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from exodus to easter A Ministry of Paulist Evangelization Ministries 3031 Fourth Street, NE Washington, DC 20017

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Author n Rev. Frank P. DeSiano, CSP Fr. Frank DeSiano, CSP, a noted speaker and author, is President of Paulist Evangelization Ministries. A number of his books, including Why Not Consider Becoming a Catholic?, are available at www.pemdc.org.

General Editor n Rev. Kenneth Boyack, CSP Editor n Ms. Paula Minaert Design and Layout n Pensaré Design Group, LTD CoveR IMAGE n © AYImages / iStockphoto.com

From Exodus to Easter my daily journey through lent

Nihil Obstat: Rev. Christopher Begg, S.T.D., Ph.D., Censor Deputatus.

Imprimatur: Most Rev. Barry C. Knestout, Auxiliary Bishop of Washington, Archdiocese of Washington, March 28, 2012.

The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free from doctrinal or moral error. There is no implication that those who have granted the nihil obstat and the imprimatur agree with the content, opinions or statements expressed therein.

Copyright © 2012 by Paulist Evangelization Ministries. All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the copyright owner.

Scripture references for Sunday Mass are taken from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition © 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Other Scripture references are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Excerpts from the English translation of The Roman Missal © 2010, International Committee on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Rev. Frank P. DeSiano, CSP

Published by Paulist Evangelization Ministries 3031 Fourth Street, NE, Washington, DC 20017 www.pemdc.org April 2012 printing

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i n tro d u c ti o n

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Introduction Lent offers, to Catholics and Christians, the greatest invitation in our lives. Every year, Lent calls us to the central business of our spiritual lives: to live more fully as disciples radically identified with Jesus Christ, and to open our hearts even more deeply to the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus continues to send upon us.

One way to think about this basic and essential business of our spiritual lives is through the image of pilgrimage. In ancient and medieval times, people seeking renewal often went on pilgrimages—long journeys to holy places—as a way to put themselves completely under God’s direct guidance and will.

These pilgrimages of the past bore no resemblance to modern travel, filled as it often is with many creature comforts and fourstar hotels. Rather, they were journeys in which pilgrims actually put their lives in danger. They put their very existence in the hands of God, risking potentially calamitous weather, sickness, and attacks by wayside robbers. Pilgrimage helped put them radically into relationship with God. Lent and pilgrimage have a connection with each other. Lent mirrors the pilgrimage of the people who are preparing to join the Catholic Church at Easter. In particular, Lent is their time of “election,” when they prepare intensively to receive the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist for the first time. The forty days of Lent recall the forty years the Hebrew people wandered in the desert, which are reflected in the life of Jesus by his forty days of fasting in the desert. Lent also mirrors the journey of the whole Church toward Easter hope, powerfully celebrated as the climax and goal of the Easter season.

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This year we pilgrims will be exposed, in a special way, to the graphic challenges of the Gospel according to St. Luke, seen in his compelling images of divine mercy, selfless love, and service.

These challenges will serve as a guide to the kind of progress God continually calls us to in our personal journeys.

The daily reflections in this booklet will point you to the upcoming Sunday Gospel and to different parts of our Catholic Eucharist. They will orient you toward the Sunday celebrations, which serve as signposts on our Lenten pilgrimage. The reflections will invite you to look at where you are in your life— and to where God invites you.

In the pages for the six Saturdays of Lent, we provide a list of the readings for the following Sunday’s Mass. For example, the readings for the First Sunday of Lent on page 15 look like this:

Readings for the First Sunday of Lent Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Psalm 91:1-2, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13 Psalm response: Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.

Plan to read and pray over these readings sometime during the week as you prepare for Sunday Mass. Many Catholics have adopted this practice as part of their weekly spiritual exercises, and find that it nourishes their souls. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you in making it a habit of the heart for you.

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Monday

We can feel the players’ muscles flex. We can sense the strain as winter’s flabbiness melts under the discipline of spring.

