Becoming Catholic (RCIA) #19 - "Lent" (2017-2018).

[Music] I'll save what I was going to do for next week so that we can get into Lent which is going to begin on Wednesday and have a understanding of what it is that the church is asking of us so let me ask you to flip to Matthew 6 if you wouldn't mind first book of the New Testament so we want to look at the purpose of Lent the means to achieve the purpose say something about the significance of Fridays during Lent talk about days of abstinence and then I want to talk about the what we call the scrutinies and then Holy Week and true to him and we'll fly through all that so everybody who here knows that next ones who here doesn't know next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday it's Valentine's Day okay that will be a really non event for us as Catholics next week so celebrate Valentine's Day Tuesday at least if you plan on celebrating it with chocolate so Ash Wednesday is next Wednesday and so it's not a holy day of obligation and yet it's probably with the exception of Easter and Christmas the most highly attended mass day of the year it's always interesting to me we gave out dirt and people come so in in Europe and other parts of the country or other parts of the world on Ash Wednesday people come forward and they sprinkle ashes and they're here what are they doing South Africa mmm her just nod mmm forehead for it okay so it was in in Italy and lots of places in Europe there just sprinkle ashes in your hair in the States and apparently in South Africa at Mass after the homily we invite people to come forward just like they do and for Communion and you can all come alright so you can't get the body of Christ but you can get ashes so people come forward and we make the sign of the Cross with ashes on someone's forehead and there's a couple of different formulas that are said when we do that and it's it's for two purposes it's for us and it's for to be a visible witness to others and it's really easy to find out although it's not just Catholics who celebrate Ash Wednesday anymore lots of more and more evangelical churches and protestant churches celebrate it as well so you know you speed to dust or remember that you are dust and to dust you will return or repent and believe in the gospel that's what the priest or the Eucharistic minister will say and then the rest of the mass is mass like normal so the entirety of the season of Lent has a focus so when I was a child I hated this season it meant that you gave up things and I didn't understand the purpose of that and I kind of thought it was just about seeing how disciplined you could be that's not what Lentz about so the the goal of Lent is really simple the goal of Lynas conversion repentance and growing and greater conformity to Jesus so it will be a good Lent for me and for you if you and I get to Easter Sunday which is when Lent ends and we look more like Jesus it will be a bad Lent if we've lost some weight managed to stay away from all the things we gave up but we don't look anything more like Jesus those things are just means to the ends right so that's the goal the goal of Lent is conversion and emerging at Easter looking more like the Lord the season of Lent has two parts to it really so the first part is focused more internally on ourselves and just kind of a prolonged if you will examination of conscience and the way I would do it though I'm suggesting people this year is something as simple as this just ask the Lord this question this one question Lord what's the one thing in my life that's most keeping me from being the man or the woman that you made me to be for some of us it might be I'm impatient with my kids for some of us it might be I'm impatient with my spouse for some of us it might be I don't pray or don't pray faithfully I don't I don't carve out time every day for some of us maybe it's I don't think I'm really reading Scripture for some of us it might be someone that we're just bitter towards that we haven't managed to forgive you might be sins of speech you know I the Lord's just call me to curb my tongue stop gossiping learn how to bite it over both with fat all right whatever it might be but just because we've got a few days now we've got five six days before we actually enter the season use this time to prepare and that's how I I would encourage us there's lots of ways that's what I'm doing I'm just Laura what's the one thing kind of keeping me from being what you want me to be or a friend of mine is this religious sister she says it this way she says ask the Lord Lord what he asking me so imagine you're carrying all these things what do you ask me to put down what am i carrying that you that you don't want me to carry anymore and what do you ask me to pick up so what am i doing that you don't want me to do and what am I not doing that you want me to do yeah oh yeah yeah absolutely so um and I'll say something a little bit more specific about that in just a second but yeah well we'll talk about how to how to go about discerning what things we want to both do and not do but absolutely I'm just in terms of kind of this first part of the season of Lent just doing this examination of conscience the way I would think about it is like sitting down with a physician saying where am i sickest if you asked the Lord Lord what do I need to change the most um like people who think I pray like God never talks ask that he'll talk you'll tell him to stop just one thing Lord really