This Sunday’s Readings

This weeks readings from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which uses the New American Bible.

Click here for THIS SUNDAY’S  readings

The Word on Fire

The Word On Fire – Fr. Robert Barron’s internet site offers many interesting insights into all things Catholic. Fr. Barron has a full library of homilies that he has prepared and we will be featuring a link here to his 15 minute reflections on this week’s readings.

This Sunday: “As Lent commences, we are given the great image of Noah’s Ark. This story is not just a charming tale that we tell to the kids; in it is contained the whole message of salvation, if we but know how to decipher the symbolism…..”

Click here to listen to Fr. Barron’s Homily for This Sunday

Fr. Scott Lewis

Fr. Scott Lewis is an associate professor of New Testament at Regis College in Toronto.  Each week Fr. Lewis writes a short reflection on the upcoming readings in the Catholic Register.

This Sunday: “Please click on the link below and then on the link for First Sunday of Lent… “

Click Here to read the rest of Fr. Lewis’ reflection for THIS SUNDAY

Fr. Greg Friedman

Sunday Soundbites is a weekly, 90-second radio homily based on the Sunday readings, written and read by Fr. Greg Friedman, O.F.M. Sunday Soundbites is also heard on Catholic radio stations around the country.

This Sunday: “Please click on the link below and then on the link for First Sunday of Lent.“

Click here to listen to This Sunday’s Soundbite.

The ChurchYear.Net site is a resource that provides short and highly readable information on the Church Liturgical Year.

Click here to read more about Lent

1.

-No person really decides before they grow up who they’re going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you’re stuck with.– Kristen, age 10

2.WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?

Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then.– Camille, age 10

3. HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?

You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.– Derrick, age 8

4.WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?

Both don’t want any more kids.– Lori, age 8

5.WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?

-Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.– Lynnette, age 8

-On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.– Martin, age 10

6.WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?

-When they’re rich.– Pam, age 7

-The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn’t want to mess with that.- – Curt, age 7

-The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It’s the right thing to do.- – Howard, age 8

7.IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED?

It’s better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.– Anita, age 9 (bless you child )

8.HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN’T GET MARRIED?

There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn’t there?– Kelvin, age 8

9.HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK?

Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a dump truck. — Ricky, age 10

 I have been talking a lot about kindness in the last few years. It’s such in a sense a humble word when we think about spiritual practices or if I think about 30 or more years ago when I began to be interested in a meditative path. We talked about things like enlightenment and revelation and kindness is much more humble. But I actually think kindness is what I’d really like to establish in myself. The Dalai Lama, when people ask him what’s your religion, says my religion is kindness. I think that’s a word that subsumes tolerance and forgiveness and graciousness and patience.

A Catholic Priest, a Baptist Preacher and a Rabbi would get together and someone made the comment that preaching to people isn’t really all that hard, a real challenge would be to preach to a bear.

They decided they would all go out into the woods, find a bear, preach to it, and attempt to convert it to their religion and later discuss their experiences.

Father Flannery, who had his arm in a sling, was on crutches, and had various bandages on his body and limbs, said, ‘I went into the woods and when I found the bear, I read him the Catechism. Well, that bear wanted nothing to do with me and began to slap me around. So I quickly grabbed my holy water, sprinkled him and, Holy Mary Mother of God, he became as gentle as a lamb. The Bishop is coming out next week to give him first communion and confirmation.’

Reverend Billy Bob was in a wheelchair, with one arm and both legs in casts, and an IV drip. He exclaimed, ‘Well brothers, you know that we Baptists don’t sprinkle! I wentand I found me a bear, then I began to read from God’s Holy Word! That bear wanted nothing to do with me. So I took hold of him and we began to wrestle until we came to a creek. So I quickly dunked him and baptized his hairy soul. Just like you said, he became as gentle as a lamb. We spent the rest of the day praising Jesus. . . Hallelujah!

The Priest and the Reverend both looked down at the Rabbi, who was lying in a hospital bed. He was in a body cast and traction with IVs and monitors running in and out of him. He was in really bad shape.

The Rabbi looked up and said: “Looking back on it. . . circumcision may not have been the best way to start.”

“Building prisons to address crime is a bit like building graveyards to address AIDS.”

