From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for The Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (2026 February 15)

Feb 15 - 6th Sunday

Remember Lent? Well, it’s back. Your favorite time of year: when the natural world is thawing out and the world invites you to rejoice and frolic, but the Church makes you punish yourself by being sad and finding ways to suffer more than you already do. So you can appreciate Easter all the more!

It may feel like that. But in truth, Lent is about learning how to rejoice and take delight rightly. To do that, we have to unlearn that worldly way of feasting which actually is an ever-deeper dive into increasing internal misery and disorder in our relationships. Yes: woe to those who never make a good Lent! Their lives are a continual descent into the dead of winter, whatever the weather is like outside!

What recoils from the discipline of the forty days is our flesh: that insatiable, impetuous underlord of our souls… if our spirit allows it to rule our decision making. The flesh is what grows fearful over all the comforts it “can’t live without,” and the thought of doing anything difficult for longer than we feel like it. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing,” observes Qoholeth, “nor the ear filled with hearing” (Eccl 1:8), nor self-will with getting its way. And the flesh will never learn to be content with less until we teach it that it is not in control and that it must accept what it is given, which is always less than it might like. 

St. Paul commands Christians to “walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would” (Gal 5:16-17). Because of that opposition, one cannot serve both; only one can be the master. Yet we must serve one, the flesh or the Spirit: either we live to gratify ourselves, or we live to gratify God. Man will either seek delight in pleasing himself, or he will seek (and find!) delight in pleasing God. Thus St. Augustine was able to divide all of mankind into two camps, two cities: “[And the] two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; and the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self” (City of God, 14.28). 

Those who choose to “sow in the seedbed of the flesh,” says St. Paul, “will reap a harvest of corruption” (cf. Gal 6:8). In other words, those who obediently serve the passions and appetites of the body will be paid in the currency of sin– “immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing,” etc. (Gal 5:19-21) –the wages of which are slavery and death. But those who refuse to obey every prompting of the flesh, but rather take their marching orders from the Spirit of Truth, will know the freedom of the spirit, and reap a better harvest: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control;” i.e., the best of things (Gal 5:22). 

Lent is about choosing (again, and again) to which camp we will belong; which god we will serve: the Lord, or our stomachs (see Phil 3:19). Here, it's worth remembering that “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 16:25). Yes, the discipline of Lent does involve suffering and death… for that part of us that wishes to live according to the flesh. But it’s the hard narrow path that leads to true life: eternal life in the Spirit who brings freedom wherever He goes (cf. 2 Cor 3:17). And so: be fearless and bold in making your Lenten resolutions, friends! In these matters, it is merciful to be a little cruel with your selfish self. It’s not about piling on suffering or suffocating springtime joy; it’s about choosing wisely who we seek to please, and being willing to disappoint or even do a little violence to the desires of the flesh, remembering that “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and men of violence take it by force” (Mt 11:12).  

From the Heart of the Shepherd: The Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time