The Grace Filled Life Ep. 64 Leaning Into Lent.

0:00Life can be good, life can be hard, but life is truly special when it is filled with God's grace. Welcome back to the Grace-filled life. And Father Christopher Dittomo here once again with you, Pastor St. Mary, Catholic Church in Huntly. A welcome to everyone listening, especially in the Huntly area on Huntly Community Radio. And to everyone listening on podcast, iTunes, Spotify, I Heart Radio, if you're listening or watching, I should say on our YouTube channel. It's great to see you, great to be seen. And please send us an email. We'd love to hear feedback. We'd love to get questions. We'd love to get prayer requests, topics, possible topics for future shows. So the email is one, it's the number one, one Grace-filled life at gmail.com, one Grace-filled life at gmail.com. So here we are, we are in Lent and last week, our episode was titled, are you a Lenton loser? And that was just a, I don't know if that title was attention grabbing, but sometimes we can go through Lent and we feel like I have all these goals and plans,

1:01but this is not working out. I'm not able to do these penitential practices or make these sacrifices or stay committed to my spiritual goals of reading the Bible every day or praying and I feel defeated. Of course, that's not the point of Lent. It's not to feel defeated. But it also brings up the question that I'd like to get into a little bit today, which is just more basically, why do we do Lent exactly? I know I touched on that a little bit on the last episode by going through some of the prayers in the Roman Missile, which is the book we use for Mass. And what the different prayers say about what Lent is, what this season is, what's the point of fasting, what's the point of almsgiving, what's the point of prayer. But again, we go through this idea of, why do we do this every year? Why do we go through Lent every year? You might say to yourself, you know, I've done Lent, been there done that many, many, many times. And there have been some Lent, sometimes during the Lenton season, where yeah, I feel like I had a good Lent, quote unquote, like I grew closer to God.

2:02I learned some things about myself. My weaknesses, my need for God. Sometimes during Lent, maybe we go through a season of Lenton, it's a time where there's a lot going out in our own lives. Maybe there's things going on at work or in the family and it sort of seems to eclipse whatever we seek to do spiritually, or let's call it our spiritual program for Lent. It just goes past us, Lent goes past us, it passes us by and we think I really wasn't that focused this year. Why do we do this though? Well, the reality is, I wanna walk backwards to answer this question. Let's walk backwards from the goal of Lent or the termination, the ending point of Lent, which is really Easter, right? Easter is, Lent is all about preparing us to be able to celebrate Easter in a worthy way. Now, one thing we're gonna look at when we get into the Easter season is, well, people forget about the Easter season.

3:03It's not just a day, it is a season. It's a 50 day season that itself culminates in Pentecost. So that'll be the topic for a future episode too, is how do we celebrate the Easter season? How do we live in the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus for 50 days? What does that look like? We kind of understand what Lent looks like. We don't really always understand why is there a need for us to celebrate 50 days of the resurrection? Of course, Jesus was, after his resurrection, he appeared to the disciples for 40 days before his ascension and then finally Pentecost. So even the Easter season leads up to Pentecost. So that's its own topic for the future. But we wanna look at everything in Lent is supposed to be about preparing us to celebrate Easter. And you know, what's one of the one things we will do? And of course, I'm speaking, I know I'm speaking to an audience that includes Catholics and non-Catholic Christians and maybe non-Christians as well.

4:03And that's great, because this shows for everyone. But of course, as a Catholic priest, I'm gonna come at it from the perspective of the Catholic Church, which includes our sacred liturgy, the way we pray, our seasons, our calendar. But it is applicable to everyone. So one of the things we do in the Catholic Church on Easter Sunday or at the great Easter vigil, which is the long liturgy on the night of Holy Saturday, just as we anticipate Easter Sunday the night before. And it's a beautiful mass, more of my favorite masses of the year because we take men and women for one thing who are preparing for baptism. That's the night that they get baptized. They go through Lent like all of us and they're learning about the faith and they're studying scripture and they're trying to intensify their own purification and repenting of sin and all these things. All is a way to prepare to be baptized. And the night historically that men and women were brought into the church through baptism with Easter vigil.

