The very fact of rising from the dead makes Jesus someone special, worthy of attention. Add this to the model he leaves of how to live your life—what more is needed? He taught us how to live, he taught us how to die and hopefully, how to rise again someday.

Is there anything in our human experience that can equal that? The answer is simply, "no." We have the "How To" book in the scriptures, in the stories that are handed down in the rituals and traditions of the Church, in the lives of the saints. It is all there before us.

Now it is Easter season. We have hunted and eaten our Easter eggs, hard-boiled or chocolate. Our children have dressed up in their flimsy Easter finery on a thankfully warm day and we have prayed at the empty tomb.

Now, like Mary Magdalene, we must tell the world what has happened and how it changes everything. There is a custom in the Orthodox Church that on Easter, one greets everyone with the phrase, "Christ is risen," even complete strangers. In a country where freedom of religion also means freedom from religion, what would happen if we did this throughout the "fifty days?" People would think we were insane. We might greet someone of a different faith community who does not honor Jesus as the Messiah. It could get awkward. But if we said it enough, to enough people, we might start a movement. To compromise, how about saying, "Peace be with you?" It was good enough for Jesus. It should be good enough for us. And anyone who doesn’t need a wish of peace in this world is from Mars!

So we have a project: start slowly with people you know are Christian. Instead of saying, "hello, how are you?" try "Peace be with you." See what happens. It could start an interesting conversation. We would be surprised if, provided you don’t meet Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris (journalists who espouse atheism), if you got a negative reply; maybe a confused one, maybe one that is a little slow on the uptake, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. They might even ask what the proper response is. "And also with you" works. In time they might find something else that they are more comfortable with.

In no way does such a greeting violate anyone’s civil rights. You are simply wishing something good and needed, akin to "take care" or "feel better." When your doctor sends you off with "Be well," it is essentially the same thing. It expresses your belief, your wish, no one else’s. If the recipient doesn’t get it, like the disciples, you can shake the dust off your sandals and move on.

Let Bread & Roses know how people respond. After the "50 days" we will pass on some of your experiences on this page. Good luck! Pray for strength and courage to change the world and make it better.

The men in the Alamo, who included notables like former US Congressman David Crockett and James Bowie, developer of a distinctive knife still used by hunters, were informed by their commander, William Travis, that aid was not coming and given the chance to leave without dishonor. Only one man slipped out under the cover of darkness that night.

The seeds of the siege of the Alamo were planted when, to ward off marauding indigenous tribes, newly-independent Mexico invited US citizens to settle in Texas, then a Mexican state. Settlers would be given land at bargain–basement rates, encouraged to bring family and friends and live tax-free. Some years after the original offering, a new Mexican regime reneged, reinstating taxes, forbidding further immigration and sending an army to enforce the changes. The Texans, as they were called, as well as Mexicans living in Texas, called Tejanos, declared their independence from Mexico.

This group of men, who had every incentive to escape, chose to die for a cause. It was a political cause, but things like human rights, appropriate legislative representation and the ability to chart their own course in life are things that we as Catholics call social justice issues.

The men who died at the Alamo could have left. They could have saved their own necks. Because they died, others were inspired to keep up the fight for freedom. Eventually that led to Texas independence and annexation as a state of the US and the Mexican cession that extended the US to the Pacific. The Texans and Tejanos at the Alamo found something in their lives to believe in, something worth dying for, a set of ideas and behaviors that are worth one’s life. We Catholics have a history of this: our Church has been nourished by the blood of the martyrs and championing the weak from day one.

In 2010, we are soft and we are safe. Our lives are not at stake for our religious beliefs. They are arranged around convenience and ease. Short of crime, our lives are not at stake for anything. We lack the courage to incommode ourselves even in the slightest to stand up for what we believe in whether secular or moral.

Is our Catholic faith not worth a little inconvenience? Is it not worth showing up for Mass on time and staying through the recessional hymn? Is our professed devotion to Jesus not worth the commitment to minister regularly, to give our time to good causes? To carry Jesus’ message of peace and justice into the streets of Yorkville and beyond? To learn the tenets of our faith, its history and tradition? If our faith is not that important, what is? To whom do we go?

