As we careen towards the halfway point of our Lenten journey, I think it is good to take a moment and step back, take a deep breath and ask: What am I looking for this Lent?
To get closer to God? To clean up my act, so to speak? To feel more religious? Or, just to lose a few pounds? We have to be frank about our objective for this Lent because we’re bound to find what we seek.
The right answer might not be what we think it is. We don’t have to try to get closer to God. We can’t -- God’s right here! God dwells within us; temples of the Holy Spirit! Getting closer to God’s ‘will’ might be a better goal because that alignment is often very far off. It’s what many of us struggle with.
If we find ourselves thinking that Lent is not working -- that the enchantment of “feeling our religion, feeling God” isn’t happening this year, then maybe the answer is to practice a new consciousness.
What if we all tried to spend one hour a day trying to be consciously aware of God in every person we meet and every place we go; to keep searching with our eyes, our mind and our heart?
If we practice believing what we profess—that God is in our midst—then we are much more likely to awaken to the presence of the Divine, in us and all around us!
At the very least it will begin to change how we see and relate to other people as we practice seeing and believing the Divine presence within each one of them, regardless of how they may treat us!
This is what Pope Francis is hoping will happen as we draw near to immigrants and refugees, to all those who are marginalized. That as we draw near to the one who is “other” to us, by God’s grace, our biases and preconceptions about them will dissolve and we will come to know them as sister and brother, as images of the Creator, as children of God.
So this Lent, let us ask ourselves, in whom is it most difficult for me to see the presence of God? What deeper reality is God calling me to this Lent? To whom am I being called to “draw nearer”?
And let us continue to hold the people of Palestine and Israel in our thoughts and prayers. Let us pray for a swift end to the war being raged between Israel and Hamas and for an end to the war by Russia against the people of Ukraine and for the U.S. and other countries of the world to increase their combined efforts -- to intercede to bring about peace in all the places wars are being waged around the world.
May our Lenten prayer be for peace. Peace in our hearts, in our families, our friendships, our schools, our workplaces, our nation and throughout the world. May the shalom of our God, in all of its fullness, be upon you all and upon all of the earth.
Lenten blessings,
Fr. Tim
To get closer to God? To clean up my act, so to speak? To feel more religious? Or, just to lose a few pounds? We have to be frank about our objective for this Lent because we’re bound to find what we seek.
The right answer might not be what we think it is. We don’t have to try to get closer to God. We can’t -- God’s right here! God dwells within us; temples of the Holy Spirit! Getting closer to God’s ‘will’ might be a better goal because that alignment is often very far off. It’s what many of us struggle with.
If we find ourselves thinking that Lent is not working -- that the enchantment of “feeling our religion, feeling God” isn’t happening this year, then maybe the answer is to practice a new consciousness.
What if we all tried to spend one hour a day trying to be consciously aware of God in every person we meet and every place we go; to keep searching with our eyes, our mind and our heart?
If we practice believing what we profess—that God is in our midst—then we are much more likely to awaken to the presence of the Divine, in us and all around us!
At the very least it will begin to change how we see and relate to other people as we practice seeing and believing the Divine presence within each one of them, regardless of how they may treat us!
This is what Pope Francis is hoping will happen as we draw near to immigrants and refugees, to all those who are marginalized. That as we draw near to the one who is “other” to us, by God’s grace, our biases and preconceptions about them will dissolve and we will come to know them as sister and brother, as images of the Creator, as children of God.
So this Lent, let us ask ourselves, in whom is it most difficult for me to see the presence of God? What deeper reality is God calling me to this Lent? To whom am I being called to “draw nearer”?
And let us continue to hold the people of Palestine and Israel in our thoughts and prayers. Let us pray for a swift end to the war being raged between Israel and Hamas and for an end to the war by Russia against the people of Ukraine and for the U.S. and other countries of the world to increase their combined efforts -- to intercede to bring about peace in all the places wars are being waged around the world.
May our Lenten prayer be for peace. Peace in our hearts, in our families, our friendships, our schools, our workplaces, our nation and throughout the world. May the shalom of our God, in all of its fullness, be upon you all and upon all of the earth.
Lenten blessings,
Fr. Tim
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