Lent , the New Evangelization, and Pope Francis

It is Lent. We are walking in the desert with Jesus. We are in the middle of the desert, watching him move closer and closer to his ministry and ultimately to his passion and death followed by the resurrection.  Despite the suffering our sweet Jesus went through for us we carry inside of us a quiet, sometimes hidden, joy. A joy that knows about the resurrection. A joy that has been very hidden for quite some time, but it is there.

This weekend I learned that two thirds of the world's population still does not know Jesus. They are still walking in the desert of their own lives, thinking perhaps that they are alone. All alone. Jesus is with them and they do not know it !  We have to tell them !

It is our baptismal call to evangelize and witness to others. God is calling us today, this very day, March 17, 2013, and all the days in the future, to do our best to bring the new evangelization to the world.

Now we have a great new helper to do this work - POPE FRANCIS ! Isn't that awesome?  I don't know about you, but Pope Francis has given me so much more hope for our Catholic future! All of a sudden, things don't look so bleak and I feel we can handle anything that comes against the church now because the Holy Spirit has heard our cries for help and has sent us Pope Francis.

I have been quite despondent prior to Pope Francis coming into our lives. In my area, the church has seemed so depressed - like a big heavy wet cloud hanging over us. But now, Pope Francis, chosen by the work and power of the Holy Spirit, has been given to us, and the cloud is starting to disipate.

I hope all of our priests are encouraged by this as well because they too need a strong, joyful leader. Even our priests have looked so burdened and sad and now....now....the wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing around the globe and I feel like the new evangelization will really take off now.

Yes, we are walking in the desert with Jesus. Lent is still here, but can you also see the oasis in the distance? Can you see that soon the suffering will be over and Easter will be here?

I can.

Prodigal Sons and Daughters

There comes a time in each of our lives when we realize that we are, or have been, a prodigal son or daughter. As sinful humans, we think at a much lower level than God does. Our reactions to life situations can sometimes be very impulsive and our choices can be poor. None of us can escape that because we are frail human beings and far from perfect. I believe we all have times when we run from our Heavenly Father – just like the prodigal son did in Sunday’s gospel (3-10-13). Can you think of a time when that was true for you? I can and I’m going to take a risk and share it with you now…..


I am a cradle Catholic. I have always believed in God. There have been good times and rocky times in my journey. I remember once, when I was 15, I was so angry with God that I told him to get out of my life. I remember the day: I was walking home from school, madder than a wet hen about a lot of things and hurting really badly. I was ranting to God from the depths of my teenaged heart. It was a rainy day, gray and cold, late fall. I remember stopping and looking into a puddle and watching my tears fall into the puddle. I remember telling God that I was done with Him, I hated Him, and wanted nothing more to do with Him. I meant it too. Then, BAM !!!! In an instant my world changed. It was if a door slammed shut. There was a sudden deep emptiness in my soul. Such blackness. God had listened. He let me go. I felt it. He let me run away like the prodigal son. Something inside told me I had just made a huge mistake, but I was so angry that I just kept going…further and further away from God.  (Perhaps you experienced something similar?)


For the next few months I made some stupid decisions including one that almost cost me my life. Like the prodigal son, I eventually got tired of running and cried out to God. He heard me, sent out angels to help, and I found the courage to head back to Him. I expected to be greatly chastised and perhaps not welcomed back at all. But….God took me back – without hesitation. I realized He was waiting for me to come to my senses and learn a few lessons. I apologized profusely. God’s love and acceptance were immediately present and powerful.


A few months later, I was still feeling icky about everything, especially my comment about hating God, and I was advised to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I didn’t really understand then as a teen that sin doesn’t just affect our personal relationship with God, but also our connection with the entire Church, the entire Body of Christ, so I needed to mend that through the sacrament of Reconciliation. So I did. To hear the words at the end of confession when the priest, representing Jesus, said – “I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” – was so powerful. To me those words were, and still are, the most wonderful words on the planet (well, then there is also “Body of Christ” at Holy Communion too! J) – Those words are so healing.  I only wish priests would say those words a lot SLOWER so they have more impact and are clearly heard and can sink into the soul more powerfully.


The one aspect of the prodigal son parable that I still wonder about is this: how long did it take the prodigal son to forgive himself? Sometimes forgiving ourselves is the hardest part of straying from God. Sometimes we are harder on ourselves than God is (He is so merciful and we often are not) and we subject ourselves to all sorts of self-imposed consequences, not all which are without merit, but still, I wonder about this….

I would say that it took me a few years before I could fully, and finally, forgive myself for hating God and for my actions. Looking back, I know that I was just a teenager and my faith life was very new overall, but the feelings were intense and real and I was really hard on myself.  As Dr. Phil says, it was a "defining moment in my life".......my life of faith to be exact.

So, to my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow prodigal sons and daughters, may God bless your day.

A Lenten Message: Desert Fears, one person's experience

I think we al have a natural fear of the desert. There are a lot of unknowns in the desert. Extreme heat. Extreme cold. Wild creatures. Spiritual deserts can be just as scary as earthly deserts.

Images of a stark landscape and deep solitiude and loneliness come into play when we think of the desert. Painfully hot days and shiveringly cold nights. No food. No water. No sustenance. Not sure how you got there and not sure how you will get out, or if there every will be a way out.

Additionally there are times of temptations, all sorts of feelings such as anger, despair, depression, anxiety, confusion. You name it. One can feel it in the desert. The desert is to be avoided at all costs, right?  We'd much rather be on the spiritual mountaintops - dancing and conversing with Jesus, feeling all warm and loved. The warmth of the sun on our faces, feeling healthy and grounded. 

