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29/3/2019

A Reflection on the Gospel for March 31st, 2019:
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Luke 15.1-3, 11-32

All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So he told them a parable: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So the father divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.

“When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. The young man would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.

“But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’

“So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.

“Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe — the best one — and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. The slave replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’

“Then the elder son became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’

“Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

“Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

The prodigal son did not realize that his father loved him so very much. He asked his father for forgiveness for leaving home and for squandering his inheritance because he simply had nowhere else to go, no resources left, and no one to turn to.

How surprised he must have been to be received so royally, given a robe to wear, sandals for his feet, and a ring signifying that his authority over the household was restored. Moreover, the fatted calf was killed to celebrate his return!

We may not necessarily have gone to the extremes the prodigal son did, but we have on so many occasions turned our backs on God and have put so many things and people ahead of Him. How many times were we late to mass and yet we would never think of being late for an important meeting with our bosses? Or how many times have we put off going to mass at all because we wanted to finish that mystery or thriller on TV? Even in church, sometimes we cannot keep our hands off our cell phones to read the text that just came in, taking our focus away from God.

Yet, God our Father loves us and forgives us all the time even if we do not ask Him to. His mercy is overflowing, His providence for us is boundless and His love is endless and truly immeasurable because He is Love.

"His mercy is overflowing, His providence for us is boundless, and His love is endless and truly immeasurable because He is Love."

We do not realize how vast His love is for us to have given us His only son, who would suffer so that we may all be saved. As with the father’s lavish welcome to his prodigal son, God’s response to us is over the top! There was a feast and celebration for the son’s return. So it is with us! Everything that His beloved Jesus does is so special for Him, so Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was enough for the Father to restore us all to His favour. We should therefore respond with gratitude and with a realization that God’s plan for us is to have us all live happily with Him in heaven. This sounds so much like a catechism statement, but that is the truth! We have to reflect on it and work our way toward heaven and also bring others to heaven with us. That is the simple truth.

These words from a popular Chris Tomlin song come to mind:

You’re a good, good Father
It’s who you are, it’s who you are, it’s who you are
And I’m loved by you
It’s who I am, it’s who I am, it’s who I am

Because you are perfect in all of your ways
You are perfect in all of your ways
You are perfect in all of your ways to us.

Liz Venezuela

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Before and After

28/3/2019

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A Reflection on the Second Reading for March 31st, 2019:
Fourth Sunday of Lent

2 Corinthians 5.17-21

Brothers and sisters: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God.

B.C. and A.D. versus B.C.E. and C.E. I gather that scholars popularized the terms “Before the Common Era” and “After the Common Era” as a way to avoid referencing the divinity of Jesus evident in the terms “Before Christ” and “Anno Domini.” Although I’m a Christian and believe in Christ’s divinity, over the years I have come to find the secularized reference useful for reasons entirely self-serving. With B.C. and A.D. no longer the only way to refer to timelines, I am free to use these initialisms as I please—and I do. The former refers to my life before Christ and the latter to my life since then.

Truth be told, I have been a Catholic all my life, but I have not always been a follower of Christ. In my “B.C.” life, I attended Mass because my family did, I went to confession because my schoolmates did, and I sang in the choir because my friends did. All of this made me a follower of others, but not a follower of Christ. Difficulty and turning to Christ in the midst of it is what made me His follower, His disciple.

"Difficulty and turning to Christ in the midst of it is what made me His follower, His disciple."

Suffering gets a bad rap. Personally, I’m grateful for suffering, not because I’m a masochist—I’m not. Still, were it not for suffering, I would have moved through life on my own steam, leaning on those who love me during the rough patches, but generally trusting in my own self to make my way in the world. By the grace of God, that didn’t happen. Instead, I hit a bump so debilitating that I couldn’t return to health on my own. And when I leaned on those who loved me, they simply couldn’t bear the weight. Having no one else, I turned to Christ, who loved me and carried me through it. As He and I travelled along together, I grew to love Him—not because of my family, my friends and my schoolmates but because of who He is and what He did for me.

In the second reading for this Sunday, Saint Paul reminds the Corinthians that each person who follows Christ becomes a new creation. When Christ is born (and borne) in us, it winds down our B.C. era and ushers in a radically new life: the years of our Lord. We receive from Christ a new vision. “We regard no one from a human point of view” (v. 16). Rather than valuing people for their appearance and worldly success, we see them from a spiritual perspective instead. The longer we travel with Christ, the more intimately we know Him and the less we desire our B.C. life.

