Moving Forward

When we're going through tough times, some amount of struggle and grief is to be expected. But as people of faith, we know that at some point we need to let go of the grieving and move forward with grace.

— from Lent With St. Francis


Thank you St. Francis. Pray for us.

Summer*

Lent Day 18 - The Diversity of Saints

One thing that strikes you first about the saints is their diversity. It would be very difficult to find one pattern of holiness, one way of following Christ. There is Thomas Aquinas, the towering intellectual, and the Curé d'Ars who barely made it through the seminary. There is Vincent de Paul, a saint in the city, and there is Antony who found sanctity in the harshness and loneliness of the desert. There is Bernard kneeling on the hard stones of Clairvaux in penance for his sins, and there is Hildegard of Bingen singing and throwing flowers, madly in love with God. There is Albertus Magnus, the quirky scientist, half-philosopher and half-wizard, and there is Gerard Manley Hopkins, the gentle poet. There is Peter, the hard-nosed and no-nonsense fisherman, and there is Edith Stein, secretary to Edmund Husserl and colleague to Martin Heidegger, the most famous philosopher of the twentieth century. There is Joan of Arc, leading armies into war, and there is Francis of Assisi, the peacenik who would never hurt an animal. There is the grave and serious Jerome, and there is Philip Neri, whose spirituality was based on laughter. How do we explain this diversity? God is an artist, and artists love to change their style. The saints are God's masterpieces, and he never tires of painting them in different colors, different styles, and different compositions. We might say God is a pure white light that, when refracted in the prism of creation, breaks into countless colors, each unique and each an aspect of the light. These colors are the saints, each one reflecting some aspect of the divine reality. What does this mean for us? It means we should not try to imitate any one saint exactly. Look to them all, study their unique holiness, but then find that specific color God wants to bear through you. St. Catherine of Siena was right: "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

"The saints are God's masterpieces, and he never tires of painting them in different colors, different styles, and different compositions." - Father Robert Barron

Cool song

Do something

Lent Day 17 - Carry Your Own Cross

Jesus summed up his teaching with a word that must have been gut-wrenching to his first century audience: "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." Now, his listeners knew what the cross meant. It mean a death in utter agony, nakedness, and humiliation. They didn't think of the cross automatically in religious terms, as we do, for they knew it in all of its awful power. Yet Jesus places this terrible image at the foundation of the spiritual life. Unless you crucify your ego, you cannot be my follower. But how should we take up our own cross? It requires not just being willing to suffer, but being willing to suffer as Jesus did, absorbing violence and hatred through our forgiveness and non-violent love, thereby transforming it. We turn to Jesus on his cross and carry ours in imitation--loving what he loved, despising what he despised. We "come after him" through own sacrificial love.

"We turn to Jesus on his cross and carry ours in imitation--loving what he loved, despising what he despised." - Father Robert Barron

IHS

When the words don't come
But the heart loudly screams
When I finally realize
Action's what love means

My feet start running
My hands start to serve
I gaze on the Cross
And gather my nerve.

Another's desires
Come priority
Good intentions turn
To reality

Love takes new action
The Word is made Flesh
Differences start
Converting to mesh

Persons assemble
Start taking their turns
Strong passions ignite
The Spirit's love burns

God loves His creation
He said it was good
Yet I ponder and question
What is misunderstood

Saints in the making
Still terribly flawed
Through the Mass perfected
A mystery awed

He gave Love Himself
When He sent his Son
Who taught that His will
Was God's Kingdom come

So I'll take up my cross
And accept His grace
So I can behold
Him soon face to face

Why wait for my Lover
The present is best
Why wait to take action
Until laid to rest

With a humble heart
And a willing soul
Let In His Service
Be my lifelong goal

Carol

Lent Day 16 - Turning Over Your Tables

From very early on, Christian theologians and spiritual writers made a comparison between Jesus' cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem and Jesus' cleansing of our hearts and bodies. St. Paul refers to the body as a "temple of the Holy Spirit." Your self, your body, your whole person is meant to be a temple, a holy place where God dwells and where prayer and union with God is central. It's a beautiful image: rightly ordered, we become temples of the Holy Spirit. This image leads to an important question: what goes wrong within the temple of our souls? The same thing that went wrong with the Temple in Jerusalem--what's meant to be a house of prayer becomes a den of thieves. All kinds of distractions came into the Temple, money changers and corrupt influences, those who turned people away from worshiping God. Today, we should ask, what distractions and corruptions have come into the temple of my heart and body? Lent is a terrific time to allow Jesus Christ to make a whip of cords and come into the temple of our hearts, and, while there, to turn some tables over, to flip things upside down if he has to. What would Jesus chase out of your heart if he had a chance? If you let him in, with all the wonderful fury displayed in the Gospels, what would he cleanse?

"What distractions and corruptions have come into the temple of my heart and body?" - Father Robert Barron

Lent Day 15 - Your Life Is Not About You

In Jesus' last temptation in the desert, the devil led him to the parapet of the Temple and invited him to throw himself down, confident that the angels would support him. What was at stake here was the aggrandizement of the ego. What was the Temple but the place where God himself is worshiped? It was the high-point, the summit of Israelite life. To put oneself there was to place one's ego at the center of everything. In many ways, this is the very essence of sin; this is what, in a certain sense, all of us do. We make ourselves into God, which is to say, the center of the universe. We really believe that everything revolves around us and our needs, fears, and expectations. Everything ought to serve us. But one message at the heart of the Christian faith is this: your life is not about you. It is about God and God's purposes for your life. And so Jesus affirmed: "You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test." God tests people all the time in the Bible, but he himself should never be tested. A good Lenten question to ask is this: Are you the center of attention? Do you allow God to test you?

"One message at the heart of the Christian faith is this: your life is not about you." - Father Robert Barron