Lent

4th Week of Lent, Wednesday

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Today’s Gospel continues the aftermath of Our Lord healing an infirm man at Bethesda, which we considered yesterday. Since Jesus had healed on a Sabbath, the “Jews” (the scribes and Pharisees) began to persecute him. Today’s Gospel begins with his response to their criticism: God the Father works on the Sabbath, and, therefore, so does he, since he’s been sent by the Father. Despite their lack of faith they intuit from this declaration that Jesus considers himself equal to God in this affirmation, which is why they think he deserves death. So we see events slowly turning toward Holy Week and Our Lord’s Passion.

John’s Gospel often communicates at multiple levels. In this case, Our Lord is not shying away from the fact of being God the Son, although that would be a terrifying realization to his listeners if they grasped it fully, since the Lord for them was someone tremendous, transcendent, and awesome, but Our Lord is also explaining today how every believer, in imitation of him, should imagine and live his relationship with God. God wants to be Our Father, so we should treat him as a good son or daughter would, in imitation of Jesus. Today’s First Reading encourages Israel to realize that the Lord loves us as a parent and beyond: even if by some tragedy a mother should forget her child, the Lord would not forget.

Lent is the perfect time to revisit our relationship with Our Father and see whether we’re being good sons and daughters. No matter what we do, he’ll never forget us or stop loving us. Seek his will, because his only desire is our love and happiness.

Readings: Isaiah 49:8–15; Psalm 145:8–9, 13c–14, 17–18; John 5:17–30.

4th Week of Lent, Tuesday

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The infirm man by the pool of Bethesda in today’s Gospel had taken a great step forward after thirty-eight years, despite the fact that he was unable to move. He acknowledged that he needed help to be freed of his predicament. As Our Lord would later reveal, his illness was just a symptom of a deeper problem: sin. He’d been sick for thirty-eight years, but it’s not clear how long he’d waited near the pool. Somehow he got there, and that desire to be there showed something was dawning in his soul, something good: he wasn’t just lamenting his health. Now he was seeking a spiritual solution. It was believed that when the waters moved in the pool of Bethesda you could bathe in them and be healed: some ancient biblical manuscripts added here that an angel brushed its wings on the water, showing with the ripples that an opportunity was at hand for healing. As the number of people around the pool demonstrated, many people hoped for this miracle.

It doesn’t seem the infirm man was completely paralytic, but he couldn’t move easily. Who knows whether he’d spent the last of the little strength he had to just get nearer to the pool, but now there was no one to help him go further. Or wasn’t there? The infirm man in his mind had a plan, and it involved God: he was taking a step forward in faith and trust going to Bethesda despite his limitations. He believed healing was possible there. Our Lord comes onto the scene, knowing his plight and his desire, and the man expresses his faith in a miracle and that all he needs is a little help to receive it. The miracle arrived: Our Lord healed him and then disappeared into the crowd. When the healed man picks up his mat and walks off, he doesn’t understand much of what happened; all he knew was that a stranger healed him. Once he had a little time to process what had happened, Our Lord sought him out and warned him against falling back into the true source of his woes: sin.

Some sins are only conquered after a prolonged battle. This should not discourage us. The important thing is to keep our eyes fixed on where we need to go spiritually in order to overcome them. Our Lord works through our faith, our trust, and our effort. Lent is a time to progress in conquering sin. Let’s keep moving forward as the Lord reveals the path to us and not get discouraged when it seems we hit a roadblock. The moment will often come when you least expect it.

Readings: Ezekiel 47:1–9, 12; Psalm 46:2–3, 5–6, 8–9; John 5:1–16.

4th Week of Lent, Monday

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The Gospel of John is a Gospel of signs. John recalls the signs that Our Lord performed in order to encourage people to believe in him. The first sign was the wedding feast at Cana where Jesus changed water to wine. This sign was already starting to bear fruit: as today’s Gospel recalls, when Our Lord passes through Cana again, a royal official already knows his reputation and seeks him out to heal his terminally ill child.

Today’s First Reading reminds us that one of the signs to which we can look forward is the end of sorrow and the blessing of longevity; it is a freedom from illness and the sorrow that ensues from it. The royal official today is seeking a healing, but still expects a process to be followed when he approaches Jesus. Perhaps he was rationalizing what Our Lord could do and how, which is why he asked him to come down to Capernaum and heal his son; he thought he was on a time table, based on his son’s worsening condition. So Our Lord, in a sense, asked him for a sign of faith and trust by chiding him and then telling him his son would live. The royal official knew that if it wasn’t true his boy could very well be dead by the time he returned home. So John recalls that the man believed and headed back home; he really had no sign to go on other than the first sign and Jesus’s word. It was a long journey (around 25 miles), and servants met him along the way to tell him his son had recovered. It was at the exact hour Jesus said his son would live. This was the second sign in John’s Gospel: with a few words Our Lord healed a dying boy who wasn’t even present.

We pray for miracles, and we should, but even in praying for them we have an opportunity to practice faith and trust by not insisting on the ways and means. Our Lord knows what we need before we ask, but we should ask. He may stretch our faith and trust a little, but if we trust in him, everything will work out. We also know miracles don’t always happen in this lifetime, but today’s First Reading reminds us that it is not a matter of “if,” but, rather of “when.” If the miracle doesn’t happen here, it will happen in eternity, thanks to Our Lord.

