Radical Incarnation: Go Tell the World

Our theme for Lent brings front and center for us the mystery of Incarnation — the mystery of the Word made flesh.  Incarnation reminds us how completely God is wanting to "be with us."  How do we respond?  Do we open the door to the Divine invitation?
  
When we do, we become partners in God’s kin’dom-building. God is ever inviting us into “radical         incarnation” — going back to the root of our relationship with God: our belovedness, to the root of the message of Jesus: forgiveness, to God’s truest desire of justice and mercy for us.

What better response to this incarnation than to bring it to the whole world, to go and tell the world about Jesus and the love he shares with us all!
  
Come and join us online for Sunday livestream of Mass at 10:30.   (This Mass is available only by livestream.)
 

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"The purpose of the first part of Lent is to bring us to compunction. "Compunction" is related to the verb "to puncture" and suggests the deflation of our inflated egos, a challenge to any self-deceit about the quality of our lives as disciples of Jesus.

By hitting us again and again with demands which we not only fail to abey, but which we come to recognize as being quite beyond us, the Gospel passages are meant to trouble us, to confront our illusions about ourselves. "Remember, you are dust..." From this perspective, Lenten penance may be more effective if we fail in our resolutions than if we succeed, for it's purpose is not to confirm us in our sense of virtue but to bring home to us our radical need of salvation.

"It is in answer to this profound awareness of need that the lectionary shifts from the Synoptics to John, from the demands of discipleship to the person of Jesus. John presents Jesus as the Savior, but Jesus can only save those who know their need for salvation. Confronted with our sickness and powerlessness, we pray for our salvation."

—from  "The Spirit of Lent," Mark Searle, in Assembly, Vol 8:3

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