My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in St Matthew's Gospel, God the Father speaks from heaven only twice. First in this passage of the Transfiguration, and the second in the passage when Jesus is baptized.

Both times he says essentially the same thing. Which is just to emphasize how important it is. He says that Jesus is his beloved Son, and we should listen to him.

Listening to Christ means getting to know him and following his lead. When parents instruct their children to listen, they want the kids both to hear and to heed what they are saying. God the Father does the same thing.

Jesus Christ is God's own Son, sent by the Father to be our guide to fulfilment, to the meaning and happiness we all long for. Christ alone is the answer, the secret to a life lived to the full.

He is not just one great philosopher in our history. He is not just a wise teacher. Jesus is the fulfilment of the long history of salvation that God traced throughout the Old Testament, represented in the Transfiguration by the appearance of Moses and Elijah.

He is God made man, whose glory is way beyond anything we can imagine. Peter, James, and John got a glimpse of it, and it terrified them, and they were no strangers to miraculous occurrences. Jesus' face shone like the sun - try to imagine that! His clothes became as white as light - picture that!

Jesus is our glorious Saviour - he came to change our lives, to "save us and call us to a holy life," as St. Paul wrote in the Second Reading. All we need to do is "listen to him," to turn our gaze to him, to follow him, and we too will be transfigured.

Abraham and Paul Escape Their Comfort Zones

My dear brothers and sisters, we must be realistic. Listening to Jesus, hearing, and heeding his voice in our life, is not always comfortable. Abraham discovered this, as we heard in the First Reading.

He was living happily and prosperously in the fertile land of Mesopotamia when God spoke to his heart. God invited him to leave behind his extended family, his business, his homeland, his security, his financial stability, his friends - everything, in fact. And he didn't even tell him where he was going. He just said, "Go to a land I will show you." But God had a plan for his life, a plan that would bring blessings to Abraham himself, and bring blessings to others through him.

Abraham listened. He didn't write off God's call to his heart, and he didn't ignore it. He stepped out of his comfort zone and put his trust in God. We can only imagine the turbulence it caused at first between him and his wife, and how awkward he must have felt trying to explain his decision to friends and colleagues.

St. Paul had a similar experience. He was on the fast track to success in the Jewish establishment when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and invited him to take a different path. And it was not an easy path.

That's why he writes to Timothy in the Second Reading, "Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God." Paul's share of hardship included multiple shipwrecks, imprisonments, calumnies, beatings, whippings, and, finally, martyrdom by having his head cut off.

Listening to Jesus, hearing and heeding his call, means accepting our share of hardship for the gospel. But it's well worth it. Otherwise, why would the Father have told us to do it?

"Taking Up" Something for Lent

Pope John Paul II said, in commenting on this Gospel passage, "Life changes when the heart has been 'conquered' by Christ" (JPII, Angelus, 24 February 2002).

We all love Christ, that's why we are here. But we are also here because we feel a need for our lives to change - we know we have not reached the spiritual maturity and peace of heart that we were created for. Our hearts need to be more fully conquered by Christ. But Christ is too respectful to conquer our hearts against our will.

Today the Father is inviting us to let ourselves be conquered anew by Jesus Christ. How? By spending more time in heartfelt prayer, by delving into the marvelous teachings of the Church, by steeping ourselves in the living waters of the Gospels and the rest of Holy Scripture, by accompanying Christ himself truly present in the Eucharist, by serving Christ in our needy neighbours, and most of all, by doing his will each day with faith, hope, and love, no matter the cost.

Most of us have probably given up something for Lent. That's good - it reminds us that we must govern our natural inclinations if we want to root sin out of our lives and become spiritually mature.

But maybe we also need to take up something for Lent. It is good to weed a garden, but it is equally necessary to water and fertilize, if we want the plants to grow. We still have most of Lent ahead of us. Let's take up something that will help us listen better to Jesus.

Christ is going to give himself to us again today in this Mass. Let's not leave without giving him something in return - a specific promise to become better listeners. 

Liturgical prayer is the official public worship of God by the Church as the Body of Christ. It tends to be more formal, with prescribed structure, rubrics, and words, and usually led by an ordained minister. The Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours are the most common examples of this sort of prayer. The documents of Vatican II speak of the Eucharist as "the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed" and "the font from which all her power flows," (Sacrosanctum concilium, 10). The Eucharist is the "fount and apex of the whole Christian life" (LG 11).

