Claire Smith

Scripture:

Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-15

Reflection:

“If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet.   John 13:15

This evening we begin the Triduum, the three holiest days of the year for Catholics. The Triduum begins with the celebration of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. The reading from Exodus recalls the origins of the Passover celebration of the Jewish people, who will celebrate this feast tomorrow. The lamb is slain and the blood is used to protect the people from the final plague, the Angel of Death. The blood was applied to the door posts so that the Angel of Death would know not to visit these houses. The Hebrew people were then freed from slavery in Egypt. These past 40 days of Lent was a time for us to change ourselves through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It was an opportunity to free ourselves from those things that keep us from God and to grow closer to God.

How have I changed these past 40 days?

The reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians recalls the words of the Eucharist as it was celebrated in the early Church. We still hears those words today in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Words that are two thousand years old that recall the night when Jesus took the bread and wine of the Passover feast and instituted the celebration of the Eucharist. Jesus brings forth a “new covenant” for all who believe in him. Humanity is now freed from the slavery of sin.

The Gospel of John recalls Jesus’ and the Apostles celebration of the Passover feast with a different focus than the Synoptic Gospels. Matthew, Mark and Luke have Jesus blessing the bread and wine and calling them his Body and Blood and asking the Apostles to “do this in remembrance of me.” The Gospel of John takes a different focus. Jesus, the Son of God enters the house and prepares to wash the Apostles feet. Foot washing was the role of the lowest ranking servant in the house. Imagine the shock when Jesus takes on this role. The lowest servant would have been in shock, Peter is the one who objects and the other Apostles would have had a variety of shocked looks on their faces. For them, their teacher, rabbi, is taking the role of a servant. The Son of God humbled himself to wash the muck off of the feet of the Apostles and then tells them they must do the same for each other. If the Son of God can lower himself to do the least desirable job then as Christians we too must be willing to do those tasks that seem small and not important.

Linda Schork is a theology teacher at Saint Xavier High School in Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Matthew 26:14-25

Reflection:

By the time you read this reflection we will be immersed in the great celebration of Holy Week.  It is an exciting time in the life of every Christian and especially for the RCIA Elect as they journey to the Easter Sacraments. Oh Happy Day!

The gospel today recounts the familiar story of the Passover meal Jesus ate with his disciples followed by the betrayal of Judas.  BETRAYAL is such a personal insult on our very being, hurtful to the core and long lasting for the most part.  I often think of Judas and wonder what things happened to him in his life that led him to commit this sin of betrayal.  Did he grow up surrounded by betrayers, by people he loved and trusted at one time and then betrayed him.  We are reminded often that all that God created was Good.  Does this mean Judas and others who appear to be like him are really good? Let’s hope so. I think if we are all honest with ourselves we have to admit that we are guilty of the sin of betrayal.

The sin of betrayal causes us to hurt those we love with our indifference and self-centeredness,

The sin of betrayal tells us it’s okay to be silent and passive rather than challenge the corrupt practices of government and patriarchy that are rampant in our society and church today.

The sin of betrayal leads us to buy into the merits of infidelity, addiction, crime and violence that makes life difficult for those we love and care about.

The sin of betrayal rears its ugly head when we favor revenge over reconciliation.

Jesus ate the Passover meal with people he trusted and loved.  We live, work, pray and socialize with people we trust and love each day.  When the sin of betrayal enters in and messes up our world even a little bit we feel hurt, angry, alone and bereft.  Jesus felt all of these human emotions, but in his great love for us, he accepted death on the cross in order that we all may enjoy new life.

Let us enter into the Triduum celebrations, let us join the faithful at the Table of the Lord and be nourished.  Let us wash one anothers feet, let us embrace the pain of the cross on Good Friday, but most of all let us celebrate and live the Easter message!

Let us move from BETRAYAL to BEFRIENDING and glory in the Resurrection!

A new day is upon us REJOICE!  Easter Blessings to All.

