The Old Rejoicing in the New

Passion Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When it comes to the Bible, I think sometimes we have this sense that the New Testament is all we need to read.  And certainly, it is often a bit easier.  The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are pretty straight forward.  The writings of St. Paul, while including some long sentences with very complex structure, are instructive, as are the other epistles from St. Peter, St. Jude, and St. John.  Yeah, Revelation or the Apocalypse of St. John can be a bit confusing and/or scary, and easily misunderstood and misinterpreted, but generally, the New Testament seems like the place to focus.  To use an analogy, the New Testament seems like nice, sunny pastures with rolling hills, while the Old Testament, even with some of the familiar stories that we enjoy, seems much more like a forest with thick growth, and a narrow trail through it.
    But we cannot truly understand Christ without understanding what He Himself revealed before the Incarnation.  We cannot be like the gnostic heretics who claimed that the God of the Old Testament was a different God than Jesus Christ.  When read properly, the Old Testament points to and is fulfilled in Christ.  That is one of the points of the Gospel today.  Our Lord says, “‘Abraham rejoiced to see my day.’”  Abraham rejoiced because in Christ, God’s covenant would be opened up to all nations, a covenant made with a true son of Abraham through Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
    The evangelists and apostles were great at seeing how Christ was revealed throughout the Old Testament.  The Letter to the Hebrews, our epistle today, in another place talks about Melchizedek as a type of Christ, since he was king of Jerusalem and a priest of God Most High, and because he had no lineage given (unlike almost everyone else in Genesis), and because He blessed Abram, noting that only a greater blesses a lesser.  The author of the Letter to the Hebrews also quotes Psalm 2 when he asks, “to which of the angels did God ever say: ‘You are my son; this day I have begotten you’?”  And he also quotes other verses to shows Christ’s superiority to the angels.  St. John the Apostle and Evangelist loves to quote earlier Scriptures as he saw them fulfilled by the Savior.  When the soldiers cast lots for the robe at the crucifixion, he quotes Psalm 21:18; when the soldier pierces the dead body of Christ with a lance rather than breaking the legs, he quotes Psalm 33:21 and Zechariah 12:10. 
    The Church Fathers also saw Christ prefigured in Old Testament figures who had their proper importance in their own right.  Christ is the New Adam, the new head of humanity, who, rather than disobeying God and dooming all of humanity, is obedient to God, even to the point of death, and so graces all humanity and opens for all the children of Adam and Eve the possibility of eternal life in heaven. 
    Christ is prefigured in Abraham.  Abraham left his home at the direction of God, and was promised descendants numerous as the stars in the heaven.  Christ “journeys” to earth to fulfill the will of the Father, and joins both Jew and Gentile to God, so that the number of the elect comes from every corner of the earth.

    Isaac, too, represents Christ.  Isaac is the beloved son of Abraham and Sarah.  Abraham, his father, asks Isaac to carry wood for the sacrifice up Mount Moriah, the mountain, according to tradition, on which the City of Zion and Temple were later built.  Isaac is a young man, and yet allows Abraham to bind him to the wood for the sacrifice of his own free will.  So Christ carries the wood of the cross up Calvary, and willingly lays down His life, trusting in His eternal Father.  Abraham’s hand was stayed by the angel, stopping the sacrifice, but no angel stopped the sacrifice of Christ.
    Christ is prefigured in Jeremiah the Prophet.  Jeremiah preached tough messages to the people of Judah.  He condemned trusting in a building, even the Temple of the Lord, and called the people to be faithful to God.  For preaching God’s message, Jeremiah was opposed and oppressed by the king and leaders of Judah, even though his words came true.  Christ preached the Word of God, and foretold the destruction of the new temple built by Herod, built after the temple that Jeremiah saw had been destroyed by the Babylonians.  He was opposed and oppressed by the leaders and many of the chief priests, Pharisees, and scribes of His own day.  Christ called all to fidelity to God and a return to Him.
    This could go on and on (maybe you feel like it has already!).  But the point is that the entire Old Testament points to Christ and is fulfilled in Him.  Beyond the people, all the sacrifices of the Old Testament are fulfilled and perfected in the one, perfect sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, which we will celebrate in a particular way on Good Friday.  So if we wish to truly appreciate who Christ is and what He did for us, we need to be well-versed in the what came before Him.  Yes, it can sometimes seem strange, and needs to be unpacked, and should be done with the assistance of the Magisterium, the official teaching office of the Church.  But rather than avoiding it because it can be confusing, let’s take the safe path of how the Church has read the Old Testament, so that we can arrive at the one fountain of life that forms the hinge between the Old and the New Testaments, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

