Daily Scripture

Third Sunday of Lent 

Scripture:

Exodus 17:3-7
Romans 5:1-2, 5-8
John 4:5-42, or 4:5-15, 19b-26, 39a, 40-42

Reflection:

"God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth."

Though I am sure I have read it countless times, I don’t know that I  ever thought much about this gospel of the Samaritan woman before today.  But upon a deeper reflection, I see that Christ tells us a great deal in this encounter, and not just from what he says. 

Jesus was a rebel.  Of course, this sort of goes without saying considering he was claiming to be the Son of God.  But Jesus did something truly scandalous as he took rest by Jacob’s Well in Samaria-he talked to a woman!  It may seem silly to us today, but it was strictly taboo for a man to talk to a woman he didn’t know in public, not to mention that he was a Jew and she was a Samaritan.  Then he doesn’t just talk to her-they engage in a profound discussion in which he not only offers her salvation but reveals himself to be the Messiah" "I am he, the one speaking with you."

There are so many lessons just from this initial encounter-first off, you never know where you are going to encounter Christ (so you better be ready).  This woman was just taking her daily journey for water, an exhausting and monotonous task.  And yet, what she finds at the well will change the whole course of her life.   In her meeting with this strange man, it becomes clear that Jesus did not care about appearances.  If we are to take the reading literally, this woman has been married five times and is currently living with a man who is not her husband.  But our Lord talks to her as an equal knowing that her worthiness in the kingdom is not measured by her gender or race or class. 

And for her part, this woman could have closed herself off from this bold and inappropriate man who was bothering her for a drink.  But she received Christ’s message, "Sir, I can see that you are a prophet."  She believed.  And even more, she became an evangelist!  She didn’t even take the time to grab her water jar first, she ran into town, "Come see a man who told me everything I have done.  Could he possibly be the Christ?"  Her testimony helped make believers out of many.  

How many times have we had opportunities to meet Christ in our daily lives and instead we just turn in the other direction?  And yet, this ordinary woman finds a peace that perhaps she didn’t even know she was looking for.  But this wasn’t a chance encounter.  Christ was waiting for her there.  Because he didn’t just come to save the devout!  He came for the lost and the hopeless and the sinner.  "But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us."  (Romans 5:8).

Christ actually shares a lot about worship and faith and the Father in this brief encounter.  But what continues to resonate with me is this symbol of the living water: "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst . . ."  We are so busy running around trying to quench our proverbial thirst that we often ignore the only thing that will truly fulfill that longing-faith, love, Christ.

 

Marlo Serritella is on staff at the Holy Cross Province Development Office in Chicago.

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

"Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the first skill of self-giving love". –Mahatma Gandhi

As I read today’s Gospel, one word that stuck in my mind was forgiveness.  I remember back to my school days and hearing the story of the Prodigal Son.  Much like the older son in the story, I could not understand why the father was so happy and ordered a celebration to hail the return of his younger son after he squandered his inheritance.  Now as a parent, I fully understand.

As the mother of two young adult sons I understand the joy the father experienced when he saw his son returning to him.  Something I have always told my boys is that "no matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter how you act, I will always love you." They know our home is their safety zone.  In the Gospel, as the son realized he was wrong and wished to seek his father’s forgiveness, he found his faith and was welcomed with open arms to his father’s home.

I made what I feel to be a great leap of forgiveness some years ago.  My mother passed away when I was very young and because of my father’s alcoholism, my relationship with him grew very strained.  I moved out and went to live with my grandmother and great-grandmother that raised me.  I did not see or speak to my father for several years.   When I was about 28, he got in touch with me and I went to visit him.  As I became an adult, and more importantly a parent, I understood the heavy burden he carried as a young widower and single parent of three.  We talked and cried and hugged.  I forgave him and we reconciled.  He got to meet my husband and children, his grandsons.  I think it gave him a sense of peace to know that I did not blame him anymore.  Several months after our meeting he passed away.  I feel very fortunate to have had the chance to give him the forgiveness he sought and welcome him back.

During this journey of Lent, maybe it is time to seek out forgiveness from those we have mistreated or forgive those who have mistreated us, leading us closer to the salvation that is the Resurrection.

