Reflection for the 1st Sunday in Lent 2022

Made whole.

He will not break off a bent reed, nor put out a flickering lamp. He will persist until he causes justice to triumph.

Jesus came to fulfill what Isaiah had written about centuries before. Isaiah writes about a ‘bruised reed.’ and a ‘smoldering wick.’ Both analogies speak to something at the point of death, at the point of losing everything. 

We previously discussed the fact that the word bruise in Hebrew really meant a very severe injury, injury to the point of death. So too the smoldering wick. We see the light as dying, going out and away into nothingness.

As we journey through this Lenten season we will focus on aspects of our brokenness and what is smoldering within us. We will see how Jesus has taken brokenness and the smoldering away, how He has healed and re-ignited us, such that we may bear great witness; so that we fulfill His purpose every day; that we have life eternal.

It is sort of odd, the tenses of the words used here. We speak of Jesus having already healed us, having already re-ignited us. Yet, we often see ourselves as still bruised reeds and smoldering wicks. Perhaps we do not feel complete healing within ourselves nor the fire, the passion we should have for the gospel life?

It is not uncommon to feel this way. Still, we should set those thoughts aside because we already possess the healing, the re-igniting we desire. We have been mightily changed by Jesus.

As a special blessing we have the example of Kassidy Colleen before us today. Today Kassidy enters the Holy Church through the waters of regeneration. She becomes a full-fledged member of the Kingdom of God which Jesus established.

Regeneration means as it sounds, to be re-made, re-born, made whole, perfected. No matter how many years ago we were baptized, we remain in our regenerated state.

You see, Jesus did not come to leave things as they were, to just hope for some change in the world. As He faced off against Satan in the desert, He drew a clear distinction between what life in the Kingdom is and what life outside is. In the Kingdom the reborn, those with healed bruises and re-ignited flames, place their reliance on God alone. The world’s allurements are nothing to us. We have something so much better, something Kassidy owns today – life in the Kingdom.

We, healed of our bruises and re-ignited to passionately partake in God’s work, see the blessing of this day, a reminder of our own baptism, and this Lenten season. Here is our chance to realize our state as truly healed and re-ignited, to return our understanding to what it means to have been regenerated – made new, whole, and on fire for the gospel, and do each day all that this status entails.

Reflection for Ash Wednesday 2022

He will not break off a bent reed, nor put out a flickering lamp. He will persist until he causes justice to triumph.

Matthew 12:20

Jesus came to fulfill what Isaiah had written about centuries before. Isaiah writes about a ‘bruised reed.’ The English word ‘bruised’ doesn’t really convey the meaning. The word ‘bruise’ is a weak word because we experience bruises all the time. Sure, they hurt, but they do heal on their own. 

In Hebrew the word we translate into English as “bruise” is a word that means crushed. It implies a deep contusion. This is an internal break whereby an organ has been injured or destroyed. You may not see it on the surface like our understanding of bruises. Rather, this injury is deep. One is bruised, i.e., injured to the point of death.

So too the smoldering wick. If one blows out or better puts out the candles here on the altar, or the fancy Yankee candles we have at home, there is always that period of smoldering. We see the light as dying, going out and away into nothingness. There is that brief moment where we might think, will the candle reignite or go out, but we do not often wait and see. Most times it goes out if is not fanned back to life. A smoldering wick, like the bruised, is a step away from death.

We are those bruised reeds and smoldering wicks Isaiah prophesied about. We are a people broken inside, subject to death. We can easily go out if not fanned back to life. We cannot produce anything of value because of our brokenness, our lack of fire.

Jesus’ treatment of the bruised reed and smoldering wick, that is us, is not as simple as His being kind and compassionate to us in our weak state, the state of a suffering person desperate for hope. It is deeper than that. It is not just about tenderness or compassion toward a crushed spirit or wounded soul.

Rather, it is about a God Who is our true Father. He would not come to us to destroy us, to enact a final break of the bruise or a quenching of the flame. He will not bring death, but rather brings us life, healing the bruise, reigniting the light – and for more than just being kind – for a purpose.

God saw us as we are, broken and near death by our sins, and sent Jesus Who did something about it.

More than for mere kindness and compassion, Jesus was sent exactly to heal the bruise in us so we might not die but live. Jesus was sent to reignite us into a bright flame. He heals us so that we are no longer bruised and subject to death. He takes away our brokenness and our lack of fire. He did that exact thing on the cross.

