Let us focus our eyes today, not on the computer screens in front of us, but instead on the cross of Christ. Let us take time to reflect on all that he endured for us—-the pain, the ridicule, the torture. And then, let us prepare our hearts to receive Him on Easter Sunday.

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Lent is nearing an end. The death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior is approaching. Good Friday is just a week away, and then two days later, the Glorious Resurrection on Easter. Its a good time to reflect on our Lenten journey.

How is your journey going? Have you seen any growth in your spiritual lives? Have you remained committed to your Lenten promises and sacrifices? For me, the Lenten journey this year has been a mixed blessing. This year, I committed to refraining from all sweets. (If you know me, you know this is hard for me.) Each time I was tempted with something sweet, I said a little prayer, offering that sacrifice to God. Doing that gave me lots of opportunity to pray. I also committed to getting in front of the Blessed Sacrament each work day. It seems easy to do, since I work at a church, but it proved to be rather difficult for me. What I was hoping to do was to create a new habit that would continue even after Lent. But it is hard to make the time to pray—-not just the short moments of prayer each time I was tempted by sweets—-but to enter into a conversation with God, so spend some time nurturing my relationship with Him.

Going through Lent gives us an opportunity to reflect on Christ’s passion. And we need to reflect on His passion. We need to understand what Christ went through, to know the amount of suffering He endured. Not because we’re sadists and enjoy watching others suffer, but because unless and until we understand what Christ went through we will never understand how much He loves us. Jesus did not want to suffer. He did not want to endure pain, torture, and ridicule. He prayed to His Father that this cup may pass Him. But then after that prayer, He also prayed that God’s will be done.

Before enduring ridicule, torture, and death, Jesus went to the garden to pray. He took Peter, James, and John to pray with Him. Jesus remained focused and determined in His prayer. Peter, James, and John fell asleep not once, not twice, but three times. I think that their lack of commitment to prayer comes from their lack of understanding of what was about to happen.  The same is true for me. I can say that I am going to go with Jesus to pray. I can agree to join Him in the Garden of Gethsemane for prayer, but then I fall asleep. I, like Peter, James, and John, lack the discipline to stay awake, to stay focused, to stay committed.

If we can truly understand what Christ went through for us. If we can understand the emotion He felt in the Garden of Gethsemane, if we can understand the pain and torture he endured, if we can understand all of this, then it would be much easier for us to focus our lives on Him. But we allow ourselves to get distracted. We allow other things to pull us away from the love of our Father. We want it our way. The problem is when we do that we become like Peter. We fall asleep. We deny Him. We abandon Him as He’s being crucified for us.

There is one week left before we commemorate the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior. Let us take this week to truly understand all that Jesus endured. Let us understand that He endured it for us, because He loves us. Let us be committed and join Him in the Resurrection, giving glory and praise and honor to Him in all things, never taking our eyes away from Him.

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I got a new book in the mail yesterday.  I received a copy of St. Josemaria Escriva’s “The Way”, “Furrow”, and “The Forge” in a one volume edition. I haven’t had a chance to dive into and read it yet, but I did flip through it. The first sentence of “The Way” stopped me in my tracks. It really convicted me.

Don’t let your life be sterile.

OUCH! What a convicting statement! I don’t want to read further! In all seriousness, how many of us live sterile lives?

The word sterile has a couple of definitions. The first definition is “incapable of producing, or not producing”. This is generally used in reference to producing offspring. But our lives can be sterile in this sense as well. Our lives can be non-productive. I often fall into this type of sterility in my life. I get easily distracted by things that are unimportant, things that are unnecessary. I allow myself to be distracted from the will of God in my life and thus I become sterile, non-productive.

The other definition of sterile is “free from living germs or microorganisms; aseptic.” This kind of sterility can lead us away from God as well. Are you a perfectionist? Do you have to have everything in your life in order? Are you unwilling to “get your hands dirty” with physical labor or spiritual labor? Life is messy. It doesn’t fit into nice little compartments, no matter how much we try to squeeze it into them. We must accept this in our lives. We must be wiling to get our hands dirty to do the work of God in our lives and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up if things don’t turn out as we have planned. Because, if we can get out of the way of ourselves, our lives will go exactly as God plans. We may we will get dirty along the way. We need to let go of the control we think we have over our lives and give that control over to God.