just one so where do you want most most want me to change right now okay that's the first part the second part of Lent then becomes more and more a preparation for the celebration of the passion and then the death and the resurrection of Jesus so it's not quite 50/50 but that's an easy way to think about the rhythm if you will of the seasons that makes sense to everybody yeah so there's there's kind of three classical means to an to the end if you will then the end is conversion deeper repentance greater conformity to Jesus the means our prayer fasting and almsgiving so Matthew 6 talks about each of these so let's just let's look at this because this is what we're gonna hear on Ash Wednesday and then we can just make a couple of comments on it so Jesus says beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them it doesn't that mean don't do things publicly it means don't do them publicly in order so that people will look at you for then you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven thus when you give arms no tits win right not if when you give arms sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be praised by men truly I say to you they have their reward but when you give alms do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your alms may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you and when you pray you must not be like the hypocrites for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by men truly I say to you they have their reward but when you pray go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you skip down to verse 16 when you fast not if when you fast do not look dismal like the hypocrites for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men truly I say to you they have their reward but when you fast anoint your head and wash your face that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you so we read this passage on Ash Wednesday as just kind of an intense reminder to all of us as we begin this season to have the right motive right so these three things prayer fasting almsgiving are the three classical means to help us along the way towards conversion and repentance and greater conformity to Jesus but if it's just outward show and my heart's not involved its vain much like we talked about using the Lord's name in vain right so arms giving today's interesting today's the Feast of a man named Saint Jerome emiliana Saint Jerome was a mayor among other things and he left his wealth and he left his position of privilege and he founded a religious community to work with especially with orphans and so the reading that's assigned to him comes from the book of Tobit and in the book of Tobit God sends the Archangel rafail to someone and he gives him this message and in the message this is God's angel speaking to us saying prayer and fasting is good alms giving is better that's an interesting word from heaven it's great to pray it's great to fast we need to pray because we need to be in communion with the Lord obviously it's a good thing to fast cuz the more we can exercise self-control it's easier just to live life but arms giving alms giving is better the Lord says through his angel why do you think okay it's so almsgiving is primarily financial but it doesn't have to be limited to that but it's it's typically financial but why would it be better yeah the Lord gave everything right so the Lord is the great merchant he he makes an investment of himself so he the currency if you will that he uses is his whole life poured out for us and an imitation of him we're called to do the same but it's also just an act of charity right so to give to those who are in need is clearly an act of charity that's why it's better and the great command is to love to love God and to love your neighbor so I was struck by something a friend of mine said the other day we were in a small gathering of folks and she said she was in in a church over Christmas and it was freezing in there and she she was downtown Detroit and she was complaining to her husband how cold it was in the church and as soon as she started to complain she felt the Lord just convicted her and said and you're going to leave and go home what about the people who have to endure this tonight who have no home and so she made a commitment there that for this year she would not buy anything at all for herself and so she said it's only the second week of February so I don't know how if I'm gonna get there but so far I have not bought a thing for myself this year and she was just talking about how free she is and how much she's in solidarity with the poor I've been really struck by that I'm I always tried to spend the week before Lent asking the Lord Lord what he want me to do and I think that's one of the things he wants me to do especially in let like just don't buy anything I mean I Amazon Prime to me two days before I order because I didn't - it's what I want um and we're so many of us you know are just so like that like we like I want I can get it now would you like this today I would it could be something for some of us that's just a great thing to do that's why I mention it and then what do you do you take the money you would have spent right so so some people will give up going out for coffee over Lent which is a good thing to do I mean you can go out for coffee and spend five dollars or more right on a cup of coffee so for example you might do that and then you might take the money you would have