Lent as Training

 

SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

14-15 February 2026

Church of Christ the King

Sir 15:15-20

1 Cor 2:6-10

Mt 5:17-37

 

       In case you missed it or are unaware, this coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, the 40 day penitential season in which we in the Church prepare to celebrate Easter, which is to say to enter fully into the great mystery of the saving Passion and Death of our Lord and His glorious victory over sin and death in the Resurrection.

       Thinking about Lent and Easter, I saw a podcast the other day from two laymen, canon lawyers, whom I respect. Both are good Catholic men, husbands and fathers; the one of them is a hopeless baseball fanatic. In his commentary he compared Lent to spring training for a baseball team. It’s not all wrong as a description, or as the old adage goes: No pain, no gain! Being at the top of your game demands diligent and thorough preparation and from a Catholic point of view that translates into a demand for doing penance, asceticism, or self-denial.

       My generation, older folks, all had their stories to tell about their childhood experiences of Lenten penance. Abstinence, giving up meat on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays of Lent, was nothing exceptional back then, because that was what we did all year round on Fridays in remembrance of the Lord’s Passion. Nowadays depending on how you live Fridays as a Catholic, it might be more of a big thing to watch your Friday eating habits. Different back then, not abstinence but fasting was what caught our attention because other than not eating in preparation for receiving Holy Communion, from midnight on when I made my first Communion and shortly thereafter for three hours before Communion and more recently then the present one hour fast from everything but water in preparation for receiving Our Lord, fasting was really what made Lent for us. Different than the Communion fast, what fasting meant was not eating between meals and generally reducing our food intake to one modest meal, with two other meals which when taken together should not equal that principal meal. Small children and the elderly were not obliged to fast, nor were the sick or people of a weak constitution.

       Spring training! Think about it for a moment. My now adult nieces are probably the first generation of girls in high school to do weight training for sports… and why? To enhance performance, yes, but most particularly to reduce injuries. Conversely, in the spiritual life penance plays or can be explained as playing an analogous role and that since forever. From earliest times in the Church, the hermits, the monks and nuns of the desert were our spiritual athletes. These heroes of the Church from earliest times set a pattern for all of the baptized. By disciplining themselves, by depriving themselves of food, among other things, by taking more time for God in prayer, they demonstrated their longing for Christ and His Kingship in their lives. The monastic tradition carried that on year round and the rest of the baptized took time to emulate their example of seeking the Lord through fasting and prayer during the season of Lent.

       Ash Wednesday and Lent! As individuals, yes, but more importantly as a Church, as God’s People, we enter now into our spring training. We begin our quest for the Promised Land, for leaving behind the fleshpots of Egypt so as to set our hearts more firmly on the life of the world to come.

       Ash Wednesday is not a Holy Day of Obligation, but if you have an opportunity to get to Mass that day, make the sacrifice. In every and any case, it’s time to start your spring training, to take on penance for the sake of renewing your heart and mind by joining the Church in disciplining your body. If you don’t have a regular habit of going to confession, start looking now for an opportunity to make a good confession in preparation for more fully entering into the celebration of Easter.

       No doubt some of you are well aware of your duties as a Catholic Christian and know that the Precept binds you to confess only in case of mortal sin, and then to do so as quickly as possible, or otherwise once a year. Pushing the spring training thing a bit, I would urge you to have a better standard of performance. To seek to emulate the heroes of our faith who, by penance and prayer, sought to follow, to run eagerly after the Lord of Life. Happy Lent!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Light for the World

 

SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

17-18 January 2026 – St. Therese Church

 Is 49:3, 5-6

1 Cor 1:1-3

Jn 1:29-34

       It is too little… for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

       Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.

       Between the first reading from the prophet Isaiah and our passage today from John’s Gospel for Sunday of this 2^nd Week in Ordinary Time, I think we are given an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be Catholic and hopefully thereby to recover a fuller sense of the mission of the Church for the sake of the life of the world. Ordinary Time, “green time” if you will (as opposed to purple or white, the other dominant seasonal colors), is a good time to do just that, as in Ordinary Time we are not focusing so much on the great mysteries of our faith, as we just did in Advent in preparation for Christmas, or as we will soon be doing during Lent in preparation for Easter. Let us see then for a moment if we can kind of get a glimpse of what Jesus is all about in His Person and Mission and what that means for me as a follower of Christ, as a Catholic Christian.

       Looking then in the Gospel to St. John the Baptist, who professed Jesus as the Lamb of God, what can I say not only about the Lord but about the significance of my baptism into Jesus Christ? What am I called to, who am I called to be by my baptism into Christ? Jesus, the one and only Son of God, Who came into the world, binds me by water and the Holy Spirit into that mission which, as we read in the prophet Isaiah today, was prefigured by Israel and finds its fulfillment in Jesus, as proclaimed in the Law and by all the Prophets.

