The Family Foundation School Catholic Community Bulletin
Pauca Verba (a few words)
Now we set out actively into the Lenten desert. In the biblical world, the desert, like the sea, was a place of encounter – encounter with what’s fearsome, unknown, life-threatening. Jesus meets all of this head-on. He engages the forces that have stolen away our “ancient dignity,” one monk says. This engagement will take Jesus to his death for love of us. But he will return victorious, bright and alive. He invites me to follow him to new life. If there’s ever a message we need to hear, this is it!
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Lent: the spring-time of believers. Return to the Lord! Return to the Lord! Leave the past in ashes. Jesus says, “Deny your very self,” (or, what we THINK is our very self) and “Come follow me.” It’s the narrow way that few choose – the way to life (real life.) But how? There are three ingredients: PRAYER. FASTING. WORKS OF MERCY.
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Do everything you can to get Christ into your life; there is everything to take him away.”
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Other Lenten suggestions: You think it’s hard to beat cocaine? Try this for 40 days: No criticizing. No condemning. No complaining. Let gratitude get born! Start looking through Christ’s eyes, instead of the culture’s eyes: full of lust, power-quest, materialism and greed.
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Still another Lenten suggestion: Make a (disciplined) point of reading at least one of the 4 gospels from start to finish: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.
At Easter some of us will receive our First Holy Communion. Lent will be a time then to examine our lives and to make a deep and thorough life-confession. Don’t wait until Holy Week! Ignatio can help you to understand how to go about this. Get an Examination of Conscience and use it a bit each day during Lent. An inner spring-cleaning. Pick up your head and see!
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Have a think on this! What do I think saves and teaches me/us? sciences? war-machines? power? charts and graphs? personalities? hierarchies? administrations? political parties? games? investments? intellectualizations? talk-radio? the culture? the music-makers? the movie-makers? the srend setters? Pseudo-philosophies? the newest technology?
“Nothing is accomplished outside of, nor even simply before man, but rather within him, through him, and for his sake. The entire human being is saved by divine grace. He is not taught from without. ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ (Isaiah 54:13)” A monk of Mount Athos, Greece
One of us here said recently: “For years, while I lived my life of addiction, lies and sex, I drifted away from the Catholic Church. I needed to invent a god that wouldn’t interfere with my life the way I was living it.”
Father Stephen: “Many people say, ‘I don’t need religion; spirituality is enough.’ The problem with this statement is that spirituality doesn’t say anything about the cross. In other words, spirituality asks nothing of me. I don’t have to die to myself.”
