Transcript

I love this prayer!

I get the biggest kick out of this every time I do this.

So if you're new tonight, just know that this is the official Theology on Tap prayer.

I did not invent it.

All right?

Our help is in the name of the Lord.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, which Thou hast designed to produce from the fat of grain, that it may be a salutary remedy to the human race.

And grant, of the invocation of Thy holy name, that whoever shall drink it may gain health in body and peace in soul through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Oh, come on!

You can do much better than that!

Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

There you go!

You've got to pretend you're Baptist.

The Baptist wouldn't like that.

All right?

We usually, at the end of talks, you know, I always take time—try and take time for questions.

And I thought, though, this time I'll do a little differently.

I'm going to give the questions because these are the questions I get asked every single year at this time.

So we'll get these out of the way, and then we can focus at the end on other kinds of questions.

So why do we use ashes, and where do they come from?

So only the Roman Rite and the Maronite Rites actually use ashes for the beginning of Lent.

None of the other rites do, and they come from the palms that were burned the previous year.

And of course, ashes are an ancient sign of mortality and penance.

This is the big one on Ash Wednesday: When can I wash the ashes off my face?

I had to look this one up because Byzantine Rite doesn't do ashes.

There is no specific instruction on how long ashes can be worn.

In fact, you can wash them off immediately after the service if you want.

I did not know that!

Most folks can choose, of course, to wear their ashes for the remainder of the day because this is how you show everybody that you really are Roman Catholic, and it's a great witness.

You're entering into a season of penance.

There was a clip online of Mark Wahlberg.

He went to the first Mass of the day on Ash Wednesday at St. Patrick's in New York City because he was going to be on TV. And when he got to the studio, the camera crew—because they always do the makeup business—they wanted to take off his ashes, and he said, No! The whole point I went to the first Mass was so I would have them.

And then when he was talking with the hostess, she suddenly just blurts out, Oh dear God!

It's Ash Wednesday!

I'm Catholic!

I should know this!

And I said, Good for you, Mark!

So she says, I got to get to church!

All right, why is holy water removed from the fonts during Lent and replaced with sand?

This is my least favorite because some brilliant liturgist somewhere came up with this idea.

It has absolutely nothing to do with any Catholic teaching whatsoever.

Somebody invented that as to represent the dryness of the soul, and the dicastery for worship in Rome specified this should never happen.

So if this happens in your parish church, you now have an argument.

It said in the letter that Lent is a season of penance.

It is rich in symbolism of water and baptism, constantly invoked in the readings and the liturgical texts.

The encouragement of the Church that the faithful avail themselves frequently of the sacraments is to be understood to apply also in Lent.

The fast and abstinence which they embrace in this season does not extend to abstaining from sacraments or the sacramentals.

So the holy water fonts are not supposed to be emptied until the Triduum, which is Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, because the water is blessed at the Easter Vigil when our statues and crosses are supposed to be veiled.

Why doesn't my parish do it?

I don't know why your parish doesn't do it.

I hate when people ask me that kind of thing.

My pastor does—I don't know!

Deal with your pastor!

But the tradition is that you start it on the fifth Sunday of Lent, and on Holy Thursday, the Roman Missal says that the altar, of course, is stripped after Mass on Holy Thursday, and if possible, the crosses are taken down from the church, and then they have to be veiled—the ones that remain in the churches.

Why can't we have flowers in church during Lent?

Because it is a season of penance, only on feast days and Laetare Sunday, but never on the altar.

This we get at our church.

Why do you people in the Byzantine Rite use the Alleluia during Lent?

Don't you people know it's forbidden?

Well, it is in the Roman Rite, but not in the Byzantine Rite.

So if you come to my church during Lent, don't be scandalized.

We sing it before the Gospel because Alleluia also means God is close at hand.

So that's why we continue to do it all year long.

Do I have to fast?

Katie said this is like God number one question: Do I have to fast on Sundays of Lent?

No, you don't! Sundays are always the resurrection.

Why don't my evangelical neighbors keep Lent?

I didn't realize this until a couple years ago because a lot of them, they don't have a liturgical calendar.

The only liturgical things they do is Easter Sunday and Christmas.

It's really only like the Lutherans and Episcopalians and some of the Methodists who have a calendar.

Why 40 days?

So the 40 always signifies in Scripture that something big is coming and that it's going to bring about a change.

So 40 days of the flood—the human race starts over again.

40 days of Moses on Mount Sinai, up in the clouds and the thunder and the lightning, because there he is alone with God to receive the commandments and bring them down.

The 40 years of wandering in Sinai because the adult generation that came out of Egypt had to die off, and the new generation of the new Israel—they crossed the Jordan and they enter into the Promised Land.

The 40 days of Elijah traveling from the wrath of Queen Jezebel to Mount Horeb because he meets God in the thin small sound of silence.

40 days of fasting in the wilderness—our Lord goes off for the 40 days because that launches the public ministry.

So 40 was always a time of testing, of growing in faith and trust in God and His providence in a new way that something great is coming.

