Love one another. It seems like a simple enough command, and yet in practice it has proven to be quite difficult for us. We live in a world where we all too often only look to the good of ourselves, and don’t even notice those suffering around us. Let me be clear: suffering can take many forms, and a lot of them are un-noticeable enough to us that they are easily passed over. It often takes an active interest in others to pick up on these things, and yet that is exactly what we are called to do. We are called to lay down our own lives for those around us. This does not necessarily mean being martyred in the traditional sense; It can also be by simply dying to self enough that we can then recognize the suffering in those we encounter. This is the daily laying down of one’s own life that we must pursue to truly fulfill our calling and love our Lord by keeping His commandment.

To do this is something that we cannot will or decide on our own. We must ask for the help of God, and then accept the grace that will come of that. That seems to be the hard part. Our Lord hears our prayer and responds by giving us the innate knowledge of what we must do to fulfill it, but we often find this to be out of our comfort zone and then fail to act. We must also pray specifically for the grace of the Holy Spirit to be infused in us, and to strengthen us, so that we can be more accepting of God’s will. How often have we said to ourselves, “It’s a shame about the homeless situation,” or we see the plight of those who are ill or without the necessities, and then we still pass them by without doing anything? We tell ourselves we’re busy, or it’s simply not a good time, or perhaps that it’s not safe to engage like that with someone we do not know.  In truth, we do need to be careful these days about who we engage with directly, but that does not mean we have an excuse to ignore. We must still find ways to safely engage. Perhaps we do this by having someone along with us, so that we are not alone when we provide some form of help, or perhaps we simply provide funding so that others can directly engage and will then have the needed resources to do so. What we cannot do is nothing. We cannot fail to act.

In our first reading, we hear of how the spirit was poured out upon the gentiles that Peter encountered, and that he recognized God’s lack of partiality based on earthly standards. We are not called to judge or decide who is worthy, and who is not either, we leave that to our Lord. As he told us, He would sort out those who were among His flock later. That leaves to us the task of taking care of the whole flock. That is our mission. We do this by word (sharing our faith), and by action (living our faith), and part of that action is charity toward those who are in need. It has been said that one cannot learn about our Lord when one’s stomach is empty. That is one of the founding principles of many of the Catholic charities, as well as those of other faiths. You have to address the whole person. It is very crucial though that we do not leave out either aspect, because while people need to eat and have shelter, they also need hope, and that hope best comes from knowing our Lord. He can provide in the long term, He can heal, He can bring people to a new way of living if He is known to them. We all have a role to play in this, we all have some way we can help. What we simply cannot do is leave anyone to the world, because it is not a world that Loves our Lord. Think, then pray, then be open to His message, then act. This is how we all start, and every problem requires a beginning for the solution. The very beginning happened at the Cross; Our beginnings happen when we truly love.

Podcast Link

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-v76dn-102f733

When we hear about Saint Paul’s arrival in Jerusalem, and how the disciples were initially afraid of him, their reaction seems very understandable given what his previous mission had been – the eradication of all those who were followers of Jesus Christ. What they had no way of knowing was the profound change that had taken place while he was in Damascus. They received part of the picture from Barnabas, in terms of how Saul, now Paul, had spoken out in Jesus’ name, but they did not really know about the profoundness of the change within him. How he had become during his time of blindness totally reliant on Jesus, both for his healing, but perhaps most importantly, for his strength to press on with the message he had been charged to share with all of humanity. His mission is our mission, and we need to understand that the same limitations that were evident for him, are equally a part of our make-up. We need our Lord if there is to be any hope of fulfilling the plan, He has for each one of us.

Our gospel reading today takes this message a bit further, as our Lord uses the analogy of a vine and its branches to describe our actual reliance on Him if we are living out His plan. We cannot really do anything without Him. To be fruitful, we must be both wise and humble, in that we need to be readily accepting of our limitations, and profoundly grateful for His graces that He gives to each of us as we need them. If we’re really honest with ourselves, I think we will each acknowledge our own limitations and how much more we are capable of when we simply allow ourselves to rely on His strength to work through our challenges in this life, and especially those that we encounter when we are trying to live out the gospel message in the face of so much resistance that our world throws in our direction because it does not want to walk in His light. There is no hope of our affecting change without His love and strength guiding us in doing so.

