Rejoicing in the Time of Corona

40 Shades of Lent, Sunday Week IV-A, 22 March 2020

***1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13* +++ Ephesians 5:8-14 +++ *John 9:1-41***

Photo by author, Laetare Sunday 2019, Parokya ni San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Bagbaguin, Santa Maria, Bulacan, Philippines.

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Lent known in its Latin verb form “Laetare Sunday” when the liturgy calls us to rejoice because Easter is fast approaching.

But how can we rejoice in the midst of an “enhanced community quarantine” or lockdown, when we cannot even come to church to celebrate the Sunday Mass together, when so many people are dying while millions of others face uncertainties with the widespread disruptions and problems in life caused by COVID-19 worldwide.

On this date is also my 55th birthday – but, no worries, the more I rejoice in the Lord almost alone. Thank you for all the greetings that have been pouring since yesterday. As I was telling you last Sunday, COVID-19 has brought some blessings or good news too for us.

Let us rejoice in the Lord today because he has not left us, the more we feel him present with us, thanks or no thanks to Corona virus.

As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”
John 9:1-3

Our “blaming game” vs. light of Christ

More than ever as we suffer through this pandemic of COVID-19, many of us have again resorted to that old myth that whenever something bad happens to us, especially sickness, it is always taken as a punishment from God.

It is totally untrue because nothing bad can come from God. Many times in our lives, we become artificially blind that despite our gift of sight we fail and even refuse to see the truth and realities in us and around us, even in front of us!

What happens is our tendency to blame others like in that question to Jesus, who sinned – the parents or the man himself that he was born blind?

This is the problem with our “blaming game” : we are blinded from taking responsibilities for our acts that we would rather blame others even God for everything bad that happens to us. There are more times that there is no one to be blamed at all like our genes or Mother Nature; we just have to accept things as they are.

And that’s one lesson we must learn fast: there can be no rejoicing when there is no self-acceptance.

How funny and sad that less than a week since our Luzon-wide lockdown, many of us have been quarreling on-line on almost everything we see and hear on TV and the social media that has led to bashing and nasty exchanges of words, even breakdowns. Very funny, and tragic when we focus on non-essentials, almost forgetting COVID-19.

How tragic that some chose to hide facts and truths that have caused the lives of others, too. This is the dark reality of our blaming game – we never admit anything wrong about us.

See beyond external things. Try seeing also how God is working in our midst as Jesus offers us in this holy season of Lent the best way to deal with our present situation by returning to him, by believing in him.

Photo by author, Baliwag, Bulacan (25 February 2020).

Have you noticed the many little miracles happening in some families now together, praying together, staying together?

One reason for rejoicing this fourth Sunday of Lent is perhaps everyone’s hope that after this COVID-19 episode, we all start a new chapter of renewed relationships and bonds, of fresh outlooks after rediscovering the value of life and every person again.

Jesus spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes, and said to him, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam”- which means Sent. So he went and washed, and came back able to see.
John 9:6-7

Here again is the presence of water like in last Sunday’s story to remind us of the Sacrament of Baptism which is closely tied with the season of Lent. St. John had translated the meaning of Siloam as “Sent” to stress that Jesus is the Christ, the One sent to cleanse us and wash away our blindness caused by sins and evil.

Another reason to rejoice this Sunday! Most especially now many of us realize the value of the Holy Mass, especially the Sunday Eucharist we used to take for granted before. Every time we celebrate the Mass, we perfect the Baptism we have received when we are washed and refreshed anew in Jesus through his words and Body and Blood.

It is only when we stop blaming others when we begin to see our true selves, when changes finally begin to happen in us.

Like God, let us try to see things and persons beyond what is physical. In the first reading, God chose David over his elder and better brothers who would later defeat Goliath to become Israel’s greatest king from whose lineage came Jesus Christ.

Jesus on the Cross, our true joy

Photo by author, Lent 2019, Parokya ni San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Bagbaguin, Santa Maria, Bulacan, Phils.

The moment we remove Jesus in our lives, when we refuse to acknowledge him as our Lord and Savior, that is also when we are blinded by sin, especially by pride.

Do we not see this so true that led one way or the other to this pandemic?

We have totally turned away from God and his ways, following our greedy paths of power and wealth. We have long been distant from one another despite the great advances in modern communications that have also brought us farther away from God as we spend more time with our gadgets.

