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This weekend, as we celebrate the Second Sunday of Lent, Holy Mother Church once again gives us the Lord’s Transfiguration to reflect on as we journey towards Easter. A journey that invites us to join Jesus in His retreat for 40 days, the liturgical season of Lent. A journey that takes us through Jesus’ Trial, Condemnation, Suffering, Passion, Crucifixion, Death, Resurrection, Appearances to His Apostles and Disciples, the descent of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost and the Ascension of our Lord Jesus, the Christ.

In today’s gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the devil that we do not live by bread alone. That’s a good thought with which to begin this holy season of Lent. He uses the term bread not just to describe what we eat, but, in the way that has become popular in our modern time, it means “money” and all the things money can buy such as food and drink, clothing, cars, big flat screen TVs, computers, the latest electronic gadgets, appliances, travel, exotic vacations, homes and mansions, and the list goes on and on. Many people think that having enough of these things is the key to happiness. And the more money you have, the more you own, the happier you’ll be. There’s truth to this, but it’s a very limited view of what goes into a meaningful human life. It completely ignores the human spirit – that part of us that yearns for something more than what money can buy. Many of the people who know this, whether they can put it into words or not, look to religion to satisfy this hunger and emptiness. They go to churches and synagogues and mosques. They pray and worship and try to fan into flame that spark of the divine and spirituality that lies deep within each of us. Our church sets aside these next several weeks of Lent as a special time to nourish that flame.

In today’s Gospel from Luke 6:39-45, we are awakened to the profound truth about the source of our words and the weight they carry. Jesus, in His compassionate yet challenging manner, invites us to reflect on our inner selves, the wellspring from which our actions and words flow. This passage is not just a moral teaching; it is a profound invitation to examine the condition of our hearts and the nature of our speech.

Christ's teaching on 'turning the other cheek' is a profound and often misunderstood concept that challenges our natural inclinations toward retaliation and self-defense. In my frontier missionary life, I have lived among warring tribes, seen brutal violence, shielded hunted down individuals risking personal safety. I visited Rwanda after the genocide and listened to the horrors of that massacre from some survivors. But in all these experiences, I was a sympathetic onlooker carefully avoiding taking sides. On 24 December 2005, violence became a personal tragedy when my companion priest, Fr Philip Valayam aged 46 years, was killed in a car robbery as he was returning from the Christmas Vigil Mass. I was on home leave in India and returned to Kenya for the final farewell before his body would be flown to India for the burial. The following months after this tragedy, ‘turning the other cheek’ teaching of Christ made me cringe as helplessness, anger, sadness and even the temptation to leave were all lumped together into a reaction of quiet silence and passivity. The people around me, especially the staff of the institution, were very concerned about my well-being, health and even the future of all the varied ministries of youth programs and communication projects I was spearheading.

We are all familiar with the “Sermon on the Mount” which is found in Saint Matthew’s Gospel. A very similar message by Jesus in St. Luke’s Gospel is referred to as the “Sermon on the Plain”. The passage is explicit in saying He “stood on a stretch of level ground.” Why does it specify “level ground”? This is to show that Jesus fulfills prophecies that speak of how the mountains will be made low and the valleys will be filled in. It also leads into a theme evident in Luke’s Beatitudes and throughout the gospel of Luke, “the reversal of fortune.” God will make things right. For example, the hungry will be satisfied and those “who are filled now…will be hungry.

As we come to the 5th Sunday in Ordinary time we accompany Jesus well into His public life, His Galilean ministry, the one He began in Nazareth. But this Sunday contains a surprise development. Isaiah, Paul and Peter are each expressing themselves as worthless! These are three of the greatest witnesses in the Bible!

The Feast of the Presentation takes place on February 2nd each year, a date which falls on this Sunday. The Presentation in the Temple held significant religious and cultural importance for Jewish families in Jesus' time. This ritual commemorated God's sparing of the Jewish firstborn during the Exodus from Egypt. Forty days after giving birth to a son, the mother underwent a ritual purification. This involved offering a sacrifice at the temple, usually a lamb and a pigeon or turtledove. For poorer families, two pigeons or turtledoves were acceptable. The Presentation reinforced the family's participation in God's covenant with Israel, passing on their religious heritage to the next generation. This public ceremony introduced the child to the religious community and affirmed the family's commitment to raising the child in their faith.

