The Friar Podcasts - preaching prayer and spiritual reflections

Warning

Hello and welcome to Spend Five with Jesus. I am the Friar. Today is Friday, October 13th, 2023. I am delighted to have you with us today.

Today our first reading for Mass came from the book of the prophet Joel, and it's a good one I think. It causes us, I think when we really explore it a little bit in this reflection, to see things perhaps a little bit upside down, to see things maybe that we don't always see in this particular way.

Anyway, Joel is speaking to a people that are kind of in a tough time, an agricultural community and not enough water, the winter rains were not sufficient. There's an infestation of locusts, which is bad, damaging the crops. And the people are really in a mess. They're really in a bad situation.

But Joel asks them to think about this situation in a little bit of a different way. And what he is suggesting is that these signs, these bad things that are occurring, could be seen as an absence of God. But Joel is suggesting that perhaps the people turn their attention and their view to see these things as a warning from God, a chance to to see and to examine their own lives and to turn back to the Lord.

You know, prophets are almost always sent when things are a mess. And their job is, again, almost always to bring them back to God, to demonstrate to them the ways in which God wants them to live and what it is that God wants them to do. And that's what Joel is trying to do in this reading.

And he's saying look if you don't see where God is active in your life and if you don't turn your lives around and return to the Lord God, then things could get even worse if we don't do that. We need to be looking for God in our life.

Now of course we always need to be a little careful when we get readings like this because we want to make sure that when we talk about a warning we're not talking about the types of things that are toxic. You know sometimes a horrible thing will occur and there's kind of a toxic, "oh my gosh it was their fault they did all these things" and so forth. That's not the way God works.

So this isn't a punishment, it's a warning. It's a reminder to people that they need to think about their lives and they need to do something to make their lives better. So that's really what Joel's message is.

But now how does this apply to us today? I think one of the most important things is it helps us to understand the most important thing that we are called to do, and that's to discern. We need to be asking ourselves in our lives, where is it that God is active and alive.

Where is it that God is effective? Where is it in my life that God is calling me to change my life, to become closer to Him, to become less selfish or less mean, or to become one who doesn't ignore the needs of those people I don't like or even the people I do like but I don't want to be bothered to help them when I can. It really is an act of love and kindness on the part of God.

Now I know it may not feel that way, but we all know that the scripture tells us that sometimes things don't feel so great, but they are the right thing. And that's what Joel is warning us to do today. Now one thing that's important, and I think one thing that also helps us to sort out the difference between the kind of toxic blame that we can feel in our lives from the type of repentance and conversion that leads to new life.

One thing that can really be helpful, well I guess two things I should say, one is the regular practice of the sacrament of confession. It forces us to think about our own lives, to reflect on our behavior, and to really seek God's forgiveness wherever we need it. . .

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.

We know we hear how important it is to pray. Read any book on the spiritual life and they'll tell you how important it is to pray. But in my experience, the reality is that while we may want to pray, we don't always know how to. We don't always know what to do.

To be sure, when someone we love is sick, for example, or there's a tremendous need in our lives or things aren't going the way we would hope, then it is certainly possible. In those instances, we ask God to do something, to be wonderful and tremendous as He is.

But what about times when that isn't the case? It's interesting that this summer I was talking with a priest who's a friend of mine, and he was reading at that time a book that suggested that part of the challenge is that we sometimes think prayer is something that we do.

So, we have to have the perfect technique, or we have to do this. We have to pray, let's say the rosary, or we have to read the Bible, or we have to do these things. Those types of things are wonderful. But the point of the book was, really, when we get down to it, prayer is what God does. We simply have to be open to what God does. We simply have to be ready to accept how it is that God will be active in our lives. Today, make a little time just to allow God to do something in your prayer.

Nicene Creed: God the Son

To understand this part of the creed, it is important to remember the significant source of the Arian heresy. Namely, how can there be three persons in one God? Or, put another way, is Jesus really fully God, or some lesser God created by the Father?

The answer has probably become so familiar to us that we don't think much about it these days. Of course. We understand the Trinity. We know that God is one, and three persons. We know that Jesus is fully God and fully human.

But such was not the case during the time the Creed was written. We have already discussed the fundamental problems. So this section of the Creed is really about spelling out exactly what we believe. And because the Incarnation is such a critical foundation for our faith, the Creed spends a lot of time emphasizing that Jesus really is the divine Son of God.

