Daily Scripture

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

As we anticipate Holy Week that begins on Sunday, the Passionists of Holy Cross Province offer each day on this website a reflection on the Way of the Cross.  Each day, another Station along the Way.  Today’s Fifth Station is “Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross.”

There really is not much known about Simon either before or after this encounter other than he came from Cyrene in what is now Libya in northern Africa.  He just happens to be present at a moment when Jesus is in need.  We don’t hear that he felt a deep compassion to help.  He was conscripted, ordered by the soldiers to help carry the Cross of Jesus.

It is not hard to find examples of Simon of Cyrene all around us.  Stories of others we know very little about or are little known.  But they are there helping others carry their crosses.  Perhaps they would not have chosen the role of caregiver or guardian now bestowed on them.  But they take up the task because they are there, and the need is clear.

As my mother’s husband of 22 years, and also my godfather, grew weaker in body more than mind at age 95, there was more to do for mom to keep him moving and engaged.  I said to her recently, “I don’t suppose this was in the playbook when you and dad were married in 1948, or when you married John.”  There was no playbook, she said.  You just do what needs doing

We take up our own crosses when we help others carry the crosses of those burdened by life, infirmity, loss, sadness, or tragedy.  Like Simon of Cyrene, the opportunity will likely find us first.  We’ll just be there at the right time to help.  Maybe today’s Station will help us appreciate all those who are and have been “Simon” to others – and to us.

Robert Hotz is a consultant with American City Bureau, Inc. and is the Director of The Passion of Christ: The Love That Compels Campaign for Holy Cross Province.

Scripture:

Daniel 13:1-9, 15-17, 19-30, 33-62 or 13:41c-62
John 8:1-11

Reflection:

The Woman Caught in Adultery

I know a man who threw stones at himself.  He was a merciless, legalistic judge.  But towards others, especially his wife and two young, rambunctious daughters, he was gentle and patient and loving.  He saw in them the face of Jesus, the face of love.  Not so when he looked in the mirror.  There he saw an ugly sinner whom no one, least of all himself, could forgive.  He saw a judge clutching stones.

One evening, he was invited to join RCIA students at a “Dry Mass,” that is, not a celebration of the Sacrament, but rather an instructional version of it.  Fr. Pat Brennan, C.P., led the class that evening at Mater Dolorosa Retreat Center’s chapel.  At one point, Fr. Pat shared the sad and tragic story of his older brother, a Marine, who was killed in the Vietnam War.  When we celebrate the Mass, he said, we enter into the eternal now.  “And at Communion I am as close to my brother as I can possibly be this side of heaven,” he said.

Fr. Pat’s reflection had a profound effect on the man who threw stones at himself because he remembered a man named David, whom he loved and missed, and still struggled with his death more than a year later.  “Now, every time at Mass,” this man reflected, “I remember David and how he took me at face value, without pretense or judgment.  I still love him for it.  At Communion, I feel as close to David as I never had before since he died.  But more than that, for the first time, Jesus went from an idea of someone who hated me for my sins, to a real person who died for me and who loves me in spite of my failings.”

In his letter to the Romans, Paul the Apostle tells us that “while we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us.”  True judgment, true mercy, true love.

The last time this man who threw stones at himself looked in the mirror, a moment of grace happened.  The stone fell from his hand.  He stood alone with Jesus who said to him: “Neither do I condemn you.  Go and sin no more.”

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

Scripture:

Jeremiah 31: 31 – 34
Hebrews 5: 7 – 9
John 12: 20 – 33

Reflection:

As I sit at the desk in my office, I look up to gaze upon my beautiful print by Thomas Kinkade entitled “Walk of Faith”.    The artist has created a magnificent image of a garden with lush trees and greenery offset by his characteristic patches of bright light and shadows with a path winding its way down the center of the garden.  When completed, the artist wrote that he himself was so enchanted by the beauty of the scene that he had to place a person on the pathway to give the image fullness of life.  He placed the image of Jesus walking on the Way with Peter strolling along side.   I find both the image of the garden and the title striking.  As a meditation, I often put myself in place of Peter on the walk and imagine a conversation with the Lord in an effort to discover in ever deeper ways who Jesus is for me and for all of us.  When we think about it, we might discover differing images or dimensions of who Jesus is for us depending upon what we are experiencing in life and how we are dealing with that experience.

