Daily Scripture

Scripture:

Hosea 14:2-10
Mark 12:28-34

Reflection:

I wonder what the Scribe in today’s Gospel thought Jesus was going to say in response to his question, "Which is the first of all the commandments?"  Perhaps he thought Jesus was going to say something "new."  But, in his response, Jesus reminds him that love, first of God and then of neighbor, is at the heart of God’s commandments.  It always was and it always will be.  The Scribe praises Jesus’ answer.  Jesus tells the Scribe that, because he understands this important truth, he is not far from the Kingdom of God.

What about us?  What do we think is the most important of all the commandments?  Do we understand, as does the Scribe in the Gospel, that love is at the heart of the Gospel?  Of course we do!….

The first reading for today is from the prophet Hosea.  He speaks of God’s commitment to forgive Israel and Ephraim, i.e., God’s people who have been so unfaithful.  Throughout these first weeks of Lent we have had readings from various prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel), assuring us of God’s constant forgiveness for the many sins of idolatry and injustice committed by God’s people.  It would seem that knowing the first of all the commandments doesn’t’ guarantee that we live it.

This message of the prophets is very reassuring for us as we try to live what we know is true, that love is the heart of the Gospel, and of God.  We pray that during this holy season, God transforms our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh so that we can live in God’s love.

 

Fr. Michael Higgins, C.P. is the director of lay formation for Holy Cross Province and is stationed at Immaculate Conception Retreat in Chicago.

Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

Scripture:

Jeremiah 7:23-28
Luke 11:14-23

Reflection:

"…the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed." Luke 11:14

Strange things are happening these days. People are beginning to trust their intuition, their inner sense of God, speaking up and being heard. Why just the other day, the great state of Mississippi spoke up and ratified the 13^th Amendment to the U.S Constitution.  All of a sudden we are hearing from the 99 percent, people who have been silent (dumb in today’s scriptural language). Hispanics, the fastest growing demographic in the US are voting as a bloc electing presidents, women are speaking up and more importantly are being heard. It’s amazing!

Using Facebook and Twitter, everyday people are now able to "comment" or "like" what someone else has written or said. They can let the world know what they think. It’s amazing! For example, the other day my cousin posted "Sami’s story" from Youtube on her Facebook page. I "liked" it and because I thought it significant, decided to post it on my Facebook page. From that one post, eight people from all parts of my past responded by "Liking" my post, and four of those wrote and shared their thoughts. It’s amazing! Some think presidential elections are won, when one person speaks up, i.e. Jimmy Carter’s grandson. James Carter IV, overheard remarks by one candidate, and "leaked" those remarks to the Press and those remarks went viral. Ordinary everyday people responded by showing up, voting and being heard. It’s amazing!

If I didn’t know better, I’d think Jesus was walking our streets today. Well, maybe He is, in the person of everyday, ordinary people, like you and me.

"If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts". (Today’s Responsorial Psalm refrain)

 

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

Scripture:

Deuteronomy 4:1, 5-9
Matthew 5:17-19

Reflection:

Lent is a good time for us to examine our relationship with Jesus?  How close and how deep is our friendship with him?

 

I suggest we ask ourselves two questions:

     — The first question: On a scale of "one to ten," how would we measure our relationship with Jesus?  Let’s say that it’s a "seven."

     — The second question: What would it take to make that a "ten?"

In both our first reading today and in our gospel our attention is focused on the law and its fulfillment.  But it is clear from Jesus’ words that mere keeping of laws and statutes is not enough. 

So we participate at Mass, read Scripture, go to Reconciliation and pray the Stations and the Rosary to help us grow closer to Jesus.  During this Lenten season we also fast, give alms and do other good works to help our relationship with Jesus become a ten.  

Still, after keeping laws, praying, fasting and doing good works, we still don’t feel very close to God.  Slowly we begin to realize that the spiritual life is not about us.  It involves getting out of the way so that God can mold us, shape us, form us, take over and live through us.  If we "let go and let God," than some day we will be able to say with St. Paul , "I live now not I but Christ lives in me." (Galatians 2:20)   

The focus of the spiritual life is on the power and love of God at work among us. Then what is left for us is to give thanks and praise to God.  With Mary we proclaim,"He who is mighty has done great things to us.  Holy is his name." (cf. Luke 1:49)  There is great peace in a life of gratitude.

