Daily Scripture

Holy Saturday
Scripture:

Genesis 1:1-2:2 or 1:1, 26-31a
Genesis 22:1-18 or 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18
Exodus 14:15-15:1
Isaiah 54:5-14, Isaiah 55:1-11
Baruch 3:9-15, 32-4:4, Ezekiel 36:16-17a, 18-28
Romans 6:3-11
Matthew 28:1-10

Reflection:

On this day throughout the world, the tabernacles in Catholic churches sit empty.  Mass is not celebrated on this day.  Like an empty tabernacle, Saturday is a day of emptiness.  This is how we celebrate Holy Saturday.  This is the day about which we pray: “He was crucified, died, and was buried.  He descended into hell…”  (A better translation: He descended to the place of the dead.)

This is the day we keep silent vigil between Good Friday and the Resurrection.  On this day, as in so many days and weeks throughout the world-wide pandemic, we have been called to wait in silence and solitude in a new and different way.  In these times of social distancing from one another, and on this day, we are called to experience a spiritual distance from Christ, even as we pray “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”

Dr. Michael Downey reflects eloquently on Holy Saturday in his book, The Depth of God’s Reach: A Spirituality of Christ’s Descent: “Christian living is always between memory and hope, between promise and fulfillment.  Life in Christ is always toward Easter.”

Holy Saturday is the day of hope, when we are reminded that God’s hand can reach to deepest recesses of our lives, of our experience.  Hope calls us to resistance; to resist despair, darkness, and death.  Where there is resistance, there is hope – as we await Easter.

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

Scripture:

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42

Reflection:

The world and all those who live in it are enduring a tremendous cross right now. The COVID-19 virus spread globally, infected over a million and killed tens of thousands so far with no end yet in sight. It can certainly seem like everything we depended on has died. Where do we find hope?

I find hope by recognizing that, as Paul says, we do not have a God who is unable to sympathize or understand our weaknesses and our suffering, but one who has also endured it. Our God, in Jesus, knows pain, betrayal, abandonment, torture, injustice, despair, and death.

I find hope knowing that when I am nailed to the cross, I am not nailed there alone. I have someone with me, as close as my own breath, suffering with me, crying with me, and never leaving me.

I find hope knowing that if I walk hand-in-hand with Jesus, then no matter the pain, no matter how deep the tomb, no matter how black the night, somehow, some way, God will bring resurrection on the other side. I can’t see it right now. It’s like looking at the black sky at midnight and trusting that dawn will come, the sun will rise, the sky will be blue, and a new day will arrive. There is absolutely no evidence of that at midnight. It is my experience of its reliability that allows me peace and trust.

My experience of God is of the paschal mystery – life, death, and resurrection. We were never promised an easy life. We were never promised no pain, no sorrow, no uncertainty, no suffering, and no death. In fact, we were promised quite the opposite. God does not just take the cup away. Yet we were also promised faithfulness, and resurrection in this life and the next. We were promised the same reliability as the sunrise – a powerful, strengthening, life-giving presence that will never leave us in the dark but will lead us through the dark to new light.

So as our global family faces our own version of Good Friday with this virus and all the destruction, decimation, and death it brings, I trust that somehow, some way, our faithful God of life will find ways to bring resurrection out of it, both for individual people and for our world as a whole. It’s hard to see it when nailed up in excruciating pain, but the promise remains. And hope lives.

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:

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

Reflection:

Coming Empty to the Table of Our Lord

The gospel of John for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper has no supper. Nor will most of us dine at the banquet table of the Eucharist this evening. John tells us of another aspect of the Eucharist: our call to serve. “What I just did was to give you an example: as I have done, so you must do.”

Since Monday the liturgy as been preparing us for tonight. On each of those days, we have joined Jesus at a meal.

What a very strange meal took place on Monday of Holy Week. Strange in the sense that there is no food. We can’t begin to imagine what Martha prepared, but knowing Martha as we do, we can presume there was a lot of it. And Mary, who thanks her soul friend without words, anoints Jesus’ feet with rich oil and dries them with her hair. Who better to do something that will look to the day of Jesus’ burial than Mary, who had just mourned the death of her brother. Mary, the contemplative who is comfortable with mystery and finds meaning there. And Lazarus. Who sat next to Lazarus? Maybe Jesus. What a strange meal. This is a vision of the banquet table of heaven – the arguing women reconciled, the dead Lazarus alive, there is service, there is love and gratitude, there is Jesus. But if I was a neighbor who stopped by for a quick bite, I’m not sure I would have stayed. Something else is going on in that house.

