A Lenten Reflection on the Temptation of Christ

This year has been a difficult one for all of us. We have been in isolation, quarantined, missed receiving the Eucharist, missed holidays with family and friends, weddings and sadly funerals. We have been shown a different kind of fasting, abstinence and almsgiving. This lent I believe we are being called to offer this past year up to God as a sacrifice.

I would encourage all of you to enter this lent a little differently because let’s face it we are living in a different world. Jesus’ 40 days in the desert were a test of his mind, body and spirit. He came out of that desert stronger and able to start his ministry with the confidence and love he needed to take on this world. I think we are being called to do the same. We led a life before the virus hit that is much different than the life we lead today. We have been in the desert for a long time now and I encourage you to use this time of lent as preparation for what you want your life to look like when you are able to leave, when you get to go back out into the world.

For your body, are you taking care of your gift? Are you nourishing yourself of are you indulging? Are you moving, even a little, so that when you put your hand on your heart you can feel it beating just a little bit faster? Mind are you making time to gain knowledge? Maybe now is the time to read the book you have been putting off, take a class you have wanted to take (available online I am sure), do something that will engage you and occupy your mind with something that takes a little more effort than just watching TV or staring at a screen. Spirit now would be a good time to find time every day to pray.

Jesus was being called to be all things to all people every day of his ministry, but he even found time to pray. Instead of making this lent a 40-day challenge, let the challenge be how are you going to make everything you do this lent into a habit so that you continue to do these things in your daily life long after lent has ended. Please take the time to pray and reflect and give yourself some time to really contemplate what your lent this year is going to look like… — Jackie Sullivan

Hope

Hope

I’ve been thinking a lot about hope lately, perhaps because hope seems hard to come by at times. Yet, hope is fundamental to our Christian faith. We talk about hoping that Covid-19 will no longer be a threat. We hope for peace, justice and unity. We hope our political agendas work out. We hope our children are happy. We hope our favorite football team wins. All of these involve looking to the future with the wish that things happen the way we would like. Is this real hope or wishful thinking? The Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron, says that hope “comes from a feeling that we lack something…from a sense of poverty” and “robs us from the present moment.” I have struggled with her statement for quite a while – a few years to be honest. I can’t deny the truth that focusing on some imagined better future can rob us of the beauty of the present moment. Yet, it seems to me that Christian hope is something more. It doesn’t rob us but rather, propels us.

I came to this notion of hope in a rather surprising way. I had been thinking and talking about “fierce hope” – by that I mean an expectation that fights back against the despair I see around me and at times fall into. A deeper understanding came together for me in a discussion with my grandchildren. As a COVID quarantine activity we have been reading The Lord of the Rings together.  We join each other over Zoom once a week to discuss what we have been reading. If you recall, The Lord of the Rings is all about hope in the face of hopelessness – particularly once you get to The Return of the King. Hope in this context is not a confident expectation that things will work out the way one wishes but rather a force that moves one forward against all odds. Hope, then, is active, full of energy and propels us to create the future we are dreaming of even if that seems futile at the moment. Perhaps the more relevant question is: how do we nurture and sustain that kind of fierce hope?

I would propose two paths that are interwoven. As Christians we believe that all of creation is infused with the goodness of God and that we are moving toward fullness and completion. Hope invites us to be co-creators with God in bringing forth that future. Secondly, in the same way that we need one another to be the Body of Christ, we need one another to sustain hope. There are moments when I can see God at work and can share that with others. There are other times when I am lost and need someone to point the way for me. Let us together live this fierce hope and let it propel us into the future God is inviting us to share.

—Suanne Reed

Putting on the Mind of Christ in Complex Times

How does Christ’s way of thinking influence the complexity and challenge of living in the world while growing into Christ’s set of values-spiritual poverty, a capacity for humiliation or contempt, and humility?

Since Covid-19, the complexity and challenge of living in the world while growing into Christ’s set of values have shifted enormously. Covid-19 has shouted it loud and clear across the length, breadth, height and depth of the entire earth: no to an economy of exclusion; no to the new idolatry of money; no to a financial system which rules rather than serves; no to the inequality which spawns violence( Chapter 2, The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis Apostolic Exhortation).

Covid-19 is calling the whole world, all cultures, all social groupings to purification and growth, offering the Church, the Body of Christ, a marvelous opportunity through social media to bear witness to a…new way of living together in fidelity to the Gospel ( p47, The Joy of the Gospel). Therefore, in this Covid-19 environment, Pope John Paul XXIII’s sentiment is a timeless one…in our times, divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations which, by human effort and even beyond all expectations, are directed to the fulfilment of God’s superior and inscrutable designs, in which everything, even human setbacks, leads to the greater good of the Church (p44, The Joy of the Gospel). — Celpha Sands