Our Lenten Scriptures today say some Greeks ask “to see Jesus”.  Really?  Which Jesus do they wish to see?   Our readings tell us whom they will meet today.  He is the one who fulfills the promise of a renewed relationship with God as foretold by Jeremiah in the first reading.   To accomplish this, Jesus is the one who learns obedience from His sufferings.  He will be the seed that falls to the ground and dies so that we might live, so that we might be freed from slavery to sin, so that we might walk with Him in the pathways of light rather than in the dark shadows.  While John has, throughout the Gospel, revealed Jesus as the Gentle Good Shepherd, the Bread of Life for us, the Giver of Life to the Dead, the Healer of both body and soul, John now reveals Jesus as the Suffering Savior who will die the scandalous death of crucifixion so that we might have new life in Him.  Is this the Jesus the Greeks came to see?  Will they understand this image of the Suffering Messiah?  They will if they have ever experienced suffering in their own lives or if they have witnessed the suffering of others.  As believers who have lived from the 20th century into the 21st, we are beset by a collage of images we will never forget, even if we desired to do so.  Images of the trench warfare of World War I, the bread lines of the 1930’s and families with unemployed breadwinners, the death camps of Nazi Germany, the scarred survivors of the atomic blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki , screaming children running for their lives during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam,  the sight of the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground with thousands of innocents trapped inside, the ugly and horrifying images of journalists, aid workers , and Syrian Christians  being slaughtered by terrorists — all of these and more are part of our life circumstances.  In addition to seeing and feeling the suffering of this magnitude, we experience our own pain and suffering in the circumstances of life from death of a loved one, to unemployment, to worry and concern for a child or grandchild or parent or a friend, to personal illness, to the ordinary advancement of aging.

Our Scriptures invite us to vividly remember that Jesus was no stranger to suffering and that we, His followers, will need to deal with suffering in our own lives as well.  This is the Jesus we meet in today’s Scriptures.  Does Jesus desire for us to suffer?  I think not.  I believe in a Jesus who wishes us to do everything in our power to eliminate or minimize suffering in life.   After we do this, we will find, as did Jesus, that there is just some suffering in life we just cannot do anything about.  It is at this point that we are invited today to unite ourselves with our Crucified Lord, to make ourselves one with Jesus in His sufferings so that we might receive His Divine strength in our neediest moments and become one with Him in bringing about new life and a renewed, more profound relationship with God for ourselves and for all of God’s People.  These are the moments when we look for Jesus, when we most desire and need to see Jesus.  Our Scriptures invite us to understand that in these neediest of life’s circumstances; we will see the Suffering Jesus and will recognize the immensity of His love as the foundation of His sacrifice for us.

United with our Crucified Lord through our own unavoidable sufferings in life, we will be fortified and empowered by Him to take the “Walk of Faith” with Him through the garden of life.

Fr. Richard Burke, CP, is a member of St. Paul of the Cross Province and also serves on the Provincial Council of Holy Cross Province.  He lives at St. Ann’s Monastery in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Scripture:

Jeremiah 11:18-20
John 7: 40-53

Reflection:

Brandon Marshall is a highly respected professional football player.  He is a wide receiver, and has accrued All-Pro honors for several years.  He receives a handsome salary commensurate with his talents.  The past several seasons he has played for the Chicago Bears.  But recently the Bears traded him to the New York Jets.  They no longer wanted him as a member of their organization.  Why would they divest themselves of so valuable a player, especially given their need of great talent to improve upon their recent overall poor performance?

There are presumably several reasons, of which money (the salary paid him) was a likely factor.  But is it the primary reason?  Probably not.  Marshall proved to be an outspoken commentator on matters football, and his remarks were often critical, that is, uncomplimentary, especially of the Bears organization, management and leadership.  So the powers-that-be made the judgment that more good than harm would accrue from his being traded to the Jets team.

This is not the first time that a valuable asset has been given up by an organization on the score that it would be better off without than with him/her.  In fact, today we hear of the same scenario operative in the lives of Jewish prophets of old: Jeremiah and Jesus.  Both members of the Hebrew people, they belonged to a highly esteemed category: the prophets.  Some of the most illustrious persons among the  Hebrew people were prophets: spokespersons for God, who revealed God’s designs at work in the history and life of the Jews, and the way forward to improve their lives.  But, as is so often the case, their prophetic words and actions on behalf of God were not always appreciated, somewhat like Brandon Marshall’s comments about the Chicago Bears’ organization.