Life isn’t sterile. It’s messy. We need to set aside our distractions. We need to be disciplined. We need t be flexible. We need to allow God to form us and mold us and draw us out of our sterile environments. St. Josemaria Escriva goes on to  say:

Be useful. Blaze a trail. Shine forth with the light of your faith and of your love.

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How do we ask for mercy? How do we approach God in prayer? I believe that the first thing we need to do is approach God with a heart of humility. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells this parable:

Two people went up to the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, “O, God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income. But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

In order to ask for mercy we must first realize that we are asking for that which we do not deserve. We need to go to prayer, not like the Pharisee, but like the tax collector.

It is often times so hard to understand that we are deserving of nothing, that our sinfulness, our failings put us in a situation where we don’t deserve anything from God. We live in a culture of entitlement. We’re entitled to have a big house, a big car, a big paycheck, a life without pain and suffering. What we have is ours. We believe that we worked hard for what we have and we deserve to have what we have. With everything that our culture is telling us it is hard to believe that we don’t deserve any of it. It is even harder to believe that everything that we do have has been given to us through the grace, and mercy, of God.  All of our gifts, all of our talents, all of our possessions are a gift from God to us. The only thing that we can claim as our own is our sin.

So, it is with this in mind that we come to God and ask for mercy. Like the tax collector, we bow our heads, beat our breasts, and beg for mercy. We need to let go of our preconceived notions of what we deserve—-because we deserve nothing. We need to be like the younger son in the parable of the prodigal son. He wasted his life away, thinking that he deserved to receive his inheritance, that he was entitled to it. In the end, after losing it all, he went back to his father and begged for mercy. His father showered him with mercy and grace. Our Heavenly Father is waiting for us. He’s waiting for us to return to Him so that He can shower His mercy on us.

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Many of you know that I work as a full time youth minister. Over the years, I have had many people tell me that what I do is very hard work and they don’t envy the job that I have. At first, I didn’t understand. I was on fire with the Spirit and excited about sharing the truths of our Church and encourage them to have a personal relationship with God. I love my job. I enjoy spending time with the teens each week. I enjoy sharing my faith with them and encouraging them in their own faith.

After being in youth ministry for nearly 3 years now, I am beginning to see where some of these people are coming from when they say they don’t envy what I do.  Yet I have a feeling that the difficulties I have are not the ones that they envision. I have a feeling that the friends of mine that could not, or would not, do youth ministry are thinking about the “teen angst” that is always present with middle schoolers and high schoolers who are dealing with a number of changes, physically, emotionally, and mentally. No, for me, it’s not the “teen angst”. That part doesn’t bother me. What I have a difficult time with is support.

For many youth ministers there is a lack of support on the parish and diocesan level. But this is not the lack of support I’m speaking of. The lack of support I’m speaking of is support from the parents. There are many, many (too many, if you ask me) parents that feel that it is the Church’s job to educate their kids in the faith. They drop their kids off to religious education classes week after week (some of them only enrolling their kids in sacramental years) or send them to Catholic schools, thinking they’ve done their job, that they’ve done what they promised to do when they baptized their children. I can reach out to the teens that come to youth group. I can engage them and educate them. But then…..well….they go home. And that is where I lose my support.

I firmly believe that teaching children faith begins and ends in the home. It is not the role of the Church to do all the work when it comes to education children in the faith. The role the Church plays is in supporting the work done in the home, filling in the blanks that parents may not be able to fill themselves. If what the Church does in religious education instruction and youth ministry is not modeled in the home then the work we do is an exercise in futility. I can, many catechists and youth ministers can, impact teens. We can engage the youth, but if they aren’t engaged in the home, then they don’t stay engaged. If you don’t make your faith a priority then how can you expect your children to make their faith a priority.

