Reflection for Septuagesima Sunday 2024

He said to him, “See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.” The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report.

Here we are. Pre-Lent. Septuagesima, a time vitally important for our own good, the benefit of our souls, and the attainment of the graces we need to enter Lent head on.

As many of you know, I love to cook. One YouTube channel I regularly watch is Chef Jean Pierre. He’s been around awhile, used to have a PBS show, was on the major networks, owned a restaurant, and had a cooking school. He transitioned from the cooking school to teaching videos. He is also quite funny.

In any event, one key thing he continually reminds his viewers about (including – the onion is always number one) is the ‘mise en place.’ Literally, it is the preparatory stage of getting everything together, pre-preparation for the cooking.

Let’s say you were making a stew or soup. You would pre-cut the meats and vegetables and array them before you along with the herbs, spices, liquids, and anything else you need. You wouldn’t turn on the burners until everything was in place, mise en place.

Believe me, learning this tip saved me tons of aggravation (where is that ingredient) and burned food.

It is interesting how the ordinary things in life derive from our shared faith experience. 

Pre-Lent is our pre-prep or our mise en place for Lent. We are called to get everything ready for the Lenten journey only two-and-a-half weeks away.

Think of all the mise en place in our lives. I know I have walked into tests without pre-preparation – learned very quickly it was not a good idea. Coaches, teachers, doctors, trainers require us to pre-prepare. They learned from the Holy Church’s call to preparation for Lent, the most vital of times for our souls.

Brothers, sisters, our soul is the most important thing we carry within us, for from it – when it is aligned with God – flows every good thing. So today, we are called to get ready, to put all in place for the good of our everlasting souls during the Great Lent.

Let us resolve to meet Ash Wednesday head-on, prepared and ready to go.

February 2023 Newsletter – Prepare, Grow, and Build Like Noah

By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. 

The text above is from Hebrews 11:7, wherein the writer is reminding people who knew the Hebrew Scriptures, of Noah’s faithfulness to God’s instruction and the fact that by being faithful he became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. 

This year, the Pre-Lenten season begins right on the first Sunday in February, and by the time this two-and-a-half week season passes on we are in Lent. It will go by quickly. This year, let us liken ourselves to Noah. We all know the account found in Genesis Chapter 5 – 9.

Scripture says that Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation and that he walked with God. While this was true of Noah, and because of Noah was also true in his family, the rest of the world was corrupt, violent, and filled with continuous evil (sound familiar?). The question to ask – Am I faithful like Noah, and how will my faithfulness affect this age? Noah certainly did not know what to do with the corruption of his time. While he acted properly, was righteous and blameless, he made no impact on those around him. God had to intervene to change the situation. For us, we live in the light of God’s greatest intervention. Not the flood, but the sending of His Son Jesus. That means we now know what to do and we have the power to do it (no flood needed).

Jesus showed us the way to go. He  gave us the gospel that is life. He enjoined on us the Beatitudes as a way of life along with all the other instruction from the Sermon on the Mount. If we do as Jesus taught, we will deeply impact our time, culture, and the people around us. As with the early Christians, people will be amazed and enter the kingdom. Like Noah, let us use this time to prepare, to grow in faithfulness, to build a way of life consistent with the gospel. Where we have succeeded, let us build further.  Where we have fallen short, let us prepare to fix it now, and fix it this Lent.

Welcome to our February 2023 Newsletter. With the start of February we enter the Pre-Lenten Season of Septuagesima. We engage in preparation for our Lenten journey because by the end of February we will be in Lent. This month and next we engage in the ministry of administration with our annual parish and financial meetings. Our Valentine’s Raffle is underway. SouperBowl Sunday is February 12th – let us give generously to feed those in need locally. We also celebrate Scout Sunday, review the great scholarships we have available, and list some fantastic Youth events/opportunities upcoming. There is a pizza/game night around the corner and the Basket Social is not that far away.

Check out all that and more in our February 2023 Newsletter.

Reflection for Septuagesima Sunday 2023

The way of life.