This section begins with what was not viewed as a controversial statement. Saint Paul says in the Letter to the Philippians that Jesus Christ is Lord. Moreover, to say the Jesus Christ is Lord is only possible for us because of the Holy Spirit.

Moreover, the identification of Jesus as Lord is sprinkled all throughout the New Testament. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "By attributing to Jesus the divine title "Lord", the first confessions of the Church's faith affirm from the beginning that the power, honor and glory due to God the Father are due also to Jesus, because "he was in the form of God" and the Father manifested the sovereignty of Jesus by raising him from the dead and exalting him into his glory." (CCC 449)

And again, the Catechism says that the title "Lord" indicates sovereignty and is a profession of divinity. And so the Creed uses very specific language to reinforce the divinity of the Son while preserving the one God. How?

The word "begotten" does not get much use today, but it has a very specific meaning that is necessary for us to understand what we are saying in the Creed. Better than I could do, here is what C.S. Lewis has to say about this word in Mere Christianity.

“We don't use the words begetting or begotten much in modern English, but everyone still knows what they mean. To beget is to become the father of: to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless set – or he may make something more like himself than a wireless set: say, a statue. If he is clever enough carver he may make a statue which is very like man indeed. But, of course, it is not a real man; it only looks like one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive.
Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man. That is why men are not Son's of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God.” -- C.S. Lewis

This is not merely a minor distinction between create and begot. It is important, for if Jesus is to be the divine Son of God, then he cannot have been created by God the Father, because he would be a creature and not a divine being. So, by saying Jesus, the Son, is begotten by God, it means that Jesus shares in the divinity of God.

So it is not that God the Father created the Son. The Son is co-equal with the Father. The Son is fully divine. So Jesus is not just a worthy human being to imitate, but is the Son of God. He is fully divine, not almost as divine as the Father. He is truly God. . .

These are just the readings of the day, but I think today's gospel probably fits well with Linda. I'll leave it to you to decide whether she's Martha or Mary, but the gospel has a very particular point, but I want to begin with the first reading today, because the first reading is really a continuation of this great story of Jonah.

Jonah has been called by God to preach to the people of Nineveh, a huge city of the day, to get them to repent and to recognize that if they don't, they will be destroyed. Jonah doesn't want to go. He doesn't like the people of Nineveh. He doesn't want them to convert. And as we're going to learn, he gets mad at God precisely because God shows them mercy.

It's an interesting thing for us in our own lives, I think, to reflect on how is it that we respond to what God wants in our life. Do we open ourselves to the will of God, especially when it seems like it's hard or difficult or something we don't even want to do? Or can we accept it, in the face of it being hard or difficult or cutting against the grain?

The Gospel puts two aspects of life side by side and says, "You know, you need both of these things." But as St. Thomas Aquinas would say, "One is a little bit better." And that's what Mary chooses. The contemplation of Jesus in life. The spending time with Jesus, the interaction with the Lord, the finding time in our busy lives not to be active, but simply to sit at the feet of the Lord.

Now Martha finds this difficult. She's a good woman. She believes in Jesus. She's the one who says at the death of her friend Lazarus, "I have come to believe that you are the Christ." It's not that she was without faith. It's not that she didn't contemplate.

It's that at this particular moment, she lost sight of what was most important. And that's what challenges like the one that we're facing now can do to us. They can cause us to lose our real vision. They can cause us maybe even to see or to begin to think that God doesn't love us, that God doesn't care for us.

It's hard when someone we love is sick. It's hard when someone we love and care about has found themselves in a very difficult place. And as much as I would like to say, "Don't worry about it. Everything will be fine," I can't say that. A, I'm not a doctor, but B, I don't even know if that's true.

And yet, what do we do? We could despair and say, "Well, too bad. What more can we do?" We could go into our house and just withdraw from everything and feel sad and miserable. where we can recognize what Martha needed to learn in the Gospel, that we are in the presence of God.

And we see and experience that presence of God, not just in the Church, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, not just in the Eucharist, but in each other, made in the image and likeness of God. And so we do the only thing we can do.

We come together to support each other, to care for each other, and we pray, leaving all in God's hands, recognizing that our love is as real as it can be, recognizing that God loves us more than anything, but learning what Jonah needed to learn as well, But in all things, we must go wherever it is that God leads us.

