I’m excited to announce that I have partnered with friends Fr. Mike Gaitley (author & director of the Association of the Marian Helpers) and uber-evangelist Kelly Wahlquist (Assistant Director of the Evangelization and Development Office for Parish Evangelization for the Association) to co-lead a special Marian-focused Holy Land Pilgrimage this September 5-14th, 2012.

Fr. Mike’s two books (Consoling the Heart of Jesus and 33 Days to Morning Glory) have been life-changing for me , so I am especially excited for him to share his spiritual insights in the Holy Land, and Kelly is one of the most passionate Catholic women and evangelists I know.  We will enjoy daily Mass with Fr. Mike, pray the Rosary at the locations of the Mysteries, and I’ll be opening up the Scriptures “on location” spanning from Caesarea Philippi in the north to the fortress of Masada in the south, and all the significant cities in between including Capernaum, Caesarea Maritime, Cana, Nazareth, Ein Kherem, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and more.

The pilgrimage will also help support the awesome work of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception who spread devotion to Divine Mercy around the world. Our pilgrimage will begin at JFK, so we can reach out to as many people nationally as possible. Space is limited, so prayerfully consider signing up soon.

See the flyer below for details and itinerary. Please don’t hesitate to contact me through the contact page on the website with additional questions you may have, and consider sharing this with friends and family members who may be interested in joining us!

Click -> PILGRIMAGE FLYER

I am a big fan of the Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, one of the 20th century’s most cogent and successful communicators on both the Gospel and the human condition.  He further endears himself to me by what he say about prayer and coffee.  The context is his excellent little book “The Priest is Not His Own,” and the chapter is on “How to Make the Holy Hour.”  After encouraging the priest to make a Holy Hour  of prayer BEFORE his morning Mass, the good Archbishop advises an early cup of the dark brew.  Continuing, he asserts:

…Joseph was probably a young man, strong, virile, athletic, handsome, chaste, and disciplined; the kind of man one sees sometimes shepherding sheep, or piloting a plane, or working at a carpenter’s bench. Instead of being a man incapable of love, he must have been on fire with love….Instead, then, of being dried fruit to be served on the table of the king, he was rather a blossom filled with promise and power. He was not in the evening of life, but in its morning, bubbling over with energy, strength, and controlled passion.”  - Archbishop Fulton Sheen

The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) are the crown of the Sermon on the Mount and the pathways to the Kingdom of Christ. They are a series of eight snapshots of Christ, and because we are called to “put on Christ” (Rom. 13:14; Gal. 3:27), they become the goal of every Christian.  The Beatitudes have an inner logic and connectedness that we can’t explore in detail here, but the first, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Mt. 5:3) is the foundation of the seven that follow.   Being “poor in spirit” doesn’t mean “down in the mouth,” humiliated or groveling through life.  It is synonymous with the humble-hearted (Prov. 29:23).  Mary possessed this characteristic of Christ as proclaimed in her Magnificat,  “All generations will call me blessed,” she says, for he has “exalted the lowly” (Luke 1:46-55).

As we begin to grow in Christ, we soon realize that we are completely bankrupt apart from God.  We acknowledge that we lack both the power and resources to save ourselves, and anything we do possess was first His gift to us.  That’s the starting point of real and sustained spiritual growth.  One of my spiritual directors, Fr. Raymond Gawronski, SJ gave me a helpful visual aid for this.  He has on his prayer table a simple wooden bowl like those used by Buddhist monks in Asia.  They carry it into the streets and villages each day asking for others to fill it (think “give us this day our daily bread”).  He taught me that this is how we must begin our prayer, extending our begging bowl to God, admitting before Him that we are empty with nothing to give.  It is only when we are empty that God can fill us, that is why we are BLESSED if we understand this fundamental reality! (see also, Phil. 2:5-8). It helps us hold loosely to the things of this world, and ”makes us free, supple, and flexible beneath the action of the Holy Spirit, who is the Master of true love.” (Servais Pinkaers, Living the Beatitudes, pg. 44).

The BLESSED Virgin Mary, as the Mother of the Beatitudes, understands this, and lovingly draws us into this foundational spiritual principle, so that Christ may be fully formed and matured in us.  She asks us to turn over everything to her, so in turn, her Son Jesus can fill us to the brim with his Life!  AND she takes what we give her and makes it better, more pure and more powerful. What an exchange! St. Paul said it so well in 1 Corinthians 3:21, “Left with nothing, we can possess everything”

Come Holy Spirit, living in Mary…Help me be generous in giving all that I have to Mary.

Back in 2011, Pope Benedict XVI made Baptism the focus of his Lenten reflection, reminding us that no matter how many decades ago we were baptized, the sacrament still speaks into our lives today and ”informs the entire existence of the baptized, imparting divine life and calling for sincere conversion; initiated and supported by Grace, it permits the baptized to reach the adult stature of Christ.”  Every Lent is intended to be a recovery of the significance and the saving, soul-shaping power of this sacrament in our lives.

In fact the whole of Lent is ordered to baptismal grace, “A particular connection binds Baptism to Lent as the favorable time to experience this saving Grace,” Benedict says, “The Lenten journey finds its fulfillment in the Paschal Triduum, especially in the Great Vigil of the Holy Night: renewing our baptismal promises, we reaffirm that Christ is the Lord of our life.”

In Fr. Mike’s book, “33 Days to Morning Glory” we learn that the renewing of our baptismal vows is also beautifully linked to Marian consecration.  So we are DOUBLY BLESSED this Lent to be consecrating ourselves to Mary in the very season that we are called to cooperate more fully with the graces of our baptism! The servant of Mary, St. Louis De Montfort, calls us to renew our baptismal vows and place them in the hands of Mary.  He even proposes a simple prayer for doing this:

“I [name], a faithless sinner, renew and ratify today in thy hands the vows of my baptism; I renounce forever Satan, his pomps and works; and I give myself entirely to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, to carry my cross after Him, all the days of my life, and to be more faithful to Him than I have ever been before” (pg. 37).

Baptism and Marian consecration have the same end or purpose: shaping and maturing Christ in our souls that he may be visible to the world through us.  That’s probably why, at the end of his Lenten reflection on the importance of renewing our appreciation of our baptism, Benedict XVI invites us to entrust our Lenten journey to our Lady: “In this our itinerary, let us entrust ourselves to the Virgin Mary, who generated the Word of God in faith and in the flesh, so that we may immerse ourselves – just as she did – in the death and resurrection of her Son Jesus, and possess eternal life.”

LECTIO Meditatio: Today Jesus reveals one of the paradoxes of the Christian message: to save your life you must lose it. Following Christ is a death to be sure: the death to self, to old patterns of thinking, acting and speaking but it is also the path of LIFE! Taking up our Cross isn’t reduced to embracing suffering and spiritual death, it is also recovering the other paradoxical meaning of the Cross: The Cross as a GIFT of self to others. On the Cross, Jesus made a full, free, faithful and fruitful gift of Himself to the world. When we take up our Cross we are invited to do the same.

Look for opportunities today and throughout Lent to give yourself away in love to others, and in so doing reveal the Power of the Cross in your life.

“Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius” – Pietro Aretino

It caused me to wonder if God’s hand isn’t at work in the weather to feed the human soul.  What if the blinding blanket of snow or the thick curtain of intense rain that marks the seasons in most of the world was an invitation to Life within?  Maybe what I find boring (everything is just white) or smothering (I feel trapped by all this snow), is nature’s way of simplifying the stimuli and affording me an opportunity to draw interiorly , to listen in silence to Wisdom.  Benedict XVI said it this way, “Only in silence can the word of God find a home in us, as it did in Mary, woman of the word and, inseparably, woman of silence.”

I have a renewed interest in what winter may bring within by removing the distractions without.

One of my favorite places to take pilgrims when I guide Catholics through the Holy Land is the Brook Elah in the broad valley where the Israelites faced off against the Philistines and their champion, Goliath of Gath (1 Samuel 17).  It is a narrative that has fascinated me since I was a young boy, and it is our first reading in today’s Mass.  As you probably recall, the Israelites were paralyzed with fear, listening to weeks of mocking of their God by their enemy, the Philistines and Goliath, in particular.  Even the hero-king Saul would not face off against the towering warrior from Gath.

Enter young David, bringing lunch to his brothers in battle. His courage is matched by his righteous indignation that God’s name is being shamed and mocked by Israel’s enemies.  Rejecting the offer of armor, David simply picks up five smooth stones from the small brook that ran through the Israelite camp as his weapons.  I had often wondered why he would pick up five stones, when he certainly has a clear sense of his aim.  For many years, I saw the five stones as a helpful metaphor for the five spiritual practices that we can use to fight against the enemy of our soul (e.g. the Eucharist, Rosary, Confession, Lectio Divina, the Daily Examen).  But I want to propose another approach. I think David knew he could take down Goliath with a single shot to the head (which is exactly what he did), so why then the additional four stones?  Later, the Biblical text reveals a subtle answer:  2 Samuel 21:15-22 tells us that David would later take down four more giants that were enemies of God’s people.  We don’t get the exciting details of those stories, the Goliath narrative acts as a “sampling” of David’s courage and prowess with the sling. Each of the five stones met its target.

With that in mind, the story provides some other helpful points of reflection.  Though David was a crack shot, the power behind his pitch was actually the Lord himself.  David admitted as much, “ “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied” (1 Sam. 17:45). That’s why I love that the Psalm matching today’s first reading proclaims, “Blessed be the LORD, my Rock!” (Psalm 144:1b).  That power helped him systematically eliminate all five of Israel’s greatest enemies.

