Reflection for Friday, February 12, 2016

Friday after Ash Wednesday
IS 58: 1-9 A
PS: 51: 3-4, 5-6 AB, 18-19
MT 9: 14-15

A common theme in both today’s first reading and Gospel is the act of fasting.  As a 20-year-old college woman with a big appetite, fasting isn’t something that necessarily sounds very appealing to me.  When I think of fasting, I immediately think of no snacking, eating extremely healthy, and being careful about my portions. Possibly this Lenten season, some people have already decided to fast in different ways. Some people may give up luxury things or addicting foods to fast from, as every person can view fasting in a different light.

Last week, just days before Lent began, I came across one of those articles on Facebook that about 17 of your friends have shared, so you know it must be important.  This time it wasn’t the super high-tech new SLU video that just went viral, but rather an article called “Pope Francis’ Guide to Lent: What You Should Give Up This Year.” As I had just begun the thinking and reflecting process of what I personally wanted to do for Lent this year, I immediately was intrigued knowing that Papa Francisco would definitely have some good and challenging insight for us.  And of course, he did.

In this article, Pope Francis shares some new ways of fasting this Lenten season.  This time it wasn’t holding back on the candy and chocolate, cutting out the carbs, or giving up warm showers, this time it was about one another rather than ourselves. It was about doing good for the people around us and sharing Christ with each other.  This year, our leader in the Catholic church has challenged us to not make fasting become superficial, but rather “reconsider the heart of this activity this Lenten season.”  And he encourages us to do this by fasting from indifference towards one another.  In his Lenten message he says, “Indifference to our neighbor and to God represents a real temptation for us Christians.  Each year during Lent we need to hear once more the voice of the prophets who cry out and trouble our conscience.”  Pope Francis shares with the people that when we fast from this indifference towards others, we can begin to feast on love. If we do no good to others, we do nothing great.  Today’s first reading from Isaiah tells us, “This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.” He doesn’t talk about food, but rather he talks about acts of kindness towards one another.

So I hope your Lent this year is off to a great start. Although we are already a few days in, it’s not too late to begin something new.  Take the words of our reading and gospel today, and the words from our church leader, to challenge yourself into a new way of fasting and relationship with Christ and one another.

Betty Goodwin is a Junior studying Education and Theology.

Reflection for Thursday, February 11, 2016

Thursday after Ash Wednesday
DT 30: 15-20 
PS 1: 1-2, 3, 4 AND 6
LK 9:22-25

How do we live out God’s will in our everyday decisions? Overall, we know we want to follow God, but do our everyday choices, big and small, reflect that commitment? As humans, many times we blatantly go against God’s will and choose sin. Other times we hope we are doing the right thing, but we have no way of knowing for certain if we are doing the right thing. We wrestle with different options and wish that God would simply send us a sign confirming that we are on the right path. When reflecting on the readings of today, it is hard not to become a little apprehensive with the emphasis on the destructive outcomes if we do not follow God’s commands. If these are the consequences, which is even more reason He should make His will a little more clear.

When I was struggling last year with how to know if I was following God’s will, a friend shared this following prayer with me. It has since become my favorite prayer, and I hope you enjoy it also. I had been praying for God to show me what to do with my life, and I knew I wanted to follow His will. However, I did not know if I was actually doing so or just making my own path and convincing myself it was what God would want. The prayer is as follows:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” ~Thomas Merton

Focus on the line “the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.” My hope is to keep that desire to please God in the forefront of our Lenten journeys, growing in our desire to do God’s will without losing sight of the big picture by stressing the details. The prayer provides a sense of comfort that our attempts to follow His ways, no matter if we stumble or succeed, bring God joy. A genuine desire to please God and an effort to step back and let Him have direction over our lives will allow those details fall into place.

Emily Kirsch is a sophomore majoring in Public Health with a minor in Spanish. She is involved with the Micah community, Campus Ministry, and Billikens for Clean Water.