So the 40 days of Lent, you know, is for the resurrection, you know, the new life in Jesus Christ at the end of the fasting of Lent that we should be ready to be raised into new life.

All right, now the reading for today in the Byzantine Rite was from the prophet Joel, so from chapter two: Even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and mourning.

Rend your hearts, not your garments.

Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and repent of evil.

Who knows whether He will not turn and repent and leave a blessing behind Him?

I will restore to you the years which the swarming locust has eaten, which I sent among you.

You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you, and my people shall never again be put to shame.

Now the reading is given today because it's a reading of promise, and in the Byzantine Rite, it's taken today in order to lead us into the season of bright sadness.

Last week was the week that we got rid of meat in our homes for the people that were going to keep the strict fast.

This week is the week we get rid of dairy products in our homes for the people getting ready for the strict fast.

So the reading from Joel today is a reminder to us that even though you may be getting rid of different foods, you have to be focused on the conversion of heart.

You have to be focused on conversion of heart.

That's the most important thing: Rend your hearts, not your garments.

And what will happen when we do this?

God says at the end of the chapter, You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.

My people shall never again be put to shame.

That I embark on a new life, a new life of holiness, a new life of growth, a new life of being a mature Christian.

Why do we have Lent?

Why do we do it?

From the fourth Sunday, the Divine Office for the fourth Sunday of Lent in the Byzantine Rite says this: You poured the balm of Your compassion over my wounds, O Christ, over my wounds, for I am covered with bruises because of the assault of my sins.

You have given Your body and soul to redeem me, O God our Savior, to save me who am completely wounded by the multitude of my sins.

I have no other hope of healing but Your mercy, O Lord.

Lent is supposed to be a time of healing.

Whatever it is that is holding me back from God, whatever causes my soul bruises, this is the time to let Jesus' mercy come and pour over me as a balm of compassion.

I had a psychologist tell me once that it takes six weeks to break a bad habit.

Forty-two days—Lent is how many days?

Four plus the extras, right?

So we have Lent, then you have Holy Week.

In the Byzantine Rite, we start on Pure Monday, which is the first day of Lent for us next Monday, and it's a day of strict fasting—no meat, no dairy, one meal.

And we go to church that night, and we're anointed with holy oil to strengthen us for the spiritual combat.

Then we go to the Friday before Palm Sunday, and then Holy Week is its own time period.

It stands alone.

In the Roman Rite, it goes from Ash Wednesday to the Wednesday of Holy Week, and then the Triduum stands alone—Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday—until the Easter Vigil.

Scott Cairns writes that Lent consists of a number of formal, predominantly negative rules and prescriptions.

You can't eat meat on Ash Wednesday; you can't eat meat on Fridays of Lent.

There's a lot of no's. What are you going to give up?

Everybody asks that: What are you giving up this year?

But he goes on to say such is the degree of our alienation from the real spirit of the Church that it's almost impossible for us to understand that there is something else in Lent, something without which all these prescriptions lose much of their meaning.

And that something else is another disposition altogether.

Father Alexander Schmemann characterizes it as an atmosphere, a climate, a state of mind, soul, and spirit.

That's what should be happening during Lent, and that's why in the East we call it bright sadness, because it is a penitential season, but there's also brightness.

There should be joy with it as well.

Lent can become an incentive and a powerful means by which we can enter the Kingdom of God, even as we're living here on Earth, to experience the Kingdom of God in a radically different way.

So bright sadness is connected with tenderheartedness.

Bright sadness is connected with tenderheartedness—God's tenderheartedness, compassion, a compassionate heart in which God's loving face looks at my face.

My face is looking at God's face.

That's what should happen every day of Lent—that I am so transformed by the power of the liturgy, by the power of my prayers, by the power of the music in church that is so different, and especially in the Byzantine Rite.

The Lenten music is unique; we don't do it any other time of the year—that I am looking at God face to face, His all-compassionate, loving face looking at my face and into my face, right to get into my soul.

So what begins as something inward and deeply personal—letting myself be touched by the poetry of the prayers and the melodies in the liturgy—is meant to be a source or a wellspring of empathy, of mercy, of forgiveness, of getting God's forgiveness by going to confession and accepting His forgiveness.

Sometimes I don't think we accept that God forgives me, that God is willing to forgive me.

I always say one of the worst things to hear in confession is somebody saying, I don't think God can forgive me for what I did.

And that's not true, because if I'm sorry for what I did, then God will forgive me, and He wants to.

That's the kicker: He wants to forgive me.

So to have Lent, you know, is to think about God's healing mercy that can deliver me from the habit of sin, you know, to experience love without limits.

We always say God is love; He abides in love, abides in God, and God in Him.

But we can kind of let that, you know, slide over us.

I think it's a love without limits.

God's love has no limit.

God is constantly pouring Himself out.

That's what grace is.

He's always pouring Himself out.

Nowhere in the Gospel does Jesus say, You know what?

I'm only doing this for a few people.

He doesn't say at the Last Supper, Do this, you know, in memory of me.

You know, do this for the 12th.

Oh wait, we're down to 11 because Judas is going to hell.