Theresa Secord is a Pastoral Associate at St. Agnes Parish, Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture: 

Isaiah 49:1-6
John 13:21-33, 36-38

Reflection:

In the gospel this Tuesday in Holy Week we hear the whispers of what is to come on Good Friday.  During the breaking of the bread, Jesus calls out Judas as the one who will betray him.  At the same meal, Jesus tells Simon Peter of his denial in the coming days.  Evil choices are on the same table with the bread that is shared with love.  So often in life we find evil and good together.  It’s almost as though evil prompts the appearance of love.  Maybe that’s why we pray “deliver us from evil” in the same prayer we offer for the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth, the Our Father.

The dual presence of good and evil seems to present the challenge of our lives.  How do I work to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth where all is one in Christ?  During my work on disaster relief with the Red Cross, I always was astounded by the presence of evil in the form of a disaster side by side with the presence of love and good in the people helping one another.  Love appeared often in the eyes of the suffering and those trying to help even while evil mercilessly pounded their very existence.

The presence of love and evil during Holy Week is the essence of the paschal mystery we celebrate and cherish.  Surrendering to this mystery is the heart of our prayer and action.  Walking with Jesus during Holy Week is a walk with evil and good, love and betrayal, faithfulness and denial, side by side.  Lately I have felt challenged by evil in the form of suffering in people I love.  This challenge has resulted in my own growth in sensitivity toward others and what they are experiencing.  I am reminded of my own presence in God’s hands even while walking toward the Cross we must all experience.  The words from the prophet Isaiah comfort me on this journey through the paschal mystery.

“Hear me, O islands, listen, O distant peoples.  The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.”

The Lord knows all our names, even before we are born.  The Lord comforts me, even while I experience both good and evil.  May this remembrance comfort us all as we live the paschal mystery in our hearts and lives.

Terry McDevitt, Ph.D. is a member of our Passionist Family in Louisville, Kentucky.

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

Scripture:

Mark 11:1-10 or
John 12:12-16
Philippians 2:6-11
Mark 14:1-15:47

Reflection:

In her book entitled, “Dead Man Walking” Congregation of St. Joseph Sr. Helen Prejean narrates the story of her relationship with a young man on death row in the Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana; he is accused of murdering a teenage couple. At first, he is arrogant, racist, thundering his innocence. Eventually, he admits his guilt to Sr. Helen. As he is preparing for execution, he appeals to the boy’s father for forgiveness, and tells the girl’s parents he hopes his death brings them peace. While he is lead to a chamber where he will die by lethal injection, Sister Helen tells him to look beyond the glass panels where she will be… “to look at someone who loves you.”
Today’s readings speak to us of our vulnerable God, as a suffering servant, and Jesus who empties himself. And in the courtyard, the night before he dies, when Jesus’ gaze of love falls upon Peter, we are told the disciple runs away and weeps bitterly. This is the same Jesus who looks with love upon the rich young man in Mark’s (10:17-31) Gospel, encouraging him to sell everything, and follow him.

This Holy Week might be an appropriate time to again allow the loving gaze of Jesus to fall upon us. Our tears are very different from the ones we weep when we feel judged or humiliated. Admitting we are sinner, we recognize we are loved. And Jesus’ loving gaze transforms us.

Fr. Jack Conley, C.P. is a member of the Passionist formation community at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

Scripture:

Ezekiel 37:21-28
John 11:45-56

Reflection:

Christ Crucified Alive

 “You know nothing at all, nor do you take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people.”       John 11:49

Caiaphas as high priest tells us in today’s gospel that we do not take an inventory nor compute the value of the death of Jesus.   Devotion to the Passion of Christ means a lot more than ending the distress of our brothers and sisters around us.    All the actions and sufferings of Christ should be seen in real time and not just something that has happened 2000 years ago.  The actions of the Divine Jesus in His earthly life are not merely contained or limited by past time.   The sufferings of Christ are caught up in the eternal presence of His divinity.

I find St Gregory of Nazianzus words fascinating:  “Christ is alive.  Christ is present.  Alive and real, not in the shadows of doubt and uncertainty.  Christ is present. Time does not limit nor does it consume Him.”   God the Father lives in an eternal now and has no past and still hears the agony of His Son’s wordless cry on the cross.   There is no time but real time in God!