If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live; he has set before you fire and water to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand.

Thank you for joining as we testify, proclaim, and evangelize the great and Holy Name of Jesus.

Today we enter the Pre-Lenten season. I say that every year, and perhaps this year I have come to understand it even better because I better understand the nature of choices. We do that as we get older because, as some would say, we have wisdom. Others would say that we now see the long-term consequences of our decisions. Did that decision lead to good, or did it create a disaster.

Ben Sira of Jerusalem, or in short Sirach, shares various versus of wisdom with us, things learned from the Spirit of God for right living. Today, he presents us with some real age-old wisdom we totally connect with: There is a hot stove, don’t touch it. As I just mentioned, wisdom comes from experience with choices made. I wonder how many times Ben Sira touched the hot stove after his mom told him not to. Ben Sira knew, as wisdom, the fact that touching a hot stove leads to disaster while listening leads to good.

That is the way of God. We have a way of life before us. Will we reach out to His life or chose death?

St. Paul tells the Corinthians the practical truth: What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him, this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

Paul is speaking from experience, i.e., the wisdom he had acquired from Jesus on the road to Damascus. Meeting Jesus caused him to pull his hand away from the stove and to choose life. He said to himself, Wow, I was about to be burned bad, I could not see it, I could not hear it, my heart was closed to it, but now I know what God has in store for me if I chose His way of life.

It is of note that the Corinthians were new Christians, for not more than three years. They were falling back into their former way of life in so many ways. They were running headlong to each and every hot stove they could find. Paul is reminding them of that choice, the fact that they will be burned, and in being burned will reject all God has in store for them.

Jesus’ commandments to us, His way of life built upon His Father’s Commandments, may seem anachronistic to us. Divorce is common. Treating people as sexualized objects, without humanity, is not just a way to sell music and products, but a commonplace way of life. Disrespect for others, calling them empty (raqa) or impious (foolish), basically non-human, most especially online, is easy. The stoves seem to be so much fun. Jesus’ way of life so difficult. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Let us then take this Pre-Lenten opportunity to identify the stoves in our lives, those areas of disaster we reach out to. Let us recall what will happen if we do not stop, and focus our Lent on eliminating them, choosing life with God.

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. 

February 2022 Newsletter – Timeless Preparation

Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD.

The text above is from Jeremiah 17:7, the Old Testament reading at the start of Pre-Lent. The next verse goes onto say about the one who hopes and trusts in the Lord: They are like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream: It does not fear heat when it comes, its leaves stay green; In the year of drought it shows no distress, but still produces fruit. As you will read herein, the Pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima is one of preparation. So the question, Preparation for what?

We could say that Pre-Lent is preparation for a better 40 day Lenten journey. That we might make time and schedule our fasting, prayer, giving  – that is certainly true. We could mark the time off on the calendar as days until Easter: 70, 60, 50 – that is true as well. Notice how both of these thoughts on preparation are time-constrained. I must set time to do these timely things according to the time on the calendar. However it might be better if we did not consider our preparation or even our lives as time constrained, as limited. We have, through our baptism, been  added to the great cloud of witnesses – disciples of Christ – who already reside in His eternal Kingdom. We are no longer time-bound. Rather we are freed to be as Jeremiah states. Then, let us prepare to be fully engaged as a people who trust in the Lord – having a real and active faith that Jesus does as He promised to do. We are to have full-time hope in Him – and that trust and hope leads to a courage when speaking about Jesus to others. If we focus on trust and hope and who we are in the Kingdom we turn out (bloom) like that tree. We are planted in Christ Jesus Who nourishes us. We do not fear the negatives, the “heat,” for Jesus has us safely in His care. We remain alive in Him, so prepare to bear fruit full-time by timeless lives that draw others unto Jesus.