The Liturgy of the Hours, or Divine Office, is a liturgical prayer of praise based on the biblical prayer of the Jewish synagogues. In the early Church the Offices, or "hours." were celebrated both in the major churches and in the monasteries. The basic structure of an hour of the early cathedral Office would have included several psalms and canticles, the Gloria in excelsis, some intercessions, and a closing blessing and dismissal.

Vatican II sought to restore the original rhythm of the Office so that it might become again a prayer not just for priests and religious but for the entire Church (SC 100). It singled out Morning and Evening Prayer as "the two hinges on which the daily Office turns; hence they are to be considered the chief hours and are to be celebrated as such" (SC 89). Today the Liturgy of the Hours is prayed by an increasing number of lay Christians. Many religious communities pray the Office in the morning, at noon, and in evening, establishing a rhythm of prayer to the day.

Liturgical prayer is meant to unite the various parts of the Body of Christ into one body, with Christ, our High Priest at the head, represented by the deacon, priest, or bishop, leading us together to the Father. Because of the diversity of the members of the Body of Christ, liturgical prayer is more structured, with texts chosen from the rich history, scripture, and tradition of the Church, and focuses on the Paschal Mystery. In liturgical prayer, the royal priesthood of the baptized faithful is practiced as they offer the sacrifice of the Mass. There is not, however, much room for insertion of personal preferences or prayers. The liturgical prayer unites and transforms us – it changes us, we don't change it. It belongs to the whole Church, not to any one of us. It is the prayer to the Father by Christ, our High Priest who invites us to join into the life of the Trinity. Each liturgical celebration has a sacredness that surpasses anything else, so it is unmatched and irreplaceable (SC, 7).

Liturgical prayer and devotional prayer are meant to work together to lift our minds and hearts to God. Devotional prayer allows us to develop our personal relationship with the Lord according to the way that best suits each of us. That is why the type of devotional prayer one chooses is more subjective; even the manner of praying the same prayer may vary from one person to the next. Having established a relationship with the Lord in our devotional prayer life, we bring that to liturgical prayer, where it is united with the others in the Church and incorporated into the Paschal Mystery. Then both will form the foundation of a strong spiritual life.

Ultimately, between the two types of prayer, we learn to "pray constantly," to lift our minds and hearts to God at all times, as we walk together to our heavenly home. This is a difficult expectation, at least at first, but it gets better with practice. 

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if we only memorized one verse from the Bible, I would recommend the one we just heard: "Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."

If we happened to live 1000 years ago, I would probably recommend a different verse. But we live now. And right now, the biggest obstacle to our happiness and holiness is our culture's commercialist mentality.

The commercialist mentality says that all our problems can be solved by stuff, by bread. The commercialist mentality is the attitude encouraged by the commercials, advertisements, and billboards that we run into a hundred times a day, every day. The commercialist mentality says that if we have the right bank account, the right house, the right vacation spot, the right outfits, the right software, and the right job, everything will be all right.

All of these material things, all these loaves of bread, are good. They are part of this wonderful creation that God has generously given to us. But they are not enough. They are necessary, but insufficient. They cannot solve our most important problems.

Because the human soul is much greater than a machine. We need something much greater than fuel and axel grease to make our lives run smoothly. We need truth. We need to know and follow the truth about who we are and what we were created for. We need to drink in the truth that we are loved by God, personally, and that we are called to love him in return, with all the power and creativity of our being.

The deepest part of our soul is hungering not for bread, but for the Word of God, Jesus Christ, who is himself incarnate Truth and Love.

Story of An Expensive Orphanage

Imagine a family in which the mom and dad both have very successful careers. They make plenty of money and are quickly climbing to the top of their professions.

They can afford to give their children all the best things: a beautiful house with a huge property; the most prestigious schools; personal coaches for each child's favourite hobbies and sports; a full-time grounds keeper and a full-time housekeeper.

But because the parents' professions are very competitive, both mom and dad have to work extremely long hours. So they never see their children - not even on weekends, not even on vacation.

On the material side, those children would have everything. Yet, they wouldn't have the most important thing: a living relationship with their parents. For all practical purposes, they would be living in an expensive orphanage.

Those children will not be happy or healthy. They will not grow up to be well-balanced, self-confident, and capable of communicating with others, loving others, and making meaningful commitments. That's what today's culture is like. It's so focused on money and the pleasures money can buy, that it has tried to cut us off from our Father, from God.