Although our major celebrations coincide roughly with seasonal changes, we do not necessarily experience this. Christmas, for example, aligns with the start of winter, but we might have been feeling winter weeks before December 21st. Lent roughly coincides with spring, but its start may not feel any different from the cold and chilly weeks before.

Reflection Whether spring comes early or late, Lent still takes place. From ancient times, Catholics have set aside these forty days before Easter as a period of growing intensity, of consciously greater concentration on what God calls us to be and do.

Lent is the beginning of the most significant time of the Church’s liturgical year. Lent marks the first part of a focused season that runs from Ash Wednesday through Pentecost Sunday—ninety days in all. The forty days of Lent prepare us for Easter; the fifty days after Easter (the Easter season) direct us toward Pentecost, when the Church expands the world-changing implications of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Lent, as it calls us to prepare for Easter through a more concentrated look into our hearts, seems to parallel what happens in the world of sports. Whatever the weather is in a particular city, media outlets there start to carry stories of baseball players in spring training—an intense period of concentration when players get ready for the baseball season. We read about workouts, special training procedures, and the physical condition of the players.

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What about our spiritual condition? Our spiritual flabbiness?

Our inner strength?

Lent calls us to our own spring training. It’s a focused time to advance on the journey God wills for us, a time for concerted personal effort. Fortunately, though, it’s also a time when we Catholics, as a community, help each other grow in replenishing our faith.

It’s spiritual spring training. So let’s get ready.

Question How are Lent and Easter a significant time in your life? Do you think you’re giving this season the attention it deserves?

Act Choose one of your favorite figures from sports or the arts. Try to imagine what that person goes through to get ready for working in his or her field. See if that example has anything to say to you.

Prayer Lord, help me get ready for this new spiritual season. Help me, with my sister and brother believers, to undertake the changes that you call me to make. Help me focus on your Son, Jesus, as he prepares to guide me through the mysteries of his death and resurrection. Give me the strength to follow his example. Make me aware of the power of your Spirit present in my life. Amen.

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Tuesday Lent always begins in the desert. It’s in the desert that the Hebrew people wandered after fleeing from Egypt (the Exodus).

It’s the desert they cross when returning home from exile in Babylon 750 years later. It’s the desert where Jesus goes and, on our behalf , undergoes temptation. The week of Ash Wednesday prepares us for Jesus’ meeting with the Tempter.

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This, of course, is exactly the fundamental temptation we face in life! Just look at how we try to puff up our self-esteem, and how we try to secure our basically insecure lives.

So Lent starts by posing one of the core questions we have to answer in life: what we are living for? Or, more precisely, who we are living for? Is it God? Or is it mostly ourselves, or, even worse, illusions about ourselves?

Question If someone were to live completely for God, what do you think that person’s life would be like?

Reflection We tend to think of temptation as confronting something almost irresistible—and then watching to see if we can, in fact, say no. To be sure, temptation often does present itself this way, particularly when it targets some of our strongest natural appetites.

But perhaps the deepest temptations we face lie beneath our natural appetites. Perhaps they lie in our hearts, and in the picture of the world we carry around in our heads: our basic attitudes in life, which lead to our actions. A temptation, after all, can come as a completely distorted picture of ourselves and our world—which we manage to swallow in spite of its distortion—an alternative way of living. And we can be good at telling ourselves so many big lies.

Act As you read the newspaper or review your news links on the com­ puter, look at the top stories. Do you see people being tempted in these accounts? How? How did people respond to the challenge?

Prayer Lord, you formed us from the dust of the earth and breathed your very spirit into us. Yet we turned from you in sin, and in the many ways we misconstrue you and ourselves. In this time of renewal, have mercy on us. Lead us back to you and the life of your Son, Jesus. Amen.

Jesus’ temptations do not appear similar to ours, until we think about it. The Tempter is presenting Jesus with an alternative course for his life. Rather than live totally for the Father and the Father’s will (that is, the Kingdom), the Tempter urges Jesus to live for himself—for his fame and his security.

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Ash Wednesday The whole world seems to stir as Ash Wednesday comes.

Catholics everywhere sense something inside, something instinctual. In cities and towns, young and old, all prepare to receive ashes. What do those ashes mean?

The Church gives ashes under two prayers. The older prayer says, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

A second prayer was introduced in the 1960s, and expanded for Catholics the meaning of this ritual. The ashes, this prayer highlighted, are not only a remembrance of mortality (as seen in the older prayer). Even more, they call Catholics to experience conversion. So the second prayer says starkly, “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”

This set of words comes right from the gospel accounts of Mark and Matthew, in the first preaching of Jesus. This is what he said to his society, to his contemporaries, to religious leaders, and everyday people alike. Today, whether the priest, deacon, or ecclesial lay minister uses the first or second prayer when we receive ashes, it comes with a pressing call to conversion.

Repentance certainly is about more than doing penance. Ashes certainly are more than a ritual sign. In ancient times, ashes and repentance reflected a reversal, a radical turning around in life. In the story of Jonah, for example, people put ashes on themselves as their last desperate prayer for the salvation of the city of Nineveh.

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These ancient traditions are part of the simple ritual we use today of imposing ashes on our foreheads, and they enrich it powerfully. Thousands of years of praying for reform come down upon us in this simple rite.

A turnaround, radical shift, complete departure, total change of mind: this is what the ritual calls believers to today.

How are they calling to me?

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Question What does the reception of ashes mean to you?

Act As part of your Lenten discipline, try to identify one specific area in your life where things need to turn around—obviously not a superficial area, but something deep and significant. Identify where God wants you to grow and change, and the specific steps you will take to move in that direction. Write this down, and plan how you will keep track of your progress.

Prayer Lord, my conversion is never finished. I open my heart for you to change me, but there always seem to be new changes that have yet to happen. Help me not be discouraged. Help me to have hope because you are not yet done with me, because you continue to transform my life. Make this Lenten time a period of deep and abiding renewal for me. Amen.

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T hursday Every Mass has a section called the Preparation of the Gifts. It begins the second major part of the Mass, the part we call the Liturgy of the Eucharist (to distinguish it from the first major part of the Mass, called the Liturgy of the Word, which begins with the first reading). The Preparation of the Gifts involves bringing up gifts of bread and wine, and, usually at Sunday Masses, taking up the offerings of the people.

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26:10). In other words, the gifts acknowledge the gracious and unmerited love God offers each person. If God has done this for us, what, then, can we do for God? Some (not enough) parishes talk about stewardship, which, unfortunately, Catholics often think is only about money.

Regrettably, Catholics think of the Sunday collection in just the same way: opening our wallets to contribute our money.

But it’s not about money. It’s about us, and our relationship with God, and how we properly respond to God’s astonishing love.

Reflection

Question

The first reading on this first Sunday of Lent comes from the Book of Deuteronomy, one of the Books of the Law of the Old Testament.

In the reading, Moses explains to the Hebrew people how the priest is to make an offering of gifts—the first fruits of the harvest, which are brought by the people and then placed in a basket. For many centuries, this ancient activity was repeated in this part of the Mass, and Christians brought in gifts of various kinds—produce, animals, and other resources—to give to the priest for the support of the poor. Our collection of money reflects these ancient rites.

Act

The first reading places this collection of harvest gifts in the context of God’s saving help of the Israelites. The author recalls this history, how the Hebrew people were brought down to Egypt and eventually became enslaved: “…we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression” (Deuteronomy 26:7).

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.

In light of this history, the priest makes the offering to God. “Therefore, I have now brought you the first fruits of the products of the soil which you, O Lord, have given me” (Deuteronomy 10

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How do you usually think about the collection at Sunday Mass?

Is it for whatever money you happen to have on hand or is it something planned?

Think about the most memorable gifts you have received in your life. What makes you remember them? What have these gifts meant to you? How do you connect the gift with the person who gave it to you?

Prayer

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the wine we offer you: fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink.

(From the Preparation of the Gifts)

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Friday Older Catholics remember when every Friday was a day of abstinence, which meant that Catholics refrained from eating meat. Meat, culturally, was a sign of extravagance for many people, so refraining from meat showed our denial of splurging.

Now our Catholic practice is to abstain from eating meat only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and on the other Fridays during Lent.

Reflection

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Could it be that one of our biggest illusions involves thinking that we are the center of everything, and that life owes us everything and anything we want? Beyond the selfishness inherent in this kind of attitude, let’s not forget our frequent blindness to how millions of people are deprived of even minimal things in life, to how millions might long for the things we toss aside or take for granted.

Might there be a value in denying our whims so, at the very least, we can identify with the mass of suffering and deprived humanity? And this isn’t just people in foreign lands. How about the underclass in our own society, who live from hand to mouth?

How about identifying with them, as Jesus did?

We do not have to be vegetarians or vegans to realize that not eating meat hardly seems difficult for us today. Many people, after all, liked abstinence from meat because it provided an excuse to eat a more desired, and more expensive, piece of fish!

Question

But the practice of abstinence should lead us to the question of personal discipline, that is, the denial of some desire for the sake of something more important. In our world, where strip malls and large shopping centers often define and dominate our neighborhoods, our every want seems to take us to some way of satisfying it. One of the reasons people often praise a city like New York is because, as they say, “You can get anything you want, day or night. The city never sleeps.”

Act

So is there a value to denying our whims every now and then?

Some whims—the seriously sinful ones—indeed must be denied.

But what about our other, everyday whims, what we watch on TV or our favorite music, the time we spend goofing off or visiting the refrigerator at night? What is the value of denying these?

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Do you ever deny yourself something you’d like to have and can afford?

Does your parish distribute a collection box that collects money to give to the missions or the poor at the end of Lent? Try to get one for yourself, and make filling it a conscious act of giving alms, rather than just a place for spare change.

Prayer Lord, help me to be freed from my constant self-concern so that I may be made free to attend to the needs of others. Amen.

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Saturday

Question

Most of the Mass involves prayers said out loud. Some of them, however, are said quietly by the priest. Among these are the beautiful prayers the priest says just before Communion.

Reflection “[K]eep me always faithful to your commandments, and never let me be parted from you.”

With these words, we see one of the most important dimensions of receiving the Eucharist: how its effects should endure in us.

The act of eating the consecrated bread and receiving the wine can seem like contained moments: we experience them as quiet, intense times. And then we get up and leave the church.

We may feel that the sacred time really is only those few moments of quiet that surround Holy Communion and, that when they are over, we go back to being our normal selves. But these moments of receiving Holy Communion really embody and show forth the ongoing union we have with God through Jesus—a union that endures before, during, and after Mass.

The Gospel for tomorrow, the temptation of Jesus, reveals exactly this quality of Jesus: his faithful adherence to his Father. Jesus models for his followers the unswerving commitment that we reach for in our relationship with God. Communion is not only a receiving of the Lord, but an adhering to the Lord, a union that should never be broken, a sharing that should infuse our whole lives.

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When, apart from your time at Mass, do you notice your union with Jesus? What does this union look like?

Act In the coming week, make a point each day of setting aside a few moments to reaffirm your union with Jesus Christ. Try to become conscious of the enduring quality of the Eucharist in your life. Pray for those whose sense of adhering to God seems to be weak or fickle. A good way to do this is in Eucharistic Adoration. If your parish doesn’t have it, you can find it online: go to www.masstimes. org, put in your zip code, and then click on Adorations.

Prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who, by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit, through your Death gave life to the world, free me by this, your most holy Body and Blood, from all my sins and from every evil; keep me always faithful to your commandments, and never let me be parted from you.

(Prayer before Communion recited by the Priest)

Readings for the First Sunday of Lent Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Psalm 91:1-2, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13 Psalm response: Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.

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