This Lent Remember To Repent And Believe In The Gospel!

2/18/2015

Our pastor's sermon this morning was so inspirational and instructional I felt compelled to postpone my own Ash Wednesday reflection in order to share it with all who are trying to turn toward God. Have a blessed Lenten Season!

Homily Ash Wednesday 2015
Joel 2:12-18; Mt 6:1-6, 16-18

Prayer, fasting and alms giving ... important disciplines in the Christian life carried over from our Jewish heritage. I encourage you to do something from each category this Lenten season, with the idea that you’ll carry it over into your everyday lives, as seasons come and seasons go.

If you weren’t able to make it to Mass last weekend, check out my homily on the website. I talk about barriers that get in the way of our cleanness of life in body or mind, heart or soul, and that Lent is a great time to begin fasting from those barriers.

I also talk about how prayer is essential in first identifying the barriers between us and God, and also in ensuring success through the process of tearing them down, and keeping them out of the way. We also have these little black books at the doors to help you recreate, renew, or strengthen your daily life of prayer.

Giving alms is most often thought of as making donations to help those in need, and we have the rice bowls at the doors as a way of doing that. But you can also give other things besides money. In the spirit of the New Evangelization, I suggest that once a week, you give your faith away to someone in need.

A less intimidating way to do that might be to visit the blog I’ve mentioned a few times before: www.letitallstarthere.com. There've been some wonderful things written there lately that have inspired some wonderful faith sharing among strangers and friends. Commit to contributing part of your own faith story once a week for Lent.

Whatever you do for these 40 days, do it in the spirit desired by the Lord, described by the Prophet Joel. Make sure your heart is really in it! If these practices are nothing more than added burdens in your life, that you complain about until Easter Sunday, they are meaningless, if not outright offensive to God.

“Rend your hearts, not your garments.” Back in the day, the practice of rending garments meant to tear your clothing as a sign of intense emotion – anger, grief or despair. God wants the sign to be genuinely meaningful ... he wants our hearts to be torn open, with contrition for sins, and with burning desire for reconciliation.

You probably know your heart is a muscle. When you exert other muscles in your body with high resistance training like lifting weights, you get sore the next day or two, because the exercise actually causes micro-tears in your muscle tissue ... your muscles bleed, and that hurts.

But with rest and nutrition, the healing of that tissue makes the muscles grow and get stronger. Hence, the phrase: no pain, no gain. Now, think about Lent and the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and alms giving, as spiritual exercise for your heart.

Embrace the challenge, the difficulty, the sacrifice of these penitential practices, and allow them to rend your heart ... feel the pain of tearing your heart away from your own wants, needs, and desires, so that it might focus on something other than itself.

Make the struggle a deliberate offering of self-gift, and do so joyfully, that your heart might grow ... both in capacity and strength ... to love God fully, as he first loved you, and to love your neighbors as yourself.

19 Comments

jackie white

2/18/2015 10:00:53 am

Evelyn, when you started the blog, I feared replying. Now I look forward to reading what interests you and how I can share, also.

So, if any of you reading this feel that way, give it a try as I did and now I am a regular.

As I read the homily today for Ash Wednesday, I noticed his suggestion to share a faith story.

Here goes. A few weeks ago I was in a restaurant with two friends. The waitress took our order and then she looked at my Spirit medal and said it was beautiful. When she came back to give us water, she looked again and said again how beautiful it was. To what religious denomination did I belong? I told her with a big smile that I was a Catholic. I asked her the same question. She said I am a non practicing Catholic. I am a waitress and I can't go to church on Saturday or Sunday. I then remembered when speaking with Fr. Michael about someone else with the same problem and he had suggested I tell the person to speak to her pastor and get permission to go one day during the week to fulfill the obligation that can't be done on the weekend. So I gave her that suggestion .
She was surprised about that. So, I said give it a try and talk to a priest since you have no parish at this time.