He doesn't do that.

He doesn't say, You know, I'm doing it for a few, a handful.

He says, You know, it's for the many.

He does it for the many.

He doesn't die on the cross like this; He dies on the cross like that.

Everybody is invited in.

We're all invited into the mystery of the cross together in order to enter into the cross and come through the cross to the resurrection.

The Church is always packed on Easter Sunday, hopefully, but I really want it to be packed also on Good Friday, because what's the point of coming on Easter Sunday if you haven't been there on Good Friday?

I can't understand the joy and power of the resurrection if I haven't walked the cross and come into the cross to go through the cross.

So in the Divine Office, again, look upon me with Your eyes that do not sleep.

This is the soul talking to God: Look upon me with Your eyes that do not sleep and have pity on Your servant who has fallen into laziness and sleep and has become the slave to pleasure upon the bed of passions.

You bowed Your head on the cross; You slept the sleep of death in the tomb, thus dispelling the dark night of sin.

O Light of righteousness, O my soul, seek the wine of the purifying cup in fasting and tears, for it brings joy to the heart and dispels the passions.

It reduces the furnace of the flesh to ashes.

Seek to be crucified with Christ, who was nailed to the cross for you.

You will find eternal life.

Seek to be crucified with Christ, who was nailed to the cross for you.

You shall find eternal life.

Bright sadness is the sadness of my exiles, of the waste I made of my life.

You know, the brightness of God's presence and forgiveness—that's the brightness.

That's the sadness.

You know, if you know the Hail Holy Queen, we say in the Hail Holy Queen, which is written by St. Ephraim the Syrian back in the 300s, that, you know, in this our exile, right?

We're exiled from heaven; we're exiled from our true home by original sin.

But it's not a permanent exile—the brightness of God's presence and forgiveness, the joy of the recovered desire for God and the peace of the recovered home.

That's what men should be leading each of us to—to the home where I belong.

Father Andrew Morby writes that it is sadness that permeates the Lenten season with its long, fatiguing, magnificent liturgical services, its constant call to repentance.

But it is a sadness that is leavened by a deep joy that only tears can adequately express—tears of longing for the glory and peace to come, for the recovered home where the Father embraces each of us, each of us His prodigal children, with a boundless depth of forgiving love—to place our trust and hope in Jesus Christ, who is the source of our longing, and He's the end of our longing, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of our deepest longing.

What do I need to be saved from?

What is the sin I have to be delivered from?

That's the thing to ask yourselves in this coming weekend.

What is it I have to be saved from?

What sin do I have to be delivered from?

What am I really passionate about converting a bad behavior into?

You know, we always say, What are you going to give up for Lent?

I'm on a generally strict diet, and one year one of the altar boys asked me in the sacristy, he said, Father, what are you giving up for Lent?

And before I could answer, one of the other altar servers said, He's not married; he can't drink; he doesn't eat any of the good stuff.

What the heck do you want him to give up for Lent?

I said, I can still give up stuff, you know?

Not that lost of a cause.

But what I give up should be something that is problematic, something that is causing my soul a problem.

The key then is don't go back to whatever I gave up, but replace it with something new, something good.

If I dig a hole in the yard, I don't leave a hole.

People are going to walk around, and they're going to trip, and they're going to fall into the hole, right?

And then you're going to have a lawsuit because, you know, they all get lawyers, and they all get broken ankles, and what were you thinking?

All right?

So if I'm going to dig a hole into my soul to dig out something, put something in it.

The hole in the yard has got to be filled with dirt, has to be filled with a plant, with a tree, something—something new, something that's alive, something that is beautiful.

Same thing with this: If I'm going to give up something, give up something that I know I should not go back to.

I know I should not go back to it.

At the very least, you know, to replace a sin with its opposite.

If my problem is I have a problem with anger, or I like to get even, or I like to get revenge on that schnook at work—that's what I really want to do—I have to treat the schnook with respect and as a person worthy of God's dignity.

If I get lost in alcohol and I'm drinking too much, or I'm getting stoned all the time on marijuana, who has been suffering because of that?

Someone I love, probably.

And if I'm going to give up that, then I should replace it with spending time with that person who needs my love and has been missing me.

If I'm hooked on porn, which is such a common thing nowadays, if I'm hooked on that, replace it—all that energy that you throw into the porn, throw that energy into loving God passionately, into loving friends passionately, into reaching out to others.

Fill the hole!

Figure out why I have that hole.

Why do I go back to that hole all the time with that sin?

You know, if my sin is swearing or cursing, you know, learning to praise God and to speak kindly and to speak well.

I had a guy tell me at the gym once, he says, You know what the strongest muscle is, Father?

I'm thinking, I don't know, biceps?

Beats me, I don't know.

And he says, The tongue!

You can do so much good, and you can do so much bad with the tongue.

Can't lift any weights with it, but boy, Father, I can do real damage or I can do great things with my tongue.

What an eye-opener!

You can learn the Gospel all kinds of places, you know, in a restaurant, in a gym, whatever.

