This week’s readings say to me that they are about what it means for us to love God and what it means for God to love us. The first reading reminds us what can happen if we get caught up in the noise, the fear, and the intimidation of chaotic moments. It shows us what can happen if we let a herd mentality confuse our perceptions of what’s holy and what isn’t. The crucifixion is one event that happened in such a climate, the first reading reminds us. But the same passage also gives us Good News. It tells us we can acknowledge when our vision of what’s holy has been clouded, and we can ask the Holy Spirit to sweep the clouds away and help us to refocus our attention on the True Compass. The psalm promises that God won’t abandon us but will give us clarity and healing if we’re open to receiving these gifts.
The third reading says to me that to love means to give to and to receive from the Beloved. It means cooperating and sharing a common purpose. It says that love must be expressed with actions as well as words. It says love that meets these criteria is love of God.
The gospel reading calls attention to some additional characteristics of God’s love. God understands human nature better than any human, so God knows that pleasant surprises are good for relationships, including our relationship with God. Evidence of this knowledge is demonstrated in the way the newly resurrected Jesus enters into situations in which His first followers don’t expect Him to appear. Granted, these followers are surprised to see him largely because they’ve gathered with people who have seen His crucifixion, death and burial, but they might also be surprised because Jesus doesn’t knock on the door and wait for them to open it. I’m imagining He knows they wouldn’t have opened it if He had. They’re too scared of being arrested and meeting the same fate Jesus did. So He seems to simply appear “in their midst,” going around their fear and surprising them to give them what they need (Luke 24:36) — but not before He shows their intellect and their need for food some love. He appears in their midst after two of them have returned from a journey, and He has discussed with them what refers to Him in the Scriptures and then made himself “known to them in the breaking of bread” (Luke 24:35).
I also see this passage as a reminder that God shows Divine love by demonstrating that He knows we need each other. We have opportunities to be for one another a tangible connection to divine love. In this passage, the reports that two followers provide upon returning from the journey are one example of that connection. The other is what Jesus Himself does when he appears in the midst of the group. He points out to the gathering that he has “flesh and bones” he shows them his crucifixion wounds, and he asks for something to eat (Luke 24:39). Once he gives them a tangible connection to his resurrection, he reminds them of what he told them before his death. He reinforces that the physical and the mental/spiritual realms are intertwined and that both are sacred.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
I feel reminded by the first reading that the narrowness of my perspective, my weaknesses, and my sins won’t keep God’s ultimate plan from being fulfilled, but I still need to own my narrowness, my weaknesses, and my sins and resolve to work with the Divine Plan instead of against it. Being a conduit for this plan is how I can experience renewal now and in the future.
The psalm invites me to return to it again and again, praying with its words, asking God to help me make them my own and to live them.
The third reading reminds me to make sure my actions are consistent with what I’d like to think is important to me and with what I’d like to think my relationship with God is. It also reminds me to ask God for help with making sure that what matters to me is what matters to God.
The gospel reading reminds me that God embraces all of me — mind, body, and spirit.
Lord, help me to accept the gifts of that embrace so that I can live them and share them. Amen.
This week’s readings provide a variation on the truth that conversion and growth are ongoing processes. I would express the variation that’s introduced today like this: Easter isn’t just one day. Liturgically, it’s a fifty-day season, just as Lent is a forty-day one. Life is a recurring cycle of Lenten seasons and Easter seasons with seasons that connect one to the other. These between seasons called “Ordinary Time” offer gifts of their own that, perhaps, I don’t always recognize. Life presents a series of highs and lows. We don’t get to summits directly from valleys and vice-versa. We can’t teleport ourselves from one to the other. Moving in either direction is a gradual and often painful process.
On this year’s encounter, this week’s readings say to me that the Easter season presents a process. Last week, we read that on the first Easter morning, Jesus’ followers saw the empty tomb with only their physical eyes — at least that’s how I interpreted last week’s Gospel passage. In this week’s Gospel passage, Jesus helps those who have locked themselves away after running from the empty tomb to develop their spiritual sight. The first way He does this is by letting them see His resurrected body with their physical sight. Second, He gives them his spirit so they can use it to carry the Easter message beyond their group.
He sends them to take part in reconciling His brothers and sisters to Himself and to each other. He tells them that the process of reconciliation isn’t cosmetic work or lip service. It requires action on the part of both the one who forgives and the one seeking forgiveness. It also requires openness of heart and willingness to support with a combination of honesty and compassion others who want to make difficult changes in their lives. While the passage shows Jesus’ first followers getting the physical proof and spiritual support they need to move beyond the locked doors, it also offers encouragement to the disciples who wait beyond those doors and in the future. “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed,” John 20:29 says.
