Mary: Awaken Our Faith, Make Us Strong

In our meditation of the week:  Fr. Javier del Castillo reflects on the revolutionary teaching of St. Paul who preached that Our Lord who is rich in mercy will always forgive us (Ephesians 2:4-10). It is a message that is intended to make our hearts rejoice on this Fourth Sunday of Lent or Laetare Sunday.

Salvation is a gift. God became man for this purpose, to have mercy on us. We don't forgive our own sins. It is not a conquest of our own. We can't take our spiritual life in our own hands. Where our struggle lies is in opening up our soul to God and having the humility to recognize our sins.

Even if we live good lives, as Fr. Javier explains, we must never assume that we are without sin. Our lives will find peace and joy only when we continue to ask for forgiveness:

"Lord, I want to hold on tighter to your hand, because I see myself in danger all the time, as long as I am in this world. And I want to be very close to you, really change, try to change my lifestyle, that's what I want to do."

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In our meditation of the week:  Fr. Javier del Castillo helps us to contemplate the Gospel of the Mass for the Third Sunday of Lent— Jesus cleansing the Temple (John 2:13-25). This is a rare moment in the Gospel when Jesus gets angry because the worship that was due to his Father was being mingled with human motives and was not worthy of his Father God.

As Fr. Javier explains, when it comes to the sacred, Our Lord makes no allowances for competition. The same is true for us as the temples of the Holy Spirit. "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?" (1 Corinthians 6:19) The virtue which allows us to love God and to worship God rightly with an undivided heart is holy purity.

Purity is not simply a virtue for the single person but for everyone—married, single, priest, and religious. It is a virtue that allows us to see God behind everyone and every situation in our lives. And it allows us to be a contemplative, to carry that temple, to carry God with us wherever we go.

Our heart is something great, something valuable, and we have to keep it pure for God. There's many manifestations of this virtue and they are all beautiful, but they do require sacrifice. And that is where we need to really make a commitment to living these sacrifices so that the valuable gift of holy purity can be safeguarded.

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In our meditation of the week: Fr. Javier del Castillo helps us to contemplate the scene of the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor, which we read in the Gospel of the Mass for the Second Sunday of Lent (Mark 9:2-10).

Fr. Javier explains how Jesus took the Apostles up Mount Tabor to show them the full truth about himself, about his divinity, so that they could have hope in eternal life and remember this experience of bliss and eternity, especially when it comes time to suffer through the Passion. That is, Jesus took them aside to show them the glory that is a consequence of the Cross and that can only come after the Cross: the Tabor behind the Calvary.

In considering this scene at Tabor, we also try to go to Jesus, to look at him, so that we may be enlightened and have our hopes placed correctly in that which is eternal. When we try to discover the Tabors behind the Calvaries, we are freed up of any worry and from thinking about ourselves, and that allows us to recover our peace and our inner joy in order to serve others and shine a new light around us.

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In our meditation of the week: Fr. Peter Armenio helps us to enter into the season of the Lent with a desire for becoming good repenters. And he shares the easy steps for coming back to Christ and beginning again.

Although we might believe that God must be sick of us for doing the same sinful things all the time, Fr. Peter reminds us that Our Lord never gets sick of us because he loves us infinitely. That is why his favorite penance is a humble and contrite heart, not to shame us but to get us back. Therefore, a spirit of self-knowledge--sincerity and self-honesty--is the raw material for repentance, not to wallow in our defects and sins, but as a springboard to begin again. A humble and contrite heart releases those barriers between ourselves and Jesus Christ.

Fr. Peter also highlights numerous examples of good repenters in Scripture, from King David to Peter, from Matthew to the Samaritan Woman and Dismas (the Good Thief). Their stories remind us that all saints begin as very good repenters, and Our Lord is asking us to be good repenters too.

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In our meditation of the week: Fr. Peter Armenio helps us to pray about the sacrificial and redemptive true presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and how we should make the greatest treasure of the universe the center of our life.

The source and summit of the Christian life is the Eucharist. Therefore, as Fr. Peter explains, "everything hinges on the Mass. In a certain sense, every devotion is an extension of the Mass and must lead to the Mass." And, how much we get out of Mass depends on our presence of God throughout the day, and how well we embrace the Cross.

Jesus' crucifixion and death were a culmination of his life of self-giving through his work and through his public life. We have to join Jesus in his death and resurrection, through the cross, expressed in our work and expressed in our suffering.

St. Josemaria Escriva referred to the workbench as our altar, not sacramentally or liturgically, but that everybody's altar is in whatever they do. And he says that what really counts is how much self-giving love we put into our work, because that's how much we're going to get to be part of the Mass.

