4th Sunday of Lent

March 15, 2026

God is our light in the darkness; where are we willfully blind?

John 9:1-41

As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him. We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes, and said to him, “Go wash * in the Pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed, and came back able to see. His neighbors and those who had seen him earlier as a beggar said, “Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?” Some said, “It is,” but others said, “No, he just looks like him.” He said, “I am.” So they said to him, “[So] how were your eyes opened?” He replied, “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went there and washed and was able to see.” And they said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I don’t know.” They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees. Now Jesus had made clay * and opened his eyes on a Sabbath. So then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.” So some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, because he does not keep the sabbath.” [But] others said, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” And there was a division among them. So they said to the blind man again, “What do you have to say about him, since he opened your eyes?” He said, “He is a prophet. ”Now the Jews did not believe that he had been blind and gained his sight until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight. They asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How does he now see? His parents answered and said, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. We do not know how he sees now, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him, he is of age; he can speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone acknowledged him as the Messiah, he would be expelled from the synagogue. For this reason his parents said, “He is of age; question him.” So a second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give God the praise! * We know that this man is a sinner.” He replied, “If he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.” So they said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?” They ridiculed him and said, “You are that man’s disciple; we are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but we do not know where this one is from.” The man answered and said to them, “This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him. It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.” They answered and said to him, “You were born totally in sin, and are you trying to teach us?” Then they threw him out. When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, he found him and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered and said, “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him and the one speaking with you is he. “He said, “I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped him. Then Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not also blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying ‘We see.’ And so your sin remains.”

REFLECTIONS ON THE GOSPEL

Introduction by John W. Yates II, Preaching Today Issue #46, www.PreachingToday.com, A resource of Christianity Today International

A few years ago, I realized I was going blind. Now, long before my sight began to be radically diminished, a medical doctor told me there was a good chance it would happen. Just learning about the possibility of blindness was actually worse than when my sight began to dim quickly about four years ago. Well, thanks to the goodness and the healing power of God, to modern medicine, and to two unknown persons whose premature death made it possible for me to receive corneal transplants, today I can see. My sight is getting better and better still, three years after the original surgery. All this has provided me ample opportunity to think carefully about sickness and health, and particularly about blindness. Therefore, I’m particularly interested in this story from John, chapter 9, about the man born blind. It’s one of the most interesting stories in the New Testament. This fellow who could see nothing is described by John, as you read the whole of chapter 9 of his gospel, as one of the most colorful characters of all of the New Testament, even though he lived in darkness. Today we see what we can learn about Christ’;s attitude toward disease and toward undeserved suffering. In the classroom of one of my younger daughters, there is a bright and handsome little boy who was born without any arms. How would Jesus approach such a situation? That’;s really the question that’s behind this story of the man born blind. First, I want you to notice two or three facts about this man. Although we never know his name, he apparently was someone known to the people of the community in Jerusalem. He didn’t approach Jesus. Nobody brought him to Jesus. He didn’t ask to be healed. All of his life he had lived in darkness. He was blind from birth, and he had no idea what it meant to see. His physical condition was every bit as hopeless as if he had no eyes, no hands, no arms at all. He was a beggar. He was supported by the generosity of other people. As one reads the entire story, it is evident that the man was intelligent. He was able, he was a logical thinker, and he was a skilled communicator, but he really had no hope of ever seeing. Two things happened to him in the course of this chapter. He was healed physically, and then, after going through an incredible gauntlet of challenges, he was healed spiritually as well. The Lord was in a hurry that day, as best we can tell. Just prior to this event, in the 8th chapter of John, the Lord had been involved in a major, serious confrontation with the Jewish religious leaders. Jesus had made bold claims about himself and about his relationship with his Father in Heaven. He had claimed to be one with the Father. He had claimed to be greater than Abraham. He had said that these religious leaders were sons of the Devil. And he made that day his boldest claim to divinity. The Pharisees had begun to run and pick up stones so they could stone the man to death for blasphemy, and he had escaped from them somehow by slipping away through the crowd. So Jesus wasn’t exactly relaxed. He wasn’t exactly available for a lot of heavy counseling at that particular moment as he was going out the temple gate. But apparently it was in this context that this fellow, who customarily sat by one of the exits of the Jewish temple, was approached by Jesus. Jesus approached the man. He didn’t engage him in prolonged discussion. He did not ask him questions as far as we know. He did not tell the man to follow him and become his disciple. He did not discuss the man’s past or his sins. He didn’t tell him, like Nicodemus, that he had to be born again. All of this came later on in his relationship. He simply made a little poultice out of damp clay, following an ancient custom. He applied it to the man’s eyes and gave him an assignment. There was something about his words or the manner of the Lord that convinced this beggar to do what Jesus told him to do. Jesus moved on without ever waiting to see the outcome. Later on, Jesus sought this man out and talked to him about who he was, and the man worshiped Jesus and became a convinced disciple of Christ. This is the only instance in the whole Bible where a person who was born blind was cured. The disciples couldn’t bear to let this opportunity slip away. They were just like you and I would have been. All their lives they had wondered about this age-old problem of pain. If God is a good God, and all powerful, why on earth would God allow a person to be struck down with such a problem? It was easy enough to understand if this person had been some despicable person. He would deserve to be punished. But this poor fellow was totally blind from the very beginning. When he came out of the womb, he couldn’t see. He had lived in total darkness. And so the disciples raised this question to their teacher. How did Jesus respond? Jesus could have explained that, although God is perfectly good and all-powerful, this world in which we live, which he made, has been corrupted by man’s sin. It’s a fallen, bent, crooked, broken place in which there are many selfish and harmful people, and in which there are millions of types of dangerous bacteria and viruses. All these forces are at work to make this a dangerous environment in which all people, evil or wonderful, are equally at risk, and no one is safe from danger. He himself, God’s own Son, was soon to be murdered. “All of us look to heaven as the only perfect environment.” Jesus could have said that. Or he could have explained that, yes, there are some situations in which the sin of the parent brings pain or grief or sickness on a child. We certainly see this in the case of children of alcoholics, or in instances where children suffer blindness or worse because of a parent infected with a venereal disease. Jesus could have gone into that. He could have explained that all suffering is not alike. He could have said, “Well, there are no pat answers. Here are several different things for you to think about.” He could have said, “Suffering has a place in God’s plan—in the lives of certain people and certain situations.” Jesus missed an opportunity. He could have preached an unbelievably good sermon that would have gone down in history as the most penetrating analysis of the problem of pain ever given. He was the Son of God. He knew the answers to this problem. So much of our own inner pain and philosophical bewilderment could have been once and for all settled if Jesus had just preached that sermon that his disciples had begged him to preach. Why did my father die as a young man? Why did this young mother and child die so cruelly in an automobile accident? Why that avalanche? Why that earthquake? Why that little boy without any arms? Why Auschwitz? Why Afghanistan? Why AIDS? He could have explained all of that, but he didn’t. He didn’t. And as a result, we still have only an imperfect, incomplete understanding of the answers to the problem of pain. Often, we still find ourselves perplexed and grief-stricken in the midst of tragedies that befall all people everywhere. What did Jesus do in this situation? He said: The only thing I’m going to tell you right now is that this situation is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for God to be glorified. It’s an opportunity to show what God can do. This is an important point: When you face tragedy, whether it’s sickness or natural disaster or whatever, you might be able to discern reasons why this is happening, and you may be able to lay the blame on someone or something. You may even be able somehow to see the hand of God in it. You may not, and it may seem God is not answering you when you pray. Why? It just may be the only answer you will get is this: “This has happened; don’t dwell on why. Rather, it has happened, and having happened, we now have an opportunity to see God at work.” That really is a much better answer. What a shame that Jesus didn’t give us an answer to our questions about the problem of pain. All he said was: Here’s an opportunity to see what God can do. Sickness and suffering are opportunities for us to show the love and compassion of God. I thought about that this week, and here’s what I thought: Sickness and people who are suffering around us provide us with an opportunity to show the love and compassion of God by caring for them and praying for them and working for their healing. It may be that God is calling you to medicine. It may be that God is calling you to work for the relief of suffering in areas stricken by famine. Perhaps God would have you become a part of our sick- and hospital-visitation ministry. It may be that God is calling you to a ministry of healing and relief for the sick and suffering. Affliction, sorrow, pain, loss, disappointment—they give us opportunity to demonstrate the love of God to people who are suffering. Many people, like this blind man in John 9, are too overcome by their suffering to be open to giving their lives to Christ. But when they are loved and cared for, when they sense the compassion of Christ through our deeds of mercy, they may, like this blind man, eventually come to Christ and find spiritual healing as well as physical healing. When tragedy comes, we always want to focus on the why. Jesus said it happens for a purpose, and that purpose is that the power and love and greatness of God might be seen more deeply through this.. You may have a tragedy in your life one day. Will you see it as disaster, a terrible defeat, or will you see it as an opportunity—as awful and as painful as it might be—an opportunity for God to do new things? Will you look backward, or will you look forward?

LIving Space

On this fourth Sunday in Lent, we celebrate the Mass for the second of the three “Scrutinies”. As described in last Sunday’s commentary, the Scrutinies are special rites that help prepare the Elect (also called ‘catechumens’, i.e. those participating in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) to enter the Catholic Church. Today’s readings from Year A may also be used in Years B and C when there are catechumens present who will be baptised at Easter. When catechumens are present, they are presented to the gathered community which they will soon be joining as full members, and from which they will receive acceptance and support. After the homily, and before the Creed, they will leave the gathered community, because they are not yet full members of the faith community. It is in this context that we have the marvellous story from John’s gospel about the cure of a man born blind. The hero of the story is a man who was blind from his birth.  He had never been able to see.  When he is cured, he will be able to see Jesus as his Lord, something the religious leaders were unable to do. The disciples ask Jesus, “Why was he born blind? Was it because of his own sins or the sins of his parents?” There was, in people’s minds at that time, a close link between sin and a chronic sickness or disability – one was a punishment for the other.  We remember when the paralysed man was let down through the roof at the feet of Jesus seeking to be healed of his disability, surprisingly, Jesus’ first words to him were, “Your sins are forgiven.” Here, however, Jesus changes the direction of their question. His blindness has nothing to do with his sins or his parents’ sins.  He is blind so that God’s power might be seen at work in him. He will be the focus of one of the seven great signs which Jesus is seen to perform in this gospel. A life of light: The story keeps emphasizing that the man was blind from birth. To heal him then means the beginning of a completely new life, a life where he can see. He will enter a new world of brightness.  Not to know Jesus is to live in blindness and darkness. In fact, this story is an illustration of Jesus’ statement: “I am the light of the world”. In the beginning of the story, the man is blind – he cannot see; he is a beggar – he has nothing; he is an outsider – no one accepts him. His affliction indicates that he is a sinner or the son of a sinner and as such, a person to be avoided. In the end, when he is able to see, he becomes a disciple of Jesus. In terms of the Gospel, it is the logical and inevitable outcome. Once we really see Jesus, we are hooked. In the beginning he was blind, he was in darkness.  In the end he is in the light, because Jesus is the Light of the world. Jesus heals the man’s eyes. In doing so he uses mud and saliva. At that time, people believed that saliva could heal and, to some degree they were right. Here Jesus, by using mud, also helps us to remember God used mud to create Adam, the first man. Here too, there is a new creation. Jesus is making a new man. St. Paul calls the baptised Christian a “new person”. Then Jesus tells him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. This is symbolic of his baptism. After his healing, the man’s friends and his neighbours discuss his identity – is it really him?  The beggar was blind, and this man can see. Because he has changed, some people cannot recognise him. When we are baptised, when we become committed followers of Christ, we too should change. Maybe some people will say, “You are not like the way you were before! You are not the same person since your conversion and baptism.” In fact, that is what they should be able to say. Because they are not satisfied, neighbours bring the blind man to see the Pharisees. The Pharisees are the source of orthodox thinking and fidelity to the Law. Moreover, Jesus had healed the man on the Sabbath, and the methods he used were a violation of the letter of the Law. The conundrum for the Pharisees was that if Jesus truly were from God, he would not be breaking the law. On the other hand, if he was a sinner, how could he do these things? Sinners cannot do the work of God. This led to division among the Pharisees, because they refused to follow out their own logic. The Pharisees then interrogate the blind man. He keeps telling them just what Jesus had done for him. For him the answer is quite simple: Jesus is a prophet. Sabbath or no Sabbath, his actions are clearly from God. “How could a man who is a sinner do things like this?” But the Pharisees cannot accept his argument. If they accept, then they have to accept Jesus and his teaching also. So they do not even want to accept that the man was ever blind!

Avoiding trouble
Now, they turn their questions to the man’s parents. The parents know very well that their son was born blind, but they are afraid to say so. They know that now if anyone says Jesus is the Messiah, they will be expelled from the synagogue. They will no longer be part of the community. Many Jewish Christians, known to the readers of this gospel, would have had this experience. Later on, thousands of Christians would have a similar experience, ostracised for their faith in Christ. Unfortunately, the man’s parents were prepared to sacrifice their integrity rather than suffer such a punishment. So the parents push the argument back to the son: he is an adult; he is well able to answer for himself. The Pharisees again ask the man to tell the truth. “We know that Jesus is a sinner. He cannot do these things.” 

The healed man stands his ground
I don’t know if he is a sinner. I do know I was blind and now I can see. For the umpteenth time they ask, “What did he do?”  Exasperated, the man replies: “I told you already. But you will not listen.” The man is also more daring now, not afraid, and he begins to mock the Pharisees: Why do you want to hear it all again? Do you want to become his disciples too? This makes the Pharisees angry and they begin to abuse him. “You are his disciple. We are Moses’ disciples. No one knows where that fellow [Jesus] came from.” In a sense, that is perfectly true because the Word was with God from the very beginning. On the other hand, Jesus’ origins are perfectly obvious as the cured man is well aware: Now here is an astonishing thing! He has opened my eyes, and you don’t know where he comes from? God does not listen to sinners.   God listens to those who respect him and do his will. Never before was it heard that anyone had cured a man born blind. If Jesus is not from God, he could not do this. The Pharisees, now very angry, resort to the traditional belief – sickness as punishment for sin. “You were born and raised in sin. You want to teach us?” And they expelled him from the synagogue.  This was indeed the experience of many Jews who became Christians. And the experience of many others later on, expelled by their families, relatives and society. Jesus hears that the man has been expelled. He goes in search of him and finds him. Jesus asks him: Do you believe in the Son of Man, that is, the Messiah? And, the man replies, “Tell me who he is and I will believe in him.” He does not recognise the man Jesus, for this is the first time he has seen him with his new vision since his healing. Says Jesus, “You have seen him. He is talking with you now.” “I believe, Lord,” the man replies, and falls down on his knees before Jesus. He is now a disciple. A disciple is someone who knows and can see Jesus as his Lord and Saviour. I came to this world so that the blind could see and those who see become blind. The Pharisees ask, “Do you mean we are blind, too?” and Jesus tells them, If you were really blind [like the man], you would not have sin; but because you say, ‘We can see’, you are guilty. Jesus turns around their conviction that a blind man is a sinner. Rather, says Jesus, it is those who think they can see when they cannot who are the guilty ones. There are two kinds of people:

• like the blind man, they accept Jesus’ teaching and are the sheep of his flock;

• like the Pharisees, who refuse to believe, they do not belong to Jesus.