The second reading reminds us what it means to follow Jesus and offers further encouragement to His disciples:
In this way we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith. Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
1 John 2-6
The message I’m getting is that the way of the Trinity doesn’t keep people who follow it behind spiritual locked doors. The Trinity helps us see healthy guardrails and giving, not as deprivations but as gains. Giving and living within guardrails are the ways to receive and to share the unending mercy the psalm praises. The first reading describes what living that mercy look liked for the early church. That passage brings to my mind the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy and how the two types of works are inextricably linked to each other. We are called to take part in these works, to do our part in helping the world experience that “[God’s] mercy endures forever” (Psalm 118:4).
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
It’s easy to read that ” his commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith” (1 John: 3-4) But I’d be lying if I wrote that it felt true. I don’t know about all of you, so I’ll speak for myself. Hanging onto can feel burdensome when I’m surrounded by so many events that test faith. And taking part in the spiritual and corporal works of mercy can feel burdensome because they ask me to get out of my comfort zone, to put the basic needs of others ahead of my own wants, to risk being criticized or rejected. The part of my nature that isn’t in union with God’s doesn’t want to do these things, so the necessity of doing them can feel burdensome — even though I feel lighter after doing them.
Lord, help me to accept the crosses You call me to carry for my own sake, for the sake of my brothers and sisters, and for the natural world You’ve given me the privilege of caring for. Because You accepted Your cross, died, and rose from the dead, I can find new life by carrying my crosses, by helping others carry theirs, and by accompanying others into the life of communion and dignity You intend for all of us to have. Thank You.
Give me the courage to trust in Your mercy so that I can seek it, receive it, and share it. Help me to embrace and to extend mercy in all its forms.
Thank You for being with me both in times of faith and doubt and in situations in which I experience a mixture of both. Amen.
Happy Easter! This week’s readings present me with contrasts. The contrast I find in the first reading is that Jesus came to minister, to suffer, to die and to rise so that “everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness through his name ” (Acts 10:43). Yet relatively few people had the privilege of being witnesses to His ministry, His suffering, His death and His resurrection. Yet the small group chosen for this purpose was “commissioned to preach to the people and testify that [Jesus is] the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42).
The third reading says:
Brothers and sisters: If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:1-3
It sets up a contrast between what’s above and what’s below.
The Easter Gospel reading and that the contrast between what Jesus’ first followers thought the disappearance of his body from the tomb meant — having Jesus taken from them — and what they later came to understand the disappearance of his body from the tomb— having Jesus restored to them in His glory. The third reading testifies to the greater understanding of the events of Easter morning that Jesus’ followers came to over time.
At the same time, I think the contrasts presented in the third reading point to how understandings of Jesus’ mission for us have developed since the third reading was committed to paper. It’s my understanding that the first recipients of the third passage assumed Christ’s return was imminent. I think I’d be a lot less inclined to worry about what’s going on around me if I thought I was about to be taken out of those circumstances.
This is not the only scripture passage that tells Christians what not to worry about. For example, Jesus tells us not to worry about what to wear and what to eat (Matt. 6:31-32). But when looked at alongside other teachings of Jesus and of Paul, I don’t think either person was advising us to be passive and wait for what we need and what others need to materialize from Heaven. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 says “… we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.” (As an aside, this verse is often used as a political weapon, so I’d like first to make a distinction between someone who cannot work enough to support him or herself and someone who could but doesn’t. A person on the outside of an individual’s situation is unlikely to have enough information to assess with perfect clarity whether a person is doing all he or she can to support him or herself. Secondly, I’d like to offer that a person who supports others doesn’t necessarily get income from that work with which to feed him or herself. This reality doesn’t mean the person is lazy.) Jesus says, “If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well” (Matt 5: 40). In these examples, Paul and Jesus are concerned with the challenges of life here on earth. They aren’t focused on a future reality where these challenges don’t exist.
So I propose that the lesson of the third reading is not “Think only about God, angels and saints rather than what’s going on around you. Instead, the lesson is to look at what’s around us and what we have and don’t have through eyes of faith. Perhaps the third reading offers a different way of bringing us back to the message we received at the start of Lent. Perhaps we are being reminded that only God is eternal. We are eternal when we unite ourselves to God by trusting Jesus and doing as He does. What we celebrate today reminds us of that promise and that reality.
Some aspects of life are gifts from God — and we can recognize them as such – but aren’t eternal. Other aspects of life aren’t welcome, and the promise that they aren’t eternal is good news. For both cases, perhaps this week’s passage from Colossians is a reminder to discern what’s eternal — the qualities of God — and not to treat what’s not eternal as if it were.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Dr. C. Vanessa White invites us on this Easter Sunday to be to the world around us what Mary Magdalene was for the apostles on the first Easter Sunday.
Beyond this week’s readings:
Here it is, Easter Sunday. Do I feel or think I’ve moved any closer to God than I was at the beginning of Lent? I wish I could say I do, but I don’t. But what I decided to offer to God this Lent did teach me. It taught me how important my favorite free-time activities are in my life and how much they feel like additional ways to express myself. They make me grateful for the many forms beauty takes in this world.