Readings: Isaiah 65:17–21; Psalm 30:2, 4–6, 11–12a, 13b; John 4:43–54.

4th Sunday of Lent, Cycle C

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We are just past the half-way point in Lent. Jesus is heading to Jerusalem for the last time, and Easter is a light on the horizon, because we live Lent with Easter in mind. The message for this Sunday is on the lips of St. Paul in today’s Second Reading: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

In today’s First Reading God tells Joshua that the forty years that Israel spent in the desert, due to rebelling against God, are over. The Israelites have just entered the Promised Land, and for the first time in forty years they eat the Passover meal using the food of the Promised Land instead of manna, a fine powder God gave them each day in the desert to bake into bread: “a fine, flake-like thing, fine as hoarfrost on the ground” (Exodus 16:14). Today’s Responsorial Psalm summarizes well what they are feeling: taste and see the goodness of the Lord. It is like a cool drink after a long and hot day. The Israelites spent forty years in the desert, suffering and toiling, to reconcile with God after they mistrusted him and complained against him. They have finished their time of penance, which is why God tells them: “Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you.” Every time they grumbled and complained, they resented leaving Egypt. Egypt symbolized strange gods, evil customs: in a word, sin. Through forty years of penance the Israelites reconciled themselves with God.

The sacrament of Confession, the Catechism tells us, “is called the sacrament of Reconciliation, because it imparts to the sinner the love of God who reconciles: ‘Be reconciled to God.’ He who lives by God’s merciful love is ready to respond to the Lord’s call: ‘Go; first be reconciled to your brother’” (CCC 1424). Reconciliation with God and reconciliation with each other go hand in hand. At the start of each celebration of the Eucharist, we pray in the Penitential Rite confessing our sins to God and our brothers and sisters, and asking each other to pray to God that we might be forgiven for our sins. We know that we have reconciled with God, and received his love again, when we are willing to reconcile with others. St. John in his first letter says anything else is a lie: “We love, because he first loved us. If any one says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:19-20).

That brings us to the Prodigal Son and his brother. A moment to be reconciled is at hand for the whole family. We don’t need to do much moral math to see that the Prodigal Son blew it and is sorry. At first it seems he is just sorry that he doesn’t have anything else to eat, due to using up all his father’s money and then being in a famine, but when he comes back home, he has his lines all rehearsed: “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.”’ He barely says the words before his father gives him a big hug and calls for him to be dressed again as his son should be, and to throw a big feast. In an instant he goes from starving pig herder to a re-birthday party.

The tougher case that sometimes we overlook is the older brother; he couldn’t believe what his little brother did, but he was even more confused over what his father did. In his words to his father we see there is some resentment, not only toward his younger brother, but toward his father. This bears the risk of leaving the older brother outside in the cold: he doesn’t want to reconcile with his father, nor with his brother.

The parable doesn’t say how the older brother reacted to his father’s words. If we feel like the older brother sometimes, this leaves the story open to a happy ending or sad one. Let’s spend the last few weeks of Lent reconciling with God and with others in order to have a truly happy ending to our story.

Readings: Joshua 5:9a, 10–12; Psalm 34:2–7; 2 Corinthians 5:17–21; Luke 15:1–3, 11–32. See also 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday and 2nd Week of Lent, Saturday.

3rd Week of Lent, Saturday

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Every moment of prayer, in addition to being supplication, thanksgiving, adoration, or intercession, is a moment of truth. It’s a moment where we acknowledge who we are before God, who is immune to all spin, all subterfuge, all self-promotion. It’s a moment where we ask ourselves whether God’s view of us and our view of ourselves coincide. We know this is not easy, because Our Lord knows us better than we know ourselves. Despite this, we know deep down that lowering our estimation of ourselves is probably more in line than increasing it. Nevertheless, humility is a sound knowledge of self; we don’t navigate self-exploration alone. Those we trust help us to evaluate ourselves, and the Lord above all in every moment of sincere prayer.

Our Lord promises us that if we “aim low” we’ll receive the recognition that counts: his recognition. The tax collector in today’s Gospel knew he was a sinner; Our Lord didn’t deny that in the parable of today’s Gospel. The tax collector knew he needed mercy and didn’t deserve it. Prayer in that moment for him was a moment of truth: the truth he claimed was the truth as Our Lord saw it. He received mercy from God for his interior honesty. It’s not surprising that today’s Gospel says the Pharisee “spoke [his] prayer to himself”: it could just mean he didn’t say his prayer out loud, but it could mean that we was so wrapped up in smug self-worship that he really was praying to himself. Our Lord says he did not go home justified like the tax collector; he’d really accomplished nothing of worth and just went home.

Lent is a time of prayer. Let’s make it a moment of truth where Our Lord helps us to see ourselves in the depths of our heart as we truly are. It will make us abase ourselves so that he can raise us up with his love and mercy.

Reading: Hosea 6:1–6; Psalm 51:3–4, 18–19, 20–21b; Luke 18:9–14.