Just to let you know that the signs I wear of my faith have helped me evangelize about three times in the past month.

charlene caramore

2/20/2015 11:16:50 pm

It's a wonderful thing that something as simple as wearing a medal can begin the evangelization process. I always wear my Miraculous medal and a Cross on the same chain and I've had such beautiful conversations with people because of that. And some aren't so lovely too but it gives me an opening to make a faith statement that I hope will get people thinking. Once when I was in a play one of the other actresses came up to me while I was getting into costume, pointed to my necklace and said, "That's got to go." I said, "No, it doesn't come off." She's a Catholic too but I hope that the simplicity of my comment--no arguing, no defensiveness, just a statement of fact--made a point. After that, I had been in plays that she directed and it never was mentioned again. At other times, I've gotten a chance to explain what the medal means in our faith and also to me. We are so blessed in our faith.

jackie white

2/20/2015 11:49:12 pm

Charlene,

I love it. All for the greater glory of God.

jackie white

2/23/2015 03:47:01 am

The Lord led me to giving my faith away Friday of last week. I have been called to pastoral care ministry at the hospital for my parish. As I usually do, I check the Catholic list for parishioners and I bring Christ through my own presence to the patients on my list. There was only one that day.

There has been a person from a parish close to my home but far from the hospital that I visited a few times because I wanted to do so.

As I was approaching the D unit, I met up with about 7 people who were talking in the hallway about the 'on call' priest for that day whom they had called and were waiting for him for the mother to be anointed. They were getting impatient because an hour had gone by and they even called a second time with no response.

I asked them if they wanted me to go and pray with her before the priest arrived. I would be happy to do so. They wanted me to do that. They gave me a first name and a room number and off I went. As I looked down at the name and number, it was the lady who I had been visiting from the parish near my home.

Out of all the people in the hospital, the person was the one I had originally planned on seeing.. Coincidence? No, it was my YES from the Lord that I was to go there. I shared prayers with her and then the priest came to anoint her.

I walked away feeling very close to the Lord and very happy that He chose me to go and see her.

charlene caramore

2/25/2015 11:50:08 am

What a great story, Jackie. One of the ladies in my Kateri class on ministry always says, "There are no coincidences, just God-incidents." How true! When the Holy Spirit acts, we just stand in awe at the goodness of our God. All praise to Him! Many blessings.

Diane DeDominicis

2/26/2015 02:54:19 am

What a wonderful and inspiring Homily! Thank you, Evelyn, for sharing it here with us!

evelyn link

2/26/2015 04:20:47 am

It truly is! Thanks for visiting www.letitallstarthere.com again.
Can you share the link with your parishioners and friends?
I will be posting this weekend on Answered Prayers

jackie white

2/28/2015 09:27:33 pm

Charlene,

I am passing the God-incidents along ....It is super........

Richard Anthony link

3/1/2015 10:52:05 am

“Rend your hearts, not your garments.” really hits home with me, as right now I'm wrestling with a crisis of conscience that maybe other Catholic readers can identify with and/or weigh in on.

Last Lent, besides the usual abstaining from one selected
self-indulgence, I decided to also give up having ashes imposed on my forehead. Why? The Lenten scriptures. To me they are very explicit.

Matthew 6:16-18 says: "anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others" and "do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting." Do it "so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you."

Immediately after these readings, in what I now see as glaring and
almost farcical hypocrisy, the entire congregation lines up to have
their faces smeared with black crucifixes--or more often than
not--black smudges. Everybody except yours truly. . . . Talk about
being odd man out.

I'm sure that this issue will continue to pose a personal dilemma for
me every Lent from now on. Am I the only one in the Catholic world who feels this way? Maybe Evelyn could devote a future blog to it! Short of that, any and all comments here will be welcome.

evelyn link

3/1/2015 11:26:08 am

Hi Mr. Anthony! I just saw your post and need to re-read it and digest all that you have written. I had an initial response...as I always do. But alas, I will have our heart like our dear Blessed Mother and ponder this for a bit. I am about to post a new blog about prayer. Please read, comment and pass the link on.

evelyn link

3/2/2015 02:43:31 am

Thank you for raising this issue dear sir. I am hoping that Fr. Michael can speak to the concerns you have shared here. You will find that he is an essential resource for us. His training in seminary, his continual study of the faith, along with his critical and analytical thinking skills from his previous life as an engineer, have given him the ability to piece together many facts from many sources and connect the dots beautifully. Or simply put: The Holy Spirit is working though him. In any case, I urge you to reach out to him outside of the confines of this blog. He, if you are in the right frame of mind…with an open heart and willingness to trust, can assuage your crisis of conscience. I see it happen all the time during his Sunday homilies. And believe me I listen with a critical ear and I am watching the people in the pews.
However, for now, let me speak to what I think the adorning of my forehead with a smug of ash symbolizes in these modern times. Simply put…if I were writing this as a mathematical equation, I would scribble on the paper: ASHES = I BELIEVE. And that’s all she wrote! By the way… I don’t do math. And I went back a second time, in the middle of that Wednesday, because my bangs brushed my ashes away. These days when Christians are dying because they won’t denounce Christ…I felt it was an important sign of my solidarity.
The Canonical gospel writer Matthew did, as you suggest, offer Jesus’ clear guidelines on how one might atone in an attempt to get in right relations with God. But I don’t believe Catholics who want to wear the sign of our salvation, the cross, are being hypocrites. (We can talk about the actions of a faithful hypocrite in another blog, for surely we are all guilty of that!) This Catholic ritual is way for us to acknowledge that we are attempting to “repent and believe in the Gospel”. We are not disfiguring our faces to show others we are fasting. (And I think what our Lord meant by disfiguring has more to do with facial expressions of a sour or dour frown, an obvious look of suffering...) We have listened closely to Jesus’ teachings and we have learned that lesson. Instead, and you know this, we are accepting the smudge of ash as a badge of honor! I have found that the ashen cross on the forehead is as empowering to a Catholic as the American flag is to a patriot. This is how our faith has evolved.

Richard Anthony link

3/3/2015 06:33:03 am

Thank you, Evelyn, for your thoughtful and well-reasoned response to my comment about the imposition of ashes.

My psychological quandary did not happen overnight; it took years of hearing the scriptures read on many Ash Wednesdays, absorbing and reflecting upon them, to arrive at my present interpretation. It is a very personal decision that I doubt can be reversed by anyone's arguments or logic. Nor do I feel it is an issue that can be (or should be) argued about. You either do it or you don't. To my understanding of our religion, there is no obligation to have ashes imposed nor is it sinful not to have them. But in my congregation of hundreds, inasmuch as I am the only one who does not accept the ashes, my sense of apartness and alienation is strong, and in future years it is likely to intensify. My only consolation is that Our Heavenly Father knows my soul and will judge me accordingly.

Please understand that I accept and relate to all your reasons for having ashes imposed on your forehead. I do not suggest that you or anyone else stop the practice. My question in my initial comment was, " Am I the only one in the Catholic world who feels this way?" When St. Matthew tells me, every Lent, to "wash thy face That thou appearest not to men to fast," I take that very literally. There are many other badges of honor that I can wear to proclaim my faith and joy at being a Catholic.

evelyn link

3/4/2015 12:56:44 am

I know that these Catholic rituals (as with any ritual) are intended to unify us and not to divide us. I am sad about your prediction: "...inasmuch as I am the only one who does not accept the ashes, my sense of apartness and alienation is strong, and in future years it is likely to intensify". I can tell you are a great thinker from our few exchanges Mr. Anthony, so I am asking that you set your intellect aside and read this with the eyes of faith: We are called to be the Body of Christ...the Church and its members are Christ's Body: "There are different offices/gifts/ministries given to members to build up the Church, of which Christ is the head.
His Body, the Church should be unified and consistent in faith and doctrine.
And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love." Ephesians 4:11-16
You had asked: " Am I the only one in the Catholic world who feels this way?" I was not trying to argue with you Mr. Anthony...I was trying to say that I do not feel that way and why. I was asking you to reconsider. We need you to be with us.

Richard Anthony link

3/4/2015 04:12:29 am

I AM with you, Evelyn, and appreciate the honesty that you and your readers share in these comments. Yes, we are one body, and as our Lord says: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."-- John: 5

My "prediction," as you put it, stems from my predicament (not accepting ashes on my forehead 1 day a year); and until I can reconcile within me the need to do so I sense that my feeling of alienation will not disappear. But it's only 1 day a year, and more specifically, 1 hour a year--the Ash Wednesday mass.

