We celebrate our children and another successful year of Religious Education. Religious Ed Director Siobhan Potter speaks about Jesus revealing himself in others and the deep faith she has observed in our children throughout the year.

homily transcript

When I was working on my

degree in education at Nazareth College, I became a junior and I had to really

start focusing on my major and choosing the classes that would not only help me

learn all I could, but classes that really interested me and my love for

teaching. 

After meeting with some great

people in the education department, they gave me one, simple next step to my

road of getting my degree…

They wrote a professor’s  name down on a post-it note and told me where

to find him, because he was my new advisor. 

Well…. I walked over to the

right building, went up to the correct floor, and from there I walked the hall

UP and DOWN about 4 times searching for this professor. 

I kept seeing the same man in

a terribly messy office, but I was little embarrassed to ask for help, because

obviously I was lost.  Plus – this man

looked a little lost himself – or rather a little out of place. 

He had a plaid shirt with a

tie that did not match; a big swirl of messed up hair and a scraggly

beard.  There were piles of papers

everywhere and more books that I have read in a lifetime. 

Finally, I gave in and

decided to ask this man how I could find the professor I was looking for that I

had never met.  I said:  “Excuse me, sir.  Could you please help me find this professor?”

I handed him the post-it

note, and with a big smile he slapped the post-it note to his forehead and

said:  “That’s me!” 

I felt so silly.  Why did I not recognize this quirky looking

man as a professor?

I was looking for a professor

according to my assumption of how a professor might look.  I was looking for someone who maybe had

glasses, a neat office with organized books, and a leather briefcase sitting

neatly on the side of their desk. 

This quirky, extremely smart

and lovable man was one of the best professors and advisors I have ever

had.  But how did I not recognize him as

a professor at first?

Professors come in many

different forms.  Perhaps it was my own

assumptions or maybe because I had the way he might look in my mind before I met

him, so I was not more open to all the possibilities. 

I think about this experience

whenever I hear the gospel reading we heard today.

Jesus’ friends have all

decided to go on a fishing trip – and like most fishing trips – they aren’t

catching many fish! 

So Jesus calls out to them

from the shore…

And they don’t know who this

man is!

How could the disciples not

recognize Jesus? 

How could the teacher and

friend they loved so much be so unrecognizable so soon after he departed them?

Just like professors, and

doctors, and hairdressers and construction workers come in many forms, Jesus

comes in many forms, too. 

There have been so many times

in my life when I have seen Jesus come in many different forms.  Sometimes in the most humblest of ways,

too.  

Back in December I was

driving to work and drove past a homeless man who spends a lot of time under a

bridge near the off-ramp of the expressway near my home.  He sits with his dog, Zach hoping for food.

I pulled over on what I

thought was one of the coldest days of the winter to offer him an extra blanket

or two we keep in the trunk for watching soccer games or going to the

beach. 

As soon as I offered him the

blanket, he thanked me and explained that someone close by let him sleep night

after night in their warm auto body shop, and someone else might need it more

than he did. 

And then… his eyes lit

up.  Right away he asked me if I would

like to walk with him to find someone else outside who would be

We celebrate the 49th anniversary of Earth Day, an event observed in 192 countries with over a million participants.

Maggie and Darryl share their passion for protecting the earth and inspire us to care more deeply about our planet.

Homily Transcript

It is both our

pleasure and honor to address you today on this 49th celebration of Earth

Day.  Earth Day was founded in the United

States by Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin in 1970.  It is now observed in 192 countries, and is

the largest civic event across the world with over 1 million people

participating in various cities.  1970

was also the year the Environmental Protection Agency was established.

Our intent this

morning is to inspire you to care more deeply about our planet and to share with

you our passion for protecting and preserving our planet Earth.

I grew up in the

70s when the Keep America Beautiful campaign was launched.  There was a very popular commercial, some of

you may remember, referred to as the “crying Indian.” This TV commercial

depicted a Native American paddling his canoe by a huge industrial plant that

was spewing toxic gases, then pulling his canoe ashore to find litter strewn

about.  He is pictured shedding a single

tear.  This was an effective commercial

and impressed upon me that pollution was a significant problem.