But we cannot live on bread alone. Our minds, hearts, and souls also need to feed on God's Word - the Word of his love and truth, the Word that is Christ, present in the Eucharist. If that same family made less money (even a lot less), but was full of real, open, dynamic relationships, those kids would have a much better chance at a meaningful life.

Just so, our relationship with God, our friendship with Christ - this is what gives meaning to everything else. It lasts forever, unlike even the most expensive loaves of bread.

Renewing Our Commitment to Christ

Lent is a time when the Church invites us to pay special attention to God's Word, to the truth that Christ came to reveal to us - so that we don't forget what's most important.

There are many ways to do this. It could be as simple as spending fifteen minutes a day reading and reflecting on the Scriptures. It could mean taking more time to turn off the noise all around us and read, calmly and reflectively, a good spiritual book or a biography of Jesus Christ.

It could mean taking one of the weekends during Lent to go on a retreat - to go somewhere away from our normal surroundings and rediscover God's forgiveness and wisdom. It could mean finally following through on the commitment made long ago to really take time to study the catechism - that hidden treasure house of Catholic doctrine and wisdom that we pay much too little attention to.

Today Jesus will renew his commitment to us by coming once again, body, blood, soul and divinity, in the sacrifice of this Mass, and by offering himself to us as the true bread from heaven in Holy Communion.

When he does, let's renew our commitment to him. Let's not leave this church today until we have decided how we can best respond during this Lent to whatever inspiration God has placed in our hearts.

Jesus doesn't want this Lent to be "just another Lent." He has something he wants to do for each one of us, something that will help us grow in our knowledge of the truth and in our ability to live accordingly. Let's give him the chance.

Contemplative prayer is a prayer of loving attentiveness to God's mysterious presence, even though that presence is not directly experienced but known only in faith. The prayer the young Samuel learns from the priest Eli provides a model: "Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening" (1 Sam 3:9). While mental prayer involves the active use of our faculties of imagination and intellect, contemplative prayer is more quiet, receptive, and affective. It is a prayer of the heart, a focus, a quiet awareness of God's presence sensed deep within us or suggested by the silence and solitude of a natural vista-a grassy meadow under an infinite blue sky or the heavens at night filled with stars. Sometimes that presence moves us to pray affectively, praising, loving asking pardon. Thus, contemplation involves not so much the imagination or discursive reason as it does the heart.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who perhaps more than anyone else brought contemplation to the attention of contemporary men and women, describes it as a deepening of faith to the point where the union with God already given in our very nature is realized and experienced. It is not the result of some psychological trick but a genuine grace, something that comes as a gift and not as the result of our own use of special techniques. In his poetic language Merton describes contemplation as a door opening in the center of our being through which we seem to fall into an immense depth of silence and presence while our ordinary powers of thinking and imagination are stilled. It is at this point, when our natural faculties are quiet and in darkness and prayer becomes a simple awareness, that contemplation begins to shade into what spiritual writers describe as "infused" contemplation, the first stages of mystical prayer. The latter should not be associated with extraordinary phenomena such as voices, visions, and levitations. It is better understood as a heightening of contemplative prayer, in which a person enters into a more profound awareness of God's mysterious presence.

The Church has been enriched enormously by its spiritual teachers and its mystics, men and women like Bernard of Clairvaux, Catherine of Siena, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Jean Gerson, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis de Sales, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton. Mysticism is very much part of the Catholic tradition. But contemplative prayer is not something limited to mystics or those living the monastic or religious life; it can be practiced by all Christians. Today many people find what is known as "centering" prayer a helpful preparation for contemplative prayer. Centering prayer can quiet the mind and imagination and focus one's awareness. The approach is simple; one sits quietly with the eyes closed and turns in faith toward God, ignoring the thoughts and images that continue to flow from the imagination. Many find it helpful to use a "sacred word" such as "Abba" or "Lord Jesus" to focus their attention. When the mind wanders off, one simply returns to the sacred word. Centering prayer is related to the ancient Eastern tradition variously known as Hesychasm (from the Greek hesychia, meaning "quiet" or "stillness") or the Jesus Prayer, a way of centering oneself by repeating over and over again "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me." 

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, when Jesus says, "You have learnt how it was said," he is making a clear reference to the Old Covenant, the Law of Moses. That Law gave the Jewish people their unique standing among all the nations of the world because God himself had given it to them - God's finger had inscribed the tablets of the law.

