"40 Day Challenge" - 6th Sunday Homily

If you were not here last weekend, we had the collection for the 2026 Annual Catholic Services Appeal.

When you leave tonight, please see the poster in the gathering space.

You can use a QR code on the poster to make your pledge online or fill out a card that's on the table and mail it.

Thank you for your support of the charitable work of our Archdiocese through the Appeal.

Whenever I prepare couples for marriage

Most of them, I have to give a 30-day challenge of chastity.

They're months away from their wedding.

It's a long stretch.

So my thinking with a 30-day challenge, that's much more doable.

Because the big ask to wait all that time, let's just do it in increments, focusing on chastity as every couple should.

But for some, it's a long stretch.

And it helps them, makes it more manageable.

We can approach Lent starting on

Wednesday, same way.

It's a 40-day challenge from Jesus.

to live not only chastity but all the virtues.

And paying attention to the Gospel, He's inviting us, challenging us to go deeper than the commandments.

Yeah, you've heard it said, but I say to you, it's this surpassing righteousness, it's really the Beatitudes.

So this 40 day challenge, again, it's a segment of time.

It's rather better to focus on just 40 days, although it feels pretty long when we're in it.

Then all year long, all the time, I can focus in on 40 days.

And it's not huge stuff.

Like, live the Beatitudes, start tomorrow.

It's taking a little step towards that.

Little stuff we want to give up.

Again, at the moment, it's not a little thing to give up sweets or the second cup of coffee.

But it's little things, appetites, little appetites for food and drink that we build a discipline to then go to the bigger appetites, the bigger passions, bigger stuff with sin.

Jesus lists two of them, anger and lust.

And so Lent us have time for us to build discipline, hopefully continue it with big stuff like anger and lust.

Each of these is based in pride.

When temptation hits, the evil one tempts us with anger, lust, and our pride latches onto it.

With anger, the

Pride says, how dare you do that to me?

I'll show you.

With lust, something's presented to us and pride kicks in saying, yeah, I want that.

I deserve that.

So it's based in pride and selfishness.

And it's really important to build that control of our passions, our appetites.

And there are techniques from the church that are really helpful as we

Begin the 40-day challenge on Wednesday.

So with anger, might consider these during Lent.

With anger, the world says pray, count to 10.

It's good advice.

Takes the same amount of time to pray Hail Mary.

That's in the moment.

A lot of times our passions are running us in the moment, and then later on we're like, what happened?

So it might be good to anticipate situations at work or at home that you might expect or anticipate getting angry, to pray beforehand.

You pray in general for meekness.

That's the virtue that controls anger.

Jesus says, am meek and humble of hearts, which means he got angry.

We know he got angry a lot.

dealing with the disciples, the religious leaders, and sinners.

But yet, he only acted out like once or twice, maybe.

His meekness controlled that anger.

So a good exercise in Lent, like a spiritual thing to do, would be read the Gospel like a chapter a day and focus in on Jesus.

How did he control his anger?

How did he deal with all the stuff like imperfection and everything around him?

Where he didn't explode.

like we like to do.

That virtue of meekness can really help.

Lust, I recommend strongly whispering the name of Jesus, Jesus, to yourself when you're tempted.

We are no match for the evil one in temptation, but the evil one is no match for Jesus and His holy name.

So it's a nice thing to do to pray, but it's also invoking power.

powerful name of Jesus.

Really strong technique in the church.

have a card in our gathering space called the freedom of chastity and it talks about Saint Augustine who went from playboy to saint.

He used reason to control desires.

So a reason would be there's nothing good here.

Why do I fall for this every time?

It looks good, it feels good for a moment or two but then oh man there's the guilt and the shame and

Separation from Christ, from the Eucharist, from my family, it's not worth it.

That's like hindsight.

That's nice to have foresight or in the midst of sight to have it at the ready to say, it's just a mirage, man.

Get real buddy.

You'll never be with that person.

Whatever it is, the reasons we can think of now, why can't I think of that in the moment?

To repeat regularly when you're not tempted.

That when temptation comes, you're ready.

Reason can control desires.

It really sizes up the situation.

Because again, so many times we give in to temptation, like, what was I thinking?

I mean, I wasn't thinking.

That's right.

So reason can keep us mindful, keep us thinking, and size it up.

That when we say yes to stuff we shouldn't, it's not as good as we think.

And the bad will rise to good ultimately.

But when we say no to things we shouldn't, that's what we really want to do.

to actually say no to our desires that are sinful.

We're like slaves to sin, scripture says.

That's our tradition.

That's our experience.

One time to say no to that is freedom.

it's so nice.

And peace, and joy, and happiness.

There's pleasure, which again is fading, then there's happiness.

That comes with Christ.

So this life that he calls us to,

It's an overwhelming call, it's intimidating, but we want to take one little step in this 40-day challenge to live the life that He calls us to and we really want to live, truly.