Week 5 of Lent

Each liturgical season of the past few years, I begin with the desire to make it the best ever. I began Lent with that same intention. I failed my giving up coffee after a few days. Silly of me to give up a medicinal item. I must have forgotten how a cup coffee can sometimes ward off a migraine or at least take the edge off a migraine headache. Instead, I have been trying to give up small treats like eating out when I have work meetings or appointments in the city and avoiding unnecessary food items when I am grocery shopping. This is all small change in the big picture of life and poverty that so many people live in and hardly worth mentioning.

What I have enjoyed most this Lent is the mass readings. I am a big fan of Word on Fire and listen to Bishop Barron’s weekly homilies from the website https://www.wordonfire.org/  I discovered that you can listen to homilies that go back to 2001, and narrow your search by the “season” or one of five other categories of searches.  I have been listening to current and past homilies on each week’s readings across all the cycles. To do this you go to the main website. Click on resources on the top menu > Homilies> Season > Lent. It has been an amazing experience to drench in the Word this way. It’s a type of Lectio Divina, with Father Barron painting the picture of each biblical story. Father Barron has a gift for preaching that brings scripture to life and he has a way of putting it in the context of life today. Everything that happened in bible has relevance to life today.

In the past, I have struggled with Lent and Christ’s Passion because it is so brutal and unfair that Jesus had to die for us. I understand St. Peter’s wish for Jesus not to die.

Matthew 16: 21-23

21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

Jesus had been trying to prepare the apostles for what was going to happen, but poor Peter could not understand why it had to be this way. This is where Jesus’s divinity is not altered by his humanity. Jesus always did the Father's will in everything. We, on the other hand, are constantly swayed off the narrow path by our human concerns. In this season of Lent we are asked to get back to the basics and identify, what are the stumbling blocks in our lives. What takes our focus off of God’s will for us?
Next week is Holy Week and we will again walk with Jesus through the scriptures and revisit his Passion and Death and Resurrection. This is the week that changed history. Don’t miss it.   

Paula