We are about to set out on the journey through Holy Week—the trip from "Hosanna" to "Crucify Him" to "He is risen." Is the Son of God who gave his life for us deserving of our time and attention — more than anything else, or not?

After five weeks of Lent, we can only hope that we have at least the courage to be disciples as our past and present martyrs, and all those who found something greater than themselves to die for and to live for.

As we prepare for Holy Week:

Ask yourself "what is the most important thing in my life?"

What do I live for? What would I die for?

What does it take for someone to be mentioned by name in scripture? Well who is named? God, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel Noah, Moses, Pharaoh (although we don’t know for sure which one), Elijah, Samson, Mary, Ann, Zechariah and Elizabeth, John the Baptist, Herod (2 of them) and Herodias, Paul, Pilate, Judas and the apostles, not to mention the non-humans.

It would appear that to get a mention, one has to be either very good, or very bad. Middle-of-the-road doesn’t make for good copy. This Lent as a parish, we are trying to deepen our relationship with God and his son our Lord, Jesus. As we get to the half-way mark, if there was a contemporary scripture, would we be named in it? As a good guy or a villain? Are we Herod or Mary, Pilate or Paul, John the Baptist or Herodias, Joseph or Jezebel?

Each day God raises the sun in the sky to remind us that we have another day to live. Day by day of our lives goes by and we have chosen for or against God in our actions. And, by the way, doing nothing = doing no good.

In our first reading, Moses’ first line is "Here I am." Not the first time we hear this and not the last. Moses was ready to be there, ready to engage with God because his life had prepared him. He had been the adopted son of Egyptian nobility and the exiled murderer of an Egyptian overseer. He had suffered wandering in the Sinai desert and began a new life in the tents of Midian. He was a tree about to bear fruit.

How did he get there? He was open to God through his life experience. So much had gone seemingly all wrong. He came to know that his people were slaves in Egypt. He also came to know that he was the one to lead them out of that bondage.

We are also called, like Moses, and Abraham of last week’s readings. Our tasks may not be dramatic or worthy of a Cecil B. de Mille epic, but they are important in the scheme of things. And if these calls are not answered, many things can go down the slippery slope. The world would be a very different place if we all answered the calls to action God sends.

Let us put a case — parents of a pre-teenage child are called to his school because his behavior is disruptive. In a family interview, the conversation surfaces that the child is confused by his parents’ behavior. Though the family attends Mass weekly, and he goes to a Catholic school, his father works for a company that is dishonest in its dealings. Father has three choices: 1) do nothing which will only exacerbate the situation, 2) he can try to exert his influence to facilitate change in his workplace or, 3) he can search for another position. He is called to a more honest way of dealing in the world and to be a better example to his son. Mother may be called upon to work outside the home.

The son’s behavior and the school’s in alerting the parents are both positive responses and by extension , calls to all concerned to live holier, more honest lives.

Our calls come day by day, maybe minute by minute. Answering, saying "Here I am," can involve sacrifice. For Abraham, lots of moving and for Moses, leading his people up to the Promised Land all around the desert.

In this week of Lent as we get closer to Easter, let us pray to heed God’s calls no matter how insignificant they may seem. We answer in the firm knowledge that answering will achieve God’s will, even if we don’t get an engraved announcement about it.

To Ponder in Prayer:

1) If you were asked to return to a dangerous situation in your life and turn it around, what would you do?

2) Pray "Here I am." How does it feel to be available to God and his will?

3) Can you make a great sacrifice for a purpose you may never see achieved? Pray for humility.

4) What calls have you ignored or thwarted in your life? What happened ultimately? What does that teach you? Can you respond now? Or is it too late? What can you do now?

It’s a rare day when we have both the process and the result of our life journeys. Today’s readings show us how our earthly life answering God’s calls leads to Transfiguration. In our first reading we meet Abraham, the first person to believe in a single supreme god. Since he didn’t leave a memoir behind, we will never know now he came to that knowledge, but it did involve a conversion experience. Abraham began life as a polytheist, a worshipper of many gods. At some point, the many household gods of the Chaldeans were found wanting. As Abraham was adjusting to his new belief, his one God to whom he had surrendered asked him to pack up his extended family (we might call it a tribe) and move at a time in history when moving was a perilous venture with no guarantee of success.