Also in the 70s was

there was the Oil Crisis during which I remember my parents having a

hard time paying heating bills in the winter months.  This again impressed on me the importance of

protecting and preserving our planet’s natural resources.

One of my high

school teachers established a club called the P.E.T. Project. This was

an acronym for Protect the Environment of Tully–the rural community in which I

grew up.  Every Saturday we would join

together at the town garage and collect recyclable newspapers and glass.  We would separate the glass into brown, green

or clear, put on our safety goggles, and hand crush it.   Our teacher would bring soda and hot dogs to

grill for lunch, and we bonded for a single cause–to protect and preserve the

environment.

This experience

embedded in me the value of doing something for the community and doing

something for the Earth.  In our senior

year one of my girlfriends in the PET Projects painted a 12-foot high mural of

the character Willman Marston’s superhero Wonder Woman inside the garage

building were we gathered for P.E.T projects on Saturdays?  This was a powerful image for me that

strengthened my conviction that protecting and preserving the Earth was

important and that I could make a difference as a woman.

I’m convinced that a person’s convictions motivate individual actions. I

think that one has to have a deep belief that what he or she does has impact,

no matter how small or simple the act.  I

believe that our Mother Earth needs us to preserve, protect and respect

her.  But my passion for the environment

is rooted in the beauty I see every day.

When I awake in the

morning, and before I retire in the evening, I take a look at the sky.  I do this because I am deeply inspired by the

vastness of the earth.  I am continually

in awe of the beauty and reflections of light in the sunrise and sunset, and

the textures and shapes of clouds.  I am

mystified by the stars, moonlight, and the darkness of the night.  When I walk barefoot on the morning grass I

feel a connectedness to the earth, as the dew awakens my senses.

I have stood at the

shores of the ocean and felt its power and pondered the diversity of marine

life and I have walked through the woods and felt surrounded by the peaceful

strength of trees.  I am grateful for

each new day, another rotation of the planet, and know that the planet is the

single thing that connects all living beings. 

It is truly the “common ground“ we share with all of humanity, crossing cultural,

socio-economic, et

Rev. Myra led us to the good news of Jesus’ resurrection during our beautiful Easter Celebration. She preached on how Jesus’ unwavering love for us all, brings us from darkness to light, from hopelessness to hope, to being alone and knowing that God was there all the time.

Homily Transcript

Every night when I

go to sleep I am covered in a quilt of women. Not just any women but women in

the bible. A gift that was given to me by Lori Fromm & parishioner and a

group of women in the parish who sewed quilt patches of these women to give me

inspiration and strength. One of those women who have a patch on my women’s

quilt is Mary Magdalene who is spoken of in this gospel today. Mary happens to

be one of my favorite disciples. She is mentioned 14 times in the New

Testament. She had come to Jerusalem with Jesus for the Passover celebration,

but rather than feasting, she stood near the cross with the other women during

the crucifixion and watched Jesus die.

When Joseph of Aramethea took the body of

Jesus to the tomb, she stayed outside the tomb with the other women to watch

them roll the stone in place. And in the gospel of John she comes to the tomb

twice, once alone to find the tomb empty, and a second time to encounter Jesus

who she thinks is the Gardner.

 Mary is a woman who understood struggle and liberation!

When she met Jesus she was struggled with seven demons that possessed her that

Jesus cast out. Now I thought to myself that sometimes its enough to go through

life struggling with one demon, and here she was consciously aware of her

struggle in 7 different areas of her life that needed Jesus help. How many

times have we needed Jesus to help us with our inner demons? Our struggles

around fear, self worth, addiction, hopelessness, greed, anxiety about the

future, where we struggle to see our selves the way God does?  Or to see a better future than what we are

experiencing in the moment?  The second

reading speaks about it as clearing out the old yeast, – old mistakes and

failures and becoming a fresh batch of dough!  I love that! Having the opportunity to write

and discover new truths about our lives as we let the old go!