So if Lent is the opportunity to stop something and to replace it with something, then build up on that.

Just spend time with the people I love.

If I'm giving up smoking, every time when I want to light up a cigarette, or I want to smell the smoke, or have a taste of a cigarette after eating, I have to remind myself, Why am I doing this?

Why am I doing this?

Not just for that sake of connecting with the people I love, not just for the sake of getting rid of a particular sin, not just for cleaning up my act, but for this: I am going to do this in union with the saving passion of Jesus Christ, who ate and drank nothing from the Last Supper until He tasted the sponge on the hyssop on the cross for my sake, so as to save my soul.

That's why we have penance; that's why we have penitential prayers; that's why we do penitential services; that's why we fast and abstain.

Every time I do that, you know, I'm not going to have the cookies today because I'm uniting myself now.

And it seems something as small as that—not having the cookies—I am personally uniting myself with the life-giving passion of Jesus Christ.

I am personally doing that right now.

If I'm giving up chocolate or beer or dessert or whatever, I'm fasting.

It's a form of fasting.

Why am I fasting?

Those things bring me pleasure, and they bring me joy, but also I can be so overly focused on those things and forget that when I give them up, I can still live.

Man does not live by bread alone.

Fasting or abstinence always has to be done for a reason.

One of the worst things is when people say, Oh yeah, I'm going to lose 10 pounds this year because of Lent.

I could afford to lose 10 pounds, but that's not going to happen because of Lent.

That's not the goal of Lent.

The goal of Lent is for the conversion of my heart.

The goal of Lent is for the salvation of sinners.

Our Lady of Fatima said nobody prays for sinners.

Think of all the folks you know that have drifted away from the Church.

Think of the stuff you see on TV, on the news.

These people all need prayer.

You know, I see people on the news, and they have a beautiful saint's name, and they've done a terrible crime, and I say to myself, You know, when that kid was born and those parents gave that kid, you know, that name, they weren't saying, 'Yeah, let's give him that name because he's going to be on Channel 4 in 20 years.'

They had hopes and dreams for that person, for that little baby.

There's so much conversion and healing that we can achieve for people by offering it up for the conversion of sinners and always, always, always, always in union with the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So what these folks are going to do is this is the prayer of St. Ephraim.

I mentioned St. Ephraim is the original composer of Hail Holy Queen.

St. Ephraim is a Doctor of the Church.

He was a Syrian deacon, and St. Ephraim composed this prayer, and in the Byzantine Rite, we say this all through Lent.

So what we're going to do is once everybody has it, we're all going to say it together, and then I'm going to break it down for you as to why he wrote what he wrote.

Okay?

Ready?

All right, so all together: O Lord and Master of my life, keep from me the spirit of indifference and discouragement, lust of power, and idle chatter.

Instead, grant to me, Your servant, the spirit of wholeness, humility, patience, and love.

O Lord and King, grant me the grace to be aware of my sins and not to judge my brother.

Okay, so let's start now so I don't forget in between what we do.

If you ever come to our church, and if you're going to keep—you’re welcome to keep the holy card, all right?

And to use this during Lent, and you can use it all year long.

It's not restricted to just Lent.

It's in between where those little gaps are is you do a prostration.

So if you're doing this at home, you just make the sign of the cross.

You either bow down deeply, or you get on your knees and put your head down, or you lay flat on the floor, you know, whatever works, but you do the prostration.

So O Lord, Kyrios—God is the Lord.

When the Jews no longer said the holy name of God, they used the word Adonai, Lord.

So Kyrios, Lord, is someone on whom I depend for my entire existence.

That's why we call God Lord, Lord and Master.

He's the one, it says in Scripture, that our eyes should be on the hands of the Lord.

Our eyes should be on the Lord like the eyes of a servant are on the hands of their master, you know, the handmaid on the hands of her mistress—that we're looking always to them.

So He is the one on whom my whole existence depends, and He is the one who is the Master of my life.

God has complete control of my life, and God is the one on whom I depend.

Keep from me the spirit of indifference—probably one of the greatest sins of our age is religious indifference and indifference to others.

You know, you always see these little clips on YouTube, you know, where they try and stage something where there's some poor soul in need of help.

How many people walk by?

A lot of people will walk by.

We have become very good at being indifferent to those in need, even sometimes to the people we love.

And discouragement—don't give up!

Don't give up!

Never give up!

God has not given up on you.

Why should you give up on you?

Never give up!

Don't be discouraged!

So to keep that from myself.

Lust of power—one thing Americans really like is control.

We are taught to be in control from a very early age, and the spiritual life, you can't be in control.

All of the apostles, all of the holy women, all of the people who followed our Lord during His lifetime, they had to give up power and walk with Him for three years, and they did it because they loved Him so much and were so drawn to Him.

Same thing for us—to give up that lust for power and control.

And idle chatter—yackety-yackety-yackety-yackety-yack.

We're very good at that too.

We talk too much in this country.

When I have had people come over from Eastern Europe, they're just stunned, you know, because Americans, you know, you meet somebody new, Hey, how are you?

What are you doing?

How's things?