 

Claire Smith is on staff at the Holy Cross Province Development Office in Chicago, Illinois.   

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

On one of my talks for the weekend retreat, I remark that Jesus knew what it was like to be misunderstood. In today’s Gospel, we see an indication of that very thing. Our Gospel passage begins with Jesus telling the apostles about His suffering and death that would occur when they got to Jerusalem. Right after this, the mother of James and John asks that her sons sit on His right and His left at the coming of the kingdom. We don’t have an indication that James and John tried to stop her from asking. But it seems to me that Jesus’ prediction of His Passion might have given them pause.

When we reflect on the Cross of Christ, it should give us pause. Jesus is telling the apostles about the suffering and death that has to occur before the Resurrection. But James and John are more concerned about the glory they could have. The other ten are indignant at James and John, but I don’t think it’s because they understand Jesus any better than Zebedee’s sons. I think it’s because they were hoping for glory themselves.

If we follow Jesus, we can’t take a shortcut to glory. In fact, personal glory becomes less and less important the more we follow Jesus’ commands. This is what Jesus tells the apostles and us: "Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave." And if we act as a servant solely for the purpose of being considered great, we will still have missed the point.

We follow Jesus, even to the point of serving others and carrying our own crosses, not for glory or fame, but so that the Gospel is spread, the love of God is shared, and that we might live with Jesus forever. May God help us let go of the desire for glory, and give us the desire for His kingdom!

 

Fr. Phil Paxton, C.P. is the director of St. Paul of the Cross Retreat and Conference Center in Detroit, Michigan.

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

Listening to God

Each day when we reflect on the readings of the day it is a prayerful way of listening to the word of God.  Good prayer should be very sensitive to the Holy Scriptures as it is the revealed word of God to us.  When we prayerfully study the Bible we are asking God to speak to us. 

People in the Scriptures were terrified by the silence of God.  "For if You are silent to me, I will become like those who go down to the pit." (Ps 28:1)

The silence of God is death to prayer.  For in the Bible when God stops talking even nature sinks back into the chaos of early Genesis.  God’s word creates light and goodness and when he ceases to speak all becomes darkness and waste.  Praise to his love for us He constantly communicates to us his deepest thoughts in the Scriptures.

The secret of good prayer is to be a good listener.  It is nearly incredible the amount of emphasis that God places on listening!  "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." (1 Sam 3:9)  The Scriptures treat listening some 4,824 times.  "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me." (Jn
10:27)  The word "know" indicates a deep intimacy with Jesus.  Deep friendship with Christ emerges from paying attention to his word.                      

The closest we can get with persons is communication.  It is when I take what is deep in my mind and heart and give it to the mind and heart of another.  When we open our inner selves by listening to what lies deep in the mind and heart of God expressed in his word, we approach an intense intimacy with God! It is no wonder that God intervenes on the mountain: "This is my beloved
Son, listen to Him." (Mt 17:5)

 

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

 

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

Well, it has been almost two weeks now since the first day of Lent, when most of us had our foreheads marked with a cross of ashes.  It’s a good time to ask ourselves how it’s going.

Today’s Gospel moves us deeper into the spirit of Lent and challenges us to carry the Cross of Jesus in our hearts rather than on our foreheads. 

Religion can sometimes be such a pretence–like the Pharisees in today’s Gospel who are mostly pretending to be righteous.  They paraded around in their religious "costumes" so that people could see how special they were.  It’s a comical image, as Jesus describes them, with their extra large phylacteries and streaming tassels. (Phylacteries are little boxes hung on the wrists and forehead and over the heart, usually containing Scriptural prayers like the Schema Israel: "Hear Israel, the Lord our god is Lord alone.  Therefore you shall love the Lord with all your heart, your mind and soul."  Religious people took literally the admonition to have the Law always at hand and before their eyes.  And tassels were attached to the four corners of their robes as a reminder that the Law extends in every direction.)

Jesus warns us today not to pretend to be something we are not.  When it comes to true religion, the simpler and more honest the better-because God knows everything and it doesn’t matter so much what everybody else thinks. 