I’m also grateful that taking time away from these activities made me appreciate them more and helped me be more present to what’s happening around me and not to rush to these activities rather than expressing myself through writing first. Still, letting myself be bored and/or uncomfortable, and struggle with practicing the discipline of focus has been a strain.
I think that during these weeks of Lent, I’ve gotten used to making time for ways of expressing myself that have greater potential to serve others than my favorite hobbies do so that now I can continue benefiting from these flexible practices every day while reintroducing other hobbies.
Learning from and living with Jesus changed the lives of those who walked with him on Earth. But experiencing life with Jesus didn’t erase the pasts of His spiritual brothers and sisters, their personalities, or all their concerns. Instead, sharing life with Jesus changed how his disciples saw the other components of their lives. Experiences with Jesus planted the seeds of being open again and again to changes in circumstance and perspective.
The understanding Jesus’ followers had of the significance of the empty tomb and how it related to their mission evolved over time. Similarly, I hope that as time goes by, I’ll recognize that greater spiritual growth and significance came out of this Lent then I can recognize today.
Open my heart to the significance of the empty tomb, Lord. You have left the tomb. Come and fill my heart to overflowing so that I can’t help but share Your love. Amen.
As I sit with these passages again this year, I find myself paraphrasing something my pastor said. It was in 2021, I think. He said that at various moments in our lives, we are every character in the passion story. I’ve been many of them. I’ve been open about my faith when I was in a crowd who made it easy to be open because they were being just as open. I’ve been silent about my faith when being open felt threatening — even just socially. I’ve asked God to get me out of a difficult situation, and God didn’t. I’ve said, “Thy will be done,” though I doubt I’ve ever been able to mean it without reservation as Jesus did.
Simon of Cyrene was “pressed into service” to help Jesus carry the cross (Mark 15:21). At most, I’ve been volunteered for some tasks I wouldn’t have chosen to do on my own. They were a lot less strenuous and my circumstances a lot less dangerous, yet I doubt I allow myself to be changed for the better as much as Simon must have allowed himself to be for his name to be remembered in accounts of Jesus’ passion (Matt.27:32; Mark 15:21; Luke 23:26). I’ve betrayed people in my life and been betrayed by them. I’ve thought that if God is real and cares about His children and His creation, why doesn’t He save them from harm in easily recognizable ways all the time? Why would he allow them to suffer? I’ve also been asked the same questions when I’ve undertaken something or accepted a circumstance, and someone else didn’t understand why. I’ve asked now and then why God has abandoned me.
I’ve never been accused and/or sentenced unjustly by anyone charged with enforcing laws, but too many people have been. So many others have stood by someone unjustly sentenced and/or condemned, just as the people at the foot of the cross did for Jesus.
In this week’s readings shows the power of knowing who we are and what our purpose is in pursuing a purpose, regardless of the cost of doing so. The path of learning who we are, of fulfilling that purpose, of sacrificing for it looks different for everyone.
For Jesus, this path meant giving of Himself again and again in prayer, teaching, feeding, and healing. The darkest part of his journey brought him every kind of suffering brought him death. Why did He surrender to suffering and death? Not because God required His suffering and death to save us, but because we required his suffering and death to bring us back into union with God. We walk away from that relationship. God doesn’t. In fact, He never stops pursuing a relationship with us. The cross was the ultimate example of that pursuit, of going after us as we are — in all our fears, doubts, greed, fickleness, cruelty, violence, and even in our mortality.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Another reflection, “Jesus Did Not Die to Appease an Angry God,” even though it was published as a reflection on earlier Lenten readings, helps me make sense of this week’s readings in light of one core belief that’s been handed on to me — that God is love.
In the last few years, I’ve made my own the prospective on atonement and on the crucifixion that Fr. Terrance Klein expresses in the previous paragraph’s link. It’s been more than a week now since I first read his reflection, but I may have used some of his words in my reflection without realizing it. He explains so well, in my opinion, what I’ve wanted to communicate on this blog, but I never thought my way of communicating it made as much sense.
I hope you can access Fr. Klein’s reflection. I came across it on the website of America Magazine. I think viewing a certain number of articles on that website is free each month before the website invites visitors to subscribe to read more. I’ve tried to put this perspective into my own words at the end of the first section in case you are unable to read Fr. Klein’s words, but I hope you’ll be able to. If you are able to, I encourage you to do so. Fr Klein isn’t the only person I’ve encountered who offers this perspective or a similar one on atonement and the crucifixion, but his article is the one I have most recently encountered on the subject.
