My friend and fellow pastor, Father Paul, noticed unsightly, overgrown trees near his parish church. He asked the maintenance crew to cut back the growth, which they happily did, telling him the trees would be much healthier and even fuller after a good pruning. A few days later, Father Paul received a letter from an irate man in the neighborhood who wrote, “Jesus would never prune trees like that. He loves trees, unlike you.”

Recently I was with my little dog Libby at a retreat center in the Arizona desert. I sat in a chair near a ravine filled with shrubs. Unbeknownst to me, Libby wandered down there and disappeared. Suddenly an animal’s wild shriek erupted from the area. Without thinking, I bolted down into the ravine fully expecting to see coyotes, javelinas, or rattlesnakes. I didn’t care. I desperately wanted to get Libby out of there, without any selfregard. Before I could face whatever danger lay hidden, my dog blissfully trotted out from an entirely different area, utterly unaware that I had (quite heroically) just placed my life on the line.

You know what are some of my favorite moments in Scripture? The little “Easter eggs” of Jesus’ humanity, things like Jesus falling asleep, Jesus drawing in the sand, Jesus playing with kids. And how about Jesus rising from the dead, appearing to his disciples and saying, “So, have you got anything to eat?”

A protestant pastor friend of mine was invited to meet Pope Francis with a group of other pastors. He noticed the Pope’s chair was especially ornate and set at the head of the group. He somewhat playfully said, “Holy Father, why do you get that special chair?” The group chuckled nervously at my friend’s audacious chide.

Alleluia! This Hebrew word is a powerful prayer which means “Praise the Lord!” It is a prayer we now voice to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection from the dead; it was absent from our liturgies during the season of Lent. The liturgical Easter season extends from Easter Sunday through Pentecost Sunday, May 19. The season includes Divine Mercy Sunday (the Second Sunday of Easter, April 7) and Ascension Thursday, May 9. The Fourth Sunday of Easter, this year celebrated on April 21, is often called Good Shepherd Sunday because the gospel reading is always one of the stories about Jesus, the Good Shepherd. The Sunday first readings during the Easter season are from the Acts of the Apostles, the story of the early Church, while the second readings, which focus on our lives as Christians, are all from the First Letter of John. Most of the Sunday gospel readings are from John’s gospel. You can read about The Acts of the Apostles (outline, themes, etc.) on Fr. Felix Just’s Catholic Resources webpage, catholic-resources.org/Bible/Acts.htm. Fr. Just also has a webpage with many resources regarding the Gospel and Letters of John at catholic-resources.org/John/Intro.html. You can prepare for every Sunday’s readings at liturgy.slu.edu/.

We have completed our 40 day journey and we find ourselves looking joyfully into an empty tomb. We began our Lenten journey on Ash Wednesday and find its fulfillment here, on Easter! Throughout our journey we challenged ourselves to search and find all the brokenness and weakness of our lives, all that would distract us from being true disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. We were led this past week, Holy Week, to carry all our troubles, weakness and brokenness to the tomb with our Lord, and now we rejoice in the fact that through His death and Resurrection, he has saved us, restored us, and made us whole again.

The Bible is a strange book.

It’s one of the only books that most people never read in its entirety, even those who claim it as one of their favorites. It’s also one of the only books that we feel comfortable chopping up and sectioning out. There’s nothing wrong with that, really, until people start making wholesale judgments of divine revelation based on one tiny part of it. You can’t base your belief system on a few lines from Leviticus and ignore the Gospels, just like you can’t embrace the teachings of Jesus and ignore the Old Testament. You need to accept the whole story, in its entirety, or none of it means anything.

We parents know that it’s tricky, tackling the topic of fear with our kids. We want them to know that it’s okay to be scared, that it’s something we all feel from time to time. We want them to understand that bravery isn’t the absence of fear, but the choices we make in persevering despite that feeling.

Most of all, we want to model the right kind of behavior for our kids. Whatever our scary situation is — illness, a job loss, life changes — we want them to see us make a choice to face that fear head-on.

Our national pastime isn’t baseball. It’s what the Bible calls “condemning the world.” We generally enjoy pronouncing curses upon those whom we see as trouble, wrong, or evil. Don’t believe me? Listen to almost any podcast, cable news network, or social media platform to hear it. It will be some version of: “We all agree that if they are eradicated, things will be great.” Condemning is almost always clothed in virtue. It basks in its good intentions. That’s why it is so attractive. Condemning seems like our best path to saving what is good.

Watch your fellow churchgoers today as the priest or deacon reads the story of Jesus raising hell (or perhaps he’s raising heaven?) in the temple square. Dollars to donuts, they’ll be squirming.

As Catholics, we have become very uncomfortable with Angry Jesus. He makes us cringe in the same way that the Old Testament God does when He calls Himself “jealous” and talks about punishment. That level of intensity makes us recoil. If it were present in a human relationship, it would be toxic and abusive, because in humanity, fierceness and love rarely coexist in a healthy way.

It seems to happen every year, like clockwork: we drag a bit, as we enter into the second week of Lent. On Ash Wednesday, we feel a bit like soldiers banging our shields, rushing into battle. “We’re ready, God!” our hearts cry out. “Transform us through sacrifice! Your will be done!”

When I feel down, I sometimes watch the famous “Double Rainbow” video on YouTube to feel better. It’s hilarious. A young man camping in Yosemite Park sees two rainbows stretching across the sky. He bursts into a kind of ecstasy. “Double rainbow, all the way! Oh my God!” he announces. Then he starts to weep. He cries out, “What does it mean?” Beneath the humor of his glorious overreaction is the deep intuition we all have, I think, when we see the colorful bow in the sky. This Sunday, God sends a rainbow to Noah, and to us. What does it mean?

“Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart…” So begins the first reading of Ash Wednesday, a reading from the Old Testament book of the prophet Joel. Just a bit later, the prophet further exhorts us to “[r]end your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God”. And so, Lent begins with a call to return to God genuinely and wholeheartedly, a call, perhaps a reminder, which we hear every year at this time. The gospel reading for Ash Wednesday, taken from Matthew’s gospel, tells us of three ways in which we can concretely express our return to God: giving alms, praying and fasting. (You can find the Ash Wednesday readings and all the daily Mass readings at bible.usccb.org.) These three spiritual practices are often referred to as the pillars, or disciplines of Lent. Here are some thoughts about how we can carry out each of these means of returning to and encountering God.

When I was in high school, we read “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka. It’s a depressing little novella about a man who (spoiler alert!) turns into a cockroach and dies of neglect, his family gradually ceasing to recognize the creature he has become. “Never underestimate how badly human beings need touch,” our teacher told us. “Without each other, we curl up and die.”

Lent is nearly here! Ash Wednesday is February 14 and reminds us that we belong to God and are called to be reconciled to him and to live in his ways.

During the six Wednesdays of Lent, (February 21 through March 27), St. Mary Parish will celebrate Evening Prayer, complete with the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and the opportunity for individual confession (Sacrament of Reconciliation). The Lenten Evening prayer will be held on Wednesdays beginning February 21 through March 27, from 7:00 to 8:00PM in the Chapel. Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament will take place at 7:00pm, followed by Evening Prayer.