The Light is On for You, Catholic Reading Wednesday, & Men's Night Out

Do you need a new start?  The Light is On for You!

Go to confession TONIGHT, or any Wednesday this Lent from 6:30-8:00 pm in our own church,

or any parish or chapel in the Boston Diocese.

All people are welcome to come to the Heavenly Feast, so start with a good confession to our Lord.

An introduction on how to make a good confession can be found here.  

What to do in Lent? How can we make this a holy season, growing spiritually and in our relationship with our Lord? Here's are five quick thoughts:

1. Sacrifice something - give it up. Not for yourself (aka. dieting), but as an offering to the Lord. Put this thing out of your life for a time, and allow God to fill that void with His grace.
   
2. Give alms - give from your need, not just your excess. Give money saved by making sacrifices to the poor, lonely, forgotten, and mistreated.  Unite yourself to those who suffer, and give with a sincere and generous heart.
   
3. Give time - start a habit of caring for someone that God has put in your life. This may mean beginning a commitment to volunteer, visiting a neighbor in need, or giving more dedicated time to your family.
   
4. Go to Confession - recognize your sins, faults, failings, and struggles. Confess them to the Lord sincerely, and ask for His help. God is faithful! Then go out and make amends with those whom you have hurt. Generously forgive those who have hurt you. Offer others the same new beginning which Christ has offered to each of us.
   
5. Make a habit of Prayer - start spending time with God, habitually. For some this means going to Daily Mass. For others, it means praying the Rosary, the Daily Readings, or other set devotions. For others this means cracking open the Scriptures. For others it means sitting quietly and listening to God. Whatever way you pray, just do it.

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With many thanks to our wonderful and insightful curator, Karen Celano, you can delve into a faith-related news article each Wednesday! Karen writes:

As Holy Week commences, we are called to reflect upon the Passion – the suffering – of Christ, which we Christians believe He endured for our salvation. The Christian message contains the paradox that great joy only comes through great suffering – that we can only attain the heights of holiness when we descend into the depths of suffering humility. In an Op-Ed for The New York Times, David Brooks reflects on this paradox, writing that, though we “shoot for happiness,” we are “formed through suffering,” and that suffering can be a “fearful gift” that opens up windows on ourselves, our limitations, and our capabilities. Suffering “drags you deeper into yourself,” revealing depths and heights to your soul that you may never have realized existed. But after it drags you into yourself, it calls you up out of yourself and into compassion, self-gift, love, and holiness.

Brooks speaks about the paradox that those who have recovered from suffering, “[i]nstead of recoiling from the sorts of loving commitments that almost always involve suffering. . . throw themselves more deeply into them.” In a remarkable essay juxtaposing his experience of falling love almost immediately before being diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer, poet Christian Wiman speaks of how the reality of his impending death has, paradoxically, empowered him to fall even more in love with the world he will soon be leaving, and to grow in "hope towards God," whose existence Wiman sees as implied by the reality of love. He writes: “By some miracle I do not find that this [love of God] is crushed or even lessened by the knowledge that, in all likelihood, I will be leaving the earth sooner than I had thought. Quite the contrary, I find it thriving in me.” Suffering, he says, is “at the very center of our existence, and. . . there can be no untranquilized life that does not fully confront this fact.” But his experience has taught him that the mode of confronting this suffering does not need to be grief and angst. He has learned to confront suffering with love.

Wiman references Simone Weil, the Christian existentialist philosopher, who describes hypothetical prisoners separated by a wall who then discover that they can tap on the wall to communicate: “The wall is what separates them, but it is the only means they have of communicating.” Suffering, Wiman implies, is like this wall: it is an indication of our distance from God, but it is also a means of communicating with Him. Christ Himself – the Word of God, the self-communication of God to humankind – made this possible on the Cross, creatively transforming the suffering that is a necessary condition of human life after the Fall into a means of participating in divine life. 

Because of this transformation of suffering into the means of salvation, we need not approach suffering with despair and fear. Christian Wiman learned to let go of an existential angst born of defeatist fatalism; in a similar way, 26-year-old Macklin Swinney, also diagnosed with cancer, learned to let go of fear. Wiman and Swinney are both powerful examples of people who have, as Brooks put it, been “formed through suffering” – and of how suffering can be a path to holiness through the faith, hope, and above all love with which we face it.

Finding meaning in suffering is one of the greatest challenges of human existence. As we approach the Easter Triduum, let us let Christ teach us how to suffer, and ask Him to transform our own sufferings into the means of our sanctification.

"Suffering, which is present under so many different forms in our human world, is also present in order to unleash love in the human person." Pope John Paul II (to be canonized on April 27th)

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Here's a friendly reminder that tonight is Men's Night.  Join other Catholic men from the parish for a low-key gathering, games (think: Settlers of Catan) and food.  The host's address will not be published publicly online, however if you are interested in joining us, please email Hudelson [at] gmail.com.  Bring a drink or food to share.  We will start at 7 pm. Hope you can join us!