 

Fr. Alan Phillip, C.P. is a member of the Passionist Community at Mater Dolorosa Retreat Center, Sierra Madre, California. http://www.alanphillipcp.com/

 

 

Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent

Scripture:

Daniel 3:25, 34-43
Matthew 18:21-35

Reflection:

As an urgent care physician, most of my days at work are filled with common maladies such as sore throats and sprains, cuts and coughs.  Occasionally, either due to denial or desperation, a more serious situation will present itself.  Such was the case recently when a man arrived at our center, severely short of breath.  He was brusque with the staff and greeted me with an obvious air of suspicion.  As his story was unfolded to me…60 pack-years of smoking, no regular or routine health care, it would have been easy to detach myself and judge his condition as self-inflicted.

As we continued our discourse, his anger began to give way to the fear that was driving it, and soon he was pleading with me.  "Please give me something to make me better.  I can’t climb the stairs to my apartment without stopping many times along the way.  I can’t sleep because I wake up choking.  I can’t work because I don’t have the strength or breath for the two-mile walk to get there."  Eventually, his words turned to sobs as his wife sat silently nearby.

After some testing, an x-ray, and treatments given to make him more comfortable, we gathered again in the tiny room to face the fact now revealed…a large tumor occupying his right lung.  This vulnerable soul at the foot of the cross.

I had been pondering our readings for today for some time prior to meeting this patient.  Both readings detail accounts of individuals, like my patient, in desperate situations.

In the reading from Daniel, we hear the prayer of Azariah (Abednego) as he, Shadrach and Meschach are pleading for their lives as the fiery furnace is being stoked.  Our reading today from Matthew’s Gospel is the final section of a larger discourse that is often called the "church order" discourse or the "Discourse on Community".  It includes the Parable of the Lost Sheep, in addition to today’s Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.  In the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, we hear the pleading words of the servant as he falls down in homage before his master.  In each of these readings, the ultimate call is to reconciliation, right relationship.

The Proto-Indo-European origins of the word, plea, bear the meaning to smooth out or to make flat.  Similarly, the Middle English roots of the word, reconcile, mean to make good again, to reconsecrate.

Most of us do not pass the day without an awareness of the spoken and unspoken pleading voices in our world, in our communities, in our own families.  How do they transform us?  How do we reconcile? 

The Holocaust museum web site has a banner that provides one answer to such questions.  It reads, "Never again.  What you do matters."

 

Dr. Capper Rademaker is a longtime friend and partner of the Passionists in Louisville, Kentucky.

Monday of the Third Week of Lent 

Scripture:

2 Kings 5:1-15
Psalm 42
Luke 4:24-30

 

 

Reflection:

Lent:  Fasting from Anger, Feasting on Patience

In today’s Gospel selection, Jesus was rejected by the people of his home town of Nazareth because he was too familiar to them, his words too challenging, and even his family background too simple.  He was "taken for granted".  The people rose up against him in anger and wanted to throw him over the hill of the town.  Jesus patiently moved through their midst, and went away.

In the reading from 2^nd Kings, Elisha’s directions to Naaman for the cure of his leprosy were at first shrugged off because they seemed too simple and commonplace.  "Go and wash seven times in the Jordan…"  Naaman went away angry – until others patiently reasoned with him…and he was cured.

Both scriptures speak of anger in the hearts of people, and the destructive force it carries.  The word itself has roots that connote choking and strangulation.  No doubt, anger "chokes" our personal growth, our relationships; it is destructive on many levels!  In our anger, we lose perspective on life and close ourselves inward.  We need the grace to change and grow.

This Lent, we’re encouraged to have a change of heart.  As we become more aware of our gifts as members of God’s family, God offers us the grace to change:  to move away from the anger that may try to "strangle" us, to a renewed patience that helps us see every person, every event in life as part of God’s Plan for us and our world.  To move from anger to patience:  a challenge!  So necessary!

