Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
"Lent is God's Alarm Clock: Why We Need 40 Days" | March 30, 2025
In this episode, we explore how Lent prepares us to fully encounter the proclamation of Easter Sunday and the risen Christ. The 40 days of Lent tune our spiritual ears to hear what we might otherwise miss.
• The resurrection accounts in the New Testament show that even Jesus' closest followers needed help recognizing him
• Encountering the risen Christ always came after hearing the proclamation that he was risen
• Our experiences today connect directly to those first witnesses through the chain of testimony
• Doubt has been part of Christian experience from the beginning
• The three Lenten practices—fasting, prayer, and almsgiving—help us see the world differently
• Fasting interrupts our normal patterns and opens us to new awareness
• Prayer invites God's presence into the details of our lives
• Giving alms changes our relationship with the poor and reminds us of God's generosity
Join us in the weeks ahead as we continue exploring the profound power of the Lord's resurrection.
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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.
This is Living Catholic with Father Don Wolfe. This show deals with living the Catholic faith in our time, discovering God's presence in our lives and finding hope in His Word. And now your host, father Don Wolfe.
Speaker 2:Welcome, oklahoma to Living Catholic. I'm Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. As we grow through the discipline of Lent, we're focused on shaping our lives so that, when Easter Sunday arrives, we're ready to encounter the proclamation of Easter Sunday. While this may sound somewhat anticlimactic, given the penance and abstinence we're asked to do during these 40 days, it is the heart of Lent. In fact, it's the heart of the faith. This is why this season is important to all of us and why we're asked to take it seriously. Not only that, there are a few tips the tradition of the church provides for us as a way to make these days really count. Going through the New Testament, we're invited to see that the encounter with the risen Christ on Easter Sunday morning is something of a confusion for those who experience it. While they came to the tomb and were puzzled by what they saw since they were expecting what they had every right to expect, that it contained the body of their friend they were even more puzzled when they encountered the figure of Jesus resurrected. In fact, the accounts all acknowledge that each encounter was a time of difficulty and anxiety, because the ones who saw Jesus didn't know what or who they were seeing. They needed help to understand. And why wouldn't they?
Speaker 2:Resurrection is not something you run into every day. In fact, it's the first time that this victory over death has taken place. Yes, there are accounts of those gods and goddesses who went into the underworld, for example, and came out, and there are those accounts of those who were killed and came back to life. But in each of these cases they were part of mythic stories or they simply picked up life where they left off. Jesus, the man human in all ways we're human was killed and then resurrected. He didn't just come back to life, he was transformed into the victory over death. Death could not hold him and when he was present among those who knew him best, they didn't quite recognize him.
Speaker 2:In every case, those closest to Jesus needed some help in seeing and recognizing. They had to be urged or invited to see and understand what this was and who was present to them. Most importantly, they had to be told about the resurrection and what it meant for them. And centrally, the message was that they were going to go to Galilee where they would find him. There. They were to return home where the story of Jesus and their friendship and discipleship began and they would encounter him there. Once they got that message, they were in shape to ready themselves for meeting him.
Speaker 2:Most importantly, every encounter with Jesus, the resurrected one, was preceded by a proclamation of the event. When the women came to the tomb, it's not clear exactly what they saw, but whatever it was, whether a man dressed in white or an angel who spoke to them, they had to hear it from that person that Jesus was risen. As we said before, even the community of Jerusalem on Easter Sunday assured the disciples who just arrived from Emmaus with the message that Jesus had appeared to them that they already knew because they had heard about it from Peter. Jesus had appeared to Peter and Peter had told the rest of them. The church on the first day of Jesus' resurrected life heard it by way of the proclamation of Peter. Whether subtly or overtly.
Speaker 2:The message from the pages of the New Testament is that we who live in these days after the first generation, from the pages of the New Testament, is that we who live in these days after the first generation receive the message of the resurrection in exactly the same way as those who were present there in Jerusalem on that very Sunday did. It is by way of the proclamation of the resurrection that we are in touch with the resurrected Christ, just as the church in Jerusalem, just as the women at the tomb who came to the dark on Easter morning were. They heard of it and then strove to make sense of it by way of a message given to them. It's what we do on Easter Sunday morning all around the world as we read the stories of the resurrection. We are just as they were. Our encounter of the resurrection is equal to theirs and equally powerful. That's the heart of the message.
Speaker 2:The stories even include the expressed doubts of those who at first didn't believe what was happening. All over the stories from these first days are the doubts of the disciples whether what they were experiencing really was the resurrection Jesus had spoken about? In the future, we can consider why this must have been so difficult. Are the doubts of the disciples whether what they were experiencing really was the resurrection Jesus had spoken about? In the future, we can consider why this must have been so difficult to see him and not know him, or to see him and not understand what was going on, although everyone else knew it to be the case? At the very least, we can add this testimony to buttress our experience. Doubt is part of the common experience of the church and has been so from the beginning. It takes some doing, some work to get to where we can see and understand Jesus for who he is and what has become of him.