5:04To have that experience of baptism as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, to also receive the other sacraments like confirmation and Holy Communion. They received the Holy Eucharist for the first time. And thereby to be incorporated into the body of Christ, the church. But one of the things that we do, and we call those men and women who are preparing for baptism, we call them catechumans. They're preparing to receive baptism. That's their name, catechumans. But before they're baptized, they will be asked to do two things. Renounce Satan and then affirm their faith. So one thing is negative, right? One thing is negative. I'm saying what I reject, which is Satan and his lies and all that stuff. And then only because I can do that, you have to do that first, right? That's like repenting. Jesus says, repent and believe in the gospel. You can't really believe in the gospel unless you repent of sin first because sin blocks us from being able to receive the gospel

6:08and believe it and love it, right? So we have to kind of turn away from sin first and then turn towards the gospel and turn towards God. So the first part is I'm renouncing Satan. And then the second part is I am affirming and we usually use the apostles' creed. I'm affirming the faith, right? What we believe as Catholic Christians, of course, many non-Catholics would also accept what's professed in the apostles' creed and the nice scene creed as well. So this is, and this is interesting. Now they will do this right before they're baptized. It's a very powerful moment in the liturgy of the church. But then actually we all do it as well. By we, I mean, those of us who are already baptized, the ones who are already believers, we actually do this too. We will do it at the Easter vigil. We do it on Easter Sunday. And then we're sprinkled with holy water. You know, Catholics, we love holy water. We use it all the time.

7:09We dip our finger in the stoop and we make the sign of the crop. And you might be thinking, why do you, what's the deal with the holy water are you guys? What's that about? Holy water, this is a little tangent. Holy water is what we call sacramental. We take water. We blessed it. It's one of the most ancient sacraments in the church, church's tradition. The water is blessed and it becomes a means by which we can pray. And for the most part, a means by which we remember our own baptism. That's what we're doing. Whenever a Catholic takes holy water and makes the sign of the cross and blesses himself with it, what they're doing is they're remembering their baptism. They might not know to do that, but that's why we do it. You know, you might just do it automatically as a sort of a habit. But we shouldn't do things just as habits. We should be intentional and we should take the holy water and you bless yourself and you're reminding yourself of the fact that you're baptized. And all that that involves, right?

8:09That I'm a son or daughter of God. I'm filled with the Holy Spirit. I've been cleansed of my sin. I've been invited to this life of following Jesus. All that stuff is part of that gesture, okay? So in the Easter mess, this is what we'll say to everybody, not just those who are getting baptized. We'll say, do you renounce Satan? Well, let me back up here. This is a little introduction. It says, dear brothers and sisters, through the Paschal mystery, we have been buried with Christ in baptism, right? That's right from St. Paul, Romans six. We've been buried with Christ in baptism. So that we may walk with him in newness of life, in newness of life. That's also in Romans. So that's the point of baptism that we would walk in a new way that we would live in a new way. And so now that our Lenten observance is concluded, now that we're done lent, those 40 days is over. Now let us renew the promises of holy baptism by which we once renounced Satan and his works

9:10and promised to serve God in the Holy Catholic Church. And so I ask you, and then these are the questions of precess. Do you renounce Satan? And we all say, I do. Do you renounce Satan? I do. And all his works, I do. And all his empty show, I do. Isn't that great? A lot of what Satan does is an empty show, right? He tempts us, tries to lure us into sin and to pursue what we think will make us happy, but it doesn't. It's all vain. That's one option. Another option is, again, this is another way to ask these same three questions. Do you renounce sin so as to live in the freedom of the children of God? I do. I mean, we renounce sin so that we can be free. That's the whole point of the Christian life is freedom. Do you renounce the lore of evil so that sin may have no mastery over you? I do. Do you renounce Satan? The author and Prince of sin, I do.

10:12Okay, so then from there, the next three questions are about the creed. So the first ones, do you believe in God, the Father Almighty creator of heaven and earth? I do. Do you believe in Jesus Christ is only Son our Lord who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered death and was buried, rose again from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father? I do. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting, I do. All right, and then we sprinkle the whole church. Everybody in the church gets sprinkled with holy water and they make the sign of the cross. So this is a renewal of baptismal promises and why do we do this? Why do we do this every year? We do this because, well, in some cases, right? Obviously, as Catholics, we observe the tradition that's ancient of baptizing children. And so in some cases, when you're baptized, especially if you're baptized as an infant, it's with the faith of your parents, it's with the faith of the church that you are brought to baptism.

