March 5th 2017 Bulletin Message, Fr. Floyd McKinney

So you have started your Lent; you are fasting and abstaining like a good Catholic should. That is a good thing. In the scriptures we see that there can be more for us to do; we can reach out to others. If you look on the internet for “fasting and Catholic tradition” you can find a lot about what, when, and how. That means there is a lot to read about the details of our lenten penances.

If we want to make our sacrifices a little more spiritual, maybe we should look into the ‘why’ of our lenten observances. Since we are talking about our relationship with God we usually think more about ‘what am I doing spiritually?’. If we look at the scriptures we can see that at least in part our spiritual life is connected to our practical life. Nurse the sick, it tells us; clothe the naked, feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted. It adds, turn the other cheek, return good for evil, give to the poor, go forth and preach to all nations.

We can see then that the Gospels help us to look at social justice. We might say, of course we believe in social justice; we do not want war, poverty or even human trafficking and we know we need to take care of our planet. We understand the problem in our mind but can we say that we are doing something in our day to day life. THAT is why we sacrifice during this preparation for Easter, to remind us that we do indeed need to remember that our faith does not take a vacation. God has called each of us, individually, uniquely, to live in this life, this world…and help build a better one.