This was Jesus’ refuge after his trips from Galilee. Bethany was the rest stop where  Galileans recuperated from their long walk, rested and then entered Jerusalem to celebrate their feasts. But the shadow over us today is that Jesus has just lost his place of comfort. His world will not be here much longer. He doesn’t have a place.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, first in John’s gospel and then Matthew, Jesus is emptied of things he loved. First, night envelopes Judas, who leaves to betray him. Then in Matthew’s story where Judas is identified as the betrayer, all the disciples ‘one after another’ deny that they would betray him. Judas betrays, the others flee, and Jesus is alone.

Tonight at the Last Supper Jesus has lost his place of comfort in our world, he will not have friends but is alone, darkness descends around him. In Jesus’ world, where he saw beauty and often speaks of nature, it will never be beautiful again.

Many people now feel very empty. We are deprived of the Eucharist, the beauty of the world and one another. We live with uncertainty and fear in this time of virus. During Lent, we fasted to become empty. To become empty is God’s gift, fasting our prayer. It seems God has called us to great emptiness now. We hear the greatest penances are not the ones we choose to but the ones that come unwelcome, unwanted. Today you may feel not at home, even afraid, in the world you live in, lonely and in darkness, empty of friends, peace, hope. If you are empty Jesus knows those feelings; they are his feelings too. He shares them with us. It seems something is placed upon us, not at all of our choosing. Into this emptiness, this hunger, may Jesus come to you today.

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

Scripture:

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

Reflection

This is a story of a twisted heart. On his own initiative, and without the slightest hint of reluctance or reservation, Judas Iscariot sneaks off in search of a deal. He goes to the chief priests because he wants to see how much his planned betrayal of Jesus might be worth to those eager to get rid of him. Because this traitorous deed typically overshadows every other dimension of his life, it is easy to forget, as this gospel reminds us, that Judas was “One of the Twelve.” He was not a marginal character in Jesus’ life; rather, Judas, along with the eleven other apostles, was among his most intimate companions. Judas had a history with Jesus. For the three years of Jesus’ public ministry, Judas’s life was taken up with Jesus. He journeyed with Jesus, shared meals with Jesus, learned from Jesus, worked with Jesus and, as friends always do, must have had many conversations with Jesus. So how could this possibly happen? How could someone so deeply connected to Jesus be willing to exchange the most precious gift of his life for thirty pieces of silver? Was Judas so blinded by greed that money mattered more to him than a man who clearly loved him?

It is easy to feel superior to Judas, easy to comfort ourselves by thinking that we would never do anything so wicked and perverse. But is that really true? There’s a bit of Judas in most of us inasmuch as it is easy to let something other than Christ rule our hearts. Whatever abides in the center of our hearts is what we love most, what we prize and cherish more than anything else. If it is something other than God, it’s a dark and dangerous love because, as the story of Judas vividly illustrates, sometimes we are willing to do anything to protect and nurture that love.

Here’s the point: Judas is willing to give the life of Jesus away for money and Jesus is willing to give his life away for Judas—and for every other sinner to come who is willing to betray Jesus for whatever those thirty pieces of silver are for them. Perhaps that is why in these days of Holy Week that guilt and shame are never far apart from boundless gratitude.

Paul J. Wadell is Professor of Theology & Religious Studies at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, and a member of the extended Passionist family.

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

“So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.” (JN 13:30)

In 1962 Nelson Mandela, a lawyer working in Johannesburg was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. He had the nerve to stand up against the South African powers that be and their system of apartheid a system that gave privilege to white people over black people. He stayed in prison for 27 years, making friends of his jailers. I was a junior in high school at the Passionists’ Prep in Warrenton Missouri, learning about a man, Paul Danei who like Mandela came from privilege but chose to identify with the poor.

“So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.” (JN 13:30)

In 1968, my twin brother Dave joined the US Navy forces fighting in the waters of the Mekong Delta, while I stayed at school with my privileged school deferment and ironically, studied amongst other subjects, peace, or irenology as the science would call it. That same year Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed (April 4, 1968) and I student-taught in a Chicago Public School amidst the resulting hysteria.

“So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.” (JN 13:30)

In 1979, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, foundress of The Missionary Sisters of Charity received the Nobel Peace Prize. Born in Macedonia she joined the Sisters of Loretto in Dublin Ireland where she worked as a teacher until feeling called to work with the “poorest of the poor” (The Nobel Prize) opened up a school with no walls serving children growing up in the slums of India. That year I started working in the Insurance business where I eventually made more money than I ever dreamed possible.