This perspective is important because it has the potential to recast who we say God is, what God does, and how God sees us. This perspective helps me see God as a rescuer and a healer, someone who wants to save us from what our own distorted vision, weaknesses and injustices do to us, rather than someone who punishes out of anger, jealousy, or a desire to exact revenge upon us for our lack of obedience. It’s a perspective on the relationship between God and humanity that has taken humanity time to develop. By using the word “develop,” I don’t tend to suggest that humans came up with it, but that each of us is on an ongoing journey to understand reality more fully and thus to know God better.
I also don’t mean to suggest that sins don’t matter to God. I think they matter to God precisely because God understands better than we do how sin hurts the sinner and others affected by the sin. It’s precisely because of this supreme understanding that God goes to battle with all of sin’s damage in the generations before Christ and during Christ’s conception, hidden life, ministry, and passion. God wills restorative justice.
Thank you, Lord for coming to rescue us by living a human life so You could be an example for us and could heal us through Your Divinity, Your human relationships with others, Your ministry, Your intercession, Your suffering, and Your death. Amen.
This week’s readings show me from different angles about how to start fresh, how to find renewal, how to be restored. The first reading echoes the message of last week’s third reading — that Christ is the source of renewal in God. This week’s first reading promises the renewal, the reunion with God that the events of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday will offer.
The psalm says to me that I might as well be its narrator. “A clean heart” and “a steadfast spirit” are precisely what I long for. As a person who experiences anxiety, has an anxious nature even, the request for “a steadfast spirit” particularly resonates with me (Psalm 51: 12-13).
The third reading urges me to persevere in making the requests I highlighted in the second reading. It also reminds me that receiving that “clean heart,” that “steadfast spirit” will mean facing my fears and in doing so, standing up to my desire to let the comforts of self-preservation and the status quo rule my life (Psalm 51: 12-13). To imitate Jesus, to cooperate with God’s will, to live, is to die to the instincts to preserve a distorted idea of myself and to maintain the status quo. The Gospel passage presents the same message in a different way.
I don’t mean to suggest that this message is telling us that rules are meant to be broken and that systems are meant to be dismantled, or that following a routine should be dispensed with entirely — only that we need to be open always to evaluating how our systems are working, who they are working for, and who they aren’t, and how they need to be reformed, adapted, or adjusted to work better. They can’t work better if they don’t support growth, which means more than being alive, it means living, which means being able to share material, spiritual, and intellectual gifts. It means being able to connect with and care for the world around us.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
My immediate reaction to this statement was to push back, partly because of sermons, homilies and other reflections. I’ve often heard that God’s forgiveness doesn’t excuse what’s being forgiven; forgiveness of harm doesn’t erase the harm. And wouldn’t forgetting mean erasing the harm from individual and collective memories? And how can an all-knowing God forget?
I’ve read that Jesus retained His wounds after the resurrection. For many others having, the reality of their wounds and what caused those wounds acknowledged is an important part of the healing process. And yet, too often, societies and individuals have behaved as if healing could be found by pretending harm never occurred.
Maybe we don’t have accurate words for how God sees us and our sins. An all-knowing, all-powerful, all loving God can see in each of us the special ways reflect the Divine Nature if we don’t distort this reflection with sin, or if we allow God to restore the clarity of the reflection by handing over our sin and frailty to Him God knows that, by ourselves, we can’t be completely undistorted mirrors of holiness. Perhaps God also doesn’t unknow each of our sins. But God does transform them into opportunities to receive and to share grace, opportunities to recognize that we need God and others, and that others need us in return. Showing our wounds lets others know him they can uncover theirs as well. Wounds exposed to light, air, disinfectants, and other treatments can close. Them closing doesn’t mean they won’t leave behind scars. It just means they won’t hamper our growth, our very life, as they did when they bled under bandages.
Lord, give us the courage to acknowledge our wounds before you and others, just as you have not hidden your wounds from us. Lord, clean our wounded spirits and restore them to steadfastness. Transform scars into reminders that strength can be found in the vulnerability of openness. Help us not to let whatever we’d rather forget weigh us down. Transform our memories, whether painful or joyful, into means of connection to You through everything that is. We thank You that everything is able to serve this purpose because You came to live, die, and rise among us. Amen
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “5th Sunday of Lent, Sunday 17 February 2024: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.186, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 8 Feb. 2024, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm.
This week’s readings are about being in exile — far from home, the place where one belongs. The first reading and the psalm teach that God can work, even through those in exile — perhaps especially through the exiled, provided that those in exile don’t lose sight of who they are and where they come from. God works through those in exile precisely because while they hopefully can live in harmony with the people native to the place they now find themselves, they stand out. They can use their visibility to be examples of authenticity and charity. Humility is necessary for authenticity, and authenticity makes room for charity, which is service toward and cooperation with others.
The third reading teaches that we can be neither authentic nor humble if we’re under the illusion that anything we are or anything we do comes from us alone. Setting aside any environmental factors that contribute to who each of us is, none of us would exist without the combined DNA of other people, and none of the people who make up who we are would exist without God’s life giving, sustaining, and restoring love. All that is exists to magnify and to be a channel for that love.