Sometimes however, the desert cannot be avoided. Sometimes we are plucked off our mountaintop and tossed headfirst into the desert and , just like the cartoons, we sit up and have stars swirling around our heads and we think "What the heck just happened?".  Where is Jesus? Where is the mountaintop?  What is this place?

I have been on mountaintops with Jesus. It is FANTASTIC!  I have also been in a few partifularly severe deserts during my spiritual life. The most recent desert, still fresh in my mind, is a desert I entered about two years ago.  I wasn't just plopped into the desert. It was more of a slow slide off the mountaintop and then, tripping somewhere along the way, I fell off of a cliff, sailed through the air at breakneck speed and landed with a very hard THUD, face first in the desert.  When I sat up, I had a mouth full of sand, no water, a headache, and was frightened beyond belief. Enter, desert fears.
That desert lasted many months. It was an incredibly hard journey.

I am thinking of desert fears now because it is the Lenten season. Jesus spent 40 days in the desert and for some reason the reality of that hit me hard this year. Jesus Himself, the Prince of Peace, could not escape the desert. In fact, he willingly walked right into it.  That just blows me away. He could have hung out on the mountain top forever, but He chose to walk into the desert. I didn't choose it. It was apparently given to me as a "gift", but I didn't know that until afterwards.

Just like Jesus' experience in the desert, there are reasons why we must walk through it.  There are benefits to the desert. I found that out the hard way.

I learned a lot from being in the desert. First of all I learned that it didn't kill me, although on some days I felt very dead.  I learned that intense and prolonged solitude can make a person stronger instead of weaker.  I learned that wisdom develops in the desert as a result of all the solitude and reflecting that goes on.  I learned that Jesus allows us to wander through deserts to get us to other destinations (spiritually speaking).  I learned most of all that the desert makes us into very different people than we were upon entering it.

BUT - and here's the clincher - the only way we can become different and leave feeling like a better person instead of a more angry and bitter person, is that we have to come to a point when we SURRENDER to the desert.  There comes a time when we can't do it anymore. We can't fight anymore. We have no more prayers. No more reflections. When we don't know what direction to walk in next and all seems lost...that is when things start to change. Because then, and only then, do we shout out to the Heavens "I GIVE UP! I HAVE NO ANSWERS. I AM LOST. JESUS SAVE ME!" and then we collapse into the sand. We lay there motionless for what seems an eternity. We are too weak to do anything. We look and feel dead through and through.

In essence, we sleep, we rest. We can do no more. We are near comatose, spiritually speaking. 

Then, slowly something starts to change within us. Not sure what it is, we pick our heads off of the ground. with the little bit of life we have left in us. We spit out the dirt in our mouths. The desert is silent except for a distant wind. It is night. The stars are out. We cannot stand, so we remain seated just looking up at the stars. It is in that moment that we realize how small we are. How invisible we are to all of humanity. Nobody will come looking for us, yet.......suddenly we feel we are being watched and there is a sense that we are not alone. God is there. Watching us. 

There comes a period of waiting. We cannot ask any more questions. We do not complain anymore. We can barely eek out the words:  "Ok, Jesus. I'm here. Lead me." We feel the breeze on our face and through our hair.  We watch. We listen. We are silent.  We hear out own heartbeat and our own breath. We feel intense hunger and thirst.

Slowly we are given what we need from above. I will not share with you what Jesus sent me because that is too personal to share in a blog ( one must have some discretion, you know ), but just know that I got what I needed. I rose, listened, and walked according to His voice and where He was leading me.

I had forgotten that deserts have oases. In my case, Jesus knew I needed a break. I had lived through enough and if I didn't get a break, I would not make it through the desert.  He provided for me a special place in the desert in which to seek refuge, to have some comfortable temperatures, and to feel some relief. In essence, I was in a place where I had time "to be".  To be in His presence. Saying nothing for I had no words.  I stayed there for quite a long time.  I started to feel very comfortable there - so much so that I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to have to venture back out into the desert, even if it meant that I would know a way out. It was too scary and I was quite weak.  The thought of going back "into society" was also a fear because I knew I'd be going back much different and wondered if I would be accepted ( which is always a fear of mine, desert or no desert ).

However, the day came when Jesus asked me to leave this oasis and start the journey out of the desert. I obeyed. Obedience is something else you learn in the desert by the way. One of the promises I received from Jesus was that I could always go back into my oasis whenever I wanted. Having that comfort, I felt strength to leave it.

Many months went by. The journey was long. Every step forward gave me more strength, more wisdom.  When I reached the end of the sandy desert I came upon a beach. It was empty. Jesus came, hugged me, and we walked for a long time, talking and enjoying each other's company. The desert had ended. THANK GOD.  But a new way of being had begun for me.

As I said before, when a person goes into the desert, they go in one way, and they come out much different. That is what happened to me. Oh, I know most of the people around me probably can't even see that I am different. But I know I am. I still get up every day. Go to work. Do the things I have to do. But inside my soul, I am a very very different person.

I guess one way to describe it is that of a clay pot being fired. It goes into the kiln as soft fragile clay and after being subject to 2000+ degree heat, it comes out a transformed pot, much more solid.  Now it can be painted beautiful colors and the next firing in the kiln will make it even more beautiful and useful. Does that image help you understand?

So yes, there are many things to fear about the desert. The pain is real. The process is real, although invisible. I share this with you to give you some words of  wisdom that I learned in the desert : if you find yourself in the desert, know that it will end some day. Remember to surrender. Remember to listen. When you are presented with an oasis, visit it.

Thanks for listening. Hope this helps.