Fifth Sunday of Lent

“I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live”

Jn 11, 1-45

Rev. Alexander Diaz

Today the word brings us to see Jesus, human and divine.  We don’t see only a Jesus who heals and resurrects at the same time, we see a Jesus who cries, who is perturbed by His friend’s death, a Jesus who has friends, a Jesus close to his people.  He was perturbed and wept over the loss of His friend.

This shows us the quality of human being that He was, His words become alive among us.   There are many people who, when the subject of death is approached, get shocked, they get depressed or they simply are afraid to touch the subject.  This will destroy them and submerge them in sadness. 

They try to prevent talking about death as much as possible.   Jesus gets close to us and gives us an answer, when we are confronted with the sad reality of death.  It is normal to falter when we lose a love one,  to miss him.  

It hurts us to see him return to the Father’s house,  it is normal to experiment all these feelings, we are not saying it is wrong to feel that way, even Jesus in today’s Gospel felt and do the same, what is not normal is not to accept this moment, which we all will go thru and face sooner or later. 

But that will only be a bridge that will mark the beginning of a new life.  So when we die, we will still live, spiritually speaking.   This Sunday’s Gospel makes us reflect in a profound manner about the subject of not only our corporal and biological death, but also the spiritual death that so many of us are submerged in our society.

Jesus goes to Lazarus tomb and tells them to “Take away the stone”.  Martha, sister of the deceased , answers: “Lord, by now there will be a stench, he has been dead for four days” Jn11,39).  The teacher is not worried about the stench, His only interest is to bring him out of the bad smelling and no sense tomb. 

The dead ones who need to come out of the tomb are those people who stop growing and have lost all hope.  Are the ones who live full of fears, when the Gospel tells us time and time again:  “Do not be afraid”.  Those are the people who have very easily thrown down the towel, when Jesus invites us to fight. 

To be dead in and buried in, is to be unhappy, is to allow love to die, to allow loneliness to win the fight, to be a coward, to be indifferent, the boredom of our routine, the absurdity of our past, the stubbornness of our pessimism and the in-satisfaction.

I do not get tired of saying, that many in this society do not live life to the fullest, they just  survive and agonize. There are many reasons that will make people lose their willingness to live.

There are many people who, instead of facing their serious problems would rather let themselves die.  I have always told myself, that to confront the difficulties and problems od this life, what I need to do is fight to overcome them.  It is sad and disheartening to see people be seized by loneliness, discouraged and disheartened; see how they suffer day by day. 

They get stock, they will not move neither interior or exteriorly, they constantly complain because they are unhappy but they are not willing to step out and go further than their boredom.    We have to read this Gospel remembering the prodical son (Lc ll) since the younger son “was dead and came back to life”.

 He came back to life because he was able to liven up, turn back his footsteps and move forward.  It does not pay to stand still and do nothing but complaint all day long.  You have to struggle, fight for what you want, you have to sacrifice to obtain what you desire.  

The suffering of many people could be avoided and diminished if they had the capacity to change, get up and go back to the Father’s house.  But no, they constantly complaint about their past, their present and their future.

To die, is to allow the different ways of dying (sins) present in the world, to win our earthly interior. To resurrect is to “stand up” and go back to the Father’s house. 

The words of Jesus impact me, when with authority, He calls out, from the tomb’s door.  The Gospel tells us that Jesus cried out in a loud voice:  “Lazarus, come out” (Jn. 11.43).  Jesus’ phrase is a spiritual order for us to come out of our inferiority complexes that do not allow us to love and be loved, to come out of our depressions, to come out of our exhausting and dying past, to come out of the frightening tomb to be a better person, to overcome our complexes and exceed ourselves, to live. 

To come out of that toxic environment that is killing us, an environment created by your own friends, coworkers, even your own family.  “GET UP”, Come out, breath the fresh air of the resurrection, of peace, of joy, of the goodness and the kindness you are losing.   Come out of the tomb, Jesus is telling you every day thru the people who love you.

