            <div id="father_cummings_title">Father Cummings Homilies</div>
            <div id="father_cummings_excerpts">Excerpts</div><br/><br/>
            <div id="father_cummings_homily_title">Journey of Conversion</div>  

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               <p>Lent is not just pious custom. It is a journey of conversion in the Holy 
                    Spirit, encountering God in our life. Only when we make a "desert" for 
                    ourselves through solitude, emptiness, poverty, and various practices 
                    of self-denial will we be able to meet God and acknowledge Him as the 
                    most important person in our lives. Lent is a real opportunity. A time 
                    for grace. A time for grace which will make us strong for a battle that 
                    is otherwise too much for us. A chance to change our lives, to get out 
                    of ruts that we are in, which lead us where we don't want to go. </p>
                  <p>We may not know exactly where to start to make our Lent fruitful. I suggest 
                    that - alone in a "desert" with some sort of fasting and prayer- we try 
                    to identify what is our biggest obstacle in our attempt to live like Christ. 
                    Then determine to tear down that idol during the year, beginning in a 
                    big way during Lent. If we worked on eliminating just one vice a year, 
                    and building up its opposite virtue, we would be perfect in a very short 
                    time. Let us say that you decide you are envious, because you see that 
                    you are always a bit sad when others succeed, and are noticed, and you 
                    are not. Perhaps you even see that you tend to criticize others for this 
                    reason, and speak of their faults. Well, then, for you, you must fast 
                    and pray for the strength to overcome this. Your greatest sacrifice will 
                    be speaking well of others, extolling those people that you envy most. </p>
                  <p>We must not be discouraged at the necessity of this fight against temptation. 
                    It should not depress us. Indeed, it is, in a sense, the reason we were 
                    baptized. The fathers saw baptism as induction into an army. We were given 
                    weapons like the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the virtues of Christ. As 
                    St. John Chrysostom says "You did not receive weapons so that you might 
                    sit at ease but so that you might fight!" So let us wage war on one of 
                    our defects that keep us from the Lord. Then, when Easter comes, we will 
                    be able to celebrate the new life of Christ in us! 
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