Getting on Track: Removing Obstacles | First Sunday of Lent

as i mentioned last week this weekend here we begin our new preaching series these six weeks of land entitled getting on track that's the point of lent the point of lent is for us to get on track it's to get on track of this period of renewal to be transformed it's to be on the track that leads to him and really that's the whole point of life is to make sure that we're on this track that leads to this further conformity to christ us growing in holiness a track that leads to him the problem is we all have a tendency to get off the track like that's part and parcel of being human our human natures we have a tendency to get off track i mean look at things with you know with with exercise i start off exercising and how easy it is to get off the track or it's with a diet i'm on a diet and to fall off track father burke right now is on a diet he's been on the last couple months no carbs at all just two days ago he'd mentioned you know that he was at a dinner that had carbs and he said he didn't do it because he knows if he did it would just be this downhill just for he'd be done and so of course over the last couple months knowing that he's on this diet i frequently when somebody drops some fresh loaf of bread off or some sweets i kind of waff it over to him and make sure he gets it and i've been having a good time with that and each time he does say get behind get behind me satan he says that but as it's the case to get off track how easy it is for us to get off the track in those things it's also easy for us to get off track in our spiritual lives maybe we're here this morning and we've fallen off track over the last maybe even couple years with with kovid maybe we're sitting here this morning we've got one two wheels on the track the other two wheels are off or maybe some of us even are this morning and we're completely off the track maybe some of us even if we really think about what it means to be on track of conforming our lives more and more to christ of rooting out sin in our lives maybe for some of us it's like you know what father mark i don't even know if i've ever been on track if i've really been on track in my life of pointing it this is the time we're gonna get on track these 40 days these six weeks of lent we're gonna get on track and it is the case that it happens getting off a track it happens little by little the drift off a track maybe one wheel maybe two wheels and all of a sudden it is i'm off track and all of a sudden it's like the vice here or vice there it continues and then now i look and it's like this is this is a habit for me it's habitually i fall into this and i can't kick it or maybe it's priorities that are just a little like god first god first family second everything else third it's it's a i know it needs to be tweaked a little bit i'm a little off and then it continues the drift the drift to drift and now it's man my priorities are all out of whack and if i really look at it i'm completely off this track of being aligned to him that's why the church gives us lent that's why the church gives us this time for lent because as humans all things being equal we fall off a track we drift off the track and then on top of that you throw on now the secular culture which just more and more puts god off to the side boy we can drift easy and so the church gives us a lens and to get on track there are no shortcuts it's prayer and silence but that's next week that's what we're looking at next week this week we have to first remove obstacles to get on track we first have to remove the occipital obstacles that have come on the track that there ain't no way i'm getting on track unless these obstacles on the track are first removed and so that's why the first sunday in lent the church always brings us in the desert no matter if we're reading from the gospel of mark luke or john we're always in the desert where jesus is led out in the desert by the holy spirit why what's in the desert there ain't much the desert is a spot it's barren in the desert there's very little clutter there's very little distractions in the desert there's not much obstacles and so for us to look at this week to say maybe we turn and we look down at our tracks and say i've got all this junk this dude debris this clutter that's here clutter and stuff that i don't even want to be on here that i don't know how it got on here that i want to get it off i need to get it off if i'm going to be the man or woman that i know i want to be that god's calling me to be and the devil in the desert he's clever make no mistake the holy spirit leads jesus out in the desert but jesus doesn't counter satan in the desert and he's clever with the temptations that he gives he was clever with the temptations that he gave with jesus that matched with temptations from the old testament and the devil is also clever with the temptation he wants to give us and oftentimes for a matter modern man it comes down to diversions and distractions increasingly so i think is the case c.s lewis a great christian author in the 20th century he wrote a book called the screw tape letters and the script tape letters is a series of letters between a senior tempter demon named screw tape and he's writing these letters correspondence to a a younger demon who's just kind of underway he's just starting he's learning the ropes and how to best trip up his his new clients or his new people that he's trying to attempt up and his name is wormwood and in these letters wormwood the junior tempter he's all excited he's about doing these big you know tempting the client