Those who sin, those who refuse to listen, those who are proud, are the really blind people (and immediately following this passage, John’s gospel will speak about Jesus as the Good Shepherd). The Pharisees, who thought they could see, were the real sinners. And the man born blind who accepts Jesus can really see. This gospel has a clear relation to Baptism. We read it today for the catechumens who are preparing to be baptised and enter the Christian community. They have begun to see Jesus, to recognise him and to follow him. But the Gospel is also for us already baptised.  We also need to see Jesus and the Gospel more clearly. The words of Paul in the Second Reading are very appropriate: You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord; be like children of light, for the effects of the light are seen in complete goodness and right living and truth. On the one hand, Paul is telling us that, like the man in the Gospel who represents all of us, we were also blind and stumbling in darkness. But now we live in the light of the Gospel and the New Testament. And that light is seen in the way we behave, in the way we relate with other people in “complete goodness and right living and truth”. Our lives are to have a transparency where there is no darkness, no hidden behaviour which we would be ashamed to reveal to others. Let us all pray for this.

LENTEN POETRY COMPANION WEEK 4: AN INVITATION TO LIBERATION

MONDAY — Tomorrow’s Children by Rubem Alves
What is hope?
It is a presentiment that imagination is more real
and reality less real than it looks.
It is a hunch
that the overwhelming brutality of facts
that oppress and repress is not the last word.
It is a suspicion
that reality is more complex
than realism wants us to believe
and that the frontiers of the possible
are not determined by the limits of the actual
and that in a miraculous and unexpected way
life is preparing the creative events
which will open the way to freedom and resurrection....
The two, suffering and hope, live from each other.
Suffering without hope
produces resentment and despair,
hope without suffering
creates illusions, naivete, and drunkenness....
Let us plant dates
even though those who plant them will never eat them.
We must live by the love of what we will never see.
This is the secret discipline.
It is a refusal to let the creative act
be dissolved in immediate sense experience
and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren.
Such disciplined love
is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints
the courage to die for the future they envisaged.
They make their own bodies
the seed of their highest hope.

Source: “Tomorrow’s Children” from Hijos de Maoana, by Rubem Alves. Salamanca, Spain: Ediciones Sigueme, 1976.

TUESDAY — A Sick Person’s Complaint by Edward Caswall
Hail holy Sacrament,
The worlds great Wonderment,
Mysterious Banquet, much more rare
Then Manna, or the Angels fare;
Each crum, though sinners on thee feed,
Doth Cleopatra’s Perl exceed.
Oh how my Soul doth hunger, thirst and pine
After these Cates so precious, so divine!
She need not bring her Stool
As some unbidden Fool;
The Master of this Heavenly Feast
Invites and wooes her for his Guest:
Though Deaf and Lame, Forlorn and Blind,
Yet welcome here she’s sure to find,
So that she bring a Vestment for the day,
And her old tatter’d Rags throw quite away.
This is Bethsaida’s Pool
That can both cleanse and cool
Poor leprous and diseased souls,
An Angel here keeps and controls,
Descending gently from the Heavens above
To stir the waters; May He also move
My mind, and rocky heart so strike and rend,
That tears may thence gush out with them to blend.

Source: “A Sick Person’s Complaint” from Hymns and Poems, Original and Translated by Edward Caswall. London: Burns, Oates & Co., 1873.

WEDNESDAY — The Garments of God by Jessica Powers
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at his feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous
garments
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am dust.
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Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I will not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.

THURSDAY — Am I to Lose You? by Louisa Sarah Bevington
‘Am I to lose you now?’ The words were light;
You spoke them, hardly seeking a reply,
That day I bid you quietly ‘Good-bye,’
And sought to hide my soul away from sight.
The question echoes, dear, through many a night, —
My question, not your own – most wistfully;
‘Am I to lose him?’ – asked my heart of me;
‘Am I to lose him now, and lose him quite?’
And only you can tell me. Do you care
That sometimes we in quietness should stand
As fellow-solitudes, hand firm in hand,
And thought with thought and hope with hope compare?
What is your answer? Mine must ever be,
‘I greatly need your friendship: leave it me.’

Source: “Am I to Lose You?” from Poems, Lyrics and Sonnets, by L.S. Bevington. London: Elliot Stock, 1882.

FRIDAY — Now I Become Myself by May Sarton (1912-1995)
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before—“
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted so by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I love
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

Source: “Now I Become Myself” from Collected Poems 1930-1993, by May Sarton. New York: Norton, 1993.

SATURDAY — A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our heats, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead
Act,- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead.
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
a forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us then be up and doing,
with a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Source: “A Psalm of Life” from The Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1893.

PREPARATION FOR THE SESSION

Presence of God: Jesus, As I come to you today, fill my heart, my whole being, with the wonder of your sacred presence. Help me to become more aware of your presence in my life, and more receptive to that presence. I desire to love you as you love me. May nothing ever separate me from you. ( 1-2 minutes of silence)

Freedom: Jesus, Grant me the grace to have freedom of spirit. Keep me from being bound by desires and actions that are not good for me or others. Cleanse my heart and soul that I may live joyously in your love. ( 1-2 minutes of silence)

Consciousness: Where am I with God? With others in my life? What am I grateful for? Is there something I am sorry for, words or actions that have hurt others, and which I now regret? I take a moment to ask forgiveness of God and of those whom I have hurt. God, I give you thanks for your constant love and care for me. Keep me always aware of your presence in my life. (2-3 minutes of silence)

OPENING PRAYER

Lord, I know that I am often blind. I do not see others as you see them. Help me to see the beauty and the goodness in those around me, recognizing that you made them and love them as you do me. I also know that I am often caught up in the bitterness of failed expectations, or rejection or personal weakness. Help me to work though that bitterness and see my negative experiences as a change for you to work miracles of growth within me. Help me to remember who is in charge here.

COMPANIONS FOR THE JOURNEY
From “Sermons and reflections shared by Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Alexandria, VA”
Katie was a classmate of mine in elementary school. We were in many of the same classes for kindergarten through 6th grade. I remember her younger brother well. He played trombone in the band, he had a whacky sense of humor, he played baseball. I remember her brother well, but I don’t remember much about Katie even though she was in my class for seven years. In fact, the only thing I really remember about Katie is that she was blind. I and others identified Katie by her disability. She was the “blind girl” at Dawes School .And sadly that’s all we knew. At least we knew her name. “The blind man” in today’s gospel didn’t even have that recognition. It seems that no one knows his name. No one really pays much attention to him. After his sight is restored by Jesus, his neighbors say, “Is that the man who used to sit and beg?” They really aren’t  quite sure because no one knows him as a person. They identify him only by his blindness. Once he is no longer blind and begging, they don’t recognize him! There are many stories of healing in the Bible. Jesus heals the blind, the deaf, the lame, those with chronic illness, those who are mentally ill, and others. These stories reveal to me a God of compassion, of strength, of miraculous power. But these healing stories are not comforting for everyone. In fact, these stories can be difficult for those who have disabilities. (And that’s a lot of people – nearly one in 5 in the United States according to the most recent census.) The healing stories of Jesus can be difficult because sometimes the impression is given that those with disabilities are not yet whole people, that they need to be fixed. The healing stories of Jesus can be difficult because sometimes the stories talk about healing as a result of the faith of the one who is healed, giving the impression that the person who still has a disability somehow does not have enough faith. The healing stories of Jesus can be difficult because sometimes a relationship is made between illness and sin, giving the impression that a person’s sinfulness causes the illness. We need to debunk all of those false beliefs. A disability does not need to be fixed to make a person whole. A disability is not the result of a lack of faith. A disability is not a punishment from God for sin. And that is why John chapter 9 is claimed as such an important text for those within the disability community. When the disciples try to link sin with disability, Jesus won’t allow it. He clearly says that it is not the man’s sin or the sin of his parents which made him blind. There is also no association between faith and healing in this story. There is no act of faith on the man’s part. He does not ask for healing. He does not touch Jesus’ cloak like the woman who is hemorrhaging. He does not ask to be carried into healing pool like the paralyzed man at Bethesda. This man receives healing entirely through grace. No faith necessary. Furthermore, unlike how those with disabilities are sometimes treated in life as well as in the Bible, this story is helpful because ​the man who is blind is shown to be an individual, an intelligent individual with a winsome personality. He is thoughtful. He speaks for himself. He’s funny! I love this line when he’s asked what happened and responds,​​​ “Why do you want me to tell the story to you again?” Can’t you see the grin on his face? Do you also want to become his disciples? But what I think is perhaps the most remarkable thing about this healing story. Aside from the fact that it shows the man as an individual, that it disabuses the notion of disability as a punishment for sin, that it doesn’t equate healing with faith. The most remarkable thing about this healing story is that Jesus teaches that it isn’t the man who has been blind since birth who needs healing. It isn’t he who is lacking in real sight. It is the others who need healing. Those who are blind to God’s work in the world are the ones who need new vision. Lent is often focused on changing something in our lives. We’ve talked about changes in circumstances. We’ve talked about a change in heart. We’ve talked about a change in habits. Today we’re talking about a change in sight, and we’re not talking about a change in sight for those who already wear glasses, we’re talking about corrective lenses for those of us who think we already have 20/20 vision. In her book For the Benefit of those who See, a wonderful collection of stories about her work with those who are visually impaired in Tibet, Rosemary Mahoney says that “seeing is not a function of the eyes alone.“ “It is a function of the mind at least as much as the eyes,” she says. “We only see what we look at.” So let’s think again about what it means to have 20/20 vision. 20/20 vision looks at the world and can see God’s hand in and through it all. 20/20 vision notices that the sacred is present outside of church or synagogue and in everyday life. 20/20 vision sees the blind man begging at the side of the road and stops to chat and find out his name. 20/20 vision observes tragedy around the world – a mudslide in Washington, a plane crash somewhere over the ocean, and does not blame the victims. 20/20 vision pays attention to inequalities due to race or socioeconomic class or gender and does not dismiss them. 20/20 vision looks, notices, sees, observes, pays attention to the world around them. and ironically, perhaps, the blind man has done this better than anyone else. May our eyes be opened to see.

LIVING THE GOOD NEWS

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion? Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions which follow.

Reflection Questions
What is the difference between physical sight and vision?

John is not telling us that one man was born blind and Jesus cured him, but that we humans are "blind from birth and we all need healing.
What are my limitations, blind spots, or false notions of God?
What leads us to spiritual blindness? (self-absorption, righteousness, unwillingness to change and grow, for example)
When have I preferred shadows, darkness and illusion in my life?
What have been the enlightening moments in my life?

Do we see, really see, the needs around us, or are we willfully blind?

How do we deal with those who are willfully blind?

Why are we born the way we are?
Do we believe our bad luck is the result of God’s punishment, or that our good luck is the result of God’s pleasure?

What kind of courage do we need in this day and age to witness to Jesus?

How has your perception of Jesus changed in the course of your own spiritual journey?

Recall some beliefs which were once a part of your life, but which you no longer consider to be true.

Have difficult times in your life affected your faith?
In what way?

If Jesus were to ask me “What is it that you want me to do for you,” what would you answer?

What have been my “blind spots?”
Where has God’s grace figured in my enlightenment?
How has this enlightenment affected my behavior?

In short, we must do more than “believe.” We must act on our beliefs. What will my action be this week?
Where will my light shine this week?

Has anyone ever tried to make me conform to beliefs that were popular and accepted as correct, but which contradicted my own?
Have I ever been in a position of power or authority where I tried to coerce others into voicing my opinions or beliefs?
Have I ever been intimidated by a person who had power to harm me in some way?

Is there anything in my life right now that keeps me from seeing what God wants me to see?

Has there even been someone in my life who shed light on my actions, my goals, my relationships? How did I respond?

Have I ever made judgments about someone based on how they looked or acted, or based on commonly held beliefs about such a person?
Has anyone ever judged me in this way?

John is not telling us that one man was born blind and Jesus cured him, but that we humans are "blind from birth and we all need healing.
What is the difference between physical sight and vision?

What are my limitations, blind spots false notions of God? What leads us to spiritual blindness? (self-absorption, righteousness, unwillingness to change and grow, for example)

When have I preferred shadows, darkness and illusion in my life? What have been the enlightening moments in my life?

Why are we born the way we are? Do we believe our bad luck is the result of God’s punishment, or that our good luck is the result of God’s pleasure?

What kind of courage do we need in this day and age to witness to Jesus?

Do we see, really see, the needs around us, or are we willfully blind? How do we deal with those who are willfully blind? Can we?

How has your perception of Jesus changed in the course of your own spiritual journey?

Recall some beliefs which were once a part of your life, but which you no longer consider to be true.

Have difficult times in your life affected your faith? In what way?

CLOSING PRAYER

Don’t forget to provide some prayer time at the beginning and at the end of the session (or both), allowing time to offer prayers for anyone you wish to pray for.

( Adapted from a homily by Father William Bausch in 60 More Seasonal Homilies)

A Prayer for seeing
Some of us are blind to our own faults
All: LORD, WE WANT TO SEE
Some us always focus on the weakness of others
All: LORD, WE WANT TO SEE
Some never acknowledge life’s blessings
All: LORD, WE WANT TO SEE
Some are blinded by unbridled desires for pleasure, money, and self-promotion, and fail to notice the needs of others, or the presence of the poor
All: LORD, WE WANT TO SEE
Some have eyes darkened by prejudice and hatred
All: LORD, WE WANT TO SEE
Some re blinded by ambition, and step all over others’ feelings
All: LORD, WE WANT TO SEE
Some are blinded by pride which makes them think they are the center of the universe
All: LORD, WE WANT TO SEE
Some wallow in their own self-pity and are turned in on their own sins and never notice God’s mercy
All: LORD, WE WANT TO SEE
Some don’t have their prayers answered and need to sense something deeper happening in the crosses they bear.
All: LORD, WE WANT TO SEE
Lord, we want to see as you see, to see others as you see them, to see ourselves as beloved, to see what is truly important. Lord help us to
see your love and your light.
Amen.

FOR THE WEEK AHEAD

Weekly Memorization
Taken from the gospel for today’s session: One thing I do know, is that I was blind and now I see.

Meditations
A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action: (Adapted from an article by John Yates in “Preaching Today”) As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.

