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2nd Week of Lent: Readings and Feasts

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MARCH 6 Mon Lenten Weekday

Dn 9:4b-10/Lk 6:36-38 

7 Tue Lenten Weekday [Sts Perpetua and Felicity, Martyrs] Is 1:10, 16-20/Mt 23:1-12 

8 Wed Lenten Weekday [St John of God, Religious] Jer 18:18-20/Mt 20:17-28 

9 Thu Lenten Weekday [St Frances of Rome, Religious] Jer 17:5-10/Lk 16:19-31 

10 Fri Lenten Weekday Gn 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17b-28a/Mt 21:33-43, 45-46 

11 Sat Lenten Weekday Mi 7:14-15, 18-20/Lk 15:1-3, 11-32 

12 SUN 3rd SUNDAY OF LENT Ex 17:3-7/Rom 5:1-2, 5-8/Jn 4:5-42

Our readings for this week, beginning with the Old Testament reading from Isaiah, proclaim the mercy of God. The New Testament readings on Monday, Thursday and Saturday are from St. Luke– a gospel of mercy. Jesus proclaims God’s mercy, especially extended to the poor. The story of the Prodigal Son, Luke’s great parable of God’s mercy, is read on Saturday,

Matthew’s Gospel for Wednesday reminds us that temptations about power, so obvious in the story of Jesus’ temptations, also occur in his disciples, like James and John. Can we see it too in the elder brother from the Parable of the Prodigal Son?

The readings from the Old and New Testaments complement each other during Lent. Celebrations of the saints are fewer and often become optional memorials, as is the case of the saints this week. .

The mercy Jesus calls for is not just acceptable or normal;  it’s Godlike. Can any of us be as merciful as God?  But there’s no watering down the challenging, radical words we hear in our lenten readings.

Lent’s not meant to make us comfortable; it sets our sights on loving more, and it sets the bar higher than we like. Like the Olympic games, lent calls for our best, and more. A bigger prize than a gold medal is at stake.

Saturday, First Week of Lent: Loving Enemies

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Lent 1

“Jesus said to his disciples: ‘You have heard that it was said,

You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I say to you, love your enemies,

and pray for those who persecute you,

that you may be children of your heavenly Father,

for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,

and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” (Matthew 5: 43-48) 

When people talk about love today,  they’re usually focused on romantic love, “falling in love”, or loving yourself. Not much talk about loving others or loving your enemies today.

 “Love your enemies”, Jesus says in today’s gospel. Have a love that imitates God’s love,  our heavenly Father “who makes his sun rise on the bad and the good and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”

Is that love beyond us?

We’ve been told from earliest years that there are some people you can’t trust; they’ll take advantage of you; they’ll harm you. You have enemies in this world. Be careful.

Certainly Jesus doesn’t condemn reasonable caution. He had enemies too and he was careful what he said and how he dealt with them. Evil exists. Rather, Jesus warns against  a pessimism that leads us to condemn someone or some groups absolutely. We see no possible goodness or possible change in them, only intractable evil.

We don’t see as God sees when we think like that. The sun of God’s goodness shines on this world; the rain of his mercy softens its hardest places. His love changes people for the good.

We can’t just reason our way to a love of enemies, we must pray to grow in this love.  Jesus not only taught us, but showed us by his own example how to love our enemies. Look at him in his Passion, says St. Aelred:

“Listen to his wonderful prayer, so full of warmth, of love, of unshakeable serenity – Father, forgive them.  Is any gentleness, any love, lacking in this prayer?
 
  Yet he put into it something more. It was not enough to pray for them: he wanted also to make excuses for them. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. They are great sinners, yes, but they have little judgement; therefore, Father, forgive them.
 
They are nailing me to the cross, but they do not know who it is that they are nailing to the cross: if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; therefore, Father, forgive them.
 
They think it is a lawbreaker, an impostor claiming to be God, a seducer of the people. I have hidden my face from them, and they do not recognise my glory; therefore, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
 

Teach us, Lord, a love like yours,
that never gives up or draw limits,
or settles for those in its small circle.
Help us to love like the sun and the rain
that reach everywhere.

The Law Made Flesh

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Fra Angelico: The Crucifixion (detail), ca.1437-46
Source: Wikimedia Commons

10th week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday

1 Kings 18:20-39, Psalm 25, Matthew 5:17-19

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

In the legalistic society Jesus grew up in, he witnessed the meticulous ways in which people carried out their ritual purifications, food laws, and Sabbath regulations. The heart and soul of these minute rules was love, Jesus pointed out earlier to the wise scribe (Mark 12:28-34). He had no battle to pick about words and letters in the law. Such scholarly disputations were a hindrance to his simple yet inexhaustibly profound message from the Father’s heart: the only-begotten Son of God is the Law made flesh.

All of the sacrifices of the Old Law were nailed to the Cross in Jesus Christ. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it will not live. Seen in the light of the Trinity, Jesus showed us that the way to authentic personhood and communion is self-emptying. By detaching from ego and its illusory, finite possessions both material and spiritual (“mine”), persons are released into the infinity of the Triune Love (“all mine are thine, and thine are mine”).

Spiritual eyes open slowly and gradually, over centuries and generations, as humanity crawls from babyhood to adulthood as one man. In the dramatic episode of Elijah’s glorious defeat of the prophets of Baal, the lukewarm children of Israel returned to their God. However, zeal and fanaticism led Elijah to kill his opponents. With the heat of Jezebel’s threat on his neck to take his life in return, he fell into depression under a broom tree, begging the Lord to let him die. He was not fully aware of the reason for his slump, but it probably came from his excessive zeal.

No prophet ever died for his enemies but Jesus Christ. All of the arrows, violence, scorn, beatings, and hatred of the scattered children of Adam were hurled upon the Cross. And Jesus said, “I thirst.” He thirsts for our love and unity. He thirsts for our ultimate happiness which can only be obtained by dropping our arrows and emptying our hands. We are one, he told his disciples at the Last Supper. If you hurt one of the least of my brethren, you hurt me, he told Saul (later Paul) on the road to Damascus. 

In the childhood of humankind, the line between good and evil was drawn outside in the world of material extension. “Us” versus “Them,” “friends” versus “enemies,” “I” versus “You.” The line between good and evil, however, is found within the human heart, the true altar of sacrifice. The message of the Beatitudes is conquer yourself. The battle with sin and evil is within. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is replaced by, “Love your enemies.”

Stories abound from the desert fathers and mothers about the discovery of God’s universal love for all without discrimination, a realization obtained only after a great interior battle and purification.

Let us pray with the Psalmist, “Teach me your paths, my God, and guide me in your truth” (Psalm 25:4b, 5a). 

-GMC