4th Sunday of Lent - C (March 27, 2022)

 

God is Filled with Compassion

Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32

 

In the face of evils and suffering, we want to ask, “Why God?”  Or if God is a benevolent God, why would God allow evils and suffering?

 

This parable teaches us that it is we, like the two sons, who cause our sufferings and we cause others to suffer.  We do not see ourselves as God’s children.  We rebel.  We do not want to live in God’s house, or following God’s laws.  We treat each other as strangers. (In the parable, the younger brother only thinks of himself and his wants.  He has no consideration for his father or his brother.  The older brother complains to his father about the faults of “your son” but not “my brother.”)

 

When we cause our own sufferings, and when we cause others to suffer, God is “filled with compassion for us.”  God “comes out and pleads with” us to return to share God’s love, compassion, and joy with God and with each other.   

 

Image: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Return of the Prodigal Son, www.wikipedia.org

3rd Sunday of Lent - C (March 20, 2022)

 

The Lord is Kind and Merciful

Luke 13: 1-9

 

These words of the responsorial psalm consoles and encourages us.

 

Imagine if God “dealt with us as our sins merit” (Psalm 103:10).

 

Instead, as Jesus teaches us through the Gospel parable, God creates us and continually sustains God’s gift of life in us. 

 

But we do not always live the way of God.  Even then, like the gardener, in our Savior, God guides and nourishes us with God’s grace, so that we, the fig tree, might bear fruits.

 

 Image source: www.agnusday.org

2nd Sunday of Lent (March 13, 2022)

 

Prayer

Luke 9: 28b-36

 

Jesus took Peter, John, and James to the mountain to pray.  The three were “overcome by sleep.”  Later, while “fully awake,” Peter spoke to Jesus, “but he did not know what he was saying.” 

 

Can we relate to those experiences in our prayer?  Sleeping?  Saying things that we do not know what we are saying?

 

We are consoled and encouraged to know that it is Jesus who leads us when we pray.  It is Jesus, the head, who prays in us, His body.  It is also Jesus who is speaking to us the words that God invites us to listen to.

 

As God spoke to the disciples, God still speaks to us.  In addition, whether we are awake or asleep, God’s presence and glory always embrace us. 

 

Prayer really does not depend on us and our efforts.  It is God’s initiative to draw us into relationship with God. 

Image source: www.agnusday.org

1st Sunday of Lent - C (March 6, 2022)

 

Jesus – Our Way and Power

Luke 4: 1-13

 

Our Christian life is a journey. 

 

While on that journey, we need regular opportunities to recalibrate our progress and direction. 

 

The annual observance of Lent offers us the opportunity to recalibrate.  And Jesus gives us the direction.

 

The direction of Jesus’ life is oriented towards God and humanity.  As seen in the three temptations in today’s Gospel, he did not use his power to serve his needs, to control others, or to supplant God. 

 

His life culminated at the cross.  There, he gave himself as the sacrifice of love that all humanity might live.  There, he offered the sacrificed of perfect obedience to God the Father. 

 

With the power of Christ’s gift of self in the Eucharist, may this Lent help us to recalibrate our Christian life according to how he lived and sacrificed himself for us.  

 

 

8th Sunday - C (February 27, 2022)

 

“Fullness of the Heart”

Luke 6: 39-45

 

Lent begins later this week. 

 

We often plan on what to give up for Lent.

 

What if we push ourselves a little further, and focus not on what to give up but on what we should make room in our hearts for?  It might still involve the giving up, but it takes us to the next level. 

 

In fact, it’s even better to ask not “What?” but “Who should we make room in our hearts for?”  Last week, when we listened to an earlier section of this same Chapter 6 from Luke, Jesus invited us “to be children of the Most High,” and to “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

 

With God’s grace, the holy Season of Lent will make our hearts somewhat fuller with God.  

 

Image source: www.pinterest.com

7th Sunday - C (February 20, 2022)

 

Children of the Most High

Luke 6: 27-38

 

Two observations on this Sunday’s Gospel:

1.     Sometimes, or even often, we might view God’s law as a burden, or something that God imposes on us.  That attitude is both wrong and not helpful.  We need to appreciate that God’s law is a gift from God to help us become more like God, to live as “children of the Most High.”  God’s law is thus not a burden.  It is a privilege. 

2.    Have we found it hard to love people who we do not like, or worse, those who have done us wrong?  Jesus is quite practical in his commandment of love.  He tells us to “do good, bless, and pray for them.”  We might not be ready to do good for them.  We can start by asking God for help as we pray for them.  

 

Image source: www.agnusday.org

6th Sunday - C (February 13, 2022)

 

Hunger for Jesus

Luke 6: 17. 20-26

 

St. Luke lets us know that the crowd of people who came to listen to Jesus kept growing in numbers and in their hunger for his teaching and healing. 

 

Two Sundays ago, Jesus was preaching in the synagogue of his home village of Nazareth.  Their reception went from curiosity to fury at him.   Last week, he was on the lakeside in Capernaum.  He needed to preach from a boat because the crowd was bigger and they were “pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God.” 

 

Today, “A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases”  (6: 17-18, v. 18 is not included in the passage used in Church).

 

More and more people were coming to be with Jesus, to listen to him, and to be healed by him.

 

Does my hunger and desire for Jesus grow with time?