Commentary: The disciples couldn’t bear to let this opportunity slip away. They were just like you and I would have been. All their lives they had wondered about this age-old problem of pain. If God is a good God, and all powerful, why on earth would God allow a person to be struck down with such a problem? It was easy enough to understand if this person had been some despicable person. He would deserve to be punished. But this poor fellow was totally blind from the very beginning. When he came out of the womb, he couldn’t see. He had lived in total darkness. And so the disciples raised this question to their teacher. How did Jesus respond? Jesus could have explained that, although God is perfectly good and all-powerful, this world in which we live, which he made, has been corrupted by man’s sin. It’s a fallen, bent, crooked, broken place in which there are many selfish and harmful people, and in which there are millions of types of dangerous bacteria and viruses. All these forces are at work to make this a dangerous environment in which all people, evil or wonderful, are equally at risk, and no one is safe from danger. He himself, God’s own Son, was soon to be murdered. “All of us look to heaven as the only perfect environment.” Jesus could have said that. Or he could have explained that, yes, there are some situations in which the sin of the parent brings pain or grief or sickness on a child. We certainly see this in the case of children of alcoholics, or in instances where children suffer blindness or worse because of a parent infected with a venereal disease. Jesus could have gone into that. He could have explained that all suffering is not alike. He could have said, “Well, there are no pat answers. Here are several different things for you to think about.” He could have said, “Suffering has a place in God’s plan—in the lives of certain people and certain situations.” Jesus missed an opportunity. He could have preached an unbelievably good sermon that would have gone down in history as the most penetrating analysis of the problem of pain ever given. He was the Son of God. He knew the answers to this problem. So much of our own inner pain and philosophical bewilderment could have been once and for all settled if Jesus had just preached that sermon that his disciples had begged him to preach. Why did my father die as a young man? Why did this young mother and child die so cruelly in an automobile accident? Why that avalanche? Why that earthquake? Why that little boy without any arms? Why Auschwitz? Why Afghanistan? Why AIDS? He could have explained all of that, but he didn’t. He didn’t. And as a result, we still have only an imperfect, incomplete understanding of the answers to the problem of pain. Often, we still find ourselves perplexed and grief-stricken in the midst of tragedies that befall all people everywhere. What did Jesus do in this situation? He said: The only thing I’m going to tell you right now is that this situation is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for God to be glorified. It’s an opportunity to show what God can do. This is an important point: When you face tragedy, whether it’s sickness or natural disaster or whatever, you might be able to discern reasons why this is happening, and you may be able to lay the blame on someone or something. You may even be able somehow to see the hand of God in it. You may not, and it may seem God is not answering you when you pray. Why? It just may be the only answer you will get is this: “This has happened; don’t dwell on why. Rather, it has happened, and having happened, we now have an opportunity to see God at work.” That really is a much better answer. What a shame that Jesus didn’t give us an answer to our questions about the problem of pain. All he said was: Here’s an opportunity to see what God can do. Sickness and suffering are opportunities for us to show the love and compassion of God. I thought about that this week, and here’s what I thought: Sickness and people who are suffering around us provide us with an opportunity to show the love and compassion of God by caring for them and praying for them and working for their healing. It may be that God is calling you to medicine. It may be that God is calling you to work for the relief of suffering in areas stricken by famine. Perhaps God would have you become a part of our sick and hospital visitation ministry. It may be that God is calling you to a ministry of healing and relief for the sick and suffering. Affliction, sorrow, pain, loss, disappointment—they give us opportunity to demonstrate the love of God to people who are suffering. Many people, like this blind man in John 9, are too overcome by their suffering to be open to giving their lives to Christ. But when they are loved and cared for, when they sense the compassion of Christ through our deeds of mercy, they may, like this blind man, eventually come to Christ and find spiritual healing as well as physical healing. When tragedy comes, we always want to focus on the why. Jesus said it happens for a purpose, and that purpose is that the power and love and greatness of God might be seen more deeply through this. You may have a tragedy in your life one day. Will you see it as disaster, a terrible defeat, or will you see it as an opportunity—as awful and as painful as it might be—an opportunity for God to do new things? Will you look backward, or will you look forward?

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions: Read the section from John again on the man born blind, and pay special attention to the reactions of the Pharisees. Pharisees have not been well regarded by Christianity as a whole, but the fact is, they were very religious people. God really was the center of their lives, and they saw that the best way to do God’s will was to be very attentive to the laws of Judaism. These were rather strict laws which imposed a considerable burden on those who chose to follow them, and the piety of those who followed the laws was very real. These were, in the main, good people. In fact, when we look at the American Catholic of the 1950s—rigidly and almost obsessively following “rules” such as abstaining from meat on Fridays, fasting each day of Lent, attending First Friday Masses, Stations of the Cross on Lenten Fridays, being very diligent about frequent confessions and the proper attire for Church--we can see a great resemblance between us and the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. The problem occurs when we think we know God better than anybody else does and proceed to judge others by our own religious standards. Spiritual arrogance is the problem for a lot of us, whether we realize it or not. Have I been confidently smug about my relationship with God because I appear to be a good person? I reflect on a time when I have I been judgmental of someone who made a decision which I thought was a bad or wrong one. Have I ever made a judgment about someone only to discover that I didn’t have the story straight? Did I share my judgment with others and injure this person’s reputation? I reflect on Jesus saying: since you say “we see” your guilt remains. I end my meditation with a prayer for true humility which allows me to see the good in others and to realize that all my spiritual gifts come only from God.

A Meditation in the Ignatian style/Imagination: Read this passage again from John 9:1-41. Imagine that you are the blind man. What, exactly, is your life like? Where do you live? What do you do every day? How do other people treat you? What do you think when you hear that Jesus is in the area? Why do you do what Jesus says? How do you feel to have your sight restored? Does it make you nervous when you are questioned by the Pharisees? How does your perception of who Jesus is gradually change? Do you believe him only because of the fact that he healed you? What is your life going to be like from now on? Would it change anything about your perception of Jesus if your blindness recurred? Returning to the present day and your 21st century life, reflect on where you need healing, where Jesus has enlightened you, and what your mission is to be in this life going forward. Make a realistic plan.

POETIC REFLECTIONS

This is a poem of great hope, that shows us that the light of Christ is in our midst today.

To us who live in darkness
To us who live in darkness
a great grace
passes through the night
like a star
the valleys and the mountains
are one land
the lion and
the young lamb
are one heart
darkness and light
are one life:
Peace shall find a home in us;
he shall walk with us
the long day the
great climb.
—Ed Ingebretzen, S.J.

Read the following poem from Mary Oliver, recalling a time when God walked with you through the darkness of your own life and, additionally, whether you have ever been blind to God’s grace.

The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist
Something has happened
To the bread
And the wine.
They have been blessed.
What now?
The body leans forward
To receive the gift
From the priest’s hand,
Then the chalice.
They are something else now
From what they were
Before this began.
I want 
To see Jesus,
Maybe in the clouds
Or on the shore,
Just walking,
Beautiful man
And clearly
Someone else
Besides.
On the hard days
I ask myself
If I ever will.
Also there are times
My body whispers to me
That I have.

3rd Sunday of Lent

March 8, 2026

Acceptance of the other; openness to God breaking into our lives, and our response

John 4: 5-42

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” [The woman] said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the well is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come back.” The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.” Jesus answered her, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; *  but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Anointed; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, *  the one who is speaking with you.” At that moment his disciples returned, and were amazed that he was talking with a woman, but still no one said, “What are you looking for?” or “Why are you talking with her?” The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?” They went out of the town and came to him. Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” So the disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘In four months *  the harvest will be here’? I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest. The reaper is already receiving his payment and gathering crops for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work.” Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I have done.” When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. Many more began to believe in him because of his word, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.

REFLECTIONS ON THE GOSPEL

Living Space, A Service of the Irish Jesuits

• The theme of today’s Mass centres around water. The links with Baptism are obvious. Water is the source of life but also of destruction.

• So we have the story of the Flood, which brought salvation to Noah and his family but death to a sinful world; the crossing of the Red Sea, which meant life and liberty to the Israelites but death to the army of the Pharaoh; and the water from the rock for the Israelites in the dryness desert.  We will hear more about these at the Easter Vigil during the blessing of the baptismal water.

• The Gospel which we have just heard is about the Woman at the Well and it also centres around the theme of water and life.

• Marginalised groups

  • The woman can be said to represent three oppressed groups with which Jesus and the Gospel are interested:

    • women

    • prostitutes and sexually immoral people generally

    • all kinds of outsiders, people who are unclean, infidels, foreigners…

  • The story begins by Jesus showing himself as a person in need: tired, hungry and thirsty. We constantly have remind ourselves how genuinely human Jesus was, “like us in all things but sin”.

  • He asks help from a person he was supposed to avoid (a strange woman on her own) and also to hate (a Samaritan).

  • She is very surprised at his approach but her surprise allows Jesus to turn the tables and offer her “living water”.  She, understanding him literally, asks how he can give it as he has no bucket.  But the water that Jesus will give is different. Those who drink it will never be thirsty again and it gives eternal life. Again, literally, the woman wants this water that lasts forever. Then she will never have to trudge to the well again.

• Baptism

  • What is this water that Jesus speaks about?  It is God’s Spirit which comes to us in Baptism.

  • Baptism is not just a ritual producing magic effects.  It is the outward, symbolic sign of a deep reality, the coming of God as a force penetrating every aspect of a person’s life.

  • And this happens through our exposure to Jesus and to the Gospel vision of life and our becoming totally converted to that vision. This can only happen through the agency of a Christian community into which we are called to enter. As the Second Reading says today, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”. It is not just a question of a ritual washing or immersing and saying magic words but of a real drinking in of that Spirit. The spirit quenches our thirst, not by removing our desire for God’s presence but by continually satisfying it.

• Five husbands plus

  • Jesus now invites the woman to come back to the well once more with her husband. Jesus’ mission to these people begins with reaching out to a family. But she says she has no husband. Jesus reveals her true situation: she has had five husbands and the man she is with now is not her husband. She is a “loose” woman who must have been deeply despised by people around. No wonder she came to the well alone!

  • The water that Jesus promises is closely linked to conversion and forgiveness of sin. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But the sin must first be exposed and acknowledged. And Jesus’ goal is not just the woman’s sin but the whole town from which she comes. Sinner that she is, she will become the agent of their salvation and conversion.

  • Changing the subject

  • She is staggered at Jesus’ insight into her life. She is embarrassed and so there is a sudden change of topic to something theoretical and “safe”. (How often do we experience that? People will interrupt a religious talk with a seemingly important but totally irrelevant question. For instance, one is talking about Christ’s command to carry our cross and a question is asked about indulgences.)

  • The question the woman asks is about Jewish and Samaritan places of worship: Jerusalem, holy to the Jews, or Mount Gerizim, holy to the Samaritans, or the well of Jacob where they are. But gives Jesus the opportunity to make another important point. The “holy” well where they are will become irrelevant. So will the Temple of Jerusalem or the mountain of the Samaritans. True worship will be done “in Spirit and in truth”. There will be no more temples. It is not places which are holy but the people who use them. It is we who are the Temple of God and the dwelling place of Christ.

  • The woman goes on to say that when the Messiah comes he will tell all about this. At that point Jesus tells her that he is the Messiah. How extraordinary! It is a religious outsider and a multiple adulterer who is the first in John’s Gospel to hear this revelation! Precisely because it is people like her who need to hear it. People who are healthy do not need the doctor, only the sick.

• Amazement

  • Just then the disciples now return. Men of their time and culture, they are amazed to see Jesus talking alone to this woman and despised outsider. They don’t know what to say. They offer Jesus food but they are told he has food they know nothing about. “Not on bread alone does man live but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus’ food is his total identification with the will of his Father and doing his work.  “Happy are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”

  • Linked with the idea of bread and feeding, Jesus tells them that the harvest is great and it is ripe.

  • And it now includes Samaritans (including this woman) and all outsiders, aliens, unbelievers, sinners…  It is a harvest that has been prepared by others.

  • ‘Stay with us’

  • Many Samaritans came to believe in Jesus because of the woman’s witnessing. Then they asked him to stay with them, otherwise he would have continued on his journey. Jesus often needs to be invited to stay. Remember the two men walking to Emmaus? He would not have stopped if they had not invited him to stay the night. He stands at the door and knocks but he will not come in unless invited.

  • As a result, in this story many in that Samaritan village came to believe in Jesus. And they said: “It is no longer because of what you [the woman] said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the World.” For our catechumens, and for all of us, the faith that has been handed on must become our own faith. So that, even if everyone around us were to abandon Jesus, I would not.  Ultimately faith is totally personal. “I live, no not I, but Christ lives in me.”

First Impressions by Jude Siciliano, OP

Exodus 17:3-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-2,5-8; John 4: 5-42

The generations before us were a traveling folk. Except for Native Americans, we all came from other places to be here. (It is believed that even Native Americans arrived here during the Ice Age, 20-30,000 years ago.) The number of vowels in my last name gives evidence to my ancestral origins.  The “old folks,” so they seemed through my boyhood eyes, left the poverty of southern Italy for America—the “Land of Promise.” And, despite the poverty and prejudice my grandparents’ generation endured, their sacrifices bore fruit for their children. Here we are, a couple generations later, educated, employed, well fed (perhaps too well fed!) and settled in “our country.” The Israelites were also a traveling people and we can tell from today’s first reading that they had a harder trip to make. They had left slavery behind, but their arrival to the next place, the Promised Land, was long delayed and the trip to get there was arduous and tempted their faith. They were forty years in the desert. They didn’t like what they left but, as the reading from Exodus shows, at this point of their travels they were very discouraged. Each day was a struggle and the present moment looked impossible. They were thirsty and they were beginning to doubt Moses and their God. Where was God in this hard place? The name of the place summarized this moment of their journey: Massah means “Proof”; Meribah means “Contention.” That’s how hard the place was! The trip was too long, with too many camping grounds and too many frustrations and failures. Was God with them? Judging from their condition, it didn’t seem so to the Israelites. We can identify with the people wandering in the desert, for we too have known similar moments on our  journeys. There have times when we have lamented, “How long must I endure this?” “When will it end?” “Can I/we make it?”  We know what we have left behind and we are not sure what lies ahead. Will it be worth the struggle?  We have known the hard places; we have known the rock at Horeb. We can understand the temptation the Israelites had to return to the old places and the old ways. We  have dreams we want to see come to fruition for ourselves and or family, yet at the rock, the hard place, those dreams feel flimsy. So, for example: We would rather go back to silence and getting along, than to more open communication and the pain that may cause. We would rather stay in a relationship that is not working, than risk a break and go forward to new, uncharted territory. We would rather stay with an abusive spouse, than choose the scary terrain of independence. We would rather continue old habits and dependencies, than go through the sacrifice change requires. Lent urges us to shift to a traveling mode. Lent invites us to set out; to say to ourselves, “I have got to change, I have got to make this journey.”  We are being invited to leave behind what is not working and not good for us and go to a place up ahead. Like the Israelites, we start out making the changes we must, but the road is long, uncertain and sometimes very hard to stick to, so our resolution dissolves and we look back to where we used to be and turn around. The experience of the Israelites in the desert reminds us how much we need God -- day by day. Today’s Exodus story reveals that at the very hard place, at the rock of Horeb, God will provide the refreshment we need.  God tells Moses to strike the rock with his staff. From the rock water flows to quench the people’s thirst.  Is the same possible for us: that from the very hard places of struggle and temptation God can draw water for us and refresh us? How?  By the steady hand of a friend; the presence of one with us by the bedside of a loved one; in the support group that encourages and challenges us to stay with the program so we can break an addiction or destructive habit; the voice of confrontation from a loved one, who encourages us to be better than we have been. The initial experience has the sound and feel of the rock; but then, through God and God’s instruments, we discover that we are at the rock at Horeb and God has made living water flow to quench the thirst only God can quench. The Israelites, we are told, quarreled and tested God at the hard place and asked, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” To their sunrise, they found that God was. The story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman is a familiar one—perhaps too familiar. It is an important story for John and he spends a lot of time narrating the exchange between the two. (There’s a shorter option in the Lectionary, but why violate the storyteller’s intent by reading a chopped up version? For the sake of brevity will we sacrifice the dramatic development in the account? I plan on inviting the congregation to sit down and listen to a good tale.) Because the story is so familiar I find myself leaning heavily on John P. Pilch’s input for new insights (Cf. Below). Pilch notes some “irregularities” in the story. He says the Mediterranean world is divided according to gender: women have their places in the home and kitchen; men have theirs in the fields, market place and the gate. The well is common to both, but women and men go there at different times of the day. Women go in the morning and evening. The Samaritan woman is there at noon—something is wrong. Is she avoiding the other women of the town? Does she have a “reputation” and is shunned by them? She is at a well, at noon and she is alone, speaking to a strange man in a public place. The conversation between Jesus and the woman raises even the suspicions of Jesus’ disciples. When it is over she goes to another public place to tell those gathered there (men at the market?) about her conversation with Jesus. Pilch notes the subversions that are occurring in the story. John is giving new roles to women in his community. He fashions the conversation between Jesus and the woman in a seven part dialogue;  each speaks seven times. Is a new creation story being told in this seeming unimportant moment and place? Just as God created light on the first day, so Jesus leads the woman out of her darkness into light, to a deeper understanding of his identity. Did you notice the growth in the woman’s awareness of Jesus, revealed in the names she gives him? She begins by calling him “a Jew,” then moves to “prophet,” then, she tells the town people, “Could he possible be the Christ?” Later they call him “the savior of the world.” The woman gets more time in this story than anyone else in John’s gospel. She grows rapidly in her insight about Jesus and he commissions her to go call her husband and return. She announces Jesus’ presence to the people of the town and is, therefore, the first disciple in John’s gospel. In our first reading the people grumble against Moses in the desert. They are thirsty and demand water. Under God’s direction Moses strikes the rock and water flows. In the gospel Jesus, the new Israel, is thirsty and stops at a well in Samaria. There he receives a good reception, first from the woman, then from the townspeople. Jesus finds rejection among his own; among Samaritans, he is welcomed. He reflects God’s thirst for people, willingness to go outside the usual religious and social boundaries, and God’s desire to give life giving water to anyone thirsty enough to seek it. The woman in today’s story has no name. Perhaps she represents all of us, regardless of race, gender or nationality, who acknowledge our thirst for more than we can provide for ourselves. The entire exchange between the woman and Jesus is characterized by respect, openness, even mutual challenge. But there is an underlaying current throughout the story—Jesus’ compassion. He accepts the woman as she is.  She, on her part, reveals an honest probing into Jesus’ identity; more than we find among Jesus’ disciples. Two strangers meet at an unusual place and their honest dialogue brings one to a deeper knowledge of herself and the offer of a new and deeper life. Is it possible then that, when we meet a stranger and are willing to put aside all the political, social, ethnic and religious barriers that normally separate people, and enter into open dialogue, that we too might come to the life-giving experience the woman had and discover God in the stranger?

