Easter 2025

John 20:1-9

Richard Dawkins is one of the most outspoken atheists in the world.  He’s written books proving, at least in his eyes, that there is no such thing as God or an afterlife.  He’s a very smart man and his logic has shored up many others who are atheists.  Today’s gospel is about belief, and I’ll get back to Richard later.

Today’s gospel describes three encounters with the empty tomb.  The first is Mary Magdalene.  If all we had was John’s gospel, we would have heard about her first when she stood at the foot of the cross, and this would be the second time.  She must have been well known to the early Christians.  It’s said that after the Resurrection Mary went about proclaiming the “Resurrection all through the Roman empire.  According to some early writers, Mary was independently wealthy and moved among the rich and famous.  In some icons she is shown holding a red egg; this is because of the story that she was having supper with the emperor Tiberius.  In the course of the conversation he told her that he would as soon believe the resurrection as he would believe the egg she had in her hand was red.  And it became so.  But we meet a younger Mary in the gospel story, who confronts the empty tomb and doesn’t believe, not yet anyway.  To her the empty tomb means that the grave4 has been robbed.  It will take the personal appearance of Jesus to convince her otherwise.  

The second character is the beloved disciple.  John never calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved.  IN fact it probably isn’t John the apostle who wrote the gospel of John.  Frankly we don’t know who the beloved disciple is.  Many people think John is saying something like “the beloved disciple is the ideal disciple, in contrast to the real people around him.”  The beloved disciple sees what Mary saw, and believes, even though as the gospel says, he did not understand the scripture that Jesus had to arise from the dead.  I assume the beloved disciple believed on the basis of the empty tomb, and that’s a hint as to the kind of faith we must have. Because in the end, you can find evidence for the Resurrection, or you can claim Resurrection is a myth.  But there is no proof one way or another, and it ultimately comes down to faith, faith which is not just belief but acting on that belief.

The third character is Peter.  In the light of all the gospels, Peter stands out.  He’s a real person.  We can all identify with him.  He’s a man of great enthusiasm, and he makes powerful statements.  “You are the Messiah of God” he exclaims. He steps off the boat into the sea to walk on water, but it doesn’t work and Jesus has to rescue him.  He tells Jesus that if it means fellowship with him, then wash my hands and my head as well as my feet!  He pledges to be with Jesus even if it means death.  And then he betrays him in the courtyard of the high priest.  You and I are Peter, and like Peter, we see the evidence, the empty tomb, the burial cloths , the covering of the head.  And our gospel does not tell us what Peter believes.  Like the beloved disciple, he also did not understand the scripture that said Jesus must rise from the dead.  Later, of course, Jesus will appear to him, several times, but at this moment he’s somewhere between Mary Magdalene and the beloved disciple.  Sometimes if you are like me, you are there as well.  

But we have more than Peter had.  We have two thousand years of history.  We know what life was like before the Resurrection.  Things were pretty much the same from the earliest recorded history to the time when Jesus was born.  Empires rose and fell, tribes distrusted and fought other tribes, people worshipped gods by sacrificing their children to them.  Kings built monuments to themselves and great tombs to assure themselves of immortality -- it didn’t matter whether it was in Egypt or China, or the Aztec empire.  All over the world the bottom line was power.  But after the resurrection, the world has changed.  Sure, there’s always the tendency to revert back to those primitive times when might made right.  It’s going on in the middle east, in Russia and the Ukraine, in Iran, in North Korea.  But we have societies where there is compassion for the poor; where people are motivated to wipe out diseases, to dispel ignorance through education.  We have societies in our world where people cooperate to improve the lives of  citizens.  We have a world where more and more people have the time and opportunity to  become better versions of themselves.  Do we take advantage of this? Is the work of building up God’s kingdom complete?  Of course not.  But there is no denying that the impact on the world of the Resurrection is real.  Jesus walks among us.  We encounter the resurrected Christ in scriptures, in love, in beauty, in wisdom, and in a world gradually being transformed into the kingdom Jesus promised.  

Richard Dawkins, the author of “The God Delusion” has made it clear that even if he doesn’t believe in God he has called  himself  a "cultural Christian," appreciating the traditions, hymns, and ethos associated with Christianity,. Dawkins has also stated that if he had to choose between Christianity and other religions, he would choose Christianity, because of its societal and cultural impact.  Even he recognizes the impact that Jesus Christ has made and continues to make.  

