First Sunday of Lent - 1990
Introduction to Lent: Sin

My dear friends:

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, and we now begin a five week preparation for Holy Week and Easter. The beginning of Lent can be found in Egypt about the year 200 where there was forty-day fast before EASTER. When the Church became legal under Constantine in 312, converts flocked in for instruction. Lent was seen as an appropriate time to prepare them for instruction. Lent was seen as an appropriate time to prepare them for Baptism and the Easter Vigil. And for the public sinners doing penance for great crimes, Lent became the final stage of their reconciliation with the community. But the converts and the penitents were not spotlighted and shunned while the rest of the community looked on complacently. Rather the whole church entered into the two purposes of Lent, because all the faithful realized that they too needed to renew their baptismal commitment, and all realized that they too were sinners and in need of penance. Very early, baptisms and penance became the themes of Lent. And these two themes spring from deep roots. More...

Second Sunday of Lent - 2008
The Transfiguration

My dear friends:

The Gospel of the Transfiguration seems a strange choice for the beginning of Lent – a radiant, glorious Christ contradicts the sombre, penitential tone and purple vestments of Lent.

But the choice by the Church is deliberate.  The Transfiguration is read on the second Sunday of Lent in all three cycles of the Gospels:
Cycle A – in 2008 we have the story as St. Matthew tells it;
Cycle B – in 2009 as told by St.Mark;
Cycle C – 1n 2010 by St. Luke.

And so, as we start the Way of the Cross at the beginning of Lent, the Church places before us the glory that awaits us at the end of our journey. More...

Third Sunday of Lent - 2002
The Humanity of Christ

My dear friends:

After the homily each Sunday, we profess our Catholic faith either by the Apostle’s Creed or by the longer Nicene Creed. There we state calmly and routinely that we believe Jesus Christ to be true God and true man. The Catholic Church now rests securely in that basic truth. But for the first five centuries, the Church fought off fierce heretics who attacked those four words – true God, true man.

Some heretics denied He was true God, and claimed he was only a man. Some denied He was true man, and claimed He was only God. More...

Fourth Sunday of Lent - 1981, Revised 1993
The Light of Faith

My dear friends:

A theme of light runs through today’s readings.  In the first, the Lord said to Samuel:
“God does not see as man sees; man looks to appearances but God sees the heart.”
In the second reading, Paul wrote to his converts: “You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord.” And in the third: “The blind man went and washed himself, and he saw.”

Light and darkness is a well-known religious theme: light, the symbol of truth and goodness; darkness, of error and depravity. We city people seldom experience darkness.  With the touch of a switch we can turn night into day – our house lights, street lights, car lights and flashlights. More...

Fifth Sunday of Lent - 1999
Lazarus

My dear friends:

Six times in St. John’s Gospel, the author records the famous “I am” statements of Jesus.  One comes this week. Jesus said to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life.” Life is what today’s liturgy is all about – human life and divine life; natural life and supernatural life, temporal life and eternal life. It’s about death too, and resurrection; about despair and hope. It’s about your life and mine.

The first reading is about a great vision God gave Ezechiel. Ezechiel writes:

He carried me away and set me down in the middle of a valley, a valley filled with bones and he ordered me to prophesy. While I was prophesying there was a noise, a sound of clattering and the bones joined together; they were covered        with sinews, flesh was growing on them and skin was covering them...and the breath entered them; they came to life again and stood up on their feet, a great, an immense army.

The Jews had been in exile in Babylon; they were saying: More...