Justice Bulletin Board by Barbara Molinari Quinby, MPS, Director, Office of Human Life, Dignity, and Justice Ministries Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral Raleigh, NC

Is the Lord in our midst or not?

Exodus 17:7

Lent is a time of fasting to create a physical hunger and thirst, which should heighten our spiritual hunger and thirst for the Lord. The one thing that should be noted is that fasting is a voluntary activity and that, even in our fasts, we are allowed to drink water. For many in our world, however, hunger and thirst is an involuntary way of life that can lead to death.Hunger in our communities is an issue that far too many families are experiencing. A lack of nutritious meals can have long lasting effects on the physical, mental, and social well-being of all members of a family. In response to this need, Catholic Charities currently operates five food pantries in central and eastern North Carolina. Here in Wake County, Catholic Parish Outreach (CPO) began in 1977 when Sister Ann Joseph and Sister Louise Hill of the Order of the Daughters of Charity were sent to Raleigh to start a Catholic charities program. At that time, Sacred Heart Cathedral was one of five founding parishes, along with St. Joseph, St. Raphael, Our Lady of Lourdes, and St. Mary, Mother of the Church. Today CPO functions with 3 full-time and 2 part-time staff members and 1900 parishioners from area churches in a true community response. Catholic Charities leverages the support of community partners to provide over 3 million pounds of food to families in need each year. Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral participates by holding semi-annual food drives, such as the one we are having this weekend. If you forgot your bag, $40 will help feed a family for a week. Please stop by the CPO truck. Catholic Charities Food Pantry Services are dedicated to distributing healthy groceries, increasing access to food, and developing innovative solutions to address food insecurity in a collaborative way. On each visit, families receive a week’s worth of groceries, helping to fill the gap that families experience once their resources have been exhausted and before they receive their next paycheck.  Once their immediate need for food is addressed, Catholic Charities staff and volunteers may connect families to other critical services that aim to remove barriers to self-sufficiency, increasing access to opportunities and creating hope for a better future.  With dignity and respect at the forefront of all interactions, families are offered a hand up during their most  challenging times. Let there be no question that the Lord is in our midst.

Faith Book
Mini-reflections on the Sunday scripture readings designed for persons on the run.  “Faith Book” is also brief enough to be posted in the Sunday parish bulletins people take home.

From today’s Exodus reading: The Lord answered Moses: “Strike the rock and the water will flow from it for the people to drink.” This Moses did....”

Reflection: Today’s Exodus story reveals that at the very hard place, at the rock of Horeb, God will provide the refreshment we need. God tells Moses to strike the rock with his staff. From the rock water to quench the people’s thirst flows. Is the same possible for us: that from the very hard places of struggle and temptation God can draw water for us and refresh us?

So we ask ourselves:

• Where are the hard places for us these days?

• What difficult changes are we being asked to make this Lent?

• Who are the instruments God is using to provide refreshing water during this dry period of our lives? Name them and give thanks for them.

LENTEN POETRY COMPANION WEEK 3: AN INVITATION TO LIBERATION

SUNDAY — The Bright Field by R. S. Thomas
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

Source: “The Bright Field” from Collected Poems 1945-1990, by R.S. Thomas.
London: Phoenix Press, 2002.

MONDAY — The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Source: “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry by Wendell Berry. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1998.

TUESDAY — The Heart of Compassion by Joyce Rupp
Compassionate God,
your generous presence
is always attuned to hurting ones.
Your listening ear is bent
toward the cries of the wounded
Your heart of love
fills with tears for the suffering.
Turn my inward eye to see
that I am not alone.
I am a part of all of life.
Each one’s joy and sorrow
is my joy and sorrow,
and mine is theirs.
May I draw strength
from this inner communion.
May it daily recommit me
to be a compassionate presence
for all who struggle with life’s pain.

Source: “The Heart of Compassion” from Your Sorrow is My Sorrow, by Joyce Rupp. New York: The Crossroads Publishing Co., 1999.

WEDNESDAY — Christ Has No Body by Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

THURSDAY — Self Portrait by David Whyte
It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong
or feel abandoned.
If you can know despair or see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living,
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequences
of love and the bitter,
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard in that fierce embrace,
even the gods speak of God.

Source: “Self Portrait” from Fire in the Earth by David Whyte. Washington: Many Rivers Press, 1992.

FRIDAY — Prayer by Thomas a Kempis
Grant me, O Lord, to know what I ought to know,
To love what I ought to love,
To praise what delights thee most,
To value what is precious in thy sight,
To hate what is offensive to thee.
Do not suffer me to judge according to the sight of my eyes,
Nor to pass sentence according to the hearing
of the ears of ignorant men;
But to discern with a true judgment between things visible and spiritual,
And above all, always to inquire what is the good pleasure of thy will.

Source: “Prayer” from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. New York: Random House, 1998.

SATURDAY — What to Remember When Waking by David Whyte
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other,
more secret, movable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly
will make plans enough for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden
as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents.
You were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now looking through
the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence
of everything that can be,
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely
white page on the waiting desk?

Source: “What to Remember When Waking” from The House of Belonging by David Whyte. Langley,WA: Many Rivers Press, 2004.

PREPARATION FOR THE SESSION

Presence of God: Jesus, As I come to you today, fill my heart, my whole being, with the wonder of your sacred presence. Help me to become more aware of your presence in my life, and more receptive to that presence. I desire to love you as you love me. May nothing ever separate me from you. (1-2 minutes of silence)

Freedom: Jesus, Grant me the grace to have freedom of spirit. Keep me from being bound by desires and actions that are not good for me or others. Cleanse my heart and soul that I may live joyously in your love. (1-2 minutes of silence)

Consciousness: Where am I with God? With others in my life? What am I grateful for? Is there something I am sorry for, words or actions that have hurt others, and which I now regret? I take a moment to ask forgiveness of God and of those whom I have hurt. God, I give you thanks for your constant love and care for me. Keep me always aware of your presence in my life. (2-3 minutes of silence)

OPENING PRAYER
Adapted from Sacred Space, a service of the Irish Jesuits, 2023

Lord, I am going about my. Business like the Samaritan Woman, and am taken aback when you accost me at my particular well. You interrupt my business, my getting and spending, and you interrupt the routines of my day. You know everything about me, the good and the bad. You know my heart. Instead of resisting, let me be like the woman at the well, moved with joy at meeting you and committed to changing my life, if need be. Give me the courage to do so.

COMPANIONS FOR THE JOURNEY
From a blog called “Interrupting the Silence”, by Father Mike Marsh, Rector of St Phillip’s Episcopal church in west Texas 

She has a history. Things done and left undone, some good some not so good. Guilts and regrets. Fears. Wounds and sorrows. Secrets too. She is a woman with a past. Study the history of this text, read the commentaries, listen to the interpretations and you will learn that her past is generally seen as one of promiscuity. The evidence? Five spouses and now living unmarried with a sixth man. Looked at but not seen. Labelled yet nameless. She remains unknown to everyone. Everyone, that is, except Jesus. How easily we forget that women of her day had very little choice or control over their own lives. If she is divorced it is because the men divorced her. She had no right of divorce. That was exclusively the man’s right. Maybe it was a just divorce but often it was not. If she’s not divorced then she has suffered the death of five husbands. Five times left alone, five times nameless, faceless, and of no value, five times starting over. Maybe some divorced her. Maybe some died. We don’t know. Either one, divorce or death, is a tragedy for her life. So let’s not be too quick to judge. We don’t know the details of her past. Maybe we don’t need to. Maybe it is enough that she mirrors for us our own lives. We too are people with a past, people with a history. We are all Samaritan women .People like her, people like us, people with a past, often live in fear of being found out. It is not just the fear that another will know the truth, the facts, about us but that they will do so without ever really seeing us and without ever really knowing us. We all thirst to be seen and to be known at a deep intimate level. We all want to pour our lives out to one who knows us, to let them drink from the depths of our very being. That is exactly what Jesus is asking of this woman with a past when he says, “Give me a drink.” It is the invitation to let herself be known. To be known is to be loved and to be loved is to be known .To be found out, however, without being known leaves us dry and desolate. It leaves us to live a dehydrated life thirsting for something more, something different, but always returning to the same old wells. We all go down to some well. For some, like the Samaritan woman, it is the marriage well. For others it is the well of perfectionism. Some go to the well of hiding and isolation. Others will draw from the well of power and control. Too many will drink from the wells of addiction. Many live at the well of busyness and denial. We could each name the wells from which we drink. Day after day, month after month, year after year we go to the same well to drink. We arrive hoping our thirst will be quenched. We leave as thirsty as when we arrived only to return the next day. For too long we have drunk from the well that never satisfies, the well that can never satisfy. Husband after husband this is the well to which the Samaritan woman has returned. There is another well, however. It is the well of Jesus Christ. It is the well that washes us clean of our past. This is the well from which new life and new possibilities spring forth. It is the well that frees us from the patterns and habits that keep us living as thirsty people That is the well the Samaritan women in today’s gospel found. She intended to go to the same old well she had gone to for years, the well that her ancestors and their flocks drank from. Today is different. Jesus holds before her two realities of her life; the reality of what is and the reality of what might be. He brings her past to the light of the noon day. “You have had five husbands,” he says, “and the one you have now is not your husband.” It is not a statement of condemnation but simply a statement of what is. He tells her everything she has ever done. She has been found out. But it doesn’t end there. Jesus is more interested in her future than her past. He wants to satisfy her thirst more than judge her history. Jesus knows her. He looks beyond her past and sees a woman dying of thirst; a woman thirsting to be loved, to be seen, to be accepted, to be Included, to be forgiven, to be known. Her thirst will never be quenched by the external wells of life. Nor will ours. Jesus says so. “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” This is the living water of new life, new possibilities, and freedom from the past. This living water is Jesus’ own life. It became in the Samaritan woman “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” She discovered within herself the interior well and left her water jar behind. She had now become the well in which Christ’s life flows. It’s not enough, however, to hear her story or even believe her testimony. Until we come to the well of Christ’s life within us we will continue returning to the dry wells of our life. We will continue to live thirsty. We will continue to live in fear of being found out. So I wonder, from what wells do you drink? How much longer will you carry your water jars? There is another well, one that promises life, one by which we are known and loved. Come to a new well. Come to the well of Christ’s life, Christ’s love, Christ’s presence that is already in you. Come to the well that is Christ himself and then drink deeply. Drink deeply until you become the one you are meant to be.

LIVING THE GOOD NEWS

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today’s reading and discussion? Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions which follow.

Reflection Questions
Have I ever felt that I did “not quite belong” to the community found myself in?
Did I feel isolated, judged by others, or simply invisible?
How did it make me feel about reaching out to others?

Have I ever, in the mist of trying to live a complicated or stressful life, found myself in need of refreshment?
Can I admit my “thirst?”
Why or why not?

We all at one time or another go down to some “well”, seeking to quench the thirst for happiness and contentment. What has been my particular well?
Am I still at this well?
Is it a life-giving one?
Have I been drawn to more than one “well” in my life?

Do I need God’s mercy and understanding?
Have I asked for it?
Does someone need my mercy and understanding?

Look what happens in John’s Gospel when Jesus and the woman open up to each other in an honest dialogue. What change in my life might a conversation with Jesus lead me to?

Is there someone in my life that I need or want to have a meaningful conversation with?

What does the water imagery in this gospel suggest to you about your own spiritual and emotional life?
Where does it need to be refreshed?

The woman leaves her bucket at the well, perhaps symbolizing the old life she is leaving behind. Is there something in my life I need to “leave behind?”

The woman at the well entered into a conversation with Jesus. What conversation do I want to have with him?
Can I have it now?
What keeps me from trusting Jesus’ words?

We, like Christ, are evangelizers for God (Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis). The pope has called us to be missionary disciples. Note here that the woman did not pack up everything and follow Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem. She had another mission give her by Jesus. What are some ways we can be evangelizers for God?
When was the last time I was involved in such an encounter?
What holds me back from being a better evangelizer?

CLOSING PRAYER
Don’t forget to provide some prayer time at the beginning and at the end of the session (or both), allowing time to offer prayers for anyone you wish to pray for.

Lord, help me to see those marginalized among us. Help me to be welcoming and compassionate, listening to their pain and sorrow, their anger and loneliness. In many ways, I am an outsider too, not quite fitting in. Teach me to rely on your love and care for me and for others who are on the margins of life for one reason or another.

