Lent begins one week from today, and if you are anything like me, you have probably at some point experienced a feeling of panic on Mardi Gras—“Oh no! Lent starts tomorrow, and I have no idea what I am going to do!” Maybe some of you have had that same feeling, like you had to come up with something really good to give up for Lent, or something really goodto do, and have felt that same sense of pressure mount as Ash Wednesday approaches. And if you are anything like me, this feeling of pressure has sometimes been rooted more in a sense of obligation than in a desire to grow in relationship with Christ. Perhaps this is why my Lenten practices, until fairly recently, have not usually resulted in real growth in my relationship with Christ. 

If this has been true for you as well, we invite you to consider Lent from a new perspective this year—not as a time when we have to do something to make ourselves suffer, because that’s what we learned in the religion of our childhood, but as an opportunity to grow in relationship with Christ, because that’s the only way we will find true joy and fulfillment. Here at New Roads, we are trying to make this relationship the center of everything we do, and to help people at all stages of the faith journey to take their next steps in developing this relationship, even and especially if the next step for you happens to be the first significant step you have taken to grow in relationship with Christ since your baptism. 

So we want to invite you to consider this Lent as an opportunity to grow in relationship with Christ. We will be doing this through our message series on “Why Choose Christ?” and we invite you to take that journey with us. We will explore together why one might choose to follow Christ and what it really means to be his disciple. Our message series this Lent will help us to find the points of contact between Christ’s life story and our own that will help us to identify with him, to recognize the ways in which he is already at work in our lives, and to become more intentional disciples.

Each week of Lent, our “Take Your Next Step” blog, appearing in both the Wednesday Flocknote e-mail and the Sunday bulletin column, will feature several members of our community offering a brief, personal response to the week’s reflection question. If you are interested in offering one of these responses, please e-mail Kathy O’Leary ([email protected]). The question for the first Sunday of Lent is: Are you ready to follow Christ?

So there is an urgency to Ash Wednesday, but it is not the urgency of an obligation to fulfill, but the urgency to pay attention, to make sure we don’t miss the opportunity that Lent offers us to reconsider our relationship with Christ. As you try to imagine what concrete form this might take for you, you might consider making a commitment to something that could help you to grow in that relationship. Maybe it’s ten minutes of daily prayer. Maybe it’s coming to Mass more regularly. Maybe it’s coming to Scripture reflection for the first time to hear Christ’s word to you. Maybe it’s coming to our Lenten simple suppers on Friday evenings, which will include an opportunity for conversation about the week’s question. Making any kind of commitment like this will surely require a tradeoff—we can’t just add things to our lives without adjusting something else. So as we begin our Lenten journey, we are invited to choose our Lenten practices based on an honest self-evaluation: What will help me to grow in relationship with Christ? 

~Rachel

Take your next step: Take some time to ask yourself: What step can I take this Lent to help me grow closer to Christ? What might I have to let go of in order to take this step?

Merry Christmas! How many times have you shared that greeting these days? During the frenzy of preparation and the pressure to try to actually create a Merry Christmas, it can be very difficult to find the time to ponder its meaning for our lives. It would be so easy to let the stress of gift buying, wrapping, and exchanging; decorating, cooking, and more family time than usual, cause us to allow the mystery of this great feast to pass without letting its significance penetrate our hearts and minds just a little deeper this year than last. These next few weeks provide a great opportunity for us to do this, beginning with the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph that shows us a human family taking their next steps on the journey of faith.

Luke’s gospel takes us quickly from the manger in Bethlehem to the Temple in Jerusalem as we learn more about the mystery of this One who has come to dwell among us. Fully human, Jesus must grow, just like us, not only physically, but mentally and spiritually as well. And his parents also learned and grew in their understanding of who Jesus was and how he would impact human history. How comforting for those of us who wonder if we will ever make progress on the spiritual journey. How important to recognize that growth is a process that unfolds over a lifetime.

It can be discouraging when our families or the other communities we belong to are not all that we want or hope for them to be. Conflict, arguments, immature behavior, and competition, just to name a few challenges, can make us feel that we will never become what we envision, and tempt us to give up trying. Parenting can be difficult when we think our kids will never get it, when all we experience is resistance. Sometimes this may be what we experience in our own interior life. Patience is required for anyone’s process of growth, our own included.

Can you imagine Joseph and Mary being patient with the infant Jesus as they taught him how to live a member of their family? It’s natural to imagine that this must have been an extremely happy family. Yet, like every other family, it must have had its ups and downs, its joys and sorrows, its problems and difficulties. There may have been problems about supplying the family’s needs on occasion. Surely someone got sick at one time or another and was a source of anxiety for the rest of the family. God invites us to grow in the midst of pressures and challenges. Our relationship with God, even though it is personal, is meant to be lived out in community and not just individually. Dealing with others may be trying, but others are also sources of encouragement and assistance.

In this weekend’s gospel passage, Joseph and Mary are astounded at what is being said about their child. This is their connection with us. Had they thought themselves special from birth, they would be distant from us. But we see them following the ordinary custom of presenting the child in the Temple, and their offering is the offering of the poor. The people in the temple, Simeon and Anna, share the fruit of their faith. Just as we do, Mary and Joseph needed those messages they received along the way, which helped them to understand who Jesus is.

Through this feast day, God wants us to know that our families and communities can grow toward our potential. With God’s help and by supporting one another, we can become more of a living reflection of Christ’s love and life. Your actions of giving and receiving care will actually make God’s love incarnate in this world.