Christ does not suffer again. “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God. 1Pet 3:18   But this most beautiful act of love in the whole cosmos never ceases nor dies.  It is kept alive in the timeless divinity of Christ and is made present to us in every encounter we have with the Eucharist.

The sufferings of Christ are present not just in the sufferings of His Church, but in the timeless sacrifice of His Son. We contemplate the suffering Christ now and not in dead past time!  In our beautiful St Agnes Church in Louisville we have a beautiful figure of St Paul of the Cross embracing the living and suffering Crucified Christ.   For Paul the suffering Christ is in real time because it is in eternal time!  We need to contemplate this timeless suffering Christ.  The words of St Paul of the Cross quite clearly show that he thought about his suffering as forever present in the “Eternal Now”.

“The world lives unmindful of the sufferings of Jesus which are the miracle of miracles of the love of God.  We must arouse the world from its slumber.  His Holy Spirit will teach us how.” 11 726

“His most holy Passion is the greatest and most stupendous work of his love.”  11 249

Fr. Bob Weiss, C.P. preaches Parish Missions and is a member of the Passionist Community in Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

Genesis 17:3-9
John 8:51-59

Reflection:

I am still able to hear my mother say over and over again to my father and my siblings, “Self praise is no recommendation.”  This was my mother’s way of saying we should always do our best in whatever we are doing and let others score your achievements.

Our Lenten scriptures for today offer us an invitation to understand with new enthusiasm how it is that God speaks the divine Word, how God commits to that Word and how God fulfills the promise of that Word.  It is God who makes the promises and it is God who fulfills those promises.  The Lord is not in need of self boasting.  The fulfillment of promises speak for themselves.

Abram receives a mighty promise.  I will make you exceedingly fertile.  I will make you father of a host of nations.  That is a host of nations, not just the Jewish nation to come.  Perhaps this is God’s way of saying Abram, now Abraham, will be the father of all peoples.  The universal sweep of this divine promise is glaring and amazing.  We might be tempted, as was Abraham perhaps, to begin thinking of a mighty family resembling the great family tree of the King of Siam in “The King and I”.  We might imagine children everywhere from infants to young adults – all with one father.  However, this was not what God had in mind.  Abraham heard the divine word and promise but then had to trust that God would fulfill the divine Word spoken to him.  He would have to wait until his old age to have a single child named Isaac who would have twins, Jacob and Esau.  Jacob in turn would have his famous twelve sons who would become the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel.  The key ingredient to all the waiting Abraham had to endure is trust.  He had to trust God would fulfill the divine promise.  He was blessed with an image if himself as the father of all.  He would be the father of every race and ethnic grouping; the father of all in every land, far and wide; the father who eliminates all that separates and divides; the father who puts to rest any form of discrimination, resentment, envy or animosity.   All would live peacefully the covenant life God formed with them.  Trust in the fulfillment of God’s promise will be the hallmark of Abraham’s waiting.

That very same trust cascaded down every succeeding generation to the moment of today’s gospel.  Would the Jews trust that Jesus was the final fulfillment of the promise God had made?  Would they hear God speaking unity and peace through Jesus?  Would they be able to see in Jesus the promise of reconciling salvation made manifest?  Or would their trust be boxed in by personal agenda and self-interest?  Would their trust be slave to their own version of how God must speak and act if the promise was to be fulfilled?  Unfortunately, we are witness to demands that God accomplish faithfulness to divine promises according to the minds and hearts of human beings.  Trust in God is encrusted with so many conditions that it sinks below the surface.  In the end, God will be God and Jesus will hear and respond faithfully to the Father’s will.

Our Lenten scriptures for today call on us to trust in God in every way.  We are reminded by Abraham’s course of life that God works in God’s own way and in God’s own time.  Like him, we wait and we trust.  Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that He is indeed the divine Word spoken to us in fulfillment of the divine promise of salvation.  We wait in Him and we trust in Him as we journey through our own lives, awaiting the final fulfillment in His coming in glory, the glory in which the Father clothed Him.