FOR THE WEEK AHEAD

Weekly Memorization
(Taken from the gospel for today’s session)
Whoever drinks of the water I shall give will never thirst.

Meditations
A Meditation I the Franciscan Style/Action: St. Francis was a lover of nature. If he were to return to earth right now, would he be happy? Within about 10 years most people on the planet will face life with water shortages. Half the world’s major rivers are being seriously polluted and/or depleted. About 40 percent of rivers and lakes in the U.S. surveyed by the EPA are too polluted for swimming or fishing. Why is this happening? Too often we pit one need against another as we use rivers and lakes to meet our needs. We grow food in ways that send pollution into our drinking water. We often manufacture products in ways that use more water than is necessary, or poison the water that people are depending upon for their daily living. We clear away forests without thinking about the erosion that will wash into our waters. What I can do: Learn more about how water is apportioned and adulterated in our own country and around the world. Pray for those who have no clean water and lobby against the movement to “privatize” water in the developing world. Speak or write to my political leaders, and support initiatives that aim at providing clean water for all.

A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination: Reread the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, putting yourself in her shoes, and imagine what you see as you approach the well to draw water. Why is there no one else from the village at the well? Why did you come at this time? Are you not accepted by the other women of Sechem? Describe the actual physical surroundings you find yourself in. What does the area look like? Smell like? How hot is it? What do you see perched on the edge of the well? What does this man look like? What does he ask of you? Why do you hesitate to give him water? How does Jesus let you know that he is aware of your past? (Just what IS your past?) How do you feel about having this past known to this man? Does he condemn you? What does Jesus tell you about the climate of your heart? Is it embarrassing that Jesus knows so much about you? Talk to Jesus about the brokenness in your own life--mistakes made, anger still unresolved, regret, shame, sadness. Then speak to him of your desire to use this brokenness to enter into communion with him who understands and has compassion for all. Finally, let that healing and accepting energy lead you back to the world, to your immediate relationships and even to others who may need your healing touch.

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions: Consider these words from Psalm 42:
As the deer pants for streams of water
So my soul pants for you, O God
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

Then I ask myself:
What does our present generation thirst for?
What does the world thirst for?
Has there ever been a “dry” time when God gave me what I needed in terms of comfort, respite, or simply God’s sustaining presence?
I name (silently or aloud) a hard place in my life at this time. Where in that rocky, desert place is God providing water for me?
Finally:I say a prayer of hope and thanksgiving for God’s sustaining presence in my life.

A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action: Think of someone in your family or among your friends and acquaintances who is somewhat outside the circle because of something he did in the past, or because she is an embarrassment to you… (maybe she dresses weirdly, is too plump, or holds the wrong political views). Now think of how Jesus would view this person, and to what lengths he would go to be inclusive. Do one thing this week—a phone call, a note, an invitation to grab a bite to eat or go to the movies—that makes this person feel accepted by you. Find time for a conversation of significance. Go on, be brave! Be forgiving!

POETIC REFLECTIONS

Think of a woman who has been discarded as worthless at least five times, rendered unworthy of human contact, but recognized in the loving eyes of Jesus who promises so much more. What a gift it is to be thankful when life is a struggle.

Conversations—III
Isn’t it strange
that as we are bent, broken
like bread, torn like cloth
poured away.
Still we are not consumed
Bless you, God.
Bless you
Who make mountains and winds;
Who give fire to breath
And freckles to children.
Bless you.
—Rev. Ed Ingebretzen in Psalms of the Still Country

Women at the Well: A Poem
When our past has cast a shadow
Even sunshine can’t dispel,
There is One who knows and loves us
Who will meet us at the well.

When our first love’s far behind us
And we’re shocked how far we fell,
Look how far He’s come to save us.
Look! He’s waiting at the well.

When we’re shackled with a secret,
Like a captive in a cell,
There is One who knows completely
And will free us at the well.

When we’re hurt by long rejection
Bitter looks and angry yells
We find pardon and acceptance
Offered freely at the well.

When we’ve drunk the living water
But we feel like empty shells,
We are overdue a visit
To the Healer at the well.

When we can’t afford perfection
But find grace a harder sell,
If we’re ready to accept it,
There is freedom at the well.

When we’re busy and exhausted,
Sit beside Him for a spell.
There’s an open invitation
Come and join Him at the well.

When we find such love and mercy,
It’s our joy to run and tell.
Come, and bring the others with you,
Come, be women at the well.
—Krissa Besselman (After six years overseas, Krista Besselman has traded the perspective brought by a childhood of Pennsylvania winters for the belief that the highlands of Papua New Guinea get “cold.” She drinks hot tea and helps track the resources used for Bible translation. She writes Excel formulas by day and poetry by night, which are really just two different ways of trying to make sense of the world. Life in Papua New Guinea has taught her a deeper appreciation for grace, relationships, and high-speed internet.)

2nd Sunday of Lent

March 1, 2026

Paying attention to Jesus/Up and down the mountain with Jesus during Lent

Matthew 17:1-9

Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up to a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; His face shone like the sun and His clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with Him. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Lord it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate and were very much afraid. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and do not be afraid.” And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone. As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

REFLECTIONS ON THE GOSPEL

Genesis 12:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:8-10; Matthew 17:1-9

In order to understand today’s Gospel, we need to put it into context. Peter had just, in the name of the other disciples, recognised their Teacher, Jesus, as the expected Messiah of Israel: You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. (Matt 16:15) It was a climactic moment in Jesus’ relationship with his disciples. But this was immediately followed by Jesus’ explanation to them of exactly what being Messiah was going to mean for him. Far from being a mighty warrior-king who would crush all the enemies of God’s people, he was going to be rejected by the leaders of his own people, arrested, tried, condemned, tortured and eventually executed—not by them, but by the very hated enemies they expected the Messiah to overthrow. This was too much for Peter (undoubtedly speaking in the name of all his companions) and he objected strongly. In turn, he was severely scolded for obstructing God’s way of doing things. Even more, Jesus had said that if anyone wanted to be his follower, then they would have to be prepared to walk the same road of rejection, oppression, and even death.

Morale boost

All of this must have seemed like a large bucket of cold water landing on the heads of the disciples. What Jesus had said was totally against all they had ever heard about the expected Messiah. It is in this perhaps depressed mood that today’s experience takes place. Perhaps to give a boost to their morale, to help them see that the way of Jesus would lead to victory and triumph, Jesus takes Peter, James and John to a high mountain. They are the inner circle of the Twelve, and are found with Jesus at other times of crucial importance, like at the raising of Jairus’ daughter and during Jesus’ agony in the garden. This happened “six days” after the declaration of Jesus as Messiah. It is perhaps a reminder that it was after six days that God called Moses into the cloud of glory on Mount Sinai.  Also in biblical times, revelations often took place on mountain tops.  There has been much speculation about which mountain in Palestine was the ‘Mount of the Transfiguration’, but it does not really matter. It is the divine significance of a mountain, any mountain, that is being emphasised.

Transformation

As the disciples watched, Jesus was suddenly transformed (Greek, metamorphoo, a rare word in the New Testament, from which our English word ‘metamorphosis’ comes): …his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light. Again, it reminds one of the radiance on Moses’ face after he came down from the mountain where he had spoken face to face with God. Then, suddenly, Moses and Elijah are seen talking with Jesus.  Their presence is very significant as they represent the two great traditions of the Old Testament: Moses personified the Law of God’s people, and Elijah, the traditions of the great prophets. Their presence and their talking with Jesus indicate their total endorsement of all that Jesus is doing, and also of all that he will experience in the days to come. Jesus is the natural continuation of their Jewish tradition and is fully part of it. Therefore, the disciples need have no misgivings about anything they have heard from Jesus about his coming destiny.

A good place to be

Peter, with his usual impulsiveness, enthusiastically suggests building three tents or shrines for Jesus, Moses and Elijah so they could stay on the mountain. It was a wonderful place to be just then.  Often, when things are good, we would like them to stay that way forever. Unfortunately, life is seldom like that and we have to move on. When we are in the cinema watching a film, we can’t shout to the projection room and say, “Stop the movie right there!  I like this bit.” Life moves on. It is true of Jesus and it is true of his followers. We have to keep moving forward, and come to terms with the happenings in our lives. In the First Reading, Abram too is told to leave his country and his family home, and go to where God will lead him. God is telling us the same every day of our lives. As Peter spoke a “bright cloud” covered them.  It was no ordinary cloud, but a luminous cloud. It both concealed the unbearable brightness and revealed the very presence of God himself (it reminds one of the cloud which covered Mount Sinai when Moses spoke with God there). From the cloud comes a voice, the voice, of course, of God himself: This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him! These are the exact words spoken at the baptism of Jesus. Again, they are an endorsement of Jesus and of all that he will experience, including his rejection by his people and his suffering and death on the way to life and victory.

“Listen to him”

This is directed at Peter and the others. To listen to Jesus is:

• to hear what he says,

• to accept what he says,

• to make it one’s own,

• to identify with it fully.

So far, the disciples have not been doing this; they have been hearing, but not accepting.

Only Jesus

At the sound of God’s voice, the disciples prostrate themselves on the ground, terrified. They hear the gentle voice of Jesus, “Get up [rise up] and do not be afraid.” Jesus’ words point to resurrection to a new life and the abolition of fear and anxiety. They look up and see Jesus standing there alone; the Father is gone; Moses and Elijah are gone. From now on they will see ‘only’ Jesus, but after this experience, they know that he is not alone, that he has the full backing of his Father and of the Jewish tradition of the Law and the Prophets. They were learning the lesson that, though Jesus the Messiah would be rejected, suffer and die at the hands of his own people and their enemies, glory and victory would follow. They were learning that, if they wanted to be truly his followers, they must accept this fully, and that they themselves must be ready to go the same way. If they stay with Jesus, victory, his victory, will be theirs too. If they stay with Jesus, they will have nothing to fear.

Back with the people

Then they came down from the mountain.  Being with Jesus means not staying up on a mountain. Being on the mountain was a wonderful experience: “It is good for us to be here,” said Peter. But Jesus came down from the mountain to be with the people in their pains and sorrows, in their fears and anxieties, in their sicknesses and disabilities and in their sinfulness. Jesus’ other name in Matthew’s Gospel is Emmanuel, “God with us”. Jesus’ place is to be with his people, and his followers have to do the same. It is nice to spend quiet days at a lovely retreat house deep in the countryside. It is nice to have a really good Mass with good homily, lovely choir, candles and incense. But most of the time our Christian life is to be spent sharing in the joys and sorrows of our brothers and sisters. We are to be the salt of the earth, the leaven in the dough, the candle on the lamp stand, helping people to know, understand and experience the love of their God for them. Most of the time we meet Jesus especially in those in need: the hungry and thirsty (in every sense of the word), the sick and disabled and those in prison: …as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ We are to find Jesus in them and they are to find Jesus in us.

First Impressions by Jude Siciliano, OP

Genesis 12: 1-4a; Psalm 33; 2 Timothy 1: 8b-10; Matthew 17: 1-9

The scriptural readings for Sundays are chosen with purpose. The first reading (usually from the Hebrew Scriptures) relates to the gospel of the day. This relationship is not accidental but reflects a theological and pastoral plan designed by the Church after the Second Vatican Council. The gospel is primary, the “theological anchor.” Each Sunday the first reading is chosen because it illuminates, foreshadows or prepares for the Gospel. So, for example, the first reading from the Hebrew Scriptures contains figures, events, or promises that prefigure Christ. The Gospel reveals the fulfillment of what the Hebrew Scriptures anticipate. So, on this second Sunday of Lent our first reading presents the patriarch Abram, who begins the journey of faith. The gospel presents the Son who will complete that journey through his faith, suffering and glory. Abram steps into the unknown because he trusts God’s Word. On the mountaintop the disciples are directed by the voice coming from the cloud, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” The pattern for us disciples is presented to Abram. Here’s how it is suggested to us today. Like Abram: we are called, we did not self-initiate that call. Abram did not invent his mission, God summoned him. In the gospel the disciples do not engineer the Transfiguration, they are led up the mountain. Likewise, our Christian life does not begin with our own designs for self-improvement. God has taken the initiative to call us through our Baptism, particular vocation, graced-conversion, showing us the way we are to serve. This is contrary to modern cues which tell us we are in control and can design our own destiny. Abram hears and responds to a promise without seeing is fulfillment. So too with the disciples. On the mountain they get a view of glory before they can understand the Cross. So, it is with us. We are called to trust. Before we see, we commit ourselves without yet experiencing promised outcomes and we follow Christ without a detailed map, or GPS. It is Lent, a time not only for fasting and self-denial, but for reflection. Today’s readings ask for a Lenten response. What is God asking me to leave? What promise am I clinging to? What feels uncertain and scary to me in my daily journey? Prompted by the disciples’ mountaintop experience, have I ever had a glimpse of Christ’s glory that sustains me in times of doubt and testing? Our lives don’t re-create exactly the biblical events, but they are shaped by that same divine rhythm and pattern: Call... Promise... Journey... Fulfillment. But before all this comes grace.

• If we are in a time of our upheaval – then we are in the “ Call.”

• Waiting for something to unfold – we are in the “Promise.”

• Struggling through difficulty – we are in the “Journey.”

And... experiencing deep peace, or clarity, we have a glimpse of “Fulfillment.” Christian life seems to move through these stages repeatedly. Our modern world prizes control, speed, efficiency and measurable results. While our faith, revealed again to us in our biblical readings today, prizes trust, patience and listening. We hear the call today to trust our faithful God over long stretches of time; to stay trusting as Revelation unfolds gradually. We are reminded that glory and suffering coexist; That our story is not unique but is part of a much larger story. Like the disciples we too have “mountain moments” – times of deep prayer, clarity, peace in the sense of God near and real. Such moments are not escapes but strengthening for when we come down the mountain and returned to live faithfully the valley. Lent is not about dramatic heroics. It is about trusting the promise we have heard and the courage to take the next step. We are like Abram: we walk without seeing the whole future. Like the disciples on the mountain, we listen to God’s Word through the Beloved Son which encourages and strengthens us to keep walking through whatever daily uncertainties we must face. We remember that it is God who calls us and God who is faithful. With that Lenten hope we are carried towards Easter strengthened and encouraged by God’s Spirit. Today’s Scriptures reveal the heart of Lent. Like Abram we are asked you to step away from what secures us. Through prayer fasting and almsgiving we turn in trust to God even before we see results. Faith is not having clarity; it is walking anyway. Abram dared to trust and so began salvation history. Notice too that the promise is not just for him. “All the communities of the earth shall find a blessing in you.” God blesses us so that others may be blessed through us. In Lent we make our yearly journey out of comfort into promise, trusting that if we walk with God, even though we have not been given a map, we are walking toward blessing.