~Fr. Thom

Take Your Next Step: Think about how you participate as a member of a family or a community, how you both give and receive care. If you are on the receiving end of someone’s care, thank the person who cares for you, and thank God for them. Try to pray about who in your family or community needs your care. Believe that in loving and serving others, you are serving Jesus.

How do you measure your value as a human being? When we’re filling out an application for a job or for college, we might be asked about our skills, our talents, or the gifts we have that will help us to be successful in a job or a school. Before we even take the risk of applying, we might ask ourselves what we think we can do. High school students are sometimes asked to fill out questionnaires to help counselors and people writing recommendations to summarize their personal and academic strengths and weaknesses in an effort to present a “comprehensive” picture of the individual. Parents are asked to fill out a “brag sheet” to aid the process. The age at which we begin to evaluate ourselves in order to compete well in society gets younger and younger. You can buy your newborn a college t-shirt with their expected year of graduation.

I wonder what effect this constant state of being evaluated has on our lives. Of course it is good to take stock of our lives, celebrate our accomplishments, and reach for greater growth and achievement. But does striving for the competitive advantage in society tend to skew our values in a certain direction and away from others? Does our effort to create a picture of ourselves cause us to lose sight of the real person we are? The gospel this week suggests that we take a look at what real success might mean and how we might accomplish it.

The master in the story who goes away on a trip entrusts his huge fortune to three servants. He trusts them all and believes in their potential. Two of the servants, seemingly unconcerned about how much the others were given, take up the master’s mission, using what they have learned from him and imitating how he goes about his business. They have appropriated his values. They don’t say what they think about him, but their actions show their attitude.

The third servant, perhaps in response to the way he compares himself to the others, wants to have as little as possible to do with his master’s business. The gospel writer lets us know he thinks his master is a hard man who expects results. He is not sure he can deliver, so out of fear, motivated by self-protection, he avoids any risk and goes and buries what the master had invested in him. 

When the master returns, the first two servants can’t wait to show him the fruit of their labors, in effect saying that they had learned from him, and that by allowing them to share in his business venture, faithfully following his way of life, they had become more like him. They share his joy. Sadly, the third is stuck making excuses. He has not come to know his master, hasn’t appreciated what the master offers, and his fear has defined his destiny.

Friends, our God is calling us to a life of abundant joy. Does the “brag sheet” we keep on file in our minds really give the comprehensive picture of us that we want God to see? Does our concern about competing and being evaluated send us in the wrong direction, chasing after things that can never be the source of our joy? Do you sometimes think that you don’t have anything to offer to God? Does your fear of what others or God will think about you cause you to bury God’s investment in you, instead of taking the risks that enable it to grow? The good news is that it’s never too late to take that next step toward sharing the life that only God offers.

~Fr. Thom

Take Your Next Step: 
Take some time to think about how you evaluate yourself. Is it by achievements? What others think of you? How much money you make? The joy you bring to others? Think about what holds you back from taking the next step in growing in faith. What are you afraid of? Ask God to help you overcome your fear, and take one step out of your comfort zone this week. Maybe say hello to someone you’ve never met. Volunteer for something. Celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation (go to confession). Sing at Mass! Share your master’s joy.

What does it really mean to be disciples of Christ, and what motivates us to try? How do we live out the call to discipleship? Once we have embraced discipleship, what moves us to take the next step and become evangelizers? Without a doubt, we can benefit from asking these questions of ourselves now and again to test whether we have truly made inroads in our lifelong journey of faith.
We would do well to reflect on the fact that our starting point is that we have been loved by God first, and that experience of being loved unconditionally and without qualifying merit impels us to love in return. The gratuitous nature of God’s love for us is overwhelming, humbling, and motivating. God’s love, if we truly take it to heart, believe it, and live in the grace, the pure gift that it is, will transform us. That transformation will determine the choices we make in our lives.

Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, speaks of the challenge which the Gospel imposes on us and the consequences that flow from embracing it:
“The Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness.” (#88)

These words of Pope Francis hit home as they tell us not to insulate ourselves from our brothers and sisters, from their needs and brokenness. We cannot separate ourselves from becoming involved with them as individuals or as part of a community. The tenderness that God has extended to us, we in turn, must offer to others. For some of us, our next step in becoming disciples might mean that we do not avert our eyes from the beggar in the street; but rather, we recognize his dignity as a person by acknowledging his presence. For others, our deepening discipleship may involve our willingness to serve meals at a soup kitchen. For still others, the commitment to discipleship may be
recognized in concerted efforts to increase the numbers of transitional housing units available to homeless families.

Pope Francis tells us: “Being a disciple means being constantly ready to bring the love of Jesus to others, and this can happen unexpectedly and in any place: on the street, in a city square, during work, on a journey.” This means we can’t compartmentalize our life of faith and our daily lives. Our faith and the love that God extends to others through us must penetrate all aspects of our lives. The opportunities to bring the love of Christ to others are all around us. We only need to open our eyes to see them, our hearts to be moved by them, and then, direct our actions to respond to them. When asked why we do the things that we do, we can respond in an evangelizing manner in the words of Sr. Kathy Sherman (who has written a song with this title): “Because we love God.”

~Sr. Kathleen

Take Your Next Step: 
In the coming week, take notice of the poor who live in our midst, and in a time of prayer, ask God: What would you have me do? How do you want me to respond to this person’s need?