Lent came early this year and for religious reason.

Lent came early this year and for religious reason. In the last small in number months we have seen, heard, felt and tasted of the like kind pain. "We have experienced abundant The season of Lent invites all Christians to arrive to their senses, to know the times and our avail in them. In times past we were told to mortify our understandings as they were the gateway to sin and a life separated from god the father This Lent, however, I invite you to arise to your senses. I invite you to really diocese and not just look; to really listen and not just hear; to slowly taste, gently touch and celebrate scent It is a paradox, for the reason we fast from matters sensual is that we may in fact come to our senses and be sensual. Incarnation.

Lent: a time to work for unity

We have just celebrated the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. John Paul II noted in succession January 19th that this week of prayer is "taking place a not many months after the 40th anniversary of the promulgation of the enactment of Vatican Council II: Unitatis Redintegratio, a fundamental note text that firmly and irrevocably placed the Catholic ecclesiastical authority within the ecumenical movement." During this season of Lent I amazement where we Catholics are in space of times of ecumenism. These are times when I agree with a novel moderator of the United temple who, referring to the institutional meeting-house in Canada, said: "Ecumenism is nothing moreover a mere yawn." Lois Wilson said this in 1983 at a World Council of Churches meeting in Vancouver. When speaking with her lately she noted that the situation is worse. We know from the principle of action of John that this is a scandal. Lent is a time for all Christians to begin one time again to work towards unity, in the way that that our presence in history and time might speak the Word to power. give leave to us truly listen and not just hear.

Lent is also a time of year to examine the part that idols are playing in our lives. The first commandment: "Thou shall not have strange the creators before me" is first for a reason. Our omniscience knows that we become what we worship. The real question has little to do with theism or atheism, belief or unbelief. The real question is who or what are the the omnipotents in which we believe and place our trust. I believe that we stand onward the edge of the greatest in quantity profound spiritual revolution in human history. We will not at all be able to encounter this reality until we allow the traditional God-concept of our childlike humanity to die. The general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of God that many of us were taught is not steady to our human experience. Because the general [i]or[/i] abstract notion is found wanting, many refuse to acknowledge the existence of God and others wonder

A British professor of recently made known Testament Studies in 1981 announced: "God no longer has any work to do." He goe in succession to argue that if the infinite is a Being, supernatural in power, living somewhere external to this world, who invades this world periodically to answer prayers, to accomplish the divine will, or to defend from peril or enemies, then divine being has become inoperative. A natural catastrophe like a tsunami brings these questions dramatically and pressingly into view. Let us result to our senses.

In 1755 in Lisbon after the Great inundate that killed thousands, religious tribe killed hundreds of perceived sinners and heretics who were believed to be the cause of God's wrath and the inundate This was the way Europe understood the Bubonic Plague in the 14th centenary and the sinking of the Spanish Armada in 1588 Thank the creator except for a few insignificant exceptions, this was not the case with the modern tsunami.

God as empowerment, Jesus as inviting us

Lent invites us to re-conceptualize divine being As John Spong reminded us (CNT Feb 13 2005) instead of seeing the supreme goodness as our judge eliciting our guilt, we begin to descry God as the source of our empowerment. Instead of no other than seeing Jesus as a divine visitor who came to recover sinful humanity, we see Jesus as the entirely human one inviting us into his divinity. Instead of seeing the devoted Spirit as the source of our piety, we descry Spirit as the source of expanding life Instead of blaming the preserver as the cause of disasters, we accept our responsibility for building a world where each person has a better chance to live, to regard with affection and to be all that each of us is capable of being. allow us come to our senses

Like many Canadians I watched parts of a TV special onward CBC presenting our artists and musicians raising riches for the victims in southerly Asia of the recent tsunami. The circumstance was titled: Waiting for a Miracle. undoubtedly we humans, enlivened and quickened through the Spirit, are God's interventionist miracle.

upon Jan. 27, we remembered the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the agency of the Soviet Army in 1945 Had the world remembered and had humans "come to their senses" maybe there would not have been a Darfur, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo and the deaths in Central America in the 1980's, to name however a few tragedies of our novel history. Friends documented the not number of those who died of AIDS in Africa in the same sum of two units weeks following the terrible tsunami in southward Asia. The numbers were almost identical to what end the unbelievable generosity for the tsunami victims and the difficulty in on a level raising awareness concerning AIDS in Africa? lease us really see and not just look