spent and then you give that to the poor that's a really effective way to do alms giving or you you don't go out to dinner during Lent and you take the money you would have spent going out to dinner and you give it to the poor so it's free there's no there's no way like you must do X right it's just it it's you know and I know and the Lord knows what are those things which will cost us do those and then take that and give it to the poor mindful that the Lord tells us in a variety of different ways in the scriptures and in different prayers in the church that when we die the people who will greet us at the gates of heaven will be the poor and either we were generous to them and they will welcome us in or we weren't because they were the Lord in His distressing disguise and I know people who are they're concerned so like sometimes they're driving and they stop at a light and they see somebody there and their question is I don't know what they're gonna do with the money and my response to that is always well God puts money in your hands and mine all the time and look what we do with it I don't really care what they do with the money quite honestly I mean if if when I die I want to hear God say you know John you were just way too generous that would be a great thing to hear as opposed to uh kind of stingy not a good thing to hear right so when the Lord you know cuts me my $12 paycheck every week he doesn't go what do you new this John it's just given to me so however it is that we I learned is you feel like the Lord moving you to give give and with all of these prayer fasting and almsgiving the greater we are with each of them the more generous we were with each of these the more we will get out of Lent and then the more we will get out of Easter quite honestly okay I'm going to talk about that in just a second when we get to fasting we'll talk about how to I think make fasting more efficacious if you will more fruitful least I find it that way so hold on just one second for that anything else on almsgiving so I I would encourage people to tithe 10% so here's the here's the best way to look at it so we're talking about the principle of stewardship here so a steward is somebody who cares for something that belongs to somebody else that's what you and I are what is it that that you and I have that belongs to somebody else everything because everything I have to gift now does God want me to go home and empty my closets and empty my bank account and go live in the street probably not he does call some people to do that and he called the one man and the gospel's to do that who unfortunately didn't do that and he walked away sad but he does call each of us to its first an interior attitude where you we have to ask the Lord to just kind of give us the conviction lord help me to remember and to understand and to realize nothing is mine and one day I'm gonna give an account for what I have and what I do I mean so I was thinking about this this morning and I have I don't know how many coats I have but the fact that I have more than one is troubling to me personally like why do I need more than one coat do I need a coat when it's 40 and when it's 50 and when it's 20 I mean so I've got things sitting in the closet that I haven't worn in a year that means I should get rid of them so it's a good thing to do is just sit before the Lord in prayer and say Lord what are you asking me to give and I would shoot for aspire towards getting to the place where you can tithe which is 10% um so I mean my my dad taught me the value of tithing when I was a kid my dad used to tithe 50% it was amazing it annoyed me when I was a kid I'm like we could have that but he's like what do I need right son you got a house we go on vacation you get food what do we need right and when the when the market collapsed you know ten years ago or so I mean his frustration was that he wasn't able to give to the level that he used to be able to give that was his angst that tells me something about my dad so sit with the Lord that'd be my encouragement and the degree that Jesus is Lord of my stuff and especially my money is really telling I think for most of us and again it's not that he's asking he's asking us to understand that it's all a gift from him and he's asking us to be generous and different ones of us gonna be generous in different ways till ok yeah great question so the archbishop talks about how to like how do you figure out how to tie it the 10% Bishop uses what he calls a five for one formula which i think is kind of helpful so 5% to the parish that you belong to why cuz that's my family that feeds me the sacraments it's the family that I belong to so five to that four percent to almsgiving so various causes and whatnot that I might have and then 1% he uses 1% to to his Archdiocese and appeals so through the needs of the wider archdiocese that get funded that's a formula there's no particular one but why why the church you belong to whatever church you belong to because they feed you that's the main reason and and it's your family and all the members of the family should pitch in you know when you're growing up and you got four siblings and one of them sitting around doing nothing and you're working hard you kind of get resentful how come they get to sit at the table they didn't do anything right okay so that's that's almsgiving fasting so there are there are two days during Lent that are days of fast and abstinence that's Ash Wednesday and Good