I truly believe one of our biggest stumbling blocks to our acceptance, and actually proper total reliance on our Lord’s strength is our own mentality that if we cannot do things using our own force of will and perceived strengths, then we are somehow failing. It’s an understandable conclusion in some respects given our culture, but in truth is exactly the wrong conclusion to be drawn if looked at through the eyes of faith. These eyes, those that perceive the actual vision of faith, are those that Saint Paul received when his blindness was lifted in Damascus through our Lord’s healing. When the scales that were on his eyes fell away, that had blocked the light from his eyes, the light of Christ was also able to penetrate and give him a clear vision of how his life was to be lived for God’s purposes, and how it would only be through acknowledging his own weakness and embracing the strength of Christ that he would be able to accomplish his mission. As I said earlier, his mission is ours as well, so it should be no surprise to us that we need to draw the same conclusion in order to be at all successful. This brings us back to the analogy of the vine and its branches, no branch can continue to grow without being attached to the vine, no follower of Christ can hope to grow in the spirit without that same connection back to Him.

Podcast Link

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-7c6q5-1024a86

“There is no salvation through anyone else” – this proclamation made by Peter is the most important statement in the history of humanity. Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died for us, and rose from the dead, in order to be our mediator before God, and to give us a path through Him to salvation. This is the news that must be shared with all of humanity, and that we must keep constantly at the forefront of our consciousness. We are charged, each of us, to share this with our brother and sisters who do not yet know Him.

This is especially true of our unique faith in Christ as Catholics, we are part of the one universal Church that our Lord took as His bride. We are to serve and draw all mankind toward her in order that they may come to a fuller knowledge of Jesus Christ, and to receive the graces that He has granted us, and we uniquely receive in the form of the Sacraments, not the symbols that some have strayed toward through a lack of true understanding. These are the fruits that we have been entrusted with and are expected to share with all. We are called to share the fullness and richness of a faith that is unbroken in its lineage and contains the full tradition and wisdom of those who were present during the time Jesus spent here on earth or were students and followers of those who were there. This unbroken faith and tradition are the gifts that are unique to our faith, and that hold the truest form of what our Lords Church here on earth was constructed to be. Our Lord founded His Church upon a single rock that still stands as the foundation and reservoir of the truth of His teachings.

In our Gospel today, our Lord describes himself as the Good Shepherd, and he truly is. No one is good but God alone, and He has indeed proven Himself a true shepherd. You see a shepherd actually cares about his flock, he guides them to food, nurtures them as they grow, protects them at all costs, even that of his life if necessary. His focus is always on the good of his flock, and he places himself second to their needs.  Our Lord gave all for each one of us in His flock, He emptied himself completely for our sake. We are called to follow His path and to shepherd His people as well. We are called to do this for the sake of our love for Him, and for all those created in His image. We are not called to be hirelings, but humble shepherds. Hirelings do not truly care for the flock, and we will know them by their actions. We see this sometimes in the news about “preachers” who care more about their book sales or seminar attendance numbers, and who are content to keep their “churches” pristine rather than open them to those truly in need of shelter, or who see no issue with their driving Ferraris while others struggle to exist – these are the “preachers of prosperity” that are the modern-day Pharisees. We see it equally in all those who proclaim themselves Christs followers, but whose focus is solely on self, and who look down upon those who are of lesser means or status whom they see as being untouchable. These people cause others to stumble by eroding the image of what a true follower of Christ is, and cause more and more to turn away from the faith because of their example. They do not place the flock first, and work in humility for the good of all, actually cleansing themselves by taking on the dirt that others must be cleansed of. We must beware of anything that distracts us similarly toward the more worldly pursuits that this temporal existence constantly beckons us toward, and instead allow ourselves to be guided by the Spirit into what Jesus has envisioned for each one of us in His plan. We must be content to be with the weakest and most in need of His flock, those who are the least attractive by worldly ideals, but who are the most precious in our Lord’s eyes. We must be the ones who go in search of these sometimes-lost sheep and place them upon our own shoulders and humbly bear the burden of work that will draw them toward our Lord. Our reward is in Him, and in seeing those created by Him being a closer part of His family, our family through Him. Each person brought toward him is a brother or sister we never knew but can then rejoice at being reunited with in our universal family. This is our calling.