For 1500 years, Israel's prophets and rabbis had interpreted it, applied it to changing circumstances, and exhorted the people to live it out. But never in those fifteen centuries had a faithful Israelite ever claimed authority over it.

After all, the Law had come directly from the Lord, so who could possibly have authority over it? So, when Jesus says, "… but I say to you…" implying an addition to the Law, his listeners are faced with something entirely new, someone who claims authority over the Law of Moses. He is requiring of them a new allegiance and making way for a New Covenant. The Sermon on the Mount was revolutionary not only in its ideas, but in the claims of the Lord who gave it.

And this claim, this implicit claim to have authority over divine law and, therefore, to actually be divine, has consequences. It means that his commands demand obedience. In the ancient world, obedience to a ruler was a familiar concept. In today's world, dominated by political democracies, it has become less so.

In fact, today's critical, self-sufficient, democratic mindset (so useful for politics) can even seep into the Church (where it's much less useful). But the truth of Christ doesn't change with fashions and referendums. In our relationship with Jesus and his Church, humble obedience to legitimate authority is a virtue, not a vice.

Obedience, for us Christians, is a positive virtue, not a necessary evil. It is such a central aspect of human life and spiritual maturity, that it even makes its appearance in the Ten Commandments, God's own list of our most basic moral responsibilities.

The Fourth Commandment tells us: "Honour your father and mother." This commandment singles out the obedience that we owe to our parents, but it doesn't stop there. Parents are the first authority figures. God delegates to them his own authority so that they can raise children properly.

But all of human society is full of relationships of authority. Legitimate authority always requires our obedience, unless that authority is being abused and trying to lead us into sin.

Imagine if everyone tried to invent their own traffic laws, instead of following the laws instituted by the legitimate authority. There would be chaos on the streets and driving would be unsafe. With the Fourth Commandment, God is teaching us that we all need to live the virtue of obedience to legitimate authority, instead of the vice of self-centered rebellion and anarchy.

Here is how the Catechism explains this aspect of the Fourth Commandment. As we listen to it, let's reflect on how we are living it out: 2199 The fourth commandment is addressed expressly to children in their relationship to their father and mother, because this relationship is the most universal. It likewise concerns the ties of kinship between members of the extended family. It requires honour, affection, and gratitude toward elders and ancestors. Finally, it extends to the duties of pupils to teachers, employees to employers, subordinates to leaders, citizens to their country, and to those who administer or govern it.

This commandment includes and presupposes the duties of parents, instructors, teachers, leaders, magistrates, those who govern, all who exercise authority over others or over a community of persons.

Jesus is the Lord, and if we claim to be his followers, we need to treat him like that by living authentically the virtue of obedience. And if we do, we will give him more room to bless us.

The Fourth Commandment, in fact, is the first one that points this out. As the Catechism explains: 2200 Observing the fourth commandment brings its reward: "Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you." Respecting this commandment provides, along with spiritual fruits, temporal fruits of peace and prosperity. Conversely, failure to observe it brings great harm to communities and to individuals.

As we continue with this Mass, let's renew our faith in Christ, the Lord, and let's ask him for the courage we need to obey whatever he commands. 

Mental Prayer

When we pray discursively, using our minds and imaginations to unite ourselves with God or to consider some divine mystery, we are doing mental prayer. Meditation is the most common form of mental prayer.

The Bible is a particularly rich source for meditation. We can ponder a passage of Scripture, reading it over, savoring its language and imagery, letting the Lord speak to us through the text. We can meditate on a scene from the life of Jesus, imagining the cure of the blind man for example, placing ourselves in the scene, taking the part of one of the characters in the story, seeing ourselves as the blind man, calling out to Jesus (or perhaps finding ourselves reluctant to approach him), feeling his touch, opening our eyes as for the firs time. When we meditate on the life of Jesus in the Gospels we allow its imagery and language gradually to become our own. More importantly, in making a kind of imaginative contact with the person of Jesus presented to us in the gospel mysteries, we discover the correspondence between his humanity and our own; Jesus becomes more real to us, and so we grow in love and appreciation of the Lord we cannot see.