“So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.” (JN 13:30)

God of justice and mercy, if you exist (and I believe you do) help me to wake up today to join you in loving and caring for all, in particular those who are persecuted, marginalized or just ignored as if they don’t exist.

Dan O’Donnell is a Passionist Partner and a longtime friend of the Passionists.  He lives in Chicago. 

Scripture:

Isaiah 42:1-7
John 12:1-11

Reflection:

The whole world is under a heavy, dark cloud this Holy Week as the Covid-19 virus spreads its invisible, insidious poison everywhere.

None of us is spared. No individual is safe. The best most of us can do to save our individual selves and everyone else is to unselfishly be at home.

Others have active missions in healthcare facilities, in essential services such as utilities, food distribution and coordinating the emergency responses. We pray for their safety.

Each of our lives, constructed around self-sufficient structures and illusions of security like the stock market, careers, and a stable government, are suddenly vulnerable in ways none of us every imagined.

Science cannot destroy the virus. Our military is not able to defeat it. No government program can fully contain it, only slow its spread.

We are left exposed, fearful and restless. We are face to face with a reality we spend our lives fleeing and denying: we are not in control.

It is a lesson in humility that makes us uncomfortable. As Americans we are taught a “can-do” attitude toward life. We want to take charge, achieve goals, make money to insure ourselves against tragedy and to guarantee comfortable lives and “secure” retirements.

The pandemic, then, can be a moment of grace, teaching us the importance of being passive, resting in God alone.

In today’s first reading, the first of the Servant Songs from the Book of Isaiah (chapters 40-55), we learn of God as the initiator in the life of a humble man disposed to only doing God’s work of justice: “I have grasped you by the hand; I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.”

And in the Gospel selection from John’s twelfth chapter, Jesus rebukes Judas Iscariot’s attempt to take control and use money to fix poverty at the expense of Mary’s humble, repentant connection with Christ in their midst.

During this dark time in the world’s history, we have an opportunity to stop our usual routine busyness, carrying on with a blinded sense of our self-sufficiency and self-importance. Now we are forced to realize we control nothing.

Submitting our lives to God in moments of deep prayer today we can come to understand only God can give the peace and serenity we seek in life. Things we think are crucial or necessary suddenly are brought into perspective. What is essential is what Mary did at the feet of Jesus at Bethany: humbling savoring the presence of the Lord.

This alone is our safety. God will provide all that we need, especially when we are most fearful.

Jim Wayne is a board member of the Passionist Solidarity Network (PSN), and author of The Unfinished Man. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

Scripture:

Matthew 21:1-11
Isaiah 50:4-7
Philippians 2:6-11
Matthew 26:14-66 or 27:11-54

Reflection:

What a Lent this has turned into.   When we began this sacred season on Ash Wednesday, none of us would have predicted such a rapid global upheaval.  The new norm includes social distancing, confining isolation, evolving information, daily frustration, and nightly confusion.  Stories of heroism complement the reality of grieving. And yet how can anyone grieve when the need to maintain distance for one’s health takes precedence?

The streets are eerily quiet.  The hospital reports say it is a war zone.  And another scene is replayed in tens of thousands of households where a young mother or father with small children is working from home and has just lost it because they can’t find a way to be a productive employee, a loving parent, a good spouse, while confined to a small apartment.  All they want is a little mental sanity.

Where is God?   Why doesn’t God do something about this situation?  The psalmist words today;  “My God my God,  why have you abandoned me?”

We add to that the financial problem.  Homeowners and shop owners, small business people and people who live from paycheck to paycheck who have no money coming in.  A slight hope, out there beyond arms reach is a promise from the Federal Government with a placard stating “stimulus package” being tossed around.    The prayer from their mouth is, ” Oh God, how are we going to get through this month?”

A woman lies in isolation in her home having tested positive for Covid-19.   Her husband lies  in a different bed several miles away in the hospital and she can’t be there as he struggles for his last few breaths.  In fact there is no one there to hold his hand.   And for those who have died, either from the virus or another cause, their loved ones can’t be together to grieve.  People are kept apart from each other even in times of painful loss.  We can’t even come into our churches to pray and grieve.  And the most we can do to show our support is to “drive by” while maintaining our social distancing.

My God my God,  why have you abandoned me?  These words of Jesus, as he hangs on the cross haunt us this day.  It’s all a little too close to home.

Maybe today, Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday, is a time to move the perspective from an event that happened two thousand years ago to who we are today.   Literally, the whole world is affected.  We are hurting, confused, frightened, haunted, and wishing we could just wake up from this nightmare.  Like the two Gospels given to us on this day, first the triumphant entry into Jerusalem and the second the proclamation of the Passion, this Lenten season has shifted our mood and our direction.  We have gone from personal expectations of Lent to the unpredictability and a deeper crying out to God because of human suffering.

