The only way out is through (Fr. Mike Schmitz)

   Why couldn’t God just take the people of Israel from the place of slavery to the place of promise? Why did they have to go through the desert? Because they needed training. They didn’t know how to live as free people. 

   God is giving us this desert of Lent because we are like the people of Israel: I just want to be done: Lord, just tap me on the head and make me look like Jesus, automatically! But we need this training; we need this place of the Way, because we are called to be people we are currently not, able to do something that we currently cannot. 

   So God is leading us into the desert, where all the things we trusted are finally put down. That’s what Lent is. We’re led into the desert where we are just invited to put down all of the things we trusted in. The desert is a place of training. The desert is a place of testing. The desert is a place of trial. But it’s also the place where all the things I’ve trusted in are absent. All our crutches, all our comforts, are absent. We put down those things we use to buffer between us and life, the distractions, the noise, the diversions, all the things we hold onto that will help us from having to acknowledge that we are not yet who we should be. 

   And so here, at the beginning of Lent, you are entering into a place of training, of testing. So it can’t just be the usual. It can’t just be the status quo. It can’t just be the normal thing I always give up. I can’t just do the same thing I always have done and expect a different result, because we are called to do something new, to go somewhere new, and that means putting down something old. 

   Whenever we find ourselves trusting in ourselves rather than in God alone, that’s what we have to be willing to put down. It will be difficult. It will be difficult. 

   What am I training for? What am I trying to become? 

    I want to be able to live like Jesus. I want to be able to love like Jesus. I want to be able to trust like Jesus. That means I have to go from not-knowing to knowing. That means I need to go from not being able to being able. It is frustrating. 

   And the only way out is through. 

--Excerpt from
Fr. Mike Schmitz’s homily,
Hallow App, Lent,
March 2, 2025

Image source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/christ-in-the-desert/iwEnS8zpRy4qzw?hl=en&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A8.663783236351296%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A2.734523311575076%2C%22height%22%3A1.2374999999999994%7D%7D

Make friends with the desert (Bishop Robert Barron / Fr. Ron. Rolheiser)

Deserts are places of no distractions,
when we get down to spiritual basics
with nothing to divert us from the great questions.

--Bishop Robert Barron

    The Gospels invite us to make friends with the desert, the cross, with ashes, with self-renunciation, with humiliation, with our shadow, and with death itself. We grow by letting the desert work us over, by renouncing cherished dreams to accept the cross, by letting the humiliations that befall us deepen our character, by having the courage to face our own deep chaos, and by making peace with our own mortality. 

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Facebook, November 5, 2025

Image source: https://cathopic.com/photo/57450-jesus-christ-in-the-desert 
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He took upon himself the shame of Adam (Pope Francis)

    Adam, after his sin, experiences shame, he feels naked, he senses the weight of what he has done; and yet God does not abandon him: if that moment of sin marks the beginning of his exile from God, there is already a promise of return, a possibility of return. God immediately asks: "Adam, where are you?" He seeks him out. Jesus took on our nakedness, he took upon himself the shame of Adam, the nakedness of his sin, in order to wash away our sin: by his wounds we have been healed. Remember what Saint Paul says: "What shall I boast of, if not my weakness, my poverty? Precisely in feeling my sinfulness, in looking at my sins, I can see and encounter God’s mercy, his love, and go to him to receive forgiveness. 

--Pope Francis 

Image source: La Tentation d'Adam et Eve, Cathédrale Notre-Dame de l’Assomption, Clermont-Ferrand, France, http://luc.greliche.free.fr/Mathieu/clermontferrand0402.html 
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Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 22, 2026: Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert...

Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert…
Are we ready to enter into the desert of Lent? 

   In the Creation story of the second chapter of Genesis, the Lord God forms man out of the clay of the ground and blows into his nostrils the breath of life. It is a moment of striking intimacy, an action on God’s part to make of his creation man, a living being, a being created to love God. But God also creates the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden in Eden and tells the man that he is free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except this tree. The man thus has a choice, the free will to choose what is right or what is wrong. Free will is necessary to human existence, for, if God created us to love God, we need to be able to choose. But humankind is tempted by a desire for control, and thus both the woman and the man, tempted by the serpent, eat some of its fruit. Together, they choose to disobey God’s command, and the consequences will be grave indeed. One can imagine them singing Psalm 51, Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned, as they leave paradise in shame. 