The Raising of Lazarus and a Greater Miracle

Fifth Sunday of Lent
    I have a vague memory from when I was a young child of the first funeral visitation I attended.  I remember looking at the casket with the deceased person, and being a bit confused.  The person looked to be asleep, and I wondered if the person would ever wake up again, and if it would happen while I was there.  I obviously did not, at that point, really understand death.

    We have heard this story about the raising of Lazarus how many times in our life, and it probably has become a bit passé and humdrum.  We know what’s going to happen.  But imagine that story was transposed into our time.  Imagine a wandering priest, who had worked some miracles, walked into the funeral home visitation with a closed casket, told you to open it, and then said, “Awaken!”  And then imagine the person actually opened his eyes, sat up, and then got out of the casket.  Not so humdrum anymore!
    That is the shock that we should have when we hear this familiar story.  It should shake us out of our complacency.  The raising of Lazarus is the last great sign in John’s Gospel that Jesus is who He says He is.  And Jesus takes great pains to make sure that no one will be confused about the significance of what just happened.  Perhaps the other accounts of Jesus’ miracles were written off by others as parlor tricks, or clever shows put on by a snake oil salesman.  But this amazing feat could not be written off.  Jesus waited two days after knowing that Lazarus was ill even to go to Bethany.  And by the time He gets there, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days.  There was no question that Lazarus was dead.  In fact, the people were concerned that decomposition had started.  And yet, no one could deny that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, because they saw Lazarus, tied up in burial cloths, walking out of the tomb. 
    And yet, that work, as amazing as it is, is not the greatest work of Christ.  This sign, this miracle, merely restored earthly life to a man who would die again.  Incredible?  Yes.  But not as incredible as the greatest work of Christ, which was His own Death and Resurrection, into which we will enter and participate in less than two weeks. 
    The raising of Lazarus was the re-vivification of earthly flesh.  The Death and Resurrection of Christ brought about the possibility of eternal happiness by filling the earthly flesh with the Spirit of God.  St. Paul references this in our second reading when he writes, “if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness.”  And Christ comes into us through Holy Baptism, the Sacrament in which we die with Christ so that we can rise with Him to new life.
    Through Baptism, God takes something which is opposed to Him, His own enemy, and makes it the dwelling place of His Holy Spirit.  He makes a son or daughter out of an enemy, and takes that which is pointed towards destruction and makes it that which is pointed toward glory.  Our bodies operate under the weight of sin and the death that comes with sin.  And yet, by the Spirit of God, they can continue on this earth but no longer plagued by sin and death, but designated for eternal life.  And that eternal life will not end, like the earthly life of Lazarus eventually ended (and as our earthly life will eventually end).  But God will raise up our bodies to be like His in glory, as St. Paul said, and those bodies will experience no more death, nor more pain, no more limits that our earthly bodies experience. 
    With this in mind, it is also striking that we often choose to reject the resurrection that Jesus offers us, and give in to the death that comes from sin.  If Baptism is our own raising like Lazarus, so that we are a new creation, choosing to commit major sins after Baptism is like asking the crowd to re-wrap us with burial cloths and put us back in the tomb where can rot.  Sin binds us up and brings death and rot.  Jesus, on the other hand, frees us to be ourselves as God created us to be, and refreshes us and restores us to our youth. 
    Do we believe that Christ can do this?  Do we have faith in Christ who is the Resurrection and the Life?  Are we like St. Martha, so often put down because of her busyness, but here demonstrating her faith in the Lord?  Do we meet Him and express our faith that we will rise in the resurrection on the last day, because He is the Christ, the Son of God?  Are we like Mary, who previously had sat at the feet of Jesus, but who, in this instance, was slow to come to Jesus and slow to believe?  Are we willing to accept the new life that God desires for us, a life separated from the sins of our past, leaving them in the tombs as we walk about in the fresh air of life in Christ?
    [My dear Elect, in this last scrutiny, we once again ask God to heal you from your past sins, and remove any hold that Satan has upon you.  Christ beckons for you and says, “Come out!  Do not be bound any longer!”  You are less than two weeks away from the time when Christ will make you His own, and pour His Spirit within you, the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead.  Hear the voice of God.  Do not linger in the tombs, but enjoy the bright light of freedom.]
    I dare say it would be a shock to any of us if, at the next funeral we attended, the person were to come back to life.  And if that person said that Jesus had sent them back, we would probably pay heed to what Jesus had said to that person.  Jesus does a greater work than that: He frees you from the death of sin.  Pay attention to what Jesus has said through the Scriptures and the Church.  Pay attention to the witness of those who have died to their sins and risen to freedom in Christ.  Come out of the death of sin.  Allow the grace and mercy of God to unbind you from slavery to Satan and walk about freely in the Spirit of God.