Welcome to our February 2022 Newsletter. It is packed full of info on the season of Pre-Lent / Septuagesima, the two-and-a-half week time of preparation for the Great Lent (which starts late this particular year). We have provided materials linked herein for your study. We are holding our annual meetings this and next month, part of our ecclesial democratic tradition. The Valentine’s Raffle is here, SouperBowl Sunday, and Epiphany house blessings continue – schedule your time soon. March 6th is Scout Sunday and Scouts coming to church in uniform can get their Scout Sunday patch for 2022.

Also, read up on things to say in church, the meaning of “Lord have mercy,” College Stipends and Scholarships, free healthcare opportunities, and the BASKET SOCIAL is back. All this and more in our February 2022 Newsletter.

Reflection for Quinquagesima Sunday 2021

Cleaning out.

  • First reading: Hosea 2:16,17,21,22
  • Psalm: 103:1-4,8,10,12-13
  • Epistle: 2 Corinthians 3:1-6
  • Gospel: Mark 2:18-22

“No, new wine is poured in new wineskins.”

We are in the final half-week of this short season dedicated to preparation for our Lenten journey. It is a season of ‘cleaning out the old’ to make room for the new thing God has waiting for us.

In the first Sunday of Pre-Lent we recognized our likeness to the leper in the Gospel. We acknowledged the fact that we need Jesus to make us clean, clean from old idols and rebellion against God. We were asked to trust that He will indeed cleanse us.

Last week we saw Jesus forgiving sin and showing forth this authority to do so through the curing of the paralytic. Jesus came to cleanse us at an entirely different level – like with the paralytic a cleansing so deep it is complete. St. Paul reminded us that God’s promises are sure and firm. He will do what He says, providing us complete cleansing, forgiveness, and healing. We need only trust.

Today we focus on the room we have made by cleaning out the old and by trusting in God to cleanse us. The room we have made prepares us for the new thing God has waiting for us.

Have you ever reflected on how amazing God is at doing something new? Who else but our God would do new amazing things like lead His people dry shod through the midst of the sea on their way to freedom? Who else would cause the walls of the world’s strongest city to fall before His people? Who would allow His servants to walk safely through the hottest oven ever built? Who would give victory to His armies in the face of overwhelming opposition? Who would send His Son to save us? Who would love a prostitute?

Wait, what? Yes, who else, beside our amazing God, would be bold enough to do what no one else would do, love a prostitute.

The story of the Prophet Hosea is exactly that, God’s next new thing. Hosea was commanded to go out, find, clean up, and marry Gomer the prostitute. Hosea was commanded to go after her, even when she chose to leave him so she could go back to prostitution. In this relationship, God shows forth the depth of His love, a love ever new and renewing. A love deep, complete, and powerful to do new for Gomer and for us.

Jesus speaks of clothes and wineskins. Imagine your oldest most threadbare clothes. God’s ever new way is not to fix up your old clothes with patches, trying to cover the holes that leave us exposed. Rather, He has prepared new brilliant white clothes for us to wear into the kingdom. He does not want to fill the old us with His new wine, His word and His very self. If He did, we would burst. Rather He makes us new, in and out, and ready to receive His next new thing this Lent. 

Reflection for Sexagesima Sunday 2021

Cleaning out.

  • First reading: Isaiah 43:18-19,21-22,24-25
  • Psalm: 41:2-3,4-5,13-14
  • Epistle: 2 Corinthians 1:18-22
  • Gospel: Mark 2:1-12

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

We are in the second week of this short two-and-a-half-week season dedicated to preparation for our Lenten journey. It is a season of ‘cleaning out the old’ to make room for the new thing God has waiting for us.

Last Sunday we recognized our likeness to the leper in the Gospel. We acknowledged the fact that we must throw away the old idols within us and clean ourselves of the rebellion against God that is in us. We must ask Jesus to cleanse us of our ẓaraʿat, and trust that He will cleanse us.

Jesus pointedly brings that message home to us today. We must trust that He can and will cleanse us.

The story of the paralyzed man and his friends is dramatic. A crowded street and entryway to a home. People pressing in on all sides, the man and his friends unable to get to Jesus. They get up to the roof and tear it open to lower their friend to Jesus. It is miracle time. Jesus is going to cleanse him of his paralyzing condition.