There is a wonderful story that Viktor Frankl, the Jewish psychiatrist, tells in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he describes some of the horrors of the death camps in World War II.  When he was arrested he tried to hide in the lining of his coat his life’s work-a manuscript on psychiatry.  But they took everything from him, even his coat.  Eventually he was given the coat of another man who had been sent to the gas chamber. In the pocket, Frankl found a single page of Scripture-the Schema Israel.  It suddenly became clear to him that the real meaning of life was not in his great book, but in his simple relationship to God. 

So having begun our Lenten journey with an external mark on our foreheads, let us allow the grace of this season to transform our inner hearts.  In the words and after the example of St. Paul the Apostle, let us strive only to "put on Christ."

 

Fr. Jim Strommer, C.P. is on the Provincial Council and lives in Citrus Heights, CA.      

Scripture:

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

Reflection:

As the Japanese people continue their recovery efforts, following the devastations that overpowered parts of their nation, they are undoubtedly wondering how or whether they could have done anything differently, to either prevent it, or at least diminish its terrible effectiveness.  They are an intelligent, industrious and resilient people.  But we ask: are these endowments equal to the task of giving an affirmative answer to this question?  One thinks of the tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004, recalling that the wildlife, the animals, knew ahead of time that the tsunami was moving their way, and they were already escaping to higher ground.  They were better equipped to deal with the imminent danger than human beings were.  Was that the case in Japan?

Heading to higher ground to avoid the threats of danger is an apt Lenten program.  Both Daniel and Luke help us in this trek.  Daniel exposes his awareness of a "higher power" at his beck and call: "Ah, Lord, you who keep your merciful covenant toward those who love you….Justice, O Lord, is on your side….".  He also enjoys the kind of self-knowledge that makes him aware of a besetting problem: "We have sinned, been wicked and done evil…"  He knew where his weakness lay, in view of future onslaughts: "We are shamefaced…for having sinned against you."  With such attributes working for him, Daniel, rational animal that he was, was in position to compete with other animals of his environs to gain higher ground.

Luke recalls Jesus supporting this pursuit of self-preservation.  Jesus notes the waste of time and energy spent in judging others in a time of peril.  He urges His followers with vignettes that have proved helpful in gaining success: "Give and gifts will be given to you…poured into your lap.  For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you."  Here Jesus provides the formula of success: giving more than getting.  This makes us masters of our own destiny.  For we know ahead of time exactly how we will manage in time of need, aware that the resources we have at hand are factored into our savings account by what we have given out to others.

Lent is the time before the storm, when we seek higher ground to escape the tsunami heading toward shore.  Veterans of past mistakes deterring us from the effort at climbing, we can now learn how to fashion our own future survival before the storms that lie ahead, by generously reaching out to help others in their upward climb.  If other animals have learned to move to higher ground, we can imitate them by mastering our own destinies through generously measuring out to others, what is ours.

 

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

 

Feast of Saint Joseph

Scripture:
2 Samuel 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16
Romans 4:13, 16-18, 22
Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24a or Luke 2:41-51a

Reflection:
"When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home." (Matt. 1:24a)

I write this reflection in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PNG), just after attending one of the Sunday Masses at St. Joseph’s parish, a Passionist ministry here in PNG. It is about a two minute walk from our community residence, and I arrived as the previous Mass was ending, a Mass celebrated in Pidgin. The Church was full to overflowing and it holds a good 600 parishioners. I concelebrated the next Mass and even more people attended. Extra chairs were brought in.

The people of PNG have a special devotion to St. Joseph. It may be because they find it easy to identify with this humble man who is so central to our redemption. As I reread the Scripture reading for this Mass amidst the simple but highly complex life of PNG, I can begin to appreciate some of the reasons why the people here have fallen in love with St. Joseph. He represents a man who was obviously not highly educated but greatly skilled at listening to God and at understanding what God was asking of him. And Joseph was not afraid to act, to follow through on what God wanted from him.

Life in the United States can be quite complicated. Because so many of us are highly educated and at the same time, so many are school drop-outs but educated in the streets and/or by the media, we tend to believe that we have life figured out, how life should be lived, especially how others should live their lives, how others should behave, how others should organize their lives so that we don’t have to suffer personal discomforts and deprivations. The law is the law, and there are no exceptions, except when it comes to our own lives, of course. We can have friends of ours "fix" our speeding tickets, defraud our government by finding loop holes in the tax system and take advantage of gullible consumers by short-changing them in our business deals. But on the other hand, others have to abide by the letter of the law when it comes to our rights, our lives. Our self-centeredness can lead us to set up two sets of ethical and moral norms, one for ourselves and another for the rest of the world.