This is what we hear today, from the assigned scriptures.  They speak to us of the plight of Jeremiah, one of the two or three most esteemed prophets in Hebrew history, undergoing some grueling treatment at the hands of his fellow Jews.  But he portrays himself as a trusting lamb being led to slaughter by those opposed to him and his prophetic ministry to them.   Designs got underway among the Jewish leadership to rid themselves of him, with his withering criticism of them and their ways.  They even wanted to obliterate all memory of him.  But Jeremiah was not going to take this “lying down”.  He called on God to defend him by taking vengeance on his opponents.  Undoubtedly, Brandon Marshall may have much the same thing in mind the next time the Jets play the Bears.

And we hear nothing different in the readings taken today from John’s gospel, about the greatest of all prophets, and, indeed, one far superior to any prophet: Jesus the Galilean.  We become witnesses to a heated discussion among the Jews, apparently not so much the leadership, but the ordinary population at large, that is, those who had opportunity to hear the words of Jesus, and perhaps witness some of His miracles.  They heard Him explain the meaning of the scriptures, and the designs God had in mind for the Jewish people.  He spoke to them of God’s program, centering on love of His Father, and of one another.  They heard Him criticize Jewish leadership much as Jeremiah had done before Him.  He was fearlessly outspoken.  And so He was the center of attention, much to the discontent of the chief priests and the Pharisees.  And so the issue became His credentials: was He THE prophet, perhaps the MESSIAH, long awaited throughout Jewish history?   Various answers flew back and forth on this issue.  Even the soldiers sent by the Jewish leadership to arrest Him, returned empty-handed, stunned by His eloquence.  And the secretive and timid Nicodemus, of whom we heard early on in Jesus’ public ministry, and himself a Pharisee, took issue with this inordinate haste to condemn Him.

So, critics often have a hard time of it.  Of course, many of them give as good as they get.  Nonetheless,   today’s scriptures speak to us forcefully of the role that convictions and commitments should play in our lives.  While we need not be brash or combative about them, we must abide by them, and not allow opposition or criticism to deter us.  All of us are called to be prophets of God’s ways in our lives, if not in word, at least in our conduct.

Fr. Sebastian MacDonald, C.P. is a member of the Passionist formation community at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago.

Scripture:

Wisdom 2:1a, 12-22
John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

Reflection:

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.

The readings that we have for the Mass today offers us glimpses into two minds. The first, from the Book of Wisdom, the mind of the evil doer. The second, from the Gospel according to John, the mind of Jesus, the Son of God. The contrasts could not have been greater. It is worth our while to just of deepen our mindfulness into these two very different points of view.

Maybe there was a time in our lives when we thought we were in control. We thought that we were worldly-wise. We cut corners and we were not struck by lightning. We were able to take advantage of those who wanted to do everything right, thinking that they were so dumb and we were so smart. Some of us even thought that we were superior to those who seemed weak or powerless. At the conclusion of this first reading, we are told: “they know not the hidden counsels of God; neither do they count on a recompense of holiness nor discern the innocent souls’ reward.” (Wisdom 2:22)

In the Gospel reading, we hear Jesus express his mind to the crowds that are following him. He knows who he is, he knows where he comes from and he knows why he has been sent by His Father. There is clarity in his mind, while there is confusion in the minds of the people who follow him.

Jesus knows well why God sent him: because God is close to the broken-hearted.

It seems to me that when our hearts get broken, we become more open to the healing touch of God. When our hearts get broken, we realize that we are no longer in control. When our hearts get broken, we long for someone to heal our broken hearts, to tell us that it will be alright, even when it doesn’t feel alright just now. The power of God’s Love is more powerful than the feelings hopelessness and unworthiness.
Lent is a time to get our act together. It is a time to set aside those naïve thoughts that are expressed in the first reading, thoughts of power and control and smugness. It is a time for us to have clarity of mind, like the mind of Jesus. It is a time to recognize when we are brokenhearted, even when we have lived in denial for a while.

There is no shame in being brokenhearted.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.

Fr. Clemente Barrón, C.P. is a member of Immaculate Conception Community in Chicago, Illinois.