Lazarus obeys and comes out, with difficulty, the Gospel tells us that “the dead came out, tied hands and foot with burial bands, and his face wrapped in a cloth”  So Jesus said to them: “Untie him and let him go”. (Jn. 11,44). Those words have a very deep meaning in this actual and modern world, because the modern world is full of people who are dedicated to suffocate, stifle others, they are the burial bands and cloth that will not allow Lazarus to freely come out. 

People who live their lives spreading the culture of death on them and others.  They are supporters, advocates of a world of death, they are the ones that normally and without regrets support the mother who is willing to abort, (kill) the child she carries in her womb.  They will advise a couple to get divorced, instead of fighting and struggling to save their marriage, they promote and encourage the idea of the terminally ill and the old be exterminated. 

These are people that in their project of life, if something does not come the way they planned, they will promote, as a quick way out, the auto elimination, suicide, as an expression of liberty.

 I will never support the culture of death, I will never agree with the ones who make death, breaching, breaking, dividing the solutions to their problems.  Do not become an accomplice to the well known “culture of death”.   The culture that Jesus brings us is, the culture of life, physical and eternal life. 

The resurrection that Jesus proposes to us, is of our hearts.  The person who is united to Christ will support and collaborate with Him so the interior of many human beings will be transformed and be, at the same time, able to transform others.  You and I were born to live, we were not born to die.  Remember and be aware of Jesus’ words: “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”.   Live in Christ.

Amen!!

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

“¿Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

Jn. 9, 1-38

Rev. Alexander Díaz

It is interesting to see how Lent advances, and what I love the most is to see how it develops; from the temptations, we pass to the transfiguration and from there to the encounter of Jesus with the woman from Samaria. 

The Liturgy, the readings of each Sunday center us towards the figure of Jesus. Finally, the whole period of Lent is oriented to remember the intense days of the Passover in Jerusalem, where Jesus lived His own personal Passover. 

The gospel of this Sunday marks another event in the public ministry of Jesus and is given thru the healing of a man who was born blind.  In the biblical text of today, to “see” is a symbol of faith. “To see” is to have faith. 

To recover the sight is to enter the world thru faith. To enter this world, it is necessary to be close to Jesus.  The blind man had never seen  the light, hence he received  many beatings, he had been knocked down many times throughout  his whole life, he had been led by people he didn’t know. 

Jesus gave him the gift of sight, to feel the real world, the freshness of light.  Faith is the refreshing element that helps us see clearly the problems of our lives, this is why it is necessary to hold on to Jesus’ hand, because He is the only one who can give us the light we need to go on. 

“To see” is to look at the world with Jesus’ eyes, to perceive life as the Lord wants it to be, not as we human beings have been demonstrating.   “To see” is to understand that to follow Jesus is not only to transmit a few concepts or some doctrines, for the most part repetitive and empty. To follow Jesus is to carry these concepts and doctrines deep down inside, to plant them with conviction in this life and thru this life others around us will also understand.  

I always tell the Catechists that the children, who are getting ready to receive the sacrament of first communion to show them with conviction, make them understand, that they live it, not to configure computers that do not understand what they are saying while praying to our Lord.

Many will say, the children are ready to receive first communion because they can pray, they know all the commandments and the sacraments.  To know all these is very important because it allows us to go further than what we believe in, but what is really most important is to live fully in Christ. 

 I am sure that if I ask the children they will answer with mathematical precision.  On the other hand, if I should ask them, who is Jesus, most likely for them, He is a stranger.  It is important to educate our children to know Jesus, be with Him face to face, without any nearsightedness that will frustrate our encounter with Him. 

To accept Jesus as the One sent by God, the One who is able to open our eyes to understand.  But to overcome our blindness, the lack of understanding, is a long process that each person must do on his/her own. 

In the center of all these events, are the Pharisees,  who doubt not only the miracle but the capacity of seeing that the blind man acquire.  The Pharisees represent the complete lack of understanding, the real blindness; they do not want to recognize Jesus, even though they have in front of them all the proof of His good deeds.

They only see that He healed this man on a Saturday and that, to them, is to disobey God.   Afterwards the blind man will step forward to confirm that “this man is from God” and he even began to “teach them”, giving lessons to the ones who were supposed to be the teachers of the Law. 