Speaker 2:While we don't often point to this powerful reality, the stories highlight that the resurrection at the heart of our faith in Jesus is a testimony that connects us historically to Christ himself. St Paul made this point more than once when he reminded his readers that they were the product of the testimony of those who had experienced Jesus risen from the dead. If they cared to look, he said, they could find someone who knew, someone who had seen the risen Christ In Paul's time. This would simply be a matter of traveling to the right place and looking for those who were actual witnesses. For us, it's acknowledging that the proclamation we engage in on Easter Sunday has as its origin the actual experience of those who are walking, talking and acting on that day and in the days to follow. It would be possible, with enough time, to find all of the links in the chain of testimony to take us back to the actual day of Easter and provide us with the living words of those who had seen and experienced all that took place.
Speaker 2:The resurrection wasn't mystical in that no one saw Jesus, but only felt like they had had some sort of experience. It also wasn't hidden in that no one could see, except maybe at night, or only in one place or only at one time, and, according to St Paul, it wasn't limited to the special apostles and disciples of Jesus who had followed him for years. Paul himself was an example of one of those who had no idea and no interest in encountering the risen Christ, and yet he did. Jesus rising from the dead was, in this sense, a public event. It was an event placed in the lives of those who were in Jerusalem and then in Galilee, an event they eventually had to come to terms with in their own lives. In short, their lives were changed by what they saw and how they experienced it. It would appear that no one simply saw it and then walked away. They were changed by it.
Speaker 2:We have to remember the disciples went into the world to make this proclamation and they went everywhere. It may have begun on Easter Sunday in Jerusalem, but it didn't stay there. Belief in Jesus spread all over the Jewish world and even, to the puzzlement of the believers in Jesus, into the pagan world, before they knew it, even before they could account for it themselves. The message of Christ risen from the dead was out and it was changing the lives of those who heard it. From the day of Christ risen from the dead was out and it was changing the lives of those who heard it. From the day of resurrection up to today, the message is present and it is offered to those who hear it as the cornerstone of a life not limited by the powers of this world.
Speaker 2:And Lent is the invitation for us to hear this proclamation. That's what Lent is all about, because we all know that unless we're ready, unless our hearts are turned in the right direction, in our ears tuned to the right frequency, we can miss its importance, even its presence in our lives. It's not easy to hear. Spending 40 days preparing ourselves and tuning our ears gives us a chance to receive the message and to bolster what we've heard in the past. This may sound a bit extreme, something left over from a time when rigor and discipline were much more popular than now, but of course, hearing and understanding is never easy, especially when the message is something new or it's inviting us to act or to be different. We can take a lesson in this from, of all things, the movie my Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.
Speaker 2:The main character is a travel agent who goes to the famous sites in the world, leading tours. In one scene she's on the tour bus instructing the people about where they're going and how long they're going to be there. She's businesslike and friendly, telling everybody what they ought to do. She says we're only going to be here an hour. It's just as you've seen it in pictures your whole life. So take your cameras along and take your pictures here and you can leave all of the things on the bus while we go in. It'll be locked and everything will be secure. It's all the normal stuff you'd hear on just about any tour. But just as soon as she's finished speaking, someone asks Can we take our cameras? Another says Is it safe to leave our things on the bus Immediately? Another says how much time should we plan to be here? The dialogue's really funny, all the more so if you've been on trips like this, because it's so typical People.
Speaker 2:All of us really have a hard time hearing what's said to us. It's especially difficult when we're not paying attention, when we're surrounded by what's common enough or unthreatening enough that we don't tilt our ears to pick up what's being said. Preparing to listen is vital, or else we're liable to miss everything. In fact, this is the greatest complaint, in fact, about Catholic education over the last several generations. A student, the complaint goes, can go from class from kindergarten to senior in college and attend mass several times a week for all those years and still sleepwalk through the proclamation of the Lordship of Jesus in our lives. It's possible to spend 20 years in school Not listening. I suppose the same thing could be said about most things. Actually, how many spouses have you heard of who, in 20 years, haven't been able to hear what their spouses are saying to them? Hearing takes preparation and without it nothing gets in. And if nothing gets in, increasing the volume or the frequency of it or even the subtlety of it won't pass the barrier. So preparation to hear is everything.