with these new sins these big sins and all of a sudden [Music] um all of a sudden screwtape writes back and says easy easy you don't need to worry about all these big sins all you have to do is distract them just it takes a little bit of work to have a person waste their whole life in distractions and worthless distractions he says he says just keep them from real authentic pleasures because real pleasures that's the enemy's territory that's god's territory the demon is saying so just keep them from the real pleasures and just distract them distract them from things that they don't even really want to be doing after the fact they say what was i doing i didn't even want to be doing that for that long and so that's why the last couple years now as a priest when i approach lent and even preaching on it i i think it's really hard to imagine anyone today in the 21st century to approach lent to look into lent without making some adjustment to screen time whether that be phone social media tv right if if if you don't have a phone it may be it may be video games it may be the news prior to lent this year once again i looked at my screen usage again i deleted a couple apps from my phone and for four to five days into lent as we are today i've had the same experience that i had last year and that is i've noticed these last four to five days the slightest law or dead time that i've had or even anything in the midst of of being at the desk i just reached for my phone to like for some just little slightest little diversion to look at my phone and now the last four or five days i'm turning my phone and i'm scrolling through youtube's gone twitter's gone i find myself just going to my email and just refreshing my email that's been the last four or five days i'm just refreshing email but what i've noticed again is this this strongest knee-jerk reaction in me and the slightest law is just to pick up my phone to look to a screen to be diverted to be distracted i was you know the wild thing is too with that is i didn't grow up with a phone i didn't get a phone i think it was i don't i don't think i got a phone until my freshman year of college many some of you you know those that are here younger all you know is being raised in front of screens and phones i was sharing some of this with a high schooler yesterday who was helping us out he's a he's a high schooler at nazareth and he was helping us out with a number of different things in the morning and as i was going through talking about this and the necessity for us this week to remove obstacles i asked him i said what what are you going to remove what's the obstacle what's the screen time maybe that you're going to remove and he kind of looked at me with a deer in the headlights kind of like what do i say here to the breeze and so i suggested how about you how about you delete tick-tock thinking that he would just kind of brush me off to the side and then he turns to me he says oh father mark actually i deleted tic-tock from my phone four weeks ago i said why he said because i've noticed i noticed now for the longest time i've been just at at the end of the day lying in my bed for some times right before going to bed one hour sometimes two hours just looking at videos for two hours and after i got done realizing that i didn't even know i couldn't recall one video that i looked at he said it was he said he said it wasn't doing me any good see it was a harm to him it was a harm as he mentioned there's a harm to to his mental health and it's also an obstacle for his spiritual life i shared with him after he told me that he said you may not know this but coincidentally just this past wednesday on ash wednesday states attorney generals from across the the country launched a nationwide investigation into tick tock those of you that are wondering what tic tac is it's not tic-tac-toe right it's it's a it's a popular new video platform that are especially popular amongst youth but u.s lawmakers republicans or democrats they don't agree on much but they agree on this and they're looking at the harmful effects that it's having on youth catastrophic catastrophic effects and increasingly they're seeing this looking at seeing the the number of girls out of a hundred thousand in this country that are admitted that have been admitted to the hospital because of harming themselves that number was pretty stable up until the year 2010 2011 it was you look at a graph it's pretty pretty stable and then as soon as 2010 2011 hits that graph just shoots off the page it's now up 62 for older teen girls ages 15 to 19. it's up 189 percent for pre-teen girls ages 10 to 14. that's triple i had a hinsdale police sergeant that attended the 7 30 mass this morning and he mentioned this morning he said father mark just this friday alone friday alone just in hinsdale we had four calls for young young young youth in this area what's more troubling are the suicide rates older teen girls the suicide rates are up 41 percent the last 10 years for pre-teen girls ages 10 to 14 the suicide rate is up 151 percent now the variables of course are probably multi-layered but one thing is assuring that what cannot be ignored is the pattern of when social media began to be in the pockets of young people beginning in junior high in high school and then and at at that point in 2008 when it was more in the pockets of junior highs and high schoolers was 2008 and then what you see is the correlation of those numbers going up we hear about these studies we see about them this isn't the first time you're hearing about here the harmful effects of social media of screen time