Every year as we celebrate Ash Wednesday, we hear God say to us through the Prophet Joel: "RETURN TO ME WITH YOUR WHOLE HEART, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning...and RETURN TO THE LORD, YOUR GOD. For gracious and merciful is HE, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment." (Joel 2:12-13). This is a joyful way to enter into the 40 days of Lent. The Prophet Joel gives us HOPE. The kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem had just experienced a great disaster (locust invasion) and Joel announces the coming of a much worse, unprecedented disaster unless the people turn back to God. If Joel were alive today, would his message to us be the same? Most of us would say:,Yes! We need to change. So many people have gone far away from God. God is being pushed out of our society through a growing secularization of our culture. We too need to cry out for help to the Lord. Like Joel, we too believe that THE LORD GOD will welcome us back and assist us.

Lent is a time for individual conversion, a time for spiritual renewal, a time for personal Reconciliation with God. We may not be able to make dramatic and rapid change in the less and less Christian culture of our society. But we can and we must make changes in our own personal relationship with God. We can and we must help our own families get closer to God. We can and we must help our family of families, our parish to go through a spiritual renewal.

How can we return with our whole heart to God this Lent?

FIRST, we must PRAY! Lent is a time of PRAYER. Prayer will help us to focus on what is essential in our life, to focus on God in the silence of our hearts. We are totally dependent on God. Our life on earth is very fragile and limited. Most of our attachments to the world are distractions away from the purpose of our life; to love and to be loved. We believe that GOD IS LOVE and that HE created us in HIS own image. God has sent to us HIS ONLY SON so that we may have ETERNAL LIFE. We all come from GOD and the purpose of our Journey on earth is TO RETURN TO GOD. TODAY can we all hear GOD's voice, "Come back to me with all your heart!" Yes, we all need a change of heart, we all need a loving heart.

SECOND: in the same way PRAYER restores our personal, loving relationship with God, we must restore our relationship of love with OTHERS. Lent is a time to GIVE ALMS, to turn our attention to OTHERS, away from our continuous preoccupation with ourselves. Our society is about ME-ME-ME: if I choose to do something, what will I gain personally? ALMSGIVING forces us to think about the needs of the others. The Church teaches the importance of WORKS OF MERCY. Almsgiving is one of the seven CORPORAL Works of Mercy, together with “Feed the Hungry, Give drink to the Thirsty, Shelter the Homeless, Visit the Sick, Visit the Prisoners, and Bury the Dead.” The Church also teaches about the seven SPIRITUAL Works of Mercy, and all seven of
them are also fitting during Lent: “Counsel the Doubtful, Instruct the Ignorant, Admonish the Sinner, Comfort the Sorrowful, Forgive Injuries, Bear Wrongs Patiently, Pray for the Living and the Dead.” My suggestion this Lent is that each one of us choose to focus on one or two of the Corporal or Spiritual Works of Mercy.

THIRD: throughout Lent we need to FAST and REPENT. Fasting helps us to detach from our personal attachments to the world. The Church requires that we FAST two full days during Lent and Holy Week: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (while abstaining from meat during every Friday from now until Easter). But fasting goes beyond fasting from food, it also means fasting from our attachment to sin. Like the leper in last week's Gospel, we need to kneel down to Jesus and beg him: "If you wish, YOU CAN MAKE ME CLEAN ". Like the leper we believe that Jesus can transform us. Through our sins, we are spiritual lepers. Jesus instituted the amazing Sacrament of RECONCILIATION (PENANCE/CONFESSION). During this Lent, Jesus invites all of us to come to HIM and ask for forgiveness of our sins. If there were ONE THING, only ONE THING we want you to focus on during this Lent, it would be to prepare yourself to go to confession: first, have a thorough examination of your past sins since your last confession, and second take the time to go to Confession. We have increased the number of hours for confessions. And if the times are not convenient to you, call the office and make an appointment with Fr. Ben or myself.

May the next forty days of Lent help all of us to climb the beautiful MOUNTAIN OF EASTER. May we all benefit from our Parish Lenten Retreat “THE GIFT OF LOVE”, as we walk together with Jesus on the Way to the Cross. “You can still sign up, click here.” May God help all of us to be renewed and transformed through changing our hardened hearts into loving hearts.