PodCast Link

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-u78k4-101a376

Our Lord came to us in the flesh in order to save us and reconcile us to the Father. It was for this purpose that He was born man, and He knew what was to happen in order to fulfill prophecy and to achieve this reconciliation and salvation. He carried this with Him all the while that He ministered to us here on earth. Yet despite knowing what we would do to him, He cared for us, taught us, loved us, and ultimately saved us. What He asked in return, was for us to love Him, love one another, and to obey his teachings.

In our second reading today, Saint John tells us very plainly, that anyone who claims to love, and be a follower of our Lord, but does not follow His teachings, is a liar, plain and simple. No one can profess to love our Lord and be His follower, and at the same time ignore His words and teachings. That means all of them, not just those which are deemed to be appropriate or convenient. This does not mean that we will not make mistakes, we will, and for that we must be truly sorry for them and be healed through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is when we ignore His teaching, because in our arrogance we have decided that we don’t think it really applies to our worldly situations, that we stop being His true followers. It is one thing to stumble and stray from His teaching and then repent, it is another to actually reject His teaching because our pride in our own sophistication and intellect compels us to judge which of His teachings are to be followed and which we think we can dismiss. Jesus made his meaning plain to us in how he wanted us to show our love for Him. We were to love Him, and as part of the way we show that, in turn love one another. This means, we cannot truly say we love God, without caring for and showing genuine concern for all of His creations – not just those that we find easy to love like family and friends. The fact is we are all family, we share this bond through our humanity, and while there are many we may not have met yet, there are really no actual strangers. We don’t (and likely won’t) like everyone we meet, but we do need to care for them regardless. This means caring for their needs, not just thinking nice thoughts. This means true concern for their bodies and souls. From those who have been conceived, and are yet to be born, to those who are the most aged and sometimes considered burdensome to society, we must care for all.

Those who claim to be followers of Christ, and who continually through their actions show anything less than this concern for all His children, are in fact the liars that Saint John was talking about. We will know them by their actions and words. We will see it in their presence in our lives, or perhaps indirectly in what we hear of their actions and words through the media. Perhaps it is their public statements, or their voting record, or their written word that we encounter in so many media venues. The simple fact is we will know them by all these things, and we are then left with a choice, to follow them either actively or passively – thereby perhaps giving tacit approval to what they profess, or to correct them through our own responses or perhaps associations. We cannot follow Jesus and follow those who ignore His teachings – this is duplicity, and it is tantamount to lying. We must always be actively following our Lord – everything else is secondary. No other allegiances or alliances, personal, professional, political, or ideological take precedence. Our Lord is trustworthy – He has proven that over and over and has given of Himself completely for our sake – we must try to follow His example. This is our calling.

PodCast Link

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-vvd67-100fafb

In our Gospel today, we hear about our Lord’s appearance to His disciples after His resurrection. I remember thinking to myself when I was younger that I couldn’t believe their first reaction was that of doubt and fear – He was standing right in front of them! How could they doubt, how could they not be overjoyed right out of the gate? These days though, I can understand this a bit better; Perhaps life experiences allow me to see more clearly how flawed I truly am, and just how little faith I can sometimes exhibit. I see things now through the eyes of someone who believes, but who has also seen how sometimes I can forget and lose sight of my belief and the priorities that come with that. It’s easy to do. The world is constantly trying to distract and draw us away from our faith. It happened to those who were with Jesus, and it can happen to us.