Reflection for Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Ash Wednesday
JL 2: 12-18

PS 51: 3-4, 5-6 AB, 12-13, 14 AND 17

2 COR 5: 20-6: 2

Gospel Mt 6: 1-6, 16-18

As we begin our annual Lenten observance, I have to admit that I have something of a love-hate relationship with Lent, and in particular with Ash Wednesday. I love that it is the most “irreligious” (i.e., critical of external religious practices) day in the liturgical calendar, the day that spends the most energy on telling people not to take their ritual performance as a mark of moral or spiritual perfection. As they are today, the readings are always something about religion being about a change of heart and life, not just about looking good: “rend your hearts, not your garments,” “don’t let people see you fast or give alms or pray,” that kind of thing. Even more personally, the words we hear when we receive the ashes cut right at my vain little heart: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Translation: Keep building sandcastles, but remember that the tide is coming in.

Yet paradoxically, Ash Wednesday is the day on which our churchgoing is most visible and on which we spend the most energy thinking about ourselves. My more liturgically expert colleagues and friends tell me that more people show up to church on Ash Wednesday than on any other day of the year, even more than Easter and Christmas – and it isn’t even a holy day of obligation. I can’t help but wonder if it is such a popular day because we are wearing a sign of our church attendance right on our foreheads – precisely what the readings warn us to beware…

Of course, we also spend an inordinate amount of mental energy on changing some pattern in our lives - giving up chocolate or caffeine or beer, doing our pushups every morning, whatever - for the next month and a half. Here’s my problem with that: we tend to think that the content of the discipline is less important than having a discipline. “What are you giving up for Lent?” means that giving up SOMETHING is what matters, but SOMETHING easily turns into ANYTHING. Except that the whole point of it, of any of the religious things we do, is the coming of the reign of God, the overcoming of everything that tears down the fullness of human life. That’s it. So say the documents of Vatican II: “the Church has but one sole purpose – that the Kingdom of God may come and the salvation of the human race be accomplished.” (Gaudium et Spes 45) It isn’t just that God likes it when we give things up; we are about the Kingdom of God, the healing and restoration of a world that is torn apart by greed and indifference, which means that WHAT we do matters.

This Lent, might our discipline be about something that actually responds to a bleeding world? Instead of (or if you must, in addition to) giving up something arbitrary, or doing something that just makes us feel good about ourselves, this Lent is a good time to commit to learning more, saying more, doing more about racism, classism, economic injustice, all the things that destroy life - not just for the next forty days, but in ways that we can't -- won't -- take back after the season ends.

Patrick Cousins works in the Department of Campus Ministry.

Welcome to Lent 2016

Thank you for joining us as we begin our Lenten journey. Check out our schedule of events, keep up with daily reflections on this blog, and join us as we pray and fast together through this season of conversion and hope. 

Reflection for Saturday, April 4, 2015

Holy Saturday

GN 1:1-2:2

PS 104: 1-2, 5-6, 10, 12, 13-14, 24, 35

Gn 22: 1-18

PS 16: 5, 8, 9-10, 11

EX 14: 15-15: 1

EX 15: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 17-18

IS 54: 5-14

PS 30: 2, 4, 5-6, 11-12, 13

IS 55: 1-11

IS 12: 2-3, 4-5, 6

BAR 3: 9-15, 32C4:4

PS 19: 8, 9, 10, 11

EZ 36: 16-17A, 18-28

PS 42: 3, 5; 43: 3, 4

IS 12: 2-3, 4BCD, 5-6

ROM 6: 3-11

PS 118: 1-2, 16-17, 22-23

MK 16: 1-7

“Then God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind, and trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And so it was.” (Genesis 1:11) “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:28)

“then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Genesis 2:7-8) “And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” (Genesis 2: 22)

These scriptures give a glance into the two different creation stories that emerge from Genesis. In the first, God creates the world and all that is in it and then proceeds to make man and woman. In the second, God first makes Adam and then creates all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and, seeing that Adam is lonely, creates Eve. I think many times when people read these two separate accounts of creation, they get confused, and either choose to believe one or neither of them. Especially for people new to Christianity, finding two contradictions within the first two chapters can be disheartening. Often we forget that the world was a very different place tens of thousands of years ago when the first stories in the Bible were first being passed down. There was no written communication everything was by word of mouth. Each village or tribe of people would have story tellers who recounted the stories of how things came from memory. These story tellers learned from the story tellers before them and before them and so on. The repetition in the first creation story “Then God created… and He saw that it was good.” Is proof of this and gives insight into the use of repetitive language to help remember. There is really no way of knowing how the world was created and which, if either, of the two stories is the right one. But really is it a matter of how we got here or that we are here? Should we be putting so much focus on the how of our creation or the now of God’s presence with us? On this very Holy Saturday of the Easter season, I think it is easy for us to get caught up in remembering the Passion of our Lord and waiting in anticipation and hope for him to rise again on Easter Sunday. There is nothing wrong with this as remembering and celebrating is what the Easter season is about and is the concept around which Christianity was formed, but what else can we do to respond to the Jesus that is here, now, right in front of us? As a college student, the first thing that comes to mind is inviting others who may not attend church to go to the Easter vigil mass. Even the smallest things can invite Jesus to be a part of our lives here and now. Whatever it is, however insignificant you might think it to be, try it! Remember, “The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.”