Jesus’ purpose – was to bring us into His Kingdom as willing citizens, restored and free. Jesus’ purpose was to ignite us with a passion like unto His – for the saving of souls, so many might enter the kingdom of God because of our presence, words, and work.

As we journey through this Lenten season we will focus on aspects of our brokenness and what is smoldering within us. We will see how Jesus takes the broken and the smoldering away and heals us, ignites us, such that we may bear great witness. So that we might fulfill His purpose. We will look to examples of where Jesus did that in the lives of the great saints and how we too can be like them.

Jesus Christ came to us because His Father resolved to heal and restore the brokenness of the human condition. God loves us beyond our hopelessness and fragility. He loves us beyond our bruises and our smoldering wicks. He resolved to take on our humanity so to heal it. He faced our beatenness, batteredness, and bruises, our dying fire, so that we might enter the Kingdom He established where there are no more bruises or smoldering wicks. Where His people call others to know, love, and serve Him.

So we begin our Lenten journey together. As we do, let us offer up our bruised state, our weak light, and all Jesus to mould us to His purposes. Doing so we may truly rejoice at Easter and forever.

Reflection for Quinquagesima Sunday 2022

Called to Live Anew.

Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Anew – Life Anew in Christ is exhibited especially when we live to know, love, and serve the Lord and when call people to also know, love, and serve the Lord and His Holy Church right here at this parish.

Today we enter the final half-week of this Pre-Lenten season. This season is specifically designed so we might prepare ourselves for the rigors of the Lenten season to begin in just three days. Between now and Easter we endeavor and strive at the vast changes we need in our lives.

St. Paul reminds the Church at Corinth, and us, that we have been made new, we have put on the eternal, the incorruptible. The definition of life anew. He reminds us that we are not to be those hypocrites Jesus warns against, but rather those who bear good fruit, producers of good.

In baptism we were consecrated to the Lord and that makes us different, new. We have entered the Kingdom and its life. We have victory. Therefore, we must be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord. As such, we must live as the Kingdom people we are now, not the people we were then.

Being fully devoted to the work of the Lord means calling ourselves to necessary repentance, to fasting, prayer, and charity. Being fully devoted to the Lord means constantly reaching for the next rung on the ladder to heaven and helping others up the ladder.

By growing in this new life, we show our beauty – our attractiveness – to those who do not know the Lord. Between our Kingdom life example and the gentleness of our words we call others into the Kingdom life.

Last night’s Grand Ole Opry introduced a group appearing for the first time, We The Kingdom. It was a great example of people, family and friends, living out their faith in Jesus Christ publicly, with joy, and celebration. So, we should be We The Kingdom for indeed that is what we are – as we live out our life anew in Jesus Christ publicly, with joy, and celebration. As they sang, calling others to meet Jesus by their artistic example, so must we by the means and opportunities that are in our paths.

Imagine a community of people where others are welcome without criticism and judgment, where words and music are sweet balm for the hurting, where the inhabitants are steadfast, devoted to the work of the Lord, where each person helps the other to climb the ladder to heaven. Yes, that place is here because we are the Kingdom and we grow evermore as we endeavor and strive at the changes we need in our lives – living anew each day, and welcoming others to the same.

Reflection for Sexagesima Sunday 2022

Called to Live Anew.

“Give, and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

Anew – Life Anew in Christ is exhibited especially when we call people to know, love, and serve the Lord and His Holy Church right here at this parish.

Today we enter the second week of this Pre-Lenten season. This season is one in which we prepare ourselves for the rigors of the Lenten season because it is between now and Easter that we endeavor and strive at the vast changes we need in our lives.

Jesus certainly speaks of vast changes, a true upheaval in our lives. Jesus calls His followers to radically different lives. If we were once silent and demure we must now speak up boldly.

In this discourse on living radically different lives Jesus alludes to measures – the weight of our obligation and the generous weight of God’s response.

Certainly, many of us have baked. Perhaps it is only out of a Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines box. Perhaps it is from scratch.

If we have cooked from scratch, consider how the measurement and handling of flour can result in such different weights. A cup of sifted flour seems light while a packed down cup of flour can be quite dense and heavy. As we shake that cup down, we can always seem to add more.

Consider how those weights might represent our call to life anew, to the inner changes we need and our call to drawing others into worship and fellowship right here. 

It is a serious obligation to live as Jesus says we must: loving people who hurt us, giving our all and without expectation of repayment, foregoing judgment and accusation, and forgiving.