The first time I read this Gospel, I can remember thinking to myself – Wow, if only I had been there and seen what the apostles had seen, I would have no doubts. That’s an easy way of thinking to slip into. It appeals to our physical humanity. If only I could see, hear, touch, smell, or taste something, then I would believe it easily. The reality is actually quite a bit different. We are only partially physical creatures, and the evidence that the senses provide us is often incomplete because it does not take into account the rest of our nature, the truer side of ourselves. This is the side that is spirit, and it is this side that is subject to the fallout from original sin, and can sense, process, and discern far more than we often give it credit for. It also has the ability to allow us to either ignore our faith and live in doubt and fear, or accept what only this side of ourselves can perceive, and live in belief and harmony with Jesus as we make our way through this physical existence with the hope of the world yet to come. Think about this for a second: the apostles had been with Jesus for about three years when all of this came to pass, and our Lord died on the cross, and was then resurrected and appeared before them, and yet their first reaction was not joy. They had already seen Him perform miracle after miracle, heal those who seemed beyond help, and raise those from the dead who were beyond hope of continuing in this life. They had heard His message, they had been told specifically that He would die and then rise after three days, and yet when this took place right on time as He said it would – they couldn’t get past fears and doubts without some reassurance from Him. This is how wounded and flawed we are in this life – all of us. We can say that if we had been there and seen Jesus, we would have no issues with doubts or beliefs. But the fact is, the sensory experience is NOT enough, and it never will be. To truly assuage our doubts and fears requires experience and evidence that comes not from our physical senses, but from our hearts when they allow themselves to accept what we innately know to be true. We have to listen to that quiet voice within that comes from our soul, and we need to listen to God’s words through our individual time in prayer, meditation, and study, and we need to come together and be in front of our Lord physically in the celebration of the Mass. It is ONLY through our pursuit of Him at the spiritual level that we will attain true belief and intimacy with Him. Why? Simply put, it is because it is through the senses of our spirit that He can bestow on each of us the grace of understanding. Yet to do this, we must make a place within ourselves that welcomes Him. We must make a home for Him to reside in. Our Lord gave us free will because He loves us, and wants us to freely love Him, so it is only through our welcoming Him into ourselves that this can happen in light of the freedom He has given us. This Easter season, let’s sweep ourselves clean and make our houses welcoming dwellings for Him. Let’s invite Him into our hearts by the way we pursue Him and learn about Him and focus our lives on Him. This is the key to our happiness; It is the only key. Everything outside of an intimacy with Christ is transitory and of relatively little consequence to our happiness. Material things will fade in their ability to gratify, people will sometimes disappoint us, all the sensory pleasures of this life will be inadequate and will not last. We’ve all experienced this kind of let down before. This is yet another piece of the evidence we should be considering that points toward us being far less creatures of the physical, and far more creations of the spirit. Embrace our Lord, feel His embrace in return through what only your soul can reveal to you, and know true happiness and peace.

Podcast Link

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-x4cbh-100500d

He is risen! What wonderful words to hear. I can remember as a child, this was the Easter Greeting that everyone would exchange. I didn’t fully understand what this meant, but I knew that it meant that something big had happened, beyond all the Easter candy and treats, beyond all the gathering of family, even beyond the dinner of ham and other dishes that only seemed to come on that occasion. I knew that Jesus had risen from the dead, and that was a wonderful thing, because it always saddened me that He had been put to death. What I didn’t grasp was that He had also purchased my own rising to life through what had happened. He had paid my debt for my sins, both those I had committed up to that point, and those I would commit in later years, and He had paid for all of this with his most precious blood, and now after having done that for me, He had risen so that I too could one day rise and be with Him then, and live a new life now .

What we often fail to grasp sometimes about our Lord’s resurrection, is the ramification that it can have on our daily existence as well as our spiritual and eternal existence in life with Him. You see, when He purchased us with his body and blood on the cross, He freed us in that He restored our relationship with the Father. When He broke the bonds of death and rose from the dead, He broke the bonds that hold us captive as well. This is true of our hope to rise to life with Him one day, and it is true of the bonds that hold us captive in so many ways while we live here on earth. If I told you that you didn’t need to worry any more about all the stuff that takes up so much of your time right now, would that seem like a good thing? If you didn’t have to worry in the same way about bills, job problems, your physical body, your taxes, where you live – what if none of these things were as big a concern anymore? That would be freeing wouldn’t it? Yet what we sometimes fail to realize is that we have been freed from being overly hung up on this by our Lord’s resurrection.