       I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

       Try to imagine yourself as a light to the nations! Not easy as most of us cannot really see ourselves as playing an important role in the life of the world. We’re just ordinary folks, right? We cannot imagine ourselves as a light to the nations in Christ’s place. And yet, if you read the lives of the saints, especially of the early Roman martyrs, it becomes clear that beyond the clergy who suffered martyrdom, we are often talking about girls and young women, who put Christ first in their lives, embracing virginity and refusing marriages, advantageous marriages often with pagans. Lots of early Christians suffered death themselves simply for giving a decent burial to others who had made the supreme sacrifice. Their witness of decency and virtue was undeniable light for the world.

Back in the 1960’s there were official documents out of Rome which referred to the Church, to Catholics, as experts in humanity. Most lay people and clergy were embarrassed by such talk back then and today very few would not reject it as nonsense. I think such talk can lead to a misunderstanding of what it means simply to live the Christian life. Granted from the point of view of reputation, the Church in our day and in our country is pretty well beaten up. An awful lot of dioceses have had to declare bankruptcy to pay off legal claims precisely for their lack of good sense in dealing with frail humanity. But Baptism and the personal witness of heroic virtue is and always was what brought the light of Christ to the world. The truth is that day in and day out we still hear accounts of heroic husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, who sacrifice themselves for their families, live out their vocation heroically, perhaps foregoing chemotherapy to be able to carry a baby to term.

       I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

       Where else does or where should this grand calling of being a light to the nations or an expert in humanity play itself out? Where I ask in a political or social world very much dominated by relativism and opportunism, in a world distorted by the pet ideologies of unbelieving people who not only claim to impose their personal preferences on others but refuse to admit consequences for their actions or choices. It is in such a world that the heroic virtue of ordinary Catholics breaks through and scatters the clouds of ambiguity.

       I don’t want to put on any sort of life seminar for you but very simply to invite you to spend time quietly on the Lord’s Day, allowing for a bit of inspiration and recognition of what are the all-important things in life.

       I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

       We are exhorted to let our light shine for all to see. That light is basically the heroic virtue of personal self-sacrifice for the sake of building up Christ’s Kingdom starting from home. Neither material wealth nor power count for much in the grand scheme of things. Rather, may Jesus Christ be praised!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Baptized for Justice Sake

 

THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD

10-11 January 2026 – Christ the King

Is 42:1-4, 6-7

Acts 10:34-38

Mt 3:13-17

       A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench, until he establishes justice on the earth…

       With its choice of first reading from the prophet Isaiah the Church today associates the Baptism of the Lord with His establishment of justice upon the earth. The Lord Jesus came to bring justice to our world, and we are baptized into Christ’s Baptism and therefore into His mission for the salvation of the world. As the prophet Isaiah proclaims, Christ our Savior came “to bring light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness”. Justice: how should we define it? It is not so much what is our due, but what God has willed for us from all eternity.

We know from our catechism that unlike us, frail human beings, Jesus as God did not need Baptism to be freed from Adam’s sin, from original sin, but rather Jesus’ Baptism by John in the Jordan points to the other essential aspect of this first of the sacraments by which we are washed clean of sin and united with Christ. Baptism not only opens the gates of heaven for us individually, but it also unites us with Christ in His work of bringing light and life to the world. We are freed from sin so that in and through us, in and through the Church, in Christ all might be saved, A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench, until he establishes justice on the earth… Not what is owed to us, but what is willed for us by God.

Today, with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord we bring our celebration of Christmas to its completion. In His birth at Bethlehem Christ was made manifest by the message of a angel to the shepherds and by His birth announced also to the Magi through the appearance of a star, at the wedding feast in Cana Christ showed Himself by turning water into wine, and Jesus when baptized by John in the Jordan, the heavens opened, and the Spirit descended upon Him like a dove, and God spoke from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

The Church has always taught the urgency of Baptism. That if we truly love our children, we will bring them to the cleansing and life-giving waters of the font of Baptism as soon as possible after their birth. We certainly want to fill them with Christ’s saving light, but we also want to empower them to cooperate in the work of redemption and hence the urgency, that all might be saved, first and foremost those whom we love. For a long period in the history of the Church, Catholics did not even wait until the mother was out of bed after giving birth to bring the baby to church for Baptism, which partly explains the more prominent role played by godparents in the pre-conciliar rite of Baptism. As often Mom wasn’t able to be there. Not even a century ago, when Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) was born on Holy Saturday, April 16, 1927, it was not thought extraordinary that his father carried the baby directly to church that same day to be baptized with the new Easter water blest that very morning. Little Joseph’s parents, like many others back in the day, wasted no time in giving their son to Christ and freeing him from the power of darkness.