Was it any different than the nightmare of the Apostles who just in a matter of hours lost the one in whom they had put all their hopes and expectations?  Was it any different than the regret of Peter whose mental tape played his last words of denial over and over in his mind?  Was it any different from the emptiness Mary felt when after birthing and raising this special little child, and she now holds his crucified, lifeless body?   Was it any different from the fear of the disciples locked in the upper room wondering if they were going to be next?  None of this made any sense to anyone living subjectively in the midst of the situation.  And the uncertainty of what might be coming next plays with the mind and the emotions.

One thing the Gospel accounts insists on is you cannot read the Gospel stories like a newspaper.  And in fact, every time you read the Gospels wearing the lenses of the resurrection, suddenly the stories begin to sound differently.   Christians are supposed to be people who can not only see and live in the Kingdom, but they can share and proclaim it as well.  How do we get there?   I think the answer is practice.  To be proficient at any trade, talent, or sport requires practice.   So too is practicing the art of interpretation in light of the resurrection.  The more a person practices this art, the greater their skill and prayerful reward.

Only a few years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul writes to the Christian community in Corinth reflecting on how interconnected we are for all of us make up the body of Christ.  Specifically, (1 Cor 12:26) “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members share its joy.”   Christ never abandoned the church.  If anything, Christ lives in and through its members.  Theresa of Avila’s teaching was quite the similar invitation.

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless His people. God alone suffices.”

Today as we listen to the Passion of Jesus proclaimed, we live, and pray this truth.  The liturgical readings and our lived communal experience have aligned asking us, do you see Christ Crucified today?   This is not a mere historical occurrence.  This is a reality which we live with and are being asked to internalize.   Instead of pleading to God to change this situation, can we begin to see how the suffering of Christ is a reality in the suffering of humanity?  Indeed, Christ chooses to suffer with us in our afflictions.

Two thousand years ago the whole world was affected by the death of Jesus.  That event changed the face of humanity.   Today, in the contemporary event of human suffering, we sit, ponder, and prayerfully meditate with the Passion of Christ from both the historical and contemporary dimensions.  As Jesus did not abandon us even in his suffering, so too are we assured of his presence in this challenging time.  And we pray from the core of our being, not as defeated people, but people who know that God is faithful to the splendor of the resurrection.

Fr. David Colhour, C.P. is the local superior of St. Vincent Strambi Community in Chicago, Illinois.

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

Goodness to Come Of Evil?  God Says “YES”!

We’re on the “eve” of the great week we annually call “Holy”.  The opportunities and challenges of Lent continue to draw us deeper into the Paschal Mystery.

Today’s Scriptures highlight the providential love of God for everyone — even the sinful.  John’s Gospel recounts the plotting of the chief priests, Scribes and Sanhedrin to kill Jesus.   Jesus preached healing and love, attracting many followers.  The high priest Caiaphas expressed his idea that one man should die instead of many people, based on his fear that the Romans would disturb the status quo and rob the freedom and land of Israel.  Jesus’ death?  Tragedy!  Evil!  …and Salvific!

From our 21^st Century vantage point, no doubt Jesus’ death on the Cross was better than the whole human race “perishing” in sin.  God’s plan was that the life, suffering and death of Jesus would bring about atonement for the world’s sinfulness; Divine Love would triumph; goodness would blossom from evil, risen life from crucifixion.  As one author put it:  Good Friday didn’t spoil the weekend…

This Lent is a unique journey of faith!  The pandemic experience of global sickness and death, of fear and isolation, of short-sightedness and confusion – all are vivid examples of 21^st century Evil.  Yet as we ponder the life of Jesus, as we dig deep as men and women of faith, as we come together as a faith community within our socially isolated spaces…God can and will bring new life and goodness from the evil we experience.  Just as God brought about good from the evil plot to kill Jesus, God will bring about good in our day.  We are to be men and women of ever-deepening faith, selfless and generous in union with Jesus, firmly confessing that “God is in charge”.

May we enter these concluding days of Lent embracing our share in the Cross of Jesus.  As proclaimed in the Responsorial Psalm from Jeremiah 31, God shall guard us; God will redeem us; God will turn our mourning into joy and console and gladden us.  God lovingly says:  “Yes!”  And we today add our “Amen!”

Fr. John Schork, C.P. is the Vocation Director for Holy Cross Province. He lives at St. Vincent Strambi Community in Chicago, Illinois.