11:13At baptism, you actually receive the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. But then as you get older, then you're able to exercise that faith. As you're getting older, your intellect is able to grapple with who God is and the truth of the gospel and your free will, you're able to choose him and all that. So in some sense, of course, it's always good because if you were baptized as an infant, you didn't say those promises yourself, it was your parents and your God parents who said them for you. But now here's the chance for you to say them again, okay, to renew these things. It's really helpful to renew certain things. I'm not saying we have to always do it, but people know that with marriages, it's a very common great way to celebrate a marriage is to renew your vows, right? After whatever of 25 years, 50 years, sometimes couples will do a renewal of their vows. And they might say, why do that? You guys did it at one time. Like, what do you think that didn't count? No, it counted. We did it, you know? But let's today renew those vows.

12:14Let's speak them again and reflect about what they mean and tell each other that we mean those things again today. And we recommit ourselves to those vows. It's a beautiful thing. Well, we kind of do that as Catholics every year with the Easter, with baptism. And the reality is, we don't just do that, we don't renew our baptismal vows just without thinking about it. It's a lent that prepares us to be able to renew our baptismal vows with vigor and with sincerity and with humility, recognizing that we need God's grace, but we need that. That's good for us. That's good for us to do. So, continual conversion is an important thing about the Christian life. It really is. Jesus calls us to follow Him and that never stops. Whenever, you know, we're never finished being a disciple in this life. We're always called to follow Him as we get older, as situations change, our health changes,

13:16life, there's life changes. Someone might be married for 50 years and their husband passes away. Okay, life's different. Now you're a widow. You're different. You're not married anymore. You're a widow. Perhaps you're a mother, but your children are grown. You're maybe a grandmother, but life changes. You have different responsibilities. Now you have to ask yourself, how do I follow Jesus in my new season of life as a widow? It's important. continual conversion, we're always called to grow. We're always called to formation, to learn, to be educated, to grow. We're never finished growing. There's no one on this earth who could say, I'm completely perfected as a Christian. No, it doesn't exist. All right. I mean, it'd be pretty brash for us to think that we could ever get to that point where we just say, yep, I'm 100% holy, I'm good. I've mastered this Christianity thing. No, no.

14:17I mean, God always has more for us. He always has more grace, he wants to give us. He always has more things he wants us to learn. So we have to keep our faith fresh and we have to keep that, we have to be reminded of its power and vitality. And that's one of the ways we do that is through time. It's through the calendar, through the seasons. You know, every Sunday is really like a mini Easter. Every Sunday is a special, it's the Lord's day. It's a special way that we commemorate the resurrection of Jesus. But again, we have this one day in the year which is the grand celebration, Easter Sunday, the Sunday of the resurrection, Easter vigil and Easter Sunday. And then even that gets extended out really. There's an eight day octave of Easter and then there's the Easter season which culminates in Pentecost. So we live through this season, this time and it helps us to really enter into the mystery

15:18of Jesus' resurrection and new life. So the question is at the end of length, am I able to walk in newness of life in a new way, right? Because this is the thing about faith. I mean, we have faith in Jesus. We trust in Him, you're baptized, right? I mean, you believe in some ways you're renewed by that. But we still have to battle the old self. There's still the spiritual battle with sin that goes on. And some days it's really easy to pray. Some days it gets hard to pray. We might go through some spiritual dryness. We might be struggling in our vocations whether it's as a married person or a religious or a priest and things are just harder than they were. So we have to always say, Lord, help me again today and through this season of length, prepare me to walk in newness of life. I know that was the promise of baptism. I've been baptized. As Catholics, we don't re-baptize. We don't baptize again. You know, it's one baptism. But the question is

16:20there's always that invitation every day for us to live out our identity that we have through baptism in a deeper, more intentional way. And that's really what Lens about. It's about saying like, let me get more intentional again about my walk with the Lord. Let me be more focused on reading scripture. Let me cut away some of the things, TV, movies, online stuff, stuff with my phone. Let me cut away some of that stuff that's not as essential for my soul. And I could cut that away and have a little bit more silence and allow the Lord to speak with me, right? We do this with a lot of things too. We commemorate Jesus's death on Good Friday every year. Do you ever think like, why do we have to do that every year? Did we forget that he died from our sins? No, we don't forget it. But we gotta enter into it. We have to celebrate it. We have to commemorate it. And if you go to a Good Friday liturgy, it's a beautiful thing to deventerate the cross, to kiss the cross, to hear the passion and to realize like he did that for me.

