March 23 through March 29, 2025

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(March 23, 2025: Third Sunday of Lent - Year A Option)

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“The place where you stand is holy ground...”

“Holy ground.” The term conjures up images of mountaintops shrouded in smoke, sanctuaries illuminated by candlelight, grand churches with vaulted ceilings and ancient monasteries in remote locations. Such places may indeed provide the opportunity to stand on “holy ground,” but there’s a lot more to “holy ground” than meets the eye.

In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales observed:

“There is no place or thing in this world in which God is not truly present. Just as wherever birds fly they always encounter the air, so too, whoever we go – or wherever we are – God is truly present…Thus you must say with your whole heart and in your heart, ‘O my heart, my heart, God is truly here!’ Remember that God is not only in the place where you are but is also present in a most particular manner in your heart and in the very center of your spirit. Just as the soul is diffused throughout the entire body and is therefore present in every part of the body – but especially in the heart – so also God is present in all things but always resides in a special manner in your spirit. For this reason, David calls him ‘the God of his heart,’ and St. Paul says that ‘we live, and move and are in God.’ Therefore, in consideration of this truth excite in your heart great reverence toward God who is so intimately present in you.” (IDL, Part II, Chapter 2, pp. 84-85)

Today, do you want to stand on “holy ground”? Begin by looking in a mirror!

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(February 24, 2025: Monday, Third Week of Lent)

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“If the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it?”

Naaman – a great general and a foreigner – travels to far-off Samaria in the hope of being cured of his leprosy. This powerful man – a force with whom to be reckoned - is prepared to do whatever it takes, regardless of how superhuman or heroic, in order to curry favor with the God of Israel. When he finally reaches the home of Elisha, Naaman is told to simply wash seven times in the River Jordan. Period!

Naaman is furious! Such a remedy seems useless at best, insulting at worst. But then, someone in his retinue challenges his presumption that God can only work through extraordinary events and actions or that God is only interested in extraordinary events and actions. In effect, a servant says to Naaman, “You know, if the prophet had asked you to do something absolutely impossible, you would have done it in a heartbeat. When he asked you to do something incredibly ordinary instead, you couldn’t believe it. Get over it and go wash! Other than your pride, what do you have to lose?”

And the rest – as they say – is history.

There’s something of Naaman the Syrian inside each and every one of us. After all, don’t most of us – if not all of us – believe that if you really want something big – if you love somebody big-time – that you need to do something big in order to achieve something big – and that you have do something big in order to express your big-time love? Francis de Sales reminds us:

“Great opportunities to serve God rarely present themselves, but little ones are frequent.” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 35, p. 215)

Are you looking to do something good for God today? Rather than wasting your time waiting around for an opportunity to do something bigger than life, how about turning your attention to everyday life?

With big – that is, great – love!

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(March 25, 2025: Annunciation of the Lord)

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“Ask for a sign from the Lord your God…”

Who wouldn’t jump at the chance of making such a request of God? Who wouldn’t say “yes” to the opportunity for God to display His power for us and/or for someone whom we love? Yet, in today’s selection from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, Ahaz balks when given the opportunity of a lifetime and he takes a pass. He backs away, saying, “I will not tempt the Lord.”

What’s up with that? Perhaps Ahaz’s reluctance is rooted in his intuition that signs from the Lord often require changes in the one who asks for the sign in the first place! Under those circumstances, his circumspection makes a whole lot more sense. Remember the admonition? “Be careful what you pray for…”

In his Treatise on the Love of God, Francis de Sales wrote:

“Devout discussions and arguments, miracles and other helps in Christ’s religion do indeed make it supremely credible and knowable, but faith alone makes it believed and known. It brings us to love the beauty of its truth and to believe the truth of its beauty by the sweetness it diffuses throughout our will and the certitude it gives to our intellect. The Jews saw our Lord’s miracles (signs) and heard his marvelous doctrines, but since they were not disposed to accept the faith, that is, since their wills were not susceptible to the sweet and gentle faith because of the bitterness and malice with which they were filled, they remained in their infidelity. They saw the force of the proof, but they did not relish its sweet conclusion…” (TLG, II, Chapter 14, pp. 139 – 140)

Of course, God has been giving us signs of his love for us - regardless of whether we have asked for them or not - from the very beginning of time. Creation, itself – through which we were made in God’s image and likeness - is the first and fundamental sign of God’s love for us. As today’s Gospel reminds us, Jesus is the great reaffirmation of that first and fundamental sign of divine love, because Jesus not only redeems us, but through Jesus God also made himself in our image and likeness.