You might not know much about what happened in the first reading. You may not know who Ruth was, why they left, and ultimately what happened to Ruth and ultimately to us. They went to a foreign land because they were in need. They were refugees.

They went into this foreign land and they were fortunate. They were allowed to do what is called gleaning the field. To glean the field means that they were in that part of the field that was left for strangers, for refugees, for the poor. In the midst of this gleaning that was going on, Boaz notices Ruth and ultimately falls in love. They get married.

Think about how history could have been changed if Ruth and Naomi had not been welcomed into this area. Boaz and Ruth never would have met. But more importantly, Boaz and Ruth would not have had children. One of their children was the servant Jesse, who was the father of King David. And it's from King David that Jesus is born.

Think about moments in life where we think maybe things aren't going so well. I can think of at least one. It was when I didn't get an assignment that I thought I was going to get when I was still in Vermont. But had I not gotten or went to the assignment I did get, I wouldn't have experienced the value of community. I wouldn't have decided to leave the diocese, to join the Dominican Friars, and I wouldn't be here. My life would have gone in a completely different direction.

Now think about our community for a minute, because if we want peace, we first of all have to understand how to make peace in our own world and in our own place. Are you the kind of person that goes out of your way to meet people you don't know, to meet strangers, maybe to get to know someone that's different than you are?

Or do you play it safe and just kind of stay with people that think like you do, look like you do, act like you do? And when it comes to welcoming others, Do we know anything at all about areas of our region that are different from where we lived?

You see, we live in a particular time where I think it's easier than it has ever been to kind of put ourselves in a little cocoon. Not to allow ourselves to be challenged. Not to allow ourselves to see things maybe from a different point of view. Not to understand that some people struggle and suffer and have difficulties.

But it may just be the stranger in your life that sets your life on a completely different path, the one that leads to fulfillment. It is not easy to live our life. There are all kinds of things that are challenging and difficult, but not as challenging and difficult as people who are forced to leave their homeland because it isn't safe or there's nothing to eat.

Just imagine if when Mary and Joseph had left their home in Nazareth and gone to Bethlehem, they had not been welcomed. When they went to Egypt, what if they couldn't get a job? What if they couldn't do anything?

Strangers are an opportunity to help us to get to know a little bit more the person of God, because we're all made in God's image and likeness. Now, let's think of our community again. You see, the only way I can really get to know someone is, or the only way I can really live in harmony with someone, the only way I can really live a fulfilling life, the only way we can really call ourselves brothers and sisters is if we listen to the stories and the circumstances of one another.

And I'm going to give you today some concrete ways you might, just might, take an opportunity to get to know God better and to get to know each other better. Think of where we are right now, Ross Hall, a space that's normally used or is often used, probably most used, for us to have lunch.

What have you sat at a different table with people you didn't know. What if instead of trying to sneak into cram more than six people at a table, not that anybody here at CBC would ever do that, but go with me for a while, what if you said, "I'm going to go to a different table"? Maybe where I don't know someone. . .

Refugee, Migrant, Foreigner

Hello and welcome to Spend Five with Jesus for this Monday, October 9th, 2023. Start of another work week and hopefully it's a good start for everyone here. If it's not, let's pray for each other and make it a little bit better day.

Okay, today we have two readings that really focus on how to treat foreigners. The first reading from the book of the prophet Jonah is kind of a don't do it this way. And the Gospel is a surprising story that probably isn't as shocking to us as it would have been to the people that heard it. And it's a story that's really familiar to us because it is the parable of the Good Samaritan. So let's take each in turn for a little bit and then we'll draw some conclusions about what it might mean for us in terms of our spiritual life.

So let's take a look at the first reading. We don't know whether this is actually a a true true story or something that's designed to illustrate a point. But either way, it's a rather interesting story about this prophet Jonah who's called to preach to the people of Nineveh.

Now Nineveh, in addition to being an enormously large city according to the scriptures, is also not Jewish. It's not a city predominated with people of the Jewish faith. And so Jonah's reluctant. He doesn't want to go, quite frankly, because he doesn't like them. And he doesn't want God to save them. So he tries to run away.

And in running away from having to serve the foreigner by seeking their salvation in God, Jonah causes all kinds of trouble. And he's ultimately responsible for a really, really awful situation where he's ultimately thrown overboard.