The move from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran was only the first of many times Abraham would say his great "Yes" to the God in whom he believed without question. On all of these occasions, God blessed Abraham and promised him that his line would be great and continue forever (In fact, one of the great fears of the Jews within our own lifetimes was that the seed of Abraham would die out in the Holocaust.). God’s blessings do continue. When Abraham was, to our way of thinking, past the point where he might father a child or even want a little one running around, Sarah, his barren wife, gave birth to Isaac.

No sooner did Abraham get comfortable as a father, God asked him to sacrifice that beloved son (sound familiar?) He was willing to answer that call. And then to move to Canaan, the promised land — suffering from a famine. Off again, to Egypt. Eventually, Abraham settled in Canaan, only to learn that the promise was not for him, but for his children and his children’s children to names that echo through history: Jacob, Joseph, Juda to Boaz and Jesse to David.

Abraham heard God’s call to obedience. God blessed him and made a covenant with him.

As Christians, our lives can be like Abraham’s. We are called by God to follow wherever God leads. Throughout our lives we are often put at forks in the road where we choose for or against God. We are called to faith, to hope and to charity.

Even this weekend, when several of our liturgical ministers will be commissioned, we will see Gods’ call in action. A number (not enough) of our parishioners have answered the call to service here at St. Elizabeth’s. That call is made to each and every one of us. We have only to answer that call to receive God’s blessings as did Abraham. We are in the "Abraham" phase, just trying to get there. For this week use the following questions to further our journey and bring ourselves with God’s grace to Transfiguration.

1st Week in Lent February 20-21, 2010

Faith is like a muscle—if you don’t take it out for some exercise regularly, it will become soft and flabby and useless when you really need it. Faith is a marathon, not a sprint. We need to continue to grow in our faith (by definition, that which is not growing is dead).

In Lent, we have a chance to get back to giving our faith what it needs: a renewed effort to use the tools at hand: prayer, the sacraments, scripture, good works, giving of ourselves through donations of time, money services. This isn’t hard even in the fashionable Upper East Side. There are many within easy reach, even right under our noses, in need of practical assistance and simple kindness.

For us to get to a point where we feel comfortable to be an active "ambassador for Christ" (Ash Wednesday’s epistle from Paul’s 2^nd letter to the Corinthians, 5:20), we need to make use of all that the Spirit and the Church offers us. In this first full week of Lent, we take strength from Jesus’ temptations in the desert. Ours are not as dramatic, but they are just as real—go to Mass on Sunday or stay home and read the New York Times; meet friends for dinner or go to Saturday evening Mass; turn down your children’s Sunday morning soccer league or worship as a family. There are often practical solutions to those specific situations, but often we don’t make use of them. Take a small step in the right direction this week. Get up half an hour early on Sunday to spend a few moments before Mass divesting yourself of any anxiety or distractions. Spend a few minutes when Mass is over getting to know the statues, Stations or stained-glass windows and entering into their stories. Remember a picture is worth a thousand words, and until fairly recently, most people could not read, so pictures were the only way they had to access Jesus’ story. Those images have fuelled faith for over two millennia. They ought to work today.

Yes, this first time it will be uncomfortable but with repetition, a few extra moments in our beautiful and prayerful church will become easy to do and reap increasing rewards. And because you have attended to your private work in the church, you will be able to participate fully in the communal ritual you came to participate in, the Mass, with the rest of your fellow parishioners.

To return to Jesus’ response to his temptations, he simply lined up his priorities. His first priority is always his Father. Throughout his life he never wavered in this. He set his pattern early and stuck to it no matter what. The late theologian, Karl Rahner, believed that choices are not usually between polar opposites. They are tiny choices which if wrong take us down that slippery slope in infinitesimal increments to serious sin. Not today, but down the road, when it is extremely difficult to change our course. Conversely, very small steps toward the good, if you will, can march us, over the span of our lives to heaven.