Jonathan Meinhardt majors in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering..

Reflection for Thursday, April 2, 2015

Holy Thursday

EX 12: 1-8, 11-14

PS 116: 12-13, 15-16BC, 17-18

1 COR 11: 23-26

JN 13: 1-15

Imagine yourself at the last supper with the apostles when Jesus takes bread and proclaims it to be His body, and then takes wine and turns it into His blood. After doing this, He tells you, along with the apostles, that you are to “do this in remembrance of me.” How would you feel to be in that room? Would you understand the symbolism in what He was doing?

Keep that scene in you mind as you consider the gospel acclamation and the gospel story for today. In these, Jesus not only falls to His hands and knees and washes the feet of those with Him, but He also reminds us to “love one another as I have loved you” and to “wash one another’s feet [because] I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” In these moments, Jesus is giving us the model of servant leadership. He is literally giving of Himself at the last supper, and he is humbling Himself before us as He washes the apostles feet.

Many of us have spent the past few weeks fasting, sacrificing various items, or doing good deeds in order to grow closer to God and to be in solidarity with Jesus Christ as He makes the ultimate sacrifice on the cross. However, in these readings we are reminded of our call to minister to the Church and “proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes again.” At no point in that directive did Jesus tell us to proclaim His name until Lent was over. Instead, this was a call that we must answer everyday.  While some days we might do better than others, everyday we must take up our crosses and join our brothers and sisters in Christ, as we wash the feet of those around us and continue in the efforts that we began about 40 days ago when we made our Lenten promises.

Katelyn Seroka is a Senior from Avon Lake, OH majoring in Communication Sciences and Disorders and minoring in Catholic Studies and Special Education.

Reflection for Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Wednesday of Holy Week

IS 50: 4-9A

PS 69: 8-10, 21-22, 31 AND 33-34

MT 26: 14-25

“Answer me” is the final part of today’s responsorial psalm: “Lord, in your great love, answer me.” Then, the Gospel features the Last Supper and Jesus’ announcement that one of the apostles will betray Him. Judas, along with the others present, asks “Surely, it is not I, Rabbi?” and waits to hear what Jesus responds. 

Reflection and self-evaluation are themes during Lent, and questions play a big role in both of these. But who are these questions directed to? Have you ever said the words “Answer me” to someone? A parent might say these words to a child who does not want to answer a question. An anxious student or employee might think these words as they stare at the computer screen and await an important email. Have you ever said these words to God?

I seek confirmation and affirmation daily, especially from peers and friends. “Did you think that test was difficult?” Or, as I recount an exchange from the day, “Do you think I did the right thing?” Usually I know what my own thought is, and I want to check to see if another agrees.

On other occasions, I keep things to myself. I might ask, “Don’t you think what So-and-so did is annoying (mean, weird, etc.)?” Framed a certain way, my confidant will likely agree with me. I may (knowingly or unknowingly) paint the picture in a self-flattering way, without acknowledging my own insecurities and biases. If painted in honesty, the answer is probably that I am the one with a problem.     

I think I would benefit from directing more of my questions, especially the tough ones, to God. 

Judas asks, “What are you willing to give me?” to the chief priests. In contrast, the Psalm reminds us that “The LORD hears the poor, and his own who are in bonds he spurns not.” 

My prayer is to remember to turn to God constantly, even if just to say “What?” or “Why?” And then, I pray for patience, as I plead, “Lord, in your great love, answer me.” 

Stephanie Kaefer is a Junior in the College of Education and is involved on campus in the Micah Program and SLU Students for Life.