Flowers & Fern in a rock, back garden, Cape Elizabeth House Picture by Gail Prince
Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.
Give me back the joy of your salvation,
and a willing spirit sustain in me.
O Lord, open my lips
and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
Psalm 95
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Take care not to perform righteous deeds
in order that people may see them;
“When you pray,
do not be like the hypocrites,
who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners
“When you fast,
do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.
They neglect their appearance,
so that they may appear to others to be fasting.
Matthew 6
Our Post is Inspired by The Holy Spirit.
We linked these readings together because they clearly state how we are to conduct ourselves, and the Psalm tells of the truth of acting as Jesus did.
That truth being the Joy of Salvation;
that truth is a relationship with God;
and that truth is we are loved!
We start by acknowledging we are sinners, and I am sure if your life is like mine, satan will tell you that you’re really pretty good, and you don’t need Jesus to justify you to the Father.
In my younger years, I had these thoughts and sadly believed them. Now I tell satan to, “Get behind me,” and realize that I am a sinner, and I ask God to be Merciful with me.
What I didn’t fully realize until today, the Holy Spirit working in my life was Jesus showing us how to build a relationship with His Father through the Gospel readings below.
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Take care not to perform righteous deeds
in order that people may see them;
If I am performing righteous deeds so YOU can see them, I am giving honor to me, and not to God the Father, who asked the Holy Spirit to whisper in my ear to do that particular deed.
Yes, I now fully believe all I do that is righteous is a result of my listening and acting on the whisper of the Holy Spirit. If God is leading me, and God is, then I can only honor God by doing His will, and building a relationship with God.
How do I build a relationship with God if I want adulation from others?
I can’t!
A choice then has to be made, God or satan.
As we have said since we started our posts, for me life is easy, black or white, satan or God.
No gray.
Both want a relationship, only one climbed upon a Cross so I might be justified, so I can live in a life filled with love, Joy, and Peace.
I have lived with satan, I NEVER want to go back!
Jesus also said:
“When you pray,
do not be like the hypocrites,
who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners
Once again this is all about me and aren’t I holy.
This does not build a relationship.
I do as you well know, truly believe in the power of prayer.
Ever since I started observing prayers I was sending for people who never knew I was praying for them, and seeing the prayer answered, I am filled with Joy when the person I prayed for told me that what I was praying for, happened in their life.
A few posts back I reported praying for our son David, that they would have a safe trip to Canada and back and the car wouldn’t break down. We reported Dave’s car broke down because it truly was a lemon, but it broke down in the driveway at each end of the trip.
This also builds relationships because the only ones who know what we asked for is God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and me.
I said we in the above paragraph, and I recall reading in a C.S. Lewis’ book, I have forgotten the name of the book, that Jesus brings us to prayer, gives us the words to pray, and brings the prayer to His Father. I had never appreciated the fact that Jesus was so fully involved in my(?) Our prayer life.
“When you fast,
do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.
They neglect their appearance,
so that they may appear to others to be fasting.
If I look gloomy, whom do I honor?
Me!
Look at poor Fred, he’s really a holy person, and you can tell by the suffering he is experiencing by his Lenten fast. What a dumb statement!
Where‘s God?
This is why once again thanking God for the difficulties He has allowed in your life and saying this until you smile sets you up for being helped by God, and in the case of Lent, successfully completing my Lenten fast.
Our whole life is meant to give glory to God, and as the above three readings clearly show that doesn’t happen when we are self-centered. This is why the response to the responsorial Psalm and the last four lines are so appropriate.
Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.
And you will receive the joy of your salvation,
and a willing spirit sustain you.
O Lord, open my lips
and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
“The nine” We pray you will grow in the Love, Joy, and Peace of the Holy Spirit by growing in Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control.
Sidebar:
I love Lent because it’s a time to make adjustments in my life and try to bring my passions under control.
I don’t know when I really started trying to live a complete Lent, complete meaning keeping the promise I made that I would fulfill during those forty days. I do know I started off with the best of intentions and failed miserably at first.
What changed?
I brought God into my, now our, Lent.
An example. In nineteen seventy I said I would stop smoking. I was smoking a pack a day.
Not good!
I said I would stop smoking starting on Ash Wednesday. Notice the I.
Well, I did.
I went to Mass, arrived at the office with the ashes still on my forehead, and fifteen minutes later, lit up.
Wow, that was a fast Lent! I couldn’t even make it for a day.
Next year my decline was even faster.
The third year the Holy Spirit, whom I didn’t know at the time, whispered into my ear, “Use Jesus on the Cross as your motivator.”
What did this mean I asked myself? The answer was, “If Jesus could hang on the cross with nails driven through His Hands and a nail driven through His Feet, and hang on the Cross for three hours, then you concentrate on Jesus and His Cross, and how hard that was and how easy in comparison not smoking is, and every time satan, who I didn’t fully appreciate was in my life as much as he was, suggests quitting, you will get the strength to complete your Lenten promise.
I did exactly that, and at the end of Lent celebrated my stopping smoking.
Do not think for one minute satan didn’t try to get me back into this awful habit after Lent. satan did, but I now knew how to beat off satan, and that was by concentrating on Jesus on His Cross, and this helped me to carry my, our, cross.
I also realized that if I kept my Lenten promise one more week I had a habit, and this was a habit we really wanted.
One last part of this story. I arrived in the office, in the third year, to be told a lawyer called and was going to sue me because of something someone else did. I opened my desk drawer, took out the cigarettes, I had to have one, but after I said this I had the thought, the Holy Spirit whom I didn’t know at the time, “This lawyer is not going to get me to smoke!” I picked up the pack and threw it out. I then celebrated my, once again I didn’t know the Holy Spirit at that time, victory.
Look how empty the last paragraph is. God gives me the help I need to overcome a really bad habit, at a very stressful time in my life, and I don’t recall thanking God for all God did for me at that time.
I pray our last post lays to rest that I will never NOT thank God for all the Difficulties and the Miracles, big and small, God has brought into my, now our, life.
I, we, pray this will be a Lent filled with Joy for you, as you build your relationship with God, by imitating His Son on His Cross, by listening to the Whisper of the Holy Spirit, and doing the will of God, Our Father, by imitating His Son on the Cross.