Food of the Covenant

Fourth Sunday in Lent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Growing up I never liked cooked broccoli.  I would eat raw broccoli, like on a vegetable platter, but for some reason the smell or look of cooked broccoli just didn’t do it for me.  At some point in seminary, there was a formal dinner with cooked broccoli.  I didn’t want to pull a George Bush, but I also didn’t want to leave food on my plate.  So I took a bite.  It was actually good.  Granted, it was dripping with butter, but it was really good.  Since then, I have been able to eat cooked broccoli, (as long as it doesn’t have melted cheese on it).
    Today’s Gospel, the multiplication of the loaves, points to the Eucharist.  Indeed, this passage forms the beginning of John chapter 6, what we commonly refer to as the Bread of Life discourse.  Our Lord reveals that He is the Bread of Life, and that whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life within him.  John is known for not including the institution narrative of the Eucharist, as the three other Gospel writers did.  But the entirety of John chapter 6 provides its own magnificent exposition on the Eucharist as the flesh and blood of Christ.
    But this heavenly food, this Bread of Angels, is not for everyone.  Christ provides His Body and Blood for those who are part of the covenant, the new covenant sealed in His Blood.  The Eucharist is for the children of the Jerusalem from above, those born of the free-woman.  It is for those who have been set free by Holy Baptism from slavery to sin; those who live in the freedom of the children of God.
    But why focus on the Eucharist now?  In a few short weeks we will be celebrating the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, and entering into the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday, to which the Last Supper and every Eucharist points.  But, if you listened at the beginning of the Gospel passage, it said that the Passover was near, just as our celebration of Christ’s Passover is near for us.
    Every Mass celebrates what Lent prepares us for: the Passion of the Lord.  At each Mass we enter into that one Friday that allowed us to be good with God.  Each Mass we are given the opportunity to enter into the offering of Christ to His eternal Father, and celebrate in an unbloody way the very bloody sacrifice of the Savior on the altar of the cross.  
    The bread we use is offered by us, but is received by Christ and miraculously changed to be enough for all.  We don’t have much, but our Lord makes it “super-substantial” (what the Greek word in the Our Father literally means while we say “daily” bread).  He makes it–by the power of the Holy Spirit and through the ministry of a priest who acts in His Name and Person–a way that we grow in grace, a way that we have our very God inside of us.
    And just as we prepare to celebrate the Passion of the Lord, so we should prepare to receive the fruit of the Passion of the Lord which is the Eucharist.  How do we prepare?  For Lent we fast and abstain.  And so the Church asks us (tells us) that we are to abstain from all other food except water and medicine for one hour before we receive Holy Communion (unless our health requires some other sustenance).  As we give alms during Lent, so during this Mass God asks us to give of the blessings He has given us for the benefit of the Church, and for this parish particularly, to support the spreading of the Gospel right here in Flint.  Lent invites us to enter more deeply into prayer, and so, as we’re able, we should seek to pray before Mass to prepare our minds to focus on the holy things which are present before us, as the veil which separates heaven and earth is pulled back and we join with the angels and saints in worshipping the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  For some, especially parents of young children, praying before Mass may be very difficult or seem nearly impossible.  But even as parents seek to keep their children from crawling or running away, or walk in the back to try to calm their child down, there is the chance to offer that desire to focus on the Mass as a prayer to God, the sacrifice which is proper to parents in their vocation when the children are young and don’t understand the greatness of what takes place each Mass.

    Later in John chapter 6, our Lord teaches that unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we do not have life within us.  Receiving the Eucharist in a state of grace imparts to us the new life of Christ to which the Passion points.  Lent is not an end to itself.  It always points to Easter, just as the Passion always points to the Resurrection.  Christ wants us to share in His new life, which prepares us for the new life that never ends as we worship God with the angels and saints in heaven.  We usually think backwards when we think about the Eucharist, as we think of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.  But the Eucharist also points forward to the end of time, when God will be all in all.  And so, as we receive the Eucharist in the present, we become partakers in the past, present, and future salvation accomplished by our God.  That is why we can pray with St. Thomas Aquinas:
 

O sacrum convivium!
in quo Christus sumitur:
recolitur memoria passioni eius:
mens impletur gratia:
et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.

Or, as one Dominican translation renders it:

O Sacred Banquet
in which Christ becomes our food,
the memory of His passion is celebrated,
the soul is filled with grace,
and a pledge of future glory is given to us.  

Let us pray:

O God,
in this wonderful sacrament
you have left us a memorial of your passion.
Help us, we beg you,
so to reverence the sacred mysteries
of your body and blood
that we may constantly feel in our lives
the effects of your redemption.
Who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Whose Side Are We On?

Third Sunday in Lent

St. Ignatius of Loyola

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I have never done the Ignition 30-day retreat, but many priests I know have, and they talk about how powerful it was for them.  In particular, there is a meditation called “The Two Standards.”  This meditation reflects on two camps (standards being an old word for flags): the camp of Satan, and the camp of Christ.  One Catholic author describes it thus:
 

Imagine the [kingdom of the evil one] to be the vast and wide plain of Babylon (hell).  Satan, in his pride, is seated on a high throne of fire and smoke to intimidate and impose his power.  […]
Imagine the evil one calling his numerous demons to this throne and sending them forth, throughout the whole world, to every person and place.  Imagine this vast army of diabolical creatures going forth on their mission of death and destruction. […]
What is their mission? […]  Saint Ignatius says that satan instructs his demons to tempt God’s people in three initial ways: To first desire riches in their heart. To seek vainglory, honors and worldly recognition. To puff up their pride.

The author, reflection on this meditation, the continues describing the camp of Christ:
 

Christ is found in a humble and low plain near Jerusalem.  He is standing there with crowds around Him.  It is a beautiful and peaceful place.  Imagine the scene of Him with a crowd of faithful followers around Him. […]
One by one, Jesus chooses person after person to share in His divine mission.  He calls them to Himself with gentleness, interior strength and authority.  And then He sends them on a mission.  […] with hearts set ablaze with love they eagerly go forth to joyfully spread His mercy and truth. […]
This is what they are to preach and to encounter. […] They are to preach about poverty.  Interior spiritual poverty and even the value of leaving all for Christ.  If they are rejected by some, then they must rejoice and not lose heart, even if people hold them and their message in contempt.  They are to be humble and receive any humiliation in love.  [from https://mycatholic.life/books/ignatius/part-two-ignatian-meditations-arranged-according-to-the-liturgical-year/meditations-for-ordinary-time/two-standards/]