You and I, Mary Magdalene and the beloved disciple, and Peter, all stand before the empty tomb and in the end, what is our response?  Let it be that  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and death has been defeated, and our world is continuing to be transformed into God’s kingdom even now.  

Good Friday 2025

John 18:1-19:42

The Passion we read on Good Friday is taken from the Gospel of John.  It’s long and there are so many things we could think about.  Towards the end of the gospel we hear this passage:  “Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdala.  We also assume the disciple whom Jesus loved was there as well, since Jesus spoke to him from the cross.

Mary, his mother, was there.  Long ago when she was a teenager she had a vision of the angel Gabriel, who informed her that she was to become the mother of the Redeemer.  And Mary said “Be it done to me as you say”.  She didn’t know what she was getting into.  None of us do when we tell God to use us as he wishes to use us.  Mary  speaks two more times in scripture -- when she says to Jesus “Son, why did you do this?  Your father and I have  been searching for you”.  And another time, when she tells the waiter to “do whatever he tells you”.  If you had met Mary you would probably not have been impressed.  She probably wore something like a hijab when she went out of her home.  Her clothing was coarse, and she probably had woven the cloth herself.  If you saw her on the streets of Nazareth she would be carrying a basket, taking something from her garden to the market, bringing something else home.  And every day was like every other day, except when Jesus was lost; except when she and her family celebrated a Jewish holiday; except when Joseph died, and except when she heard about the fact that her son was going to be executed.   And she is standing there, looking at her son, suffering with him, her heart broken.  The one God chose as his mother, the woman conceived without sin, the most perfect human -- and yet she isn’t spared pain and poverty and all the sufferings human life offers.  Can we expect otherwise?

Then we meet Mary, the wife of Clopas, the sister of Jesus’ mother, according to John.  In the gospel of Luke two disciples of Jesus were on the road to Emmaus, despondent because the one they thought would save Israel had been crucified.  One was named “Cleopas”.  It’s not unlikely that the other was his wife.  Some of the Christian writings that never made it into the bible said that Cleopas, or Clopas, was the brother of Joseph.  It would seem unlikely that Mary’s parents would have named two daughters “Mary”, so if all this is true, Mary’s sister was probably her sister in law.  Mary, the wife of Clopas must have made an impression on the early Christians, because she is probably the Mary in Mark who is the mother of James and Joses, two of Jesus’ cousins.  I suspect that Mary of Clopas and Jesus’ mother were good friends, and Mary of Clopas is there,risking her own life to lend support to her sister in law.  She is an example of real friendship, the kind that we Christians are called to.  Do we go out of our way to comfort those we know who are on the margins, who are ill, who are old and unable to get around anymore?  True friends are there when you need them the most and don’t drift away like Jesus’ other friends.

And there is Mary Magdalene.  I picture her as younger -- Maybe because I was heavily influenced by that old Movie, “Jesus Christ, Superstar”.  In the movie and the broadway musical, Mary Magdalene is  depicted as someone who is more or less smitten by Jesus -- she’s in love with him.  And that’s consistent with some of the early Christian writings as well, where she is depicted as Jesus’ confidant, his closest disciple.  We really don’t know much about Mary’s background -- all we know is that Jesus at some point drove seven devils out of her.  Mary was lost -- possessed -- and then rescued by Jesus.  No wonder she loves him.  And she is at the foot of the cross, grateful.  And after the resurrection her loyalty and love will be rewarded because she will be the first to meet the risen Lord.  She is the apostle to the apostles.  

And finally there is the beloved disciple.  Down through the ages that individual is identified with the writer of the gospel of John, who in turn is thought to be the apostle John.  But neither is true.  John’s gospel is very different from the others, and emphasizes Jesus’ divinity.  And whenever you meet the beloved disciple, John wants you to put yourself there, in that scene.  It’s like a place marker for his readers.  And in this place John invites you to put yourself at the foot of the cross, and think about what God has done for you in the person of  Jesus, and how the church springs forth from his side when he is lanced, and how he offers his mother to be your mother, and how he is the perfect image of the Father’s love. 

So today on Good Friday you are there -- with his mother, with her best friend, and with the woman who loves him because of what he has done for her.  YOu are the beloved disciple. Go and tell everyone you know that they are beloved as well.    