We draw people to Jesus because our lives are so different from that of the world. Jesus is saying the cup of our work can always be shaken down more – and that we must put more into it.

In return, Jesus makes an awesome statement. We will be repaid equally. As radically different as our lives are, so radically will God give unto us. What we pack in will be poured into us.

Our Kingdom lives are so vastly different and so amazingly blessed. As St. Paul tells us, the image of the earthly and worldly man in us – the place we came from – is vastly changed because we now bear the image of Christ Jesus. We therefore must give our all and still more for the advancement and growth of the Kingdom because we are the image of the heavenly.

Put the image of God’s generous outpouring into our mind’s eye and pour into the places we go a heavy, not a sifted, weight of our own life in Jesus.

Reflection for Septuagesima Sunday 2022

Called to Live Anew.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.”

Anew – it is a word we will focus on for years to come. Now is the time for our next great step together, to call people anew to knowing, loving, and serving the Lord and His Holy Church right here at this parish.

What better way to connect with the word anew than to enter this new season in our Church life, the Season of Septuagesima, Pre-Lent.

This Pre-Lenten season is one in which we prepare ourselves for the rigors of the Lenten season because it is between now and Easter that we endeavor and strive at the vast changes we need in our lives. To live anew we set to the hard work that is a re-valuing of our priorities, and the doing of God’s work.

Let us start with the one beatitude that is very hard for most of us: Accepting the fact that we will be hated, excluded, insulted, and denounced as evil because we proclaim the name of Jesus. We know it happens to those who follow and speak Jesus’ teachings, because those teachings call worldly people to repentance and change. Who really wants to change and live anew anyway? We know it can and will happen to us as we live anew and call people to know, love, and serve the Lord and His Holy Church

We all want to be liked, we all want to be fabulous, funny, accepted, spectacular, and spoken well of. But there is a cost. The cost is the truth of God’s word and our place in the Kingdom. So, we set out in this season and the season ahead to re-value what is important and to live the way we must – not should – but must. Life anew.

If we are to live lives anew, things must change in us. We each have those inner issues we need to overcome. We each have attitudes, really bad-i-tudes, that must be rooted out and replaced with Jesus’ beatitudes. We must weigh the cost of silence versus the loss of souls on the scale of eternity and do all we can to speak about our God, our faith, and our Church and how they hold forever promise for each person we encounter.

Knowing we live in the Kingdom of God we must be willing to accept polite and not so polite no’s when we invite people to meet Jesus, to join us in fellowship. We must be willing to speak truth in the face of worldly values so that hearts might be converted, and people might be saved.

So let us start now, living anew in each encounter and invite others to that same new life for Jesus’ sake no matter the outcome. If we do, we hold onto our forever promise and await the day we rejoice and leap for joy as we accept Jesus’ great reward in heaven. 

Reflection for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

Called to Live Anew

“Here I am,” I said; “send me!”

Anew – it is a word we will focus on for years to come. Now is the time for our next great step together, to call people anew to knowing, loving, and serving the Lord and His Holy Church right here at this parish.

We have certainty in the gospel. We know the things we are to share – love that conquers all things and the gifts of the Kingdom life to the unexpected in unexpected ways.

You can imagine the unexpectedness of Isaiah ‘s encounter with God as he was pulled into the heavenly court to meet God face-to-face. Isaiah well knew that no one could survive such an encounter and live. Isaiah literally says: â€œWoe is me, I am doomed!” Yet the God of the unexpected did something – well unexpected. 

God cleansed and freed Isaiah from his unclean lips and his life in and among a people of uncleanliness – sin. God freed Isaiah from certain death. Then God sent Isaiah to proclaim His word to the people. To do all necessary to draw the people back to God.

Likewise, Jesus caused Simon and the other fishermen with him to face something unexpected, a great catch and an even greater call to evangelize the people, to make the promise of the Kingdom life known. They then did something equally unexpected – they left everything behind – their life’s work, investments, all they had to follow Jesus.

St. Paul fully realized the unexpectedness of his call. He calls himself least of the Apostles, realizing and acknowledging his sins – the very persecution of the Church and how he had been forgiven. 

 All of these lessons point to our call to live anew and to speak to others of our God, to spread the gospel, to make Jesus known.

