Category: Ars Praedicandi

So many folks in our own ambit are languishing in the darkness of some tomb hoping God or one of God’s people might speak or act in such a way that they hear the resounding invitation to come forth, leave the darkness behind, be unbound, and step into the light.

But this third Sunday of Lent, which the church designates as the premiere day for the first public scrutiny of the elect moving towards Easter sacraments, reminds us that Lent is first and foremost a font journey, a well-drawing opportunity, a rock-striking moment for those thirsting for life eternal.

Turning the other cheek was not an act of cowardice or passivity but an act of defiance.

That sounds extreme, and it is. But in these days of too many mass shootings, too much racial prejudice, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, too much war and poverty and polarization extreme measures seem necessary.

In the spirit of this divine Bandit, we are unexpectedly invited into the piracy of God, the Robin Hood mission of the only-begotten baptized not just to be disciples but maybe even holy marauders.

“The Faberge exhibit was beautiful, but I did not experience God in the museum. On the L platform, however, I sincerely believe that I encountered the face of Christ.”

“Until we meet again … be at peace and, no matter in what prison you might dwell, no matter what darkness threatens to enfold you, take up his good news choose to be part of the proof that I did truly baptize God’s own messiah an unending source of consolation and light and his name…

The turnstile in the gospels is not a thing: it is a person. Jesus is the true narrow gate through which we must pass.

Like a nurturing parent, today’s readings invite us to encounter a Jesus who spiritually loans us his divinely mature soul, his faith, his self-lessness, and his vision of God’s reign, so that we can change our much less plastic hearts and change our patterns of living, spiritually evolving from instantiated even lethargic observers of faith…