Saint Paul says, each time we turn away from harmful things, we are reconciled to God. As this turning away becomes habitual, so does the process of our reconciliation to God. This makes our A.D., the years of our Lord, so much better than the darker time before, and it helps us to achieve our heart’s desire, which is to be more like Christ.

Donna Davis

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Remind Me Who I Am

27/3/2019

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A Reflection on the Psalm for March 31st, 2019:
Fourth Sunday of Lent

Psalm 34

I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. R.

O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. R.

Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. The poor one called, and the Lord heard, and saved that person from every trouble. R.

I find that it's really easy at times to forget my identity in the Lord—to forget who I really am: a beloved child of God. Because of God’s love for us, He never wants to see us fearful and anxious. When we seek Him, He will show up and He will deliver us from our fears. The Lord is so good.

The early spring months are quite busy for university students. With midterm season never ending, it seems as though all the tests and assignments are all at once, leaving no room to breathe and rest. In these times, I can get so caught up in the busyness and struggle of the end of the term that I can sometimes forget who I really am. I forget that my worth is not defined by my grades or my ability to live on 4 hours of sleep and many, many, many cups of coffee. Although it’s important to strive to do well in the things that matter in your life, the “failures” that you may think you have imposed on yourself do not define you as a failure. God does not ever see us in this way, so we shouldn’t perceive ourselves to be this way either. Finding our worth in the truth that we are deeply loved by the Lord, takes the unnecessary pressure off of the day-to-day as well as the larger tasks in our lives.

"Although it’s important to strive to do well in the things that matter in your life, the “failures” that you may think you have imposed on yourself do not define you as a failure."

No matter where you are in your faith journey, God wants to be there for you and help you in your time of need. Although I sometimes struggle with maintaining a proper relationship with God when I get overwhelmed with life, when I finally do turn to Him for help, He always shows up. He comes to us through the Eucharist in such an accessible way. He is always available to us. Even though it is not always easy to keep your priorities where you would like at certain periods in your life, I find that the time that is spent praising God and seeking Him out is never regretted. It helps me to gain perspective about my current struggles and to know that I am never alone in them. God never fails to provide and to save us from our anxieties. This is a reminder that I have greatly needed to reinforce for myself in the past few weeks. I pray that I can continue to turn to the Lord in the good times and successes, and also during my lower moments. With Him, all things are more joyful.

Megan Noye

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God Will Provide

26/3/2019

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A Reflection on the First Reading for March 31st, 2019:
Fourth Sunday of Lent

Joshua 5.9a, 10-12

The Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.”

While the children of Israel were camped in Gilgal they kept the Passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho.

On the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the children of Israel no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.

“God will provide; He always does.” These words still echo in my mind from January of 2010, when, as a nurse in the Canadian Armed Forces, I was deployed to Haiti following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that crumbled the already shaky foundations of the country. I was profoundly impacted by the poverty I witnessed there. As a healthcare provider, I saw firsthand the physical and emotional suffering the people endured, not only from injuries and losses caused by the earthquake, but also from their ongoing survival on the bare minimum of everything.

In this reading, Joshua has taken up the torch from Moses and is leading the Israelites into the Promised Land. Up until now, God has provided them with manna, every day, as much as they needed—no more, no less—for all this time. And now, He has delivered on His promise of the land of Canaan, flowing with milk and honey.

One aspect of God’s provision is indeed in terms of material things; money, food, shelter, clothing, and belongings. I am often guilty of taking these things for granted in my world of relative plenty, and reflecting on my experience in Haiti helps me to put it all in shocking perspective. Despite this, I sometimes struggle, quite profoundly, with trust in God’s provision for the spiritual aspects of my life. I admit this, my spiritual poverty, as I reflect on memories of my time in Haiti.

Like the people of Haiti, the people of Israel suffered, and though we in Canada are by comparison wealthy, we suffer also, in many ways. The people of Israel were afraid, so they complained, they rebelled, and they doubted. Yet God provided for them—He gave them manna; He provided their leader, Joshua, their land, Canaan, and all that came with it—all He required of them was to have faith. How easily we forget.

"... He provided... all He required of them was to have faith."

While I was in Haiti, a couple of my nursing colleagues and I went along with our chaplain to deliver some supplies to a local orphanage. The place was chaotic with energetic children who were so excited to see us and the pictures of actual snow that were on my camera. The dear woman who ran the orphanage expressed gratitude that they had sustained little significant injury or damage in the quake, but shook her head as she lamented the gaggle of teenage boys in her charge who, as she said it, were “eating her out of house and home”, and she had nowhere to send them. They were ready to go into the world, but there was no school for them, no work, no family other than each other. And she said, lifting her eyes and with a slight smile, “… but God will provide. He always does.”

Lindsay Elford