Like Isaiah, we must recognize that the Lord God has cleansed us for the work we are to do and has sent us forth to proclaim His word. As with Paul, we have been set free from wrongdoing to be apostles in our world, to make the truth of the gospel known. Like Simon and the other fisherman, we are called to get up and go, to set aside those things we might otherwise feel important and focus our efforts on the Kingdom of God.

Today we gather in the grand tradition of our Ecclesial-democratic establishment, to reflect on the work of the year gone by and to set our eyes forward. We are, like Paul, to hand on to others as of first importance what we also received: that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried; and that he was raised on the third day. Let us set out and preach the gospel we have been given for the benefit of those who Jesus has also called. Those who would not know Him without us.

Reflection for the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

Called to live anew!

But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.

Anew – it is a word we will focus on for years to come. Now is the time for our next great step together, to call people anew to knowing, loving, and serving the Lord and His Holy Church right here at this parish.

As you may recall, last week we discussed certainty. We considered how certainty assists us in living and bearing witness to the gospel and drawing others into the life of faith, the kingdom life which Jesus has created for us.

Today we are given entrée into the things that make up the kingdom life – the things we are to share.

St. Paul reminds of the great gift that marks our lives as Christians – that of love also translated charity. This love is far more powerful than any other gift, than any intellect. It overpowers and overcomes all things. Pick a topic – something seemingly insurmountable by human standards – and know and proclaim that Kingdom love will conquer it.  Yes, we can say that.

Last week we heard Jesus read from the Isaiah in the synagogue; speaking of the things He had come to fulfill – the great gift of freedom from captivity and poverty, from blindness and oppression. He indeed had come to conquer all by His love, to invite all to repentance and membership in the Kingdom. Unfortunately, the people of His hometown were not quite onboard with such an expansive view of love.

For context, the people in Nazareth had heard of all Jesus had done in Capernaum – the preaching, the healings, the freedom He was granting, though love, by inviting sinners and people who were quite different from themselves – for Capernaum was diverse and included Gentiles and Samaritans.

The Nazarenes did not want to hear that kind of good news, the gospel message and membership in the Kingdom needed to be more limited. Their wonder and amazement were not positive, rather it was negative – the way of love must be within established standards, and only for some.

Jesus shows them and us that the freedom and love of the Kingdom life is not for the expected, but rather the unexpected. Jesus’ quoting of two examples of God’s love and charity to ungodly pagans relates the expansive power of God’s love overcoming.

At the end of the gospel, Jesus walked away from those who closed themselves off – who were unwilling to share the Kingdom life and wished to deny it to others. In doing so, He invites us, those already in the Kingdom, to do as the Kingdom life requires, i.e., to share in love that overcomes all things and to offer the gifts of the Kingdom in unexpected ways and places, to unexpected people.

Reflection for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

Called to Live Anew

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me… He has sent me

Anew – it is a word we will focus on for years to come. Now is the time for our next great step together, to call people anew to knowing, loving, and serving the Lord and His Holy Church right here at this parish.

At the beginning of today’s gospel, Luke, the scientist, addresses Theophilus (translated literally as “Friend of God”), relating to him the gospel message he received.

Luke relates the gospel, not for the sake of telling a story, or even creating a documentary on the life of Jesus (he wasn’t working for the History or Discovery channels), but rather for the purpose of Theophilus’ certainty. He was sending the message so that energized with it, Theophilus would live out and proclaim the gospel message, drawing others to it.

We need the same certainty. We have the same charge.

In regrettable ways many Christians have become bystander faithful, documentary viewing devotees, and going through the motions followers, believers without passion or resolve. Many have forgotten the gospel charge – to go out and proclaim it for the gathering in of fellow disciples.

It must not be so for us. We need to feel within ourselves the Gospel’s confidence and certainty. Armed with its confidence and certainty we then walk the gospel path ever more closely. We proclaim that gospel ever more boldly. We become like Theophilus – each of us a friend of God and witness in our community.

To live life anew, life in the Kingdom already present for us, we must set confidently to work, the work shown us this very day. 

Like Ezra and Nehemiah, we are to call the people in, call them together, and place before them the glory of the gospel word and way – and then celebrate. We are to take the gifts St. Paul reminds us we have each received in different type and proportion and use them with passion for the building up of the Kingdom. By our work and word many are to know, love, and serve the Lord in His Holy Church, members of His body.