We can never rejoice for ourselves and for others when we are far from Jesus Christ. In his very unique manner of looking at things, St. John presents to us some funny contrasts in the story of the man born blind that we also see happening in this COVID-19 pandemic.

First is when the people doubted the man healed by Jesus was himself the one “who used to sit and beg”, despite his clear declaration of “I am”. We have experienced this so many times when others doubt we can rise and become better.

How sad these past days we have seen how some people have been so mean especially with younger and newer leaders who have risen against the threats of COVID-19, shooting down their efforts, even to the point of maligning and even threatening them. It is as if they are the only “anointed ones” with whom God can work with.

Second is the attitude of the parents of the man born blind: betrayers are the worst kind of artificially blind people. Like the parents of the man born blind, they refused to vouch for his identity and healing for fears of being banned from temple worship.

Ouch! for us in the church with our “holier-than-thou-attitude” especially with those closest with us like family members and friends. Like Judas Iscariot, sometimes those supposed to be dearest to us are blinded by money, power, and fame that they also betray and dump us.

Where has all the love gone for one another, for the country?

Lastly, there are those supposed to be learned ones but unfortunately blinded simply by lack of faith in God like those Pharisees who refused to believe the man born blind’s story of healing as well as to recognize Jesus as the Christ.

Observe the attitudes of the Pharisees who claimed to know “this man, Jesus, is a sinner” because he healed on a Sabbath while the man born blind retorted “I do not know (Jesus) but how come he had healed me?”

What a tragic comedy! It is the root of the mess we are into today of so many learned men and women pretending to know so much but totally incompetent and ignorant of the realities going on, who do not care at all with the plight of the masses!

Both the whole world and our country are in deep darkness today with so many blind leaders and followers alike. Let us heed St. Paul’s reminder not to be blinded, to stop blaming others and to start confronting ourselves in the light of Jesus Christ.

“Take no part in fruitless works of darkness; rather expose them, for it is shameful even to mention the things done by them in secret; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.”
Ephesians 5:11-14

Rejoice for an enlightened Sunday and new week for everyone despite COVID-19. Amen.

Where is our love?

40 Shades of Lent, Saturday, Week III, 21 March 2020

***Hosea 6:1-6* <(((>< +++ ><)))> *Luke 18:9-14***

Photo by author, Mount St. Paul, Trinidad, Benguet (04 February 2020).

Your words today, O Lord, are so true.

And so painful, too.

What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your piety is like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes. For this reason I smote them through the prophets, I slew them by the words of my mouth. For it is love that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather burnt offering.
Hosea 6:4-6

We could feel your sadness, O Lord, speaking to us who have become like your people Israel. Slay us with your words as we close the first week of our heightened community quarantine deep in confusion and loss when our leaders fail – or refuse – to rise to maturity and statesmanship when concern for ego and turfs have become their main preoccupation while others are nowhere to be found.

Where is the love, O Lord, they have promised us, our country?

But the more painful question we all have to answer really is where is our love? Where is our love for our country expressed in electing all these officials we now have? Where is the love we have promised to one another, of husband and wife, of parents and children, of siblings, of friends?

We have sinned, O God our Father, because we have failed or refused to love and share your immense love for each one of us.

Forgive us, for we have lost the essence of love, of forgetting one’s self in favor of the beloved. We have loved our selves too much, thinking we are always just and right, truly the ones for whom today’s gospel is meant for without exceptions.

Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.
Luke 18:9-14

We have thought that love is when the good times roll, when there is laughter and pleasure, when there is affluence. Worst of all, we have thought that love is a material expressed in things or mere feelings we always show in sweet nothings.

Teach us again to remember that love is a person … because you are love, O God!

Deus caritas est (1 John 4:8).

Let us love, love, and love truly like Jesus your Son who gave himself for us on the cross. Amen.

Parokya ni San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, 2019.

Unbelievable

40 Shades of Lent, Friday, Week III, 20 March 2020

***Hosea 14:2-10* ><)))> +++ <(((>< *Mark 12:28-34***

Photo by author, Mt. St. Paul, Trinidad, Benguet, 04 February 2020.

Unbelievable.

That’s the only word you spoke to me Lord in my prayers last night and this morning.

Unbelievable.

As the days move on, God our Father, the more I could not believe all these things going on. What have happened with us, Lord?

Bakit kami nagkaganito at paano kami humantong dito, Panginoon?

Your words today, O Lord, are so true. It is you indeed who speaks to us especially in the first reading through the Prophet Hosea. You have spoken so well — we have all sinned.

We have disregarded you and others. We have relied so much in our own powers and abilities. We have insisted on doing things our own ways totally discarding your teachings.

But more unbelievable in this unbelievable situation is your immense love and mercy for us, O God our Father.

Thus says the Lord: Return, O Israel, to the Lord, your God; you have collapsed through your guilt. Take with you words, and return to the Lord… I will heal their defection, says the Lord, I will love them freely; for my wrath is turned away from them. I will be like the dew for Israel: he shall blossom like the lily.
Hosea 14:2-3, 5-6

Help us, Father through your Son Jesus Christ that we may look more inside ourselves these trying times, that we may see you more and as we see you as the most essential, the most important of all, we also see our value as persons.

Let us experience that love you have for us that we ought to share with one another, beginning in our family, in our neighborhood.

How unbelievable that some of us, like that scribe who asked Jesus “which is the first of all commandments”, we keep on categorizing, ranking things and even persons to determine who or what is the most important — the first.

Unbelievable but true, this pandemic is happening because we have forgotten you and we have forgotten others too. We have forgotten YOU are always first, always great. Semper Primus, semper Major!

Teach us to see more of you so that we also see you among one another. Amen.

Pagkakataon… ng COVID-19

Lawiswis ng Salita ni P. Nicanor F. Lalog II, Ika-17 ng Marso 2020

Larawan ay kuha ni Angelo Nicolas Carpio ng krus ng aming parokya, Enero 2020.

Pagkakataon.
Ito ang kataga 
na tumimo sa akin 
mula sa Ebanghelyo ngayon.

Wika ng alipin sa kanyang panginoon
"bigyan ninyo ako ng pagkakataon
mabayaran mga utang sa inyo"
at siya nama'y pinagbigyan nito.

Ngunit nang masalubong
kapwa alipin may utang
hamak maliit kaysa kanya,
pinagkait pagkakataon bagkus ipinakulong.

Kaya nang siya ay sinumbong
sa kanilang panginoon
tinawag siyang "napakasama" dahil
pagkakataon binigay sa kanya, pinagkait sa iba.

Larawan kuha ng may-akda, Kuwaresma 2020.

Pagkakataon.
Ito ang kaloob sa atin ngayon
ng pagkukulong sa mga tahanan 
at maiwasan pagkalat nitong COVID-19.

Sa mahabang panahon
tinalikuran natin Panginoon
nang sariling pamilya binalewala
di pinansin, ang iba inaway natin.

Kay inam na pagkakataon
mabuklod mga pamilya ngayon
bilang isang tahanan at pamayanan
na pinagmulan noon ng ating simbahan.

Habang walang pasok
mga magulang at anak
balikan katesismong binaon 
unahin mga panalangin nilimot.

Basahin din at limihin
Banal na Kasulatan ating tinalikuran
sapagkat ito ang siyang gagabay
sa buhay natin sa gitna ng karimlan.

Kuha ng may-akda, Parokya ni San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, 2019.

Pagkakataon.
Marami tayong pinalampas noon
binalewala Panginoon at kapwa
kaya tayo ganito ngayon.

Hindi ito parusa ng Panginoon
kungdi kasalanan at pagkukulang
nating lahat sa mahabang panahon
Diyos at kapwa hindi natin nilingon.

Kaya ngayon sa gitna nitong hamon
kinakaharap natin sa pagkakataon
tama narinig kong nawika 
ng punong ministro doon sa Italya:

"Maghiwa-hiwalay muna tayo ngayon
upang mayakap ang isa't-isa sa kinabukasan"
kaya naman pagyamanin natin itong
pagkakataon makulong sa iisang bubong!

Lent is for “debugging”

40 Shades of Lent, Friday, Week-I, 06 March 2020

***Ezekiel 18:21-28* +++ 0 +++ *Matthew 5:20-26***

Photo by author, Parokya ni San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Bagbaguin, Santa Maria, Bulacan, Lent 2020.