Jesus had been sitting there speaking the word to them. He was proclaiming the gospel message, repent and believe, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. I have come to free you from your handicaps, from your blindness and captivity. He was alluding to the words of Isaiah: The past is forgotten; a new way is being made. No matter how obstinate you have been, no matter how sinful, for My own sake I wipe out your offenses, and remember not your sins. I have come to cleanse you at a whole different level – completely.

Some in the room were listening, others not. Along (or down) comes the paralyzed man. The room goes silent. What will happen next. Will he walk? Will Jesus fail?

Jesus looks up and says: â€œSon, your sins are forgiven.” I am hereby cleansing you of every sin, every failing, every fault. 

The Scribes (read lawyers) were shocked. Jesus cannot cleanse that way. That is blasphemy. So, Jesus confronts them. He asks them what is harder, the cleansing of forgiveness or of healing.

Jesus shows that His cleaning is God’s cleaning and that His cleaning is at a different level – it is so deep it is complete.

St. Paul got our doubt about the completeness of Jesus’ cleansing. How could God free me, heal me, cleanse me. That is why Paul told us that Jesus is YES and AMEN. In Greek “yes” means “sure” and “amen” means “firm.” All of God’s promises are sure and firm. They are unchanging, unwavering, and unmovable. He will do what He says. He will provide us complete cleansing. Jesus has forgiveness and healing waiting for us. Yes, we can trust in Him.

Reflection for Septuagesima Sunday 2021

Cleaning out.

  • First reading: Leviticus 13:1-2,44-46
  • Psalm: 32:1-2,5,11
  • Epistle: 1 Corinthians 10:31 – 11:1
  • Gospel: Mark 1:40-45

He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere. 

Just prior to Holy Mass I noted that we enter the Pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima today.

This short two-and-a-half-week season is dedicated to preparation for our Lenten journey. It is a season of ‘cleaning out the old’ to make room for the new thing God has waiting for us.

The Hebrew term ẓaraÊ¿at is traditionally rendered “leprosy” because of its Greek translation as “lepra.” The Greek word for leper covers a wide range of diseases that produced scales including many non-contagious types. Greek lepra may have included true leprosy but was not limited to it. It is likely that the banished, like the man who approached Jesus in today’s Gospel, were lifelong sufferers.

Leprosy was most often attributed to the sufferer’s sin. In scripture, whenever a reason is given for an attack of ẓaraÊ¿at, it is in connection with a person challenging duly constituted authority. Miriam challenged the prophetic supremacy of Moses (Numbers 12); Gehazi disobeyed the will of his master Elisha (2 Kings 5); and King Uzziah challenged the exclusive prerogative of the priests to offer incense (2 Chronicles 26).

In this first week of Pre-Lent, let us consider our ẓaraʿat, the leprosy we carry from our challenges to God’s duly constituted authority and that imparted to His Holy Church by the Holy Spirit.

Did our spines and muscles tense just then. What do you mean I have to listen and follow, give up my way of doing things and do what God and that Church are telling me to do? Are you kidding me? I am free to decide! And there is our ẓaraʿat. It lives in our rebellious natures.

From Lucifer to Adam and Eve to the people of Babel and Abraham, to Miriam, Gehazi, and Uzziah, rebellion was the ẓaraÊ¿at that needed to be cleansed in them. 

Rebellion is the leprosy that needs to be cleansed in us. Rebellion is bitter, angry, violent, corrupt, and stubborn. It is contention and dispute, pridefulness. Rebellion defies God’s will and is the enemy’s bad fruit. It is the refusal to turn ourselves over to God.

We choose rebellion because we fear placing our complete trust in God. To solve rebellion in us, we must be wholeheartedly His. We must take the courage to step out and hand over everything to Christ.

Like the leper in today’s Gospel, we must ask Jesus to cleanse us. We must throw away the idol within our heart that says, ‘You cannot have me.’ Yes, we must come to Him from wherever we are, with our whole being, and beg to be cleansed of our ẓaraʿat.