Because we are the friends of God, the Theophiloi, residents of and workers in the Kingdom, armed with the great gifts of the Holy Spirit, and charged by Jesus Himself to go out and make disciples, we must take the certainty of the gospel seriously and set to work. We must be bold in our proclamation – sometimes in subtle ways, other times ingeniously, still other times with great verve, but always confidently.

The words Jesus spoke today are not just Self-referential. They apply to us. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us. We are anointed. We are sent.

Reflection for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

Called to live anew!

To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.

Anew – it is a word we will focus on for years to come. Now is the time for our next great step together, to call people anew to knowing, loving, and serving the Lord and His Holy Church right here at this parish.

How do you recollect time? Most people see time as a linear progression, past, present, and future. We could draw an arrow from one moment in our lives to the next, event to event. Did you know that God sees time differently, that Jesus came to change our conception of time and even place?

That is true. Jesus’ birth marked the start of a new age – the age of the Kingdom. In His Baptism, which we celebrated last week, Jesus marked out our change – how we are to enter His place and time, the Kingdom of God.

For many Christians, the Kingdom is something afar off. We have time. If we are sinning, we can go to confession tomorrow, or next Sunday. If we need to repent and live changed lives, walking the gospel path much more closely and realistically – radically, well we can work on that. That is a false notion. We have our facts wrong. The Kingdom will not come someday but is here now. We are in it, and we are called to live changed now, immediately.

What St. Paul tells us in his writing on baptism is true. We died with Christ in our baptism and so we have been raised with Him to life anew. We are no longer living according to the world’s time and priorities, stumbling from moment to moment, place to place like the lost. Rather, we are living a changed reality in which we have great work to do, Kingdom work. We must set to it now.

Kingdom work comes down to what Jesus showed us at Cana in Galilee. It is about changed perspectives and lives anew.

The changing of water into wine isn’t just a one-off miracle. It is not just a moment along a timeline. It is rather a foreshadowing of the eternal change that comes when the wine is made His blood. It is a foretelling of the way we are changed in Jesus. 

When we share in the Eucharistic moment in a short time, the changing of bread and wine into His body and blood, we literally join with Jesus in His timeless reality. the ever-present Kingdom where we also reside. We receive abundant grace for our work.

Our Kingdom reality is where the Spirit’s gifts, given to each of us in different form and measure, are to be implemented. We are residing in God’s time and place and our mission is an imperative command to declare the Kingdom and invite others into it; to live changed. 

Reflection for the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord 2022

Called to Live Anew

After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying

Anew – it is a word we will focus on for years to come. We together have spent the last decade in a lot of hard work building up this parish, strengthening it, readying it. Now is the time for the next great step, to call people anew to knowing, loving, and serving the Lord and His Holy Church.

Today we are called to situational awareness and the actions we must take.

The gospel passage from St. Luke paints a picture of what occurred on the day of Jesus’ baptism. However, in this account, the discussion between Jesus and John is missing. Also, the actual moment of baptism is missing. We must infer what happened by starting at the after-the-baptism moment.

What we can take from this account is the fact that John baptized a lot of people that day. Jesus, like the rest, stood in line and entered the Jordan to be baptized. Afterward, He, like the rest, filed out of the river and went to the riverbank to pray.

The rest of the gospel focuses on the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God and the revelation of the God as Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Spirit.

This short gospel snippet, about three-quarters of a single sentence, and awareness of our situations, is a call to action for us.

Now imagine that line at the Jordan. Can you picture yourself standing there in line with Jesus? It would be so cool, so excellent to be there with Him. Many were, perhaps not realizing Who stood in line with them.

We are called to be situationally aware, alert wherever we venture. The bank, shows, movies, the supermarket, work, social events, and even theme parks. In many of those places we face the prospect of standing in line. As such, we who are baptized are called to be Jesus in that line. We represent Him and that carries a responsibility to help the people around us find life anew in Jesus.

You know how it is. In line everyone has eyes cast down, perhaps hoping no one will notice them. Let’s just get the task done and get out. We have the power to turn feelings of apartness and separateness into moments with Jesus. Simply, say hello, how are you. Pass a smile and offer a simple blessing – ‘May God bless you today.’ Then let Jesus take over. Try it!

What happens as we stand in line bearing the image of Jesus, or in whatever situation we find ourselves, is the offering of our time to God in accord with our after-the-baptism call. Let us be situationally aware, not in fear and apprehensiveness, not in trepidation, but in the hopefulness and joy of being born anew as we call others to the same newness of life in Jesus.