What do you do for a living?

Oh, do you like that color?

Oh, I like that color too!

Right?

We're good at idle chatter.

And I said, Why do people always ask, 'What do you do for a living?'

Nobody ever asked me, Who are you?

Everybody wants to know what my job is.

Well, they were all seminarians, so that was quickly answered.

So, you know, Who are you?

We never ask people, Who are you?

Instead, opposite—turn around, turn around in a different direction.

Grant to me, it's a gift, Your servant, the spirit of wholeness.

We all need wholeness.

Humble-mindedness—something else we do not learn as Americans.

Humility, patience.

In icons, in icons, the noses of the saints are always long as a sign of patience, and the mouths are always small.

They only said what mattered, what was important.

Humble-mindedness, patience, and love—a word that we use too casually in American English.

When I was growing up, growing up bilingual in German and English, I was taught very early on by my grandmother that you only say Ich liebe dich (I love thee) to my parents, my sisters most of the time, and to my grandparents.

And then I went to kindergarten in a public school, and I came home, and my mother said, So how was it?

And I said, They're all crazy!

And she said, What do you mean they're crazy?

And I said, Nobody could count beyond ten; they only speak English; nobody speaks any other language; nobody can read; and they love peanut butter!

They're nuts!

They're crazy!

I didn't even realize the pun I made when I said that.

I was only five or so.

Love is a gift from God.

Humility is a gift from God.

Patience is a gift from God.

O Lord, again, the one on whom I depend, and He, the King of the universe, Christ the King, the King of my heart, grant me the grace, the gift, to be aware of my sins and not judge my brother.

We can be overly focused on the faults of others and forget about our own.

For You are blessed now and forever.

Now there's a reason why He puts that at the end: For You are blessed now and forever.

All of this is because God is blessed.

God is holy.

God is merciful.

God is good.

That's why we have this prayer.

I'm going to put you to work again.

What?

What's that?

You're bad!

All right, so this is, if you want them, it's a little devotional prayer book.

If you want to learn some of the prayers from the Byzantine Rite and some of the things that I referred to tonight, it has a prayer for the beginning of Lent.

It has the prayer of St. Ephraim in it.

It has what we call the introductory prayers that we say before we do anything.

And then it has prayers from the first hour, which is the first thing you would say in the morning, the third hour, which is at 9 o'clock in the morning, the sixth hour, which is 12 noon, and the ninth hour, which is 3 PM, although you can say them at any time.

And it's just a couple of excerpts from those hours.

And then it has the Eucharistic prayer of St. Basil.

Eucharistic prayer number four in the Roman Rite is based on this liturgy of St. Basil.

So it has all of that.

And then at the very back, starting on page 23, are the seven penitential psalms.

St. Augustine had these psalms posted on the walls of his room when he was dying, and these are the classic penitential psalms that are said throughout the year.

So if you want, you can take this if you want to have it.

The icon that's on the cover says is the Holy Face.

This is not the Veronica's Veil, so this is why Jesus is not in the crown of thorns and with blood.

The story is that King Abgar of Edessa, which is a city in Turkey now, sent his emissaries to Christ because he was suffering from a terrible disease, and he wanted Jesus to come and cure him.

And instead, Jesus pressed a linen to His face and then sent the linen back so that linen with the face on it was actually enshrined in the gates above Edessa.

And then after Edessa fell to the Persians, they took that with them to Constantinople.

So it used to be enshrined there, and we use this a lot during Lent because, again, what I started out with—the idea of, you know, face to face, compassionate, loving face to loving face—you know, that we look into the face of the Lord, looking, you know, see He's got the long nose of patience, the small mouth—what should be said is what's important, the high forehead for wisdom, and the eyes, you know, to look into the eyes.

If I look into your eyes, you know, those are the windows of the soul, and that's how we make contact with each other.

People who are in love with one another look into the eyes of their beloved, and that's what we should be doing with Jesus Christ.

So you're welcome to take that, you know, if you want.

Okay, the other thing is that is the prayer of the Jesus prayer.

So the Jesus prayer is Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Very simple.

It's very easy to learn.

And in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it says this: that the Jesus prayer combines the Christological hymn from Philippians with the cry of the publican and the blind man begging for light.

By it, the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior's mercy.

The invocation of the holy name of Jesus is the simplest way of praying.

Always, when the holy name is repeated often by a humbly attentive heart, the prayer is not lost by heaping up empty phrases but holds fast to the word and brings forth fruit with patience.

It's possible at all times because it is not one occupation among others, but the only occupation—that of loving God—which animates and transfigures every action in Christ Jesus.

We're all called to pray without ceasing.

St. Paul says this in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5: Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.

This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

So the real question is how?

And this short prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, was created by the monks of the 4th century in Egypt, and then it spread throughout the Church, particularly in the East.

And the idea is, you know, that we draw nearer to God.

St. Isaac of Syria says it's impossible to draw near to God by any other means other than by increasing my prayer.

And St. Theophan says, you know, we have to keep our mind and the heart at all times.

The Jesus prayer is the prayer of the heart.