Reflection for Quinquagesima Sunday 2020

You have heard
it said.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life”

As we discussed over the past two weeks, this Pre-Lenten season’s readings are taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ teaching takes the Commandments of God and instruct us in the way we are to understand and live them. Jesus commandments, His way, His fulfillment of the old Law, His right interpretation is for us, so we can truly live.

We have been reminded, in this season of preparation, that we are to turn and focus on living in the way Jesus defines. This great opportunity moves us not just into unity with life as God designed, for unity with that way of life is not enough. Rather, we are called to dive headlong into the fulness of God’s way.

At the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus demands more of us than His words alone describe. He calls us to complete integrity of life. If we live His call to integrity, the reward is great. The reward is fullness of relationship and inheritance. It is a joy without compare or equal. However, if we do not surrender to Jesus’ way, if we are not all-in, the caution is, we grow ridgid and cold. Sin creeps in and puts the frost on. The cold goes deeper and deeper and we lose touch with God and with our very selves.

This season of preparation, with only today plus two more days to go, has been a wakeup call. In the Orthodox Churches the Sundays before Lent are days of clean out. The home is cleansed of earthly things like meat, fish, dairy, and eggs. This clean out symbolizes the call to detachment from distraction, from the things that may hold us back from jumping in headfirst.

Hearing Jesus’ words today remind us of this necessary detachment.

Jumping in headfirst requires an act of faith and trust, complete trust in God. It requires trust that says nothing we have, nothing we desire or value outside of God, is of any consequence. They are things here today, gone tomorrow. Seemingly beautiful in the now but only fuel for the fire, or the dumpster, or the landfill tomorrow.

Faith and trust in God, in His word: “do not worry about your life,” is a surrender. As we enter into the Great and Holy Lent this Wednesday let us recognize that proclamation is not enough, worship is not enough, setting aside food, and place, and wealth for a time not enough. Rather, we are to value God above all, setting aside what the world says for what Jesus says, and surrendering fully.

Reflection for Sexagesima Sunday 2020

You have heard
it said.

Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

As we discussed last week, this Pre-Lenten season’s readings are taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ teaching there take the Commandments of God and instruct us in the way we are to understand and live them. 

Jesus commandments, His way, His fulfillment of the old Law, His right interpretation is for us, so we can truly live. Yes, it is for us, as we heard last week: to make us great in the kingdom!

In this season of preparation, we are to turn and focus on living in the way Jesus defines. We are to live His way without limit and in striving to do so, wash away the ways we fall short. As we will hear in today’s closing prayer, we are to move toward committed love and faithful work for the Kingdom.

Living in a genuine way is not easy. Of course, it is easy to say we are genuine, I’m the ‘real me’ when we go about doing whatever we want, what we choose. Unfortunately, that is the power of sin, it blinds us to the way we are to strive for; the way ‘just being me’ isn’t good enough for the Kingdom. My being me should never be good enough for me. It should not be good enough for you, the people around me.

As faithful and devoted Christians, we know that we fall short in ways big, small, and perhaps in ways only known to ourselves. As such, let us take this season to evaluate where the fixes are needed, where I fall short of the Kingdom life I am to live.

God told the Israelites to: “Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.” That is a super high standard, but indeed, as the lessons from the Sermon on the Mount tell us, we have a gap to cover, a ways to go, but that we can do it.

It is important that we not despair in our frequent failure to live up. Where despair is called for is in any lack of trying, and lack of self-assessment, any attempt to ignore the blindness sin instills. 

Committed love calls for faithful work. Bringing the ideals of the Kingdom life to reality in our lives will not kill us. In fact, they will inoculate us so we can enter the Kingdom with heads held high, so we can enter as the great in the kingdom!

As we enter this new week, let our self-examination focus on the ways revenge, hate, resistance, ‘opionatedness,’ or limitation exist in our lives. Let us remember that to be great we must see and rise above (recall this is a year of politics) and live the Kingdom life.