Palm Sunday cycle C

 Palm Sunday

Luke 22:14 - 23:56)

Once again we read the passion, this year, Luke’s version.  All the versions tell us that Our Lord suffered severely and died in a shameful way.  We always see pictures of Jesus nearly naked except for a loincloth, but we know from historical documents that the Romans usually crucified people with no clothing at all.  This was to humiliate them even further.  We aren’t sure that  capital punishment in the modern age is really a deterrent to crime, but it was in Roman times.  Our scriptures tell us that Jesus was beaten until he couldn’t stand up, nailed to a cross, and suffered death by asphyxiation, since if you are hanging on a cross your respiratory muscles eventually  don’t work anymore.  It was a horrible death, and the question down through the ages is why did Jesus have to die for us?  I think we have to assume that he had to die, because at the last minute Jesus begged his Father to allow him to avoid the cup of suffering, the Father did not grant his prayer. 

John tells us that Jesus is the light of the world, the true light that enlightens everyone,  but that the people loved darkness rather than light.  What is this light?

Jesus revealed the true face of God -- no longer a God who executes, a God who is to be feared, but a God who wants to save every person.  Jesus also shows a new way for humans  to be -- he overturns this world’s values and pronounces that true greatness is service to one’s brothers and sisters.  Jesus proposed a new religion, not built on rituals and obedience to commandments,  but rather, a religion that draws its followers to act out of love -- love of God, love of neighbor, even true love of self.  And Jesus called for a world where the poor, the marginalized, the weak, widows and orphans come first and those who have everything come last. 

Jesus in a sense did not choose to die, but if he avoided death he would have to renounce all those proposals.  He would have had to adopt the mentality of the world and resign himself to the possibility that there would never be a change, that evil would triumph, and that people -- his  brothers and sixers, would be abandoned into the hands of the “prince of this world.  If he had embraced the ways of this world he probably would have been adorned with honors -- after all, more than once the people were set to make him king, and in the shaky peace of the Roman empire, who knows what might have been possible?  But he would have become part of the kingdoms of this world that Satan had promised in the  beginning of his ministry.  

During this holy week, let us ask ourselves if we have accepted the kingdom, his kingdom, his revelation of God, his new religion, his new vision of man and society.  Are we living that way in our own lives?  Or are we like the apostles at the last supper, asking “Is it I Lord, is it I who is standing in the way of your kingdom?”

Fifth Sunday of Lent, cycle C

John 8:1-11

People who hear this story of the woman caught in the act of adultery first ask, what about the guy?  Wasn’t he just as guilty?  And then they wonder, “What is Jesus writing in the dirt?” But the story doesn't tell us those things, and so we won’t bother to answer those questions.  And we all agree adultery is bad.  But maybe that’s not the issue either.

This little story was probably not in John’s original gospel.  Some people say it sounds more like Luke, and in fact there are some very old manuscripts that seem to support that some poor old scribe put the story from Luke into the Gospel of John.  There was even a debate about whether the story should be considered part of Sacred Scripture, but the story survived.  It's a dangerous story and one of the early fathers of the Church, as well as a couple of protestant biblical scholars, wanted to leave the story out of the official bible because of the worry that it might encourage people to commit adultery.  After all, if it was so easily forgiven, even when the woman didn’t even ask for forgiveness, what’s the big deal?

But just to set the record straight, Jesus is not ok with adultery.  In fact, Jesus, who does nothing that is not approved by his father, is against all sin, even things we think of as little.  IF you fight with your spouse, not good.  IF you get back more change than you should have and stick it in your pocket, Jesus is not ok with that.  IF you leave bulletins behind in the pews, even that’s not ok.  Some country comedian once said, “I love women best and then whiskey, my neighbor a little, and God hardly at all.” And we laugh uncomfortably because there’s a little of that in all of us.  IF God made us to know love and serve him in this world to be happy with him in the next, as the old catechism said, why is it so hard?  Even the great saints felt this tension.  Our natural instincts seem to be at odds with what God wants from us.

Saint Augustine spent a lot of time on this.  He talked about how he had lost himself in all the pleasures of the world until he finally found God in the center of his being.  He wrote, “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  When we look at our natural instincts, our natural desires, we see that they all draw us beyond what we think we want.  When we satisfy a desire, sinful or good or neutral, moments later we are seeking something else.  There is no rest.

