Dear Parish Family,

We have now entered the most cherished and sacred time of the year, as we as Church commemorate Passiontide. It is here that the stark reality of the Lord’s Passion is encountered through the lens of Holy Week. News Flash! This is not just another ordinary week. Stop yourself dead, before beginning it as such! We must echo the question of Jesus “Will you be my disciple? “Will You! It's not a rhetorical question, it never was! It’s not a redirect for the faint of heart, nor the one that lives a compartmentalized life. It’s the life of the cross, a life filled with convictions and deep conversion. This is the life of a Christian, not one caught up in petty incidentals.

This Sunday we are reminded how quickly things can change. People cheer and wave palm branches and call Jesus King and then we hear the story of His suffering and death. That same crowd that praised Him calls for Him to be crucified. Sometimes we do the same thing in our own lives with those that we call friends. Lent will soon be ending and Holy Week has begun. It brings both joy and deep sorrow. We now walk with Jesus in His final days before His Death on the Cross.

To know where we are going, we must know where we have been. This is the plight of embracing this Fifth Sunday of Lent, knowing full well we began in the cross marked upon our heads by the ashes that remind us of our human nature and our mortality. Lent causes us to think about the grim realities of our fate, that we are going to spend eternity somewhere. Lent is the reminder of our call to conversion by way of confession and penance.

How many of us wish that we could bring back a loved one after they have died? If you listened to the readings, this weekend, that is just what happened to Martha and Mary, the two sisters of Lazarus. When he became gravely ill, they sent a messenger to Jesus to let Him know, with the hope that Jesus would come immediately to heal him. Instead of rushing there Jesus delayed and Lazarus died. Can you imagine the pain and hurt they felt thinking that if Jesus had just been there, their brother would not have died? We might ask, “ if these were friends of Jesus why did he not go right away”? We, like them, at times, pray, and we wait in earnest for God to help us.

This week we are asked to see in a new way just like God does. God sees people differently than we do. We look at the outer person first, but God looks deeper and knows what really matters. In our society and in time of Jesus, the elder son was usually the one to carry on with the family name, or the family business, but this week we learn that God has chosen David, the youngest and smallest to be a king. In the reading this week we also hear that Jesus healed a man that was born blind to see.

This Fourth Sunday of Lent brings us to the silver- lining, as we return to the liturgical color rose for the simplicity of the joy that is in our midst. It is through the paschal mystery in sharing in the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ that we know that joy is truly present in our midst, and as a result we rejoice in it. Rejoice in the Lord always again I say Rejoice! Who among us could not manage a sprinkle of joy, because we know we are turning the corner toward the most joyful and glorious event for which Jesus conquers sin and death, by overcoming the grave. We now can see what is ahead of us on the horizon, the sun is rising and upon us is the dawning of a new day!

This week we are reminded that God is with us, when we are tired, in need or unsure. The readings focus on faith, conversion and God's desire to fill us with new life. We hear about people who feel empty and thirsty, but God gives them what they truly need. God listens to their cries with love and care. He guided Moses to strike a rock so that water would flow out even though others were doubting God's presence and even quarreling with Moses.

Now in this third week of Lent, we connect at the beginning of our journey with the cross of ash we received upon our heads, in recognizing the invitation from Jesus we receive, and how Esther we are to be marked by him and for him.

1. We have been invited to bear the cross of the Lord, and to bear it boldly. We say yes in a radical way to his call, "will you be my disciple" It is by the cross that we identify with Christ, and his cross as a device of torture, shame, and execution, but his cross becomes our gateway to redemption and eternal life.

This week God calls people to trust Him. In each reading we see someone stepping forward with faith. Abram leaves his home; the disciples follow Jesus up the mountain and Paul tells Timothy to keep going even when life is hard. Lent is a time that we need to listen and follow even if it is in ways that we do not expect, or when it is hard. We should not stay in one place; we are called to move forward with hope and with faith, that God is leading us somewhere good. Have you noticed that when God wants to meet people in a special way He does it on a Mountain?