Let’s not forget:  With God all things are possible.  Let’s be open to the graces of Lent, and be renewed on every level of life. 

 

Fr. John Schork, C.P. is the local leader of the Passionist community in Louisville, Kentucky. 

Saturday of the Second Week of Lent

Scripture:

Micah 7:14-15, 18-20
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Reflection:

The first reading, from the prophet Micah, is his reminder to Judah that God will be faithful to the covenant made between God and Abraham, and renewed in God’s faithfulness to Isaac and Jacob.  This covenant includes the promise of forgiveness from the sins committed in Micah’s generation, when the abuse of money and riches led to a corruption of ritual and honesty among the Judean inhabitants around Jerusalem.

And then comes the Gospel, with Luke’s richly dramatized account of the "prodigal son".  There is probably no more easily recognized story from the New Testament, if we put the Infancy Narratives and the Passion accounts in a separate ranking.  Now, during the Lenten season, when parishes hold their accustomed "Penance Services", this is the scripture reading that is most likely to be chosen for reading to the assembly.

It is a story that highlights the foolishness of sin, more than the evil intent that also stirs the heart to sin.  In this account, the second son is presented as a foolish adolescent who has big dreams of making it in the world.  He is a self-centered and impatient young man who fails to appreciate how much he has benefited from his father’s largesse. 

When the world of his dreams, which he thought would spring into being by his foolish spending on luxuries and loose-living, comes crashing down around him, he collapses into a confrontation with his own self.  He starts talking to himself, he tells himself what anyone could have told him when he embarked on his spending binge.  Coming to his senses he thought,‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger.’

"Coming to his senses."  He was acting foolishly, but he realized that by acknowledging his foolishness, he could get back the roof over his head at his father’s house, even though he would not ask for anything more than to be considered one of the servants. 

So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.

The narrative now takes a different tack.  We have followed the fate of the second son.  He has rehearsed his petition for pardon from his father.  But now the father steps to the fore.  He was filled with compassion.  

Because of that compassion, even the "bargain" rehearsed by the son, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son;treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers, does not get uttered….His father cuts him off in mid-sentence.  His father changes the tone of the encounter.  Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again;he was lost, and has been found.

So often when we re-read this beautiful story of compassion, we hear the events re-told.  Think for a minute of the words the son and his father exchange:  "Father, I have sinned…." and "this son of mine was dead…."  The son would have accepted to be let back under his father’s roof as a servant, but the father’s love for his son is not to be bartered for a relationship based on a penitent remorse.  The father cannot not love his son. 

This is the exact opposite of the older son’s attitude toward both his father and his brother.  The older son, called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him,‘Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf…’.

Even the servants can see the overflow of love between father and second son.  It is the very thing that drives the older brother to protest: Look, all these years I served you, and not once did I disobey your orders;yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.

Curiously, it was the second son who thought he could win his father’s love by asking to be treated only like a servant.  But it is the older son who actually makes the comparison in his cause: "all these years I served you, and not once did I disobey your orders…."  He has been as good a servant as possible.  And he also wanted to be rewarded for this servant’s loyalty, "a young goat to feast on with my friends."

Even more tellingly, when this older son tries to plead his cause, he can’t even bring himself to acknowledge his father and brother as such.  His choice of words says so much: "But when your son returns…."  He can’t can even say "my brother".

It is a true story of God’s love for us and a model of what our love should be for God.  It is a relationship rooted on God’s parental love and our filial response.  However, it also means that we are brothers and sisters to one another.  Without that relationship with one another, we harbor a selfishness and a pettiness that will keep us from appreciating the gift of compassion that God shares with all of us here on God’s earth.

 

Fr. Arthur Carrillo, C.P.  is the director of the Missions for Holy Cross Province.  He lives in Chicago, Illinois. 

Scripture:

Genesis 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17b-28a
Psalm 105:16-17, 18-19, 20-21
Matthew 21:33-43, 45-46  

Reflection:

The readings of today are all closely linked.  Their purpose is to strengthen our faith in God’s complete love for us in spite of the sufferings and despair we may undergo.  In fact, they prompt us to see that these very sufferings are a sign of that love – that through them we can become one with Christ and so enter with him into everlasting glory.