Sunday’s liturgy juxtaposes the story of Jesus reading in the synagogue at Nazareth with the story of Ezra reading the law to people upon their return to Jerusalem from exile. The Babylonian exile of the Jews was a pivotal moment in Jewish history, marking a significant turning point in their religious and cultural development. This period began in 597 BCE when the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II laid siege to Jerusalem, resulting in the first wave of deportations. A second, more devastating deportation occurred in 587 BCE, when Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple were destroyed.

We are in year C in our Liturgical cycle, and it began with Advent. It will feature the Gospel according to Luke. The following words will be proclaimed before the Gospel reading each Sunday: “A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.” But the readings will change during the season of Lent and Easter. But, to make things more complicated, this Sunday—the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time—does not have a reading from Luke’s Gospel. The Church has used instead a reading from the Gospel of John, one about an event which actually took place before the start of Jesus’ public life, as Jesus says explicitly (“My hour has not yet come”). We have also entered the “Ordinary Season” after the Christmas season, and the focus will be on our spiritual growth and so many references will be made to the kingdom of God.

Today marks the formal end of the Church’s Christmas season with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The event of the baptism of the Lord is very intriguing and paradoxical. All of the three synoptic Gospels mention the baptism of the Lord (Lk 3:21-22; Mt 3:13-17; Mk 1:9-11). However, there is a problem: we are told that the baptism offered by John the Baptist was “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Lk 3:3). John began with the message: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is close at hand” (Mt 3:2). And Matthew adds: “and as [the people] were baptized by him in the river Jordan they confessed their sins” (Mt 3:6). If Jesus was without sin (1Jn 3:5) why did He go to John to be baptized?

The Magi's visit is celebrated as the Epiphany, marking the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles. In our contemporary world, where faith is often challenged, this feast reminds us Catholics of the ongoing need for Christ to be revealed in our lives and in society. It calls us to be bearers of this revelation through our words and actions. The Magi's long journey guided by a star represents the spiritual journey of every one of us. Like the Magi, modern believers are called to seek Christ with determination and faith. This journey often requires leaving behind the familiar and comfortable, much like the Magi left their homeland. For contemporary Catholics, this might mean stepping out of their comfort zones to live out their faith more authentically in an often-challenging secular world. Like the Magi, we might encounter disconcerting experiences in our journey of faith. First, they met King Herod. He was certainly interested in the Child of which the Magi spoke; not to worship him, as he wished to make them believe by lying, but rather to kill him. Herod was a powerful man who saw others solely as rivals to combat. Basically, on reflection, God also seemed a rival to him. Herod is a figure we dislike, whom we instinctively judge negatively because of his brutality. Yet we should ask ourselves: is there perhaps something of Herod also in us? Might we too sometimes see God as a sort of rival? Might we too be blind to His signs and deaf to His words because we think He is setting limits on our life and does not allow us to dispose of our existence as we please or give expression to our wanton way of life with unlimited freedom?

No room at the inn. No room anywhere. They gave him the only place they could spare and the promised Messiah was born that night on the floor of a stable without any light where they cut the cord and cleaned up the mess and wrapped him in somebody's workaday dress and while Mary slept there, exhausted and cold, Joseph sat by feeling helpless and old.

Mary, shortly after the Annunciation, traveled from Nazareth to the hill country of Judea to visit her cousin Elizabeth. This journey was approximately 90-100 miles long. Mary likely joined a caravan for safety and ease of travel, as it was uncommon for a young woman to travel alone. The route from Nazareth to the Judean hill country had two main options: The shorter trade route through the center of the region, which was strenuous and passed through Samaria. Mary must have taken the longer route through the flatter Jordan River Valley, which was about 90 miles long. The journey typically took 4-6 days, with travelers covering about 20 miles per day. Mary may have traveled on foot or ridden a donkey, which was a common mode of transportation at the time. The destination was likely Ein Karem, an idyllic village where the wealthier folks lived, about 5 miles southwest of Jerusalem, traditionally considered the birthplace of John the Baptist.