One theologian said that there are those explicit desires -- love for another person, friendship, a piece of art, a vacation, a good meal, winning at a game or winning in our profession, even desires which lead to sin -- and we see that beneath all of these is a desire for completion, for what will make us whole, a desire for God.  Our human nature does, in fact, direct us toward God.  All human beings live in a state of desire.  Sometimes these instincts seem selfish and even immoral, but ultimately, they make us reach out for what keeps us alive and ensure that the human race keeps on going.

God who created us with all these desires wants us to enjoy the good things he’s made for our benefit.  In fact, he loves for us to do this.  But it’s like my grandfather giving me a pocketknife when I was five.  He didn’t just hand it to me; he made sure I knew how to open and close it without cutting off my finger; he demonstrated how to whittle a stick by pushing the blade away from me; and he told me never to stick it in a pet or one of my friends.  Our enjoyment of God’s good things is accompanied by instructions that are built into us -- common sense is a name for them.  Sin is when we don’t follow the instructions.  

And the implicit desire is that we want what is behind all these good things, all these earthly pleasures; and that’s where Jesus comes in, because he tells the woman caught in adultery to sin no more, or as one translation has it, do not do this sin again.  Sin, even small sins, make it harder to see past those instincts that come from our human nature to what our whole being longs for -- God.  

The Church puts this gospel story close to Easter, close to Holy Week, because it is a reminder that all of us, like the people who turned away from stoning the woman, are sinful.  If we carefully look at our lives, we see that there are things we do over and over again that we shouldn’t.  We see that time is wasted, that we use our resources unwisely at times; that our tempers are not totally under control, and we could go on and on.  If you think you are without sin, think again.  And we are like the woman caught in adultery -- condemned for our sin, and there is nothing we can do about it.  And we are like that woman because Jesus crosses the divide between God and man and is there to rescue us through his passion, death and resurrection. As with the woman caught in adultery, Jesus does not condemn us but offers his forgiveness.   

Fourth Sunday in Lent cycle C

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

The parable we just read is one of the most popular of Jesus’ parables. It has fascinated people down through the ages. It’s been used to contrast the Jewish religion with Christianity -- usually unfavorably -- forgetting that Jesus told this parable before Christianity ever happened. It’s been used to encourage those who have fallen away from the Church to return. The older son is often held up to show how jealousy can isolate you from the people you love. And of course the father is compared to God -- sometimes, or if you really want to stretch things, he’s sort of the opposite of a prudent farmer, giving in to the son’s demand for his share of the inheritance, sitting around waiting for his son to return, going wild when the son comes home and literally treating him like a visiting nobleman. And I’m not sure anyone really knows what was in Jesus' mind as he told this story. We need to remember that according to Luke, the Pharisees are upset because he eats with tax collectors and sinners, and then he tells three parables in a row about lost things -- a lost sheep, a lost coin, and finally the lost son. But here’s an interpretation you probably haven’t heard yet. It’s a parable about how to be a good steward. How do we rightly use what is in our hands? This parable can be seen as about the man who has two sons.

First thing we notice is that he is generous. He freely gives what is his to give, namely, a share of his property. When the other son complains, the father reminds him that everything he has is his. The father is not only generous with his possessions, but is generous of spirit; He welcomes the younger son back with open arms, rather than making him grovel. And he goes out from the celebration to find the older son, rather than demanding that the son recognize his authority.

The man is loving, that’s the second thing. He treats both sons with dignity. When the younger son gets in trouble, as we all knew he would, the man honors his son’s choice’ he does not ride off to rescue him. The younger son claimed his freedom, his father allows him to make what turns out to be a foolish choice. And when the older son leaves the party and sulks, the father honors that choice as well. He does not order him back to the party, but tries to show him why he should come back. In other words, in the case of both sons, the father treats them as equals, as people who are free to make mistakes, free to choose, rightly or wrongly. We don’t often think about it that way, but that is loving behavior.

Finally the man has a specific purpose in mind -- to find what is lost, to regain what has been taken. He uses his resources to shore up and strengthen the relationships he has with his sons. He does not reject one for the other, we understand at the end of the parable that his generosity does not create a winner and a loser where his sons are concerned.

So we can see that this parable can teach us something about stewardship. It’s ironic that the word Stewardship traces back to Old English, stigwaerd, which means “keeper of the pigpen”

We learn from the parable that being generous is not the same as being wasteful, like the prodigal son, nor is it being stingy, like the elder brother. The man cannot give what he doesn’t possess. Some of us need to learn the lesson that you can’t give away what you don’t have. Most of us don’t have too much trouble where money is concerned, but many of us promise our time and don’t have enough of it to meet our basic commitments.