One very fruitful way of growing in prayer is to take each day a brief passage from a particular Gospel, not a whole chapter but one a miracle story, a teaching or saying-and using it for our prayer. Some people find it helpful to see the readings for the liturgy of the day, listed in any missalette, for their daily prayer. This has the advantage of uniting them in their prayer with the liturgy or of preparing them for the liturgy if they are able to participate in the Mass on a daily basis. Others find helpful using a book of brief meditations such as the classic Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis.

Other forms of mental or discursive prayer might include a meditative reading of Scripture, a spiritual reading, doing an examination of conscience or "consciousness examen"-which means looking for God's presence in the events of our daily lives-or keeping a personal journal in which we reflect on our prayer experience and our personal spiritual journey. Those who pray regularly often find that they are led gradually from discursive prayer to a simpler, more contemplative way of praying. 

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, in this Sunday First Reading, Sirach reminds us that our life, from here to eternity, is built on our choices. The Lord created us as free beings, but with freedom comes responsibility.

We always have to "own" what we have done and what we have failed to do, which is why we make a Penitential Act at the start of every celebration of the Eucharist. Sirach doesn't just remind us today that we're free to choose; he encourages us to make the right choices.

God's Commandments reflect God's wisdom, and that not only makes them good choices, but the best choices, even if sometimes in the uncertainty of faith we have to trust in God in making his choices our choices.

In the Second Reading, St. Paul reminds us that our choices shouldn't be done just out of obligation, but out of love. They have to be choices made from the heart, or they'll never achieve their full potential.

The world has a wisdom to it, but its surface has to be scratched to realize how superficial that wisdom can be. Sometimes scratching below the surface reveals "wisdom" to be folly.

The best attitude of a wise man is to acknowledge how much he doesn't know. That's what makes him always continue to seek wisdom. Wisdom is not just an accumulation of information; it is an insight into the big picture. God not only has the big picture, he "painted" it, and he unveils it little by little if we pay attention and seek to learn.

However, Paul gives us a shortcut to getting the big picture: love. We've been created by God out of love and all he wants in return is our love. He wants it, but love is incredible in that you can't make someone love you; it's the greatest and freest choice you can make. A hint of coercion and it's not love. Nobody who has chosen not to love is every truly happy.

Then, in the Gospel, Our Lord teaches us that all the commandments have a purpose and reflect a wisdom that can shape our lives for the better if we choose to observe them from the heart. In his discourse he is also calling out those who observe the commandments superficially and without heart.

God doesn't do anything pointless; everything is part of his loving plan for us. He hasn't come to simply discard the old covenant, the "law and the prophets," as never having had any purpose at all. Rather, he puts the old covenant's purpose into context. In his own words he did not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfil them.

A common recurring defense today for a watered down life ethic is, "hey, at least I'm not killing anybody." Our Lord reminds us that not killing anybody is good, but we have to go way beyond that if we don't want to be Pharisaical. When we can say, "hey, at least I don't hate anybody," we're getting closer to the mark. In a violent world maybe sometimes we look the other way in the face of a lack of kindness, but Our Lord today reminds us to go the distance and not only not kill anybody, but to actually be kind to everybody.

When tempers flare and rash words are said the best thing to do, as Our Lord teaches, is to try to make amends as soon as possible and simply apologize. If we live a life of cruel and cold justice, focusing especially on the justice due to us, we'll be in for a surprise when the eternal Judge brings us to "court" by the same harsh standards to which we held others. As Our Lord's prayer reminds us, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Our Lord teaches us that chastity starts in the heart. The eyes are the windows to our soul, and if we start ogling and fantasizing a radical response is needed if we are to preserve our chastity and keep our hearts pure, since no one can intervene regarding the hidden desires of the heart except ourselves. Our Lord reminds us that making a promise or giving testimony is a powerful thing. The promises we make give witness to who we are, and the witness we give is a testimony to how seriously we take our promises.

We've all experienced how unedifying it is when someone swears something to be true, promises to deliver on something, and then is revealed to have lied or fails to deliver, and not just because of circumstances beyond their control. When something is as simple as "Yes" or "No," as Our Lord teaches us today, there's no room for spin, for sophistry, for fine print, or for establishing little grey areas in our conscience instead of admitting we can or can't deliver on something or whether we know or don't know something.

Our Lord gives a laundry list of things the people of his day were using as collateral to show how serious they were about the oaths they made. He also puts his finger on the problem: that collateral is not theirs, nor is it under their control. It's not as common today, but when someone swears "on my life," or any other number of things or people, we are put on a guard, exactly because they are swearing on something over which they have no control or ownership and usually as a way of convincing others of their sincerity.