The first word of the entrance hymn today is “Rejoice!” This tradition originates from the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, where the first word of the Introit, or entrance antiphon, was Gaudete (rejoice, be glad). Hence, this Sunday has come to be known as Gaudete Sunday. Today, we light the pink candle on our Advent wreath to mark this day of joy.

Every year on the second Sunday of Advent, the Church has us ponder the words and deeds of Saint John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the coming of the Lord. Luke introduces John in a way similar to how the Hebrew Bible introduces the prophets, with a full reference to who was in power at the time. Luke is careful to include the full list of Roman and Jewish officials in office (secular and religious) at the time of John's debut around 27 AD and Jesus' movement from his hidden life to his public ministry. Jesus' emergence in Israel, emphasized through a genealogy that stretches not only past Abraham but all the way back to Adam, has implications for everyone everywhere.

As soon as the feast of Thanksgiving is over, we tend to fuss over our Christmas preparations with a flurry of activities to decorate our homes, shopping for gifts and of course planning the food platters. In households with roots in the Italian American tradition, cooking up a feast of seven fishes makes for a very special Christmas Eve, with generations of cooks in the kitchen and favorite foods that return year after year. But the Church calendar puts a kind of break and damper by highlighting the season of Advent. If Christ has already been born, what is this Advent waiting all about? Have we forgotten about His birth? Strangely the latter question contains part of the answer. It has to do with Jesus’ birth into our hearts and our forgetfulness.

Royalty and Kingship, for most of us these days, is the stuff of tabloids and cartoons and for the younger generation challenging computer games. Our last collective focus on the matter of kings and queens occurred during the media attention given to the car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris, France on Sunday August 31, 1997, when Princess Diana died. I was visiting Germany at that time, enroute to a seminar in Rome before my missionary assignment to Kenya, in Africa. Five days later the world mourned another death with less tabloid attention but with more worldwide participation when Mother Teresa died at the age 87 on Sept. 5, 1997. The high contrast of the two events had impacted me at that time as I had personal encounter with Mother Theresa several times and I also had admiration for the efforts that Princess Diana made particularly in raising global awareness of landmine victims and the indiscriminate nature of the weapons. Countries came together later in 1997 to sign the Mine Ban Treaty in Ottawa.

As we approach the end of the liturgical year, the theme of end times is proclaimed in the reading at the Eucharist. The word ‘Revelation’ comes from the Greek ‘apokalypsis’. The common feature of apocalyptic literature is an unfolding of matters generally unknown, such as heavenly regions or the events of the future by someone who has been granted a special revelation of these things by God, either directly or through an intermediary, such as an interpreting angel. In many cultures like the Mediterranean culture of Jesus time, when a bride walks towards the groom, she is wearing a veil; a veil which prevents her from seeing the groom clearly and becoming close to him. The intimacy that is initiated when the husband lifts his new wife's veil will be like that for the church when Christ returns. Christ is the groom, and the church is His bride.

Our Catholic Faith teaches us to cherish the memory of our dear departed. It urges us to commune in prayer, especially at Mass, with the souls of those we loved while they walked this Earth. We are continually reminded that “life is changed, not ended.” Just as “the living” are helped over the rough patches of this early life by experiencing the love, sympathy and solidarity of their friends and family, so also, we believe that the dead are consoled and helped as they pass through the often painful “cleansing” which we call ‘purgatory’ in preparation for their ultimate encounter with God and enjoy eternal peace. We remember in a special way the members of our parish family who passed on in the last year.

When asked about the smallest measurement of time, a humorist went beyond the Planck Time (light travel) and Zeptosecond (particle physics) and coined a term, ‘honky second’ as the measurement of time between the light turning green and the honking of the car behind you at a stop on a busy highway. Stopping at a red light could bring different reactions in people. Some see it as a bother or a freedom limiter, while others see it as a safety guide and a prevention of rash driving. These attitudes can also indicate a person’s general reaction to rules and commandments as well.