The positions have been reversed and that offends the Pharisees, they are not willing to learn, because they do not want to admit their blindness.  Our grandparents used to say, there is no worse blind, than the one who does not want to admit his blindness, that is how they represent their ignorance. 

To them is not enough to see, to have good eye sight and be able to distinguish the figures and forms.  There is also, another way of seeing, of knowing, another way to interpret the figures that are seeing. 

The Pharisees said that the man who was blind from birth was born blind as a result of sin and that is why he is unable to understand clearly what he sees.    I ask myself: ¿Why as human beings, we always have to judge and question God’s plan? ¿Why do we always have to be right, even when we are wrong?  ¿Why do we play with the signs that God sends us? 

Those are our real blindness, enclosed, inflexible, and without exits.   In today’s Gospel Jesus is able to transform a belief to a new valor.  Who did not perceived faith, now recognizes Him as the Messiah, now he can “see” the world and himself with a very different look.  

We need for Jesus to heal our blindness, which are more than one.  It is possible that our glance on others might be in a serious trend of conversion.  It is possible that your sincere desire to follow Christ produces magnificent possibilities of miracles towards the ones around you. 

But the blindness that must really worry you is your own, the one that does not allow you to see yourself as you are for God, for yourself and for the others. 

There are Christians able to perceive the blindness on other people but are not able to see their own darkness.  To be blind inside is not to find the path of hope, is to be an ignorant of God and oneself.  Jesus does not act on that person’s life because his mind is far away from His message; “To see” means to love. 

Whoever does not love, stays in absolute darkness, in the most profound death of his faith.   The fact is not to ask ourselves how much or how little we know about biblical texts, not even if we have deep theological knowledge. 

The question is if all I know will get me lovenly closer to God and others.   If I see myself growing in love, I am on the right path. If I perceive that my love for God and others decreases, then my blindness has grown. (Mario Santana Bueno)

We are Christians not only because we follow what Jesus said.  We are Christians because we follow Him in person.  We do not follow ideas, we follow Jesus, the healer and savior.   This gives me the impression that most of our brothers and sisters are not clear about faith.  They, as myself, need to be healed of their blindness.

Amen!!

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT

“Give me a drink.”

(Jn.4, 5-42)

Rev. Alexander Diaz

This Sunday's Gospel tells of Jesus' encounter with a Samaritan woman. The text allows us to discover the delicate way in which Jesus approached people who were in complex situations, and how he accompanies them to discover the truth and the meaning of life. This context is a rich inspiration for evangelization services.

The first point to clarify is the origin of the woman who talks to him: Does it have a special meaning that it is a Samaritan woman or is it purely accidental, not planned or a coincidence?

I'm pretty sure in most cases; encounters between people and God are often set to be accidental or coincidental. Conversations are often held on the streets, at home, hospitals ... When we go to Church we put ourselves before God.

This encounter turns more interesting because relations between Jews and Samaritans were very difficult, the Samaritans were regarded as semi-pagan, because their faith was mixed with beliefs from other cultures, and for this reason, the Jews did not allowed them to participate in the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, and their place of worship was on Mount Gerizim.

Jesus does not stand in solidarity with the rejection manifested by His people. Breaking down social barriers, strikes up a conversation with this woman, whom He treated with respect.

Through the conversation, Jesus leads this woman to find answers to her deepest concerns, and she ends up becoming a harbinger of the good news that changed her life: “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Christ?”

How much good is done when we talk calmly, when we look for answers and listen quietly. Jesus does not address this poor woman for her mistakes, does not criticize her, does not confront her, only shows love, respect, charity and above all, peace, for her to find herself. It would do much good to many of us if we were to listen and correct with peace and tranquility as Jesus does with this poor woman.

Jesus attitude towards the Samaritan woman shows the universality of His message of salvation, which is not restricted to a particular culture, but is offered to all men and women of goodwill.

“Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well.
 It was about noon.” Tired, thirsty... Like any human being, Jesus feels the consequences of climate and labor.

At that time, a woman comes to the well to get water and take it home. Jesus begins a conversation with the anonymous woman, perhaps as we have done many times while we wait at the doctor's office or waiting at the bust stop.

Despite the sensitive subjects that are entering into the conversation, the woman at any time feels uncomfortable, by her comments and reactions, He is encouraging her to step into her internal growth.