Speaker 2:In the tradition of the church, there are three ways recommended so that we can prick up our ears and begin to hear what normally just gets past us. Those three ways are fasting, prayer and giving alms. I know those things don't sound groundbreaking, but, as GK Chesterton once wrote, it takes real courage to tell a truism. Partly it's because everyone's heard it before and isn't in the mood to hear it again, and partly it's because we have an interesting resistance to hearing the truth when we know it to be true and it lies like a log against the road we're traveling on. Fasting, prayer and giving alms are old truisms. We ought to listen to these recommendations, just because they've been repeated for so long.
Speaker 2:First, fasting To deny ourselves something in the course of these 40 days is often the very definition of what Lent means. We're invited to give up something for this time as a way to attune our senses to the world around us, and the mechanism is easy to understand. When we go without in some measure, when our habits and common practices are interrupted, we begin to notice things we didn't notice before. It's a common spiritual practice, but it's also very much embedded in all human experience, no matter where it's recorded. When we get out of the rut we're in, we experience the world in a different way. In that difference, we have a chance to begin to see what we might not have seen otherwise. In that difference, we have a chance to begin to see what we might not have seen otherwise.
Speaker 2:After all, it's not an accident that when Jesus was in the wilderness fasting for 40 days, he experienced temptation there. It wasn't just because his fasting weakened him, since he'd gone without food for so long, but also because, in the interruption of his normal experience, ideas about making his life easier through divine power or becoming notable and famous, or perhaps availing himself of the powers of the state to get his message across, all those things floated into his consciousness. It only takes a little change and suddenly our lives are open to all kinds of new notions or to a new hearing. Our lives are open to all kinds of new notions or to a new hearing. Jesus, as a result of his fasting, could also receive the ministry of angels who aided him during his time in the desert. Even the Son of God could hear and experience what would not have been available to him unless he had foregone something of the day in order to open his ears and his mind to the world around him. Foregone something of the day in order to open his ears and his mind to the world around him.
Speaker 2:If this sounds a bit overblown in its claim simply fast for 24 hours. I'm not recommending it as a Lenten penance or as a way to grow holy or any spiritual discipline. I only suggest it as a way to begin to understand what fasting is all about. Going 24 hours without eating begins to reshape what you think of what's normal and it begins to make you notice how fragile you really are. In some cases it can even make you feel a bit empowered, since you've gone all that time without eating and you've overcome the challenge. But whatever happens, you won't feel the same, certainly not the same as when you've overcome the challenge. But whatever happens, you won't feel the same, certainly not the same as when you've had three meals. You might even begin to notice some things you haven't noticed before, like how incredibly comfortable our lives are, and that's what fasting does. It lifts us out of the normal and allows us to see the layers and the events we don't normally see.
Speaker 2:Fasting doesn't have to be extreme, although it can be. The Cistercian monks were famous for the long Lenten fasts that were solemn and tough in their monasteries. Or it doesn't even have to be with going without. In the book the Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, the author relates that at Gethsemane Monastery, where Thomas Merton was a monk. They ate sweet potatoes as their meal three times a day for 240 days in a row. While that sounds even more extreme, it's also a reminder that, in the history of the world, our ancestors were much more in tune with that experience than with any other. It provides a sense of continuity and understanding with the past we might not have.
Speaker 2:The truth is, any alteration in how we eat or how we go about our day is enough to invite us to consider the world differently. An unfulfilled appetite permits our other appetites to show themselves, including the appetite for holiness or even the desire for change. Fasting is a good thing. Prayer, of course, is also recommended. That seems like a no-brainer.
Speaker 2:Anyone who wants to get closer to the work of God in the world should pray, and while there are a hundred recommendations for how to initiate a discipline like this and all of them are equally good we should remember that prayer is to begin or to deepen our relationship with God. That's what it is. That's the premium. It's what the prayer schedules and the prayers recommended to us, or the times we spend in silence and meditation, are all about. We're invited to include God and the awareness of God's presence in our lives. By way of this, we begin to get a glimmer of the promises of God's accompaniment and the working of God's plans in our lives. We might even have the opportunity to experience that the details of our lives can be lived in response to God's direction and intervention can be lived in response to God's direction and intervention. If you don't think that's true, then just try it. Try being attentive to the promise of the presence of God in your life in the smallest part of what you do for 40 days and see where it leads you. What you'll find is that God becomes a steady presence, a real accompaniment to the project of your life, not simply an idea or an obligation.
Speaker 2:In one of the exorcism stories in the Gospels, the disciples of Jesus are having a hard time dealing with a man who's possessed by a demon. They make no progress in naming and casting out this evil presence. When Jesus comes on the scene, he commands the demon to leave, which he does by violently throwing the possessed person to the ground. Everyone is amazed, especially the non-believers. Later on, in private, the disciples want to know what they did wrong and Jesus assures them that this type of evil presence can only be cast out by prayer and fasting. Only by becoming enabled by the fullest awareness of God's presence and power are the disciples able to address these challenges that come to them. In the accounts I've read of the exorcists who are at work in dioceses around the country, they regularly fast and spend long hours in prayer before they address the mnemonic among the people. They're called to minister to. Fasting and praying make a difference to those who practice it.