Spiritual writers speak of different kinds of private prayer: vocal and mental prayer, affective and discursive prayer, formal and spontaneous prayer, meditation, contemplation, and mystical prayer. But distinctions often break down as one type of prayer shades over into another. The vocal praying of the Rosary can easily lead to a contemplative centering of the person or to an imaginative meditation on the mysteries of the life of Jesus. A discursive meditation can simplify into contemplation, including the deep contemplation verging on what the tradition has called "infused" or "mystical" prayer. For the sake of clarity we will follow the traditional distinctions of vocal (oratio), mental (meditatio), and contemplative prayer (contemplatio), recognizing the limitations of the categories themselves.

Vocal Prayer

Vocal prayer is a way of addressing God using either formal as the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory to the Father, or simply sharing prayers with God the thoughts and concerns of our hearts in our own words. We should never think of such formal or conversational prayer as a kind of second-class prayer. Formal people want to pray but find themselves without the words to express their feelings, prayers can be a great help in those times when we particularly experience the emptiness we sometimes experience.

Praying to God conversationally can be a profound experience when we feel great interior joy or sorrow or struggle. We should be able to express ourselves freely to God when we are so moved. Both kinds of vocal prayer should be a part of our daily lives, just as sometimes we need to wait for the Lord in silence and expectation. What is important is that we pray honestly from the heart rather than trying to force something that doesn't truly express our inner feelings.

Some kinds of vocal prayer call not just on our minds and feelings but on our bodies and imaginations. The Rosary is an ancient method of prayer that combines simple prayers hallowed by the tradition with brief meditations on events in the life of Jesus and Our Lady. It is a kind of mantra prayer, quieting the mind and the imagination by fingering the beads and repeating over and over the simple words of the Hail Mary while focusing on the mystery the annunciation, the birth of Jesus, his crucifixion, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and so forth. The Stations of the Cross is another prayer that combines vocal prayer and meditation on the mysteries of Christ's passion with bodily movement, sometimes standing, sometimes kneeling, walking with Jesus from one scene to the next. 

My dear brothers and sisters, Jesus chose his words carefully – including the words we listened to in this Sunday Mass. They are part of his famous Sermon on the Mount, which is like a highlight film of all his sermons.

Christianity is not a message or revelation about a God who remains distant. God was near, not far and that we could open ourselves to God's presence. In Augustine's words, God is more intimate to me than I am to myself. God's self-revelation in the person of Jesus means that God is both the giver and the gift itself. In Jesus, who made us his brothers and sisters and poured out upon us his Spirit, we have been given a share in God's inner life as a Trinity of persons. Christian prayer is always Trinitarian; we pray to the Father in the Son through the Spirit. A great part of the mystery of the Trinity is precisely the mystery of our own share in the divine life. "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him" (John 14:23).

One theme has unified all of Pope Benedict XVI's homilies and speeches since the publication of his last encyclical, "Saved by Hope."

He has been talking to us, his spiritual children in Christ, and also to the rest of the world, insistently about one thing: hope. Hope is a supernatural virtue. That means that when we were baptized, when God poured his grace into our soul, he also planted there the seed of hope.

And like all virtues, whether the seed takes root, grows, and bears fruit depends on us. Virtues are like talents: they are given to us in potential, and it is up to us to develop them, through disciplined practice.

Some people are gifted with a talent for music, but unless they study and practice, the talent will not reach its full potential. Some people are gifted with a talent for sports, but unless they study and practice, that talent cannot reach its full potential.

As Christians, we have all been gifted with the virtue of hope, along with faith and Christian love, or charity. But unless we put these virtues into action, they cannot reach their full potential, and if they don't reach their full potential, we will never really grow up as Christians.

Since the Pope has been speaking about this virtue so insistently, it would be good for us to give ourselves a check-up on it, to see why this virtue is so important, and how well-developed it is in our lives, and what we can do to make it grow.

The Beatitudes Tell Us What Hope Is

First, let's look at what hope really is. We have just listened to the beginning of Jesus' first homily. In those few verses, he sums up all his teaching on how to live life to the full. Each one of the eight Beatitudes is phrased in the same way, a very curious way.