These are the words of Father Greg Boyle, or Father G as his friends call him. Below is a short video that is at least 15-20 years old. It is interesting to hear former presidents and a governor talking about getting “tough on crime.”

A generation later all the USA and in particular the State of California have to show for their  efforts is many billions of dollars invested in prisons that are over flowing. Oh yea and the gang problem- still there.

Father Greg on the other hand spent that 20 years building Homeboy Industries. I have no idea how much money the government has put forward to help build lives for those touched by crime in LA’s toughest neighborhood but I am guessing it is less than a billion bucks.

As we boldly prepare to repeat the same mistakes here in Canada, as Prime Minister Steven Harper readies himself to have his clip added to this failed montage, it might be worth taking sometime to THINK AGAIN. Perhaps we should invest in serious ways to deal with the problems rather than constantly treating the symptoms.

As Father G says : “Building prisons to address crime is a bit like building graveyards to address AIDS.”

Cute Post-It Love Story! from hulahan on GodTube.com.

This Sunday’s Readings

This weeks readings from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which uses the New American Bible.

(Isaiah 43:18-19, 20-22, 24-25; Psalm 41; 2 Corinthians 1:18-22; Mark 2:1-12)

Click here for THIS SUNDAY’S  readings

The Word on Fire

The Word On Fire – Fr. Robert Barron’s internet site offers many interesting insights into all things Catholic. Fr. Barron has a full library of homilies that he has prepared and we will be featuring a link here to his 15 minute reflections on this week’s readings.

This Sunday: “Paul tells us that with Jesus Christ it was never yes and no, but only yes. This means that in Jesus all the promises made to Israel have come true. I will tell you why this great Yes of Jesus still matters for us….”

Click here to listen to Fr. Barron’s Homily for This Sunday

Fr. Scott Lewis

Fr. Scott Lewis is an associate professor of New Testament at Regis College in Toronto.  Each week Fr. Lewis writes a short reflection on the upcoming readings in the Catholic Register.

This Sunday: “Humanity has a huge memory problem. On the one hand, we are far too quick to forget things that should be the source of wisdom. It is very easy to sweep unpleasant or painful actions and events under the mental carpet and refuse to learn from our mistakes. On the other hand, often the problem is just the opposite: an overactive memory and a refusal to let go of the past. People (or groups) can cling to traumas and injustices and continually relive them. They can engage in a lot of inner self-flagellation and self-hatred….. “

Click Here to read the rest of Fr. Lewis’ reflection for THIS SUNDAY

Fr. Greg Friedman

Sunday Soundbites is a weekly, 90-second radio homily based on the Sunday readings, written and read by Fr. Greg Friedman, O.F.M. Sunday Soundbites is also heard on Catholic radio stations around the country.

This Sunday: “We live in a skeptical age. When something is advertised as “new” we want proof. So today’s first reading is challenging: God says, “See, I’m doing something new!” If you heard God say that to you today—besides wondering where the voice was coming from—would you believe it?”

Click here to listen to This Sunday’s Soundbite.

The ChurchYear.Net site is a resource that provides short and highly readable information on the Church Liturgical Year.

Click here to read more about Ordinary Time

Here is a summary of the book:

As a pastor working in a neighborhood with the highest concentration of murderous gang activity in Los Angeles, Gregory Boyle created an organization to provide jobs, job training, and encouragement so that young people could work together and learn the mutual respect that comes from collaboration. Tattoos on the Heart is a breathtaking series of parables distilled from his twenty years in the barrio. Arranged by theme and filled with sparkling humor and glowing generosity, these essays offer a stirring look at how full our lives could be if we could find the joy in loving others and in being loved unconditionally.

It just seems to me that Fr. Greg has found a way to get serious about crime as opposed to the easier path of simply getting tough.

Below is a short video. Take a few minutes to meet Fr. Greg as he talks about Homeboy Industries.

Looking up to God by reaching down is the title I have chosen for today’s homily. Many people pray by looking up to heaven. There is nothing wrong with this. However, we often fail to realize that our God is all around us and to see him we may well have to reach down with compassion.

How do we do this? To start we need to define the word compassion.

