A Daily Lent

Inner Freedom Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent – March 11, 2020 We are social beings. All of our lives, from our first days to our last day, we constantly are learning how to live in relationship with each other. Often, though, the clues we take from others are about people-pleasing, adapting ourselves and our behaviors to the expectations of those in our life-world. It is quite common – and in fact, may have become the cultural norm – for persons to shape their lives to the expectations and demands of those around us. Inner freedom is one of the key ideas in the spiritual life. Inner freedom does not have to do with our outer freedom, that is, how free we are to come and go and do as we please. This kind of outer freedom is what adolescents strive for, and what most adults continue seeking throughout life. Inner freedom is different. It is the freedom to be the person you were created to be, rather than the person who is pushed and pulled by circumstances, conditions, a...

A Larger, Freer, More Truthful Way Saturday after Ash Wednesday – February 29, 2020 When Beatrice Bruteau describes a contemplative as someone who lets go of the old ways that seem “natural” to us in favor of that which is larger, freer, and more truthful, something in me says, “Yes!” and something else in me says, “I can’t!” She’s right. It’s not “natural” to us that we should love others without qualification. But this is part of the transformative process, the slow and messy shift in the interior life to which the contemplative is invited. Our vocation is to live in union with God, and this is the way God loves. This is how Bruteau says it: We have now identified the basic life principle of the communion of the saints. That is what is meant by abiding in Jesus’ love. Live in the kind of love-world he has created, the love-context in which he lives. Do it the way he does it. “Love one another as I have loved you,” leaving out any regard for “deserving” or “lovability,” eith...

Ash Wednesday February 26, 2020 I’ve come to believe and experience that a chief characteristic of God is God’s endless Self-giving. God gratuitously gives away who God is. God is not stingy, but generously spends Divine mercy, compassion, love, and goodness on the world. That this Self-giving is gratuitous means that we do not earn it, deserve it, or win some worthiness contest to receive it. God’s Self-giving is not conditioned upon our actions, our morality, or the vibrancy of our faith. We cannot begin any discussion of “unconditional love” until we jettison our notions that various degrees of spiritual performance get different quantities of God’s goodies. Yet, at the root of most religious systems, humans have developed complex notions for how to win God’s favor. We teach them, preach them and instill them in our young and old. These systems work for crowd control, but they are generally unworkable in helping us relate intimately to God. Self-giving that is not predicat...

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent Daily Reading : John 8:31 – 42 Focus Passage : To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (Jn. 8:31) Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor in pre-war Nazi Germany, came up with the phrase “cheap grace” for a Christian faith which wants to receive God’s goodness without radically reordering life as Christ advocated. So today I’ll use the phrase “cheap truth” for the way these words of Jesus (Jn. 8:31 – 42) have been misrepresented. These verses have been watered down (cheapened) to suggest that spiritual freedom is possible without a radical reorientation of life. Verse 31 has been used, misused, and badly abused for a long time. It gets co-opted by those who think they repres...

Monday of the Second Week of Lent – March 2, 2015 Amma Syncletica said, “There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his or her own thoughts.” [Benedicta Ward, SLG, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers , p. 234.] The spiritual practice of solitude offers us space to live more fully into our connection with God, apart from concern for how we appear to other people. In this sense, solitude provides a setting in which we can interact freely with God and begin to discern the purpose for which we were created. We, then, are able to come to some sense of our core identity apart from what other people say about us, think about us, or tell us we are. The Desert Fathers and Mothers recognized that it is possible for us to be alone, yet not truly be in solitude. In contemporary cult...

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent John 8:31 – 42 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.” “Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has ...

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent Matthew 1:18 – 25 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded h...

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent John 8:31 – 42 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.” “Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has ...

John 8:31 - 42 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.” “Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from G...

John 8:31 – 42 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.” “Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraha...

Matthew 5:17 – 19 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Spiritual development, of necessity, begins with laws, rules and obligations. None of us can handle the full weight of Truth from the beginning. It is too much, too heavy, too TRUE! We have to be moved along gently, piece by piece, step by step, into the really large realities of life. Of course, we almost never see that while we’re in the midst of the movement. We tend to think, at whatever stage of the journey we find ourselves, that we...

John 8:31 – 42 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?" Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know you are Abraham's descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father's presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father." "Abraham is our father," they answered. "If you were Abraham's children," said Jesus, "then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you ...