Our second reading shows St. Peter in the house of a Gentile, of a Roman named Cornelius. The Book of Acts shows the Holy Spirit at work here as well for the sake of justice, “to bring light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness”. Justice: I repeat not so much what is owed to us, but what God has willed for us from all eternity.

On this feast of the Baptism of the Lord, I would invite you to take time to sit quietly with the wonder really of your own Baptism and of your destiny in Christ. In Baptism, we like Christ are anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power to enlighten our world. Cornelius, against the common wisdom that Christianity was a Jewish thing was inspired to send for St. Peter and have him brought to his home. At the preaching of Peter, the Holy Spirit came down on all those gathered there and Peter understood that he was to baptize them. Let us be attentive to the Spirit Who never stops manifesting God’s will for the Baptism of His people. That God’s will would be manifest in justice, and that all people might know the saving power of God poured out in Baptism in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

The Saving Power of God

 

TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY

IN ORDINARY TIME

Saturday, 11 October 2025, St. Katherine Drexel

2 Kgs 5:14-17

2 Tm 2:8-13

Lk 17:11-19

 

The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.

Don’t mind me, but I have to express my conviction that declarations like this one from the psalms, from our responsorial psalm today don’t really make enough of an impression upon us, when we sing or recite them. The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power. That is especially true in terms of our understanding and profession of how He makes His power known to all the ends of the earth. Let’s take the example of miraculous healings.

       The horrible disease of leprosy figures big in both our first reading from 2 Kings and in the Gospel passage we just read from St. Luke chapter 17. We may not have run into this horrible illness in our own experience, but for most of human history up until very recently, leprosy was considered a death sentence after long suffering and social isolation for those who contracted it. The infection was very much feared. With that in mind, it is fair to ask why the Gospel of Luke doesn’t record a bigger reaction to Jesus healing those 10 lepers.

Even today, we may have heard of leper colonies in southeast Asia or Africa, places where the infected went to die in misery. Perhaps we know of Damien De Veuster, popularly known as Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai (born in Belgium on 3 January 1840 – and died in Hawaii on 15 April 1889). He was a Belgian Catholic priest in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He ministered to a leper colony in Molokai, Kingdom of Hawaii, from 1873 until his death in 1889. After 11 years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, Father De Veuster himself contracted leprosy. He continued with his work despite the infection but finally succumbed to the disease at only 49 years of age. De Veuster was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 11 October 2009.

       On this Sunday the Naaman the Syrian we read about in 2 Kings was a military general, a warlord, who had the confidence of his king and could pretty well write his own ticket. But nothing to do, He was a leper. A little maid of his wife, captured in a raid on Israel offered this tough guy the first hope of healing or cleansing from this malady. But as Sacred Scripture tells us he had to learn from this little slave girl and from his own servants that tough as he was and despite his commanding presence, Naaman could not set the terms for his own healing and salvation. He could not give orders to the one true God. Elisha, the man of God, pointed the way for him which was to be achieved through humble obedience: “Go and dunk yourself in the Jordan River seven times”.

       In the Gospel, we hear that the 10 lepers calling to Jesus on the road had a similar experience. “Go show yourselves to the priests!” All ten were healed, but only the Samaritan recognized that their healing was bound to confession of faith in Christ: your faith has saved you.

       The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power. What should be your Sunday meditations? How should you reflect on God’s power and His action in our world and specifically in your life? Think, if you will, especially about how renouncing stubborn, habitual sin in your life can free you for true happiness in this life and in the next. Spend some quiet time this Sunday considering how through obedience to all of God’s commands and through the humbling experience of making a good and honest confession (“Go and dunk yourself in the Jordan River seven times”) can free you and heal you from what keeps you outside the circle of the fullness of life already now and forever. “Go show yourselves to the priests!” That is Jesus’ command and the pathway to true happiness and holiness.

       Praised be Jesus Christ!

 PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Restoring justice

 https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/7838-official-vatican-report-dismantles-traditionis-custodes

https://remnant-tv.com/video/mass-deception-vatican-push-to-cancel-latin-mass-based-on-fake-news

The Little Church

A dear friend wrote to chide me for having slacked off on writing of late! I can't say as I mind his nudge in the least and by chance it pushes me to offer a book recommendation and kind of a little challenge with this quote from Joseph Bevan:

Looking back, I do not think that my family was as happy as God wanted it to be, because the spiritual side of our existence was sidelined and ignored. I do not blame Ma and Pa for this, because they trusted the teachers and clergy of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, they were badly let down, and the result is that a whole generation of unbelievers has now been spawned by my brothers and sisters. It is still a mystery to me how my parents were so blind to the unfolding crisis and often uncritically supportive of some of its worst results. [Bevan, Joseph. Two Families: A Memoir of English Life During and After the Council (p. 23). Os Justi Press. Kindle Edition.]