This week, I met a man who told me that he

had a time in his life where he struggled with his demon of addiction so badly

that his mother couldn’t even allow him in her house because, he would steal

her blind so when he would arrive hungry, she would hand him food out the door

until he showed up again the next time. He told me that when he finally got

arrested from robbing a Jewelry store, he said, “I saw the arrest as a rescue,

because he simply couldn’t shake his demons on his own.” He said, “God helped

him face his demons in prison.”

Jesus changed Mary’s life, when he helped

her face her own demons; he cast them out of her life and so she followed him.

When she is named, she is not identified by

her relationship to a man, she is not the daughter of but she is introduced by her

city. Magdala.  A city known for its

fishing industry, that built its wealth on fisheries.  Theologians tell us that she is perhaps wealthy

and independent enough to travel with Jesus as one of his disciples until his

final journey to Jerusalem.  Mary loved

Jesus! When you love someone like she loved Jesus you understand the pain she

and his mother and the disciples must have experienced at his death.

This Friday, I

attended the “7 Last Words” performance by our youth group and every year there

is one part in the play that pierces me every time, and that is when they take

Jesus down from the cross and lay his lifeless body in his mothers arms and she

rocks him.

There is no greater pain than for a parent

to bury their child or hold their lifeless body in their hands. Those of you

who have lost children know and understand that pain!

With her heart full of pain she comes to

teach us the meaning of resurrection. The scripture tells us that,

On

Is it possible for us to transcend the pain and hurt in our own lives to forgive others? That is the question that Jesus answers for us today. In this most painful time of crucifixion and rejection, Jesus will forgive.

Spirit Singers sing the Passion (4:45 – 28:00)

Rev. Mary homily (28:05 – 45:00)

Homily Transcript

In 1972 a

photographer won a Pulitzer Prize for a photograph that many of you will

remember.   It was a young girl, naked;

running screaming towards the camera in agony after a napalm attack incinerated

her village in Vietnam.  Do you remember

the photograph?  She was Kim Fuke, nine

years old.  She was photographed after a

U.S. commanded the South Vietnamese planes to drop napalm near her

village.  That photo has been reprinted

thousand and thousands of times.  She was

burned over a third of her body and she lost consciousness.  The photographer who took the picture was

there to cover the bombing of the village but he was so moved by little Kim

that he rushed her to a hospital leaving his camera equipment behind.  After 17 operations and 14 months of terribly

painful rehabilitation, Kim miraculously survived.  As an adult she traveled to the newly built

Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC to give a talk. Listening to her speech was

a man by the name of Captain John Plumber. 

He was the U.S. commander who had coordinated the air strike on her

village.  After she spoke he approached

her.  They talked for a long time and then

she forgave him publicly right there at the wall.  He became a minister in Virginia and they

continued to be close friends throughout his life.  Everyone who has ever met Kim comments on the

amazing quality of peace that radiates from her.

Is it possible for

us, like Kim, to transcend the pain and the hurt in our own lives to forgive

others?  Is it possible?  That is the question that Jesus answers for

us today in this remembrance of his Palm Sunday.  Of his holy week.  Of his message that he left for us.

There is an old

story about a king. The king took all of the treasures outside and placed them

on the front lawn of the castle – all the gold, all the silver, all the

jewels.  And he said to the people, “You

can have whatever you choose but choose wisely.”  So all the town’s people came and went crazy

hauling of the gold and the silver and the jewels and the king watched as they

did so.  But one woman came up to the

king and she said, “Is it really true that I can have whatever I choose from

what’s on the lawn?” “Yes!” said the king, “but choose wisely.”  And the woman said, “If that is the case, I

choose you.”  The king said, “Woman, you

have chosen the most wisely of all. Not only will you have me but you will have

my entire kingdom.”

On Palm Sunday we

have the story of two kings and the choice to choose one over the other.  It is the story that happens right before the

Passover.  We are in the city of Jerusalsem.  It is a time when the Jews are celebration

their freedom from Egypt.  So it is a

huge celebration.  Celebrating the

liberation which sometimes takes on protests and riots against the Romans who

now oppress them.  So in order to quell

any such uprising Pontius Pilate the Roman governor of Judea has his own parade

this day in Jerusalem with powerful war horses, soldiers and weapons all to

remind the Jews that they are the subjects of the Roman Emperor Tiberius.  And so it is on this day that Jesus decides

to have his own parade on the other side of the city.  But his parade is very different.  He does not ride on a horse, he rides on a

donkey.  His robe is a thin cape.  There are no weapons or soldiers.  The people there wave palms to honor him.  He is not anticipating conquering a country

or capturing any slaves.  But rather he

is thinking about establishing God’s

Mike Boucher preaches about how Jesus teaches us to interrupt the silence. To align with someone and not just offer a contribution, but offer a commitment. Mike recognizes that this can be nerveracking, but to “speak your truth, even if your voice shakes.”

