Saturday after Ash Wednesday

 Do you want to please God? I would say that most of us would like to please God, but the question is what must we do to please God? Luckily for us, God tells us what we should do to please him. 

In today’s first reading from the Prophet Isaiah, God says that if we want to please him we should focus on doing three things, namely guarding against lying and malicious speech; exercising charity, especially towards those who are hungry; and making the Sabbath holy.

 For the Jewish people of Jesus’ time a lot of attention was placed on being careful about what one placed in one’s month. Certain foods were unclean, so it was important to keep Kosher. Yet in Scripture, God expresses more concern about what comes out of our months than what we put in our months. St. Paul writes to “only say the good things that people need to hear.” The gift of speech was given to praise God, and to build up our brothers and sisters, but we are often so careless in what we say. We gossip, we blaspheme, we speak ill of others. To please God we should strive to be the person about whom others say, “I never heard them say a bad word about anyone.” To be a saint we should strive to be like St. Dominic of whom it was said, “He was always speaking to God, or speaking about God to others.”

 We only need to open our eyes — especially the eyes of our hearts — to recognize that there are a lot of people in need, not just in the world in general, but right here in our neighborhood. It is not as easy to provide the necessities of clothing and shelter for others, but all of us can share food for the hungry. Most of us here in America can always go with a little less food for ourselves so to share some with those in need. This morning, members of St. John the Baptist parish Knights of Columbus were over at the soup kitchen at the Cathedral to share a meal of baked ziti with the hungry. Everyone in the parish were all invited to participate, even if it was just preparing a tray of ziti for them to take to the soup kitchen. I wonder how many of parishioners made a tray of food, or make a donation of socks? I am sure each of your parishes offer similar opportunities to help the poor; do you participate?

 Finally keeping the Sabbath holy is important because it consists in “holding back … from following your own pursuits on my holy day” says the Lord. The Sabbath is made holy by doing God’s “thing” rather than our own thing. Even the type of recreation and relaxation that we do on Sundays should not be merely for our pleasure. In someways I regret the decision to let people fulfill their Sabbath obligation by going to the Saturday Vigil Mass; I think it makes it too easy to forget that we are not suppose to give God just an hour, but an entire day.

 If we wish to please God, if we want to become a reconciler in society and bring people closer to one another and to God, we must live by worshipping God on the Sabbath the whole day, curb our tongue so as to only say the good things that people need to hear, and perform the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.