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I spent a few years working as a financial advisor. I would have clients come into my office and tell me about a guy at the office who made a lot of money off of a high risk investment. They would tell me that they wanted some of the same investment or something like it. I would respond with:

Good for him! I’m glad he was lucky enough to get a big gain out of that investment. But it could have, and more often than not it does, had a very detrimental effect on his portfolio. You see, investments like that, although they can provide a short term gain, often end in a long term loss. There is a tremendous amount of risk in those types of investments. People who see gains from them receive those gains more often from luck than they do from any skill or knowledge of the market. So, I, as your advisor, do not recommend you put any money into these high risk investments. Rather, I recommend a long term investment strategy that may not have high short term gains, but in the end will provide a more steady revenue growth.

My clients would listen to me and my advice, and most of them would agree with me. However, sometimes, I would have a client insist that I buy some of this investment for him. I would tell him that I work for him and I will do what he instructs me to do with his money. I would also be firm with him about the fact that I do not recommend what he is asking me to do. I would tell him that I just don’t see it as a wise investment.

How do we invest our life, our time and our energy? Do we make decisions that provide us a short term gain? For example, are our decisions based on lust, pride, envy, or gluttony? There is a very attractive short term gain to these decisions. They fulfill carnal desires and puff up our self-esteem. But, what is the long term gain from making decisions based on these sins? More often than not, there is none. Rather, the long term effects of sin leads to pain and suffering in this life, and, ultimately, life in hell.

We should make wise investments with our life, investments that have a long term benefit instead of a short term gain. We should be chaste, humble, kind, and temperate. There may be no visible short term gains from living a life of virtue. It is a hard life, one that requires a lot of work. But the rewards are far greater than the short-term gain of sin. The rewards lead to a stronger will, better relationships, and a peace that cannot be matched. The rewards are eternal life.

Christ is recommending to us the same thing I recommended to my clients. He is advising us to choose the investments that have a long term gain instead of a short term sense of pleasure and satisfaction. If we choose a life of sin, He won’t stop us, but He will tell us that He doesn’t see it as a wise investment. He advises a life of virtue. Now that is a wise investment.

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This Sunday, we hear about the temptation of Jesus after fasting for 40 days. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert so that he could endure the same temptations that we face every day.

The first temptation was that of food. Jesus was hungry after having fasted for 40 days. How often are we tempted by food? I know I struggle daily with it. You may not think so (I’m rather lanky), but food is a major struggle for me. Not only is there a great temptation to eat whatever I want, whenever I want, but I also worry about providing for my family the sustenance we need to survive. Christ’s response was “One does not live by bread alone”. We need to rely on God first. Only then will we be provided with all we need.

The second temptation was power. Satan tempted Jesus to use his power to protect Himself from throwing himself off the “parapet of the temple”. Jesus certainly had within His power the ability to do this, and his response to Satan was “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” How often do we struggle with power? Power, in our culture, means success. Success is the most important thing in our American society. Oftentimes that success is at the expense of our families, ourselves, and our faith. We put God to the test every day in our struggle to have power. We want to be in control of our own lives. We want the power to make our own decisions. The only real power is in surrender. It is only in surrendering our wills to the will of Our Heavenly Father that we will gain real power–power over sin, power over death.

Finally, Satan tempted Jesus with possessions. He brought Him to the top of a mountain and promised him all the kingdoms and everything they held. Possessions–we want and we want and we want some more. We keep accumulating things in our lives. We worship our cars, our homes, our Facebook accounts. What does it get us? Possessions may provide temporary satisfaction, but in the end we will be left longing. In worshiping our possessions, we prostrate ourselves to Satan and worship him. Instead of worshiping what we have, we should instead, worship our Lord and Savior. It is only then can we find true satisfaction.

What really strikes me about this gospel is not the fact that Jesus was tempted. It was not that his resistance to temptation serves as a guide for us in resisting temptation in our own lives. Rather, what strikes me most about this passage is the last sentence:

Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.

We can’t avoid the temptations of the devil.  We take a beating every day from him. He is trying to hurt us, to weaken us, to get us to turn our backs to the Lord. Oftentimes we give in to those temptations. I know I give in entirely too often. But we must remember that just as Jesus had angels ministering to Him, we, too, have angels ministering to us. Those angel, and the saints, are the ones we need to go to for strength. We need to allow God’s angels to minister to us by surrendering our own wills. We cannot accomplish anything from our own will, especially resisting temptation. We look to the angels and saints to guide us, to protect us, to pray for us. We look to Jesus as an example of how to resist temptation.

