Gen. 12:1-4a; Ps. 33:4-5, 18-20, 22; 2 Tm. 1:8b-10; Mt.17:1-9
“Listen to him!” This Lent when God speaks to us in his word, in our prayer, and in our relationships, we listen to him in order to respond to his call. When we listen to him with our heart and mind, he tells us to “rise, and do not be afraid” to take the right next step in our faith journey. That step is rooted in the love of God and other. It is rooted in mercy and forgiveness. God is calling us to a conversion of greater love and mercy. “Listen to him” forgive and you will be forgiven, give and it shall be given to you, be humble and you will be lifted up. To listen is to desire something greater in our lives, more of God and less of this world.
When the Lord called on Abram, he asked him to leave behind his homeland, his comforts and “go forth” to a land he will show him. He did not promise it would be easy, without sacrifice, but he would bless him and a great nation would come from him. God never promises the easy road, and Jesus chose the via dolorosa, the way of suffering to make of us a great nation of followers of the way of salvation.
Thus, we are reminded to “bear your share of hardship for the gospel.” Alone it is unbearable but our strength comes from God when we listen to him and live according to his own design. His design is for a life of holiness and holiness destroys death and gives life immortal. We ask ourselves this Lent to bear our share of the gospel through prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Our prayer is efficacious, it makes a difference but we out to know how to pray.
Recall the acronym of prayer ACTS, adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication? Adoration is our worship of God, contrition our desire for mercy for our sins, thanksgiving recognizes the blessings we have received, and supplication is for our needs and the needs of others by the will of God not our will. “God if it be your will let it be done.” This is prayer that is efficacious for our good, the good of others and of this world.
Fasting is not only good for the soul but good for the body. Our bodies are filled with toxins that build up from our indulgence. The reality is that we consume more than we need and all that consumption creates inflammation, brain fog, and by chronic consumption leads to early disease and death. We are out of balance in our consumption and fasting helps to detox our bodies, restore our mind-body control, and open our soul to listen to him.
I propose to you a different kind of fasting than what we normally think of with food. Try fasting from what consumes our time outside of our commitments to work, school or family. Is it television, social media, talking on the phone, or try putting down that golf club, fishing pole or rushing to the bingo hall. Discover the withdrawal for all those activities that have become our addiction to this world and left so very little time for God. Imagine your world without the novela, without the news channel, without tik-tok, without gaming, without gossip, without that obsession that is taking over our time. Now we’re talking, now were fasting the mind and body.
Almsgiving is going beyond our pocket change to the person on the street. Almsgiving is taking from what we have and letting go from our feeling of dependency on having more. Do we really need that many pairs of shoes, hats, tools, coats, blankets, or whatever clutters our drawers and closets. Ask a man and you can never have enough screw drivers; ask a woman and you can never have enough shoes; or ask a child these days and you can never have enough memory for all their gaming toys. Almsgiving is also about letting go and giving to those who have not.
In many ways the message does not change. What changes is our readiness to listen to him and to respond “Here I am, Lord ready to do your will.” Lent is this invitation for us to face the enemy of our salvation. The enemy is threefold, the flesh, the world, and Satan. They do not operate separately but are always at work together for what we experience in one area is an opportunity for the participation from the enemy in other areas.
The flesh is our appetite from within as the mind seeks to satisfy the flesh in all its passions, physical, sexual, and psychological. The flesh triggers the mind to crave self indulgence to the degree that whatever the flesh desires then become the god of the flesh, destroying the body and corrupting the soul. The person becomes the slave of the flesh.
The world is its own god seeking to finds its slaves. Its temptation is to all the riches and beauty the world has to be conquered but this is a false illusion. The world will not be conquered by becoming part of the world. We are in the world but not of the world meaning we serve our God in the world and the world can be of service to us but not our quest. We learn, work, and participate in the world in order to bring to the world the gospel message by the way we live our lives.
The evil one is the least powerful in our lives because by the cross we have been redeemed unless we open ourselves up to him and sadly many unwittingly have done just that. From taking up astrology to the Ouija board, from palm readers to “curanderas”, it is all part of the culture of death. The evil one desires our death, and he relies on the world to be its weapon of destruction to bring about hopelessness. “See how good the world is, indulge and be lost in the world” or Satan can just as quickly turn it around and say, “See how bad the world is today, there is no god that can save it” and lead us to hopelessness. Satan is the master of lies but Jesus is revealing to us the eternal truth this day.
The secret is out in the transfiguration today. The vision of Moses and Elijah next to Jesus is a vision of immortality. They are alive and they share in the light of God. The secret of the vision is the divinity of Jesus “true God and true man”. This is our faith that Jesus is one divine person with two natures. The sign of Moses and Elijah is that we too are invited to rise above our human nature into the divine life through the waters of baptism. This is a great hope, and many have come to listen to him, some with the red robe of martyrdom and others with the white robe of perfection, through blood and water. The secret is out “the Son of Man has been raised from the dead” and we are invited to enter into the divine life.
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