First Jesus says, "Blessed are..." and then he names a specific type of suffering. The first thing to note in this construction is the word "Blessed". This is one of the most important words in the Bible. It is always used to refer to the fullness of life that comes only to those who follow God.

The Greek word used for it in the New Testament is "makarios" [mah- CAR-ee-ohss]. That word comes from the name of an island that the ancient Greeks considered to be a perfect paradise. The people who lived on that island were completely self-sufficient. They had no need to depend on outside sources for their prosperity, since the island was so perfectly situated and endowed.

And this is the impression that the word "blessed" should give us: the kind of happiness that is so strong and stable that not even the storms and sufferings of life in the world can shake it; the deep, interior sense of joy and meaning that we all long to experience, because we are made to experience.

But the amazing thing about these Beatitudes, the ones Jesus teaches, is where they say this perfect blessedness can be found. They say that we can experience it on earth - each time, Jesus says, "blessed ARE..."

But that experience can only come if our hearts are set on heaven, on Christ's Kingdom, on friendship with God. If we want anything else more than that - food, wealth, fame, comfort, power, praise - if we set our hearts on those things, we will not experience the blessedness that Christ wants to give us.

But as soon as we accept the hard reality that earth will never be heaven, that nothing on earth can fulfill our heart's desire completely, that we will always experience limitations like hunger, humiliation, sorrow, temptation, and injustice - in other words, as soon as we accept fully that this life is a journey to a fuller life, then we will begin to experience that fuller life, in part, even here and now, along the journey. And this is exactly what we mean by the Christian virtue of hope: the assurance that if we stay united to Christ here on earth, we will experience fulfillment, blessedness, more and more, until we are filled completely in heaven.

Why Hope Is Important

Now that we have a clearer idea of what Christian hope really is, we can understand how crucial it is for us to develop this virtue. Since all of us desire fulfillment more than we desire anything else - that's how God made us - if we aren't seeking it in the right place, we can't help seeking it in the wrong place.

But if we look for blessedness in the wrong place, are lives will fall apart, sooner or later. Hope is our compass: if we don't use it, we will get lost, fall off a cliff, get eaten by wild animals, or starve to death - spiritually speaking. Hope is our anchor: without it, we will be tossed into the rocks by life's storms and end up shipwrecked.

Hope is like magnetism. We are like a piece of metal, and the magnet is blessedness, which is God, the source of all blessings. When the piece of metal is far away from the magnet, it experiences only a slight pull, only a slight degree of blessedness. But the closer the piece of the metal comes to the magnet, the stronger the pull, the more intense the experience of blessedness. Finally, the metal is drawn into direct contact with the magnet - the perfection of blessedness, in heaven.

The better we know and follow Christ, our magnet, the more fully we experience life as he created it to be experienced. In his encyclical, Pope Benedict pointed out that sometimes we get too used to the fact that, as Christians, the mystery of human happiness has been revealed to us. He wrote, "We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God" (Spe salvi, 3).

How to Grow in Hope

What can we do to grow in this life-changing virtue? The whole Bible is an answer to this question. All the teachings of the Church are an answer to this question. The entire life of a Christian is really an exercise of the virtue of hope. And the more we exercise it, the more it grows.

We exercise hope when we follow the commandments: as Zephaniah says in the First Reading: "They shall do no wrong and speak no lies." This exercises hope because it usually involves renouncing a desire for gratification now in order to continue forward on the path that leads to true gratification later, the path of following Christ.

Sometimes telling a lie, cooking the account books, or covering up a dishonest deed would seem to be a shortcut to blessedness. But the virtue of hope shouts in our conscience: "Blessedness comes from closeness to God, not from earthly goods." When we listen to that voice, doing the right thing even when it hurts, we are exercising hope.

We also exercise hope when we take our spiritual life seriously. Again the Prophet Zephaniah puts it well: "Seek the Lord... seek justice, seek humility." When we try to learn to pray better, to study our faith, to live the sacraments more and more deeply - all of this exercises the virtue of hope, because it takes effort, and the results don't always come right away; it's a long-term investment.

Today the Church has reminded us of one of the most precious gifts we received at our baptism: the virtue of hope. When Jesus comes to us again in Holy Communion, he will nourish that virtue, as sunlight nourishes a garden. When he does, let's talk to him about what we can do this week, on our part, to help that virtue grow, to tend to the garden of our soul.

Because, as Pope Benedict wrote: "...the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey" (Spe salvi, 1)