The gospel takes exactly the opposite approach. It is the foreigner who's held up as the ideal for how Jewish people should act. So we know the story very well. There's this man who's walking down the road and there are all kinds of people that could help him, that really could provide something really wonderful and tremendous and meet the man's needs because he's been running to robbers and they've really heard him, but we know the story.

There are those that don't wanna help because to do so would make them ritually impure and they wouldn't be able to participate in temple worship because of Jewish law, but they don't help. They are, I suspect, not unlike many of us, I don't really want to get involved because I want to be able to follow the rule of worship where we see here Jesus emphasizing the rule of charity. Some probably are afraid, who knows?

Sometimes this was a ploy. You beat someone and leave them for dead in the road, you hide, and then you come out and attack those who come out to do something that is good. But Jesus doesn't really emphasize any of those things, but rather he's emphasizing what it means to be neighbor. Because the two great commandments, the two most important commandments to follow, are love God and love your neighbor. And so Jesus is answering this question about, well, who is my neighbor? Who do I have to love?

And we know the answer, well, everybody, everybody. And the real hero of this story is the Samaritan. Now, Jews and Samaritans were different people. Samaritans were in the northern part of Israel and they really kind of come from that tradition. The northern part of Israel really struggled more with idol worship and that type of thing.

So there's a little bit of a difference between these populations, and they would not have been seen as the heroes for anything. It would have been quite strange, in fact, to have a fine story being told where the hero of the story is a Samaritan. But alas, that is what it is. It reminds us today that we really have to be neighbor to everyone. We do not get to exclude . . .

Problem or Solution?Transcript

There's a saying, "If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem." I used to say when I was president of another school in the Chicago area, "Don't just bring me a problem, bring me some solutions."

Today Jesus, in a way, is kind of speaking of this very same truth. We get two parallel stories that are quite similar. In the first story, it is God telling a story about the people who have gone astray at a time when things are not very good at all. We see in this first reading that despite all that God has done, the people don't care.

And Isaiah says to them, "Things are not going to be good. They're not going to be very wonderful at all. God is going to take this vineyard, namely your kingdom, your life, from you." And we know, as we read the story of the Old Testament, that's true. They wind up in exile in Babylon. Both kingdoms fall.

It's not a happy time for the people of God. Jesus tells a very similar story with a pointed message. He is talking in particular to those who have not accepted His Word, and in particular, those who should have known better because they were the religious leaders of the people. They should have seen the signs that Jesus was performing and immediately begun to recognize the fulfillment of the promise in the Old Testament.

But they do not. We either can work to build up the kingdom of God, or we can be vehicles to tear it down. The building up is not easy at all. It's not something that immediately seems like a good thing to do sometimes.

See, the Gospel is very demanding about these things. Building up the kingdom of God means first and foremost living in a way that we demonstrate our love for God and our love for our neighbor. We can love God, I think sometimes, because that seems very abstract, not very concrete. My neighbor? Not always as easy.

I suspect we all have people in our lives that we can identify that are not so easy for us to care for. They either get under our nerves and they know exactly what buttons to push to get us upset, or they're people when we read about what they do in the newspaper or listen to it on television, we get an understanding that they are not living a very virtuous life, at least from the actions that we hear about.

Now the interesting thing about this person that might get under our skin is I suspect that there are other people, maybe not here, who would point to us and say, "That person really gets under my skin. They just know how to push my buttons. They don't always give a good example. That's me. I may be the one that's not always giving a good example. I might be the one who is sinning in my life, not living the virtues that God has called me to live.

It's especially difficult when it's a situation that we hear in the Gospel. I think the biggest reason that the Pharisees didn't want to listen to Jesus was not because they weren't good people. They knew the Law very well. They recognized that things were so bad around them that the solution was to pull back so so that they could be surrounded by people that they believed were following the Law completely.

But what happened in the midst of this exercise that they engaged in is that the Law, the rules, became more important than the Law giver. In other words, doing all of the things that God commanded became more important than God.

Because the other thing that we know from reading the Gospels is that they're not completely following every rule. There are some they like better than others. There are some they don't care about as much. There are some that quite honestly make things a little bit more difficult for them.