For this coming week, we suggest the following:

If you have not done so, dip into the Little Black Book for part of your prayer. Last week you were asked to increase your time spent in prayer. Add another five minutes. Look for a source of inspiration that you can rely on: a particular passage from scripture, or from the liturgy of the Mass or the Hours. Often a short phrase can come to mean so much if you just let it in. You may have a card or note you received, or an inscribed pendant with a phrase that works for you. You may have an object that reminds you of a time when you felt close to God. You might have a photograph of your First Communion, or Confirmation or Wedding that brings back the feeling of connection with God.

For your practical task, in addition to continuing to "feed" St. Elizabeth’s Apron, you are asked to search for an organization that can use your help. A check will not do here. Right in our back yard are a number of hospitals that can use volunteers to help in many different ways for limited amounts of time per week. This would be the time to sacrifice a couple of hours there or elsewhere.

If you have any questions about anything that comes up in your prayer, or at Mass, ask Father McCahill or Father Clemente about it.

6th Week in Ordinary Time February 13-14, 2010

For the next few weeks we are going to be considering the way we attend at Mass in these pages, that is, each person’s individual behavior during Mass.

The first thing to think about is why we go to Mass in the first place. There is a wonderful story about a woman whose daughter was a cradle Catholic in her ‘20s, yet was not attending Mass regularly. Her mother asked a priest while on retreat about this. Clearly she was very disturbed about the situation. The priest said, "When you were engaged, did you love your fiancé?" "Of course." "How often did you go out?" "In those days, we couldn’t afford a ‘date’ more than once a week. We and our families were not rich and we were saving for a nice wedding. "Did you ever miss seeing each other during the week?" "Yes, it happened. Sometimes." Then the punch line: "Was it a sin?"

God is the most important being in our lives, as a community and as an individual. If that is not what we think about him (or her), then we need to do a lot of soul-searching about the minimum fifty-two hours a year (over two full days) that we spend at the Mass itself, let alone time spent in transit, or on holydays.

God has given us our lives. He has brought us into existence specifically and individually to do his will in the world. We have the freedom to refuse. We also have the freedom to do what is right. Refusing is not right. He plans on having us with him in heaven. Like the lilies of the field we are beautiful in his eyes and like the birds of the air, he knows the inmost, least important things about us—and loves us infinitely. No one else can make those promises. So maybe we should give him an hour of "quality time" once a week or more.

This is America. Here we have the hard-won freedom to choose to practice our belief in God with any faith community we discern we are called to. That is our decision; no one can rob us of the privilege of worshipping as we choose, as often as we choose. There are places in this world, and we see them on nightly news programs, where worship is not a right and can result in serious consequences or martyrdom for those who exercise that non-existent right.

The expectation is that we worship with a community whose ideas we hold and can make a commitment to. That also means we will worship as a unit. When we gather to pray together we will do that together. We do the same gestures, say the same prayers, it is a group experience. Obviously, there are times when our minds wander or we are distracted by personal worries. Hopefully, we have the discipline to return quickly to the business at hand and support the community in its united prayer. Mass is like a concert. There is a conductor and there are soloists who add to the music, but the majority of the players work together to create at each moment something beautiful.

Working on the assumption that anyone reading this is a Roman Catholic, the chance is excellent that as children we were taught that to miss Mass without a serious reason is a mortal sin. We have to tell that to children. They may or may not be mature enough to feel intrinsically a deep yearning for God or to understand the nuances and ramifications of the life of Jesus to our world.

Mortal sin seems to have gone the way of the rotary telephone in the teaching of our faith both to children and to adult inquirers and initiates. The Church has always been wise in requiring Catholics to attend Mass weekly with a supporting community. Christianity stems from Judaism which is a supremely community-centered faith.

The Last Supper was a communal ritual meal, either a Passover Seder, or a faith-based fellowship meal called a berakah, celebrated among Jesus and his disciples. DaVinci has painted 13 at the table including Jesus, but there is no reason to doubt that there were more there to the limits of the room. It is important to point out that Jesus instituted the Eucharist, gave his most important final messages to his followers and spent the hours before he was to die on the cross not alone, or talking with each one individually, but as part of a community of those who were to build his Father’s Kingdom.