Once again, our loving Father, I take the computer as my point of comparison for my prayer reflection on this second Friday of Lent.

Thank you in giving us this blessed season of Lent when we are able to “debug” our “internal hard drive” – the heart – to be cleansed of bugs and virus as well as unnecessary materials that slow us down to be holy and perfect like you.

Your words are very reassuring of how you want us to be “fixed” always, to be in good condition, filled with life and holiness.

Thus says the Lord God: “Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of a wicked?” says the Lord God. “Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way that he may live? Hear now, house of Israel: Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair? When someone virtuous man turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies, it is because of the iniqity he committed that he must die. But if the wicked, trning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life; since he has turned away from all the sins that he committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die.”
Ezekiel 18:23, 25-28

Educate our hearts, O Lord.

Help us “surpass the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees” in Jesus Christ who have come to perfect the laws in himself, in love.

May your purifying love, sweet Jesus, cleanse us of our sins, delete our painful memories that continue to hold us back, preventing us to move forward and forgive others and especially our very selves.

Make us rejoice, O Lord, in your immense love and share it with others so that we may grow more in holiness in you. Amen.

Lent is restoring God as our “default”

40 Shades of Lent, Thursday, Week I, 05 March 2020

***Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25* +++ 0 +++ *Matthew 7:7-12***

Photo by author, Parokya ni San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, 01 March 2020, Bagbaguin, Santa Maria, Bulacan.

O God our Father, you know very well how ignorant I am with computers and the Internet. But, somehow, Lord, I have learned something very important with computers like the “default system” whereby a computer setting is on a desired preexisting configuration useful to the user.

On this season of Lent, help us to restore our default system in you, O God!

Make us stop “surfing” the universe for better default systems for there is no one better than you whom we must always have as our first option in everything, whether in good times or in bad.

Like Queen Esther in our first reading today who only had you as her recourse in seeking help for her countrymen:

“Now help me, who am alone and have no one but you, O Lord, my God… come to help me, an orphan. Put in my mouth persuasive words in the presence of the lion, and turn his heart to hatred for our enemy, so that he and those who are in league with him may perish. Save us from the hands of our enemies; turn our mourning into gladness and our sorrows into wholeness.”
Esther C: 13, 24-26

Create a clean heart in me, O God, so that I may always seek and follow you.

Most of all, incline my heart to you always so you may dwell in me to let justice and love and mercy reign in me. Amen.

Lent is sharing and giving life

40 Shades of Lent, Monday, Week I, 02 March 2020

***Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18* +++ 0 +++ *Matthew 25:31-46***

Photo by author, Mt. St. Paul Spirituality Center, Baguio City, 03 February 2020.

“Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.”
Responsorial Psalm

Today, Lord, I borrow your psalmist’s words for they summarize the two beautiful readings on this first Monday of Lent 2020.

Thank you for reminding us that we are your Holy Spirit’s indwelling, that we must be holy for you, O God, are holy (Lev.19:2).

Continue to fill us with your holiness so that we continue to do whatever is good to our brothers and sisters, especially the least among them for whatever we do to anyone, that we do also to you, dear Jesus (Mt.25:40, 45).

May your holy season of Lent remind us that it is our nature to share and give life because we have you Jesus in us. That’s the implication of those like the sheep on your right side, Lord, who were surprised and could not believe asking “when were you Lord hungry we gave you something to eat, when were you Lord…?”

When we let your Spirit of holiness animate us, that is when we are never bothered to think of anything else upon seeing the poor and suffering except to love, to practice charity.

May our Lenten practices of fasting and abstinence, sacrifices and alms-giving empty us of our selves and be filled with you, sweet Jesus, the Word who became flesh to dwell in our hearts for you alone are Life and Spirit.

Teach us to examine today our attitude towards everyone who may be unknown to us silently poor and suffering. Let us reacquire that nature in us we fondly refer to as “second-nature” of being kind and charitable to everyone because he/she has you, Jesus, in him/her.

That need not be difficult for us because in the first place, YOU, O Lord, is in us too! Amen.

Who we are vs. who we are not

40 Shades of Lent, Sunday Week I-A, 01 March 2020

***Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7* +++ Romans 5:12-19 +++ *Matthew 4:1-11***

Lent has always been associated with the Sacrament of Baptism since the beginning of the Church. In fact our Sunday readings this 2020 (Cycle A) are among the oldest in our liturgy used in the preparation of candidates or catechumens to Baptism on Easter Vigil.