Unfortunately, the magnifying glass or prism that each of us is meant to be gets clouded by things we get tricked into thinking are God. These idols block our ability to see God’s light, to feel its warmth, through and beyond them. Blockers of God’s light that come to my mind are fear, shame, anger, and envy.
This week’s Gospel reading reassures us that Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn us for the very human experiences that I just listed. He came into the world to bear the weight of all our sins, our weaknesses and our pain, to surrender himself entirely to these, going so far as to engage with death itself so that He could neutralize its power and along with it, the power of every other human frailty. The key to experiencing that, as evidenced by His victory over death, He’s stronger than every idol is to hand over the imposters to His custody so they don’t take custody of us. This handing over is so much harder to do than the writing about it was. The imposters still feel powerful, no matter how many times we hear that God has rescued us from them. We let ourselves get trapped by them into believing we should hide from the light because we belong to the seemingly stronger darkness, and that we’ll be set adrift and alone if we come into the light’s embrace and expose the distortions darkness creates as the illusions they are.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
It’s one thing to write about not hiding from the light and instead moving forward into its healing rays. It’s another matter to take the risk of coming out of hiding and to trust. One step toward allowing God to embrace me in my weakness and with all the I’m ashamed of is to bring what I’m tempted to hide to God in prayer. Doing this feels like coming to God and asking God to put a spotlight on me. In this situation, I may confront what I’d rather hide, even from myself. But I’ve also been known in times like this to be confused about what God wants me to bring to light. These tendencies are the reason why I need at least one other person to help me lift to God what I’d rather not acknowledge. The first three readings support my need for healing to have a relational component I can perceive with my physical senses.
And yet it’s so hard to seek this help, to put into words what fear warns me keep silent. After all, everyone else is imperfect too, and no one has the unlimited perspective of God. Will my frailty, my failings be understood if I share them? Will they be judged? Can I even put them into words? Will doing so ever bring me closer to spiritual wellness? After years of struggling in the same ways, believing I can be spiritually free and comfortable in the light is so difficult.
Nonetheless, “I do believe,” Lord, [H]elp my unbelief. (Mark 9-24). Help me not to carry burdens you are waiting to take from me. Grant me the grace to seek and to find refuge in Your light along with and in the sight of all your children. Amen.
Work cited
The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
The message I first get from the first reading is that the one who withholds nothing from God receives blessings now and into eternity.
The message of the psalm is a challenge to trust God, especially when doing so is most difficult. Actually, the first and third readings issue this challenge as well. The third reading also asserts that God blesses and saves whomever trusts God. And the Transfiguration in the Gospel promises the same. It also reminds us who Jesus is, and who we are. When we listen to Jesus and show that we’ve been paying attention by following Him, we regain a clear perspective of who we are, the perspective that Jesus shared about himself and about us. When we live this perspective, acting as beloved sons and daughters of God, we’re family members connected by more than DNA or choice, and someday, neither time nor any other force will be able to limit the reach of our light or our love. This is a promise that runs through each of this week’s readings.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
I’m grateful to have access to Ms. Ibrahim’s perspective on the first reading, because I find the Old Testament passage disturbing. If someone today said God commanded the literal sacrifice of his or her child, even if the person later said God had stopped the sacrifice, people inside and outside religious communities would express certainty that God had not commanded the sacrifice. They’d say the parent was mentally ill and/or hearing the voice of Satan or a demon.
As with the actions attributed to God in last week’s Old Testament reading, it can be very tempting to smooth over the disturbing content and implications of the passage by saying that the Old Testament reading prefigures God the Father not withholding the sacrifice of his Son on the cross to save the rest of humanity.
But I can think of some differences between the two sacrifices. First, thankfully, in the first reading, God prevents the sacrifice, Second, Jesus is an adult who accepted the cross, not a child, as Isaac is in this week’s Old Testament passage. I see other differences as well, but I think I’ll save these observations for a future Palm Sunday reflection.
Both the crucifixion and the story of Abraham’s almost-sacrifice of Isaac inspire me to pray about violence. Especially on my mind is how these parts of Scripture present violence done in the name of God. I offer the following prayer:
Lord, grant us the grace to trust You to keep Your promises and the freedom to live in friendship with You. Help us to recognize the vulnerable among us. Guide us and to care for them and protect them. Guide us in discernment as we seek to do Your will. Deliver us from temptation and evil masquerading as Your will. Protect us from violence, especially violence that claims to be done in Your name, but only harms the people and other living things and resources that are most vulnerable in this world rather than protecting them. Amen.
