Children are our Guests |
It belongs to the center of the Christian message that children are not properties to own and rule over, but gifts to cherish and care for. Our children are our most important guests, who enter into our home, ask for careful attention, stay for a while, and then leave to follow their own way. Children are strangers whom we have to get to know. Henri Nouwen |
A very good way to look at Lent is to see it as a time of promise—the promise of the fulfillment of God’s love for us. In Lent we do acknowledge our human weakness, but we do that in the light of God’s complete love for us. And we journey through this time with Jesus, who has fully assumed our humanity with all its sufferings and trials.
Our Gospel this Sunday allows us to witness the mysterious transfiguration of Jesus: a revelation of his glory and divinity shining through his humanity. Though it might appear that Jesus is exempt from the path of suffering and the powerlessness of our human state, what he tells his companions on the way down the mountain is that this glory can only come through his journey through suffering and death—and the full story will not be complete until he is raised from the dead—and we learn who he truly is.
In our second Reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (perhaps the most beautiful and hope-filled promise in Scripture) Paul says that there is nothing that can ever separate us from the love of God—nothing!
No matter the circumstances of our lives, the powers of division and hatred that seem to threaten us now, he proclaims the overwhelming confidence that all trials we endure are encompassed within the faithful love of God and are part of the eventual realization of God’s divine purpose for us and all of creation. Yes, Lent is a time of promise and unconditional love.
Fr. Len Kraus, S.J.
Hospitality |
Hospitality means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. . . . The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adore the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own. Henri Nouwen |
The True Voice of Love |
Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other, but does not create true intimacy. When Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples were overcome by fear and they all “deserted him and ran away” (Matthew 26:56). . . . Fear makes us move away from each other to a “safe” distance, or move toward each other to a “safe” closeness, but fear does not create the space where true intimacy can exist. . . . To those who are tortured by inner or outer fear, and who desperately look for the house of love where they can find the intimacy their hearts desire, Jesus says: “You have a home . . . I am your home . . . claim me as your home . . . you will find it to be the intimate place where I have found my home . . . it is right where you are . . . in your innermost being . . . in your heart.” The more attentive we are to such words the more we realize that we do not have to go far to find what we are searching for. The tragedy is that we are so possessed by fear that we do not trust our innermost self as an intimate place but anxiously wander around hoping to find it where we are not. We try to find that intimate place in knowledge, competence, notoriety, success, friends, sensations, pleasure, dreams, or artificially induced states of consciousness. Thus we become strangers to ourselves, people who have an address but are never home and hence cannot be addressed by the true voice of love. Henri Nouwen |
| Matthew 6:1–6, 16–18 |
Friends, in today’s Gospel, the Lord prescribes prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as our Lenten disciplines. Bishop Robert Barron |
Make God’s Unconditional Love Visible |
Whenever, contrary to the world’s vindictiveness, we love our enemy, we exhibit something of the perfect love of God, whose will is to bring all human beings together as children of one Father. Whenever we forgive instead of getting angry at one another, bless instead of cursing one another, tend one another’s wounds instead of rubbing salt into them, hearten instead of discouraging one another, give hope instead of driving one another to despair, hug instead of harassing one another, welcome instead of cold-shouldering one another, thank instead of criticizing one another, praise instead of maligning one another . . . in short, whenever we opt for and not against one another, we make God’s unconditional love visible; we are diminishing violence and giving birth to a new community. Henri Nouwen |
Solitude Makes Real Fellowship Possible |
By slowly converting our loneliness into a deep solitude, we create that precious space where we can discover the voice telling us about our inner necessity—that is, our vocation. Unless our questions, problems, and concerns are tested and matured in solitude, it is not realistic to expect answers that are really our own.... This is a very difficult task, because in our world we are constantly pulled away from our innermost self and encouraged to look for answers instead of listening to the questions. A lonely person has no inner time or inner rest to wait and listen. He wants answers and wants them here and now. But in solitude we can pay attention to the inner self. This has nothing to do with egocentrism or unhealthy introspection because in the words of [Rainer Maria] Rilke, “what is going on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love.” In solitude we can become present to ourselves.... There we also can become present to others by reaching out to them, not greedy for attention and affection but offering our own selves to help build a community of love. Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible. Henri Nouwen |
When I was a child of perhaps eight or nine, I remember seeing an ad (I think it was on the back of a comic book) that began with this statement: “The heartbreak of psoriasis!” I didn’t know what psoriasis was, but I knew that it must be a bad disease! Our Gospel this Sunday shows Jesus as he gives us the picture of God dealing with someone who had such a heartbreaking disease: leprosy. It wasn’t what we know of now as Hansen’s disease, it was any skin problem that was obvious to anyone who looked at the person. This person who was afflicted was forced to live outside of the community, with no contact with society. What Jesus does as he reaches out and touches the wound of this “leper” is to show the deep compassion of God, especially toward those who are wounded and rejected. Perhaps more important than Jesus’ act of healing the afflicted man is the good news, seen in Jesus, that, whatever our wounds might be—hidden or evident—Jesus has the same compassion for us, the same desire to heal us. This healing can send up out to do what Jesus does: touch others with compassion and care, especially those who need it most.