Friday so note this please this is why it's it's worth saying tonight in a special way so here's Bob kind of talked a little bit about this last week but so this is what the the church would teach about days of fasting and abstinence so Ash Wednesday and Good Friday this is right from the the website of the US bishops for members of our church from the Latin Catholic Church these are the the norms on fasting so it's obligatory if you are in the ages of 18 to 59 and so this is the laneway that the church refers to fasting and I hate to say it that way but I just think it's kind of pathetic so when fasting a person is permitted to eat one full meal as well as two as well as two smaller meals that together are not equal to a full meal now you're starting to pull out your calculator all right so so that's that's the law okay so one full meal two smaller meals as long as together they're not equal to a full meal here's what I'd say don't eat have one meal there are some people who can't fast from food so if you have dietary issues or whatnot or you've got a variety of different physical ailments which require food obviously your dispensed from this okay fast in some other way maybe you'll fast from coffee that day or you'll fast from media that day you'll fast from something okay so Ash Wednesday Good Friday one full meal and for the lightweights you're gonna have two smaller meals as long as they don't need to clear a big old meal you can do that that's fine I just encourage you to be bold okay and and let the Lord give to us a gift of hunger because hunger is just that there's an interesting passage in the Old Testament where the Lord's mote Moses is actually talking and he says the Lord God made you go hungry before he fed you with the manna so before he provided for you he gave you the gift of desire of being hungry and so there's a lot of us who have never intentionally skipped a meal and there's some of us who just began to like break out in a sweat at the prospect of thinking I'm not gonna be able to eat until dinner do it Derick dare God let him create space for him come in and fill you okay that'd be my encouragement follow the law you're safe with the law but they'll be my encouragement so Ashwin is a good Friday that and on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday it is forbidden to eat meat now for some of us were vegetarians no big sacrifice all right find something else don't replace the meat with lobster kind of lost the intent right so it's supposed to be why Ash Wednesday and Good Friday Ash Wednesday because it's the beginning of the season and we want to enter into the season as best prepared as we can Good Friday because it is it's the only day in the church where it's actually forbidden to say Mass so we don't celebrate Mass on Good Friday and it's the one day that we look at that we look at the if you will the horror of what it is that we did to God in all its starkness and so we don't celebrate Mass that day we received the Eucharist but we received the Eucharist from hosts that we consecrated the night before we'll say more about that in a second then on all of the Fridays during Lent they are days of fasting from meat so on Fridays during Lent no meat again for those ages that we're talking about an ash Wednesday and Good Friday not only no meat but one meal or two smaller ones that don't equal a large one if you want that makes sense yeah yes for the purpose of no meat on Friday and again for so for some countries they don't have any meat they do something different right so but meat in some places like ours at least until somewhat recently meat was almost like a luxury if you will in food ok red meat why no meat on Fridays cuz Friday is a day unlike any other day of the week because Friday is the day when God made man died for you and since since Time Matters days matter and so not only is sunday a day unlike every other week or every other day the week cuz that's the day which heroes Friday is a day unlike any of the day the week so the church is always asking us to do something to remember what it is that happened this day so it's almost like what's the baby why do I have to give my wife a card on our anniversary well you should want to write I mean it would be an act of love you would want it why do I need to remember my wife's birthday cuz it matters right so because God is a person and he's shown his love for us we should want to remember certain things and Friday is the day in which he suffered for us yeah it was yeah yes right mine too but the bishop so the bishop is the person who has the authority in a diocese to determine which because these are laws and laws can be changed okay they're disciplines would be a better way to say it and they can be changed for certain purposes and so you know it's not unusual for whether it's Archbishop vikner on here or different bishops around the country to say given this the large number of Irish Catholics that we have in our community who really do celebrate the Feast of st. Patrick I'm gonna dispense people from not being able to eat meat on this day and instead require them or ask them to do something else that's his prerogative so you can do it I don't like corned beef so it's really no big deal to me but yeah I mean to me it does but at the same time so he said think of it this way if you don't like me what are you doing on Fridays it's like I don't do anything so you would be the person who doesn't eat red meat for whatever