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Scripture:

Jeremiah 17:5-10
Luke 16:19-31

Reflection:

In this story Luke tells us that possessions are not a hindrance to discipleship, but brings additional responsibilities on those who possess it. It also happens that the “Pharisees were lovers of your monies.” (16:9) .    The Pharisees derided Jesus when he told them this.  In fact, literally Luke says that they “turned up their noses at Him!”  In Judaism possessions material possessions were supposed to be a sign of God’s favor.  In this story, the Pharisees are presented here as a slave to their possessions.

Jesus tells the Pharisees to make friends with the mammon as wickedness.  That is make wise use of  your wealth otherwise it will possess  you and make you its slave.  Jesus continues to teach that the  great acts of religion are Prayer, Fasting, and Alms.  In other words we are all called to serve the poor.

Recently, Pope Francis was asked about what to do when the panhandlers on the streets ask you for money.  Pope Francis recommended that you give him/her something if you are able.  The questioner says he would hesitate to do this because the money is likely to be used unwisely.  Pope Francis suggested that it is better to give something to the panhandler than not to give.  It is always better to respond in a spirit of compassion and not worry about how the money is used.

Jesus tells the story of the Lazarus and Dives.  This is the only parable in which the name of the recipient of the miracle is given a name, i.e. “Lazarus” (God helps).  In the Septuagint the rich man is named “Dives” In the parable Dives is introduced first.  He is dressed in “purple!”  Purple was a color used only for ranking Roman Officials.

Lazarus is covered with open sores.  He obviously is disabled, because he is “thrown” before the gates of Dives home.  All he desires is to eat the scraps intended for the dogs.  It was the crumbs of bread the diners used to clean the grease off their hands, and was thrown under the table for the dogs.  The dogs were allowed to lick Lazarus’ wounds.  It is not clear how Lazarus dies.  It could have been from freezing, or  disease or starvation.

Both Dives and Lazarus die.  Lazarus is “carried away” and Dives simply “dies!”  In the first part of the parable Dives was introduced first then Lazarus.  In this the second part of the parable Lazarus is introduced first then Dives!  For the first time a dialogue enters the story.  However, it is not between Lazarus and Dives, but between Abraham and Dives.  Abraham speaks for the Lazarus, the beggar who had no voice.  On earth he never asked for anything.  Here in the “bosom of Abraham” he says nothing.

Dives asks Abraham to send Lazarus to provide him with a glass of water.  Even in heaven Lazarus is a servant!  Dives knows Lazarus’ name.  Dives is so bold that he calls himself “Abraham’s son!”   Dives asks that Lazarus go and tell his brothers that they must change their lives.  Abraham says “No!”  There are not privileges for those who ignore the poor at their door.

Fr. Ken O’Malley, C.P., is the formation director and local superior at Holy Name Passionist Community in Houston, Texas.

Scripture:

Jeremiah 18:18-20
Matthew 20:17-28

Reflection:

When we read this passage of Mathew’s gospel we are struck by the irony contained in it.  Jesus and the disciples are on the way to Jerusalem. We have watched the mounting opposition of the scribes and Pharisees and the chief priests. They are the power brokers and opinion makers of the Jewish people. Jesus knows his fate. He takes his disciples aside and clearly predicts his arrest, condemnation to death through crucifixion by the gentiles (the Romans) and his resurrection on the third day!  We can assume that only the Twelve heard this ominous warning for immediately after Mathew relates the story of the mother of James and John asking Jesus to give her sons seats of honor in his coming kingdom! Maybe at first it seemed that there would be a kingdom.

For as the small caravan enters Jerusalem they are greeted with shouts of joy: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Those acclamations would soon change to: “Crucify him, crucify him!” Jesus again sets the apostles straight as to his fate: “The Son of man did not come to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.”  How many times do we have to be reminded of what it means to be a follower of Jesus?

Fr. Michael Hoolahan, C.P. is on the staff of Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California.

Scripture:

Isaiah 1:10, 16-20
Matthew 23:1-12

Reflection:

In the gospel this past Sunday we heard Our Father in heaven during the Transfiguration of Our Lord proclaim, “This is my beloved son, listen to Him”.  Listen to Him.  What sound, simple advice that I know I do not always follow.  In today’s first reading we hear the prophet Isiah also telling us to “Listen to the instruction of Our God”.  How well do I actually listen to the words of Our Lord??  Applying that wisdom to today’s Gospel, Our Lord has much to say.  A summary of what He says to us might be as follows: be careful to not just preach but put into practice what we have been taught and know to be right, or when we see others struggle we should do all we can to help them, or to insure you are not seeking the honor and praise of your fellow man.  Instead, serve others and always be humble.