Fr. Richard Burke, CP, is a member of St. Paul of the Cross Province.  He lives at St. Ann’s Monastery in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Scripture:

Daniel 3:14-20, 91-92, 95
John 8:31-42

Reflection:

There is an annual event in the U.S. called March Madness, and it refers to competitive college basketball teams from across the nation, representing those with the best win-loss records, playing one another, in an effort to establish the team recognized as the best team, because it has emerged as the winner of the final game between the two teams that are recognized as the best two teams in the nation.  It legitimately claims to be the best basketball team in the nation.

Today we listen to our bible readings that more or less follow the same course of action, in a completely different venue: it is a religious contest, either between Israel and a foreign nation such as Babylon, or else factions within Israel itself.

The struggle between Babylonia and Israel centered on the religions of these two nations.  For the military struggle had already taken place, and Babylonia (Chaldea) won that part of the struggle.  But then the king, Nebuchadnezzar, moved the struggle beyond the military part of it, and centered it on the religious element, for he, pagan that he was, had a huge golden statue set up representing the god the king worshipped, and he issued an order that everyone in his kingdom worship it. This included the Jews, held captive in his country, and of course the Jews had an abhorrence for idolatry, listed among the ten commandments as the first of the sins to avoid.  When three young Jewish men among the captives refused to worship this false god, it was reported to the king, who, in a rage, had them thrown into a fiery furnace, but they miraculously survived this ordeal, thanks to the protection offered them by God, and this won the admiration of the king for their God.  So, while the Chaldeans won the military phase of their struggle with the Jews, the Jews won the religious phase of it.

And a similar struggle is described in today’s gospel, between Jesus, and the opponents among His fellow Jews, concerning the quality of their allegiance to their father Abraham.  Jesus challenges the legitimacy of their claim to be Abraham’s children, over against His own claim about God as His Father.

We have in these two instances a contest underway to establish the validity of these claims and counterclaims about who is one’s father.  And it ultimately comes down to the quality of the claims about fatherhood, with the Jews claiming both Abraham as their father, (as well as God), and Jesus speaking solely of God as His Father.  Any intimate relationship, such as to one’s father, centers on the love to be found at its heart and core.  The three young men demonstrated this in the fiery furnace, showing their love for God by trusting in His protection, and Jesus relied on His loving relationship to God as His Father in establishing His credentials, which enabled Him to challenge the claims of His opponents who focus on having Abraham as their father, because He sees no love in the opposition He is encountering from them.  Today’s readings, while giving God (or god) a central place in this relationship, suggest that we check the kind of love at play this Lent, amid the competing claims made about what genuine love truly is.

Fr. Sebastian MacDonald, C.P. is a member of the Passionist Community in Louisville, Kentucky.

Scripture:

Ezekiel 37:12-14
Romans 8:8-11
John 11:1-45

Reflection:

…the time has come for the son of man to be glorified…

The end is drawing near…we are approaching Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem…a journey to the end. We remember, Jesus came for the Jews, and now there are Greeks among them, the kingdom is bigger and broader – the kingdom is for all.

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground, it remains just a grain of wheat…but once in the darkness of the earth, in the stillness of the ground, transformation can happen, new life bursts forth, possibilities for life-giving, life-sustaining food – food for all.

Can we go to the quiet place within our heart, enter into the stillness and darkness, dare to go into the fear and anxiety that surrounds us and consumes us.  Can we trust, as Jesus trusted, that even in the midst of the illness, disease, chaos, confusion, anger, hurt – can we trust that God is waiting to bring new hope, new possibility, new life!  God promises to stand in the tension with us.  He will be glorified – his Glory is for all.

We look to the cross, a place to lay our struggle, our pain, our emptiness and fear – out of all the emotion that we leave at the cross, God brings about hope, love, promise – for all.

With St. Paul of the Cross we can say When affliction lays heavy on you, you can go to your room, take the crucifix in your hands and give yourself a sermon from it.  What a sermon you will hear!  How quickly your heart will be calmed”  A message for all.

Faith Offman is the Associate Director of Ministry at St. Paul of the Cross Passionist Retreat and Conference Center in Detroit, Michigan.