FrNikola

3rd Week of Lent, Thursday

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The Lord through Jeremiah in today’s First Reading describes what sin is like to him: turning your back on him. It’s a complete about face. In Biblical symbolism the face is a sign of presence, even communion. Sins, great and small, to one degree or another turn our gaze away from God and fix it upon something else. The Lord wanted to see their faces, but instead he got their backs. He is their God, but he wants them to acknowledge it, to turn their faces toward him, and they don’t, despite all he has done for them.

Sin may be an exercise of our freedom, since God created us with freedom so that we could choose whether to love him or not, but it’s also something that makes us freely expose ourselves to the influences of evil in the world that ultimately seek to despoil us of that freedom. We may turn our back on God, but that leaves us exposed to the “strong man” of today’s Gospel to come and conquer us because we didn’t side with God; we turn from our Father and walk right into the alleys of bullies. Our Lord wants to be the strong man and big brother that defends us from evil, but we have to let him. In healing a mute today the Our Lord is showing, despite the propaganda of some, that the power of God is present and active in him and conquering evil, not just healing. They may not entirely understand or believe yet that he is God, but they can’t deny that the Father is acting through his miracles.

If you feel weighed down and powerless due to the bad choices you’ve made, Our Lord is waiting to be the strong man to shelter you as you regain your footing. He will help you to stand up and will stand by you for as long as you let him. Lent’s the time to regain your footing with his help and rejoin him now and forever.

Readings: Jeremiah 7:23–28; Psalm 95:1–2, 6–9; Luke 11:14–23. See also 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Friday.

3rd Week of Lent, Wednesday

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Today’s Gospel passage concerning the Law and the prophets is situated almost immediately after the Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel. The First Reading today reminds us that Moses told the Israelites that observing the Law would show their intelligence and wisdom not only among themselves, but to all the nations. In Chapter 5 of Matthew’s Gospel Our Lord is being cast as a new Moses, speaking once again the words of encouragement to the People of God. He is far more than Moses, as John reminds us in his Gospel: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

If Our Lord brought something way beyond Moses, way beyond the Law, a question obviously on his listeners’ minds is whether the Law is necessary at all, now that they have the opportunity to receive something more. Our Lord is about to teach them that the precepts of the Law are to be followed, but from the heart, not just out of a hollow external religious observance. Today he tells them that when considering the Law and the prophets they should consider their purpose; they were meant to reflect wisdom and intelligence and that wisdom and intelligence needs to be sought and kept in mind in order for their observance to fulfill its purpose. As he continues his discourse in Chapter 5 he starts teaching them how the Law’s they’d already been following needed to be lived from the perspective of charity.

Today we may ask ourselves why, based on this teaching of Lord, are we not observant Jews falling all the old precepts of the Law? Our Lord himself criticized certain traditions of interpretation introduced by the scribes and Pharisees that were not what the Lord wished (cf. Matthew 15:1–20). After his Ascension the Church also wrestled with this question when they started evangelizing non-Jews, and they discerned, in keeping with Our Lord’s teaching and aided by the Holy Spirit, that Our Lord was not asking Christians to follow the Mosaic Law and culture in its entirety (cf. Acts 15:1–35).

If you have difficulty following the “rules” of our faith, ask Our Lord to help you to rediscover their purpose, wisdom, and intelligence. He wants to teach us, even today, if we let him.

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1, 5–9; Psalm 147:12–13, 15–16, 19–20; Matthew 5:17–19. See also 10th Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday.

3rd Week of Lent, Tuesday

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In today’s Gospel Peter asks Our Lord to quantify when enough is enough in terms of forgiving someone. He wants to put a number on it. Our Lord’s response, due to the original Greek, is either seventy-seven (77) or four hundred ninety times (7 x 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 x…): in short, a lot. However, he follows up with a parable that shows we must be unlimited in our mercy. Picture the servant in today’s Gospel as being Adam after the Fall: the servant owed so much (10,000 talents in the original Greek, the equivalent wages of 160,000 years of labor) that not only was his freedom and property forfeit, but that of his entire family as well. With no freedom and no “capital” he’d never be able to repay his debt. Adam and Eve cost all of humanity their communion with God due their sin; the rest of us didn’t commit it, but we suffered its consequences, and still do. The Lord, like the king in today’s Gospel, forgave the whole debt. Everything the servant deserved to lose, he retained, due to the king’s mercy, even though he’d squandered so much.

How does the servant respond? He decided to turn a new leaf in life by becoming a loan shark collecting on his old debts. The amount his fellow servant owed him was infinitesimal (one percent) compared to what he’d just been forgiven. His repentance was shown to be short lived. When we are struggling to forgive someone, or to love someone, we are always tempted to say, “enough is enough.” We ask ourselves whether there’s a fixed rule of thumb, as Peter tried to do today, for limiting our mercy. Our Lord teaches us that “How much is enough?” is the wrong question. The right question is, “Am I going to squander the mercy I’ve received by not showing mercy to others?” The servant was forgiven, and he squandered that forgiveness by not forgiving in return; note that when the king hears of it, only the servant himself is punished, and in a worse way.

We’ve received a priceless gift of mercy through faith and Baptism. We can never repay that debt. When someone wrongs us, we have to remember that no matter how much they’ve wronged us it’s nothing compared to how much the Lord has forgiven us and continues to forgive us. Let’s forgive our brothers from the heart.