"While you are at Mass, think that you are sharing in a divine Sacrifice. For that is how it is: on the altar, Christ is offering himself again for you" (St. Josemaria Escriva; The Forge, no. 831).

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In this meditation: Fr. Peter Armenio reflects on how holiness is like the seeds that Jesus speaks about in the Gospel. Holiness grows in each one of us, but it grows by being in a constant state of converting; that is, we are all a work in progress.

Conversion requires an overhaul of our lives and a complete change of heart. And, as Fr. Peter explains, step number one is to speak with Our Lord and ask him to enlighten us, so that we see ourselves with the idea of changing, repenting, and becoming more like Christ. Our Lord desires a humble and contrite heart.

Step number two, we need faith. We must take to heart every word Jesus enunciated—his example, his witness, his sentiments, and his teachings. Our faith is not where it should be until we embrace everything the Lord says. When we look to Our Lord and ask for his grace, we will discover the tiny ways (or seeds) that allow the natural growth of our Christian life and our progress in holiness.

As St. Josemaria Escriva said, "Conversion is the matter of a moment. Sanctification is the work of a lifetime" (The Way, no. 285).

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In our meditation of the week: Fr. Javier del Castillo reflects on the lives of the early Christians and martyrs and the way they gave witness to their faith through the simple actions of everyday life. He explains how we should also foster an awareness of our personal sanctification and strive to be heroic in and through our ordinary circumstances.

The call to holiness is a real gift from God, there's nothing we have done to deserve it. As Fr. Javier says, "it's not about us doing anything as much as us getting out of the way so that God can do everything. Every ordinary thing that we do, if we look at it with supernatural colored glasses, can be a little step on our path to holiness." Therefore, as we respond to the gift of holiness with the same faith of the martyrs, we become cooperators in God’s divine plan and witnesses to the love of Christ.

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In our meditation of the week: Msgr. Fred Dolan speaks to us about our love for a good vocation story-- that amazing moment when someone's life is changed radically. There is something very special about people who have discovered what it is that God has in store for them.

Msgr. Dolan explains that the mission that Jesus offers us can change our life and fill it with light. It all comes down to that conviction that we were created, each one of us, in the Lord's image. We were called personally into existence and given a personal name. And, very compellingly, God has dreams for our life.

Therefore, during this time of prayer, Msgr. Dolan helps us make the resolution to maintain a vocational sense of life every day. Our prayer can help us to see how much depends on our response, day after day, hour after hour, to the realization that God is there, following us always with his tender love and with his tremendous interest in our lives.

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In our meditation of the week: Fr. Peter Armenio reflects on the greatest gift that we have from God-- the supernatural virtue of charity.

Many of the Mass readings during Christmas, Epiphany and the following days, remind us that God really wants us to think about charity. We are especially reminded of Jesus's desire that we, his disciples, should be known by the love we have for one another.

Fr. Peter explains that through our baptism, all of us have charity, together with faith and hope, written in our supernatural genetic code or DNA. God gives us what it takes to love with the heart of Christ.

As his disciples, no matter what the culture is like, we know that charity is more powerful than resentment, hatred, and coldness. The light of charity always dissipates darkness, just as life overcomes death and grace overcomes sin.

So, as we listen to this meditation, Fr. Peter guides us to pray and ask ourselves: When I'm with my family, my friends and my colleagues, how do they detect that I'm a disciple of the Lord? What are the characteristics of my charity?

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In this meditation for Christmas Day: Fr. Leo Austin helps us to contemplate the first nativity scene. Entering into Bethlehem and the stable, he invites us to look first of all to Mary and Joseph and to learn from them. All they had were each other (unity), poverty and happiness.

In their simplicity, Mary and Joseph are telling us that we don't need anything but each other. We don’t need anything else but to look at the baby Jesus and focus on him. Look at Jesus-- this is what all the saints have done throughout history. He will clean our eyes and our hearts. He will make us simple in a good way. This also makes it possible for us to just stop and look at each other as human beings.

Bethlehem, the city of bread. Bethlehem, the place where Jesus was born. The Eucharist is Jesus coming to us, the person of Jesus Christ taking possession of our hearts and the Blessed Trinity dwelling in our souls. And then, after realizing the love that we have received, looking at each other and at every single human being throughout history, with different eyes, with the eyes that are cleansed and purified by contemplating Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

In Jesus, we have a brother. In the Holy Family, we have a family. In Bethlehem, we have a home and we are always welcome.

As Fr. Leo says, "Mary, Joseph, Jesus, I want to be always with the three of you. I don't want to leave Bethlehem. I don't want to get complicated. I don't want to grow up in a bad way. I want to just take advantage of my family, of my home in Bethlehem, to be more simple, to be more poor, in order to bring the simplicity of a heart made clean to the rest of the world."

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