-Fr. Len Kraus, SJ
From Loneliness to Solitude |
To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. This requires not only courage but also a strong faith. As hard as it is to believe that the dry desolate desert can yield endless varieties of flowers, it is equally hard to imagine that our loneliness is hiding unknown beauty. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is a movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play. Henri Nouwen |
Loneliness |
It is the most basic human loneliness that threatens us and is so hard to face. Too often we will do everything possible to avoid the confrontation with the experience of being alone, and sometimes we are able to create the most ingenious devices to prevent ourselves from being reminded of this condition. Our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain, not only our physical pain but our emotional and mental pain as well. We not only bury our dead as if they were still alive, but we also bury our pains as if they were not really there. We have become so used to this state of anesthesia that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch, or no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves, we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again and continue the game that makes us believe that everything is fine after all. Henri Nouwen |
Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow Friday, predicting an early spring from Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania, the scene of the country’s largest and best known Groundhog Day celebration.
Just after sunrise, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club announced Phil’s prediction. Had the groundhog seen his shadow, it would have presaged six more weeks of winter.
This marks the first time Phil predicted an early spring since 2020.
The annual event has its origin in a German legend about a furry rodent. Records dating to the late 1800s show Phil has predicted longer winters more than 100 times.
This marks the 138th year of the festivities in Punxsutawney, which date back to 1887. Ten years were lost because no records were kept, organizers said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration compared Punxsutawney Phil’s forecast to the national weather over the last decade and found “on average, Phil has gotten it right 40% of the time.”
The Morning Call
www.mcall.com
The Morning Call, founded in 1883, is the leading media company in the Lehigh Valley and the third largest newspaper in Pennsylvania.
Our first reading this Sunday comes from the Book of Job. Job is overcome by his suffering and sees no hope in life. Job’s friends see that he has led a very good and upright life. Shouldn’t this have given him a claim on God so that all the suffering and loss would not have come to him? (In the end, Job is healed and restored, and he exclaims “I know my redeemer lives.”) The claim we have on God is really the claim of God’s healing and providence. In the Gospel we look at the kindness of Jesus and his desire to heal, and we put that up against the suffering and losses that we experience in our own lives. Suffering is a mystery. We rely on God’s help to save us from our misery. Jesus who lays down his life for us is the one who has shown us how to put our trust in God. With God’s grace, we continue to trust in the loving, healing power that the Lord offers us. It is through his times of quiet and prayer that Jesus receives the strength to reach out to those who are wounded and suffering. He’s found in the lonely place because he maintains a habit of quiet and prayer as the support for his compassion and his open-hearted love. The wounded and suffering called out to Jesus, and they call out to us as well. The call of the wounded is an invitation to embrace the redemptive power of love that comes to us through Christ and his Spirit. When we reach out to those who suffer, we can open our hearts and release the healing power that is within each one of us. (St. Teresa of Avila reminds us that we are the hands and feet and heart of Jesus.) In our prayers, and through our actions, we can do what Jesus does and make present today this truth: “I know that my redeemer lives.”
-Fr. Len Kraus, SJ
