St. Anthony & Our Lady of Fatima

Just as the gardener is patient with the fig tree, willing to nurture it, so God is patient with us.  God awaits our growth and willingness to live in him.  To do that, we need to be open to the graces God provides us.  Do you take advantage of the ways the Church offers to nourish your spiritual life?  We need to be mindful also to show patience with others, allowing them to bloom where they are planted.

Jesus commanded us to take up our crosses each day (Lk 9:23). A Roman cross existed only for the purpose of causing a person’s death. A daily cross is daily dying to self. This is the ultimate life of love, which is the greatest expression of freedom. However, a life of daily crosses and daily dyings requires so much love that we may not choose this life of selfless love and thereby be paralyzed by selfishness and fear. Only by obeying the Lord can we be set free to choose the way of daily crosses, the way of love.

Jesus takes us up Transfiguration mountain where the veil is removed from the hidden Christ (see Col 3:3) of faith so that we can see the transfigured Christ of glory. This may happen through the sacraments, the Bible, the poor, a healing, a miracle, a marriage, a birth, a blessing, or other spiritual experiences. When we see Christ transfigured, we are led to receive a new Pentecost. Then the Spirit proclaims that Jesus is Lord (1 Cor 12:3). Knowing not only in our heads but also in our hearts that Jesus is Lord, we listen to Jesus (Lk 9:35) — even about the love-filled life of daily crosses and daily dyings. In submission to the transfigured Lord Jesus, we are free to love as He loved — even to death on the cross.

It is an ancient tradition that we read the gospel of the temptation of Jesus on the first Sunday of Lent. There is the obvious connection that Jesus spends forty days in the wilderness, but there are deeper reasons. In each of the synoptic gospels we are told how, before his ministry begins, Jesus, filled with the Spirit, encounters the spirit of evil. It is what his ministry is all about. It is what our lives are all about. To overcome evil with goodness is the constant challenge of the gospel.

In the longer narratives in Matthew and Luke we are given what amounts to a profound reflection on the nature of temptation. To use God-given powers for selfish ends is a temptation rife in our modern times. To worship the source of evil recalls our modern confusion about what is morally good and morally bad. To put God to the test is similarly familiar. Jesus withstands each of these tests. Our gospel ends with the departure of the devil ‘to return at the appointed time’. Luke knows that the critical time will come at Calvary.

When we open our mouths and speak, we open our inner selves and reveal publicly:

Our “heart’s abundance

Our faults and sins

The bent of our minds

Therefore,

Be “slow to speak”

Don’t talk too much

“Let no evil come out of your mouths, but only such as in good for edifying, as fits the occasion that it may impart grace to those who hear.

This coming Lent, let Jesus be Lord of your mouth, the Holy Spirit purify your tongue, and the Father be glorified by your every word.