Quotable

“Abraham represents the possibility of a new beginning – the courage to answer a call.” –Elie Wiesel

Justice Bulletin Board by Barbara Molinari Quinby, MPS, Director Office of Human Life, Dignity, and Justice Ministries Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral Raleigh, NC

“He saved us and called us to a holy life.” —2 Timothy 1:9

Here, near the beginning of Lent, we are reminded as Christians, to turn or return completely to Christian commitment. It is so easy to get caught up in the humdrum of our lives, to fill our space with noise, to drown out the still small voice of God calling us to greater life. Our lives should be a consistent exercise in letting go of things that keep us from being transfigured. Yet we linger in what we think are safe and secure ruts. The gift of Lent can be for us an intense period of purification and enlightenment, a time of transformation, a time of deepening our life with Christ. How do we do this? During the papal conclave of his election to become Pope Francis, then Cardinal Bergoglio gave a three-minute speech “in which he said the Church, in order to survive, must stop ‘living within herself, of herself, for herself’” (Rolling Stone, Binelli 2/13/14). Well, here’s a news flash—we are the Church! Each one of us must stop living within ourselves, of ourselves, for ourselves. We must be love to a hurting world. Pope Leo concludes his exhortation, Dilexi Te, with these words: “ Christian love breaks down every barrier, brings close those who were distant, unites strangers, and reconciles enemies. . .Love is above all a way of looking at life and a way of living it. A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today (120). Through your work, your efforts to change unjust social structures or your simple, heartfelt gesture of closeness and support, the poor will come to realize that Jesus’ words are addressed personally to each of them: “I have loved you” (Rev 3:9) (121). For the next three weekends, please stop by to “Join in the Joy of Just Service” at our Works of Mercy tables in the narthex. Our devoted coordinators need YOU to be counted to help spread love. You can deepen your life with Christ by walking with others, especially the poor. If we implement even a small portion of what our popes say, we will see ourselves changing, like a butterfly shaking free from its cocoon. By living a holy life of love, we will change our world as well.

Faith Book
Mini-reflections on the Sunday scripture readings designed for persons on the run. “Faith Book” is also brief enough to be posted in the Sunday parish bulletins people take home.

From today’s Gospel reading: “As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, “Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

Reflection: Jesus teaches patience. Let the experience sink in. Let it be tested by daily fidelity. The deepest witness is not excited talk, but steady discipleship shaped by the cross and illuminated by hope.

So, we ask ourselves:

• What “mountain moments” have strengthened my faith, and how have they shaped my daily life afterward?

• Do I seek glory without accepting the cross that gives it meaning?

• How is Christ asking me to live quiet, patient faith right now, even without dramatic experiences?

LENTEN POETRY COMPANION WEEK 2: AN INVITATION TO AWAKEN

SUNDAY — Sunday Prayer by Jessica Powers
Prayer is the trap-door out of sin.
Prayer is a mystic entering in
to secret places full of light.
It is a passage through the night.
Heaven is reached, the blessed say,
by prayer and by no other way.
One may kneel down and make a plea
with words from book or breviary,
or one may enter in and find
a home-made message in the mind.
But true prayer travels further still,
to seek God’s presence and God’s will.
To pray can be to push a door
and snatch some crumbs of evermore,
or (likelier by far) to wait,
head bowed, before a fastened gate,
helpless and miserable and dumb,
yet hopeful that the Lord will come.
Here is the prayer of grace and good
most proper to our creaturehood.
God’s window shows his humble one
more to the likeness of His Son.
He sees, though thought and senses stray,
the will is resolute to stay
and feed, in weathers sweet or grim,
on any word that speaks of Him.
He beams on the humility
that keeps it peace in misery
and, save for glimmerings, never knows
how beautiful with light it grows.
He smiles on faith that seems to know
it has no other place to go.
But some day, hidden by His will,
if this meek child is waiting still,
God will take out His mercy-key
and open up felicity,
where saltiest tears are given right
to seas where sapphire marries light,
where by each woe the soul can span
new orbits for the utter man,
where even the flesh, so seldom prized,
would blind the less than divinized.

Source: “Prayer” from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, edited by Regina Siegfried, ASC, and Robert F. Morneau. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1989.

MONDAY — To Live in the Mercy of God by Denise Levertov
To lie back under the tallest
oldest trees. How far the stems
rise, rise
before ribs of shelter
open!
To live in the mercy of God. The complete
sentence too adequate, has no give.
Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of
stony wood beneath lenient
moss bed.
And awe suddenly
passing beyond itself. Becomes
a form of comfort.
Becomes the steady
air you glide on, arms
stretched like the wings of flying foxes.
To hear the multiple silence
of trees, the rainy
forest depths of their listening.
To float, upheld,
as salt water
would hold you,
once you dared.
To live in the mercy of God.
To feel vibrate the enraptured
waterfall flinging itself
unabating down and down
to clenched fists of rock.
Swiftness of plunge,
hour after year after century,
O or Ah
uninterrupted, voice
many-stranded.
To breathe
spray. The smoke of it.
Arcs
of steelwhite foam, glissades
of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—
rage or joy?
Thus, not mild, not temperate,
God’s love for the world. Vast
flood of mercy
flung on resistance.

Source: “To Live in the Mercy of God” from Sands from the Well, by Denise Levertov. New York: New Directions, 1996.

TUESDAY — The Rowing Endeth by Anne Sexton
I’m mooring my rowboat
at the dock of the island called God.
This dock is made in the shape of a fish
and there are many boats moored
at many different docks.
“It’s okay,” I say to myself,
with blisters that broke and healed
and broke and headed—saving
themselves over and over.
And salt sticking to my face and arms like
a glue-skin pocked with grains of tapioca.
I empty myself from my wooden boat
and onto the flesh of The Island.
“On with it!” He says and thus
we squat on the rocks by the sea
and play—can it be true—a
game of poker.
He calls me.
I win because I hold a royal straight flush.
He wins because He holds five aces.
A wild card had been announced
but I had not beard it
being in such a state of awe
when He took out the cards and dealt.
As he plunks down His five aces
and I sit grinning at my royal flush,
He starts to laugh,
the laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth
and into mine,
and such laughter that He doubles right over me
laughing a Rejoice Chores at our two triumphs.
Then I laugh, the fishy dock laughs
the sea laughs. The Island laughs.
The Absurd laughs.
Dearest dealer,
I with my royal straight flush,
love yon so for your wild card,
that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha
and lucky love.

Source: “The Rowing Endeth” from The Awful Rowing Toward God by Anne Sexton. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975.

WEDNESDAY — In Praise of Self-Deprecation by Wislawa Szymborsk
The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.
The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.
The killer whale’s heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.
There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.

Source: “In Praise of Self-Deprecation” from A Book of Luminous Things: And International Anthology of Poetry, by Milosz Czelslaw, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998.

THURSDAY — Alone by Maya Angelou
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Source: “Alone” from Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well, by Maya Angelou. New York: Random House, Inc., 1975.

FRIDAY — Think Not How Far by Harold Macdonald
Think not how far we have to go,
how far we’ve come; it saps the strength,
melts the will. It’s better not to know
the breadth and height and length
of all that’s still ahead.
Who wants to learn one’s end?
What will be, what would have been - weigh like lead.
Past offenses change not, cannot mend.
Better to proceed by little steps
within your range; no sweat, regret, no strain;
blanking out dramatic heights and depths
the thought of chasms, rough terrain.
Time then to see God’s downward bending
to share the journey and the ending.

Source: “Think Not How Far” from Poems from the Eighth Decade, by Harold Macdonald. 2004.

SATURDAY — Open Your Eyes by Richard Guy Miller
We never really die.
We just open our eyes.
When they have seen
Their last limitation,
We turn and weep,
Or we awake from our dream,
Open our eyes and know...
We never really die.
We just open our eyes.
When we have seen
Our last limitation,
We turn and weep,
Or we awake from our dream,
Open our eyes and know...
We never really lived.
We just closed our eyes.

Source: “Open Your Eyes” by Richard Guy Miller. Meditate with Poetry, 2003. http://www.explorefaith.org/oasis/poetry/openEyes.html.

PREPARATION FOR THE SESSION

Presence of God: Jesus, As I come to you today, fill my heart, my whole being, with the wonder of your sacred presence. Help me to become more aware of your presence in my life, and more receptive to that presence. I desire to love you as you love me. May nothing ever separate me from you. ( 1-2 minutes of silence)

Freedom: Jesus, Grant me the grace to have freedom of spirit. Keep me from being bound by desires and actions that are not good for me or others. Cleanse my heart and soul that I may live joyously in your love. ( 1-2 minutes of silence)

Consciousness: Where am I with God? With others in my life? What am I grateful for? Is there something I am sorry for, words or actions that have hurt others, and which I now regret? I take a moment to ask forgiveness of God and of those whom I have hurt. God, I give you thanks for your constant love and care for me. Keep me always aware of your presence in my life. (2-3 minutes of silence)

OPENING PRAYER

Jesus, there is a time for silence and a time to speak. Help me, during this Lenten season, to cultivate a silence that is free from distractions and obligations, and truly open to your word. Help me to see you as God’s beloved, and help me to see myself as God’s beloved. Help me to hear you and see you in ways I have never been able to do. Especially help me to see you in those around me—in those who love me and those who don’t; in those whom I find admirable and those whom I don’t.

COMPANIONS FOR THE JOURNEY
From “First Impressions” by Jude Siciliano (Second Sunday of Lent A 2011)

As I’ve traveled over the years, I’ve been to mountains: tall ones, like the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada mountains in the West; lesser, but still magnificent ones in Vermont, North Carolina, West Virginia and upper New York State. I’ve always been thrilled at the top of these mountains by the clear air, strong wind and spectacular views. Standing on a mountaintop also gives me a sense of security because of the solid mass beneath my feet. It’s a religious experience, it seems to me, to climb a mountain and let your mind and emotions flow with the experience. Did the three apostles Peter, James and John have some of those feelings when they got to the top of that “high mountain” with Jesus? After they got there, as if being on the mountain with him weren’t enough, they had the experience of the Transfiguration! It’s a dramatic story and appears at a key moment in Matthew’s Gospel. Some people, after a conversion experience, or when they come to a deeper awareness of the joys and peace that accompany a life centered on Christ, have a “mountaintop experience,” similar to the one Peter, James and John had. But sooner or later we need to come back down to earth and face the cross that comes with living out the life of discipleship. An authentic Christian life involves choices: will we accept the standards of living proposed by the world in its insatiable appetite for success, power, possessions, fame, etc? Or, will we choose Jesus’ way of service, peace-making, self-denial, etc.? If we accept Jesus’ way, we will also be accepting the suffering that accompanies it. Jesus invites us to take up his cross and the suffering that inevitably come with it. But he isn’t glorifying suffering just for the sake of suffering. There is a kind of suffering that is redemptive. For example, the suffering that comes with a commitment to justice for others. In this redemptive suffering comes the power to love even when resistance and hate are directed our way. With redemptive suffering also comes strength and perseverance as we work to help others who are unfairly treated by our society. Like Peter, we like to live in a fantasy world where everything is exciting and upbeat. We want to hold on to good times and happy feelings. The downside is that we tend to deny bad news, if we can. Jesus asks us to take up his cross: to live in loving relationships with others, even when opposed and taken advantage of; to respond in love to enemies; to serve and embrace, as our sisters and brothers, the poor and outcasts; to practice peacemaking in a world of violence, etc. In other words, to give our lives as Jesus gave his, for the sake of new life. Jesus was transfigured on the mountain and his disciples saw his glory. Through his death and resurrection, he transfigured the cross by revealing it as the means to new life for those who would take it up to follow him. There is one small and tender moment in today’s gospel that should give hope to us this Lent; we who are trying to pick up our cross to follow Jesus. When the disciples heard the voice from the cloud they, “fell prostrate and were very much afraid.” Then, Matthew tells us, “Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise and do not be afraid.’” This is a detail only Matthew tells. In the gospel Jesus’ words and touch have been healing, empowering and life-giving. The Transfiguration depicts the disciples, weak humans like us, falling prostrate and afraid before the divine revelation about Christ. But Jesus’ touch and encouraging words give us all the courage, desire and ability to renew our commitment to follow him this Lent. Jesus tells us this Lent, “Rise up and do not be afraid.”

LIVING THE GOOD NEWS

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today's reading and discussion? Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions which follow.

Reflection Questions:
Have you ever had a “mountaintop” experience that left a deep impression on you?
Have you ever heard yourself being called “my beloved son”, or my beloved daughter?

Have you ever had a religious experience that left a deep impression on you?
How did it affect your daily life?
Did it cause you to make any significant change?

What have been some “events of grace” in your own life?
Did you recognize them at the time?

Is it hard, in everyday lives, to hear Jesus?
Where do you go to get away from noise and distractions?

We can ask ourselves in Lent: What is Jesus saying to me in the people and events of today?

Do we understand what discipleship asks of us?

Do I really believe his words: “Do not be afraid”?
For some people, God and religion inspire a lot of fear. Why is that?

When you have had glorious, “mountaintop” experiences, how hard was it to come back to “real” life?
Did you try to prolong or memorialize the experience as the disciples did?

Like the disciples, we are attracted by what we see of Jesus on the mountain and resistant to what he says about the cross. Going up the mountain to get a glimpse of glory is one thing; going up on the cross is quite another! Are we willing to include in following Jesus both realities: the glory of the Transfiguration and the glory of the cross?

We identify any situation that brings pain and loss to our lives as our “cross.”
What has been a particular "cross" I have had to deal with or bear in life?

What are the risks involved in listening to Jesus?

Do we often, using such stories at the transfiguration, emphasize the divinity of Jesus at the expense of recognizing his humanity? What is the danger in that?

In my own spirituality, which image do I prefer?

What holds me back from more fully responding to God’s call for me?
What can I do this Lent to begin to respond to that call?

Do I listen to Christ by listening to other people in my life---really listening?
Do I listen to Christ in the scriptures, more often than once a week?

CLOSING PRAYER

Don’t forget to provide some prayer time at the beginning and at the end of the session (or both), allowing time to offer prayers for anyone you wish to pray for.

Adapted from Sacred Space 23, a Service of Irish Jesuits: Jesus, transfiguration is about you and about us. When we are with you, we are with the divine; when you are with us, you are with the human. Your love, grace, sacraments, and compassion can transfigure us. And when we look around us and see as you see, we find there are others in our loves capable of transfiguration. Help me to be present in prayer to your light and brightness; allow me to know that the light given to me at Baptism is never extinguished. Help me to light the lives of others.

FOR THE WEEK AHEAD:

Weekly Memorization
(Taken from the gospel for today’s session)
This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased. Listen to him.