but i don't know if enough action is taken by even you hearing it from from this spot up here and also maybe for us as parents as a community talking about it and it's important for you to hear this as i have a concern of course with the mental health as your pastor but also for us to hear that it's also a deterrent for our spiritual lives it's also a big deterrent for us to get on track to conform our lives more and more to christ because we were wired for god our hearts were made for him to we long to be in communion with the divine and yet screens are an obstacle for us from getting on track and it does us harm that is not to say it's bad right that the phone is bad or screen time necessarily is bad phones aren't going anywhere when you leave your home now it's keys wall and phone that's just the case that's not gonna change i'm not saying it should change i use my phone all the time but what we are saying is what i'm asking for us to do as a community is to say and for us to ask ourselves individually is lord revealed to me and how i seek out comfort and how i seek out satisfaction in front of the screen and not in you and help me lord remove that obstacle here for these 40 days to help me get on track which leads me here lastly so for whatever reason the lord these last couple weeks has been impressing upon me that we're supposed to do this and go through this and get on track and remove these obstacles we're supposed to do it together we're supposed to do it because together because we're not just simply individuals that sit next to each other in pews on sunday we are a mystical body we are a family and we're to do this together i think and so here is what i want us to do as you notice as you walked in maybe in the narthex you see the white strip of paper there on the wall i want you to write on that wall the obstacle that you need to remove this week an obstacle that you're going to remove these next 40 days what does not go on there what i don't want to see go on there are things that are you normally ask like what are you giving up for lent i'm giving up chocolate or sweets chocolate sweets and stuff that should not go on that board why because chocolate and sweets don't keep you from silence and prayer what we're going to look at next week is silence and prayer chocolates and sweets don't keep us from silence and prayer for most of us the thing that keeps us from silence and prayer is screen time what is it that what is something that an obstacle that keeps you from science here parents up here of young kids to be sure your child young kids they keep you from silence and prayer okay but you can't put them up on there okay you can't say i'm you can't write up your two-year-olds and say my two-year-old's an obstacle for the silence and prayer i'm gonna put up my two-year-old and remove them for 40 days okay no okay we can't do that it's probably going to be screen time and if you don't have a phone if social media is not a thing for you then then it's it's a good chance it's the news are we to be informed with the news absolutely but i think with what we've done in the last couple years with kovid and now even new the ukraine and russia things for us to be informed of that we need to be formed of but we should not be checking the news 50 times a day because it it keeps us from him ultimately keeps us from peace who is him and maybe just a word here too for those of you for younger people here in the pews some of you are saying see mom everyone's got a phone how come i didn't how come i don't have a phone let me tell you this first of all not everyone does have a phone and i have more and more parents come to me and tell me and say we are not allowing our children to have phones as they're in junior high or in high school even or not allowing them to have social media so do not think that you are alone by not having a phone those those that are younger that do have a phone and social media give this a try go by why are we doing this is so that you can look by and you can see other people say that they've given up tik tok for 40 days you can see other people that says deleted youtube and twitter from phone and you can say oh that was my pastor you can see other things there that i saw even this morning of people put up and says no screen time after 8 30 at night or someone else that says delete instagram from phone and then went on to say something for her children and said set screen time limits for my children so in your pews you see little square pieces of paper i want everyone to write down an obstacle that needs to be removed this is going to be a time where you do a commitment and what this is what you write on here is what's going to go on the board and so after mass after mass there's markers up there at the board there's markers there up at the board and you're going to put them up there if there's a long line and you don't want to put it up and you don't want to wait in line that's fine just take your square piece of paper and put it in the basket at those doors and then we'll put it up there for you this lent let's make this lent the best one ever when we arrive at holy week this week easter more and more conformed to christ more and more the men and women that the lord wants us to be that we deep down long to be that we want to be it's time to get on track it's time to take this step in the desert by removing obstacles that keep us from him so now let's take a minute and make that commitment

Channel: Father Mark Bernhard

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Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 06 2022