reason is still obliged to do something on Fridays they can't just go oh I'm good cuz I don't eat meat anyway so they would be asked to do some other active penance similarly and that's what he's doing on st. Patrick's Day when he gives that dispensation he's just askin hey this day pretend you like a vegan who's just not having meat and you're gonna do something else instead so he can do that it's his right him because they can be changed they know the heart of the law is what matters what matters is do something to call to mind the passion do something typically it's not have meat but again there are people for whom that's no sacrifice whatsoever so for them they're asked to do something which gets to the heart of the law that's what the Archbishop's saying on that case to remember the heart the spirit of this not because somebody could give up meat on that day and they could be a total jerk kept the law lost the intent right so we just want to keep in mind the spirit of it much like Jesus is talking about in the Gospel of Matthew 6 [Music] so kind of like maybe I'll give you an analogy so I don't take a vow of poverty I don't make any money I don't take a vow of poverty my brother priests who are in religious communities take a specific vow of property so Franciscans take vows of not only chastity and obedience but of poverty I just take one of chastity and obedience that's because the Franciscan lives the vow of poverty in a very particular way it's according to the rule of the Franciscans those who follow the life of st. Francis Jesuits take a vow of poverty according to a different rule of st. Ignatius Augustinians take a vow of poverty that's in alignment with the rule of st. Augustine or Agustin Poor Clares take a vow of poverty in conformity with the law of the Poor Clare community the fact that I don't think of our poverty doesn't mean I'm not supposed to live a vow of poverty it just means that the diocesan priest has the freedom to let the Lord tell him how to live it but there's the expectation that I I can't live poor I got an education so but I can live simply right so there's an expectation to live simply but it's it's for me to wrestle with with the Lord in a similar kind of way here's the way I would put it there's that for all the complaining about fundamentalists and fundamentalism people are actually really attracted to it sometimes because just tell me what I have to do when in fact what God's saying is no here's what I'm telling you I want the attitude to be live much like you're asking live with the true understanding that everything is a gift and now let me teach you how it is that I want you to live that out so it's the difference between being a child maybe in being an adult so the Lord wants adult disciples who are taking responsibility and accountability for their own lives and they're looking at what they have and the gifts that God has given and then all the different ways that God gives gifts so as to be able to say okay in prayer I have come to this decision that help okay because some yeah because sometimes I need laws to guide me and to move me in a direction so it's helpful to have that's like why do we have laws and culture right so I need I need guardrails sometimes to keep me without keep me from driving outside the lines sometimes you're going over a cliff that's one of the purposes of law kind of puts a barrier up to say hey don't go past here but I should but at a certain point I shouldn't need the law because the spirits taken over my heart and I'm living out of a desire to just give God everything genuinely and then you don't need someone to suggest something to you because you've already done it you're already doing it okay yeah what's interesting law and sin huge pens and what we're talking about so - knowingly eat meat on a Friday - no to understand what the purpose of the law is to help me to call to mind the passion of Jesus to know that and to still eat meat intentionally any way would be to certainly be acting contrary to how God's called me to be and so that would be sinful yeah why because I know that today is the day that the Lord's suffered his passion for me and I know that the church asked me to recall that by not eating meat and I just don't care yeah if the sin is not caring about what it is that God has done for me and the way that he gets manifested here in our country with the law is by not eating me okay totally yeah so the question is are there are there Catholics who whose hearts are very far from God who are hoping that simply doing the outward acts will be sufficient right right yeah are there Catholics that lived that way yeah other Protestants that lived that way yeah um we we don't want to live that way but we don't want to be going to the other extreme of thinking that what I do doesn't matter because clearly it does Jesus tells us that when I die I will be judged by what I do right so I'm saved by grace and grace alone which is to say by the Passion of Jesus right but I'm judged by what I do so I that's why Paul urges me to work out my salvation and fear in traveling or one of the other scriptural formations would be it's it's faith working itself out through love so you can't I can't demonstrate faith apart from what I do but st. james's whole point in his letter show me your faith without works right right you already have the love of Jesus there's nothing you can do to make them love you more this is why we talked earlier in the