This intimate link between Lent and Baptism is very evident in our synoptic gospels as Matthew, Mark, and Luke present to us how after Jesus was baptized by John in Jordan River, his temptations by the devil in the desert immediately comes next.

At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.”
Matthew 4:1-3

The Season of Lent and the Sacrament of Baptism

Let us go back a little to that Baptism scene of Jesus at Jordan so we can understand this link between Lent and Baptism as well as to appreciate the meaning of our celebration this first Sunday of Lent.

It was during his Baptism at Jordan when the Father formally launched and made known the mission of Jesus as the Christ or the “Anointed One” of God, that is, the Messiah in Hebrew or Christo in Greek from which we derived the word Christ in English.

As a prefiguration of his coming Pasch – Passion, Death, and Resurrection – Jesus Christ’s Baptism became his “investiture” or “commissioning” when the Father declared, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:17).

In his Baptism, Jesus entered into solidarity with us sinners when he plunged into Jordan River to be one with us in everything except sin. It is here we find very clear the intimate link of Baptism with Lent when we are called to be faithful children of God like Jesus Christ

An anatomy of temptation and sin

Detail of the mosaic of the “Temptations of Christ” at the St. Mark Basilica in Venice. Photo from psephizo.com.

Every temptation by the devil, every sin is always a turning away from God, a deviation from our identity as children of the Father in Jesus Christ.

Whenever we would wake up, the Father reminds us like at the Baptism of Jesus at Jordan that we are his beloved son or daughter with whom he is well pleased despite our many sins, failures, and weaknesses.

And like Jesus Christ right after his Baptism at Jordan, the devil also comes every day to tempt us to turn away from the Father, echoing to us his same words in the desert with the Lord, “If you are the Son of God” to lure us into becoming someone we are not.

The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply, “It is written: One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written…”
Matthew 4:3-6

See this pattern of the devil in his first two temptations, “If you are the Son of God” – very enticing to be somebody else, to prove one’s worth and being.

This pattern will significantly change at the third temptation when the devil took Jesus to a high mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence. No more “If you are the Son of God” but a more direct temptation that is affront and “garapal” as we say in Filipino:

“All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”
Matthew 4:9

Observe how cunning was the devil in his temptations of Jesus until finally, he brings out his sinister plot: worship him, turn away from God!

The same is true with us: the devil will lure and deceive us in so many ways with just one objective which is for us to turn away from God. In every temptation, in every sin, the issue has always been the primacy of God which Jesus Christ firmly affirmed in his triumph over the devil’s temptations at the desert.

And this issue on the primacy of God is always attacked by the devil in every temptation when he confuses us on who we really are like the woman in the first reading after the serpent had told her that she would be like God:

The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its frit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
Genesis 3:6-7

Do we not feel the same way after every sin? We feel naked – ugly, dirty, and alienated from our very selves precisely because we have not become our true selves!

These temptations of Jesus by the devil would persist up to his crucifixion where some people jeered and taunted him, telling him “if you are the Son of God” or “if you are the Messiah” so that he would turn away from the Father and forget all about his mission and Divine plan of salvation.

Notice that the last temptation of Jesus is exactly our last temptation too: abandon God the Father and simply be like the devil, with no dignity, with nothing at all because he is separated from God, our only grounding of being.

Hubris, our greatest temptation and sin

Photo by Mr. Raffy Tima of GMA-7 News, Batanes, 2018.

Last Sunday we have mentioned how the Greeks have always held that man’s first and greatest temptation and sin is hubris – that is, the arrogant presumption of man that he is god, or that he can defy the divine to do everything and have anything.

We call it pride which is at the very core of every temptation and sin. The director of the classic film “Ten Commandments”, Mr. Cecil de Mille was once asked which of the Lord’s commandments is most often violated by man?

According to Mr. De Mille, it is the first commandment of God that we always violate because whenever we sin, that is when we also have another false god or idol aside from the true God.

Very true!

Our problem in the world is not really hunger or war or poverty but our refusal to be faithful to God, to be who we really are as his blessed sons and daughters. In some instances, there are some who have totally rejected and denied God, believing more in themselves, in the sciences and technologies.