The tact with which Jesus is guiding this woman makes us think of some priests who violate the privacy of the faithful and abuse their vocabulary. It is worth stopping to consider how Jesus is discovered, with great pedagogical sense, his true identity.

What began as a seemingly coincidental encounter ends up as the revelation that the great hope of the people of Israel, the Messiah, was present among the people.

A central element of Jesus catechesis is the water. And slowly is unraveling its meaning and goes from the role in daily life to a deeper symbolism, which is the communication of divine life.

Water is the center at the Liturgy of the Sacrament of Baptism; the text that the minister reads about the sacrament reveals the meaning of the history of salvation.

So this story of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman, in which the WATER is the main focus, can be interpreted as a beautiful reflections on the meaning of baptism, which allows us to participate in the divine life within the community, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; 
but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; 
the water I shall give will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The water that leads to eternity. Today it is preached little about eternity. It is as if what really is worth to address must always be momentary. But the Gospel is an invitation to God's eternity. It often happens that preachers found themselves more comfortable talking about the human horizon instead of the promise of eternal life.

This way, Faith becomes another part of philosophy or in a suitable technique for personal growth. Eternity is not fashionable, eternity is God's time. Many of our anxieties nowadays are due to the lack of time, failure to reach everything that needs to be done. God is in eternity, outside of time, so that we realize that our life and relationship with Him is forever. God is never rushing us...

Worship in spirit and truth. The worship to God is not in Jerusalem or the temple of Gerizim, but in the attitude of faith. A person can spend all day stuck in a cathedral or in any church wanting to discover God, but their heart is spiritually thousands of miles away. To find Jesus in the tabernacle, in the Eucharist, or the Word is to first: find a place within us, find one or more reasons to give thanks for and have a spiritual ear that seeks to ensure that we do this in divine premises. I invite you to the sanctuary, the Eucharist and the Word not only in the walls of the church, but to be the base in your heart.

The true temple of worship is Jesus or the Word of Jesus that bears fruit in people's hearts through the Holy Spirit. God is above all places. Our real contact with God is through Jesus. Anyone who wants to find God will find him in Jesus Christ.

HOMILY FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

(Mt.17,1-9)

Rev. Alexander Díaz

We are celebrating the Second Sunday of Lent, and the liturgy of today is somewhat different from all other Sundays it invites us to sacrifice, mortification, and the change of life. This Sunday is most to reflect about our lives.

Today is the Tabor Sunday, of the Transfiguration, the glorious manifestation of Jesus to his friends, when they had finished climbing a massive mountain.

Jesus invites us to make a stop on the way, to accompany Him to a high mountain and see how it transforms before us; his face like the sun, his garments white as light.

I've always liked the image of Peter and the other apostles because I stop and think how impressive that situation would have been, that Peter always the most daring, could only think to say: "How good it is to be here!”

And then he added that they should make three tents, forgetting about his colleagues and himself. It must have been a shocking experience. It does not appear to have caused them fear at any moment or dread. Rather, the opposite. They heard or felt the voice of God inviting them to hear the voice of His Son, Jesus. Once again, the invitation to listen and open our hearts to the Word, which must always be the center of Christian life.

Everything happened on a high mountain. When I went there a few months ago, at this mountain, I began to think on how this route of Peter with His three closest friends, climbing the tall mountain on foot, must have taken them at least three to four hours, and they must have had a good physical preparation, because it is in this context that Jesus invites us to reflect on our lives.

Life is like that, it's like climbing a tall mountain, where we encounter so many difficulties, where we have to remove the stones and debris that obstruct our path to move forward and conquer that mountain.

When you climb the mountain and do not have the proper training there are times in which we desire to leave that achievement unfinished, and return to the plain path again, it does not require sacrifice and pain, it is easy to leave everything and live comfortably, but that is not to be a Christian, that's to be a coward who never conquers anything.

But after climbing the mountain, glory and the transformation follows, transfiguration, to which we are called, and why not say, forced by baptism, the big question today is:

Which are the transfiguring experiences in our live and our social environment?