discussion on the Holy Spirit that law is helpful for lots of things it's really important law can't make me do one thing can't make me love if I love I don't need the law I'm already doing what the law is prescribing if I don't love I need the law but once the spirit takes hold of my heart and remember the spirit comes to dwell on me to give me an intense like filial affection for the father and an intense love for my brothers and sisters once that happens I don't need a law because I'm living and conforming to Jesus I don't know many people like that quite honestly I know a few I don't know many most of us need guardrails at times prodding --'s encouragement but we're moving hopefully towards the place where we're trying to save the Lord more and more Lord I give up I surrender take hold of my life okay I thought we're gonna fly through this this is great all right all right so when we fast we're still in prayer let's go to fast huh no I want talk just quickly about what Isabelle said so the question had to do with how to make fasting more fruitful if you will so Jesus Jesus clearly says when you fast so there's an there's an expectation that we will fast I don't know how fasting works I just know it works so the image that I have is something like this so picture a picture a coastline or a cliff if you will which over hundreds of millions of years is eroded by the ocean and the wind and it becomes like that he picked that so some things like this and it changes because of some other action against it that's the image I have in my head when I fast for people so I always attached to the fasts that I do intentions so I'm fasting for married couples on fasting for a priest friend of mine who's in trouble or I'm fasting for whatever somebody who's suffering in some way so I always attach I know we find a way consciously to say okay Lord I am NOT eating right now for so-and-so and I tried to pray for them real quick just a call to mind as opposed to just I'm not eating right now so I'm trying to do it it's an act of love it's a little act of love right cuz it costs me like I can eat there's nothing wrong with eating I'm not forbidden to eat but I'm giving it up and I can either give it up out of mere self-discipline for which there's some value or I can give it up out of love for somebody else for which there's more value and I'm hoping that in doing this it has the effect of the wind and the surf and eroding someone's it might be the resistance to God's grace so I might be fasting for a married couple that's in trouble that's about to get divorced and I'm praying that God will soften their hearts and I'm not just praying I'm saying Lord and out of love for them I'm not going to eat for them and I pray that somehow you'll use that they have to make the choice they have to make the choice but I'm praying that somehow this little dinky act of love that I'm doing might help them mindful that we are all one body like we talked about once before in here okay yeah that's fasting so fasting doesn't have to be food fasting for some people is no big deal you could fast from social media you could fast from your phone you could fast from listening to the radio you could fast from coffee you could fast from anything yeah pick something that costs you that's the key yeah but pick give up something the encouragement would be you do whatever you want there's no I'm just trying to give you guides right so what I do there are certain things in my life that I like those are the things I give up like did not eat cauliflower really would not cost me all right so that's not gonna help somebody but do not drink wine cost me I love wine and so I regularly give up wine and you can either approach that by saying well I'm just going to through or I'm gonna say Lord you know what I love wine and scotch and so I will not drink Lent for them I love exactly it is a suffering that's what fasting is right it's not cancer but it's still something right and I and I can do it I can drink wine there's nothing wrong with it yeah totally yep so I could say free so let's do the whole trifecta here and do prayer fasting and almsgiving so maybe I like you know $250 bottles of wine just an imaginary example so I so I don't get I don't drink during Lent I take the money that I would have spent on wine I add it up I give to the poor at night it had in a meal where I would I had a glass of wine I make a special point to pray for some intention that I've got now I'm praying fasting and giving alms giving and it's all out of charity for others as opposed to I think I can do this which is of no value whatsoever except on a merely human plane got yeah okay cool so prayer it hardly seems like something we need to talk about but one of the things that that I've learned is that it's not the case so I have tons of priest friends who I know struggle to pray every day so if those are priests I'm sure that for a number of us in here it's a struggle to pray every day therefore think about what is it I can do entering into the season of Lent where I can carve out time every day to be very deliberate and intentional to pray so for some of us the step might be simply I don't do that I just kind of like pretty sporadically when I wake up and maybe I say a couple of quick prayers before I go to bed good better than nothing but for those of us who that's our life maybe it's I got to put it into my phone or my planner whatever where I'm just gonna make it a point every day