   Thus, as Paul reminds the Romans, Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death. The trespass of Adam is a transgression that led to human mortality. But, Paul goes on to say, just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous. Jesus came in order to surrender his life to God, taking our sins to the cross. Unlike Adam, Jesus brings life. 

   But first Jesus himself must experience temptation and choose. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. All three of the devil’s temptations – to command that stones become bread, to throw himself down from the parapet of the temple, and to prostrate himself and worship the devil – ask Jesus to rebel against God. But Jesus, God-made-man, steadfastly refuses: Get away, Satan! Jesus has journeyed into the desert to solidify his dedication to God’s will. In Lent, we are called to do the same, to take that very same journey into the desert, that we might learn obedience, rejecting sin in recognition of the gracious gift of the Lord, so that that grace, in turn, might overflow for the many. 

   Our journey begins! Are we ready?

This post was based on OLMC’s Scripture Class 2023.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

God calls us to action (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

   When God appears to people, almost every time, he gives them directions as to what to do. He calls them to action. What’s curious is that, so often, we don’t respond with action. We respond with hesitation. 

    When they called a fast in Joel’s time, it was meant to be immediate. People weren’t to stop for anything. Even if you’ve just been married, you were to leave the wedding chamber. Everything was to be done in that moment, so that you could respond with repentance to God. Whenever something bad happened, they believed it was because they had sinned, and when the locusts came in to devour their crops, they were certain that they needed to repent, and so they called a fast. They called for repentance from the whole group, and the whole group responded. God called, and they responded. 

   God called, and Paul responded as well, as God calls each of us to respond: as ambassadors of Christ. To be ambassadors of Christ means that we are the ones going out to make him present in the world, and that is where our energies need to be expended. Too often we expend our energies spinning on things we think we are supposed to be doing, when in fact the one thing we’ve been called to do is to make him present in the world, to bring the Eucharist we receive to bear upon the world in all of its brokenness, to bring mercy to bear. 

   Jesus has a great explanation for how we are to go about doing the various things that we might do as a Lenten observance. Yet the main thing here is, make sure you know why you’re doing it. Make sure you know why you’re giving up Brussels sprouts. Make sure you know what it has to do with being an ambassador for Christ, so that whatever you have chosen to do for Lent, it’s going to make you a better ambassador, more dedicated to the Word, to the mercy that has been shown you, so that you might show it to others. 

   Whatever we do needs to serve his will. He has called us to action, not to complacency. He has called us to more, so that he might live more profoundly in the world. 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, Ash Wednesday,
February 14, 2024

Today is Ash Wednesday!
Don't forget to fast!

Image source: Bayeux Tapestry, Feast of William the Conqueror panel, https://www.oursundayvisitor.com/whats-the-point-of-fasting-during-lent/

Your heart equals my heart (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)

In a circle of mountains
it’s easier to remember
we belong to the mountains,
belong to high-pitched cheep
of pica, belong to the cliffs,
to the path, to the unpath,
belong to the blue,
blue reach of sky. 

We belong as much to each other
as we belong to ourselves,
each of us a poem read by strangers
and beloveds in ways only they can read us,
each of us constantly rewriting
our lines, while in the meantime
we are constantly rewritten
by a great and unnamable
is-ness that rhymes us each to each other. 

We belong to the truth
that all belongs, even when we
are most lonely, even when
we would rather push away
from the world. 

In a circle of mountains,
it is easier to practice belonging—
easier to notice this math:
your heart equals my heart,
and all this opening, opening, opening
to what we cannot know,
that equals what a life is for. 

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer,
In a Circle of Mountains

Image source: OLMC’s “Chosen” group prays for the world at the end of its last 2025 meeting. Photo by Danny Gutierrez, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1328667335965344&set=pb.100064662700877.-2207520000&type=3
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We are to love (Thomas Merton)

I once asked an old man:
 Which is more important, to love or to be loved?
 He replied: Which is more important to a bird?
The left wing or the right wing? 

 --Author unknown

   Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbor worthy. 

--Thomas Merton

Image source: https://bmtrust.org/event/valentines-nature-heart-hunt/
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