Now how do I do this, you know, all the time?

You develop a rhythm of prayer.

You just develop a rhythm.

Now one time on one of my trips to Ukraine, so I'm up in the Carpathian Mountains, and this was a scene that could have taken place any time in the last thousand years or more.

There was a family working in their field, and the dad was holding on to the plow being pulled by the pony, and behind him was the wife, and she had a stick to dig a hole in the dirt where he had plowed.

And behind her was the daughter, and she was putting the seeds in the hole.

And behind her was a little boy, and he was covering the hole with the dirt.

And on either side of the family were the chickens, and they were eating the bugs that came up out of the dirt as the plow went through.

So it could have happened at any time.

But what was so cool about it was as the dad was leading, and he was saying, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, and then the rest of the family would say, Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And you could see this was their rhythm.

This was what they were used to doing.

They had no idea I was out there by the fence, let alone that I was an American priest.

This was their life.

It wasn't Lent; it was the Paschal season, actually, and they were just immersed in this.

And I thought to myself, we had to go on, and I always regretted not being able to go back.

I would have loved to have sat with them and see how they lived.

What a cool way for that man to be leading his family in the most ancient prayer we have, other than the Our Father and the Hail Mary, and just so deep, and it was so normal.

It was just so normal for them.

So it's called prayer of the heart because the idea is among the Jews, the heart is where the soul is, okay?

And it's not just the muscle pumping the blood, all right?

But it's also where all the emotions are.

I mean, we say, you know, My heart was broken, My heart is full, you know, I see you in my heart, It goes faster, because all those emotions, you know, are tied into this organ.

But it's the innermost core of the human being, you know, it's our soul.

So the heart is the place where God lives.

St. Macarius says the heart is but a small vessel, but dragons and lions are there, poisonous creatures.

But all the treasures of wickedness can be there.

It can be rough, uneven paths there, but there also is God.

There are the angels, the heavenly cities, the treasures of grace—all things are in the heart.

So the residence of the soul is the palace of Jesus Christ.

My heart is the palace of Jesus Christ.

What's the condition of my power?

Jesus desires to come to each one of us.

Jesus wants to come to us.

He desires—why?—to

complete us.

We are incomplete in our exile without Him.

There's a reason that when Jesus reveals Himself, He reveals His Sacred Heart.

He reveals His heart.

Why?

We're supposed to speak heart to heart to Him.

His heart is always shown wounded, right?

The Sacred Heart is shown with the spear wound in it, right?

The lance that pierced His side tore through the body into the heart.

And then what comes out of the wound?

Blood and water.

How does it come out?

John uses a specific word: it pours.

It pours out; it doesn't trickle out in a little tiny dribble.

It gushes out.

His life gushes out on the cross.

So in a gushing out to me, you know, His heart is wounded; my heart is wounded; all of our hearts are wounded.

We all have some kind of wound already.

His heart has always shown with the flames coming out of it, right?

In the Sacred Heart, my heart should be on fire too—not just with love for the person that God has sent to me to be in love with, not just for my parents, my grandparents, my sisters, my brother—to be on fire with love for God as well, to be passionately on fire.

His heart is the divine inner chamber that we are invited to go into, that hole, and to travel through His Sacred Body into the divine inner chamber where there's no pain, there's no sorrow, there's no grief, but only joy and love and acceptance and desire.

That's what we're here for.

He wants my heart to come to His heart, and He wants my heart to be as on fire for Him as His heart is on fire for me.

And that should be a goal of Lent.

If I'm not on fire now, to be on fire by Easter Sunday.

If I am on fire now, to be even more on fire by Easter Sunday.

The liturgical year is a reminder that everything is connected.

Advent does not just lead us to Christmas, but then to the baptism of the Lord and the miracles of His public life.

Lent does not lead us just to Easter, but to the promise of the Holy Spirit for the 50 days of celebration, drawing near to Pentecost.

Then at Pentecost, that first I have been raised by Jesus Christ into new life.

Then we are empowered by the Spirit on Pentecost to live that life.

In the Byzantine Rite, the Sunday after Pentecost is All Saints Day because that's all the men and women who have been transformed by grace to lead holy lives here on Earth.

The Pentecostal season then follows.

All the Sundays after Pentecost are called that Sunday after Pentecost.

In the Roman Rite now, for some reason, they came up with this, I think, terrible name: Ordinary Time.

Because you hear Ordinary Time, you think, What?

I mean, ordinary?

No! It's supposed to be the time of the power of the Holy Spirit.

Ordinary Time is supposed to be a time for growth, a time for spiritual maturity, a time in which the mystery of Christ is called to penetrate more deeply into history so that we're all caught up and lifted up in Jesus Christ, that all of history is directed to that.

So that what comes at the end of Ordinary Time is Christ the King.

That's how in the Roman Rite you end Ordinary Time.

Again, you know, from the prayer of St. Ephraim: Lord, Master of my life, Lord and King—that's where we're headed for in Lent, that Lent should be leading me to Christ the King, to be transformed in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So in closing, take up the prayer of St. Ephraim.