What great advice if we would just listen.  What a great list of things to do for lent.  For me the thing to work on most is serving others and being humble.  I often think “serving others” has to be an intentional activity that I set out to do, like volunteering at the local food pantry.  While that is certainly serving others, it can also be more simple and spontaneous like letting another in line before me, handing out a McDonald’s gift card to the guy on the corner with the sign, pausing to hold a door open for someone.  All have me thinking of others more than myself.   Serving our neighbor has the added effect of humbling me as well.  The Lord had to know that would be true.

So even though we are already more than a week into Lent, I am going to look each day for opportunities to simply and quietly serve others.  I am also going to go through the Gospels and look for the words Jesus actually spoke.  Listening to them, and reflecting on them, I will hopefully learn more of what the Lord thinks would be good for me, and incorporate them into my Lenten practices.

Steve Walsh is a retreatant at Mater Dolorosa Retreat Center in Sierra Madre ,and a good friend of the Passionist Community

Scripture:

Daniel 9:4b-10
Luke 6:36-38

Reflection:

There is a story about Abba Moses, one of the Desert Fathers, who was invited to join a council assembled for the purpose of making a judgement on a brother who had committed a fault. He refused to go until he was told everyone was waiting for him. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water, and carried it with him. As the story goes, the others came out to meet him and asked what he was doing. He replied, “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the error of another.” According to the story they said no more and forgave the brother.

I believe this is what Jesus is saying to us in today’s Gospel. Luke places these words on Jesus’ lips in his section called the Sermon on the Plain which closely mirrors Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Our text today is sandwiched between the Beatitudes and his exhortation to remove the log from our eye before taking the splinter from our brother.

Scholars will suggest that Jesus in this text is telling us to leave the judging of salvation or damnation to God. We hear a stern warning to those who might take on God’s role; they may end up condemning themselves. Rather, we are to hear the boundless mercy of God and act on that instead. Frankly, this is a much harder task; impossible without the grace of God in our lives. Humanity balks at these exhortations—love my enemies, be merciful, do good to those who hurt me, forgive, forgive, forgive. I can do so well in most instances because I do want to be a child of the Most High (v.35), I want to challenge myself to see with the mind of Christ as St. Paul teaches. This desire is often in tension with my idea of fairness. Is it fair that I must suffer through a hurt, to let it go while the person who hurt me gets off? Make no mistake, when un-forgiveness lies between family members, friends or co-workers suffering is there and where there is suffering the Crucified Lord is also there.

Brothers and sisters, let us lean into the merciful love offered to us from the Cross. Let us recklessly abandon this darkness and pain in our lives and take even one step towards forgiveness. The journey may take a day or even a lifetime. Let us begin our liberation today and allow that abundance to flow—let us bring God’s justice to birth in our land. May we never more be shamefaced in attending to Jesus commands.

It is only through the grace of God that we can ever reach beyond our humanity to love one another.

Into your hands, O God, Most High, I place my desire to forgive and heal—to be your child. Breakthrough my humanity recklessly so that I may be your hands and feet reaching out with mercy. Amen

Jean Bowler is a retreatant at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center in Sierra Madre, California, and a member of the Office of Mission Effectiveness Board of Holy Cross Province.

Scripture:

Genesis 12:1-4a
2 Timothy 1:8b-10
Matthew 17:1-9

Reflection:

The imagery in today’s Gospel account of the Transfiguration of Jesus is so striking that it can be very difficult to relate that moment in Jesus life to our own.  After all, “his face shone as the sun…his clothes became as white as light.”  And, Moses and Elijah appeared at his side and a voice from heaven confirmed that God was pleased with Jesus, God’s Son!  Wow, what an exciting moment that must have been!

The reaction of Peter, James and John is a bit more familiar to us, “they fell prostrate and were very much afraid.”  There have been moments in all our lives when we were so overwhelmed with events that we’ve been very much afraid and fallen to the ground, figuratively if not literally.  The experience of having to face challenges in our lives that are beyond our strength or abilities is one we all have way too often in our lives.

