Where’s the Sinner?

Good Morning Everyone!

It is a great blessing to be here again among you all. I had been gone for a few months because I had done a surgery for a pilonidal cyst. It was an easy surgery but a tough recovery. So thanks be to God. I thank you all for your concerns that you showed either through messages, phone calls, emails, and those who prayed for me. I really felt your love though I was far away. I thank Father David and Father Loukas for their diligence in caring for the church and the faithful. I was at peace being away for long knowing that the church was in good hands. However, it’s good to be back. I’ve missed you all. And I’ll be here.

Our people enjoy playing different games to find a way to pass time. Whether those games are con can, card games, boards games whatever it is.

Our people enjoy playing different games to pass time—card games, board games, whatever it is. When life gets just a little unexciting and our conversations with our friends a little dull and not much to talk about, there’s one game that’s unique that we like to play especially that’s called “where’s the sinner?”

You probably haven't heard of this game, but many of you have played it. I don't like to play, but sometimes I find myself in the middle of one.

You can play this game anywhere—at home with your family, with friends, online, on the phone. You don't need much material. Just two or more people. There's no limit to how many can play.

Here's the thing: there are no real winners here. In this game, there's only losers. Everyone who plays actually loses.

So what's the goal? Nothing really—just to find a sinner. Whether they're in your own home, in another city, sitting next to you. Wherever they may be, you only have to have your eyes focused outside of yourself.

As you can probably tell, I’m not talking about a real game. I’m talking about something that we Christians often participate in especially this time in Lent.

Lent, or the Great Fast, Sawma Rabba, is called to be a time of conversion of the Church where EACH individual looks inward at their own selves, fixes their focus on Jesus, looks at their own lives, at their own sins, their own weaknesses, and asks God for help. But when we play this game, “where’s the sinner” very rarely will we find ourselves.

It’s easy to find someone else, some wrong that someone else has done and spend our time with that.

In Lent, we walk with Jesus into the desert. He spends time in this desert wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights in the same manner as the Israelites except they were there for 40 years.

They were FREED from egypt and their time in the wilderness was a time for God to have their attention and to work on their hearts and in win them back. God wants to do that for us.

He notices we’ve given our hearts away. We’ve given our attention away. We’ve given our time away. We’ve given who we are away to things other than him.

So he gave us an example and the church gives us a solution to begin together but individually to fix our attention, order our time, and rededicate our hearts to God.

Saint Paul today talks to the Ephesians who lived a certain life before hearing the gospel. He says to put off your old nature, be renewed and put on the new nature God wants to give us.

The church gives us fasting like saint Paul says to PUT OFF our old nature, our old way of life, to give up specific attachments, to put down some of the luxuries of our lives, to let go of unhealthy habits to have a new manner of life ordered to God.

It’s not aimed simply to be a new menu for 40 days for the family. It’s not aimed to be a new diet.

While fasting is not ONLY about food, it’s about ALL that we consume both food and what goes in our ears, our eyes and mouth. Be that social media overload, screen time overload, doomscrolling, etc.

When we give something up, we are telling ourselves no, in order to give a yes to something better.

So in this process we are aiming to live a new way of living, but fasting is not just in the body, it takes place in the mind and soul. It’s a spiritual battle that requires the grace of God.

So without nourishment for our soul in prayer and taking from God’s word, we’ll be weak and empty and vulnerable. Prayer, Scripture reading, picking up a spiritual book, joining in on the hallow lenten challenge, praying the rosary. Our time in prayer and fasting is an invited to be renewed.

And finally, St Paul says to put on a new nature. With fasting and prayer we will realize that all we’ve been given, money, influence, time, is a gift given to us that is aimed to be given back to God and those around us in love. So we are called to give ourselves back as an offering to God.

My prayer for us in this Lent, in this Great Fast, is not to find the sinner, but to say here I am Lord, the sinner. I need you to find me. So we can realize and accept Christ went into the desert of this world to find US, to find YOU. To free us and to renew us. Amen