Use the Jesus prayer.

It's a very easy prayer to learn, to memorize, and one that you can repeat over and over.

You can say it on your rosary beads, you know, use the Hail Mary beads for the Jesus prayer, and then where you would say the glory be, you can say the Hail Mary, and then you just go, you know, just go right around, and it's a good way of keeping the rhythm.

You end up like that family in Ukraine on that hillside, you know, where it becomes a normal part.

And to embark on a journey this year—make this year a Lent that doesn't end on Easter Sunday, but a journey that I am ready to go on for the rest of my life.

Do that, and as Julian Norwich says, all things will be well.

They'll be well for you; they'll be well for me; they'll be well for us; and they'll be well for those around us, and they'll be well for the body of Christ, which is the Catholic Church.

So thank you very much!

Thank you!

Got any questions?

Any questions other than where do ashes come from?

Oh, okay, yeah.

Oh, Mr. Tapia, hello!

Sometimes I feel like God's mercy is not.

Does He still forgive you even though you're falling back into sin?

Before you go to confession, what?

Yeah, again, Christ doesn't say, Going to the cross, I'm only doing this for the people that are going to be perfect, right?

Nobody is perfect; everybody sins.

Yes, we should know better.

As you said, we're all here tonight because we try to be men and women of faith.

But in that journey of faith, we're all going to fall; we're all going to make mistakes.

God's mercy is always, always, always, always, always there, always there for you.

You make that act of contrition; you have reopened the door to going back on the journey into that divine inner chamber and being one with Him.

Our exile ends with death, and when we finally get to heaven, then our exile ends.

Don't ever give up; don't ever think that God has turned His heart against you.

That's the great thing of being a Christian.

You know, the Muslims have 99 names for God; none of them are Father, Love, or Mercy.

We have a Father who loves us passionately.

Don't ever give up or think that it's all over, okay?

That's really important, okay?

Yeah?

So recently, I kind of felt stuck in my spiritual life, not making progress, just kind of drifting along.

Sitting in front of the tabernacle, just kind of waiting, just kind of waiting for that next grace.

I don't know if it's a period of desolation or a period of just kind of waiting for the Word of God, but what would your advice be going into Lent?

You know, just not having really felt that spiritual progress or that growth or that maturity?

Not that we're going to force that, but how can we still grow and grow deeper in relationship with Christ in spite of kind of those blockages?

So I just want to make sure that they heard, so that everybody heard.

Dealing with a period of blockage or not feeling like making progress would be the advice for going into that.

So an image I like to use for the spiritual life is steps, like a staircase.

I climb and I get to a certain point, and then I plateau.

At the beginning of the plateau, it's a good plateau; it's a good spot.

Right now, you're further along the plateau and saying, I can't climb, I'm not able to climb.

Right?

So what do I do?

First, you don't give up because this is just, I mean, it's just how it goes.

You reach a certain point; it's like the Apostles Peter, James, and John on Tabor.

Jesus is transfigured; they see Him, they see Moses, they see Elijah.

And then Peter says, Lord, let us stay here.

I'm going to build three tents, one for You, one for Moses, one for Elijah, because they don't want to leave, because it's such a great place to be.

But then they come down the mountain, and when they come down the mountain, they come down and what happens?

They meet the father with the possessed boy, and the Apostles are not able to drive the demon out of the boy.

They said, Why can't we do this?

And Jesus says, This can only come out with prayer and fasting.

So how do I get up the step and off of that stuck plateau and start climbing again?

Prayer and fasting.

Just like I said to him over here, never give up.

Don't give up either.

Sitting in front of the tabernacle, that's one of the most powerful places to be on earth.

You know, He's in front of the Blessed Sacrament, to be in the presence of that red lamp burning and to see, you know, to say, You know, Jesus Christ is here in all His fullness and glory and love and passion.

He's there, you know, behind that little veil, and He's sitting there waiting for me, and He is, and He's waiting for you.

And you can't push it; you can't force it.

So, but I think, you know, the prayer and the fasting, and this is the season for prayer and fasting in particular.

What do I need to fast from?

Is there something I need to fast from that might be holding me back?

Have I let myself get too attached to something physical?

This is the time for self-examination, and to do that for the next week, go take your time with the Holy Hour.

Go take your time in front of Christ in the tabernacle.

What is it that I need to be freed of?

What do I need to let go of, maybe?

Or what do I need to grab hold of to be closer to You?

It can be that too; it's not just letting go and giving up, it's also taking hold.

And just sit and be quiet.

Be still and know that I am God.

Again, we live in such a noisy world with so much chatter all the time.

So try that, try that for the next few days and see what comes.

What would I say to someone who is struggling to find a focus for Lent?

What I just said to him, maybe, eh?

Take time out, go find a church that's open or an adoration chapel, like at St. Thomas Aquinas.

You're down at UNM a lot more than you want to be sometimes, probably, but you can go into the Newman Center because that's open all day.

Go in and be quiet in front of our Lord.

Going into a Catholic church is one of the most powerful things we can do because of the presence of Christ.