Full Homily Transcript:

Many of you may have heard me say

that I’m a sucker for these Facebook videos that play automatically when you

scroll over them.  The other day, I was

watching one with a wildebeest caught by a crocodile by a watering hole.  The rest of the herd just looks on as this

drama plays out.  The wildebeest is

getting slowly and methodically dragged into the water and its fate seems

certain.  Then out of the corner of the

video comes a head slowly moving across the water.  When it gets close you see it’s a

hippopotamus that rears up and uses its foot to hit the crocodile – setting the

wildebeest free….

The video got me thinking about today’s gospel –

where this drama is building.  This woman

is brought before Jesus and the local religious authorities try to trap him in

an ethical situation where it looks like both of them are in trouble no matter

what he says.  But Jesus responds in a

way that dramatically changes the equation.

Before we go any further, I just want to pause to

highlight a few details of the story.

The scribes and Pharisees bring this woman before

Jesus in the middle of the crowd.  They

declare that she has been “caught in adultery” and should be stoned.

Now you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to

know that if, in fact, she is guilty of adultery that adultery requires TWO

people and only ONE is appearing in this scene. Furthermore, Mosaic law

actually stated that BOTH parties were to be stoned.   But we

also know from historical research that women who were sexually assaulted by a

man could be “charged” with adultery.  So

no matter what actually happened, Jesus knows from the start that this is a

sham.

But Jesus is also aware that they are doing this

in public.  And when things are done in

public, it is meant to make a point.  In

this case, they’re trying to do two things. They want to catch Jesus with

witnesses present but they are also sending a message to the crowd about their

power – and it’s a message especially to the women.

Then and now, we live in a sexist and patriarchal

world that targets women and anyone who does not fit the gender binary.  I think Jesus was aware of this.  And if we look at who is speaking in the

first part of the gospel, it is all men.  The woman is silent.  She isn’t even given a name and she stands

before men who have authority – authority even to take her life.

The great writer Rebecca Solnit – Being unable to tell your story is a living

death, and sometimes a literal one…. Violence against women is often against

our voices and our stories. It is a refusal of our…right to self-determination,

to participation, to consent or dissent; [even] to interpret our own

narrative…”

So today we see a woman who is not just quiet, she

is silenced.  And the silencing of women

can take many forms.  You can be harassed

into silence.  Talked over. Cut off or

cut out of conversations.  You can be

dismissed.  You can even be mansplained.

If you

are unfamiliar with mansplaining, Wikipedia defines it as “a pejorative term

whereby a man comments on or explains something to a woman in a condescending,

overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner”. You might

have seen the New Yorker cartoon of a woman and man at dinner and the guy says,

“Let me interrupt your experience with my confidence.”  Heck,  I might even be mansplaining by defining

mansplaining…

I won’t ask to see a show of hands at how many

women have experienced mansplaining, but I’m guessing the percentage is high.

And while we might laugh at something like

mansplaining, the

Fr. Jim preaches on the story of the prodigal son, and how when the son returns home his father doesn’t punish him, but rather he rejoices and celebrates because his son was lost and now is found. Fr. Jim teaches us that we come to God not by gettting it right, we find God by getting it wrong.