And so what Jesus is getting at in today's gospel is that yes, it's easy to follow God's way when God only asks us to do all those things we've already decided we're going to do. It gets much more difficult when we're talking about having to do what God wants, when God wants from us something that is not what we want. . .

Hello and welcome to Spend Five with Jesus on this Sunday, October 8th, 2023. I am the friar, and it is just a marvelous day today, and I'm so glad you have joined us.

I want to focus today on Paul's letter to the Philippians because I think it is really something that is really appropriate for our day. It just feels to me like this is a really good reading to teach us about how to deal with anxiety in our life. Because I think everybody has some anxiety in life.

Some of it is normal and natural, but when it becomes so strong that it changes the way in which we act and the way in which we do things, then it can become a problem. And yet, I think our faith can provide us a solution to anxiety.

Now, if you are one that deals with anxiety, particularly significant anxiety, I'm not suggesting this as an alternative to the appropriate care and treatment for good mental health. Okay, so don't interpret it that way. It is really more to go hand in hand if you're in a situation where you're getting professional mental health treatment for anxiety because that is no fun at all to have anxiety. So just to be clear on that.

But Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, really encourages them not to have anxiety. Now, that's an easy thing to say. It's like, you know, don't be sad, don't be upset, don't be angry, don't have anxiety. Well, it's not always as easy as just telling ourselves we're not going to do that.

But what I think Paul is getting at here is that there are ways to deal with anxiety that are actually much more helpful than some other things. So, what is Paul suggesting? Prayer, petition, thanksgiving. Because those are the types of things that help us in our life. And I've mentioned the power of Thanksgiving, which is the last thing he mentions before.

Because I think being a person of gratitude when we see blessings from God is a really, really important thing for us to be doing. Even the smallest things I think we benefit when we hear in our prayer this idea of great gratitude, great thanksgiving, when we can say to God, "Thank you for this wonderful thing."

Because I think what happens is that sometimes when life is not so great, what happens is we focus on the negative. There's something in human existence that we tend to go to the dark side more easily. What happens, I think, in these instances when we don't focus on our blessings is we can forget they even exist. And yet, God is constantly pouring out blessings.

I think the other thing that Paul is suggesting, which is related to this, has to do with where we place our focus. And he says, if you're going to try to think about things, because anxiety is often a cycle of thinking about things that are going to go wrong, that are not so great, how we might not succeed at something, how we might not measure up. And yet Paul says, "Try to think of these things. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."

And I think that's just tremendous advice about how to really deal in our life when we get caught in these cycles of worrying and anxiety is to think about those things that are really, really helpful, that are really, really good to be thinking about in our life. Because an analogy I've heard for anxiety, which I think is really helpful, at least it's been helpful when I find myself sometimes getting anxious about things, is to think of anxiety like a smoke detector. . .

Hello and welcome to Spend Five with Jesus for this Saturday, October 7th, 2023. I am the friar. I'm happy to be with you today.

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. And as a Dominican, I simply cannot say enough about the rosary. It is such an important spiritual help to me. I pray it every day. I know many people pray it every day. And it really is an act or a prayer of confidence because we're asking the Blessed Mother really to pray on our behalf.

That's what we're asking. We're asking that she lead us to her son Jesus, which is really all that Mary wants to do. She wants to lead us into this powerful relationship with Jesus. It was her yes to God, her full and complete yes to God, and this is what she wants us to recognize and to really strive for in our own life is this complete yes to God.

In the first reading today, these are actually the readings of the day. And so we continue with Baruch, who we were introduced to yesterday. And one of the things that I think is important for us maybe that we don't think enough about is in fact the lessons that we hear from Baruch.

So Baruch is still writing this letter. He is acknowledging the sins of the people. He uses very powerful language in recognizing that God was sinned against, that was rejected. You provoked your maker with sacrifices to demons, to know gods. You forsook the eternal God who nourished you. You grieved Jerusalem who fostered you.

And so it really is this kind of turning back to God. Remember we mentioned yesterday that that cycle of sin, punishment, repentance, return, which was so important for people to recognize. But I want to kind of take this in a little bit of a different direction since this is the Feast of the Holy Rosary.

And that is that if I want to talk about the Dominican habit because you'll notice that Dominicans, in fact, wear the rosary as part of their habit. And they wear on the left side of their body. Okay, it would be your right if you're looking at them, but it's the left side for for me when I'm wearing it.