If we live in such a way, that we place Christ first in all things, and truly keep our focus on doing what is pleasing to Him, and abiding in His loving embrace, we can truly be freed from worrying about all this stuff the way we sometimes do now. It is a matter of priority and perspective. When our Lord rose from the dead, He opened to us His home in heaven, and the eternal life that is where we truly belong. The things of the here and now should seem transitory to us if we truly grasp this, and because of that transitory nature, their perceived importance is drastically altered. This alteration brings with it peace and perspective to live life in such a way that we are not so absorbed with these temporary matters and can see beyond them. We can focus on loving God and one another the way we were meant to do. We can place our efforts into doing what is pleasing to God, and will benefit His other children. We can offer prayer as we ought to, because our actions and thoughts will be focused on God and will be prayers in and of themselves when we live like this. We don’t have to be bound in the temporal any longer, we have been freed to be what we are supposed to be, children of the spirit. Yes we are physical creations, but that is only part of our nature, our truer selves are designed to be attuned to God and to seek Him always, this is the natural state for us and where we are happiest. Living in light of our Lord’s resurrection aligns us with this truer nature more fully and so our natural state becomes something new. We can shed the old self with its burdens and emerge as children more fully of spirit who possess the lightness and love that comes with that nature. Jesus Christ has given us this gift of a new life through His resurrection – Happy Easter!

When Jesus drew near to Jerusalem, and rode along on that small colt, the people placed on the ground before him their cloaks and palms branches, because they acknowledged Him as their king. This was a sign that they were looking to him to lead them, and to be fully allegiant and devoted to Him. No one but Jesus knew yet of the things that would transpire and lead to his passion and death on the cross. All they knew, was that they desired our Lord to be with them and to lead them.

The question, as we celebrate this Palm Sunday, is whether that is truly our desire as well. Do we really want Jesus as our leader? Do we have the desire to follow Him without reservation and without conditions being placed upon our willingness to do His will? We call Him God, we profess that He is our King, we pray to Him and ask His help, but do we really submit to Him as we should for our Lord and King? Our words can sound right, and perhaps even our intentions are good, but do our actions show that we are truly His followers and subjects?

A true king’s word is law, there is no ambiguity or questioning his word. The people of Jerusalem knew Jesus’ teachings and were willing to submit, and to have Him as their source of direction, knowledge and law. All this, without even knowing of the loving sacrifice He would soon subject himself to in His passion and death. What is more, they did not know of His resurrection that would take place. Had they known, they would have been all the more adamant.

Yet today, we know of Jesus passion, death, and resurrection. We have the benefit of knowledge and the wisdom passed on in what is written in scripture and given witness to by the apostles themselves who saw it all firsthand, and in the people of subsequent generations who struggled to keep His word, even if in some cases it would mean their deaths. We have all of this available to us, and yet we often stray from His word, we try to interpret it in ways that will make it more palatable to our own ideas and agenda’s, and in some cases we outright reject some of His teachings because we have decided to pick and choose what to believe and what to discard because we feel it might be too costly to us. This is not the way to acknowledge a king, and if we are to call ourselves believers with any semblance of truth to be ascribed to our words, then we must make some changes.

So, how do we do this? First and foremost, we need to make a decision. Do we truly want to follow Jesus Christ? Are we willing to shoulder the cross that He has told us we must each bear? Are we willing to give up our own prideful inclinations and intellectual vanities and accept what He has told us is the way to eternal life? If the answer to these questions is yes, then our work is just beginning. We need to take a deep look at ourselves and how we are currently living our lives. We need to do a truly unvarnished examination of conscience, not matter how uncomfortable that may be. Then lastly we need to develop a plan of action to keep ourselves on track going forward. We live in a world that screams and whispers its contempt for following Jesus and promises its sensual pleasures in exchange, so we need something to combat that. We need to place parameters on our lives on a permanent basis that will lead us to Jesus and strengthen our relationship with Him. We cannot do this ourselves; we need His involvement if there is to be any hope of success. We need to have regular time set aside for prayer, and for the reading of His word, in order to gain a truly intimate understanding of His will. You can’t hope to do someone’s will unless you understand it, and you have enough trust in them and their words to see you through when times get difficult, this can only come through prayer and reading of scripture on a regular basis. What is then left, is to actually put all of this into practice in everything we do. There is no part of our lives that Jesus should not be a part of. He gave everything He had for each of us, He’s proven His wisdom and His love for us, now it’s our turn to lay down our palm branches and cloaks in front of the one who loves us most and deserves our fidelity and love in return.