That must have been how Abram felt when, in our first Reading today, God told him to pack up his household and go “to a place I will show you.”  It takes a lot of faith to step out of our safe, familiar world, into the unknown…even when asked to do so by God.

Timothy, too, was asked to do a task that was beyond his experience; to become the leader of the whole Christian community in Ephesus.  St. Paul tells him in today’s second reading. “Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”  St. Paul reminds Timothy, and us, that it isn’t his or our personal strength that is important.  God will give the strength and wisdom necessary to complete the task that God gives us.

As we continue on our Lenten journey of deepening our faith and trust in God, sooner or later most of us come to realize that we don’t have the ability on our own to change the things in our lives that are holding us back from a deeper love for God.   But that realization need not discourage us.  The Scriptures today remind us that the strength we need “comes from God.”  And, it doesn’t come from God at some nebulous future point in time, but it is bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began….”  So, contrary what we may feel, even fear, about our inability to change, we can by the power of God, a power clearly revealed in Christ’s love for us.  We pray for openness to God’s transforming love today.

Fr. Michael Higgins, C.P. is the director of Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California.

Scripture:

Deuteronomy 26:16-19
Matthew 5:43-48

Reflection:

“Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”

This must have been a startling teaching for the original audience of the Sermon on the Mount.  For first-century Jews, “your enemies” and “those who persecute you” were most obviously the despised Roman oppressors. But Jesus challenged his disciples to love and to pray for the very people who occupy their land, tax them heavily and treat them harshly and unjustly.

His teaching, however, is no more shocking than the example of love for enemy recounted by Dr. Carolyn Woo, president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services.  She recalls the story of Amy Biehl, a young American and anti-apartheid activist who was serving the people of South Africa.  In 1993, just days before Amy was scheduled to return to the United States for graduate school, militants murdered her just outside Cape Town.

Her parents, Dr. Woo, says, “turned their unspeakable sorrow into service grounded in a deep understanding of the oppression that bred the hatred responsible for their daughter’s death.”  Linda and Peter Biehl created a foundation to improve the lives of South Africans through education, job training, art, music, and sports.  The most shocking – or perhaps the most grace-filled – moment came when two of the young men responsible for Amy’s death stepped forward to continue her work and spread her legacy.

The kind of radical love and forgiveness displayed by the Biehls is precisely what Jesus calls us all to embrace.  When we respond to persecution by loving  and forgiving our enemies, we take on the characteristics of the Father himself “who makes his sun rise on the bad and good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”

Deacon Manuel Valencia is on the staff at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California.

Scripture:

Ezekiel 18:21-28
Matthew 5:20-26

Reflection:

In antiquity, people generally believed that God operated by quid pro quo. If you were a good person who obeyed the rules, you would be happy, wealthy, and wise, with a good family and a long life. Anything bad that happened was God’s punishment for your sins. Anyone who suffered terribly must be a terrible sinner, or God would not have “done that” to the person.

We now know, both from other biblical writers and from Jesus, that God does not operate that way. The rain falls and the sun shines on the just and the unjust. Sometimes terrible things happen to wonderful people, and wonderful things happen to terrible people. God is not the ultimate punisher waiting with bated breath to send calamities upon us for our every misstep.  And yet that belief continues. I so often hear people ask, “Why did God do this to me? I’m a good person! I don’t deserve this!”

I have been facing those reactions this week. My 54-year-old brother Jim has stage 4 glioblastoma, the most deadly form of cancer that exists. Treatment buys time — perhaps only months and maybe, if we’re lucky, a few good years. When others find out what is happening, I have been asked what Jim did to bring this on himself, and I’ve been told repeatedly that God did this to him for some reason.

Jim is a truly exceptional person. He is highly intelligent and successful, extremely competitive, and never does anything halfway. Yet he is a softie, with a generous heart that knows no bounds, a deep genuine love for his family and friends, and integrity that can’t be topped. Everyone trusts Jim, respects him, and loves him. So how can it be that this young, strong, healthy, incomparable man is facing a death sentence?

There really aren’t any answers, other than the fact that this is the way life is. Most assuredly, he is not being punished for his sins. Nor do I believe God planted a cancer in his brain. Rather, life is not fair and death is inevitable. God created us as finite people with an unpredictably limited lifespan on this earth. There is no logic or rationale to who dies young and who lives to old age. There are some things we can do to increase the chances one way or the other, but we are not in control. We truly never know when an illness, an accident, or a malevolent action by someone else will end a life.

