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Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent (4/11/2025)
Sisters and brothers in Christ, our Lord and our God has great hopes for us his people, as we hear in today's first reading from the Prophet Ezekiel.
God desires us to live in unity - "Never again shall they be two nations, and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms." He desires us to love Him above all and not worships idols made of human hands that do not give us eternal life - "No longer shall they defile themselves with their idols, their abominations, and all their transgressions." God desires to free us from sin and temptations that bind us - "I will deliver them from all their sins of apostasy, and cleanse them so that they may be my people and I may be their God." He wants us to live in peace and harmony - "I will make with them a covenant of peace; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them, and I will multiply them, and put my sanctuary among them forever." Above all, God desires a relationship with us - "My dwelling shall be with them;
I will be their God, and they shall be my people."
The question for us is, what is preventing us from living this life that God desires for us, in which He sent His only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to die on the Cross for us so that we may have life and have it abundantly? Let us take this to prayer this Holy Week as we prepare our hearts for the Passion, Death, and glorious Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us ask God to open desire Him above all else in our lives in the same way that each of us is an apple of His eyes.
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Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent (4/11/2025)
Sisters and brothers in Christ, in the Letters to the Romans, Saint Paul wrote the following: "If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?. . . It is Christ [Jesus] who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?" (8:31-35).
In today's Gospel, we hear the same thing from the Prophet Jeremiah, who lived generations before Saint Paul. He said, ". . .the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion. . . for to you I have entrusted my cause. . . he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked!" While others might stand by and watch us fall and do nothing, our Lord and our God will fight for us. He will never give up on us even if we give up on ourselves. He will never forsake us even if we turn our backs on Him.
Nothing will ever separate us from the love of Christ, except. . . us. . . through sin and temptations. Therefore, in times of sin and temptations, let us recall our Baptism, in the same way that Jesus went to the place where John first baptized him (in today's Gospel), tap in the graces of the Sacrament of Baptism, and renounce sin and profess our faith in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We renounce sin and profess our faith at the celebration of Baptisms and Easter, and we review profess our faith at Mass.
And so, may the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving help us to prepare our hearts to renounce sin and profess our faith in God, not just at Easter but every day of our lives.
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Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent (4/10/2025)
Sisters and brothers in Christ, in today's Gospel, Jesus said to [the Jews], "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM." This should have reminded them of when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush. . . (Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15)
Moses said to God, “But when I go to the Israelites
and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’
if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?”
God replied, “I am who am.”
Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites:
I AM sent me to you.”
However, they had forgotten all that God had and continued to do for them because of the hardness of their hearts. How often and easily to we forget everything that God has done for us and continues to do for us. We wake up in the morning every day because God sustains us. We love our families with unconditional and self-sacrificing love because God loves us unconditionally and sacrificially. He died on the Cross as expiation for our sins.
As we prepare for Holy Week, let us pray that we never forget that it was God - the great I AM - who carried the Cross to Calvary, was crucified and died on the Cross for our salvation, because God loves us. Let us go deeper in our faith through the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving and beg God for the gift of faith that we may see Jesus as who he truly is - I AM.
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Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent (4/9/2025)
Sisters and brothers in Christ, in today's first reading, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego show us what it means to live our faith and belief in God with courage and conviction, even in the face of persecution. King Nebuchadnezzar gave them an ultimatum; ". . .fall down and worship the statue I had made. . . otherwise, you shall be instantly cast into the white-hot furnace. . ."
What was their response? They boldly told the king: ""There is no need for us to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue that you set up." The words that intrigue me the most are "even if". Their faith and belief in God is not conditioned on whether or not God delivers them; rather, their faith and belief in God is rooted in the Truth that God is the great I AM and worthy of their praise and obedience.
Life will challenge us in so many ways and test our faith and belief in God. The question for us is, can our faith and belief in God withstand the tempests of this world that rage against us? Here, I speak of sin and temptations that pull us away from God and seek to bind us to the Evil One forever. And so, let us ask ourselves if the the "word" of God that flows from our Lord and Savior Jesus find room to dwell in our hearts?
As we prepare for Palm Sunday and the start of the holiness time in the liturgical year - Holy Week - let us go deeper in our relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving prepare our hearts to receive God's love and mercy so that we are moved to live our faith and belief in God courageously.
Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040925.cfm. . .
Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent (4/8/2025)
Sisters and brothers in Christ, today's first reading is a reminder to us that our Lord and God always desires what is best for us, even if we do not see it in the moment. The Israelites lost sight of this when the grumbled against God, complaining: "Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!"
This is not to say that it is wrong to complain about God or lodge a complaint with God in prayer. I do it almost every day. However, it becomes a sin when we turn our backs to God, worship other idols (like how the Israelites created a molten calf and worship it instead of God), and lose faith, hope, and love toward God.
Rather, let us bring our complaints to God in prayer and trust in His will and providence for us. He sees the big picture whereas we live in the moment so let us be patient and allow God to unfold and reveal his plan for us to us. And so, as we prepare our hearts during this time of Passiontide, may our Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving help us to trust God in a deeper way and know and believe in our hearts these words of the Lord: "For I know well the plans I have in mind for you. . .plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future of hope" (Jeremiah 29:11).
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Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent (4/7/2025)
Good morning. In today’s Gospel, Jesus spoke to [the Pharisees], saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
Each and everyone of us received the light of Christ at our Baptism when the priest or deacon lit the Baptismal candle from the Easter candle and said, “Receive the light of Christ. . . Parents and godparents, this light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly, so that your child, enlightened by Christ, may walk always as a child of the light and, persevering in the faith, may run to meet the Lord when he comes with all the Saints in the heavenly court.” In the Gospel of Matthew, our Lord Jesus Christ said, “YOU are the LIGHT of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father” (5:15-16).
Now, in today’s first reading, we see what happens when we allow our light to be hidden by sin and temptation. We hear that the two elders of the people “began to lust for [a very beautiful and God-fearing woman, Susanna. . .]” What did they do next? They “SUPPRESSED their consciences; they would NOT allow their eyes to look to heaven, and did NOT keep in mind just judgments.” They threaten her, saying, “. .. give in to OUR desire, and lie with us. If you refuse, we will testify against you that you dismissed your maids because a young man was here with you.”
In stark contrast to the two elders of the people, Susanna did not let the darkness of the world snuff out the light that God put in her heart, even in the face of extreme challenges and difficulties perpetrated against her by the two elders. She weighed her options, thinking to herself, “If I yield, it will be my death; if I refuse, I cannot escape your power.” However, being faithful to God, she knew that she had only one choice and said to two old men: “. . .it is better for me to fall into your power without guilt than to sin before the Lord.” And as she was wrongly accused by them and prosecuted by the assembly of the people, “[through] tears she looked up to heaven, for she TRUSTED in the Lord wholeheartedly. . . [and the] Lord HEARD her prayer.”
And so, when the darkness of the world tries to drag us down through sin and temptations, let us not be like the two elders, who would NOT allow their eyes to look to heaven. Rather, let us be like Susana, who did look up to heaven and recall what Jesus said: “Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” May our Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving keep the light of Christ burning brightly in our souls and give us the courage to shine the light of Christ into the darkness that exists in the world around us through our words and actions.
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Fifth Sunday of Lent (4/6/2025)
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