Second, stewardship is rooted in love. Stewardship seeks what is best for the one who is loved. Do I pay a bill because I have to or because I have gladly purchased something that makes things better in my world or someone else’s. There’s a difference. A good steward uses those resources committed to him to bring good to those around him.

Finally, Christian stewards live with a purpose -- to use what is under their care so that those who are lost can be found, so that God’s kingdom might be brought a little closer. Because a good steward wants what Jesus wanted -- to see the world saved, to bring back the lost, to participate in the work of God, whose generosity is boundless, whose love is everlasting, who even now works through his stewards to reconcile everything to Himself.

First Sunday of Lent, cycle C

Luke 4:1-13

In the first epistle of John, which is a series of instructions on how to live a holy life, John writes “ Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world.”  Another translation of this passage is perhaps a little more approachable:  “Do not love the world or anything that belongs to the world. If you love the world, you do not love the Father. Everything that belongs to the world—what the sinful self desires, what people see and want, and everything in this world that people are so proud of—none of this comes from the Father; it all comes from the world.”

John Paul II in several of his weekly talks that came to be known as Theology of the Body, referred to this passage often, especially when he was describing the fall of Adam and Eve.  Adam and Eve were not souls temporarily residing in human bodies; they were really rational animals.  It was never God’s intention to create souls that lived for a while in a meat suit and then spent eternity as kind of a ghost.  God’s intention for human beings is reflected in the creed we say every Sunday:  “I believe in the resurrection of the Body.”  Jesus demonstrated in his own resurrection the nature of the resurrected body -- He could be in more places than one; he could pass through walls; he could know what other people were thinking -- and yet, he could be seen and heard and touched.  Our destiny is not to be spirits but to be perfected human beings who will live forever in God’s presence.

John Paul said that in the beginning these two rational animals, Adam and Eve, received supernatural grace allowing them to make choices that were not conditioned by their emotions or their animal natures.  In the book of Genesis, it says “They were naked but not ashamed”.  In short, everything was in the proper order, mind over body, reason over emotion.  They were given everything they needed to become what God wanted for them.  But then we read about the first sin, the original sin.  It’s sad that this seems to be blamed on Eve, because Adam was standing right there as well.  But in the account of the first sin, Eve first experiences the lust of the eyes -- she sees the fruit pointed out by the serpent and senses that this would be really good to eat. She then gives in to the lust of the flesh, and chooses to taste the fruit.  Finally because she rationally and deliberately disobeys God’s command, she experiences the pride of life -- her will over God’s.  And remember, Adam is there, who because he was given dominion over all the beasts of the earth, could have simply ordered the serpent to get out of there, did not; and he accepted Eve’s invitation to eat of the fruit.  Adam is as guilty as Eve.  And in the next scene, God goes looking for Adam and asks him why he is hiding.  He replies, “Because I was naked.”  and God replies, “Who told you you were naked?”  And the rest is history.  John Paul says that the supernatural protection was withdrawn; now we are subject to the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, and these encompass everything in our human nature that causes us to sin.

YOu will note that in the story of the temptations of Jesus, the devil begins by tempting him with the lust of the flesh -- turn these stones into bread.  Satan thinks that Jesus is most vulnerable because he is starving.  The second temptation is the lust of the eyes -- Satan shows Jesus the whole world and offers it to him.  And the third temptation is the pride of life -- if Jesus were to go to Jerusalem and jump off the highest building in town, and not plunge to his death, everyone would listen to him; he’d be a rock star.  

And of course Jesus turns down these temptations, quoting scripture.  The devil appealed to what he thought was Jesus’ human nature; Jesus demonstrated that his nature was like that of Adam and Eve before the fall, he was like us in all things but sin.

That’s the reason Jesus is God made man.  Not primarily to show us the best way to be, but by living in our nature, reforming it, restoring it to the way it was meant to be. You and I have been baptized.  Not just a symbol, but a promise by God to assist us in overcoming those parts of our nature that lead us to sin.  As we embark upon lent, let us look at our own sins and try to recognize how the lust of the flesh, the lust of our eyes, and the pride of life bring us to sin.  And we might even make use of John’s passage to examine our own consciences before confession, and make every effort to overcome those parts of our human nature that lead us away from God, just as Jesus did.  