At first, it may not seem like much of a choice.  The camp and standard of Christ seems so much better, and intellectually we know we should choose that one.  But how often do we go after riches, vainglory, honors, worldly recognition, and embrace the vice of pride?
    The Gospel today reminds us that our Lord is tearing down the camp of the enemy.  He casts out the fallen angels and spirits that oppress and posses God’s children.  Christ is the stronger man who conquers the enemy and regains His brothers and sisters for the kingdom of God.  And because the Savior is also the Creator of the universe, when Christ battles Satan, it’s not even really a battle; Satan has to concede.  To pretend that Satan could ever win is like pretending our legos are going to rise up and defeat us. 
    Having said that, we still have to choose a side, a standard.  For whose cause do we fight?    Do we fight for God or against Him?  How do we know which side we are choosing?  St. Paul lays out a good list today of ways that we’re on team Satan: immorality, impurity, greed, and obscene talk.  The Apostle says that these are all signs of idolatry, of making other things gods in our life.  St. Ignatius, as I mentioned above, had also mentioned making gods out of money and our ego.  We could also say that if we’re breaking one of the Ten Commandments, we are choosing something other than the rule of God.
    On the flip side, choosing the standard of Christ means doing what we can to “live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us.”  It means making the choices that Christ made to humility, obedience, and service.  It means being grateful to God for those things that we have, knowing that they are gifts from God to which we are not entitled.  Choosing the standard of Christ and living in loves means exercising patience, kindness, gentleness, not rejoicing in evil, but rejoicing in the truth, as St. Paul says in his first epistle to the Corinthians. 
    If we are to fight in Christ’s army, then not only do we follow His banner, but we also protect ourselves with His armor.  The best armor against the assaults of the enemy is prayer and service.  Do we turn to God in prayer throughout our day?  It may not mean staying in a church or chapel from 9-5, but making the sign of the cross throughout our 9-5 job, or letting quick little prayers (we used to called them pious ejaculations) like “Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!” or, “Jesus, I trust in you!” Or, “Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee” come from our lips at home, in the car, or in the office or factory.  Do we guard what we watch and that to which we listen, to make sure that we’re not inviting in spies from the enemy’s camp into our mind?  Do we read the Word of God, guided by the Church’s Magisterium, so that we can truly be those blessed because we hear God’s word and observe it? 
    Lent is a wonderful time to recommit ourselves to fighting for Christ in His army.  It is the perfect time to ask Christ to set our hearts ablaze with His love, or rekindle those fires that have started to smolder out.  Christ is putting an end to the kingdom of the prince of this world.  Let’s choose the kingdom that will give us eternal happiness in heaven, where God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit reign for ever and ever.  Amen.    

What We Have

Third Sunday of Lent
    A recent song that I heard frequently a few months ago was thought provoking, and even brought me to some soul searching.  The song is “What I Have” by an up-and-coming country star named Kelsea Ballerini.  She reflects on this constant drive to have more and more, and then juxtaposes it with what she has.  The last two lines of the refrain are, “I’m doing alright right where I’m at / With what I have.”  And then the last refrain has a slight twist from the earlier ones: “I got the air, good eyes to see / Got so much more than I’ll even need. / Even the bad days ain’t all that bad / With what I have.”  
    What do you have?  What do you need?  Our readings point us to three things that we need: water, hope, and living water.  The Israelites are on their way to Mt. Sinai, but are tired of walking.  They saw mighty works from God, including the crossing of the Red Sea, but they doubt God’s care for them, so they cry out for water.  God, in turn, gives them water when Moses strikes the rock.  But the place still garners the name Massah and Meribah “because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the Lord.”  They chose to doubt God, even though He had taken care of them and led them out of slavery in Egypt, and then saved them at the Red Sea and crushed their enemies.  They weren’t content with what they had, which was God.  