Meditations
A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination: Read Matthew 17: 1-9 (The Transfiguration). Imagine that you are Peter, and you have been invited by Jesus to accompany him to the top of this mountain for prayer. Put yourself completely in his shoes for this entire experience, trying to be present in the event as he was. Take time to sit with each question as you insert yourself into the events of that day with Jesus: What are you expecting as you set out on this experience? At what time of day do you start out? What is the weather like? What do you see? Smell? Hear? Is the journey easy or tiring? What do you four chat about along the way? How long after you all reach the top do you see something happening to Jesus? How do you react when you see Jesus transformed right in front of your eyes? Are you frightened? Exhilarated? Confused? What expressions or reactions do you see on the faces of James and John? What do you think when you see Jesus conversing with Moses and Elijah? How do you know that is who they are? Why do you suggest building three tents? When a cloud envelops all three of them and you hear a voice, do you know who is speaking? Is it because in your Jewish culture no one looked directly on the face of God, and because your stories of Moses tell you that God spoke to him from within a cloud? Why are you afraid when God speaks the words telling you that Jesus is God’s son and you are to listen to him? In what instances up until now have you been too dismissive of what Jesus was telling you about what his mission is, what his fate will be, and how you are to be conducting your life--about your mission? How do you react when Jesus quietly comes upon you and touches you, telling you not to be afraid? Are you less afraid? Have you recovered and reverted to your first sense of wonder and awe? Are you apprehensive? Why do you think Jesus tells you to speak of this event to no one until after his resurrection from the dead? Do you even get what he means by talking of being raised from the dead? Has he spoken of his death before now? Did you believe him? Sit with this experience for a few moments, then imagine a transformative or exceptional experience in your own life. Recall if you fully understood what was happening while it was happening, and what you have learned about yourself and about life after having some time to digest the meaning of the experience. T.S. Eliot, in “Four Quartets, writes: “We had the experience, but missed the meaning.” Have you taken time in your own life to process an event which was pivotal in some way? Try to recall such an event, and see if you can hear Christ speaking to you in the aftermath of that experience. Were you listening? Are you listening now?

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Consideration: From Bishop Robert Barron 2026. “Friends, today’s Gospel (Matthew 17:1–9) celebrates the Transfiguration. Christ came not just to make us nice people or morally upright folks, but rather to give us a share in his divine life, to make us denizens of heaven, people capable of living in that new environment. What gave the first Christians this conviction? The answer is the Resurrection—and the great anticipation of the Resurrection, which is the Transfiguration. This ordinary Jesus somehow became transformed, elevated, enhanced in his manner of being. The first thing we notice is that his appearance becomes more beautiful. These somewhat grubby bodies of ours are destined for a transfigured, elevated beauty. Secondly, in his transfigured state, Jesus transcends space and time, since he is talking with Moses and Elijah. In this world, we are caught in one moment of space and time, but in heaven, we will live in the eternal now of God’s life. Have you ever noticed that even as we appreciate all that is wonderful about this life, we are never really at home? There is a permanent restlessness about human life. But a higher, richer, more beautiful and spiritually fulfilling life awaits us.”

A Meditation in the Augustinian Style/Relationship:
Read Isaiah 42:1-9.
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, 
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will bring justice to the nations.
He will not shout or cry out,
or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.
In his teaching the islands will put their hope.
This is what God the Lord says—
the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out,
who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it,
who gives breath to its people,
and life to those who walk on it:
“I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness;
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light for the Gentiles,
to open eyes that are blind,
to free captives from prison
and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
“I am the Lord; that is my name!
I will not yield my glory to another
or my praise to idols.
See, the former things have taken place,
and new things I declare;
before they spring into being
I announce them to you.”

We all know that this passage is taken by Christians as a reference to Jesus. But if we are followers of Jesus, if we Listen to Him, then it should apply to us as well. In your journal, write your own response to the Lord who calls you “my chosen” and says that the Lord’s spirit is upon YOU, that YOU have been given as a covenant to God’s people. How do you respond to this awesome honor/task? Speak from your heart about your desire to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

POETIC REFLECTION

Thomas Merton, OSCO, a monk, mystic and poet, saw transfiguration everywhere. In this following meditation from Thomas Merton, A Book of Hours, edited by Kathleen Degnan, Psalm, adapted from Merton’s book New Seeds of Contemplation,( pp 30-31 excerpted) reflects the joy and total exuberance of God’s presence in our natural world.

Psalm/ transfiguration/transformation/Nature
The forms and individual characters of living
and growing things
of inanimate beings, of animals and flowers and all nature,
constitute their holiness in the sight of God.
Their inscape is their sanctity.
It is the imprint of His wisdom and His reality in them.
The special clumsy beauty of this particular
colt on this day in this field under these clouds
is a holiness consecrated by God by His own
creative wisdom
and it declares the glory of God.
The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window
are saints
The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the side of
that road are saints
looking up into the face of God.
This leaf has its own texture and its own pattern of veins and
Its own holy shape,
and the bass and the trout hiding in the deep pools of the river
are canonized by their beauty and their strength.
The lakes hidden among the hills are saints.
and the sea too is a saint who praises God
without interruption
in her majestic dance.
The great, gashed, half naked mountain is another
Of God’s saints.
There is no other like him.
He is alone in His own character;
Nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God
In quite the same way.
That is his sanctity.
But what about you? What about me?

1st Sunday of Lent

February 22, 2026

When the temptation comes to mistrust God and God’s promises, how do we react?

Matthew 4:1-11

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply: “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you’ and ‘with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’” Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’” Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.

REFLECTIONS ON THE GOSPEL

First Impressions by Jude Siciliano, OP

Genesis 2: 7-9; 3: 1-7;  Psalm 51; Romans 5: 12-19;  Matthew 4: 1-11

Ash Wednesday was a sobering reminder—those ugly ashes smeared on our foreheads, dusted our jackets and sweaters.  We quickly brushed them off our chests. Maybe the ones on our foreheads lasted a bit longer. What a bleak reminder they were about our frailty; to put it bluntly, we all face a death sentence. We were born and we will have an end. There is no running away from our creatureliness. As we survey our successes, achievements and dominance, whether as individuals or a nation, we know they are ultimately limited. The grim reaper will come along and take us away and also those we love and all our projects. After a while our names will be forgotten. Not a cheery way to being a Sunday reflection! Those are morbid thoughts, aren’t they? But we must face the truth about who we are so that we can live our lives with perspective, in other words, live our true lives. Genesis reminds us that if we acknowledge we are creatures of dust, we can also express our belief that the Eternal One has placed a life-giving breath in us. (“God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life....”) This breath orients us to God and calls us to follow God’s ways. If we haven’t been doing that, Lent is an opportunity to make necessary adjustments; in other words,  to “reform.” The gospel reminds us that during Lent we can look death, or anything that threatens our vocation to follow God, in the face and not be afraid, because Jesus has entered our desert experience and come out triumphant. He has preceded us into the place of temptation, the desert, and can help us get through our own deserts, the places where, like the Israelites, we wandered from the path. We do not have to be afraid, we are not alone and today at this Eucharist Jesus will feed us himself, the desert bread that gives us life. There is consolation for us this Lent, even as we cast a sober glance over our lives, because we have been given hope that Jesus has looked into our darkness, seen us there and has come to pull us out. As God rescued the Israelites in their wanderings, so God comes again searching us out, bringing us home. John Kavanagh, SJ says that Lent is our Christian Yom Kippur, our time of critical self-evaluation. It is a time to think things over, to reconsider and to be more aware of our limitations, our mortality and our need. It is a time, in other words, to remember that our lives need to be and can be, transformed by grace. Once more, through Christ, God breathes into us a life-giving Spirit. This dust we are has its origins and destiny in God. We have forty days ahead of us to make some choices. It is “focus time”—it’s like going for an eye exam and the optometrist places those adjustable lens over your eyes and keeps asking, “Is it clearer now? How about now?” We have forty days to choose more positive ways of looking and acting. The scriptures will be like the lens the optometrist places before our eyes. We didn’t think we had impaired vision, but then we were given a better lens and the blurred letters cleared up. So, it will be this Lent, as we listen to the scriptures and take them to heart, we will get our vision cleared.  We will learn what Jesus taught us from the desert, “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” God wants to breathe new life into us again through the life-giving Word. Baseball players are starting Spring training.  They need this time to get ready for the opening of the season and the long season of games that will take them into the Fall and possibly into World Series contention.  Without this preparation time they will get off to a poor start and not make it successfully through the season. Like these athletes, each year, year after year, we need Lent. We need a time to refocus. We need a time to renew our baptismal vows, our commitment to Christ and our profession of faith. We notice our sinfulness and our tepid responses to the gospel; but more, we look to the one who saves us. We are reminded during Lent that we can break away from sin by the enabling grace of God. The reform in Lent is both for the individual and the community. Together, especially at these liturgies, we are called to a more attentive listening to and acting on the Word. As we listen, we become more deeply unified, we hear our family story and claim it as the one we want to believe in and live by. We could make it our Lenten practice then to be more attentive to these readings and even to prepare for liturgy by reading and reflecting on them in advance. (Most parishes list next Sunday’s readings in the bulletin—the preacher might refer to this.) The readings will discourage, even expose, our sin. But this not to laden us with guilt, as much as to denounce sin and proclaim God’s mercy. Thus, Lent is a joyful time when we become more deeply aware of God’s saving grace for us. Be careful in the Genesis reading not to make too much of Eve’s first eating the fruit.  Women have too long been portrayed in religion, literature and world cultures as the temptresses. The “Fall” from grace is our human story, not the fault of a first woman or man. In the Genesis account we are not hearing a factual “you-are-there” historical retelling. But we are hearing the truth – human beings have turned away from God. In the Genesis narrative we observe God lovingly creating humans, “by hand,” breathing the divine life into them and planting a lovely garden for them to enjoy. But they turned away from God – the human story to this day. No one needed to tell us that, we know the personal and social effects of sin on humans, institutions and God’s own lovely garden—the natural world. We can’t blame Adam and Eve for something they did “back then”—rather, we must claim responsibility in our own time and place for the choices we make. “The devil made me do it,” is a lame excuse for what we have done or neglected to do. Like Adam and Eve we have a porous wall of resistance to sin’s allures, glamor and false promises. Thankfully we have not been left on our own.  The gospel shows us that Jesus had more power than sin. With him we can overcome what we have not been able to on our own. Jesus resists the temptation to take care of his hungers by multiplying bread. He also resists the temptation to draw crowds by spectacular wonders and miracles. God will provide him and us the food we really need, when we need it—our “daily bread.” Jesus also resists the temptation to go through life on an easy ride; expecting no pain or harm to befall him.  As the “beloved” shouldn’t he expect God to protect him? And, if we are loved by God, why must we suffer? Jesus doesn’t doubt God’s love for him, even when he “falls” into the hands of those who hate him and reject his message. Jesus could have possessed the world with all its power and splendor. That would certainly have attracted multitudes to his message.  But Jesus kept his eyes fixed on his God and would not sway from his calling as a servant, to become an earthly ruler.  Through his strength we are made strong. Because of his clear-eyed vision we can see the difference between what is alluring—but passing and what has lasting value—and offers life. Let’s come to the Eucharist today aware of our deep-down hunger for God, who gives us Jesus’ life for strength and his Spirit for guidance for our own particular wilderness struggle.

LENTEN POETRY COMPANION—AN INVITATION INTO THE WILDERNESS

Ash Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

but for sorrow by Rob Suarez
I might never have asked
what could be
but for sorrow.
I might never have opened
to the terrible
vulnerability of love
but for tears.
I might never have begun
this treacherous path to
God
but for emptiness.
Source: “but for sorrow” by Rob Suarez from America Magazine, Vol. 184 No. 10 (3/26/2001)

Opening Words by Denise Levertov
I believe the earth
exists, and
in each minim mote
of its dust the holy
glow of thy candle.
Thou
unknown I know,
thou spirit,
giver,
lover of making, of the
wrought letter,
wrought flower,
iron, deed, dream.
Dust of the earth,
help thou my
unbelief. Drift
gray become gold, in the beam of
vision. I believe with
doubt. I doubt and
interrupt my doubt with belief. Be,
beloved, threatened world.
Each minim
mote.
Not the poisonous
luminescence forced
out of its privacy,
The sacred lock of its cell
broken. No,
the ordinary glow
of common dust in ancient sunlight.
Be, that I may believe. Amen.

Saturday

Late Results by Scott Cairns
We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
—Milosz
And the few willing to listen demanded that we confess on television.
So we kept our sins to ourselves, and they became less troubling.
The halt and the lame arranged to have their hips replaced.
Lepers coated their sores with a neutral foundation, avoided strong
light.
The hungry ate at grand buffets and grew huge, though they remained
hungry.
Prisoners became indistinguishable from the few who visited them.
Widows remarried and became strangers to their kin.
The orphans finally grew up and learned to fend for themselves.
Even the prophets suspected they were mad, and kept their mouths
shut.
Only the poor—who are with us always—only they continued in the
hope.
Source: “Late Results” from Philokalia: New and Selected Poems, by Scott Cairns. Lincoln, Nebraska: Zoo Press, 2002

Prayer: A Progression by Jessica Powers
You came by night, harsh with the need of grace,
into the dubious presence of your Maker.
You combed a small and pre-elected acre
for some bright word of Him, or any trace.
Past the great judgment growths of thistle and thorn
and past the thicket of self you bore your yearning
till lo, you saw a pure white blossom burning
in glimmer, then, light, then unimpeded more!
Now the flower God-is-love gives ceaseless glow;
now all your thoughts feast on its mystery,
but when love mounts through knowledge and goes free,
then will the sated thinker arise and go
and brave the deserts of the soul to give
the flower he found to the contemplative.
Source: “Prayer: A Progression” from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, edited by Regina Siegfried, ASC, and Robert F. Morneau. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1989

Prayer of One Who Feels Lost by Joyce Rupp
Dear God,
why do I keep fighting you off?
One part of me wants you desparately,
another part of me unknowingly
pushes you back and runs away.
What is there in me that
so contradicts my desire for you?
These transition days, these passage ways,
are calling me to let go of old securities,
to give myself over into your hands.
Like Jesus who struggled with the pain
I, too, fight the “let it all be done.”
Loneliness, lostness, non-belonging,
all these hurts strike out at me,
leaving me pained with this present goodbye.
I want to be more but I fight the growing.
I want to be new but I hang unto the old.
I want to live but I won’t face the dying.
I want to be whole but cannot bear
to gather up the pieces into one.
Is it that I refuse to be out of control,
to let the tears take their humbling journey,
to allow my spirit to feel its depression,
to stay with the insecurity of “no home”?
Now is the time. You call to me,
begging me to let you have my life,
inviting me to taste the darkness
so I can be filled with the light,
allowing me to lose my direction
so that I will find my way home to you.
Source: “Prayer of One Who Feels Lost” from Praying Our Goodbyes, by Joyce Rupp. South Bend, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1988

Week One: An Invitation to Be Bread for Others
Sunday
Journaling:

Monday

Possible Answers to Prayer by Scott Cairns
Your petitions—though they continue to bear
just the one signature—have been duly recorded.
Your anxieties—despite their constant,
relatively narrow scope and inadvertent
entertainment value—nonetheless serve
to bring your person vividly to mind.
Your repentance—all but obscured beneath
a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more
conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.
Your intermittent concern for the sick,
the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes
recognizable to me, if not to them.
Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly
righteous indignation toward the many
whose habits and sympathies offend you—
these must burn away before you’ll apprehend
how near I am, with what fervor I adore
precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.
Source: “Possible Answers to Prayer” from Philokalia: New and Selected Poems, by Scott Cairns. Lincoln, Nebraska: Zoo Press, 2002

Tuesday

Beginners by Denise Levertov
(Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla)
”From too much love of living, Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river winds somewhere to the sea—“
But we have only begun
To love the earth.
We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope?
—so much is in bud.
How can desire fail?
—we have only begun
to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision
how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.
Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?
Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?
Not yet, not yet—
there is too much broken
that must be mended,
too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.
We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,
so much is in bud.
Source: “Beginners” from Candles in Babylon, by Denise Levertov. New York: New Directions, 1982

Wednesday

We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
Source: “We Wear the Mask” from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1913

Thursday

Night Thoughts by William F. Bell
It is our emptiness and lowliness that God needs, and not our
plenitude. —Mother Teresa
Somehow by day, no matter what,
I patch myself together whole,
But all my effort can’t offset
The nightly nakedness of soul
When angels in a dark descent
Strip off my integument.
I am a cornered rebel pinched
Between night’s armies and my lack,
And when inside the bedclothes hunched
I feel the force of their attack,
I hardly know what I can do,
Exposed to God at half-past two.
I once believed my being full,
But night thoughts prove that it is not.
Waking scared and miserable,
I scrape the bottom of the pot
And then must bow down and confess
Totality of emptiness.
Kings once ventured, it is said,
To offer gold and frankincense,
But I send nothing from my bed
Except a tattered penitence,
So very little has accrued
From years of doubtful plenitude.
God who tear away my cover,
Oh, pour your Spirit into me
Until my emptiness runs over
With golden superfluity,
And I bow down and offer up
Yourself within my earthen cup.
Source: “Night Thoughts” by William Bell from America Magazine, Vol. 187 No. 18 (12/2/2002).