Speaker 2:Even the demons notice. The third leg of this tripod of recommendations is to give alms, that is, we are enjoined to help the poor. It's curious that we often include this element on our list of Lenten practices but we almost never spend much time developing it. Partly it's because it's so straightforward it's hardly a mystery how to give so as to help the poor. But I find in my own ministry that I'm a bit hesitant to recommend this discipline because it can lead to misunderstanding. That is, I don't want people thinking that I've told them to give money somewhere or to some group as a way for their sins to be forgiven or their Lenten obligations to be satisfied. People, after all, are funny about church and money. I don't want to tempt them to think suspiciously about the invitation to deepen their lives in Christ.
Speaker 2:In southern Oklahoma, one of the pastors there would always end his penance rite by inviting the assembled crowd to do one of a variety of penances, including giving alms to the poor. At the end of the rite, a collection would be taken up and the money given to the food pantry or to St Vincent de Paul's Society, so that it would go directly to the support of those most in need. And when I heard of it, I lauded the effort. It produced good fruit and was directly in line with the traditions of the scriptures and the teaching of the church. And yet I was always a little nervous about what people would think when they heard the words penance, forgiveness of sins and collection all in the same sentence. So, legitimate or not, we shy away from the shadows cast by these associations. But giving to the poor to relieve their suffering is nothing scandalous or problematic. If anything, it's laudable for the same reason as prayer and fasting, that is, it offers the chance to change the relationship we have with the content of our lives. In fasting, we interrupt the insularity we have concerning what we need to sustain ourselves and our relationship to the goods of the world. In prayer, we respond to the invitation to bring God into the interstices of our lives. By giving alms, we alter the relationship we have with the poor. In all these practices, the normal and the everyday take a backseat. A backseat to the opportunity to see and understand differently and therefore to begin to act differently in our lives.
Speaker 2:When we stretch out our hands to fulfill a need among those most in need, we connect with them and for their need. If nothing else, it reminds us of our needs and how we meet them. In its fullest sense, it connects us with the fundamental truth of God at work in the world, which is that God is at work in the world through us. Those most in need depend on God alone, for there is never enough time for them. That's why they're in need, and God depends on us to bridge the distance between what we have done and what is needed. We don't wait on the angels to come down from heaven to give us bread for the hungry. We wait on someone to provide it. Plus, our invitation to give alms as part of our Lenten discipline is the invitation to pause for a moment to consider what we need and then how our lives are satisfied.
Speaker 2:Everyone lives dependent on the cycle of giving and receiving, no matter how successful we are or self-sufficient we are, it is the goodness of our lives, blessed by the generosity of creation, that gives us what we need, and the greatest and most important element of what we have received comes to us through the generosity of others and not through our own efforts. The love of our parents, the goodness of the land, the beneficence of those loyal to us, the forgiveness of God, the grace of life. All of these things come to us through wild, selfless giving, when we run into those whose needs are not met. We're challenged to remember the true source of our lives and the goodness of them. If we can dig into our pockets to give, we might pause for a moment and recall where our goodness comes from. Doing that is the chance to remember God at work in our lives. It's important and it's necessary. Lent is the time when we prepare ourselves. A good Lent angles us toward the proclamation of Easter Sunday, when we hear that Jesus is risen and has risen. Indeed, if our hearts and ears are open, our lives might change, which in itself sounds like a good investment. Back in just a moment. Welcome back to our final segment, faith.
Speaker 2:In Verse, we have a poem today called the Empty House.
Speaker 2:Staying once in an empty house caused me to ask what makes the homes we form adequate to the task of the shelter necessary for our important roles as we make our way, in the course of days, to our goals. To make the world a place of promise. To shape the ground below as we tease the airy thoughts above us, to form our common soul. A roof, yes, to keep out the harsher elements of rain and snow as the weather peaks and valleys in its winters pour and blow. Walls to block the sharp and ever ceaseless winds. That cold and heat be singular, not twin, along with the necessary furniture to populate the space, having the area for all those who join us apace. But more than architecture and square footage figures, a home protects against all earth's rigors. Without a willing soul to choose to transmutate, it's a floor, an empty shell in a blanked space. That's the empty house. It's good of you to join us for Living Catholic, we'll be present here in the weeks to come, especially as we explore the profundity and the power of the Lord's resurrection.
Speaker 1:I hope you can be with us then. Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more visit okcrorg.