I'm gonna spend could be 15 minutes and I'm gonna be faithful to it for those of us who already have that habit it's gonna be more or maybe you're gonna do time in the morning and time at night so for me I'm always I'm always like who prays enough nobody nobody prays enough maybe Mother Teresa she's dead so don't ask the Lord am i praying enough but ask him the question lord am i praying as much as you you're calling me too and so for me I'm he's talking to me right now and trying to set aside some other times to pray especially at night so you might want to if you already got like a good daily habit of Prayer you might want to add to that by maybe it's just 10 minutes at night but but get into the habit anyway of by the time we get to Easter all of us we've got carved out dedicated time to talk to the Lord and to listen to him because that's what friends do they make time for each other yeah so don't take a dedicated and intentional to equal formal so here's the here's the analogy I would give you so I can talk on the phone to my best friend all the time or a husband and a wife can text each other back and forth they can give a quick call they can be in constant communication in the course of a day absolutely great if they don't sit down and talk to each other every day the relationship won't grow right so so it is with God I should be constantly in dialogue with the Lord but I need to sit down with them every day if I'm gonna really develop I mean you get a friendship with someone by spending time with them all right so if I'm gonna the more that I spend time with the Lord not formally I don't don't don't think of what I'm saying is being formal I'm just thinking of it as being deliberate it's like when you know in a relationship someone says We Need to Talk can we talk yeah later no no can we talk I mean like we just need to talk we're talking right now no we're not talking right now this is what I mean you need that for real friendship to mature and God wants a more profound friendship with you and me than we do first of all and we can have a more mature friendship with God than we know that make sense okay that's the deliberate intentional peace so there are different so there there is value in formal prayer and there is value in just discourse with God so we'll tell did not that Dave talked about the rosary no we will we'll do that as we get further along when we get to prayer itself in a more kind of dedicated fashion we'll talk a little bit about that but there's value to formal person here's the key this thinks I would make this there's a difference between saying prayers and praying all praying is real not all saying prayers is is praying so I can I can pray prayer the difference is when I'm praying my heart's involved when I it's possible to just say prayers and my heart can be wherever right but it's also possible to say the same words all the time and be really praying so don't mistake formal prayer for not praying Jesus prayed the Psalms over and over and over again he was praying right they were fixed prayers there's nothing wrong with that I just have to be careful that my heart is involved in my mind's involved right okay all right um let me get to two other things real quick so one is so as we get into Lent so there are six Sundays in Lent so the third fourth and fifth Sunday's especially for those of us who are going to be baptized our times of intense what we would call scrutiny on each of these Sunday's we will actually celebrate an exorcism over you it's a time of enlightenment purification deepening repentance and conversion and preparation for the waters of baptism for those of us have already been baptized it's also an intense time of just examination of our lives and where it is that we're being called by the Lord to experience deeper conversion into it and to truly repent in those areas in our lives where we need to repent so we look at the woman of Samaria the healing of the blind man and the raising of Lazarus each of those three scenes and the Gospel of John have to do with the third the fourth and the fifth Sundays they are the same every year and we're asking the Lord in a special way to kind of arouse within us a thirst for him to heal us of the blindness is that is the lack of faith and then ultimately to bring us back from the dead which is life apart from him so that's what we're gonna do in the third and fourth and fifth weeks of Lent we're gonna get to that the sixth week of Lent begins the holiest week of the year which we call a holy week or Passion Week and the sixth week of Lent or the sixth Sunday of Lent is called Palm Sunday or passion Sunday and so that begins what's sometimes it's called the great week and Palm Sunday is or Holy Week as a time as best we can't here's the challenge right the culture that we live in because a lot of us have kids they're in school and what we do we go away I mean we go away like in the middle of the holiest days of the year because the culture that we live in could really care about the holiest days the year so as best we can and this is just an encouragement to us that's why I'm suggesting it to us now make note of these days so Easter is April 1st right so the three days before this are that what we call the sacred Triduum which is a Latin word which doesn't really get translated into English it means a three-day day so Holy Thursday Good Friday and Holy Saturday is what we call the sacred Triduum with a sacred three-day day it's