Podcast Link

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-6ep7f-ff05d6

In our Gospel reading today, our Lord uses the example of a grain of wheat to illustrate the fruits that come from the death of our focus on our own lives and comfort, and the subsequent fruits that are possible if we can forego this focus. When we die to self, our ability to focus on loving our Lord, and our brothers and sisters becomes unencumbered and great things are possible with this freedom of spirit. Our Lord showed us the way of this, He died to self each day by focusing on others, and He ultimately died on the cross for each one of us in order to once and for all offer the perfect expiation for our sins.

How often have we said to ourselves that we could accomplish more in terms of taking care of the needs of others if we only had more time to do so? The real question is not what we could accomplish if we had more time, but rather, what is it in our lives that is taking up all of our time now and precluding us from accomplishing this? Each day we have choices to make in terms of how we spend our time. Much of it is relatively immutable, we know that we must work to sustain ourselves and our families, we know that we must take care of certain tasks within our homes to maintain things so that all can live in some semblance of order. However, there is more often than not some time left that we have the choice to determine how we spend it. This is where the dying to self comes in. We can choose to veg out a bit in front of the television or computer, or perhaps unwind in some other way, neither of which is an inherently bad pursuit, but we should also consider what we can do with our time to spend it a bit more productively for our Lord and for our brothers and sisters.

It can seem daunting to try to figure out ways we can help if left solely to our own devices, but there is an easier way. There are ministries that exist within our Church community that can act as already defined conduits of activity that will benefit others. We can look at the various ones that exist and choose what we think we are best suited for, in other words we do not have to reinvent the wheel as part of this pursuit to serve our brothers and sisters. Everyone has some gift that they can contribute their time and energy toward. We can raise food for others in the garden, we can take communion to those who cannot come to Mass, we can perform repair work around the Church if we are handy with such things, or we can simply spend our time with those who otherwise have no one to visit them as part of our homebound ministries. Everyone has some gift to contribute, and perhaps the greatest of these is simply our time and compassion.

When we lose ourselves, and instead look to the needs of others, we lose our lives in this world for the care and love of others, and through them we extend this love and caring toward our Lord. This is what He is speaking of when explaining to us how to preserve ourselves for eternal life by hating the focus on our own lives in the here and now. If we cannot let go of that focus on self, we remain a single useless grain of wheat, but when we die to self, that grain falls upon good soil and yields the fruits that propel us toward eternal life with our Lord. This might sound like we are perhaps being called to forsake happiness in the here and now, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that once we have gone down the path of placing others, and ultimately our Lord ahead of ourselves, we will discover, perhaps for the first time, what true happiness in this life is all about. That is a grace that I pray will be bestowed upon each one of us.

If there is a theme for today’s readings for the Second Scrutiny, I think it would have to be one of visibility. Being able to see is a wonderful thing, but with it comes both responsibilities, and the need to exercise humility. I say this because when we see things, we become aware of what is going on around us, and this sometimes means we need to be prepared to address issues, or to call out a wrong, or perhaps to in some cases acknowledge the righteous deeds of others. All of these require awareness, and then at least as importantly the wisdom to recognize them properly. It is this recognition and proper understanding that necessitates the need for humility and to always ask for Gods help in understanding and interpreting. Without His help, we have a propensity to use purely human standards and ideas to base our judgements on, and these are often very flawed. We see the physical, we do not see the whole picture, because we cannot see the mind and the heart, and the soul.  

How often do we make snap judgements about others based on their appearance, or their attire, or their station in life? Yet do any of these things adequately define who a person truly is? We need to instead, always take the time to ask our Lord to open our eyes with compassion and love to allow us to see more of what is there in another person, and to always err on the side of being willing to give another the benefit of the doubt. When Samuel was speaking to Jesse, it initially looked to him that Eliab would be the Lords chosen based on his lofty stature and appearance, yet the Lord rejected him and chose the humblest of Jesse’s sons, David, and made him king because He knew that David would follow his word and commands rather than display arrogance and self-import, and instead follow his own designs – He knew David was a man after His own heart. There are still David’s out there today, those who each day humbly follow God without calling attention to themselves, without showing a lot of flash or the trappings of secular success. These people go largely un-noticed simply because they are not what our eyes are attracted to. As part of the remaining effect of original sin, we instead tend to look for illusions of grandeur, for position, wealth and power. It’s honestly no wonder we so often wind up with those in power over us that are inherently flawed and do not fulfill their role as just leaders. It is equally unsurprising that we sometimes make poor choices regarding those who we choose to emulate at work, or in social situations, or our personal lives. We often do not see clearly because we have not asked for the grace of God’s light to illumine our sight and open our hearts to truth.