Jesus is not indifferent to hunger or wars still going on in many parts of the world today; he had come to show us the path to our problems is to reclaim our being children of the Father, listening and living his words, worshiping and trusting him alone.

In going through his Pasch, in fighting all temptations, Jesus shows us the path to see and experience the God we can meet when we come to our desert where we rely only in him alone. It involves hard work, without any shortcut and quick fixes or instants that have become our norm these days.

It is not a simplistic approach to the many problems we are facing, but if you read the newspapers or watch the news, we see how humanity is still in solidarity with Adam, with sin, with the material world as St. Paul explained in the second reading.

On this first Sunday of Lent, we are reminded anew of our identity as beloved children of the Father in Jesus Christ who showers us with every grace and blessing that we need. Let us live in him, trust in him, hold on to him to experience life anew.

Let us give Jesus a chance to work in us, rise with him to our being beloved children of the Father! Amen.

Photo by author at the ancient city of Jericho, Israel, May 2019.

The joy of Lent

40 Shades of Lent, Saturday after Ash Wednesday, 29 February 2020

***Isaiah 58:9-14* +++ 0 +++ *Luke 5:27-32***

“The Calling of St. Matthew” by Caravaggio. From Google.

Dearest Jesus: I have been imagining in prayer of myself being Levi the tax collector sitting at his post.

It must be so lonely being like him, rich but deep inside longing for something deeper and meaningful than money and wealth. He had been thinking of making a “lifestyle shift” but he felt hopeless with nobody to help him.

Like in the first reading, your invitation Lord through the Prophet Isaiah seem to be too good to be true that anyone like Levi – or me – could make a big difference in life by “giving food to someone hungrier, abandoning my own comfort to care for someone afflicted, substituting a kind word for a malicious gossip, and worshipping you than pursuing my own interests” (Is.58:10,13).

I felt like Levi – there in his little customs post – that is impossible because everything is hopeless and there is no chance to change. Everything is doomed, especially for me, a sinner, Lord.

Then, suddenly you came, saying, “Follow me” (Lk.5:27).

How I love looking back, Lord, to those dark days when you suddenly came calling me to follow you!

It was so simple.

Like Levi, I just stood and followed you and everything changed in my life!

That was so nice of you, Lord Jesus, to take such a bold step of coming to Levi’s post to call him and, me. It was – and still is – a gamble on your part to call us sinners to follow you. And since then, you have never stopped calling us sinners Lord Jesus to follow you, even on our darkest and lowest days and hours, Lord, when everything seemed to be so doomed.

As we prepare for the first Sunday of Lent, remind me, O Lord, that this holy season is not all that drab and dry. After all, Lent originally means “springtime”, the coming joy of Easter which happens every time we turn our hearts to you like Levi. Amen.

Lent is making God present

40 Shades of Lent, Friday after Ash Wednesday, 28 February 2020

***Isaiah 58:1-9* +++ 0 +++ *Matthew 9:14-15***

Have mercy on us, O God, have mercy… for we are still totally lost on the real meaning of fasting and abstinence. We have lost its spiritual meaning, focusing more on ourselves for vanity reasons like losing weight and looking good, totally forgetting fasting is all about you and others than us!

How unfortunate, dear God, that we no longer fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday but even on Sundays before receiving your Son Jesus in the Holy Communion by making all kinds of excuses with bold claims of having sacrificed so much in doing good deeds for you.

Thus says the Lord God: Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast. Tell my people their wickedness, and the house of Jacob their sins. They seek me day after day, and desire to know my ways, like a nation that has done what is just and not abandoned the law of their God. They ask me to declare what is due them, pleased to gain access to God. “Why do we fast, and you do not see it? Afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?” Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers. Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw. This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.”
Isaiah 58:1-4, 6-7

Make us realize that fasting is not punishing ourselves, of denying ourselves with goods and pleasures of the world that leave us empty, wanting for more but never fulfilled deep inside.

Fasting is actually rewarding ourselves with you, O God, our only wealth and treasure, our only fulfillment.

Help us create an empty space within ourselves through fasting and abstinence so that your Son Jesus may dwell and reign in our hearts, saying from within us, “Here I am!” (Is. 58:9). Amen.