfect gift. God has planned and planned ever since we left the Garden of Eden and he had to ask Adam and Eve: Where are you? He told us all through the Bible he was sending us something special, but he had to find the right time to give it. Good gift giving also requires the element of surprise. We don’t often want the recipient to see it coming, so it can take their breath away.

     God has promised to send the answer to the deepest needs of our heart, but what is it going to be? Today we find out: It is his Son Jesus! It does come as a bit of a suprise to many. Our Savior God is born in a stable, not a castle. God takes on or human natre and is wrapped in swaddling clothes with only the hay, the animals and the love of his Mother Mary and St. Joseph to keep him warm. The Eternal Word of God through whom all things were created comes to us as a vulnerable, weak little baby in need of everything.

     But why is Jesus the perfect gift? Babies are, after all, very demanding. they need to be fed, changed, washed and entertained. Couldn’t God have given us something a little more low maintenance?

     No. God knows EXACTLY what he is doing. He made us after all and he knows that what really makes us tick is LOVE. We are created by God out of the fullness of his perfect and mysterious divine love to give and receive love, and so he comes aong us as one who needs the very best we can give, and that BEST is LOVE. We are at our most human when we love selflessly, generously and totally.

     when we can tend to forget that becuase we live in a world that often speaks more about taking and possessing than giving and receiving. We fell the heaviness of life and we may even have difficult burdens to carry. We can feel empty, incomplete, loneley and even unloved at times. We forget the God who loves us and the GIFT he has given to us, his own Son, his own Heart, his own Life. God has become man to lighten our burdens and get us to smile. God shows us in his Son Jesus his beautiful love for us and his desire not only to fill us with joy, but to be our lasting joy.

     Jesus Christ is truly the perfect Gift from God the Father for the whole human race. He has come from the heart of the Father. He expresses the Father’s deepest love for us. Jesus blew the budget in giving us the Gifts of his Word in the Gospel and his own Body and blood in the Holy Eucharist. He not only tells us what we are worth, he SHOWS us what we are worth when we see him on the cross. He shows us that WE ARE PRICELESS! He knows that what we need most of all is his love and his constant presence in our lives.

     May we show our thanks to God for the Gift of his Son through our daily prayers of gratitude and petition, through love and generosity to our neighbor, and through a renewed committment to serve him in love.

     Jesus Christ is our Perfect Gift. One size fits all. One love embraces all. One Peace fills all.

            Today we have the answer to the question that many people ask: Why do we need faith? Why is it so hard to live in the world without it? Why is it that faith in the Resurrected Jesus Christ is the only real answer?           

         Why do we need faith? Because the world is much bigger than we are. We encounter mysteries and joys and sorrows and challenges every day. We keep trying to make sense of it all though it does not seem to fit together.           

          The truth of our human life is that we need faith to truly live. We have come to discover that behind this big, mysterious world there is a God who loves us into being. To love something is to give it life. God loves us, so we live. We live in his heart. We live in this world. We have been given tremendous opportunities to share in life and thus make it known to others. Faith in God, by its very nature makes us witnesses to life, goodness, beauty and truth.           

          We see things as they really are. We see ourselves as we really are. We see God for who He truly is. We see creation as a gift given to us to enjoy and protect. We see ourselves as sinners, broken and unable to find lasting joy without the intervention of God in our lives. Lastly, we see God as real, true and visible in Jesus Christ, the Son of God who is raised form the dead. This is as real as it gets.         

            If faith gives us life, why is faith so difficult at times? Faith is not something like a beating heart. Faith is not something that works in us without our awareness. To have faith means to be consciously aware that we are not alone. Faith is not just about me. It is about a total surrender of all that we are to a God who loves us. Jesus makes that very clear in his preaching. God loves his people and seeks to be intimately involved in the lives of his people every day. In Jesus Christ, we see that the Father has sent his Son who is so close to us that he truly experiences our deepest fear, death. By the power of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, we recognize that Jesus is truly and physically raised today.           

          Many in our world, which is broken and devastated by sin, tell us that Jesus Christ is not life. He is an illusion or quaint legend or even a fairy tale. Jesus is in the past. He is not real now. They want us to accept that real life is power, money, sex, pleasure or celebrity. It is about my enjoyment. We must compromise and accept these things if we want to get along on the world.           

          In faith, we know this to be a bold-faced lie! Jesus Christ is alive. He is real and present to us right now. We see his love in our friends, our families, and even strangers. We see his personal love present especially in his Church, through the preaching of the Word of God and most importantly in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, the Holy  Eucharist.                

         The Risen Lord answers our prayers. He reaches out to us in love through the Holy Spirit. He suffered for us so that we could know peace. He died for us so that we could really live and love. He holds us in life as the most cherished possessions of his Sacred Heart.          

           The Church is full of life this morning with the beautiful flowers and the lush plants, the bright colors, Easter bonnets and children who cannot wait to get home and get some Easter candy. But all of these pale in front of the real LIVING ONE we see and hear and will soon touch and taste, Jesus Christ.            

          We are a people of life because we are a people who belong to Jesus Christ and live through him. We are a people who know deep in our hearts, that the Baptism we have received has brought us to life. We come as the Church to stand as witnesses to one another to the love and life given to us by God to share. As we receive that living bred of our Resurrected Lord,  let us go forth as the Apostles, living witnesses with a living faith in our Risen Lord. Alleluia.