8th sunday of ordinary time
This Weekend we pray in solidarity with the Ukrainian people as their country is invaded. With Pope Franceie we pray for peace but as we see the Russian Leadership wants what it wants no matter what we and the rest of the world think so much prayer is needed. Next week we begin the season of Lent with the Ashes on Ash Wednesday and we begin again our annual journey of repentance and conversion for 2022. We leave the Green of ordinary time behind and we go to the Purple or violet of Lent. In our parishes we will have many opportunities to strengthen our spiritual lives over the 6 weeks of lent as we ponder what our faith really means to us as individuals and as a community of faith. Over these next few days before Ash Wednesday, the Lord invites us to prepare for this annual forty-day spiritual journey. Imagine you’re going on a sightseeing tour in a city you’ve never visited before. You’re going on foot, so anything you want to bring with you, you must carry all day. You have to decide what you really need and what to leave behind. Lent is a journey. What needs to come with us, and what needs to stay behind? During these final days before Ash Wednesday, let us accept the Lord’s invitation to leave all the excess behind and journey forward with faith, knowing that the Lord who comes to us in this Eucharist as our Bread for the journey has something greater to offer us, eternal life. The Apostle says it so beautifully in today’s second reading: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
It was the Lord’s own death that swallowed death up in the victory of his empty tomb on Easter Sunday. Let us hasten to meet him there. This Sunday in our Gospel Reading Jesus is coming to the end of what, in Luke, is called the “Sermon on the Plain”. He has instructed his disciples to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, treat others as they would want to be treated, not judge them, etc. Jesus is the wise person teaching his disciples a practical wisdom for their lives as disciples. Jesus says, in summary, a person’s words and actions will reveal their character. The Gospel tells us There is no sound tree that produces rotten fruit, nor again a rotten tree that produces sound fruit. For every tree can be told by its own fruit: people do not pick figs from thorns, nor gather grapes from brambles. A good man draws what is good from the store of goodness in his heart; a bad man draws what is bad from the store of badness. For a man’s words flow out of what fills his heart.’ God’s love is effective, it produces good fruit for the benefit of others. The good we do becomes a way to spread the faith to others. Jesus sends us to be witnesses to the faith we profess to practice what we teach and preach. Jesus words to us in this weekend’s gospel show his concern for the integrity and quality of our lives. We cannot, he says, teach others if we ourselves are not witnesses to what we teach. For all of us that is what Lent is all about moving forward in a spirit of conversion and prayerful return the spirit of metanoia. For now let us stop and reflect on the good we do for others and how becomes a way to bringing the faith to them where they are as we prepare to take up our Lenten challenges as all of us go forward together with faith in God.
Fullerton T 