Here's another translation, easy to remember:  “All the things the world can offer to you—the attraction of pleasure, the passion to have things, and the temptation to think the world revolves around you—do not come from the Father. These are the rotten fruits of this world.”

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 6:39-45

Thomas  Merton said, “Nothing is more suspicious in a man who seems holy than an impatient desire to reform other men.”  Jesus says a lot of things today and it’s hard to find a unifying theme.  When he talks about splinters and wooden beams, is he telling us to mind our own business?  Is that an excuse for ignoring things about another person that could certainly stand some correcting?  When he talks about good trees bearing good fruit and not harvesting grapes from thorn bushes, what does that have to do with me?  It seems like an elaborate and long-winded way of saying you can’t give what you don’t have.  And have you ever had a friend who spent a lot of time pointing out your faults?  If you ever did, you probably don’t anymore, unless he or she is a close relative and you can’t get away.

In the early days of the Church, there was a widespread belief that the end of the world was right around the corner and Jesus would be coming very soon to start the last judgement.  You can even see how this belief influenced some of the early Christian communities.  In the acts of the apostles it records the fact that many Christians liquidated their possessions and turned the proceeds over to the apostles, who then used the money to see that everyone was fed and clothed.  Nobody worried about the day after tomorrow.  And in second Thessalonians we meet busybodies who spend all their time criticizing others and offering their advice, and Paul ultimately says that if someone isn’t working, then he should be eating either.  

But on the other hand we meet great saints who gained their sainthood by being effective spiritual directors.  Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Pio of Petronella, Saint John Vianny, and of course many others spent their lives trying to help other people become holy.  So when we read this gospel and think about things, should we be helping each other or should we keep quiet and mind our own business?

One of the beatitudes of Jesus was “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God”.  What is purity of heart? I don’t think we are born with it.  Little kids, cute as they are and fun to listen to, are pretty self-centered.  The smart ones quickly learn how to manipulate adults to get what they want.  But purity of heart means that we live to understand what God wants of us and make it our top priority to do this.  And it requires grace, it doesn't just happen.  A lot of modern Christians don’t believe in Satan anymore.  But I think those people who are trying to achieve purity of heart are the main targets of Sathan.  He doesn’t have to worry about people who put pleasing God low on their priority list.  Sooner or later the world or the flesh will do his work for them.  

There is a psalm that has the lines “Create in me a pure heart, O God; and renew a steadfast spirit in me.”  The writer recognizes that having a pure heart requires God’s help as well as persistence.  It requires two virtues, honesty and humility.  

Honesty means that I have a clear idea of my relationship to God.  I know my faults, I know my blind spots, I know the things that keep me from growing in my spiritual life.  If I don’t know these things, perhaps I should seek spiritual direction, so that I can be helped.  After all, if I’m not honest with myself, I won’t make any progress.  

The second virtue is humility.  Humility is the recognition that I can’t do it on my own.  If I want a pure heart, if I want to see God, I will certainly need all the help I can get.  That’s where the examples of the saints can teach us.  John Vianney, the Cure of Ars, would spend his days hearing confessions and according to his biographers, his nights in prayer -- during which he was subjected to temptation by the devil.  Humility means you are a person of prayer.

If we work on those virtues, by ourselves or with help, purity of heart will follow, and God will answer our prayer to create a pure heart within us.  And once that pure heart exists, He will remove the beam from our eyes and allow us to remove the splinter from our brother’s eye.  And because we have become good trees we will bear good fruit.  

We are about to enter that great penitential season, Lent.  It’s interesting how Muslims celebrate their Lent, which they call Ramadan.  No food or drink while the sun is up.  I had several Muslim doctors in our training program at Baystate when I was in practice.  Because they fasted, they never forgot that they were trying to grow closer to God and purify their hearts.  Over at Saint Mark’s Armenian church, the congregation does something similar--- during lent they become vegetarian.  A long time ago we Catholics fasted every day during Lent except Sunday.  It wasn’t a terribly hard fast -- One full meal, and you could eat two small meals in addition provided they did not equal a full meal.  You were reminded every day that you were supposed to be purifying your heart with God’s help.  What are you doing for Lent?  How are you practicing honesty and humility so that you can bring a pure heart to Jesus, so that you can see God?  This may be the last Lent for some of us.  Let us use it to grow spiritually.