In his bestselling book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, Father Gregory Boyle defines for us what it means to live a life based on the idea of Christian compassion.

Father Greg is a man who has dedicated his life to those many in society consider to be disposable and without worth. He lives among and works with gang members in the heart of Los Angeles, California.

Fr. Greg or G-Dog as his young friends in the projects call him, was teaching a class in a maximum security prison. He noticed that his students, 15 men doing life sentences, used the words sympathy, empathy and compassion interchangeably. He decided to ask them to define each of these terms.

One lifer jumped into the conversation immediately and offered that sympathy was when your friend’s mom dies and you visit him saying; ”Spenser sorry to hear about your moms.”

A second member of the class offered a definition for empathy. He told the group that empathy is going to your friend whose Mom has just died and putting your arm around him consoling him with words like; “Spenser sorry to hear about your Moms, my Moms died 6 months ago- I feel your pain bro.”

Then there was silence. Nobody wanted to take a crack at defining compassion. After a few awkward moments of quiet one of the guys, a lifer down 25 years spoke up: “Well now”, he said, all eyes on him, shaking his head, “Compassion – that’s ‘sum-thin’ altogether different.” He paused and then offered humbly-“Compassion is what Jesus did…God is compassion.”

Father Greg writes that compassion was the wallpaper of Jesus Soul- the contour of his heart.

To fully appreciate the depth of our Lord’s compassion it is important to understand what it meant to be a person with leprosy in the first century of the modern era.

We get a good sense of this from today’s first reading from the Hebrew book of Leviticus.

“The one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare,
and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’

Once a sore appeared the person afflicted would know life as they knew it was over. They would have to leave their family and the rest of their life would be filled with suffering and unbearable shame.

In the gospel we find Jesus wandering around Galilee. He is likely surrounded by his disciples and those who simply are curious about this itinerant preacher whose fame is growing through the region.

Then a voice calls out:

“Jesus if you wish, you can make me clean.”

It is out of Christ’s compassion that one of the most compelling scenes in all of the New Testament unfolds before our eyes.

“Moved with “compassion”, Jesus stretched out his hand, and touched the man, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.”

This person that the entire town considered to be untouchable, unclean and a sinner was cured. The most powerful image in this story takes place at the moment Jesus reached down and touched the man. Christ touched the untouchable and in doing so he made himself “ritually unclean” in the eyes of the religious authorities.

This would have been an unbelievable scene to those watching. The shame-filled man was able to stand tall again. He was free to re-start his life.

Shame is a deadly burden for anyone to carry. It drains the life from the one judged to be untouchable.

The gospel story offers us at least two fundamental lessons.

The first teaching, for most of us anyway, is that there will be times when we will do something we regard as shameful. This can start at a very young age. We find ourselves judged by those around us as unworthy. Many of us are our own harshest critics. We may have come to see ourselves as the one with leprosy.

The gospel challenges us to have the courage and the trust to yell out to Jesus – “Make me clean.” The trust comes in believing there is nothing we have ever done that would make us untouchable to Jesus.

Like most of the great stories about the itinerant preacher Jesus, there is a second challenge. The first is placing us in the shoes of the leper. The second test is to take the place of Jesus in the story.

Many of us look up to pray to God. We are convinced that Heaven is up. The reality however is that our God, our brother Jesus is everywhere and one of the best ways to find him is to conquer our fears and need to pre-judge others and to reach down and touch the one others consider to be untouchable.

Father Greg concludes that compassion is about living in the world where God is.

Who in your immediate family or circle of friends has been cast out and branded as the “bad seed”? Most likely they have earned this designation for repeated bad behaviour.

For you young folks, this outcast may be a classmate who is often alone and the subject of jokes and pranks because the group has branded them as weird or different.

Being compassionate to those closest to us is often much harder than extending a helping hand to a complete stranger. One of the reasons for this is that we risk being judged by others as “ritually” unclean- just as the religious authorities would have branded Jesus after he touched the man with leprosy.

We end mass now with the words: Go in peace glorifying the Lord by your life.

We can find peace by calling out to Jesus when we feel shame and need help.

When we are at peace we can glorify the Lord by having the courage to go out into the World where God is and by reaching down and touching our brothers and sisters in need.