Sermon for The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Jeremiah 17:5-8 + 1 Corinthians 15:12,16-20 + Luke 6:17,20-26
February 16, 2025

Lent starts soon.  Now is the time to be reflecting on how to make the most of Lent this year.

One suggestion, which you can incorporate along with your customary Lenten practices that you take up every year, is to make a weekly Holy Hour during each week of Lent.

Sometimes people will discourage themselves from the practice of a Holy Hour.  They tell themselves that you can only make a Holy Hour when there is Solemn Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament:  that is, when the Eucharist is solemnly shown in a gold monstrance that rests upon the altar, flanked by candles.

That solemn form of Adoration is a powerful means of prayer.  It’s a powerful means of communion with the Lord Jesus.  However, that solemn form of Adoration is not the only way to make a Holy Hour.  A simpler Holy Hour can be made simply by entering a church where Jesus is present in the tabernacle, and by spending an hour in a pew in His presence.

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However, there’s also another reason by which people will sometimes discourage themselves from making a Holy Hour.  They ask themselves, “What in the world am I going to do for an entire hour?”  “I’m just supposed to sit there in church, for an entire hour?”

The fact is that no two Christians who make spiritually fruitful Holy Hours will do so in the same way.  Think of it like this:  imagine that a father has four children.  He sets a goal for himself.  Each week, he’s going to spend one hour with each of his children:  one hour alone each week with each of his children.

Now, how is he going to spend those four hours?  He’s not going to spend all four hours in the same way.  He’s going to spend each hour in a way that best allows him to bond with that particular child.  He might go fishing with the first child, but with the second spend time fixing something in the garage, with the third spend time reading a book, and with the fourth spend time in the kitchen.  It all depends on the uniqueness of the child.

This analogy helps us understand something important about the Holy Hour.  No two Christians are going to spend a Holy Hour in the same way.

Of course, from an exterior perspective—looking from the outside in—it might seem that two Christians spend their Holy Hours in the same way.  From an exterior point of view, those two persons both spend their hours in the pew, in the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament.  But the Holy Hour is not an exterior experience.  It’s an interior experience.

What takes place interiorly during a Holy Hour differs from person to person, for at least two reasons.

First, God the Father loves each of His children uniquely, because each child is unique.  So God the Father speaks to each of His children uniquely when each makes a Holy Hour.

Second, because each Christian is unique, she or he has her or his unique way of relating to God.  Each Christian has her or his own temperament and gifts, and these bear upon how she or he relates to, and speaks to, God.

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With that in mind, consider four different ways that a Christian might spend time during a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament.

The first is to spend time praying devotions.  Devotions include the Rosary; the Divine Mercy Chaplet; any number of litanies, such as the Litany of the Sacred Heart, the litany to Our Blessed Mother, known as the Litany of Loretto, and the Litany of Trust;  as well as any number of novenas, such as the Surrender Novena, the St. Thérèse Novena, and the St. Jude Novena.  Starting on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, you’ll find copies of some of these devotions in the back of church.

The second way to spend time during a Holy Hour is spiritual reading.  Of course, the best spiritual reading is from the best book there is:  the Good Book.  But Sacred Scripture is in a category by itself, in the third way to spend time during a Holy Hour.  Here in this second way—which is simply called “spiritual reading”—the reading matter is any excellent book about the spiritual life.  A good rule of thumb is that if it’s still in print, the older it is, the better it is, especially if it was written by a canonized saint.  Examples include The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, or The Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, or True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort.

The third way to spend time during a Holy Hour is Sacred Scripture.  This is not simply “spiritual reading”.  Instead, through the twenty centuries of the Church’s history, saints have developed a four-step means of fully engaging oneself in—or you might say, “wrestling with”—God’s Word.  Briefly, these four steps are lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio:  that is, reading Scripture, meditating upon Scripture, praying from Scripture, and contemplation with the Word of God Himself.

That leads to the fourth and final way to spend time during a Holy Hour.  The first three ways that I mentioned are just suggestions.  They’re optional.  There are many other ways of spending time during a Holy Hour besides those three.  However, the fourth way is essential.  You might even say it’s the goal of spending time in Adoration:  namely, contemplation.  On the homepage of our parish website, I’ve put a link to a webpage from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, explaining the Church’s teaching on the stage of prayer called contemplation.  In the simplest terms, contemplation is what the saints in Heaven are engaged in:  direct, prayerful communion with God.  That’s what contemplation is, or at least, is meant to be.  Oftentimes, when we here on earth pray, we’re distracted by both good and bad things.  These diminish our focus.  But all of prayer, even if it’s simple and even if it’s weak while we’re on earth, is a preparation for, and a foretaste of, life with God forever in Heaven.