Father Koch: We prepare For Lent by reflecting on where we need to grow
February 28, 2025 at 9:00 a.m.
Gospel reflection for March 2, 2025, Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
This last Sunday in Ordinary Time before Ash Wednesday offers us a challenge point of focus to enter the Lenten Season.
While Lent itself is a season of preparation for the celebration of the great Mystery of the Resurrection, we cannot just enter into Lent cold; we need to prepare ourselves for the season of preparation.
It is perhaps ingrained in our human nature to focus more on the world around us than on our own interior lives. There is actually a percent of the population that has no interior conversation, while another set of the population has a hard time tuning-out the voice in their head. Yet, for all of us a sense of self-reflection is difficult.
The external world is in many ways more present. We are bombarded through sensory experiences with images, sounds, tastes, smells and the variations within the environment that occur daily.
It is, therefore, very easy to make judgments about the world. While most of our judgments are about preferences -- this tastes good, that does not -- we can easily turn against our fellow human beings by making judgments about them.
The ubiquity of social media, and certainly the many cable news and entertainment platforms that draw our attention and provide us with information, offers us the fodder to become increasingly harsh in our judgments. This is true regardless of one’s political or social situation or position. It is very easy to be judgmental against people we do not know, and especially those with whom we disagree.
We are also judgmental on the personal level. We judge our parents, children, in-laws, neighbors, co-workers, friends and the stranger in the grocery store or the gas station. We make judgments based on dress, language, personal hygiene, accent, age, race; pick your pet peeve, and we can make a judgment.
Jesus challenges us against this tendency. I know I have to be careful in writing this as I feel somewhat judgmental in discussing the tendency within others. I know that I do this as well, it is a part of my own sinful humanity.
Jesus opens for us the door to deeper self-reflection. Consider the world a mirror not a window.
We are all sinners. Hopefully, we are all trying to become less sinful. We know that it is not an easy process. There are many things to overcome. When we think of our sins -- something that many of us prefer to avoid -- we think of the big ones. Most of us aren’t murderers, adulterers or perpetrators of major crimes. We can blithely say we don’t really commit any sins; we don’t need to go to Confession.
Our sinful nature is, however, as much if not more about our interiority as it is about our external actions. The vitriol we spew about others; the leerful desires of our imaginations, the jealousy we harbor against other’s successes, the seething rage which we mask within a facade of nicety, all stand to convict us in our sinfulness.
At the core of the Lenten Season is our need to seek conversion. This is deeper in a sense than penance. When we are penitent, we atone for our sins; we feel some level of guilt or remorse for our action or inaction, and desire to make it go away. Yet, the call to repentance means not just seeking forgiveness and making some restitution for our sins. We are called to set aside the tendency or proclivity that we have to sin. This is much harder to do, yet it is at the very core of our spiritual lives.
As we prepare for Lent, let us all take a deeper look at ourselves and discover those “beams in our own eyes” that we need to remove from our lives so that we can see more clearly, not to judge others, but to walk with them on the road to the kingdom.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.
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Gospel reflection for March 2, 2025, Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
This last Sunday in Ordinary Time before Ash Wednesday offers us a challenge point of focus to enter the Lenten Season.
While Lent itself is a season of preparation for the celebration of the great Mystery of the Resurrection, we cannot just enter into Lent cold; we need to prepare ourselves for the season of preparation.
It is perhaps ingrained in our human nature to focus more on the world around us than on our own interior lives. There is actually a percent of the population that has no interior conversation, while another set of the population has a hard time tuning-out the voice in their head. Yet, for all of us a sense of self-reflection is difficult.
The external world is in many ways more present. We are bombarded through sensory experiences with images, sounds, tastes, smells and the variations within the environment that occur daily.
It is, therefore, very easy to make judgments about the world. While most of our judgments are about preferences -- this tastes good, that does not -- we can easily turn against our fellow human beings by making judgments about them.
The ubiquity of social media, and certainly the many cable news and entertainment platforms that draw our attention and provide us with information, offers us the fodder to become increasingly harsh in our judgments. This is true regardless of one’s political or social situation or position. It is very easy to be judgmental against people we do not know, and especially those with whom we disagree.
We are also judgmental on the personal level. We judge our parents, children, in-laws, neighbors, co-workers, friends and the stranger in the grocery store or the gas station. We make judgments based on dress, language, personal hygiene, accent, age, race; pick your pet peeve, and we can make a judgment.
Jesus challenges us against this tendency. I know I have to be careful in writing this as I feel somewhat judgmental in discussing the tendency within others. I know that I do this as well, it is a part of my own sinful humanity.
Jesus opens for us the door to deeper self-reflection. Consider the world a mirror not a window.
We are all sinners. Hopefully, we are all trying to become less sinful. We know that it is not an easy process. There are many things to overcome. When we think of our sins -- something that many of us prefer to avoid -- we think of the big ones. Most of us aren’t murderers, adulterers or perpetrators of major crimes. We can blithely say we don’t really commit any sins; we don’t need to go to Confession.
Our sinful nature is, however, as much if not more about our interiority as it is about our external actions. The vitriol we spew about others; the leerful desires of our imaginations, the jealousy we harbor against other’s successes, the seething rage which we mask within a facade of nicety, all stand to convict us in our sinfulness.
At the core of the Lenten Season is our need to seek conversion. This is deeper in a sense than penance. When we are penitent, we atone for our sins; we feel some level of guilt or remorse for our action or inaction, and desire to make it go away. Yet, the call to repentance means not just seeking forgiveness and making some restitution for our sins. We are called to set aside the tendency or proclivity that we have to sin. This is much harder to do, yet it is at the very core of our spiritual lives.
As we prepare for Lent, let us all take a deeper look at ourselves and discover those “beams in our own eyes” that we need to remove from our lives so that we can see more clearly, not to judge others, but to walk with them on the road to the kingdom.
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.