This week’s readings remind me that neither suffering nor pleasure is eternal in the universe. Only God is eternal and all-powerful. Sin is rejecting that which gives life and treating something else as if it were eternal and all-powerful. The readings invite me to re-examine what the things I think, do, and say reveal about what I treat like God. The passages encourage me to step back from my routines, to start fresh, and to rearrange my priorities so that I treat only God as eternal, all-wise, and all-powerful. They propose that committing to a period of abstaining from something that, while not harmful, is also not necessary, can help me reorder my life and clarify and broaden my perspective. In other words, the readings propose spiritual decluttering for the sake of gaining that broader perspective and increased clarity.
This week’s readings also remind me that actions have consequences, but I don’t believe this reality means that God sends the consequences. Certain choices yield unpleasant results, but God can take those results and use them for good. I can also use my choices to practice self-control and to help avoid experiences that are more unpleasant than the temporary inconveniences that practicing self-control can entail.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Diana Marin offers her perspective on what a spiritual desert feels like, means, and can provide.
Beyond this week’s readings:
The first reading communicates that a rainbow is a reminder of God’s promise never again to destroy the earth and almost everyone who lives on it with a flood. The psalm says that God is good, “shows sinners the way,” and “guides the humble to justice” (Psalm 25: 8-9). I have a hard time reconciling what the psalm says about God with the story about a massive flood that kills all but two of each species and one human family. My experience of the world around me and with what I’ve been taught tells me that people are made up of varying combinations of positive and negative traits. No one I’ve known has possessed either all positive traits or all negative ones. I’ve also been taught that everyone around me is created by God and loved by God, while also being vulnerable to temptation and sin. So wouldn’t Noah and his family have these characteristics too? I can imagine some arguing in response to this question that maybe Noah’s family asked for God’s forgiveness and others didn’t. Nobody outside of Noah’s family? Really?
I’m not actually bothered by these questions because I don’t view the first reading as a historical account. I think there was a massive flood because several cultures have passed down stories about it, but I also think it’s important not to be too literal about what the flood says about human nature and Divine nature.
The third reading offers a lens through which Christians can look at the flood and the rainbow that Genesis says followed it. I read the epistle as proposing that between His death and resurrection, Christ redeemed the victims of the flood, a comforting understanding to have after the resurrection and ages after that flood. Because of Christ’s total surrender to death and His victory over it, physical death is not final. Yet it’s important not to minimize that death is often painful for anyone touched by it in any way. Therefore, it’s important not to minimize the tragic nature of a massive flood, even as we look at such an event through the lens of Scripture passages written later, when understandings of God and how God interacts with the material world had evolved.
The third reading proposes that the flood prefigures baptism. It’s jarring to think of baptism as a flood that kills unjust people and establishes a new relationship, renewing promises to the people who come after the flood. The Good News is that the death of baptism isn’t a physical one. Neither is the other death, the death of selfish-centeredness I’m called to surrender to each day to keep my priorities from getting out of whack, to keep me from letting someone or something not God masquerade as God in my life.
Lord, every time I see a rainbow, remind me that my baptism was a death that inaugurated a new life, one stronger than weakness and physical death. Grant me the grace to keep returning to You, the Source of that life, to reignite the fire of Your eternal life within me. Amen.
Work cited
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “1st Sunday of Lent, Sunday 18 February 2024: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.185, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 29 Jan. 2024, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm.
In the first passage, I read that the Lord gives specific instructions to Moses and Aaron about what to do if someone has leprosy and what to tell the affected person to do.
The subject of the psalm is a different disease — the disease of sinfulness. The Good News that this psalm shares is that God offers treatment for the latter condition to everyone. The first step in the treatment is acknowledging I have this illness. The second is sharing with God and with a wise adviser or two the symptoms of it that I’m experiencing. The third step is acknowledging that I can get rid of neither the symptoms nor their cause of this illness on my own. The process of spiritual healing begins with my trust in the power of God to cure what’s sick in my soul and my awareness of and gratitude for what in me reflects God.
The third passage, the epistle, begins by reminding me that my purpose is to reflect God. The ideal is for people to be drawn to God by being able to appreciate how others and whatever is beautiful around them reflect God. I’m called to discern what guardrails come from love of God and others and what might seem like a guardrail but isn’t. It’s a wall, a human construct that divides family members and distorts their relationships with the world around them. In this passage, Paul is able to envision a world in which members of the human family, with God’s accompaniment, can come from different places and with different experiences without being divided. He urges us to honor each other’s feelings and to respect the diversity of our human family.
The Gospel passage, I see Jesus curing a disease that has separated a man from the wider community of people affected by that illness. I also see him honoring the feelings and the gifts of that person, as well as the practices of the culture both men were born into. I read that Jesus was “moved with pity” and that “he stretched out his hand [and] touched [the man] (Mark 1:41). Jesus feels empathy for the challenges the man faces.