This event is dormant when we are able to get so close to Jesus and go with him in the silence of prayer and contemplation in the Eucharist. Behold, the glory of God is neither more nor less than to enjoy our encounter with Jesus in fullness, to feel close to Jesus, who is friendly and loving. This way the love God has for us is revealed. The time we wasted looking and begging for love in all the wrong places.

This transfiguration is realized when viewed in the most poor and needy to the privileges of God; it’s also another experience of transfiguration. The disciples felt like beggars before the great event of salvation, they felt empty of salvation, and that’s why they wanted to stay and make three tents to continue the enjoyment. When you feel and experience the glory of God, you don’t want it to be over, we want it to continue and be full.

See my life as God sees me is another transfiguring experience because God is present in real life, as I am.

"Many times us Christians claim that God is in our lives, but not in our real life, but into the perfect life for which I am called. We fight because we are not as we would like to be and we get discouraged because we cannot have God to be in our ideal life. And this is true: God is never what we would be or how we want to be ... God the Father is just what we are today with our realities and miseries, our weaknesses and mistakes. If many brothers and sisters in faith would take into account this point they will suffer less and be more fulfilling Christians: God is not the ideal to which I am called. God is here today, at this moment, with me, accompanying me in my weaknesses, encouraging me, giving me life.

The Christian life is full of attempts of transfiguration, but it is those moments that mark the path we must follow. We can taste the greatness of God when we do not despair, hence the experience of the living Christ so he may not go unnoticed for so many. They are unable to capture the transfiguration because they have no time for God. "(Mario Santamaría Bueno, homilies for every Sunday, 2005)

As we need to change and transfigure our lives, by letting us get dragged by the Master, who wants to go with us to this difficult mountain of life, He truly walks with us, sadly many people doubt God because they do not see Him, we can perceive the Lord in his greatness, in his infinite love, in his glory. The Christian life is to live and tell others the experience the encountering of the Lord.

Brothers and sisters, on the way to the cross, glory and suffering intersect, human weakness and the greatness of God. It is a precise blend of what is human events. It’s a constant reminder to our weak humanity. There is no glory without the cross, there is no redeemed cross without Christ. Jesus, the Master, the brother, the friend, gives us grace and strength of transforming our lives, and walks at your side to be transformed into true children of God and true Christians.

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God”

Mt. 4, 1-11

Rev. Alexander Díaz

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, last Wednesday we started the wonderful, spiritual journey, similar to a great retreat which will last for forty days, in which we will stop to look and meditate about our fragile human reality, which weight us down and at times gets very difficult, since we are trying to follow the Gospel.

But this “human condition” fill us with temptations that makes this journey more difficult. Today’s Gospel talks to us about Jesus’ temptations in the dessert, a mystery that invites us to think that if He, being God, was not exempt from these temptations, we will not be either.

The Liturgy tells us that the Spirit took Jesus to the dessert, it is known by all of us that Israel, the place where Jesus was born and grew up is planted almost in the dessert, and I ask myself: ¿What sense does this leading makes, to a place where silence and death reside? Let us meditate a title bit on the meaning of “the dessert”.

The dessert is a place of silence, of loneliness, is getting away from all our daily activities, away from the noise and the superficialities. The dessert is an absolute place, a place of liberty, it places man in front of the fundamental things of his life.

In this sense, is a place of grace. By emptying himself of all worries, man finds his Creator. For this reason, to begin Lent, we are call to meditate on the steps Jesus took in order to begin His public life.

If we want to find answers to our own questions, we should keep quiet; we should go to the dessert and allow Him to talk to our hearts. The human being is always afraid of being alone, afraid of questioning himself, we are so use to the noise, to the hustle and bustle around us, so used to having others talk to us, but not do it on our own, for ourselves. The big things always begin in the dessert, in silence, in poverty.

We cannot participate in Jesus mission, in the mission of the Gospel, if we don’t go thru the experience of the dessert, without living its poverty, its hunger. The blessed hunger for justice, the one the Lord talks to us about in the Sermon of the Mount, could not be born, if the man is fed up with everything else.

But I want to make one thing very clear; Jesus’ dessert was not finished on these forty days. His last dessert, His extreme dessert, is when He experienced the loneliness in the agony of the Cross.

When everything seemed to be lost, when everything is dark and gloomy. And His mouth pronounced the words of Psalm 21: “My God, my god, why have you abandoned me”. In our lives, in order to conquer heaven, we will have to confront a lot desserts and storms, where we will also feel the same things that Jesus felt, we will be afraid, we will be sadden, we will feel affliction and pain.

We won’t be able to see clearly, everything will turn dark, there will be no way out, but when it is over, we have to understand that this is not the end, it is only a test, it is only another temptation we have to overcome without any problem.

When we enter the dessert, Jesus also enters the history of salvation of His people, Jesus enters this history in the temptations with His people. Jesus goes to the dessert to be tempted, He wants to participate in the temptations with His people and the world. He wants to carry our misery, defeat the enemy and open for us a path that will take us to the Promise Land.

After the experience in the dessert, Jesus goes into His life of ministry, His mission, preaching, healing, teaching, reconciling and relieving all suffering. With our own experience, we also confront temptation, we also carry out our mission of preaching, healing, teaching, reconciling and relieving all suffering in the world.

Finally, temptation is not a reality that we need to run away from, on the contrary, it is a reality that offers us a new opportunity to grow in our identity. If we are able, with God’s mercy, to be created in the image of Christ, regardless of the temptations, but in direct proportion of our strength of spirit against the lies that always accompany temptations.

Jesus took to the dessert with Him only His faith, His hope and His love. That was enough to fight any temptation used against Him and His power in a proud manner. Inside of our hearts and souls we have desires for God that need fresh air that need to be expressed.

In this new time of Lent we take the chance to face our desires of justice and reconciliation. The desire to relieve the suffering of our temptations. At any given time, when we have to face a confrontation, we know for sure that God is on our side.

That in this wonderful time of Lent, we too, become new men and women able to confront the reality of our lives and change something of ourselves. That the preaching of this Sunday’s gospel help us to change our attitude as we face the temptations that cross our paths.

Amen!!

LENT PERIOD LEADING UP TO EASTER

The meaning of Lent and Ash Wednesday

Every year the church summons us to an event that transcends our spiritual lives, it is interesting that the majority of Catholic Christians, committed, whether they practice or not, know or have heard more than once about lent, about Ash Wednesday and about these strong times in our Catholic Church. What I think is terrible, is that they do not know in reality what is the specific significance or the function these times have in the life of the Church.

I would like to explain thru this simple article the true significance of these strong times within our Church. A while back, some people came to me and asked questions which I will answer next.

Questions that I thought, many of them knew the answers. Even though to me they seem basic, to many they are not. The questions they asked me most are: ¿What is Lent? ¿When does it starts? ¿When does it ends? ¿What is the Easter Triduum? among others. Let me explain to you in a simple way the meaning of this time that is so special and so full of Grace.

¿What is Lent? Lent is a liturgical time for conversion, a time of sacrifice for Jesus. . The church marks this time to prepare us for the great celebration of Easter. It is very important to understand that Lent does not prepare us to celebrate Good Friday, as many of us think. It is not a special time to prepare us for Holy Week either.

These days which are full of Grace, prepare us to live in Grace and spiritual peace the great celebration of Easter. Let me explain a little bit more about the meaning of Lent. It is the time for us to repent of all our sins, time to change something in us and be a better person, to live closer to Jesus. It is a special time where the Church challenges us to sacrifice some part of us and live it intensely.

To look for the right path, to find ourselves in a clear, concise and sincere way. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer, through prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial for the commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Lent lasts forty days, it starts on Ash Wednesday and ends before the Mass of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday. I want this to be very clear, because there is confusion in regards to this point. It starts on Ash Wednesday, in which we all go to receive the ashes on our foreheads or on our heads, in a contrite and penitent manner.
A sign of mortification and repentance, sign of humility and desire to change our lives. On that day we are send out to do penance, with rigorous fasting and prayers, so in this way we can enter the exercise of Lent, and I say exercise because it is a great spiritual retreat in which we are call to enter in a personal way.

It is very important to meditate on these words that the priest or deacon say to us when he places the ashes on our foreheads, “Remember you came from ashes and to ashes you shall return” or “Repent and believe in the Gospel” both formulas are a clear reminder of what we really are, where we come from and where we will go back to, if we don’t change our lives to the life of Christ. “Remember” this word has a great meaning this day, remember who you are, remember you came from dust, remember you are mud, remember you are finite and without God you will return there.

Ash Wednesday calls us to a clear and frequent meditation of our interior and spiritual life. The Church advises us to make clear, strong, appropriate, willing and well lead reconciliation. The Mass readings are appropriate and allow us to find ourselves with God, to lead our life and work in prayer.

All along this time, especially in Sunday’s liturgy, we should make an effort to recover the rhythm and style of the true believer. We should live as children of God. It is appropriate to mention that this time is full of signs and symbols, inviting us to get into the heart of the times.

During these forty days, we don’t sing the “Glory” or the “Alleluia” during the celebrations of the liturgy. The only time we sing these two hymns is, if there is a special solemnity dedicated either to Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Example: The Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, which is celebrated the 25th of March, this celebration usually falls during Lent.

Other signs that can be seeing in our church are the purple curtains, the altar without flowers, which symbolizes the penance and austerity we are living at the time in sacrifice. The liturgical color is purple, which signifies mourning and penance. The priest and deacon use the color purple during Lent. It is a time of reflection, penance, spiritual conversion, time to prepare for the Paschal Mystery.

During Lent, Christ invites us to change our lives. The church invites us to live Lent as a change towards Jesus, listening to the Word of God, praying, sharing with our neighbor and doing good deeds. It invites us to live a series of Christian attitudes that will help us look more like Christ, since by the action of our sins, we drift apart from God.

Therefore, Lent is a time for pardon and fraternal reconciliation. Each day, throughout our whole life, we have to rid our hearts of hate, resentments, envy and jealousy, which goes against our love for God and our brothers and sisters. During this time, we have to learn to know and appreciate the Cross of Christ, at the same time, we also learn to take our own cross with joy, to be able to reach the glory of the resurrection.

¿Why forty days? The duration of Lent is based on the symbol of the number forty in the Holy Scriptures. The Biblical references about the forty days God sent rain in the great flood, the forty days the Hebrew people wandered in the dessert, the forty days Moses and Elijah spent in the mountain, the forty days Jesus spent in the dessert before the beginning of his public ministry, the four hundred years that the Jewish people stayed in Egypt.

In the Holy Scriptures, the number forty signifies the material universe, followed by zeros, it means the time our life on earth is marked by trials, difficulties and tribulations.

The practice of Lent goes back to the fourth century, when they had the tendency to impose it as a time of penance and renovation for the whole church, with the very rigorous practice of fasting and abstinence.

Followed very strictly at the beginning in the orient church, the practice of penance during Lent have been considerably relaxed in the occident, but it must observe a spirit of penance and conversion.

I hope I have clarified the doubts you might have about this wonderful time, in the next article we will talk about the meaning of fasting, prayer and alms giving.

If you have questions, concerns or would lit to suggest a particular subject, please do not hesitate to write me to my email: padrealexdiaz@gmail.com and I will be happy to answer, clarify and comment on your questions.

In Jesus Christ,

Rev. Alexander Diaz

NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

“NOT EVERYONE WHO SAYS TO ME, 'LORD, LORD,' WILL ENTER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN"

Mt 7, 21-27

Rev. Alexander Diaz

This Sunday’s liturgy, as previous ones, is challenging and defiant, above all, it is a clear invitation to a self and personal reflection, also it challenges us to listen attentively to the Word of God, to meditate carefully the Gospel, not to be deaf and indifferent to it

s’ call.

The Servant of God and in a few days, Blessed John Paul II, talking about this, affirmed the following: “Truly are “blessed those who listen to the word of God, keep it and obey it, because they will experiment this particular grace, in virtue of which the word of God will not fall among thorns, but on fertile ground, and will bring forth plentiful fruits. "The obedience of faith" (Rom. 13:26; see 1:5; 2 Cor 10:5-6) "is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals," (4) and freely assenting to the truth revealed by Him.