Readings: Daniel 3:25, 34–43; Psalm 25:4–5b, 6, 7b–9; Matthew 18:21–35. See also 19th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday.

3rd Week of Lent, Monday

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Our Lord’s hostile reception in his home town today reminds us that, as Our Lord taught us, those who do the will of God are his family, not just those who’ve met him and lived with him. We often ask people to pray for intentions on our behalf, and that is good and noble, but we must also pray and have faith. The people of Nazareth wanted to be impressed, but Our Lord taught them that the real welcome he expected was a welcome of faith. They knew him, but they didn’t believe in him or who sent him.

It is ironic that in the end they treated him exactly like Israel had treated prophets in the past who told them something they didn’t want to accept. Perhaps it was a sign of presumed self-importance that they thought they could throw a prophet off a cliff, but Jesus’ mission was too important to be thwarted in a little town like Nazareth. In our family of faith, even today, there are cynics and skeptics regarding Our Lord, and challenging them provokes a similar reaction.

Lent is a time to truly welcome Jesus he is by striving to be as he wants us to be. Let’s examine ourselves and see what he wants us to change in our lives.

Readings: 2 Kings 5:1–15ab; Psalm 42:2–3, 43:3–4; Luke 4:24–30. See also 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B, 17th Week in Ordinary Time, Friday, and 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Monday.

3rd Sunday of Lent, Cycle C

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We have almost reached the half-way point to Calvary. The forty days of Lent remind us of the forty days in the desert, but we must also keep in view that Our Lord now has his sights set on Jerusalem. We’ve spent a few weeks in the desert, living our Lenten resolutions, and maybe our stomachs, or spirits, are starting to grumble for those things we’ve left behind for these forty days. How are our Lenten resolutions holding up? The Lenten resolutions are how we enter the desert. If you haven’t giving anything up for Lent yet, it’s not too late, but once in the desert, you have to stay the course if you want to reach the Promised Land.

As today’s First Reading reminds us, God is never indifferent to our struggles. When Moses asks God how he should identify him to the Israelites, suffering under bondage in Egypt, God tells them, “tell them I AM has sent you.” God is always there. He doesn’t just stop with that: he reminds them he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to remind them that he is always faithful to his promises. He promised Abraham land and countless descendants if he had faith. Isaac was the fulfillment of that promise, and then Jacob became the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Despite this, when Pharaoh let Moses lead Israel out into the desert, they had forty years of wandering before they entered the Promised Land – and many never made it.

In today’s Second Reading St. Paul reminds us that all the Israelites in the Exodus received the same gifts from God, but many didn’t stay the course out of evil desires. Their forty years in the desert were due to a lack of trust in God. He’d taken them to the Promised Land, but they were too scared to enter. They put their trust in food and water (and God sent them dew and manna, and quail to eat), money, ceremonies (trying to set up worship apart from Moses), authority and rumor mongering (asking why Moses should be the only one to speak on their behalf) – and they perished.

Our Lord doesn’t mince words in today’s Gospel about how we can stay the course in the desert. We’re guilty many times of the same thing as the Israelites. We don’t understand what the desert is for: a place for God to purify the hearts of the ones he loves, away from distractions. There are far fewer distractions in the desert, but the rumbling of our stomachs is also louder, and we ask ourselves what we’re really hungering.

Today’s Gospel shows the Jews in a drought of hope. Pilate has slaughtered a group of Galileans as they were offering worship. The Jews ask Jesus why. Why would God allow such as thing? Jesus adds an accident to the list of doubts: eighteen dead in a tower collapse in Siloam. Our Lord’s words are far from comforting: they are in the same danger, just as we are. Staying the course doesn’t mean not taking risks or making sacrifices (that wouldn’t have saved the Galileans), nor does it mean getting lucky (that wouldn’t have saved the people crushed in Siloam); staying the course means putting your trust in God and showing it. We show it by bearing fruit.

Fruit? In a desert? We are in a desert, and God wants us to bear fruit. We bear fruit by trusting in God’s patience with us (in the parable he gives the fig tree four chances to get its act together), and, as Jesus tells us, by repentance. Lent is about repentance, not just for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world. And the Church teaches us three ways to prepare the soil: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. Penance prepares the soil, but the sacraments are how we draw close to Christ and the Holy Spirit. Jesus waters the soil with his own blood so that we can bear fruit. The Eucharist gives us strength for the journey, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation puts us back on our feet and turns us back in the right direction. The fruits of the Spirit will come, as Scripture reminds us: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity. By repentance and the sacraments we gain the strength to bear these fruits. Otherwise, we’ll lose our bearings and never get out of the desert.

So as we continue our march through the desert of Lent, accompanying Our Lord to Jerusalem, let’s put our Lenten sacrifices on the paten with the host, so that God can transform them into fruits. Let’s ask forgiveness if we’ve fallen behind or gotten turned around in the journey. Let’s trust in God to keep strengthening us for the journey with his Body and Blood,and the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Readings: Exodus 3:1–8a, 13–15; Psalm 103:1–4, 6–8, 11; 1 Corinthians 10:1–6, 10–12; Luke 13:1–9. See also 29th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday.