Year of the Priest

No, no, Father, please don’t toss the mike
like a DJ when you preach. Please don’t be cool.
Please don’t ride a Harley motorbike
when you come to school.

Don’t wear red cowboy boots for Pentecost,
and tell dumb jokes to be our pal. Please don’t ‘high five’,
say, “Sweet!” “Awwsome!” “You suck!” “You’re toast!”
or teach us how to jive.

Don’t sing along to the latest pop band;
you don’t need to be hip and up to date,
or come to our parties with a drink in your hand,
trying to relate.

Play it straight. Say the black and do the red.
Refrain from politics and rainbow pins.
Pray for all of us, the living and the dead,
and listen to our sins.

We want you to keep the faith, you see,
but keep it as it was. We want it old.
We want it to be waiting there when we
come in from the cold.

We want you to be our Father, not our mate.
We want a solid rock; so when we roam,
we know you'll be there, waiting at the gate,
to welcome us home.

Christ identifies with our struggles

Jesus, the friend of tax collectors and sinners, knew well that temptation could simply overcome people. Victims of poverty, ignorance, prejudice, oppression, abuse, violence and drugs reveal to us how easily people can be driven beyond endurance. Those who pray with Jesus share his profound sense of ultimate human helplessness and dependence.

Christ was human and He can identify with our struggles. Hebrews 4:14-16 says, "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."

Lord, lead us not into temptation! Rather, guide us into the pathways of justice, love and peace during these Lenten days. Give us the grace and fidelity to be faithful to our God and Father in heaven. Give us the courage to accept who we really are and where we should be.

Far from creating a great divide between Jesus Christ and ourselves, our own trials and weaknesses have become the privileged place of our encounter with him, and not only with him, but with God himself, thanks to this man of the cross. Jesus has been tested in all respects like us -- he knows all of our difficulties; he is a tried man; he knows our condition from the inside and from the outside -- by this did he acquire a profound capacity for compassion. For one must have suffered in order to truly feel for others. From Jesus we learn that God is present and sustaining us in the midst of test, temptation and yes, even sinfulness.

As Christians, we are in a constant fight with the desires born of our sinful natures. We are unable to resist temptation without God's grace. We are called to trust the Lord (not ourselves) for strength to resist temptation before it becomes sin. It is not the temptation itself that leads us to sin, but the lack of resistance and trust in the Lord for deliverance.

Our temptations

At the very beginning of his campaign for this world and for each one of us, Jesus openly confronted the enemy. He began his fight using the power of Scripture during a night of doubt, confusion, and temptation. It will do us well not to forget Jesus‚ example, so that we won't be seduced by the devil's deception. We are tempted in the same ways Jesus was -- wanting to have power over life and death, wanting to control our economic futures, putting our appetite for food ahead of our appetite for God. But trusting in God, as Jesus did, will make us strong.

Temptation is everything that makes us small, ugly, and mean. Temptation uses the trickiest moves that the evil one can think up. And his power is greater and stronger than our own human power. The more the devil has control of us, the less we want to acknowledge that he is fighting for every millimeter of this earth. Jesus didn't let him get away with that.

Jesus' desert experience raises important questions for us. What are some of the "desert" experiences I have experienced in my life? What desert experience am I living through right now? When and how do I find moments of contemplation in the midst of a busy life? How have I lived in the midst of my own desert wilderness? Have I been courageous and persistent in fighting with the demons? How have I resisted transforming my own deserts into places of abundant life?

Luke says that the devil left him when he "had ended every temptation" (4:13). Are we to understand that the devil never tempted the Lord again? Luke 4:13 indicates that the devil's temptations ended on that occasion "for a season," or "until an opportune time." The devil's opportune time will occur before the passion and death of Jesus (22:3, 31-32, 53). It was after Jesus endured the desert wilderness that he withstood temptation. Alone and defenseless against the wind and the weather, exposed to both day and night, and even exposed to the seeming absence of God, this experience of desert wilderness is a part of human growth and maturity.

Luke represents the three specific temptations as occurring after the 40 days of fasting (4:2-3). The Lord may have endured many temptations during the 40 days, but the three temptations were the culminating, most intense testing, of Jesus‚ wilderness solitude. Luke's temptations conclude on the parapet of the temple in Jerusalem, the city of destiny in the third Gospel. It is in Jerusalem that Jesus will ultimately face his destiny (9:51; 13:33).

In the first temptation in the desert, Jesus responds to the evil one, not by denying human dependence on sustenance (food), but rather by putting human life and the human journey in perspective. Those who follow Jesus cannot become dependent on the things of this world. When we are so dependent on material things, and not on God, we give in to temptation and sin.

The second temptation deals with the adoration of the devil rather than God. Jesus once again reminds the evil one that God is in control. This is so important for us to hear and believe, especially when our own temptations seem to overpower us, when everything around us might indicate shadows, darkness and evil. It is God who is ultimately in charge of our destiny.

In the third temptation, the devil asks for a revelation or manifestation of God's love in favor of Jesus. Jesus answers the evil one by saying that he doesn't have to prove that God loves him.

Lukan aspects of the temptations of Christ

Let us consider several important aspects of this Sunday's Gospel story of Jesus tempted. The Holy Spirit did not lead Jesus into temptation. The Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. The evil one would utilize the moment of Jesus‚ physical weakness and exhaustion in the desert to tempt him. Satan would consider this "an opportune time," and he would look for other "seasons" as well. The devil did the tempting, not the Holy Spirit!

Neither Matthew (4:1-11) nor Luke claim to represent the chronological sequence of the temptations. Luke may have reflected on the scene from the standpoint of geography, relating the two in the wilderness first, and then the one on the temple's pinnacle. Matthew records that after the temptation on the high mountain, Jesus said, "Away from me, Satan." Matthew's order, therefore, may be the chronological sequence, but there is no contradiction between the two evangelists.

Led by the Spirit into the wilderness

Most of us are very familiar with the three graphic temptations of Jesus as related by Matthew and Luke in their Gospel accounts of Jesus in the desert. As a result of the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus at his baptism (Luke 3:21-22), that same Spirit leads Jesus into the desert for 40 days to be tempted by the devil. The mention of 40 days recalls the 40 years of the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites during the Exodus (Deuteronomy 8:2).

At the outset we must ask ourselves as countless people have asked throughout the ages: How could it be said that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into temptation? If Jesus was God, and God is incapable of being tempted, how could Jesus have been tempted? Such questions arise when we consider the temptations of Christ. How do we reconcile what we know about God, Jesus, and temptation, with what is said to have happened in the gospel accounts regarding Christ‚s temptations?

By Father Thomas Rosica, CSB

TORONTO, FEB. 17, 2010 (Zenit.org).- An ancient proverb says: "Good habits result from resisting temptation." On Ash Wednesday we heard three fundamental orientations for this season in the rich Scripture readings: almsgiving, prayer and fasting.

Lent is a season of solidarity, of sharing, of openness to our neighbor, especially toward the most needy. Lent is also the favorable time for personal and community prayer, nourished by the Word of God as proclaimed each day in the liturgy. This year at the beginning of Lent, we are invited to focus our attention on Luke's account of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. How can we develop some good habits this Lent as we strive to overcome our temptations?

St. Bernard to get ready for Lent

Simplicity, Immortality, and Freedom
Sermon 81 on The Song of Songs

IV. 7. It is only man who has not thus been dominated by nature, therefore he alone among living creatures is free. Yet when sin intervenes, even man is dominated, but by his will, not by nature, and he is not thereby deprived of the liberty which is his birthright. What is done willingly is done freely. It is by sin that the corruptible body oppresses the soul, but it is the result of love, not of force. For although the soul fell of itself, it cannot rise of itself, because the will lies weak and powerless through the vitiated and depraved love of a corrupt body, yet is at the same time capable of a love of justice. So, in some strange and twisted way the will deteriorates and brings about a state of compulsion where bondage cannot excuse the will, because the action was voluntary, nor can the will, being fettered, free itself from bondage. For this bondage is in some sense voluntary. It is an agreeable bondage which flatters while it overcomes, and overcomes by flattery, so that when the will has betrayed itself by consenting to sin, it cannot of itself throw off the yoke, nor reasonably excuse itself. Then, like the voice of one groaning under the yoke of bondage, comes this cry, ‘Lord, I am oppressed; answer for me.’ But now listen to what he says next, knowing that he has no just complaint against the Lord, since it was his own will which was to blame: `What am I to say? Who will speak for me? For I myself have done this evil.' He was oppressed by the yoke, but the yoke of a voluntary servitude; because it was servitude, he is miserable, yet because it was voluntary, inexcusable. For it is the will which, although free, by consenting to sin became slave to sin; and it is the will which puts itself in subjection to sin by its willing servitude.

Stolen from another blog

Feeling Bad About Confession
Emotions run pretty high in the sacrament of confession. Not a week goes by that either I or a penitent doesn't end up getting a bit misty. It's because hearts are open to God in the confessional and the Holy Spirit doesn't miss a chance to touch hearts and reconcile the lost sheep.

However, while I don't mind emotion in the confessional itself, it's not much good during the actual examination of conscience. Too often the sins we feel most guilty about or most ashamed of are not the most serious sins, while the ones we may overlook altogether or think are not so serious may well be the ones that are most serious.

So, for example, most people feel ashamed and guilty about sins of the flesh. Sins of the flesh are certainly sins, but the amount of shame and guilt one feels may be disproportionate to the seriousness of the sin. On the other hand, forgetting prayers or missing Mass may be a continual sin against God himself which we overlook and under-rate. Furthermore, if we had prayed more and got closer to God we may not have fallen into the sin of the flesh in the first place.

It is good to remember that a mortal sin is not necessarily the sin we feel terribly ashamed of and guilty about. It is just as easy to commit a mortal sin and not feel guilty or ashamed at all. Just because the emotions are high as we remember a sin or commit a sin does not mean it is the most serious sin in the book. We may lose our temper, have a terrible fight with our spouse or kids and our heart may be beating and the tears may be running and the voices may be raised, but despite the high emotion it may not be a mortal sin. It might just be a fight.

On the other hand, to gossip and talk badly about others, to complain and grumble all the time and to be bitter and negative habitually may be far more serious because we ignore it and pretend we're not doing anyone any harm. At least with the big fight we feel bad and know it is a sin. With the casual gossip, back biting, nasty comments and negativity we often come away actually feeling better about ourselves.

So a very objective and clear approach to the examination of conscience is what we need. Pray for guidance and a clear vision. Go through the questions. Make a list and leave emotions for when you actually get into the box.

Change of seasons

Football is over and now time for college basketball. Oh yeah, Lent is a week away too.

Palms

WE NEED YOUR OLD PALMS SO WE CAN MAKE ASHES FOR ASH WEDNESDAY

In Georges Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest, the elderly Curé de Torcy gives his young priest friend a bit of advice about proclaiming the Gospel: "The Word of God is a red-hot iron," he says. "Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes later."

Saturday February 6
Mass at 8:00 AM
Conference begins at 9:00 AM

St. Paul Parish/Newman Center is Sponsoring Catholicism and Modern Science: A Rediscovered Heritage feat. Dr. Chris Baglow.

The Cost is free to students and $10 for all others. The costs helps cover the speaker and lunch.

Dr. Christopher T. Baglow is from New Orleans, LA. He has a B.A. in Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville, an M.A. in Theology from the University of Dallas and a Ph.D. in Theology from Duquesne University.
Catholicism and Modern Science: A Rediscovered Heritage

A. Belief Under Assault: Scientific Atheism and the Assault on Reason and Faith – Certain thinkers such as Richard Dawkins claim that religious faith is an outdated form of scientific ignorance and that science has disproved the existence of God. This introductory presentation examines this position and raises a new possibility: that modern science has actually strengthened the credibility of the Christian Faith, which is itself an affirmation of a scientific approach to the universe.

B. The ‘Big Bang’ About Creation: Is Sacred Scripture Anti-Science? - Much of the controversy surrounding the relationship between faith and science centers around the biblical creation accounts and the proper interpretation of Sacred Scripture. Through a detailed examination of the Catholic approach to Scripture and a close investigation of the message and the shape of the First Creation Account in Genesis 1, this talk reveals that Sacred Scripture is not only compatible with science, but that it fosters it and offers it a transcendent goal.

C. Patroness or Persecutor? The Catholic Church and Scientific Discovery – It is a common misconception that the Catholic Church is the arch-nemesis of the spirit of scientific inquiry and discovery that made modern science possible. Through an investigation of the Church’s teaching and history (including an honest examination of the Galileo Affair), the Church’s patronage of the sciences and her role in stimulating the growth of modern science is revealed. The presentation concludes by introducing the many priest-scientists who have made pioneering scientific contributions throughout the ages.

D. The Twist in the Tale: Modern Science vs. Scientific Atheism - From the time of Copernicus up until the end of the nineteenth century, the trend of scientific discoveries had seemed to some people to be leading away from the traditional Christian conception of the universe. But in the twentieth century, science began saying things that were totally unanticipated. In this presentation, we will look at three “twists” in the tale of scientific discovery that have occurred since Einstein’s great breakthroughs, particularly in the areas of cosmology and physics, that point compellingly toward the existence of God and the truth of the Christian doctrine of creation.

It takes no great military expert to predict the results of a war in which large numbers of the solders do not fight, do not even know there is a war on. The officers are essential, and obedience to them is essential. But an army in which only the officers fights is likely to have no spectacular success in any war, least of all that which the Church is fighting for the souls of men. - Frank Sheed, 2nd World Congress for the Lay Apostolate, 1957

Wednesday is St. Blaise day. Come and get your throat blessed.

Ah! I went to Confession on SAturday and it totally beat my “Winter Blahs”!! The self-centered crankiness, irritability and sulkiness I can harbor on these long winter days was washed away in a wave of mercy.