If you are so moved, feel free to ask God for a sign of his love and care. However, it is better that we be more moved to be signs of God’s love and care in the lives of one another.

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(March 26, 2019: Wednesday, Third Week of Lent)

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“Observe them carefully…”

What is it that we should be observing carefully? As we hear in the words on the lips of Moses from the Book of Deuteronomy today, it is God’s statutes and decrees that we are to observe carefully.

When we fail to observe God’s laws carefully – regardless of how large or how little God’s laws may be, as Jesus points out in today’s Gospel from Matthew – often times it is not because we are intentionally choosing to break them as much as – once again – we have managed to forget them, and in forgetting them we manage to lose sight of them altogether.

In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales wrote:

“Blind men do not see a prince who is present among them, and therefore do not show him the respect they do after being told or reminded of his presence. However, because they do not actually see him, they easily forget his presence and having forgotten it, they still more easily lose the respect and reverence owed to him.” (IDL, Part II, Chapter 2, p. 84)

Do you want to make progress in observing carefully God’s statutes and decrees? You can start - as the Book of Deuteronomy reminds us – by not allowing them to slip from your memory! As the saying goes: out of sight, out of mind.

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(March 27, 2025: Thursday, Third Week of Lent)

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“If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts…”

If you ask a group of people the question, “What is the worst thing that can happen to the human heart?” many folks will almost instinctively respond by answering, “When it breaks.”

However painful a broken heart may be, there is actually something far worse than can happen to a human heart - “When it hardens.”

The first reading from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah cites some characteristics or qualities frequently associated with hardening of the heart. These include:

·        Not paying attention or heed

·        Being disobedient

·        Turning ones back on God and others

·        Being stiff-necked

·        Not listening

·        Not answering

·        Being unfaithful

And in the case of today’s Gospel, we witness a particularly toxic variation on hardening of the heart: refusing to acknowledge the power of God at work in the lives of others, refusing to acknowledge that God can choose to work in the lives of others that often confound – and contradict – worldly wisdom.

Nobody wants a broken heart! However, a broken heart can serve as a kind of spiritual pulse. Wounded as we might be, at least it can remind us that we are still alive! By contrast, a hardened heart ultimately leads to one thing and one thing only - death.

If you hear God’s voice today, with what kind of heart will you listen?

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(March 28, 2025: Friday, Third Week of Lent)

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“Forgive all iniquity, and receive what is good…”

The words taken from the Book of the Prophet Hosea are an invitation for Israel to turn away from its collective hardness of heart and to turn their hearts back to where they belong - God. Hardness of heart – stubbornness of will, coldness of spirit – has brought ruin upon Israel. Through the prophet, God invites Israel to experience once again the fullness and fruitfulness that comes from refusing to place other gods before Him.

Hosea challenges Israel to believe that God is fully prepared to forgive all their iniquity. God will forgive them their sins. Israel is assured that God is once again willing to accept offerings from the people. God will accept their sacrificial goods.

On an entirely different level, however, these same words from Hosea cut both ways. After all, doesn’t God expect us to forgive the iniquities of others? Doesn’t God expect us to accept the good in others?

How can we forgive and accept others today, just as God forgives us and accepts the good in us…for all eternity?

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(March 29, 2025: Saturday, Third Week of Lent)

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"O God, be merciful to me, a sinner..."

We are told in today’s Gospel that the man who identified himself as a sinner – and who asked for the mercy of God – is the one who “went home justified,” unlike the Pharisee who in his smug self-absorption thanked God for making him better than most other people. While the latter puffed himself up, the former wasn’t necessarily putting himself down, but rather, he was simply speaking the truth.

In his Introduction to the Devout Life, Francis de Sales wrote:

“Nothing can so effectively humble us before the mercy of God as the multitude of his benefits. Nor can anything so much humble us before the justice of God as the enormity of our innumerable off3enses. Let us consider what God has done for us and what we have done against Him; and as we reflect upon our sins – one by one – so let us consider his greater graces in the same order. What good do we have which we have not received from God? And if we have received it, why should we glory in it? On the contrary, the lively consideration of graces received makes us humble, insofar as knowledge of these graces should excite gratitude within us.” (Select Salesian Subjects, 0048, p. 12)

The Pharisee and the tax collector are a study in contrast: one’s accounting of God’s graces in his life left him arrogant and aloof, whereas another’s accounting of God’s graces in his life left him humble and grateful.

Who would you rather be today?

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