On the Thursdays during Lent, we will be meeting in the parish office building after the 8 A.M. Mass and again at 7 P.M. to pray with the scriptures.  Lectio Divina is a form of praying with sacred scripture that moves the Word of God from our mind to our heart.  We will be using the Gospel for the upcoming Sunday.

If you are not able to join us, you can pray with the Scriptures at home.  This prayer is done in four easy steps.  Each step begins with the reading of a particular scripture passage.

Step 1 – LECTIO  — Read the scripture passage that you have chosen with a different mind set.  Remember that we are reading the WORD of God.  What is God saying to you today?  What word or words in the passage touch your heart.

Step 2 – MEDITATIO  — Read the passage again and reflect on the Word.  Where do you see yourself in this reading?  Are you an observer?  Are you one of the characters in the passage?  Are you able to place yourself in this picture?

Step 3 – ORATIO — Read the passage again and see how the Spirit is drawing you through the passage.  How might God be touching your deepest desire?  How might God be inviting you to attune your mind and heart to goodness, love and compassion?  Pray your desire in the form of a petition.

Step 4 –  CONTEMPLATIO  — This final step is that of Contemplation – being with.  This movement takes us to a sense of peace in God’s presence.  Enter into the silence and rest in the heart of God.  How is He touching your life?

“This is nothing else than a secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God, which, if not hampered, fires the soul in the spirit of love.”  This is God’s action in us.

This pray may be done with any scripture passage,piece of poetry or spiritual reading.God touches us in ways we cannot imagine. Let us be transformed by the Word of God during this time of Lent.

As we come together to pray on the eve of the March  for Life, I would like to look back to the prophetic document of Paul VI, On Human Life, and in that light, acknowledge the rapid collapse of the human family, but also the great hope given to us by Christ Who makes all things new!

Paul VI addresses the question of human procreation, which touches the purpose and nature of human life. The human person involves more than science or statistics. It involves the whole person, body and soul, who is called to reflect God Himself.

Certainly, we can ignore the need to be a integral person, blaming our busyness and distractions for the problems we encounter, but we cannot avoid the natural consequences of our ignorance that hinder the nurturing of a life in holy communion with Christ.

The social and cultural crisis we face today centers on our coming abandonment of true married love and on our growing inability to relate to one another with a love that is centered in the life and sacrifice of Jesus.

Marriage is an institution of God to fulfill His Plan for our salvation. As a consequence, husband and wife, through mutual sacrifice, and a maturing in their life together, cooperate with God in the conception and rearing of children.

Without God as the core of the family, human life will disintegrate along with its dignity. As our society continues to separate itself from God, even in our public discourse, Paul VI predicted a growing marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards that leads to a greater false tolerance of self-indulgence in a cruder, less human and more angry public sphere.

All of us are aware of how far human nature can be isolated from God. We are just now coming to understand the dangers this isolation brings to the young who are overly exposed to temptation, bombarded with useless information, noise and busyness. These are all distractions that will isolate them from the nurturing family we try so hard to create. Our children need new and more creative incentives to keep the moral law, and participate in a family that has God and marital love at its core.

It is an evil thing to make it easy for children not to choose Christ.

Another issue which has become common place in our society even among fellow Christians and contributes to the further isolation of the human heart is the use of contraceptives which isolate the marital act from God and leads to a lesser reverence for a spouse as the image of Christ; reducing the Act to a means of personal satisfaction rather than elevating it as the sacred bond it is. When we isolate God, we forget true love.

Finally, the Pope warned against giving to a state the power to regulate marital life, which is the heart of every human family. “We run the risk of having an amoral authority intervening in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife,” he said.

Just this past Monday, we were promised a more active disintegration of marriage and a continuance of the culture of death whose tenets arrogantly defy natural life as God created it.

We continue to hear of Catholic hospitals and universities where administrators separate themselves from the Bishops and gloss over moral discernment in an attempt to become more secular, more ‘sensitive’ to the culture of death or more falsely ‘tolerant’ of other opinions rather than a true respect for them. This has led to the taking of more innocent life and the acceptance of more inhuman acts toward human dignity.

What is more tragic for us as Christians is our tendency to ignore the progress of this alienation and pretend it will all go away; that somehow people will get a hold of themselves and start behaving more Christian, more polite, more human. Our silence gives consent and the Truth remains the Truth. When we reject the dignity of human life, we reject Christ and cannot claim to be in full communion with Him.

My dear friends, all around us we see the effects of our cultural attempt to separate God and Man; denying the sanctity of human life, on streets, in our work and in the market. What happens there affects us all. It influences our families, our spouses and our children.

