From Season to Season

Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up the mountain to pray. While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. —Luke 9:28-31 In her Revelations of Divine Love , the medieval mystic Blessed Julian of Norwich wrote:      I saw him and still sought him,         For we are now so blind and so unwise that we never seek God         until he of his goodness shows himself to us;      and when we see anything of him by grace, then are we moved by         the same grace to try with great desire to see him more perfectly.      And thus I saw him and I sought him,         and I possessed ...

In classes and days of recollection I offer during Lent, I often remind participants that the purpose of Lent is twofold: it is the time of final preparation of the uninitiated (i.e. catechumens) for baptism and the time for Christians to recall their own baptism and they prepare to renew their baptismal promises on Easter Sunday. Unfortunately, this second aspect of Lent often gets lost. Yes, we all renewed our baptismal promises at Easter and were symbolically sprinkled with holy water, but, for most of us, that moment seems to be over as soon as it has begun and we don’t really appreciate the significance of the act… which is surprising since we’ve spent 40 days preparing to say “I do!” with a renewed mind, heart, and spirit. We renew our baptismal promises each year because conversion and growing in faith are lifelong processes. In saying that, I simply mean that each moment of every day (not just the days of Lent) offers us infinite possibilities for experiencing grace, for cho...

In the opening verse of Sirach , we read, “All wisdom is from the Lord / and remains with him forever.” Praise of Wisdom is echoed in other places in the Old Testament, including Proverbs , Wisdom , Baruch , and Ecclesiastes and certain psalms. Continuing its praise of Wisdom, however, Sirach continues: “Before all other things wisdom was created; and prudent understanding from eternity. The root of wisdom—to whom has it been revealed? Her subtleties—who knows them? There is but one, wise and truly awesome, seated upon his throne—the Lord. It is he who created her, saw her and measured her. Poured her forth upon all his works, upon every living thing, according to his bounty, lavished her upon those who love him” (1:4-10). The passage from the Gospel of Matthew that we heard on the Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Matthew 11:25-30), comes in a section in which Jesus can be said to take on the persona of the Woman Wisdom, “speaking with the words and images attributed to he...