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In the gospel last Sunday, we heard “therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.” It was all about trusting in God–about not worrying about your needs. God will provide for us everything I need. My diocese, whether intentionally or unintentionally, decided to choose last Sunday as “commitment Sunday” for the Diocesan Annual Appeal. At first glance, it seems as these two things are in direct opposition to each other. On the one hand, we have Jesus in the gospel telling us not to worry about tomorrow, and on the other hand we have my pastor telling us to give money to the diocese. It could be seen that the diocese is “worrying about tomorrow”.

Upon further reflection, these two concepts are not at all incompatible. God does not want us to worry about tomorrow. He wants us to trust in Him and rely on Him to provide us with everything that we need. We are more important to Him than the birds in the sky. God takes care of the birds. He will take care of us, too.

Just because we know that God will take care of us, that does not mean that we can just sit back and do nothing. The Diocese of St. Petersburg, (or any diocese for that matter), has to work to provide for its needs. We, too, have to work to provide for our needs as well. We need to work for our corporal needs. We also need to work for our spiritual needs.

This Sunday, we hear Jesus say, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” We need to be like the wise man who built his house on rock. We need to build a firm foundation. Yes, we have to trust that God will take care of us, physically and spiritually. We should not worry about tomorrow. But, at the same time, we need to work to build that foundation in our lives. We need to work to build a firm foundation to take care of our physical needs. We also need to work to build a firm foundation in our spiritual lives.

We need to do the will of our Father in heaven. The key word is “DO”. It implies that there is an action required. God presents Himself to many people throughout the bible. Never does He appear to someone without calling them to action. We need to bring that action to our lives. We need to spend time in prayer–EVERY DAY–conversing with our heavenly Father, asking what His will is for us. We need to read scripture and other spiritual writings. We need to receive the sacraments regularly–even Reconciliation! Just as we can’t just sit back and think about money and have it drop in our laps, we can’t just sit back and say “Lord, Lord” and expect to get into heaven. We need to back all of that up with action.  Having that firm foundation build will make it easier for us to not worry about tomorrow.

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Lent starts in less than two weeks. This is the time of year where millions of Catholics are trying to decide what they are willing to sacrifice for 40 days. Are you willing to give up chocolate? Television? Candy? Beer? Facebook? (Oh NOO! Not Facebook!)

When I was a kid I  hated Lent. I hated trying to figure out what I was going to give up. I hated having to give something up. I never remembered to abstain from meat on Fridays. It always seemed that 2 or 3 weeks into Lent, I gave up on my Lenten sacrifice and started eating chocolate or playing video games or doing whatever it was that I gave up that year. And then I spent the rest of Lent feeling guilty while I indulged in chocolate bar after chocolate bar. I was grateful when Easter came along and I could rid myself of the guilt I carried around for weeks. I could enjoy life again.

I believe that my hatred of Lent as a child stemmed from my lack of understanding of sacrifice. I grew up Catholic. I went to a Catholic grade school and high school. Every year, the priests at my parish and the nuns at my school would stress the fact that we had to sacrifice something during Lent. Yet they never explained why. Or, if they did explain why, I never heard that message. I was probably too busy trying to figure out what to give up to listen to the reasons behind the sacrifice.

So, why do we make sacrifices during Lent? Does the Church delight is seeing us suffer? Does the Pope sit in the Chair of Peter laughing at all of us? (I know, the Pope doesn’t actually sit in the chair.) What is the point of giving something up for Lent?

Lenten sacrifices are designed to draw us closer to Christ. If giving up chocolate for Lent doesn’t draw us closer to Christ, then the sacrifice is useless. It is just an exercise in self-torture. Instead of cursing ourselves (or the Church) every time we are tempted to indulge in what we sacrificed for Lent we should stop and pray. Pray that God will help us through the temptation. Pray that we will be drawn closer to Christ through the sacrifice. According to the Catechism:

It is right to offer sacrifice to God as a sign of adoration and gratitude, supplication and communion: “Every action done so as to cling to God in communion of holiness, and thus achieve blessedness, is a true sacrifice.” CCC 2099

We fast, we sacrifice so that we can fill the space created through that sacrifice with the love and grace of God. Sacrifice requires discipline and discipline helps us to become better disciples (both have the same Latin root).