What happens inside a Catholic church in the silence of someone's heart in the presence of Jesus and the Blessed Sacrament does not happen anywhere else.

It cannot happen in the Methodist church or Lutheran or anything, you know, because Jesus is there.

And even, you know, you can go in and say, You know, Jesus is here.

You know, help me, Lord.

Just help me, Lord.

Or say the Jesus prayer over and over, and then just be still because it's when we're quiet, I think, that we get our best answers.

Because again, as Americans, we're so good at noise.

We're really good at noise.

Okay?

Does that help?

Okay, all right.

You mentioned bringing your heart closer to Jesus' heart.

You even mentioned that the heart isn't just a muscle that pumps blood.

What would you say to someone who has a hard time understanding?

Like, if they have a scientific understanding of, well, the heart is a muscle that pumps blood and emotions are brain chemicals, so what does it really mean to be closer to the heart of Jesus?

What does it mean to come close to the heart of Jesus?

It is the heart that pumps out purified blood.

You like that, eh?

I'm copywriting it.

Don't use it.

The heart pumps out purified blood, so the blood comes through the body, goes to the heart, and comes out cleansed.

In a Eucharistic miracle, when a host turns to flesh, it is always flesh of the heart.

It is always a traumatized heart.

When they do the scientific analysis of it, it is a heart that has been traumatized.

The scientists inevitably say in their report, This tissue is from someone who suffered a lot, and the tissue is from the left ventricle, which pumps out the purified blood.

You can play with that spiritually to say, All right, if I'm coming in through the wound into the divine inner chamber to come to the Sacred Heart of Christ, His heart, which pumps out blood from that traumatized heart.

And it's traumatized because He loves me, not I caused Him trauma.

This isn't a guilt trip; it is that He suffered trauma in order to save me because He loves me.

And the tissue that I receive in Holy Communion and the blood that I drink from the chalice is that left ventricle that pumped out purified blood.

Let me come to You, O Jesus, and let...

Me come out of you transformed and cleaned and renewed.

You see?

Okay, it makes sense.

Okay, yes, you mentioned in your introduction that you're also a spiritual director.

My question is, for whom are spiritual directors and what?

Say that again.

So, who are spiritual directors?

Who are they for?

Anybody?

Anybody?

I'll bet you good money that that Ukrainian family had a spiritual director, and it was the norm in the Church.

We don't realize that we made a terrible mistake of making spiritual direction reserved for clergy and religious and not ministering well to the laity.

This is where chaplains come in handy.

My dad was a policeman, and he actually had a spiritual director.

I didn't know this, but the chaplain of the police department was he spent tons of time with the cops, sitting with them, listening to them, and working with them.

And it wasn't a big intimidating process at all.

He really listened to them and walked with them, and it kept them sane.

My father would always say that the cops that he had to worry about were the ones who had no faith life.

Those were the ones that he got called as a lieutenant.

But the ones who had a faith life, he never had to worry about them because they were fortifying themselves with the sacraments.

And so, yeah, you can call me if you want to.

That's fine.

But you should be comfortable with a spiritual director.

It's got to be somebody you're comfortable with and that you feel at ease with, and who is going to walk on the journey with you, not holler at you.

That's not spiritual direction.

Yelling at people is not spiritual direction.

Saying you must only go to me, that's not spiritual direction.

That's a personality cult.

That's bad.

You say thank you so much, and you get in your car and you drive.

So it's got to be somebody you're comfortable with, somebody that other people you may know have said, Okay, that priest, that sister, that person with that degree, you know, is somebody that you know does well.

Okay?

But yeah, for ordinary Christians, the vast majority of them used to have spiritual directors.

I mean, the whole idea comes from the Irish, and the idea was they never used the word director; they used ahara, the friend of my soul.

And that's what a director should be.

Isn't that cool?

You like that too, huh?

You're stealing all my stuff tonight.

So, yeah, you know, a friend of my soul, I think that's such a powerful phrase.

Okay, I got to sit down again for a bit.

Okay, anybody else?

Alrighty, all right, Katie.

Oh, what's that?

Yeah.

Oh, I'm famous on the internet!

Dear God, that's their fault.

So, I meant to say, because you had put in the email today about coming to church, if you want to come to our church, it's Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

It's the only business and right church in the state.

So, it's Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

You can see we have a nice website, and during Lent, we have Pre-Sanctified Liturgy on Wednesday night and Friday night at 6 PM. It's a Vespers with Holy Communion.

It's not a Mass.

We don't do Ash Wednesday, so don't come to our church on Ash Wednesday looking for ashes, because we start Lent, as I said, on Monday.

You can receive all the sacraments at our church, because it is a Catholic church.

It's a legitimate Catholic church in union with the Pope.

Sunday Liturgy is at 10 o'clock, and Saturday Liturgy is at 5 o'clock.

I don't know the name of our channels; you have to tell me.

I'm terrible!

So, our YouTube, right?

YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, yeah, all the same: Our Lady of Perpetual Help NM. It's all one word, right?

Yep.

Okay, all right, there you go.