You can debate all you want about Bevan's analysis of the crisis in the Church and even remain pensive about whether passing on the faith to your children is reducible to Mom and Dad witnessing to their children their own love of the Lord, but Joseph convinces me even further that the faith will not be passed on if not within the family.

Bevan's "memoir" contrasting his parents' family and that of him and his wife Claire couldn't be more respectful, offering judgments which do not lack in the slightest the love and respect in which he holds his big, talented and broken family.

What's my challenge? To move beyond denial to embrace the present brokenness of the Catholic Church. I will leave it at that and see whether I can find the words and the heart to compose a more detailed and pointed analysis of the situation.

Pray for me as I do for you!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Happy Septuagesima Sunday!

In my Father's House

 

THE HOLY FAMILY

OF JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH

December 29, 2024 – Dell Rapids

Sir 3:2-6, 12-14

Col 3:12-21

Lk 2:41-52

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

       Today, on this year’s Holy Family Sunday, we have a lot to think about and to pray over, because even here in God’s country our world is not exactly in order when it comes to family life. The ideal of the family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph seems unattainable as a model for our families. That must not be so. I would insist that Holy Family Sunday is a time to pray for Catholic families and for the grace of the Lord’s aid in favor of our little church, the normal family, the building block basic to the greater unity which is the Church for the sake of the life of the world.

Sadly however, these days Jesus, Mary and Joseph at Nazareth, who should be our hope and inspiration, indeed do seem out of reach as a model. In our world, the classic mom, dad, and children family of my childhood has become somewhat of the exception to the rule. Sadly, we know much more today about the struggles of single parent homes. Divorce has become way too common, but even before we get to that point, young people seem hesitant to marry. People will tell you that the reason young people are not marrying in the Church these days and are not founding families is because everything has become so expensive. They say that buying a home since COVID is out of the question for most young folks; renting has become the norm. As odd as it seems, the couple’s second salary hardly seems to cover the cost of childcare. You’ll hear people say that they need two sources of income just to get by, and that they can’t afford children because a big van or SUV is too expensive and with all those car seats it is just too much to deal with. Lots of years ago I can remember Mom saying that no couple can raise more than 4 children (I am the oldest of 8), after the fourth she said wisely and proudly that the older children need to help out with the younger children. Granted, seat belts are important, and car seats make sense, but we used to travel all together in the family car with a younger child on each older child’s lap, so we had a double row in the back seat of a regular 4 door sedan, and that being not a new car but a very used vehicle. Even so I had the impression that we wanted for nothing and were very happy.

       Grandma would come and visit for about two weeks at some point each winter and she spent a goodly part of her stay patching jeans, sewing on buttons, darning socks, maybe putting a new zipper on some of the things which had piled up in the mending basket since her last visit. I felt loved and cared for and had no understanding of what it meant to go hungry, even though soft drinks and snacks were a rare occurrence, maybe for a little family New Years party. My point would be that family could not and still should not be factored around something like buying power for luxury items. Think about it!

       Today is Holy Family Sunday! What is it all about? No doubt many people would just assume that this would be the day to talk about behavior issues. They might even quote today’s passage from Luke Chapter 2 and say: see, that’s the way you should behave, obedient to your Mary and Joseph like Jesus was at 12 years of age. The boy Savior speaks up: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.

       Even at age 12 the boy Jesus, the Lord Jesus, even though He knew better than Mary and Joseph just Who He was and what He was about (“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”). Even so, He respected the order of things. He respected family. He didn’t stay behind in Jerusalem at age 12 when Joseph and Mary came looking for Him.  “He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them…”

       Could Jesus not have started His public ministry at age 12 instead of waiting until age 30? I suppose so, even if it would have been a bit odd. Whatever the Lord Jesus would have done, He would have done rightly, but we have been gifted with the message and mystery of His humble but terribly normal life at Nazareth a pattern for family life, for mutual respect among members of family and of course of obedience.

       Holy Family Sunday should be that time, and rightly so in the midst of our celebration of the birth of Christ, when we come to appreciate just what is true happiness. True happiness in life has something to do with being grateful for things as they are and treasuring each other at home.

       On this Sunday, pray for the happiness of your own family, pray for healing for broken families, and pray that young people might not shy away from marriage and family, from giving the gift of life and the only real happiness which matters.

Praised by Jesus Christ!

 PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI