From the Pastor's Desk | February 22

Parish Speaker Series 

Please mark your calendars for our Lenten Speaker Series The Lordship of Christ March 2, 3, and 4.  Our speaker and present is my dear friend Mr. James (Butch) Murphy.  Jim "Butch" Murphy serves as a Renewal Ministries’ country coordinator for Mexico, organizing and leading multiple mission trips each year to serve the impoverished in Mexico City. He is also the founder and president of Vera Cruz Communications and has been involved in youth ministry on parish, diocesan, national, and international levels; has served as a member of several parish pastoral teams; and has worked in various religious education programs. Jim also is the former chairman of the National Service Committee for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and former president of International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Service. Jim and his wife, Susan, have one son and live in Western Michigan.

I have preached a couple of times about my experiences on the Mexico Mission Trip with Father Gabriel Richard High School.  Butch is “the guy” who leads these regular trips and missions to the people of Mexico, particularly those living in the largest garbage dump in North America.  He is an incredible man and this will prove a worthwhile endeavor for you to attend.  

We will begin at 6:30pm each night.  Butch Murphy will lead us in a talk and meditation.  There will be some time for Eucharistic Adoration and Confession, followed by refreshments as we gather as a community.  So, I look forward to seeing you each night!

Gospel Reflection

Today is the first Sunday of Lent - that time in the liturgical year that the Church asks us to focus on those three spiritual practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to help us come out of ourselves all the more and focus our attention on our relationship with God and neighbor.

• Fasting trains us for true freedom.  By voluntarily giving something up we learn how much we are driven by our impulses - what St. Thomas Aquinas calls our passions.  Passions are emotions and desires that arise from our sensitive appetite.  By sensitive appetite, Aquinas means our emotional desires that stem from our sensory perception driving us towards some perceived pleasure.  Fasting allows us to realize how much we are driven by our impulses - or passions - and it helps us train them through our reason and will.  

• Almsgiving helps us break the illusion that what we have is only for us.  It helps us break our selfishness and places our focus on the other - our neighbors, particularly those in some real need.  Almsgiving helps us turn true repentance outward into tangible acts of love.  

• Prayer helps us reorient our lives towards our relationship with God.  As we move through life we become distracted by noise, productivity, ego, power, wealth, pleasure, and honor.  Prayer grounds us and helps us communicate all the more with the God who created us, cares for us, and sustains us.  Prayer helps us deepen our desire for God.  

My true hope is that St. Martha Parish becomes a school of true prayer - that we become a people and parish who pray and pray unceasingly.  To that end, I want to focus this Lent on prayer and to aid in that endeavor I want to introduce the One Percent Challenge.  I can take no credit for the One Percent Challenge as the title and content come directly from an organization called the Evangelical Catholic out of Madison, Wisconsin.  This organization is a great group of people focused solely on evangelization and bringing people closer to Christ.  I used the One Percent Challenge at Father Gabriel Richard High School and, I am confident that, even today, if you asked any of my former students what one percent of their day was, they would respond quickly with, “Fourteen minutes and twenty four seconds!”  

Fifteen minutes!  Can we give God fifteen minutes of our day?  We can ask that question another way.  Can we give God just one percent of our day?  That’s not a lot!  Sadly, however, many if not most cannot or will not even do that.  That is precisely the challenge.  Over these next forty days of Lent, can we give God just fifteen minutes (or one percent) of our day in silent, meditative, and communicative prayer?  I think this will be a challenge for many.  

But, what do we do with those fifteen minutes?  Let me help by offering a method of prayer called Lectio Divina (divine reading).  I am not saying this is the method to pray but I find that it is fairly simple and, over time, it helps us actually listen and recognize God’s voice.  It awakens within us our spiritual senses so that we can understand how God speaks to us.  In order to use this method of prayer we need three things: 1) fifteen minutes, 2) Scripture, and 3) a journal. 

It is imperative that we pray with Scripture because we can be confident that God speaks through his word.  Scripture is the living word of God.  Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh.  We need to meditate on scripture because Jesus speaks through Scripture.  I also think that journaling is important because it helps us do two things.  First, it helps us get whatever is inside of us out.  We are good at holding things in or not paying attention to what is stirring up within us.  By writing we can get our thoughts, feelings, and desires out.  Second, journaling helps us focus and it helps us remember.  It helps us resist the temptation of distraction and it becomes a mirror to see ourselves as we truly are.  

So, what do we do in these fifteen minutes?  Let me explain.

Once I have settled on a Scripture passage, I read the passage three times; once at normal speed quietly in my mind, a second time more slowly quietly in my mind, and a third time out loud.  When we hear things sometimes we pick up on things differently then when we read them quietly.  As I am reading I am paying attention to two things: 1) Words and/or phrases within the passage that, for whatever reason, seem to stand out to me.  These words or phrases catch my attention for some reason.  They resonate with me.  2) My thoughts, feelings, and desires - the holy and the unholy.  We all think.  We all feel.  We all have desires.  As I read the passage I pay attention to what is going on inside of me.  What is stirring up within me?  What am I thinking?  How am I feeling?  What am I desiring?  

Write - In my journal, at the top of the page, I write the words and/or phrases that stood out to me as I was reading.  

Then I put the pen down and I reflect on those words and/or phrases and how they speak into my thoughts, feelings, and desires.  I take the next eight or nine minutes and we meditate on those words and/or phrases.

Reflect - After these eight or nine minutes are over, I pick my pen back up and I begin writing.  I write what I was reflecting on.  I write down what I was thinking, feeling, and desiring.  I get what is going on inside of me out on paper.  

Apply - After I have spent some time reflecting on those words and/or phrases in light of the stirrings within me, I ask myself one simple question - how do these words and/or phrases apply to my life right now?  I write the answer to that question down in one sentence.  

Pray - During the last minute or two of my prayer time, I write a short (emphasis on short) prayer to the Lord.  It can be a prayer of contrition, petition, supplication, adoration, praise, etc.  I simply wind my time down with a short prayer to the Lord.  

When we continue this over time (a week, a month, six months, a year) and then go back and reread our journal, particularly the application, we will begin to see common threads and themes and we will begin to understand how the Lord speaks within our hearts.

How do I choose a Scripture passage?  Do not play Bible roulette!  That is when we open the Bible to some random passage, put our finger on the page, and pray with the passage that our finger lands on.  Let’s not do that.  For one reason, we will end up in Leviticus or Numbers and choose never to pray again.  

Rather, let’s be more systematic.  There are two ways to do this.  First, there are cards at both entrances of the Church with a month’s worth of scripture passages to get us started.  Please take one as we move through Lent together.  Second, the Church gives daily readings at Mass.  Choose one of the readings from the Mass of the day.  There is no science behind this, we simply choose the reading that, for whatever reason, stands out the most to us.   

As we move through Lent, let’s take up the challenge!  Can we each give the Lord fifteen minutes of our day in silent, meditative, scriptural prayer?  Can we each give the Lord just one percent of our day over these next forty days?  The hope is that, after these forty days of Lent, we will have inculcated within ourselves both a habit and a desire for prayer.  

What is one percent of your day?  Fourteen minutes and twenty four seconds!  Can we give that time to the Lord? 

Know of my prayers for you all! 

Fr. Ryan