Peter’s exclamation in today’s Gospel reading catches my attention dear friends. The Church invites us today to reflect upon the Transfiguration of Jesus and to touch upon the experience of his three disciples ‘up the mountain.’

The Gospel for the first Sunday of Lent, in all three years of the lectionary cycle, is devoted to the temptation of Jesus in the desert.

As this edition of In the Word reaches your inbox we are about to enter the Lenten season, a time traditionally set apart for repentance and deepening the spiritual life through prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

All of those activities are good and I will certainly give them my best shot. But what if, this Lent, as well as turning to the Word, we were also to deepen our spiritual life by more actively seeking to love our neighbour?

‘I gave his mother the money for his abortion, now look at him and see what I got.’ These were the words of Ae’s father when we drove to our Mother Mary Home for teenagers in Northeastern Thailand. 

Dear friends, we are in the First Sunday of Lent, and the liturgy of the day invites us to look forward to these forty days of grace and hold firm to our faith,