Lenten Reflection - Wednesday, 1st Week of Lent

Jonah and the Ninevites

God Wants to Forgive and Heal

Jesus preached to the people, asking them to repent, just as the Ninevites had done, saying, "They turned from their sins when they heard Jonah preach." - Luke 11:32

Our Lenten observances of prayer, fasting, and concern for those in need call us to radical conversion and trust in God's mercy. These practices disclose our sinful tendencies, and uncover areas of unfreedom and attachments that often lead us to sin. We realize our inner conflict like Saint Paul: "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." (Rom 7:16). We come to the limit of our creaturehood: we cannot save ourselves.

Such realization takes us to the threshold of God's unbounded mercy and love. We meet the God of Jesus who has no room for hatred, desire for revenge, or pleasure in seeing us punished. God wants to forgive, heal, restore, show us endless mercy, and see us come home. Like the father in the "Prodigal Son" parable who lets both of his sons make their own decisions, God gives us the freedom to choose or refuse divine love. God waits. Yet, God will go more than half way to meet us upon our return. God accepts our wandering hearts yet continually chooses to forgive, heal, and embrace completely. This is our homecoming. This is our Good News.

"In what area of my life might I long for yet resist a deeper conversion of heart and return to God?"

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Lenten Reflection - Tuesday, 1st Week of Lent

Thoughts Can Actually Help us Toward God

"When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven ..." - Matthew 6:7-9

Our minds are always active. We analyze, reflect, or daydream. Much of the time, we worry about the future and fret about the past. There is not a moment during the day or night when we are not thinking. You might say our thinking is "unceasing." Sometimes we wish that we could stop thinking for a while; that would save us from many worries, guilt feelings, and fears. Our ability to think is our greatest gift, but it is also the source of our greatest pain. Do we have to become victims of unceasing thoughts? No, we can convert our unceasing thinking into unceasing prayer by making our inner monologue into a continuing dialogue with God, who is the source of all love.

One way of listening to the Spirit's prompting at the core of our being is just to let our thoughts be, without judging ourselves as we experience these thoughts nor feeding them. Letting them be while inviting God in can be a way of praying unceasingly.

Let us allow the One who dwells in the center of our beings to listen with love to all that occupies and preoccupies our minds. Let us listen to the One who hides in our thoughts.

O Holy Spirit, convert my never-ending flow of thoughts into prayer.

adapted from Henri Nouwen

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Lenten Reflection - Monday, 1st Week of Lent

Choose Love By Taking Small Steps Daily

"You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself." - Leviticus 19:17-18

Often we speak of love as if it were a feeling. Rather, it is a choice. A continual choice: a commitment to nurture the spiritual growth of ourselves or another. Yes, it is difficult to choose love when we have experienced so little of it. Nevertheless, we can choose love by taking small steps of self-giving love. A smile, a handshake, a word of encouragement, a phone call, a card, an embrace, a kind greeting, a gesture of support, a moment of attention, a helping hand, a present, a financial contribution, a visit - all these are little steps toward love. It may even involve taking more rest or better self-care so that we can better care for others.

Thérèse of Lisieux reminds us that love lies not in the magnitude of the deed but in the totality of the self-giving. Mother Teresa puts it similarly: "We can do no great deeds, only small deeds with great love." In choosing to love through simple self-giving deeds, we are acting into a new way of being. These small steps ground our love in the One who is Love, beyond our feelings.

O Lord, help me to take the small steps of love I need to take today.

inspired by Henri Nouwen

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Lenten Reflection - 1st Sunday of Lent

"Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil." - Lk 4:1

"Because he clings to me, I will deliver him; I will set him on high because he acknowledges my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him." - Ps 91:14

We never talk about loneliness; yet, it is so prevalent. It visits us all. Yet, our culture frowns upon it. It is "bad" to feel lonely. However, loneliness affects us all, so much that some of us are paralyzed into fear; and many of us throw ourselves into a maelstrom of activity as if we can run away from it.

Jesus allowed the Spirit to lead him into the desert. He faced his suffocating loneliness and its temptations. Through it, he grew more radically dependent on God_Abba; he came to a deeper realization of who he was and who he was called to be – the Beloved. Like him, when we are open to our loneliness - our particular kind of suffering - something creative happens. We can stand with others who suffer their particular loneliness. And even though ours and theirs are not the same loneliness, solidarity is born. Compassion grows. Moreover, we come to know and love Jesus more intimately. Mysteriously, we grow in greater intimacy with ourselves, others, and Jesus. On the way, our heart becomes more tender and closer to the heart of God.

"Jesus, help us to enter our loneliness with you and cling to God."

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Lenten Reflection - Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Human Love Reflects God's Love - (Tình Chúa Qua Tình Người)

Jesus answered, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance." - Luke 5:31-32

We all long for love without condition. We look for such unconditional love in the faces and hearts of many people. While our parents, brothers, sisters, teachers, friends, or spouses can love us in deep and meaningful ways, their love cannot fully satisfy our deep longing. While human loves can reflect God's love without condition, they are limited and broken. No human love fulfills our hearts desire, and sometimes human love is so imperfect that we can hardly recognize it as love.