All of us face ethical and moral decisions during our life-times, and sometimes those decisions are very difficult ones to make indeed. St. Joseph faced an ethical and moral decision concerning his wife Mary, when he found out that she was with child, and the child was not his. By law, he needed to divorce her, either publically or privately, but divorce her nevertheless. But Joseph, a just man, a man of integrity, paid more attention to the voice of God than to the letter of the law. He did not arrive at this decision by just looking at his own self interest. His attitude was not, "how can I get out of this mess I’m in without getting hurt, while still looking good in the eyes of others?" Rather, his attitude was, "God seems to be asking me to do something that goes beyond the law, beyond the traditions. Should I do it?" Discernment, prayer, integrity, God-justice is what Joseph based his decision on to take Mary into his home.

One of the reasons why St. Joseph can be one of our best role models in life is because he was not a man who sat on his hands once he decided on a course of action. He took Mary into his home. He fled to Egypt when he had to. He came back to Nazareth when God said it was alright for him to do so. These were no small decisions. Yet, he carried them out. St. Joseph is a man of principle that we can all understand, no matter where we live, a Saint that we can admire, and most of all, a Saint we can pray to when we are having ethical and moral dilemmas. St. Joseph, pray for us!

 

Fr. Clemente Barron, C.P. is a member of the General Council of the Passionist Congregation and is stationed in Rome. 

 

Scripture:

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

 

 

 

Reflection:

"But if the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed,
does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life;
since he has turned away from all the sins that he committed,
he shall surely live, he shall not die."

I often wonder about the discouragement that hits a person who seems mired in sin.   It seems that try as hard as he/she does, nothing seems to work to get a person back on track.  An important question needs to be asked:  "Why am I doing what I do?"   To me this question is so important .   So often we get caught up in naming the sin or offense  along with the number of times it happened.   But lacking is the important question of "why do I continue to do this?". 

We would smile at someone who sat in a doctor’s office and complained that they "don’t feel too well.  I need some medicine."   The doctor would immediately ask, "Why are you saying this?   Where do you hurt?  How long have you felt this way?   I can’t prescribe a medicine or treatment to something.  Tell me what is causing it.  May we can figure out how to turn things around."  

So too in the matter of sin against God, neighbor or self.   There can be no "turning from sin" if we are not aware of why we are doing or avoiding what we need to do to correct our actions.   Take the matter of anger.   I often point out that I could stand in front of a group of ten men or women, asking them  "Do you ever get angry?"   As you might guess, I would receive some incredulous looks that shout, "Of course."   But in asking each one, "But why do you get angry?", I could get ten different answers.  One person may simply not tolerate mistakes.   They could live a very sheltered life, hiding the times they practice being perfect but not letting anyone see them in the process of making many mistakes to get there.    Another might find themselves angry at their College son or daughter who is partying 24/7!  "Whoopee…free at last from the domination of Mom and Dad…free at last!"  Yes, free to grow by learning to take responsibility for one’s actions.   A painful experience for trusting parents.   Another might hesitatingly admit being angry at God.   With trembling voice comes the angry question, "Why has my wife come down with cancer?  She has been a wonderful, loving wife and mother.   Why???"   Love knows both a tremendous joy when all is well and a tremendous sorrow when a loved one is hurting.   No one wants to give up the joys!   But sorrow is also a reality because death is inevitable.  Another might answer in a cold, angry voice, "34 years of loyal service to a company only to be let go because a younger worker won’t get the higher salary that I earned."   No salary can truthfully acknowledge the worth of a person.   We bring our worth to work.   True growth takes place when you and I deal with the truth.  It’s tough at times.   The scripture quote from Ezechiel points this out.  A simple "I won’t do that again" doesn’t quite work.   Knowing "why" I do what I do will lead us to seek the right help.

 

Fr. Peter Berendt, C.P. is on the staff of Holy Name Passionist Retreat Center, Houston, Texas.