one long liturgical celebration so Holy Thursday we celebrate at night we'll start with Mass at 7:00 and it'll culminate with after Mass everybody leaves in silence and we expose or we don't expose we we place the Blessed Sacrament in a chapel and we just invite people to pray until midnight in the chapel anybody wants to and to keep watch with Jesus cuz that's the night when he's in the garden and his appeal to his disciples is could you not keep watch with me one hour so we invite people just to come and to to waste time with him as we call to mind what it is that he adored for us in his agony in the garden then good Friday um there's a series of celebrations that we have but no mass so there's Stations of the Cross there's the reading of the passion always from the Gospel of John and Good Friday there's the veneration of the Cross where we invite people to come forward and they we all come forward and we all reverence the one cross which is in the center of the aisle of the church people can come to either bow to it you can kisi put your hand to it some way to get close to the cross I always have with me a relic of the true cross which I just have behind us so that we can actually kiss the real cross and then that day ends in silence that day there is no Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacles so you walk into churches and it just feels strange because it's empty from the real presence and then Holy Saturday we gather a church at night and it's when we'll bring those of you who are going to come into full communion with the church or get baptized into full communion or into Baptism and it begins after sundown and it ends right about sunup or so it seems it's long but it's uh it's a glorious night that's Holy Week and then we get to Easter and once you're in Easter you can't fast we say used to be the I mean you can write but it's highly discouraged Easter is a season so much like Christmas is not a day it's it's eight days Easter is an eight day celebration and then the season of Easter is fifty days long and in that time it's just a time of gratitude Thanksgiving celebration euphoria over the fact that you and I once had no hope and now we have hope all because Christ is risen so because of that you typically don't fast so all those things you gave up you get to have again I'll have really good wine yeah yeah Sunday so yeah so I know people who don't count Sundays during Lent I honestly don't understand that and I don't understand it mainly because first of all it's still during Lent so in other words there are people who understand let they whatever it is they gave up they partake of so I'll just tell you me so if I do that I'm gonna be a camel on Sunday and have whatever I need to last me into the next Sunday that's just me so I find it quite honestly much more penitential and keeping with the spirit of Lent to understand Sunday's as being part of Lent if you gave up chocolate don't have chocolate on Sundays because you gave it up and it's still wet does that make sense is that what you're asking yeah yeah I know some people say it's a mini Easter and there might be liturgist who say the same thing I think it's lame but that's me I'm just being candid and maybe it says a lot more about my I find it easier to give something up entirely than to do something in moderation fasting is nothing is easy to me moderation there's a lot harder like one little dove bar not a chance right I mean the bag you got I'm right there you know like the bag be gone you can have one dove bar not even so yeah I'll bring that up with Jesus thank you Touche cuz cuz I'm lame deep down inside too that's why all right anything else so Ash Wednesday this Wednesday so there's mass at 6:30 there's mass at 9:30 just mass at noon and then there's mass it is it at 6:00 Kathy it is at 6:00 isn't it yeah yeah yeah so 6:30 in the morning it's not a holy day of obligation but it's if packed 6:30 in the morning 9:30 in the morning noon and 6:00 in the evening love to have you it's a really beautiful way to enter into the season yeah Wow so the dirts net dirt right it's ashes and the ashes are made from the palms that we use on Palm Sunday from the previous year we burned them and then we use the ashes of those palms and we make the ashes that we put on people's foreheads their poems that aren't that they were taken and then they're brought back yeah so you can bring them back so that you have to bring it back you don't have to bring it back you can keep it yeah you're not going to hell for your poem don't worry you'll be all right if you got him at home and you want to bring him in bring him in we'll burn them but bring them in by this weekend yeah cuz we'll burn them and probably Monday yeah sure yeah or you can keep them yeah yeah some people make crosses out of them and they put them on Mantle's or whatever so you don't need to bring the palm back you can keep the palm bury it in the ground or burn it yeah if you have a palm that's been blessed either buried in the ground or just burn it throw in the fireplace okay lovely we're all ready to get some ashes and give up wine all right drink now all right have a great night I'll see you Wednesday Sunday

Channel: OLGCPlymouth

Views: 4,466

Rating: 4.9375 out of 5

Keywords: OLGC, Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church, Catholic Church, Plymouth Michigan

Id: VKl_PVNL6mw

Length: 63min 28sec (3808 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2018