Homily Transcript

When I was 16

years old my parents took us kids to the Eastman Theater to see the RPO and

before it started we were looking around at the chandelier and the stage and

the magnificent space in the Eastman Theater and my mother said, ”Jimmy isn’t

it exciting to be here?” And I said to her, “I could care less”.  I was being a rude, teenage brat.  But I’ll always remember my mother’s

response…I’ll always remember it.  She

didn’t say, “Hey! We spent good money on these tickets.  You’d better change your attitude.”  Or, she didn’t say, “That’s no way to talk to

your mother.”  She didn’t say

anything.  She smiled.  And it was a genuine smile.  So I realized she wasn’t listening to my

rudeness.  She wasn’t listening to my

disrespect.  She was listening to my

heart.  She knew something was wrong,

that I was going through something.  She

knew I was depressed.  I was in pain.  I learned a lesson that day:  If somebody attacks you they are really

calling for love.

In the story today

the lost son says something very rude to his father.  “Give me my share of inheritance.  I want everything that is coming to me.”  Who cares about you Dad?  It’s about me.  Just like Judas said to the priests, “How

much will you give me if I turn him in?” 

Who cares about Jesus? What about me? 

How much will you give me?

So how does the

father respond to this rudeness?  We are

told the father divided the property between them.  Just like my mother.  Didn’t say anything.  Didn’t say, “Don’t talk to your father like

that!” or, “Don’t be rude.”  Instead he

listened not to his rudeness or his disrespect. 

He listened to his son’s heart. 

He knew his son was going through something.  He wasn’t happy.  He needed to go through some transition. So

the father let him go.

You parents know

how difficult this is when your child has to leave your care.  You know they are going to make

mistakes.  You know they are going to get

hurt.  But there is no love without

freedom.  He lets him go.

After a few days

he sets off for a distant country.  Can

you relate to that?  This is really a

story about us.  All of us have gone to a

distant country.  We have different names

for this:  Vision quest, pilgrimage,

spiritual journey, voyage to find ourselves, midlife passage.

Actually Jesus did

this twice that we know about in his life. 

That he made a little journey. The first was when he was 12 years

old.  He abandoned his parents for three

days and he is looking for a new reality in his life.  Three days he took off to find something, to

find himself and when his mother reprimands him on the third day he doesn’t

even apologize because he knew he was after something.

The second time he

did that was when he was 30 and he spent 40 days in the dessert battling his

ego. 

So on our

spiritual journeys, on our vision quests, there will be similarities.  We will all experience risk, fear,

uncertainty, darkness, danger.  We will

confront our demons of ego, self-absorption, pride, negativity.  We will struggle with grief, disappointments,

wounds, suffering inadequacies and almost certainly we will all experience

failure.

So at first things

are ok with the lost son.  He is young,

he is healthy, and he has tons of money. 

He has a great time.  But then he

comes to the limits of his resources.  He

runs out of money.  He is starving.  He is on empty.  Plus there are external factors th

Rev. Myra Brown preaches about Jesus’ response to violence and his call for us to not respond with judgment. Rather, judgment is the problem and instead we need to repent. To turn our thinking around, and to love.

Homily Transcript

Last week, we

gathered with our extended staff for a leadership day where we got to know each

other better, we discussed the vision for Spiritus, and played leadership

Family Feud. In the game we posed lots of leadership questions like: What were

the five most important things Jesus said? What are the top 8 qualities of a

good leader and what 8 things should the church speak out on?  One of those 8 was violence! When violence

happens in our world it is often heart wrenching. It hits you at your core and

at so many levels is shocking to the mind. Especially, religious acts of

violence.

There are a lot

of places that we anticipate being unsafe. Church and religious spaces aren’t

generally at the top of the list. And yet in the gospel today is a story of

religious violence and where Jesus takes up the issue of violence when

approached.

The gospel

begins by saying some people told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate

had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.

They tell him a

story of religious violence. Of Galileans who went to the temple to pray and

offer sacrifices in Jerusalem, while in the process they lose their lives in

the temple at the hand or order of Pilate while offering sacrifices.

As in any community,

the word on the street was that these were a group of folks who perhaps resisted

Pilate’s authority, his way of doing things, maybe refused to pay taxes and

homage to him and just had a different understanding of how to live out their

faith.  Their beliefs were different than

his!

Now we don’t

know if these people telling the story to Jesus are fellow Galileans, or people

of some other faith tradition and we don’t even really know why they decide to

tell Jesus this story.

Is it to warn him because he is a Galilean and should avoid going to Jerusalem for fear that he could encounter the same fate?