I've sent you at least 1 email to tell you how I learned about your blog, and in it I may have mentioned that I've just published a book of popular phrases:

http://www.amazon.com/Would-You-Mind-Repeating-That/dp/0989812405

One of my sayings, under the category of "Premature" is, "You don’t have a problem until it becomes a problem." Until now, when I brought this issue up to ask if any other Catholics feel as I do, my declining of ashes has not been a problem. As I said at the outset, it's my own personal crisis of conscience. I'll have to work through it on my own. Thank you for answering my question, and there's no need on my part for further discussion of the issue. I do have the strength and power of Jesus to lead me and I'm sure that He will not let me down and will guide me true. I'll continue to read and comment, mindful that if we remain in Him and He in us, our exchanges will bear much fruit.

evelyn link

3/7/2015 12:24:39 am

I 'm grateful for your readership, your support of the blog and for your thoughtful comments. Thank you. This morning I am working on a new post: In Search of an Altar Boy.

I am wondering, were you an Alter Boy? I am wondering where they have all gone. Have you any thoughts on what has happened to the beloved Altar Boy? If so watch for my introduction to this on going essay. I feel that this topic is not considered enough (so far as I can tell) in our great mission of Evangeliation. And that is the reason for my blog: www.itallstartshere. To ackowledge that IT ALL STARTS WITH GOD AND OUR RELATIONSHIP TO HIM. So I believe we need to reinstate the historic Altar Boy so we can groom young, faithful men and increase vocations to priesthood. Again...your thoughts?

jackie white

3/7/2015 01:21:43 am

Evelyn,

When I was young umpteen years ago, the altar boys were so numerous that they needed to take turns serving and maybe that would happen once a month.

During that same time period, the parents came to church on Sunday and were connected to the church community. That is not the case anymore. The children don't come to church because the parents don't practice.

What I am going to suggest at my church at our next council meeting because we have the same problem is a family affair.

Mom , Dad and the children would be responsible for helping at a Mass. They would serve in the different ministries as a family. There are enough different things to do at each celebration to have something for each family member. The little ones can be carried by the parents so that for example the Saturday Mass would have the Jones family responsible for everything to help Fr. Michael. The training could be by the Evangelization team in your case. That person would be there also to make sure the whole things runs smoothly for the celebrant.

It is worth a try. Nothing else is working these days.

We have one altar girl for the 9:00 Mass each week and her mom is a lector and her father is learning to coordinate and he does the ushering also.

Not only will the altar boy/girl work but the whole family will be there and they can all go to eat together at a restaurant after they have the best meal possible in church, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Christ.

Richard Anthony link

3/7/2015 05:16:20 am

Evelyn,

I was never an altar boy, perhaps because I was never asked to be one. Nor do I recall any of my boyhood friends ever in this role. Contrast this to our compulsory attendance at catechism, both boys and girls, where we were marched from our public school classroom to the church across the street for "catechism class" and instructed in Catholicism by rote litany:

Q: "Who made the world?"

A: "God made the world."

Q: "Why did God make the world?"

A: "God made the world for us to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him."

Your call "to reinstate the historic Altar Boy so we can groom young, faithful men" surprised me, and as I mentally drafted a "guess what" comment to you, I saw that Jackie White had already noted that today there are altar girls too. In our parish, this is a relatively new phenomenon begun in the last year or so. I am sure that it portends female priests in the future.

Jackie's idea of family members as joint altar servers is outstanding.

At our church, occasionally, when there are no boys or girls as altar servers, an adult from the congregation, male or female, will step up to fulfill the duties. At such times I am keenly aware of my own unfamiliarity with all the elements and intricacies of the mass and wish that at some point I had been asked to become an altar boy.

jackie white

3/7/2015 07:12:24 am

Richard,
thank you for the reply. Not sure about women priests. I think there are so many roles for women in the church today that ordination to the priesthood should remain for men.

I mentioned at our last meeting of the parish council that adult men and women should help out as servers if there children are not interested. If they become part of the process, the children eventually may want to do it also. We must encourage total family participation in the parishes.

evelyn link

3/7/2015 07:39:37 am

Hi Mr. Anthony! I am writing an essay now for my next post: In Search of the Alter Boy. It promises to be one of my more disruptive blogs. But you know ... I want to make people uncomfortable
because I believe that only then will a shift be made and things change. Jesus set a good example for us to follow. More later.

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