To make this act of faith, the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must precede and assist, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving "joy and ease to everyone in assenting to the truth and believing it." (5) To bring about an ever deeper understanding of revelation the same Holy Spirit constantly brings faith to completion by His gifts” “They are blessed because, discovering and obeying God’s will, they will constantly find the solid foundation of their lives” (Dei Verbum, 5).

And that is precisely what the modern man has lost and because he does not say it, he has forgotten the word of God, it is not to hear it, just by hearing, hence it helps us build our interior life, our life of faith, that starts to grow in our insides. Saint Paul talked to us about the Word of God being fulfilled from the Cross.

We are call to listen to this Word, which is One and indivisible, so we can really understand what God is telling us about our own history. It is hard to believe, that there are so many, that calling ourselves Christians, believing we are committed, are not able to build our own interior lives. It gives me the impression that we are not really listening or paying attention to the Word.

Jesus very clearly affirmed that, to listen to the message of life is very important and He affirms this with authority. “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them, will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came and the winds blew and buffeted the house, but it did not collapse. It has been set solidly on rock”. Mt 7, 24-25.

I like it a lot and it calls me to meditate on the word “wise”, because a “wise” person is the one who will take all precautions at hand to safeguard his life and the life of others. A wise person is the one that takes everything seriously and with precaution. Living here in the United States, I noticed that the laws in this country try to be very wise, very cautious in order to safeguard everyone’s life.

For example, transit rules, emergency exits, the capacity of public places, rules on environmental health, sometimes they seem to overdo it. But it saddens m

e that they are not wise enough in their spiritual or interior lives.

If we were wise in taking care of our souls, our spiritual and evangelical values, we would lead solid lives and be solid in our coexistence, we would have solid relationships and solid friendships, we would have a solid marriage and solid families, we would be solid in the construction of our future society, solid in our education with strong Christian values, but sadly, we are not wise in the spiritual, and God does not count in this aspect or in our lives.

Everything in this modern society is very important, even the animals, they are well taken care of and protected, they have rights, and I think that is great, I am not against any of that, but I ask myself, ¿Why are we not giving the same importance to the basic aspects of our lives? We do not protect the life of the unborn, we do not respect the life of the weak and defenseless, we kill the innocence of our little ones, we become impatient and do not tolerate spiritual values.

Everything is permissible, not to cause a trauma or a psychological problem, but it is prohibited to talk about God or to mention the name of Jesus in any form, be it in the public schools or any public place where our young ones go for social activities.

Because you cannot force them to believe, because we deprive them of their rights and liberty, faith gets involved with their development. I stop to think, how ignorant we are to what helps us to be better developed.

In one of the massacres brought about by students in one of the schools in this country, a teacher was shown in the news asking herself, what was wrong with the education system? She questioned herself, why all these things were happening? And she said: ¿Where is God when these things are taking place? And I thought to myself, we took Him out of the schools a long time ago, we will not allow Him to stay and share with us, we think that His presence in our children’s education is inappropriate because it will cause confusion.

It hurts to say it, but are we being unwised in the construction of the Kingdom, this may sound pessimist, but that is how I feel. I am heartbroken to know that the spiritual life is not taken seriously, that we are very unwise when we listen to the Word of Jesus, the Gospel is not soaking thru us as it should in our lives. We are building on sand, we are sinking our own existence. John Paul II in his last message to the Youth in preparation for the 20th World Youth Day will inspire them with these words that I think are very appropriate, not only for the young people but also for us:

“do not yield to false illusion and passing fads which so frequently leave behind a tragic spiritual vacuum. Reject the seduction of wealth, consumerism and the subtle violence sometimes used by the mass media. Worshipping the true God is an authentic act of resistance to all forms of idolatry. Worship Christ, He is the Rock on which to build your future and a world of greater justice and solidarity. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, th

e source of forgiveness and reconciliation, who can make brothers and sisters of all the members of the human family” (Castengandolfo August 6, 2004)

I want to end my Sunday reflection, asking you a simple question: ¿Where are you building your spiritual life? ¿Are you being wise in the listening of the Word and putting in practice the Gospel? Remember, it is worth to put in practice the great call Jesus is making us, to build His Kingdom. Help Him build it, you are call to be an authentic Apostle. Amen!!