17:24This wasn't just some thing that happened 2,000 years ago for some people, he died for me. St. Paul makes that point out in Galatians that he gave his life for me. And so we need to kind of, in the sacred liturgy, in these gatherings of prayer and the ritual that's ancient, we come to experience this truth. We reflect on it in a new way. You hear the singing, the hymns, and it hits home. It hits home, what we're praying about. We have Holy Thursday every year. We have Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday every year. We remember that Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist on the night before he died, to be with us in a special way. We celebrate, how about this? We celebrate Ash Wednesday every year, and I've been reflecting on this, and I love that people come to Ash Wednesday. I do. I mean, there, I think it's one of the most popular days to come to church on the whole calendar.

18:24Is it bigger than Easter Sunday or Christmas? Probably not, but it's close. I mean, it's close. We had six masses at St. Mary on Ash Wednesday. And I love it. I love having people come. I love it. I love seeing people. I'll be honest. I see people I'm like, I don't recognize that. Oh, this person seems new. I just don't think I've ever seen them before. I'm very happy to have people. There's something about Ash Wednesday that speaks to the soul. I haven't figured it out. I don't know if it's just the idea of like people saying, yeah, I'm a sinner and I need to turn back to God and remember your dust and the dust you shall return. Like, okay, I got the ashes on my head. I'm reminded of my mortality. Do people like to have the ashes on their head so they can go to the supermarket and I don't know. Maybe they do or the work and they, I don't know. Is it a little bit of, I'm displaying my faith, and that could be good or bad, right? If you do it in a humble way, it's evangelization. If you do it just for other people to see you and think,

19:24oh, they're gonna think I'm a holy person. Well, then you're actually doing something that's, the intention of your heart is not good there, right? We don't want to do things for the purpose of appearing to people in a certain way and pleasing them in any way, right? But again, don't get me wrong. Just by the fact that somebody put ashes on your forehead, it's not, it's just a tradition of the church. And it marks you, as Father Mike Schmitz said, I think he said, the ashes remind me that I'm a sinner and they're applied in the form of a cross to remind me that I have a savior in Jesus. Well, that's a beautiful thing. There's nothing wrong with that, right? Again, it's all about what's your heart, what's your disposition of your heart? If you're trying to display faith, like virtue signaling or to impress people, that's a bad intention. But if you just humbly receive the ashes and then go about your day and people notice you and some people might make fun of you. So it might work the other way. You know, who you got some dirt on your forehead, right? Or you stand out and some people don't like to stand out, but you're like, whatever, I got ashes

20:25and just gonna go about my business today. So anyways, I don't know what the absolute appeal is. Why it's such a unique appeal? When I do know, and I've been a priest for nearly 15 years, most people that go to Ash Wednesday, that big crowd, and you can do everything you want that day. You can preach the gospel and call them to repent and say, you know, we want you here at this church, like, masses every Sunday and let's live this every Sunday. You could say all that and you can Greek people and shake their hands and direct traffic in the parking lot and be really nice and smiley. It doesn't matter. I mean, that big chunk of people, they're not there the next Sunday, they're just not. I'm not saying some people might come and they might have a conversion, they might go, oh, wow, like, God, I really have to get back into my faith and that does happen. But I'm just saying like, there's something about Ash Wednesday, it brings a lot of people out. And maybe they make changes, I don't know. Maybe they're repenting in some way.

21:25God bless them. It's not judgment. But what I do know is they're not all coming back to church, which really is part of the Christian life. I mean, some people could say, well, being Christian, you know, doesn't mean you have to go to church or be with the community. I would say to you, that's not true. That's not what the scriptures say. It's not what Acts of the Apostle says. When it talks about the early Christians came together for the breaking of the bread and for the teaching and all that, it's just not what the ancient church, it's not what church history says. There was no idea that you could just be a Christian and be on your own and just do your own thing and not come together with the community and worship God. That's not a thing. It's a modern thing. It's not a thing that's in history or biblically. So anyways, I pray I pray that those people come back. I love them. I want them to come back. But there's something about, there's something about the fact that people want to experience that Ash Wednesday. But I just want them to go the full way.