Do you want to serve God better? Do you want to become stronger in your faith? Make sacrifices. And don’t just reserve those sacrifices during Lent! Make one small sacrifice every day. It may be refraining from putting salt on your food (if you’re one who loves salt) or skipping a meal. It may be giving up Facebook for a day. Then offer up that sacrifice in prayer. Pray that through making that sacrifice that you may be drawn closer to Christ–that you may understand better the sacrifice He made for us.

This is something that I know I need to do.  Lent is a perfect opportunity for me to create a new habit of making a sacrifice every day, all throughout the year. How about you?

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Over and over again I hear complaints about the Mass. Being a Youth Minister for two parishes in my diocese, this is particularly apparent from the teens I work with.

“Mass is boring.”
“The music is too old fashioned.”
“The priest can’t relate to me.”
“It’s too long.”
“There are too many old people. It smells like a nursing home.” (Yes, I actually got that comment from one of the teens. And yes, it’s true. Mass does smell like a nursing home here. I live in Florida, heaven’s waiting room.)

It’s not just teens that are complaining, either. The complaints come from the adults, too. Many adults say that the Mass is too old fashioned, too out of touch with the times. They complain that the Mass, and the Catholic Church as a whole, is irrelevant.

Over and over, people are complaining about the Mass. We complain because we’re not being entertained. We live in a culture where entertainment value is the most important criteria for deciding whether or not to do something. Whether you are a teen or an adult, if it’s boring, we don’t want to do it. People leave the Catholic Church. Many Catholics that do stay in the Church are disengaged. They are disengaged and leave for many reasons. I suspect that one of those reasons is that they are bored—-that they aren’t being entertained. Maybe, just maybe, we’re missing the point.

We’ve lost our sense of wonder and awe. It’s true in every area of our lives. We don’t feel a sense of wonder about anything. Think about that for a moment. How many of us marvel at the advances in technology or the beauty of nature? How many of us are in awe of the masterpieces of music or art? As a culture, we’ve even lost our wonder and awe at human life itself through the pervasive culture of death we live in. This loss of a sense of wonder and awe is particularly apparent in matters of faith and spirituality.

There is one image that I know we all have seen. This image should evoke a sense of wonder and awe every time we look at it. But it rarely does. I know, in my life, I seldom look upon this image with a sense of wonder and awe. That image is the image of Christ crucified. I spoke last week about what Christ endured in his passion and death. Christ endured much pain and suffering. He endured it for you. He endured it for me. I can write these words. You can read them. But does it bring about a sense of wonder and awe for you….for me? I know, at least for me, it doesn’t bring a sense of wonder and awe every time I see this image, every time I think about what Jesus endured for me. And it should.

Matthew Kelly says, in Rediscovering Catholicism:

Mass is not about who you sit next to. It’s not about which priest says Mass. It is not about what you wear or who is there. Mass is not about the music. It’s not even about the preaching. Mass is about receiving the body and blood of Christ, not just physically, but spiritually.

We don’t go to Mass to be entertained. We go to Mass to discover (or rediscover) the wonder and awe of the sacrifice that Christ made for us. We go to celebrate His death and resurrection. We don’t go to Mass to socialize. We go to receive the Word of God, both in the scripture and the Eucharist.

If Mass bores you, if you don’t find it entertaining, if you would rather watch a football game than go to Mass, then you need to rediscover your sense of wonder. For me, and I imagine for many of us—-for those of us who don’t find Mass boring….well, we need to rediscover our sense of wonder, too. It is all too easy for me to get lost in the routine of the Mass. It is entirely too easy for me to get distracted (especially with 5 kids in tow). I need to rediscover the wonder of the sacrifice Christ made for me. I need to rediscover it every Sunday at Mass. I also need to rediscover it every day in my personal prayer time.

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