A reflection for the 1st Sunday, Lent, Year A. The readings are Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7; Psalm 51; Romans 5:12-19 and Matthew 4:1-11.
I’m sure everyone reading this wants to be happy, right? And guess what? God also wants you to be happy. He wants you to be happy with Him. But we are fallen human beings and we’re weak. And there’s this thing called sin. So it’s hard.
Last week we heard that we should not murder, commit adultery or perjury (Matthew 5:17-37) and that most of us do not. And so we don’t think of ourselves as sinners. But that Jesus calls us to a higher standard. Yes, the 10 commandments are sin, but if we are really serious about our Christian journey on our way to be happy with God, we have to have a deeper understanding of sin.
The words in Hebrew and in Greek that are used in the Bible for “sin” is the same word that is used in the context of archery to mean “missing the mark”. In Archery we shoot an arrow and we try to hit the bull’s eye. If we miss the bull’s eye, we’ve missed the mark. I think this this is a good image of what sin is. It is missing the mark. The problem is that we don’t even know we’re trying to hit a mark? We don’t know what the bull’s eye is. So, what is the mark we’re trying to hit? It’s happiness with God. It’s being with God. It’s saying “yes” to God. When we fail to say “yes” to God, we’re missing the mark. So, sin is anything that we do that says “no” to God. But it’s not always very clear. I don’t mean when we’re praying or we’re at Mass. That’s clearly (or should be) saying “yes” to God. But it’s at other times. When we’re doing other things. Every choice that we make (especially the big ones), we are either saying “yes” or “no” to God. In everything we do and say, we are either saying “yes” or “no” to God. And we’re not talking about murder and adultery. We’re talking about the less obvious things. The things when we are not thinking about God. And so, I think that it’s important to think about what leads us to sin. Those are temptations.
Every time we pray the Lord’s prayer, we ask God to “lead us not into temptation”. That is asking God to help us not fall into sin. That’s a good prayer to pray. Temptation is anything that can lead us to sin, to miss the mark. Temptation is anything that leads us or attracts us to say “no” to God. Anything that we do outside of God, is sin. Anything that leads us or attracts us or pushes us to do things without God, is temptation. Any thing we do to be happy without God is sin. Any desire we have to be happy that excludes God, is temptation.
So, here’s the question again: Do you want to be happy? Does your plan for happiness include God?
Read more…A reflection for the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. The readings are Zephaniah 2:3, 3:12-13; Psalm 146; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 and Matthew 5:1-12a
I was at a funeral recently and you know how at funerals they always remember the best of the person who has died. They’ll say that they are generous, kind, fun. No one will ever say at a funeral, that the person who died was arrogant and proud, right? Because arrogance and pride are not good qualities and we know that. So it’s good to know that God, in the readings today, is telling us the same thing. The Christian life is not the “lives of the rich and famous”. The Christian life is the life of the lowly and humble.
In the first reading, from the prophet Zephaniah, we are told to be humble. Humility is a good quality. In fact, we are told that God left us a people – the remnant of Israel—who were humble and that humility would be rewarded. St. Paul is a bit more direct. He tells the Corinthians that they are nothing. They weren’t smart, they weren’t rich, they weren’t powerful – not before God chose them and they were baptised. He’s really reminding them that without God we are nothing. And that is really what humility is all about. If you look up humility in the dictionary it will say something about being modest, even putting yourself down. But that’s not humility. Humility is being real. It’s not inflating your qualities or exaggerating them – that’s arrogance. But it’s also not demeaning yourself. That’s false humility. St. Therese said that “humility is truth”. That’s what humility is, being true to who you really are. It means being down to earth. That’s what the word means. It comes from the Greek “humus”. It means “earth”. If you want to understand the meaning of humus (not the delicious dip), think “compost”. That should keep you grounded. We are compost. But not because we are worthless. In the Christian sense, humidity means, acknowledging that we are nothing without God. A few weeks ago we were hearing about John the Baptist. The hallmark of John the Baptist is that he says, “that I will decrease, so that He may increase.”
Joseph and Jesus. Photo by Kristyn Brown. http://www.thesaintsproject.org/
A reflection for the 4th Sunday of Advent, year A. The readings are Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 24; Romans 1:1-7 and Matthew 1:18-24. It was first posted on Dec 18, 2016.
When we were moving from Toronto to Holland Landing, I knew that we were going to have to get a second car. I was now going to have to drive to work. I literally had a weekend to buy a car. So on the Saturday, I went out and into the first used car dealership. I found a white Pontiac Sunfire; manual transmission. It was about 5 years old, had just over 100,000 kms and was $5000. The dealer let me take it for a spin. I drove it home to show my wife. Seemed like a good car and like a good deal. I really didn’t have time to think about this, so as I was driving back to the dealer , I prayed: “Lord, we believe that you want us to live here and that you want me to work at Salt + Light. I have to get to work and so I need a car. This car will be used to do your work. If you want me to buy this car, please send me a sign. Before I get to the dealer I am going to pass another Pontiac Sunfire.” I had barely finished saying those words, when a Sunfire came flying past me in the other direction. Then another one. And a bit later, another one. So I prayed again: “God, there seem to be a lot of Sunfires on the road today. If you want me to buy this car, before I get to the dealer I will pass one more Sunfire. Another white one.” Sure enough, before I got to the dealer, I passed a white Sunfire. So I bought the car. I loved that car. I drove it for 10 years and up to 450,000 kms.
A reflection for the 1st Sunday, Advent, Year A. The readings are Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14 and Matthew 24:37-44.
We begin our new liturgical year with the first Sunday of Advent as we do every year with readings about the “eschaton”. Don’t you know the eschaton? It is not a pre-historic sea creature that lurks in the depths of the ocean. Eschaton is a Greek word that refers to the end of times. You may have read about eschatology or heard about things that are eschatological. Those are things that have to do with the end times.
That’s what Jesus is talking about today in the Gospel. He has just told the disciples about the destruction of the Temple and they want to know when that’s going to happen. He then goes into a long speech about paying attention to signs and that there will be wars and earthquakes and famines and that when they see these things happen they should flee to the hills. And then he tells them that it will be like in the days of Noah; that is the Gospel that we heard today. It doesn’t sound so bad if we only read what we heard today, but if you put it in context and read the whole story, it’s easy to think that Jesus is speaking about the end of the world.
But Jesus is not talking about the end of the world or the end of the human race. He’s talking about the eschaton: the end of the age; the end of this age.
Perhaps a better way to look at it is the way Isaiah does in our first reading today. Isaiah is talking about the same thing, the eschaton. And it’s a beautiful picture. I imagine it as a beautiful landscape, with a towering mountain with vibrant technicolours. He says that in those days nations will stream towards the Lord’s mountain and swords will be turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against another nation, and they will learn war no more. It will be a time of peace.
But there is a deeper and more beautiful meaning here.
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deacon pedro 