Each day, we have an opportunity to ask Jesus to make the same clay and anoint our eyes so that they can see clearly those around us and allow us to treat them as we should in terms of their importance in our lives. We can learn of the things that are actually important to our salvation from sources that those who look merely at the surface would otherwise dismiss as insignificant or unworthy of attention. The janitor in the hall, the small child of limited years, the older person who perhaps cannot completely care for themselves anymore; all of these are often the true sources of wisdom if we look at them with the anointed eyes that Jesus can provide us with. As we move through this Lenten season, we should get into a new habit of asking for this clearer vision each day, and then keep to that throughout the year. Each morning as we wake, giving God thanks for that new day, and asking for this grace could be the best time we spend in that new days beginning.

Podcast Link

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-qnas2-fd8999

If you look online, or in the missalette, there are some options for today’s readings, you can use the regular readings from year b for the Third Sunday of Lent, or you can use the readings for the Scrutiny’s that can take place today for those looking to receive the Sacraments. I opted to go the latter route, in part because we will be celebrating the Scrutiny’s, but also because the Gospel message from today is one of my all-time favorites. You see in today’s Gospel God shows us just how different His way of approaching things is from our own. The same patient God, who in our first reading puts up with the grumblings of His chosen people, who He delivered from the bondage of slavery in Egypt, now make accusations against both Moses and He. They have so little faith that they thought that He may let them die of thirst in the desert, after He went to all the effort to deliver them from Pharoah. I think this may have been one of those moments that every parent has to endure, and that truly defines their patience, and in the end God delivers, with a miracle of a gushing spring from a rock in the desert.

The things is, God was just getting warmed up with the water He provided his children. This is was simply sustenance for babes, because his people were still very much in their infancy. The time was coming though, when they had grown sufficiently as a people, to be taught some new and more complex lessons. This is where todays Gospel comes in, the teacher is going to show His people how very different His way of looking at things is from their own, and He does this as he is among them in human form, as Jesus. His disciples had already begun to realize a bit of how different things were in His teachings and outlook, but the people in general still had not heard or seen much of the message, as this was still very early on in His ministry. So, how does our Lord go about making himself more known to the people in general? He starts by having a conversation with a woman of Samaria, who is despised by her own people because of her sins. Now let this sink in for a moment, the first person outside His followers that our Lord reveals His true nature to, as the Messiah, is (A) a woman, (B) a Samaritan, and (C) a publicly known sinner. To fully understand the implications of this, please know that in Jewish custom, you did not talk to a woman who was outside your family, you definitely had nothing to do with Samaritans who were basically your avowed enemies, and you certainly tried to avoid contact with known sinners. This was especially true if you were a teacher of the people, one who imparted God’s word. Yet this is exactly what our Lord does, and if anyone had any misconceptions up to that point about how different things were going to be, and how radically different the way that God saw things compared with our own perceptions, this moment should have brought a bit of clarity. Our Lord showed just how little God valued the categories that we as humans seem to feel the need to place things, and people in, so that we can better grasp or understand things, it is a function of our own limitations, and certainly one that God does not share. God does not put people into neat little boxes or categories, where everyone who commits a particular type of sin goes in their own neat little category or compartment. No, our Lord looks at the heart, and the mind, and the soul, as only He can to truly size each of us up and know where we need his help.  That is also key, He did not come to judge or condemn that woman at the well, He came to help her to be better than she was, to be a true child of God and to leave her sins behind. He came to call her to a fuller life, with the promise of one day, calling her to her true home with Him in heaven. He loves all of us, and His message is as true for each of us, as it was for her, God loves us and wants us, no matter where we are in life, and no matter what we have done. He wants us to live better, and to be with Him in eternal life – that is our loving God and Father, who always tries to show us love here, and to eventually call us lovingly home. Oh, and to paraphrase a bit from one of my favorite portrayals of biblical times, a video series called “The Chosen” that I highly recommend – get used to different.

Podcast Link

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-v7jvn-fcd27e