I also notice that when the man approaches Jesus, he doesn’t actually make a request. Instead, he makes a proclamation of faith in what Jesus can do for him. In this scene, Jesus doesn’t say after the healing that faith has saved the man, but another healing scenes, he does tell the beneficiary this. I think showing the ill man making a statement rather than a request and then showing Jesus healing is another way of recognizing the man’s faith. (Skip ahead to Beyond This Week’s Readings for an important aside about this aspect of the story. Finished the PSA break? Okay. Let’s rejoin our regularly scheduled programming that’s already in progress.)
The passage could have just said that Jesus touched the man, and the man was healed. But it doesn’t say this. It stands out to me that the passage says Jesus “stretched out his hand” (Mark 1:41). Because of my muscle spasticity, I can’t fully extend my arm, so to me, the passage is making a point that Jesus’s work takes effort and that that work is closing an often wide divide between people with this condition and people without it. Now quarantining people with this condition had a practical benefit for the wider community. What’s today called Hansen’s disease is contagious, though not as contagious as it was once thought, according to Wikipedia’s Leprosy entry. The infection can affect the nerves and the lungs and can lead to amputations as well as affecting the skin.
Jesus demonstrates knowing that communities lose irreplaceable contributions when some members are cut off from them. He also demonstrates understanding that humans are made for community, and not just conversation either, but companionship that includes touch.
Jesus’ actions after the healing also reveal wisdom, as we might expect. They remind us, for one, of the importance of letting timing shape our actions. His actions suggest he has discerned that working within the expectations of authority figures who will be challenged by his message, not giving offense, in other words, is important to fulfilling his mission at the time of this healing. He tells the newly cured man not to discuss with anyone the change in his condition or how it came about. He tells the man that instead of talking about his healing, he should go to the priest, who will see that he no longer displays the visible symptoms of the illness. Once the priest declares him clean, Jesus instructs, he should make offerings to God in gratitude for his cleansing (Mark 1:44).
I think Jesus knows the man won’t follow his instructions. Aside from Him being both fully human and fully divine at and it not being clear to us in this life how those two natures interacted, I can’t imagine the healed man being able to resist telling everyone he meets what he’s just experienced. People will no longer distance themselves at the sight of him. They’ll no longer turn away if they spot him in the distance. His appearance won’t make children scream or cry. And these are just the unpleasant reactions I imagined him receiving on account of the outward signs of his former condition. Illnesses and disabilities shape lives in so many ways that aren’t visible. I suspect Jesus not only understands that healing the man will have these effects on his life, but also he understands how tempting it is to share even a secret that is far less significant than the one the healed man knows.
Regardless of how prepared He was for the man not to follow his instructions, the reading shows Him seeking to do what He’s called to do in a way that acknowledges and responds to how the choices of others affect that calling. He responds to the news of his miracles spreading by staying in more sparsely populated areas (Mark 1:45).
We saw in last week’s Gospel that He uses time away from crowds to rest and to speak and listen to his Father. Maybe it was during one of these times away that the man who gets healed in this reading was able to approach Jesus. This week, we read that despite His efforts to give Himself that time and space, people who need help and trust that He can provide it find him anyway. God works in all our circumstances, regardless of whether our senses can detect that this is true or whether we feel like it’s true. My senses often can’t, and I often wish I felt the Spirit’s unending accompaniment more strongly.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Olivia Cathrine Hastie reflects on what it means for God to make us clean. It means far more than removing visible or invisible dirt from us, even “dirt” as in anything that might be perceived as unpleasant or uncomfortable, either by us or by someone forming an impression about us based on what he or she can perceive. She also points out that there are different words used in different translations of how Jesus is described as feeling in the Gospel passage. As I wrote earlier, the translation used for Masses in the U.S. says he feels pity for the sick man. Ms. Hastie says other translations use the word “compassion” in the place of “pity. “
Beyond this week’s readings:
I propose that compassion makes more sense than pity in the context of the Gospel passage. I make this proposal because I’d also like to offer that pity says the person who has it only feels sorry for the person who inspires that feeling, whereas a person acts with compassion. Compassion addresses a need, whereas pity merely recognizes one. Okay, maybe sometimes pity donates a few coins or offers another temporary fix in response to a situation, but I’d like to think that compassion allows for deeper connections that extend in more directions, and it offers both material and emotional or spiritual help.
In addition to prompting me to make a distinction between pity and compassion, the Gospel passage prompts me to feel it’s important to say a bit about the relationship between faith and healing. Some believe that if a person has enough faith, he or she will be healed of whatever ails him or her physically and/or mentally. As a person who is neurodiverse and has a physical disability, this perspective is unhelpful and even hurtful. It implies, however unintentionally so, that if I had enough faith, my mind and body would work the way medical textbooks say healthy minds and bodies should.
Elsewhere, Jesus tells his disciples that a man isn’t blind because of his or his parents’ sins (John 9:3). And Jesus provides the ultimate example of faith, yet he still suffered crucifixion and died from it before rising the following Sunday.