When our broken love is the only love we can have, we are easily be thrown into despair, but when we live our broken love as a partial reflection of God's perfect, unconditional love, we can forgive one another and enjoy together the love we have to offer. When we acknowledge ourselves as sinners who expect people to love us perfectly as God loves, we make space in for God. We allow God's indwelling Spirit to heal our wounds, purifies our desires, and unites us with God, whose personal and abiding love surpasses our wildest imaginations.

"O God, help me not to demand of others the perfect love they cannot give."

adapted from Henri Nouwen

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Lenten Reflection - Friday after Ash Wednesday

Meeting and Loving God of the Poor

"This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own." - Isaiah 58:6-7

Fasting is commonly understood as a means of personal holiness: a way of expiating sin, of purifying one's spirit, of offering something up to God. However, fasting is integrally related to the almsgiving of the Gospel – the practice of compassion and justice. We are challenged to a greater simplicity of life, to "live simply so that others may simple live." Does our Lenten commitment involve a deeper reaching out to our sisters and brothers who are marginalized and forgotten? Do we adopt a simpler lifestyle, or sharing of time and resources that raise awareness concerning the plight of those less privileged in society, or deepen solidarity with the poor?

God in Jesus whom we seek to know, love, and serve was born poor, lived a poor life, identified with the poor, and died poor. Our love for God is diminished if there is less room for the poor in our hearts? In reaching out to such sisters and brothers, we open ourselves to meeting and loving our God who stands with those who are poor. This is not an easy message; yet do we genuinely long to encounter and love the God of Jesus?

"O Lord, help us reach out in profound gratitude to you in those whom society rejects, abandons, or despises."

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Lenten Reflection - Thursday after Ash Wednesday

God Never Gives Up Loving Us

"Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom … Choose life!" - Deut 30:15

We often confuse unconditional love with unconditional approval. God loves us without conditions but does not approve of every human behavior. God doesn't approve of betrayal, abuse, violence, hatred, suspicion, and all other expressions of evil, because they all contradict the love God instill in the human heart. Evil is the absence of God's love. Evil does not belong to God.

God's unconditional love means that God continues to love us even when we say or think evil things. The injunction to "choose life" is not a condition of God's love for us. Rather, it describes the path to happiness and fulfillment. God continues to wait for us as a loving parent waits for the return of a lost child. Whereas our sins may keep us from God; but they can never keep God from us.

Not only does God never gives up loving us, but God chooses to create us anew every moment with each breath we take and each beating of our own hearts which continue to give life. God chooses us as we are, regardless of our response.

The challenge to "choose life" lies within the truth that God has already chosen us, over and over again. Persistently; patiently.

"O God, when we are most tempted to give up on ourselves, help us to remember that you never give up on us."

adapted from Henri Nouwen

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Lenten Reflection - Ash Wednesday

God Loves Us and Wants Our Love

"Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing." - Joel 2:13

What can we say about God's love? We can say that God's love is unconditional. God does not say, "I love you, if …" There are no ifs in God's heart. God's love for us does not depend on what we do or say, on our looks or intelligence, on our success or popularity. God's love brings us into this life and carries us into the next. God's love is from eternity to eternity and is not bound to any time-related events or circumstances. Nor is it dependent on our faithfulness.

God invites us through the Lenten journey to return, to come back, to change: to enter the desert of our inner landscape to acknowledge areas of unfreedom and resistance and allow God's unconditional love to transform us. Fasting, alms-giving, and prayer are observances that rend our hearts to make room for Love without conditions.

Let us dare to be drawn deeper into an intimate relationship with God in generosity, honesty, and trust. "O God, my Creator and Redeemer, help me this Lent to deepen my awareness and appreciation of your awesome love for me."

adapted from Henri Nouwen

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Lenten Reflection: An Invitation from Fr Tri Ðinh, SJ

My friends in the Lord,

In the past three years, I have sent a short reflection each day of Lent. I hope it will assist you in your Lenten discipline of prayer.

These reflections on the Scripture of the day are meant to be a help for a daily 5-10 minute reflection or prayer. Some of these reflections are adapted from Henri Nouwen; others will be written by someone else or me. If you feel moved to write one, please let me know.

May I suggest the following format for each reflection: follow this link

United in prayer,
fr Tri Dinh, S.J.

Suggested format for reflection

May I suggest the following format for each reflection:

1. Place yourself in God's presence, perhaps with a prayer like: "Spirit of God, please pray through me, draw me to you, sanctify, and create me anew."

2. Read the reflection slowly and be attentive to what stirs within you.

3. Speak to God or Jesus about whatever is on your mind and in your heart.

4. Listen to God's response or simply rest in God's presence with an open mind and a receptive heart.

5. End with the "Our Father" or another favorite prayed slowly.