So instead of asking “Why?” my approach is twofold. First, I pray for healing. I believe with every fiber of my being that God will answer that prayer, yet just as surely I know that God’s healing is not always the physical kind of healing we most want. It will be whatever kind of healing Jim most needs. It could be spiritual healing, or a healing of relationships, or a resolution of doubt, or the grace to cope, or even healing into a peaceful death. So I ask, and then with quivering heart and as much trust as I can muster, I place Jim into the hands of the One who loves him beyond anything I can comprehend.

My second approach is to change the question of “Why?” into “What now?” What can I do to best support Jim and family as he endures treatment and an uncertain prognosis? How can I spend more time in prayer and rely on those who love me to gain the sustenance I need? To whom can I provide a listening ear, an absorbent shoulder, or a companion through the darkness? How can I enter fully into my grief, walking into the tomb with Christ, while clinging (sometimes by my fingernails) to my fervent belief in the never-ending cycle of the Paschal Mystery – that out of death, somehow resurrection and life will follow?

As we continue into Lent — this season of spiritual growth, repentance, and the passion of Christ — I find myself echoing the psalmist: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!” And this is my prayer: Gracious and gentle God, heal Jim in the ways he most needs healing. Look into the empty spaces within him, his wife, and his family, and fill them with your grace, love, and peace. At the same time, guide my steps. Grant me wisdom, and help me be your instrument. Continue to blow your sustaining Spirit into our hearts as we follow wherever this leads. Sustain us in your love, and bring us to the other side.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. Amen.

Amy Florian is a teacher and consultant working in Chicago.  For many years she has partnered with the Passionists.  Visit Amy’s website: http://www.corgenius.com/. 

Scripture:

Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25
Matthew 7:7-12

 

Reflection:

The Spiritual Work of Counsel

This Saturday evening the Jewish Community begins the feast of Purim, which celebrates how Queen Esther and her uncle Mordecai reverse the plans of Haman who intends to have Mordecai killed and then turn his hatred against all the Jewish people. We hear the fear in Esther’s heart, since to provoke the king could lead to her death. We hear that she feels alone, and she stands alone in faith before God. Still she is intertwined with her people; as she prays for herself her prayer is also a prayer for her people and a prayer of trust in God.

Something subtle is expressed in the telling of the story of Esther. When she shares her fear with her uncle, he offers her profound counsel, “who knows but that it was for a time like this that you became queen”? In this frightful time of hopelessness, when more is asked of you than you can bear, could God not be placing you here, to be the one who can do what no one else can?

In Lent we think often of the Corporal Works of Mercy, but alongside of them are the Spiritual Works of Mercy. One of the Spiritual works of Mercy is Counsel. Esther receives guidance and courage through her uncle, Mordecai; Jesus tells us to ask and we will receive, seek and we will find. We listen to the voices through which God speaks to us so we know how to hope, what to ask for.

We sometimes are in the role of giving counsel, at other times we may seek counsel, knocking at the door of wisdom and asking the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

We ought not forget that the story of Esther like many stories of heroes and heroines is played out among us often. I heard the story of a young military nurse in her 20’s who was transferred from a comfortable assignment in the States to a battlefield hospital in the Mekong Delta during the height of the Vietnam war. She was almost immobilized with fear when she received a new assignment. Upon arriving she spoke with a priest of her fear before beginning her work. Only a week later an attack destroyed the hospital and everyone in it, save one soldier, who was found alive. Protectively covering his body was that of the young nurse who was caring for him. The words of counsel from Esther’s uncle may well fit the sacrifice of that nurse, ‘who knows that it was just for this time that you were meant to be here’. She went to save lives and she fulfilled that in the most profound way. The blood that flowed from her gave life to the unknown man that she was working to save.

When we feel alone we can trust in God who hears our prayer. We must seek, knock and ask. Where do we begin? When our requests are surrounded by fear and uncertainty what do we do? Counsel is important for heroes and heroines and for you and I as we take up our cross and follow Christ. This Lenten day we may consider the Spiritual work of offering Counsel that gives support and helps to clarify what God is asking someone. Also to open our hearts to the Counsel that God is offering us through the many voices through which God speaks to us.

Fr. William Murphy, CP is the pastor of Immaculate Conception parish in Jamaica, New York.