Paul VI wrote these things in the late sixties and he has proved prophetic for us today. He recognized that within this great human suffering would emerge a great longing for holiness. People will begin in their deserted, lonely and alienated lives to appreciate the need for grace and real human love.

These are dangerous times; they are also times of great hope based in the faith we profess here before God.  We are the unashamed believers in Christ. We believe in the Church as Christ Who teaches through our Archbishop. We believe in true human freedom, and in the right of all people to live and pursue the mission God has given them to complete.

We have each other and we have Christ in the Sacraments. It will not be easy, but it will be the right thing to do. So we believe, so we must act!

We have seen the Light that hovered over the Child and His Holy Family that now hovers over our family with the same intensity and with the same purpose!

Today we accept the mantle of the magi who now must leave the serenity of the cave and proclaim that the Light they have seen is the brightness of God’s Glory.  We take this responsibility to preach by our words and actions not as a part time Christian, but a lifetime disciple of Jesus.

Our Holy Father speaking about the new evangelization has called us to preach this way: To return to an intense sacramental life; to support by tithing and service the mission of bringing others to Church; and to enter into dialogue with those who have fallen away from God and no longer consider Him relevant to their lives.

You are in the marketplace. You witness first-hand the Star which shines brightly, pointing to Jesus as the only Way to get through the madness that is becoming the world without God.  Our Christmas celebrated this year in its simplicity and joy is but a foreshadowing of the life we could live everyday of we but follow that Star. What makes us different is that Christmas for the Disciple is not what we give as gifts but that we give gifts.

The work of the disciple, of which you are all engaged, is to first remember for ourselves and then to present again to the heart and the mind of the distracted and confused families in our community, the beauty and the constant newness of our encounter with God. God GIVES us a gift and is well pleased!!

We experience God at this manger, at this Altar and at the table of our family gatherings. We encounter God in our giving. It is here the world will find its true happiness and where the Star will take its final rest.

And now the three wise men place in our hands the three gifts of their humble encounter with Christ and beckon us to imitate their giving: Gold, the treasure of our catechism, Frankincense, the offering of our Sacrifice in the Mass and Myrrh, the peace and contentment of knowing, loving and serving God in this world and in the next.

We can be so happy today because His Light has come and the Glory of the Lord shines upon us. You who have accepted the torch of this new Way of living as a result of what you have seen and experienced here will brighten our neighborhoods with more giving and true joy.

“You yourselves have become radiant at what you see” (Isaiah 60: 1-6)! Go, be the Star pointing to Christ, the true Light of the World!

“My good is to be close to God (Ps. 72.28).” Look around you my friends; this is  your family, gathered in our home, by the hearth  of God, waiting for the Lord.

I greet all my old friends as well as my new ones; friends who I have not seen for while. I welcome too our guests, those who are far away from home and those returned home from school, welcome, welcome home!

For the Christian Disciple, it is good to be close to God! Here, among God’s People, we find the happiness for which we long. This common experience, which is like no other, offers us a gift. It lies there, in the dirt, under animals; poor, simple and humbled.

Look! There is a gift for you! It is that Child Who has come to earth for a purpose. The Child wants to bring you a happiness no material wealth or busyness can offer. He offers you a chance to embrace your poverty by embracing humbly our humble God, Jesus. Not a God Who is far away, a God we cannot see, but God made a child, a little child: happiness has come to meet us, has come so close, it is within the reach of our eyes, the reach of our heart, the reach of our hands, hands that can embrace Him and hold Him close.

Augustine would say: “I knew that happiness was God, but I did not enjoy You,” because I filled my life with other things than You. In this technological age in which we have become drunk with information, knowledge has turned joyless. Our obsession with information has saddened our spirit and hardened our relationships when all the while our human nature yearns to be embraced.

The Child’s hands are outstretched so I can pick Him up and hold Him, touch His hair and kiss Him, to show Him how much I love Him.

Look into His eyes and see how much He loves you, how much He wants to embrace you.And in these two movements of the soul, mine and His, I encounter the infinite mystery of God; and realize that all the while I am looking at Him, He is looking at me. There is only One love, born before all ages humbled yet here before me as a Child to be loved.

Friends, no matter where you are in the spiritual life, no matter how deep or shallow your relationship with God has become, on this day embrace His love for you. Accept it! Cherish It! Be grateful, for He seeks us out and brings us here, to this moment, to make you happy.

Those of us, who confess to be Disciples of Christ, cannot hoard this Child in our heart because He does not belong to us alone. Go out and share this encounter with those who have lost their faith, those who no longer join us at home and those who have left the moorings of the good harbor and are now lost in a sea of short temper, confusion and false hope. Share with them what you have come to receive today. Give His love away to another! All of It away! Love one another as I have loved You. Speak His love for you everywhere and to every person, in your home, in your neighborhood, to those who like you and those who hate you, give where you go! Share until it hurts!

Don’t you see? It is in the giving that we find true happiness, contentment and deep spiritual meaning to life. We find purpose here in our home, among our family, at this Altar, and in that confessional box. Our purpose tonight and in our life is to ‘come and adore Him.” No job, no amount of money no special scholarship, nothing but Jesus lying here in this manger, hanging on this Cross both with arms outstretched to take us in and surround us with faith, hope and love, can make us happy and give us real peace.

Simple really. As simple as a child lying in the dirt of a stable surrounded by those Who love Him and protect Him from the cold hearted, the self absorbed, the angry and the rude.

You see “God’s sign is his humility. We become like God if we allow ourselves to be shaped by this sign; if we learn humility and hence true greatness; if we renounce violence of any kind and use only truth and love.”

We can change the world, my friends, if we change ourselves and be more conscious of what we are doing, how we are acting and the way we speak. In order to make this change we will need the Light that comes only from God, the light that so unexpectedly entered into our night (Benedict XVI, Christmas Homily, 2009).

Go home with a promise in your heart, that next Sunday, you will join other Disciples, members of the same family and shout out: “Come, all ye faithful!  Joyful and Triumphant!” Come here to our Bethlehem. Come and behold him, born the king of angels:
 come, let us together adore him for ‘my good is to be close to God.”

We gather here on Sunday because it is only here where the Family of God joins the Family of Mankind to worship the Father Who is our only true Peace. The prophet Zephaniah reminded us, “The Lord, your God, is in your midst,  a mighty savior, he will rejoice over you with gladness and renew you in his love, he will sing joyfully because of you.”

Christians through the centuries have died and die even today, because they bring their families to Mass and share with their children their devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. We can’t help ourselves; we find “The peace of God that surpasses all understanding” the God Who guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

It is now more important than ever to teach children, any child, that humans will only find true peace and happiness in the hope of a new and better life when we confess our faith in Jesus and His Church.

There are no words to describe or explain ever, man’s inhumanity to man. The violence suffered on children or any human being begins here in my heart, here in my parish, here in my neighborhood or here in my country. It begins by being inconsiderate, rude, and being unconscious of the common good. Self-absorption is the planting of the seeds of violence.

What we witnessed this weekend are merely the ‘signs of our times.’ These human beings bear the violence of our culture because they are one of the weakest. There will be others if you do not look and see!  Did not the Ghost of Christmas present caution us in the Dickens work Christmas Carol to beware of two things: ignorance and greed. And yet, we remain both ignorant and greedy.

Hope, my friends, is found only in God dwelling among us. This hope is found in our faith that humanity is touched by God and offers New Life to every human being.

As disciples of Jesus, we cannot afford to remain silent, even in the smallest, most remote corners of human life. The Holy Innocents call out to us to change our culture of death not just by the words of our mouth but also by the deeds of our life; the ‘what we say,’ and the ‘how we act.’

Every disparaging word on face book, every obscene gesture on the roadway, every inconsiderate act or greedy grab, every act of violence that enters our homes on the television or computer teaches violence and begins that slow denigration of human dignity.

‘What should we do’ ask the crowds in the Gospel today? Share, Jesus tells them, share your coat and share your food. Be satisfied with you have. Because in your sharing you will find great expectation for the coming of Jesus. This is what we celebrate in Gaudete Sunday: our great expectation of the Lord’s coming!

There is another sharing you need to do. Sunday is the center of your family life. Why? Because you confess that He brings you peace!! He brings us Charity!! He brings us the New Life that will truly set us free!!

You should share this encounter with other families, especially those Catholics who have fallen away and no longer confess their faith. Tell them!! Invite them and make them feel welcomed home! Tell them because they need to hear it from you, that hope is found only in God and your joy is rooted here at the foot of the Cross of Jesus.

Sundays are a day of rest, a day of learning about each family member, the day when we learn about God from the poorer and most in need. We say yes to Joy today because of our conviction that Jesus is its source. He makes all things new and we commit ourselves to complete this work with the Eucharist as our strength. Our communion antiphon will say it clearly, “Say to the faint of heart; be strong and do not fear. Behold, our God will come, and He will save us!”

Right now, at this moment, be determined to become more conscious not of the holiday but of the holy day that is upon us! And in the words of the final blessing, “As you run the race of this present life, may He make you firm in faith, joyful in hope and active in charity.” Amen!