Is it to incite him, to avenge the deaths of these who lost their lives, because he is a fellow Galilean?

Is it to inform him of a rebellion they plan to lead because of their loss of life and they want him to hook up?

Or is it to imply to him that as horrible as their deaths were, they may have been culpable at some level and deserving? Otherwise, why would God allow it to happen to them?

Notice Jesus

doesn’t avoid Jerusalem, he doesn’t take up violent revenge, and he doesn’t

hook up with a violent rebellion.

Does God allow

these tragedies to happen as some act of Judgment or are the acts of religious

violence and evil in the world a matter of something else?

Perhaps these

questions you have thought of or heard others ponder in the face of violence.

It is precisely

these questions that Jesus attempts to put to rest and answer in this gospel

today and how timely it is when we think of the religious violence we

experienced in the Muslim community in New Zealand, the Jewish Community at the

Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg and at the Emmanuel African Methodist

Episcopal Church in Charleston South Carolina!

First, Jesus

responds to the question he knows they are pondering of whether what happened

to the Galileans is an act of God’s judgment for some wrongdoing on their

part.  Jesus responds with a question of

his own to them that tells us that this is the judgment they were making and gives

us a clue as to where the telling of this story is coming from.

He says, “ Do

you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater

sinners than all other Galileans? He puts that judgment to rest! No they

weren’t and then he tells them to repent of that kind of thinking or they will

perish from it.

He then tells

them about people who lost their lives in Jerusalem when the tower of Siloam

fell on

Spiritus Christi parishioner and organizational manager Davis Craig speaks about his experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Perú.

Davis talks about how his decision to join the Peace Corps was a leap of faith. He learned that if you want to help other people, the first thing you need to do is listen. Meaningful relationships defined his experience and taught him that success isn’t about achievement, it is about serving others.

The post Leap of Faith appeared first on Spiritus Christi Church.

Rev. Mary preaches about Jesus’ transfiguration and our own experiences of transfigurations. She teaches that our life is more than our body on earth, that we have purpose and meaning even when that body is gone, and we are still connected to one another when we are in a different realm.

Homily Transcript

My mother’s

birthday is in March and even though she has been gone now for over 14 years,

whenever this month comes around I think of her a lot and feel her

presence.  And I was thinking the other

day about her death.  I remember the day

she died.  We were all there.  All my siblings, espouses and the

grandchildren. She had had a stroke and she had loss her ability to speak so we

had been writing notes back and forth. 

But then she began to have other problems and she slipped in to

unconsciousness.  Within a week we were

gathered around waiting for her to die. 

I remember as she started to faded away a beautiful glow came over her

whole body.  It was so apparent.  When she died her skin was like that of a newborn

baby.  It was luminescent.  I just kept looking at her and I just wanted

to stay with her.  Just wanting to be

looking at her and to be close to her.

As a priest I am

able to be with many people when they die and I have seen this beautiful

glow.  This transfiguration happens on

many people.  It’s as though they just

become translucent, a halo around their faces.

Today we learn

about Jesus’ transfiguration to his disciples. 

We have all had experiences of being transfigured.  Of having our bodies change.  Our first one came when we were born.  We were inside our mother’s womb, we were

connected to an umbilical cord, we were living in a fluid and all of sudden we

come out and we were able to breathe air and we were able to eat and we were

able to be in the light.  Our bodies

become transfigured. Our bodies become something different than what they had

been.  If you are like me and have been

to the butterfly museum, I like to go with my grandchildren, then you remember

about caterpillars and butterflies.  And

we all know how amazing that is that these furry little crawly things turn in

to these beautiful, gorgeous butterflies. 

I use to think that when a caterpillar entered a cocoon it just kept its

body and then grew wings and came out as a butterfly.  But then I learned from somebody more

scientific than myself that, no this is not what happens.  It actually melts down in to a kind of a DNA

soup and recreates in to a totally different being.  It is totally transfigured.

We have other

signs of nature.  Right now we can even

glimpse these little buds on our trees. 

They are really tiny right now but they are coming…right?  It is going to transfigure in to something

different. 