    And our Gospel shows us the exchange between a Samaritan, a non-Israelite, and Jesus.  The Samaritan woman doesn’t know what she has, or better, whom she has.  First she wants the living water that Jesus describes, but then she balks when Jesus starts to confront her past and call her to conversion.  She tries to steer the conversation away from her, and engages in what is still the easiest way to get people distracted in conversation: bring up a contentious point of doctrine.  She has the Messiah, but doesn’t realize it at first.  Jesus knows both what she has, but also what she lacks, and seeks to fill up what she lacks so that she can be satisfied, just as He gave the Chosen People what they lacked in the desert when they were going to the Promised Land.
    We are arguably the most affluent society in human history.  This is not to make light of the real struggles of the poor, the homeless, the hungry and thirsty, but so many of us have more than what we need.  We have clothes, and often buy clothes that we don’t even need.  We have a house, and some even have two or three.  We have modes of transportation that are, more or less, reliable, and can take us across States and countries.  Most people have a phone which can bring up any type of information that we desire at a moment’s notice.  We have grocery stores that provide food, not only what is in-season locally, but foods from exotic parts of the world that we could never grow here.  Many of us are used to taking vacations when we feel like it.  
    And yet, with all that we have, in 2020, 45,979 Americans died from suicide, out of 1.2 million attempts.  Suicide is the 12th leading cause of death of Americans.  How could so many who have so much seek to end their own lives?  At least part of the answer is connected to how many people have stopped practicing their faith, have walked away from God.  They are like the Samaritan woman at the well, she’s thirsty, but no matter how many times she draws water, it never satisfies.  And then along comes this stranger, this foreigner, who promises her a water which will satisfy, but she can’t bring herself to accept it at first, because she won’t trust in God’s help.  She’d rather argue about where to worship and who the Messiah is at first than accept the gift of new life that God is offering.
    St. Paul says that we have hope, a hope which does not disappoint, “because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  Hope is one of the greatest things we can have (though it’s not really a commodity) because it keeps us going.  And we do not have hope because of our affluence, or even because of what we have achieved, but because of what God has done for us.  “For Christ, while we were still helpless, died at the appointed time for the ungodly.”  Jesus sacrificed Himself so that we could have the one thing we truly need: Him.  He had been doing that from the beginning.  Indeed, St. Paul writes about the first reading we heard in his first letter to the Corinthians: [the Jews] “drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.”  Even in the Old Testament, Christ was prefiguring the gift of Himself when God provided water for the Jews in the desert.  That same gift, the gift of Himself, Jesus gave to the Samaritan woman at the well, and she eventually allowed herself to receive it, which gave her so great a joy that she forgot about the water she had gone to draw from the well.  
    [My dear Elect and Candidate: throughout this past year, you have noted your need for God.  You have sensed Him offering you the living water, and you have responded.  As you celebrate this first scrutiny, Christ seeks to have you acknowledge your past sins, not to condemn you, but that He might heal them in you.  For it is only when we acknowledge that we have strayed from God, that God can heal us and draw us back to Him.  God wants you to have Him, because if you have Him, you have all that you truly need.  And even if you had everything tangible thing the world had to offer, if you don’t have Him, you have nothing.]
    We all have a lot more than any other previous generation had.  The temptations to focus on what we don’t have or what our neighbors have can easily trip us up.  Instead, let’s focus on strengthening what we truly need to be happy: God.  Because as long as we have God, “I’m doing alright right where I’m at / With what I have.”

Getting to Know Christ through the Lenten Gospels

Second Sunday of Lent
    Throughout Lent, we see overarching themes as we enter into this holy season.  Certainly we see mortification and the denial of the body as a way to focus on the higher, spiritual realities.  We are also, certainly, meditating on the Passion of our Lord, and preparing for His ultimate sacrifice which we celebrate during the Sacred Triduum.  And that Passion leads to the Resurrection, as we see in the Transfiguration today.  Our Lord had told the Apostles about His impending Passion, and then He takes Peter, James, and John, and leads them up Mount Tabor, and is transfigured before them, to show that what would happen after He suffered crucifixion. 

Church of the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor

    

    But all of the Gospels passages for this sacred time, both in the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, also help us to understand who Jesus is.  The first two Sundays of Lent find the Gospel readings in both forms of the Roman Rite the same: the temptation of our Lord, and His Transfiguration.  After that, the Gospel selections take different paths.  In the Ordinary Form, since this is Year A in the Cycle of Sunday readings, we hear the long Gospels about the Samaritan woman at the well (3rd Sunday of Lent); the man born blind (4th Sunday of Lent); and the raising of Lazarus (5th Sunday of Lent).  In the Extraordinary Form, where we hear the same readings each year, the passages are: the casting out of demons, and the accusation that our Lord does so by the power of demons (3rd Sunday in Lent); the multiplication of the loaves from John 6 (4th Sunday in Lent); and our Lord telling the Pharisees that He is greater than Abraham (Passion Sunday).  No matter which Form of Mass we attend, the readings help us to know our Lord better as He reveals Himself.
    The identity of Christ is no small matter and is perfect for meditation during Lent.  The better we know Christ, we better know our salvation.  And, since we are members of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, the better we know Christ, the better we understand what is in store for us if we stay faithful to Him.
    On the one hand we can talk about who our Lord is objectively, as in facts about Him.  The Gospels show us that He is the Son of God, who has been tempted like us, but has not sinned (first Sunday of Lent).  He is also co-equal with the Father, and sharing in His glory, the God to whom all the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) point (second Sunday of Lent).  The Savior is the one who brings down the power and reign of Satan (third Sunday of Lent, EF), and does so by convicting us of sin so that we can be healed and receive the waters of Divine Mercy (third Sunday of Lent, OF).  Christ opens our eyes to recognize who He is (fourth Sunday of Lent, OF), and feeds us with miraculous bread, going beyond what any other prophet had done (fourth Sunday of Lent, EF).  Christ is the Resurrection and the Life, who grants eternal life to those who believe in Him (fifth Sunday of Lent), whose day Abraham rejoiced to see (Passion Sunday). 
    But knowing our Lord is more than simply knowing facts about Him.  Knowing Christ means taking all those facts that I just laid out, the facts that we hear from the Gospel, and making a choice about who He is to me.  Even the demons knew facts about Christ, and could probably confess more Trinitarian theology than any of us could.  But they do not have a relationship with Christ; they do not want Him involved in their lives; they do not love Him.
    Following Christ as a disciple means growing in our love of Him.  Lent offers us the opportunity to recommit ourselves to acting like He did in our daily lives.  Do we actively fight temptations and do our best not to give in to the lies of the devil?  Does our glory come from God, or do we seek to glorify ourselves with our own greatness, that does not even come close to shining as brightly as the glory that God desires for us?  How do we fill that thirst that we have for God?  Are we active in cooperating with Christ to tear down the kingdom of the prince of this world and build up the Kingdom of God?  Do we ourselves recognize the ways we want to close our eyes to God’s goodness, and help to open others’ eyes to the truth of the Gospel?  Do we feed on the Living Bread come down from heaven, or do we try to fill our stomachs with food that fails to satisfy and is never enough?  Are we willing to let Christ raise us to new life, or do we treat Him as just another moral teacher, a philosopher, who had some good teachings, but is like all other teachers and philosophers who came before Him?
    Our reading of the Gospels and our participation in this Mass is not simply about gathering facts and putting time in with God.  When we read the Sacred Scriptures, guided by the teachings of the Church, God wants us to understand how we are to find our happiness by putting the old Adam, the one who chose disobedience to God, to death, and rising to life with the new Adam, Christ, who was obedient even to the point of death, death on a cross.  As we worship God in the Mass, God does not only want our praise from our lips.  He gives us the Eucharist, the miraculous Bread from heaven, so that our lives can be transformed and we can have a foretaste within us of the glory to be revealed at the end of time.  God wants us to utilize His presence within us to be more like Him, and to share that presence of Christ when we interact with others.  When family members, friends, co-workers, and others interact with us, do they sense Christ and see, even in small ways, His glory shining through us?  Are they greeted with the love that any person would desire to receive from God, and then invited to participate in the truth that is also God? 
    We are still early in Lent.  There is still time to get to know God better, and to open ourselves to the grace of God which makes deep changes possible in our lives so that we live a life like Christ’s.  Don’t only give up stuff this Lent.  Don’t only know the facts about the great gift of salvation God gave us in dying for us.  Allow what Christ did to become the pattern of your own life, and grow in your friendship with Him.