The miracles in the Gospels teach readers and hearers about who Jesus is. He is God. That is to say that he has authority over nature and the authority to forgive sins and liberate people from the grip of them. He is sensitive to the requests and the unacknowledged needs of people who approach him. But we were reminded last week that he didn’t stay in one town and continue to work miracles there. The inclusion of this detail suggests that not everyone who might have sought healing from Jesus in a given town was healed.
I have faith that there’s not a single form of suffering in the world that He doesn’t care about, yet despite this care that I have faith in, suffering still continues, and sometimes it’s not the result of anyone’s actions. I struggle with the idea that He wills suffering. Yet my senses compel me to accept that he allows it. Why? I won’t pretend to know all the reasons.
Lord, help me to recognize what suffering I can prevent and what suffering I can alleviate. Help me to be patient with the suffering You allow that I cannot prevent or alleviate — at least not right now. Help me to recognize if my ability to help changes. Help us to experience Your presence with us in our suffering. Amen.
Work cited
The Bible.The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
The first reading reminds me I’m not alone when life feels like a burden and everything life involves feels like nothing more than an ending and unwelcome obligation. It reminds me it’s okay to share these feelings with God in an unfiltered way. It also encourages me to consider the ways the situations I find myself in might be different than the trials Job finds himself in the midst of. It reminds me to look for blessings, however insignificant they sometimes seem.
This week’s psalm is one of praise. It characterizes God as a healer of all kinds of wounds, a healer whose wisdom has no limits.
The third reading returns to the subject of obligations, specifically the obligation to preach the gospel. When I read the parts of 1 Corinthians that come before and after this reading, I’m reminded that preaching the gospel is about so much more than talk. It’s about living like Jesus so that his message will come alive for others through me. Living like Jesus means giving of myself to others, acknowledging my feelings and desires and what I’m experiencing in a given moment, without forgetting that these realities are for from permanent.
Therefore, I have the obligation to preach the gospel with my life regardless of how I feel about having that mission. If I’m eager to fulfill that mission, the fulfilling of it is its own reward. If I’m not eager, then I’ve been asked to share the gifts that God has given to me anyway. I’m also challenged when I share these gifts not to expect to receive anything from the person with whom I’m sharing. The promise of the reading, perhaps, is that the reward whenever I offer nothing beyond my obedience will be grace received from giving without expectations. Such giving promises the grace of spiritual freedom. It seems to me that this freedom paradoxically offers the ability to reach out to people from many different walks of life because a spiritually free person isn’t preoccupied with the concerns of only one individual or group. A person can get a more expansive perspective from this situation because she hasn’t zoomed in on the picture too closely.
In the fourth reading, I see Jesus living what this paradox of spiritual freedom looks like. Peter’s mother-in-law is ill, and Peter brings this situation to Jesus, who cares for His friend by making the mother-in-law well. Yet Jesus doesn’t just help His closest companions or the people in one town. We read about Him moving on to the next town. But before He does so, He makes time for rest, quiet, prayer, and reflection, showing that these activities are essential to fulfilling His mission, which is a mission you and I have been asked to share with others and with Him.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Mary Anne Sladich-Lantz’s reflection on this week’s reading calls attention to what Jesus does when He heals Peter’s mother-in-law. I find it inspiring that she zeros in on the very human detail that she does. Read here to find out what I mean. Her reflection also includes a quotation I’ll turn into a pull quote that makes a good summary of this week’s readings, as well as a words to bring to prayer.
Discovering wholeness, healing, and joy do not save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we are healed and discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken.
From The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, as quoted by Mary Anne Sladich-Lantz
Beyond this week’s readings:
I’m not writing this post as a person who practices what this week’s readings preach. My natural inclination right now and at almost all other times, it seems, is to crawl in a hole in the ground with a device whose battery somehow never dies and lose myself in games, music, and movies. Forever. Because silence and reality feel too heavy to bear.
Now movies, games, aren’t necessarily bad things. In fact, I believe they can be part of rest. It’s the desire to turn only to these things that’s problematic, to say the least. My experience is that these activities don’t provide rest that’s truly restorative. Maybe an activity’s ability to restore makes the difference between its ability to provide escape and its ability to provide rest. The things that are easy for me to turn to offer escape, while prayer and reflection provide rest.
Can listening to music to be a form of prayer? Absolutely. But my experience is that even music or a movie with a spiritual message sometimes offers the illusion of a preferable change in feelings or perspective, an illusion that fades once the music or the picture fades.
I guess this experience is a reminder that so much of life is fleeting, and that the only constants are God and change and that God is the source of true rest. And yet God isn’t calling me to rest all the time — even in God. The time for eternal rest comes after this life. While I still have this life, God calls me to a varying rhythm of work and rest.
Lord, help me to resist the constant desire to withdraw and to stay withdrawn. Help me to reach out to others rather than lash out at them. Amen.
Work Consulted but Not Linked to
The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Sitting with the Sacred 