In Jesus’

transfiguration he has taken three disciples very close to him, Peter, John and

James, and he has taken them up to the highest mountain top. And they do what

they often do – they fall asleep. 

Probably the hike was too much for them, we don’t know, but they get to

the top, they fall asleep and when they awake they see that Jesus is

transfigured.  The scripture says he is

dazzling white. And he is not alone. 

Standing with him are two historical figures from the Jewish

tradition.  Moses and Elijah.  The disciples know right away who these

figures are.  They died hundred of years

ago but they are very well known in their Jewish faith.  And there is Jesus talking to these two

spiritual guides about what he is going to do next in his life and they are

guiding him.  When that happens, the

disciples are also transfigured.  They

are transfigured because now their understanding of who Jesus is has

changed.  Their awareness has deepened.

This is no longer the Jesus that they grew up with.  No longer the one they hav

When we are physically, mentally, and emotionally worn out we are vulnerable. We lose heart and often feel like giving up. But Sr. Margie teaches us that this is a time to H.A.L.T. and take an inventory in how we are doing inside. This kind of time out helps us to remember that we have been filled up with God’s grace and love, and that giving up is no longer an option.

Sr. Margie also preaches about how lent is a time for prayer, meditation, fasting, and almsgiving. Lent is a time where we can find our desert and our sacred place to connect with God.

Homily Transcript

About a month ago

Roger G’s daughter, Liz, died very suddenly. 

Roger and his wife, Phyllis, are with us this morning and we want you to

know our hearts go out to you.  You are

in our prayers.  Liz was the mother of two

very young children.  A five-year old and

a ten-month old.  Roger was telling me

that a couple days after Liz died, he was sitting with his grandson, Austin,

who looked up at Roger and said, “Grandpa, you don’t have to worry about

me.  I’m going to be ok because Mommy

filled me up with love.”

I immediately

thought of this little boy’s words when I read the first line of scripture

today.  Luke says, “Filled with the Holy

Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan River and was led by the Spirit in to

the desert for 40 days to be tempted by the devil.”  Jesus was filled up with the Holy Spirit.  This event happened right after Jesus was

baptized by John in the Jordan River.  We

remember that when he was baptized he received the Holy Spirit and then that

great affirmation from God: “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”

So Jesus, filled up with the Spirit, and God’s love was led in to the desert

where he was tempted.  And he faced three

temptations that could have easily been derailed his faith in God and his

mission in life.  Notice that it was at

the end of 40 days that the devil appeared. By this time Jesus hadn’t eaten

anything and was very hungry.  He was

exhausted, alone and vulnerable.  It was

the perfect set up for temptation to get the best of him.  And we know what that’s like when we are

physically, mentally and emotionally warn out. 

We are vulnerable.  We lose heart

and often feel like giving up.  Sometimes

we relapse into negative behaviors.  Or

acting out.

Now, for people in

recovery, that is a dangerous place to be because when we feel like giving up

the temptation to relapse is very strong. 

But the program tells us that this is time to H.A.L.T.  Stop and take an inventory of how we are

doing inside.  H.A.L.T. – are we “H”

hungry?  “A” angry?  “L” lonely? 

“T” tired?  If that’s what we are

feeling, it I time to stop, to halt and to get help.  The Serenity Prayer, a call to a sponsor, a

meeting, meditation or a conversation with another person who suffers from

addiction are all ways to strengthen us against temptation.  This kind of time out helps us to remember

that we have been filled up with God’s grace and love.  And that giving up is no longer an option.

Jesus’ time in the

desert definitely left him hungry, lonely and exhausted. He was in a vulnerable

place when faced with the three temptations. 

Let’s take a look at them.

The first

temptation was a play on Jesus’ mind to satisfy his hunger.  Scripture says that at the end of 40 days

Jesus was hungry.  Now I remember one

time I fasted for a week on a half a cup of rice a day and water.  It was excruciating.  I hated every minute of it.  And the people around me…they hated it

too!  So I can’t even imagine what going

without food for 40 days would be like. 

Yet there are so many people in our world who go without food as a daily

occurrence.  So the first temptation for

Jesus was to turn the stones in the desert into bread. So that he could eat and

satisfy h