22:26Like don't just have that one day where you're somber and you fast and you reflect, do it throughout length. Keep going deeper with it, right? What is the repercussions of the fact that we are destined to dust, we shall return? What does that mean for us? It means I need to convert today. I need to, I can't put off repentance. I can't put off following Jesus Christ because my time on this earth is limited. So look, we have these things. We have these experiences. We have these seasons, these days. And then we have the sacraments, the Eucharist, confirmation, confession. How do I experience the Holy Spirit descending upon me through the sacrament? Confirmation is one way. So we have sacraments. We have ritual. We have time. We have a calendar. And this is the way we enter into the mysteries of our faith, right? We enter into body and soul with our mind, our bodies. That's right, when you're baptized, you have water on your, you know, poured on your head. You feel it. When you receive the Eucharist,

23:26you're eating the blessed sacrament, which is Jesus. We're body and soul. And as times go by, we change. I'm not the same person I was 25 years ago. So every time I go through length, I'm kind of looking at length in a different way. How does this hit me now? What have I learned about myself? I've gone through things. I've had good things happen to me. How do I reflect on life now in, in length, this year, right? I'm different than I was last year or five years ago. So I want to enter into the mysteries with that with who I am now. I want to end here by reading. I always tell producers surely that I don't have much to talk about. It's going to be a short episode and it's always too, like, it's super long. But I want to end with this. This is the second reading for today. The third Sunday of Lent, Romans 5, verse 1 to 2, 5 to 8. I want you to hear this. And I know some people listening to this show. I don't know where you're at. You might be someone who's you're struggling with something. You feel alone.

24:26Maybe you had faith at one point in your life. And now it's a little bit harder to have faith. You're struggling. You have doubts. Maybe some bad things have happened. You've been hurt. And you've not really felt the presence of God. I want you to just hear this reading. I want you to just hear this reading. And we're going to do this. We're going to just turn to the Lord. This is from Romans 5, verse 1 to 2, and then 5 to 8. Brothers and sisters, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand. And we boast in hope of the glory of God. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For Christ, while we were still helpless,

25:27died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, perhaps for a good person, one might even find courage to die. But God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So we conclude with prayer in the presence of God, come Holy Spirit. It doesn't matter where you are, you're at home, you're listening to this in the car, whatever. Just invite the Lord. He's with you. And invite me into your presence. Bring me into your presence. I want to know you. I want to know you're with me. I want to know that you love me. In fact, Lord, even if I have doubts, and I'm not even sure I believe in you, I'm going to make this doubter's prayer and just say, Lord, if you're there, can you be with me now? Can you bring me into your presence? Can you show me that you're real in my life and that you love me?

26:31Because I want that to be true, and even if I have doubts, wherever you are, you can ask the Lord to invite you into His presence. And then I want you to think about this question. Let's think about this. Do I have peace with God? Paul says, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Do I have peace in my fighting God and my battling God? Have bad things happen in my life and maybe I have anger at God? Or maybe I've sinned, I've done terrible things, and I have, on my conscience, is weighed down, and I'm weighed down by my own sins, and I maybe even have some healths. I could have peace with God. He wants me to have peace. He wants to be a peace with me. He wants me to be a peace with Him. That comes through Jesus. Do I boast in hope of the glory of God? What a beautiful thing that Paul says. Do I have hope in the glory of God that God is great,

27:33that God loves, that God is powerful, that God is victorious? And He wants to invite me in to share that glory, ultimately, even now, in this life, but ultimately in the fullest sense in heaven, do I have hope that no matter what's going on in my life today or no matter what I'm struggling with, if I have illness, disease, depression, anxiety, fears, family problems, do I have hope that God is going to take care of this? He's going to take care of me. He's going to win the victory. And ultimately, he's leading me to heaven. Have I experienced the love of God poured into my heart through the Holy Spirit? If not, brothers and sisters, let's do that. Just today, just right now, we're going to do it. We're going to say, God, please, pour your love. Into my heart through your Holy Spirit. If I was baptized, I received your Spirit, but I need the Spirit to stir up all the gifts you've given me in my heart.

28:37I want to have the Father in my heart poured out through the Holy Spirit, so that I could know Jesus, follow Him, and accept His mercy, and everything He wants to do in my life. That's the end of the question. Do I know Jesus? It's a good time and lent to say, why was my relationship with Jesus? Do we know that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us? Do you realize that He would have died just for you to remove sin? Sin, which is an obstacle to our salvation, which is an obstacle to our joy, an obstacle to our peace, and our happiness? He loves you that much. Look at a crucifix today, and say, Jesus, thank you for dying for me, for rising from the dead, for me, for sending to heaven, for sending your Holy Spirit into my heart. Come, Holy Spirit, help me to know that God is real.

29:37He's powerful. He loves me. Let's have that be our lent, huh? No matter what else we do, or don't do, or fail with, let's have that be our lent. Till next time, may Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.