With that in mind, what are the five biggest enemies to God being glorified in your life?  They may be sins, behaviors, patterns of thinking that are keeping your spiritual life stationary or spiritually paralyzed.  I can look at so many moments in my life when I let sin, fear, laziness, or spiritual apathy keep me from championing God’s power in my world.

So, let this story give us courage!  It’s our trust in God’s power vs. relying only on our own resources that gives us the confidence to systematically eliminate these enemies from our life.  But we must cooperate with God’s grace and power.  Here’s some simple beginning steps:

1) Just reflecting on what your five greatest enemies may be is a great beginning.  We rarely even take that simple step of intentional living.  You may have only one or two, or twenty.  Five is a reasonable quantity to focus on.

2) Next, begin the practice of the Daily Examen to identify more clearly these spiritually defeating patterns. You may discover one’s very different than the one’s you first identified.  This is also a wonderful way to “remember” the faithfulness of the Lord in past battles (1 Sam. 17:34-37). Learn more about the practice of the Daily Examen here: http://goo.gl/C1Rz

3) Take what you learn from the examen to the Lord to prayer and to Confession, and/or a trusted mature Christian or spiritual director in your life.  This is indispensable.  The Devil wants to keep us scattered and shattered (that’s what diabolos means).  Even David didn’t take on all of the giants alone (2 Sam. 21:22).

4) Consecrate yourself to Mary (our Warrior-Queen, Rev. 12), and cultivate a robust relationship with the Saints and Angels – they form a great army of holy ones who can intercede for us that Christ will be fully form and matured in us.  You can learn a wonderful new approach to Marian consecration here: http://amzn.to/ApDe2p

5) Regularly attend Mass.  Scott Hahn says it well in The Lamb’s Supper, “We are fighting spiritual forces: immense, depraved, malevolent forces.  If we had to fight them alone, we’d be trounced. But here’s the good news: there is a way we can hope to overcome.  But the solution has to match the problem, spiritual force for spiritual force: immense beauty for immense ugliness, holiness for depravity, love for malevolence. THE SOLUTION IS THE MASS, where heaven touches down to save an earth under siege.”

There are many important themes that one could explore on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, for my part, I want to turn our attention to an often forgotten element, the presence of the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:10). I don’t think we talk about Him enough!  He is not simply a force, bond or power, but rather a full Divine Person, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Son, worthy of our worship and prayer. United with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is actively at work in every area of the Church’s life:  He acts in our sacraments, bestows the Church with her hierarchical and charismatic gifts, is the source of our life and holiness, compels us towards Christian unity, and even prays for us (Rom. 8:27).  Talk about a Friend in high places!

And, I love that the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord always falls so close to the beginning of a new year because it reminds me that the Holy Spirit is always present when God is accomplishing something new and wonderful. The Holy Spirit was present at the creation of the world (Gen. 1:2), the Incarnation (Luke 1:35), the birth of the Church (Acts 2) and is intimately involved in our salvation and new creation in Christ (Rom. 8:11). His presence at the Baptism of our Lord, signified in part, that God was doing something new and exciting in the world. And now at the beginning of this new year, let’s make an act of faith and hope that the Holy Spirit is going to do wonderful and marvelous things in our lives too!  Let’s ask for the grace to cooperate with all the Holy Spirit wishes to accomplish in us and through us.

I like to think of the Holy Spirit as the Divine Iconographer, writing the face of Christ on our souls, transforming us into living icons of Christ for a world desperately looking for Him.  And, in God’s economy (how the Trinity works in the world and in our lives, sharing spiritual goods), Mary is intimately united to this work, too!  I love how Pope Paul VI put it in his Apostolic Exhortation, Marialis Cultus, “It is sometimes said that many spiritual writings today do not sufficiently reflect the whole doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit…Such a study will bring out in particular the hidden relationship between the Spirit of God and the Virgin of Nazareth, and show the influence they exert on the Church. From a more profound meditation on the truths of the Faith will flow a more vital piety” (MC, No. 27). As the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, and the singular soul that shaped Christ in her physical womb, she continues her maternal soul-shaping work in us, until the full measure of Christ is revealed in us (Eph 4:13).  It’s a triple threat to the devil when our human will cooperates with Mary’s powerful intercession and the Spirit’s divine work – something new and wonderful is revealed!

My new year’s prayer for all of us, is that 2012 will represent a substantial and sustained transformation, a new level of appreciation and cooperation with the Holy Spirit and Our Mother.  Come Holy Spirit! Welcome Blessed Mother! My soul is open for business and I, like St. Paul, am confident that the Dynamic Duo which begins this good work in us, will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil 1:6).