We begin with the very human story of Joseph, the youngest and most favored son of Israel (Jacob).  That very favor, shown so extravagantly and imprudently by his father, prompted all his brothers to turn against him.  In fact they came to hate him and waited for a chance to kill him.  When that chance came, they hesitated to spill his blood.  Instead they sold him to travelling merchants who will sell him again in Egypt.

The responsorial psalm continues the story.  Praising the hidden workings of God, it reminds us of the calamities that Joseph bore in his days in Egypt.  In chains as a slave, he was thrown a number of times into the royal prison. But clinging faithfully and openly to his God, he was able by his gifts of prophecy to find favor with the Pharaoh himself. He became the savior of his brothers and his father, and of his people Israel.  For this God had let him be dragged down into Egypt: "Remember the marvels the Lord has done!"

In the gospel we leave Joseph, the symbol and pre-figure of Christ the Messiah, for the actual person of Jesus himself.  Jesus, surrounded by his enemies as well as his disciples, tells them a parable.  Starting with the image of the winepress taken from Isaiah, clearly and pointedly, Jesus makes it a parable about his own life.  It is the story of the patient, loving mercy and goodness of the landowner abused by the base ingratitude, greed, and cruelty of his tenants.  It ends in the tenants’ violent murder of the owner’s son, drawing down a terrible vengeance upon the tenants themselves.  Quoting from Psalm 118, a psalm of praise for the great wonders done by God, Jesus makes clear his meaning: – He is the rejected stone who, in spite of all his sufferings, and by this very rejection, will become the cornerstone of the Kingdom of God. 

In the gospel Jesus himself is telling us that the terrible passion and death he is about to enter is indeed terrible – it is indeed real.  But it is not the end: through this self-surrender he will enable his Father to raise him up to everlasting glory – and to raise us with him.  Contemplating Jesus’ own life and death in the story of the winepress, let us try to join our own difficulties, hardships and sufferings with his.  May the Holy Spirit deepen our faith and trust in the unfailing love of God for us, who "so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son; so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life." 

 

Br. Peter A. Fitzpatrick, CFX, a Xaverian Brother, is a Passionist Associate at Ryken House, across the creek from the Passionist Monastery, in Louisville, Kentucky.

 

Thursday of the Second Week of Lent

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

This gospel story of Lazarus and the rich man is so familiar to us that we could be tempted to miss the message.  Here are a few details from the reading that we might think about.  First, notice that the rich man does not have a name while Lazarus does.  Not having a name can mean many things – lack of influence, diminished power, no lasting legacy and on and on.  But it might also mean that the rich man becomes a bit like "every man" – that is that most of us could possibly identify with the rich man.  Then consider that the rich man is not described as cruel or mean.  We do not know that he makes a conscious decision to allow Lazarus to go hungry.  Perhaps his sin is a sin of omission.  Maybe he is so consumed with his luxurious clothes and fine dining, he does not even see the suffering of Lazarus.  It seems as though, the rich man is possibly what we consider a fairly good guy – after all, even in the depth of his suffering he thinks of his brothers. 

When we consider these things, perhaps we will identify more with the story. Of course most of us would never consciously decide to allow someone to go hungry or suffer great indignities, and yet, while we know that many in our world die every day from hunger, many go without the medical care needed to save their lives, many live in squalor and many don’t even have clean water to drink, we take no action.  In fact, most of us don’t want to even think about, let alone see the "Lazaruses" in our world.  We continue to consume without thinking of what our consumption does to those who suffer in developing countries.  In fact we avoid seeing or thinking about those who are in need in our own community, at our very doors.

During this Lenten Season, one of our resolutions might be to open our eyes and see those who suffer, and think about those who would welcome the very crumbs from our table.  Perhaps then we will really understand Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel.  And when we come to the end of our days, we can say to God that we heard the messages of the Gospel and changed our ways.

‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded
if someone should rise from the dead.’"

 

Mary Lou Butler is a long-time friend and partner in ministry to the Passionists in California.