And the reason for that was because it was it was to mimic or to show forth the way in which someone in the Middle Ages would have worn a sword on that side. And the rosary becomes a tremendous weapon. Now, I don't mean a weapon to kill people or things like that, but a spiritual weapon to help us to recognize that our lives can be filled with temptations.

They can be filled with so many temptations that want to take us away from God, that want us to reject God, that want us to sin, to do our own thing, not to think about the way in which God has done these wonderful things for us. And then to really recognize, as we see in the Gospel, that this is all part of God's great promise.

I mean, think about what Jesus is saying. First of all, he is praying for the disciples who have returned because so many wonderful things they have seen, they have witnessed when they were sent out. They see all these things. Jesus says, "I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky because of the ways in which the 72 disciples accepted the Holy Spirit and preached this word of the Holy Spirit.

And that when we're in union with the Holy Spirit, we are able to do all kinds of amazing things. And then Jesus reminds us the importance, when we're in moments like this where things are going well or we see clearly what God is doing, then in fact we have to be grateful.

And that's what God receives from Jesus. God the Father receives from God the Son. I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because those who trust in God like children are the ones who in fact will see these wonderful things.

And then Jesus reminds them that they have seen wonderful things and they should be unbelievably grateful for this because so many people wanted to see the very things that they are seeing in their time with Jesus. . .

Hello and welcome to Spend Five with Jesus for this Friday, October 6th, 2023. I am the Friar. It is wonderful to have you with us today.

Today in the first reading for Mass we hear from the prophet Baruch. Now many of you may not know who Baruch is. He was an assistant to Jeremiah and if you remember anything about the time of Jeremiah there are maybe two things that are important to call to mind. One is that Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet, and, and I mention that because Jeremiah, he wore his emotions on his sleeve.

And the second thing is maybe the degree to which it is important to recognize that things for Jeremiah did not go well. People didn't listen to him. They didn't change their ways and so forth.

And so this book of Baruch, which was originally perhaps called the Letter of Jeremiah, or at least the section we hear today. was called the letter of Jeremiah, was something to kind of help to express, well what's going on? What is it that in fact is important in the lives of the people?

And really it is a message that one really identifies that you know what we did not follow God at all and our lives became a mess and hence the exile. And it is a letter, I think, that also on some level preserves the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, the restoration of the relationship.

This letter, in fact, is quite related to things that we read in the book of Deuteronomy, where there is kind of this cycle, and this kind of describes so many moments in the history of Israel, this cycle of sin, then punishment for the sin, the people turn back to God in terms of repentance, and then they return. They return either to a deeper relationship with God or they return in this case literally back to Jerusalem where they were exiled because of their sin.

So it's really an important cycle for us and I want to talk a little bit about that cycle today and maybe to to challenge you to think a little bit about your own life in terms of this cycle. So all of us sin. St. Paul's letter to the Romans makes it clear we've all sinned, we've all fallen short of the glory of God. We've turned our back on God, it's been deliberate, it's been purposeful, we knew what we should have done, but we chose to do the sinful action anyway.

And it's important to know that. This isn't like just an accident, a mistake, something like that. It is really sin. It is a deliberate rejection of God's love because we wanted to do what we wanted to do even though we knew it was contrary to the will of God. So that's the first thing, this kind of understanding of sin.

And then secondly, to recognize that oftentimes when we sin, the consequences of that sin are not so pleasant. We can find in our own lives that the consequences of sin make things worse. You know, if you think of yourself as a little child and your parents said can eat all the candy you want, you might very well have to face the punishment of getting sick because you don't know when to stop. You don't know what's too much candy.

When we get in this situation, we often recognize that we're in this bad situation on some level because of what we've done. That the consequences of our actions by not following the Lord in our lives requires us to recognize that we need of repentance. We need to regret our sinfulness. We need to be a desirous of being converted from our sinfulness and we express our sorrow and our desire to change, which then leads to our return to God.

And this is a really helpful, I think, kind of description of the spiritual life, namely that even though we sin and there are negative consequences, we can turn away from that sin, seek God's forgiveness, and then return back to a relationship with God.

The primary way to do this, of course, for Catholics is the sacrament of confession, which is a really, really powerful way to understand what it is that God wants to help us to do. So maybe ask God today, where is it that you need God's help in identifying your sin. . .