In these first Sundays of Lent since Ash Wednesday, we have come from being marked in the cross, accepting our mortality, and deciding to be the disciple Christ is calling us to be, and following him. Today there is a shift, as we enter the transfiguration, and we ascend the mountain to witness the Lord in all his glory. Scripture has a way of skipping us through these aspects of Christ's life, not concerned so much about chronological order, but the order of illumination of how such parts of the Gospel coincide with the context of the season of faith we are in, and how they illuminate in us the message of redemption.

This week we hear about Jesus as he is in the desert and fasts for forty days and is tempted by the devil. Jesus stays faithful and He chooses what is right. This is a reminder that Lent is a time to turn away from sin and follow Jesus more closely. Try to picture what the world would be like if Adam and Eve did not give in when Eve was tempted in the Garden of Eden. Man brought about sin, but another man, Jesus, brings us life. Through Jesus we are made right with God again and gives us hope. Lent is a season for change, to say no to things that pull us away from God. We need to trust, to pray and to begin again during Lent.

We have now crossed the threshold of Lent. Each year marked in the boldness of ashes upon our forehead; we are marked in the cross of Christ. This is a pivotal crossroads for us, because it is here that we must decide how well invested into the process of Lent that we are. Lent is a penitential season primarily designed for us to be led into a deeper conversion. The first order of business is that all the faithful are called to admit their faults, take a long look into the mirror of our soul, and determine what must change about us.

This week we are asked to think about our choices. God gives us the freedom to choose between good and evil. He doesn't force us. God gave us the commandments, not to burden us, but to guide us to make the right choices. We hear this Sunday, that Jesus didn't come to get rid of the law for the Jews but instead to have the people learn its full meaning. Jesus tells us that it is not just by our actions that we gain the entrance to heaven, but that we need to be honest, to be pure, to let go of anger, and to speak with truth. Anger can be just as harmful as violence, and impure thoughts can lead a person away from God. We need to live with self-control and be guided toward holiness with love as its center. We are reminded by Saint Paul that God has good things planned for those who love Him.

Dear Parish Family,

We find ourselves at the brink of entering the season of Lent. This is a time for change. It's not so much being concerned with how others change, but how such change begins with us. In this jubilee year of St. Francis his prayer rings true to let peace begin with me. You want change than be the change, you want more fervor than practice it! Don't try to transfer your sense of piety on others, if anything, you should be a good example of humility and let that be contagious. After all, we can only change ourselves. We are also called to bloom where we are planted, to pick-up our cross, not run from it or move away from it.

Our faith is not something we should keep hidden. This week we hear Jesus say that we should be like salt and light. These are simple items, but they help us understand what it means to be followers of Christ. This Sunday we read that we should help others, we should care for the poor, we should be kind and trust in God. We need to point ourselves to Jesus and live in a way that points others to God. Our faith must show in our actions not just in our words. By serving and helping others we reflect God's love.

Dear Parish Family,

Something wonderful occurs as the minutes of light grow in number during the month of February. Our days become a little longer, brighter, and in Arizona a little warmer with the return of the sun. It's a bit of a miracle really to begin witnessing nature awakening from her deep winter slumber. Arizona is privy to literally front row seats, as the deserts will soon burst into color as the sun calls the wildflowers to bloom. It's supposed to be a great spectacle this year with the winter rain that fell. One thing we learn from nature is if we do not have light, we die.

Dear Parish Family,

Our scripture readings today sheds some light upon the human aspects of our struggle in faith. We learn that such faith is made real and is visible during our moments of heartache and difficulty. The Christian does not run from the cross, nor says may I have an easier one to carry. We obey the Lord and pick up our cross and follow him. Our call to discipleship is our willingness to accept the cross, and to give our lives to Christ. Our struggle is the source of our motive to seek God, and to better align ourselves with Christ.

Have you looked through your high school yearbook lately? Did you look at the fashions such as haircuts, clothes, jewelry that were the coolest thing in their time? They might seem a little silly today, but everyone thought they were the things to wear or have. If you wanted to be cool and fit in, you wore whatever was the rage like big hair, or bowl cuts, from leisure suits to poodle skirts because the reality is, when we were young, one of our greatest desires was just to fit in.