Rather than subordinate our own ambitions and desires to God’s plan, we often close our ears and tune out his voice.

With the smartphone now functioning as an essential anatomical appendage, it is harder than it has ever been to make distinctions, to turn off the noise, to say “Enough.”

The freshness and wonder, the way that what was there before still exists but is now shot through with newness. The city glitters. Why not? Lent is the season of baptismal preparation as much as penance.

We have experienced God’s benevolent interventions in our own lives.

Jesus asks us to be generous with the poor. It’s one of the foundations of his public ministry: caring for the poor himself and asking his disciples to do so.

We are invited, today, to listen—and as the psalmist today colorfully puts it, God has even done us the courtesy of digging out our ears so that we can hear.