Friday

The Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
Source: “The Uses of Sorrow” from Thirst, by Mary Oliver. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.

Saturday

What I Pray For by Dennis O’Donnell
Sacks of rocks
I have gathered from the beach,
some of which I used to toss
my own I Ching, stones representing
fire, water, wind, and the rest,
some of them with strange,
man-like markings, like circles,
probably formed by little pools of sea water,
dried by the sun, leaving behind
a round stain of salt.
Stacks of poems, sacks of rocks,
milk crates full of books
full of baloney:
I can’t let them go, not yet,
but I lie in bed and plead with God
to empty out my past, all of it,
at least all of the bad,
set me free, flush out
all the shame and rage and heartache,
but please, not the finger-paints,
not baseball and my best friends.
Deal, He says,
but all the rocks must go.
No tarot cards, and no metaphysical bull.
Fine, I say.
I have a look at my bookcase.
I see Rumi, Suzuki, Lao Tzu,
and two Bibles. So:
who will throw the first stone?
Source: “What I Pray For” by Dennis O’Donnell from America Magazine, Vol. 190 No. 6 (2/23/2004)

PREPARATION FOR THE SESSION

Adapted from Sacred Space: The Prayer Book 2025

Presence of God: Jesus, As I come to you today, fill my heart, my whole being, with the wonder of your sacred presence. Help me to become more aware of your presence in my life, and more receptive to that presence. I desire to love you as you love me. May nothing ever separate me from you. ( 1-2 minutes of silence)

Freedom: Jesus, Grant me the grace to have freedom of spirit. Keep me from being bound by desires and actions that are not good for me or others. Cleanse my heart and soul that I may live joyously in your love. ( 1-2 minutes of silence)

Consciousness: Where am I with God? With others in my life? What am I grateful for? Is there something I am sorry for, words or actions that have hurt others, and which I now regret? I take a moment to ask forgiveness of God and of those whom I have hurt. God, I give you thanks for your constant love and care for me. Keep me always aware of your presence in my life. (2-3 minutes of silence)

OPENING PRAYER

Lord, you know my weaknesses and vulnerabilities; you know what might convince me to stray from trust in your care, or take the easy way out of a situation that is uncomfortable. Help me to understand that, just as metal is tested and forged in fore, my mettle is tested and strengthened when I face my weaknesses head on and do not give in to them. Keep me strong in faith and hope in your goodness.

COMPANIONS FOR THE JOURNEY

From Living Space, a service of the Irish Jesuits

In all three litlurgical cycles, the Gospel of today’s Mass always features the temptations of Jesus in the desert. It clearly links with the Lenten themes of fasting, penance and reconciliation with God and with our brothers and sisters. In the First Reading, there is a striking contrast between Jesus in the Gospel, and our First Parents in the Garden of Eden. The Second Reading connects the two events: it was the sin of our First Parents which brought about the coming of Jesus to restore our relationship with God. “Oh happy fault!” (O felix culpa!) as the liturgy of the Easter Vigil says of that first sin. The weakness of our First Parents brought about the coming of Jesus and all that he means to us for our lives. It is an example of how even behind unpleasant and, in fact, evil happenings God’s love can be found at work. It is not necessary for us to understand either the Garden of Eden story or Jesus’s experience with Satan as being strictly historical. These stories are primarily vehicles to communicate important truths to us. Today’s Gospel story follows immediately on Jesus’ baptism and endorsement by his Father as his “Beloved Son” to whom we are to listen. Note that Jesus is led into the desert by the Spirit of God. The purpose clearly is not to lead him to do evil, but as a testing of his fitness for his coming mission. Will he fail like our First Parents or like the Israelites of old? Or will be prove himself worthy of the mission he has been given? The testing will be done not by God directly, but by the Evil One, the Tempter. It is pictured as taking place in a barren region between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Jesus, like Moses before him, had fasted for 40 days. He is alone in the wilderness without food. He is hungry, weak and vulnerable. Now is the time for the Tempter to move in.

Who is Jesus?
Each of the three temptations touches on Jesus’ identity as the Son of God, which had been revealed during his baptism.  “This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” The Tempter then begins, “If you are the Son of God, why not use your divine powers to turn these large, flat stones at your feet into bread?” God fed the Israelites with manna in the desert.  Surely he will feed his own Son? Why have powers and not use them? Why not take this opportunity to prove that you really are the Son of God? It is important to realize that all temptations—and these tests are no exception—come to us under the guise of some kind of goodness. No sane person chooses the purely evil unless some positive benefit is seen to come from it.  In each of the three tests today, Jesus is being led to do something which would seem to enhance his mission as Lord and Savior. In responding to the Tempter, Jesus will not just use his own words, but each time quote a saying from the Hebrew Testament.  In this first test, Jesus rejects the offer by saying that “it is not on bread alone that we live”. True happiness does not consist in satisfying material wants, in having many things, but in identifying ourselves fully with the vision of life which God gives us through Jesus. Further, for Jesus to have changed the stones into bread would have been to show a lack of trust in the providential care of his Father, who will see that he has all he needs for his life and mission.

Testing
Satan’s next approach is to bring Jesus to the highest point of the Temple in Jerusalem. This is God’s very dwelling place.  Surely here he will take care of his Son. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” Jesus has just shown his trust in God by not changing the stones into bread. Now here is a chance really to prove that trust. Two things would happen. First, God will not allow Jesus to be hurt. Now it is the Tempter himself who cleverly quotes Scripture: “He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” God promises his providential care in the normal course of our lives, but he never promises supernatural intervention, when we do something unreasonable. “God takes care of those who take care of themselves.” St. Ignatius of Loyola is said to have advised: “Do things as if everything depended on God and nothing on oneself and, at the same time, as if everything depended on oneself and nothing on God”. Second, if Jesus jumps and is miraculously saved, everyone will know his divine origin and will believe in him! Jesus quotes the Scripture back again, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Real faith is total trust; it is not, as Scripture scholar William Barclay says, “doubt looking for proof”.

Showdown
After the failure of the first two attempts, Satan now drops all pretense.  He brings Jesus to a high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. All this can be Jesus’, if he falls down and worships the Tempter. Is not this what Jesus wants: to bring all the kingdoms of the world into his own Kingdom? Is that not the purpose of his whole life? It is, of course, an impossible bargain. It would make no sense for the whole world to submit itself to Jesus as Lord, and then for Jesus himself to submit to the Evil One. Yet, it is a bargain we constantly try to make: to belong to God and to go to any lengths to get the things we want: material wealth, success, a recognised standing in the eyes of others, etc. Jesus will put it differently later on: What does it profit someone to gain the whole world and lose their real life? What can one give in exchange for the deep relationship with God for which we were born? Jesus absolutely rejects the offer: “Away from me, Satan!” It reminds one of the words said to Peter who tried to deflect Jesus from the way he had to go and was told: “Get behind me, Satan!”

Symbols of real tests
In fact, these three tests are really symbols of real tests that we find in the life of Jesus. Jesus did produce large quantities of bread on two occasions, but not for himself but rather to feed the hungry. He rejected calls from his opponents to prove who he was by performing some striking signs. He said the only sign would be his own death and resurrection. After one of the feedings (as told in John’s gospel), he had the crowd at his feet and they wanted to make him king. Instead, he fled to the mountains to pray to his Father and packed his ambitious disciples off in a boat and into a storm which gave them something else to think about—survival! Jesus passes all three tests and will continue to do so all during his life right up to the moment of his death.  In the garden of Gethsemane, he will beg to be spared the horrors of his Passion, but will then put aside his own fears of suffering and death and accept his Father’s way. On the cross he will make the despairing cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, and soon after, in total submission, say: “Into your hands I surrender my life.” The way of the Father is the only way that will lead him – and us – to the life that never ends and when all tears will be wiped away.

LIVING THE GOOD NEWS

What action can you take in the next week as a response to today;s reading and discussion? Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions which follow.

Reflection Questions

The Latin word used in the first verse is “tentaretur”, which is literally translated “test”.
What, for you, is the difference between temptation and test?
In what way does “testing” help us understand our strength and weaknesses and help us to grow?
What would be the benefit of “testing” for a very human Jesus as he was starting his mission in life?

Do I see the devil as my inner voice calling me to be other than I know God wants me to be because I am seduced by comfort, impressed by power and unwilling to believe in God’s care and forgiveness?

If not “bread”, what do you hunger for?

Was there ever an incident/time in your life when you sort of asked God to PROVE His love for you?

Jesus’ time in the desert was meant to be a retreat from all the noise and distractions around him as he prepared for His mission.
What things or persons, in my life, are a distraction from following Jesus more fully?
What would help me return to following Jesus more fully?

Jesus’ temptations looked like good things for him to accept, both for himself and for us. Have I ever experienced the pull to do or achieve something that is good for myself or others even though there was a cost, in moral terms?
Have I ever been tempted to do the wrong thing for the right reasons?

Do you think Jesus had to deal with real temptation in his life?
If yes, what kind of temptation?

What do you think Jesus learned about himself from his experience in the desert?
Have there ever been a time in my life when the experience of being tempted/tested taught me something about myself?

In general, does society expect people to use their position for their well-being?
Do you know people who make an effort not to use their position for their own benefit?
How do you sort out the path of virtue here in your own life?

What are some common temptations that we might be prey to?

Are you aware of an area of your life where you seem to experience temptation or struggle?
Are you also aware of sources of grace or support that God has places around you to help you deal with those temptations/struggles?
What have you learned about how God is present to you through your area of temptation/struggle?

How many of Jesus’ temptations were identity temptations? (if you are the son of God, if you are the Messiah)
How many of my temptations are identity temptations?

Are you aware of signs God places in your life that let you know that God is trying to speak to you? If not, have you ever thought of looking for some?
Are you open to that possibility?
What form might they take?

Do our problems or struggles stir up feelings of God being close to us or distant from us?
At moments like these does reflecting on Jesus’ own suffering and death strengthen us?

From Sacred Space: a service of the Irish Jesuits:
Jesus was tempted by the devil to put three values above the love of God: pleasure (bread standing for food, money, other such comforts), power (all the kingdoms of the world), and security (presuming on God to work miracles for him.). What are my temptations, the indulgences that pull me from God?

Is the power of evil real?
Where do you encounter it?

CLOSING PRAYER

Don’t forget to provide some prayer time at the beginning and at the end of the session (or both), allowing time to offer prayers for anyone you wish to pray for.

Sometimes it is so hard, God, not to be tempted by the values of this world and the needs of those around me. It is very hard not to put my needs first when I am tired, lonely, discouraged and upset. It is also hard to think of my mission as serving others, not always serving myself. How do I learn balance? How do I learn peace? How do I learn to place my trust in you?

FOR THE WEEK AHEAD

Weekly Memorization
(Taken from the gospel for today’s session)
“Get away, Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’”

Meditations

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions: Sometimes we read this story of Jesus temptation in the desert as if it were a one-time thing, that the lure to evil was vanquished once and for all. But upon reflection we realize that there were several other times in his life when Jesus was tempted to back down, or to take the easy way out. Here are just a few:

• When His family was embarrassed by his teaching and preaching

• When people clamored for more and more healings, more and more miracles

• When Lazarus was dying and He had to finish His mission where he was

• When Peter begged him not to go to Jerusalem that last time

• When He was seized in the garden

• When He stood before the leaders or Pilate after his arrest

• When He was dying on the cross

So with us, the same old temptations keep coming back to haunt us and torment us, even when we have said “no” in the past. Can you think of any recurring temptations that crop up again and again? How did you deal with them? If you succumbed to a temptation, did this cause you to give up on yourself, or did you hit the “restart” button and resolve to handle things better the next time? Do you believe, in the deepest part of your heart, that God understands when we fail? Do I understand when others around me fail? If not, what is forgiveness all about?

A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination/Consideration: Read Matthew 4: 1-11 (The testing in the desert). Forty days in a desert. Just imagine it. What does it look like? How hot is it during the day? What sounds are there? Does it smell? Are there any animals? Are you hungry? What do you do all day? Night in the desert: the lonely sounds of an animal in the distance. Are you cold? Afraid? Lonely? Bored? This is the time when Jesus was most vulnerable, and so He was tempted. Jesus was tempted to use his talents to provide for his own needs; He was tempted to test God’s love; and finally, He was tempted to forsake his trust in God in return for earthly power. How did he react? Are these temptations at all like our human temptations? Have you ever been so tempted? Have you been able to turn to God in these times of temptation? Has God been a source of strength and comfort? Close with a personal prayer thanking God for the strength you have been given to trust during the dark times. (By Anne Greenfield, from Songs of Life: Psalm Meditations from the Catholic Community at Stanford)

A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Raising Questions: Let us never forget that the ordinary way to contemplation lies through a desert without trees and without beauty and without water. The spirit enters a wilderness and travels blindly in directions that seem to lead away from vision, away from God, away from fulfillment and joy. It may be almost impossible to believe that this road goes anywhere at all except to a desolation full of dry bones—the ruin of all our hopes and good intentions. (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 235). What desert are you experiencing at this time in your life--love, creativity. Friendship, family, compulsions, insecurities? How is this wilderness experience inviting you to place your trust in God? Do you trust in the Spirit enough to give yourself totally to God? What have you held back? What are you afraid of? Speak to Jesus, who has been there too, and ask for his strength and his faith in the Father’s care. (Adapted from Songs of Life: Psalm Meditations from the Catholic Community at Stanford, by Anne Greenfield)

POETIC REFLECTIONS

Read these words by Thomas Merton and the meditation questions that follow. Can we imagine that Jesus may have had some of the same thoughts during those long 30 days in the desert?

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore, will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

In his book Thoughts in Solitude Merton reveals that he is unsure about the journey, that he cannot see clearly ahead, that he does not know for certain where the journey will end or who he himself is. When Merton wrote these words he had lived through seventeen years of monastic discipline and contemplative prayer as a Cistercian. It is helpful for us to reflect that if such a man could be confused or insecure, there is little reason to blame ourselves for our own perplexity.

Pause now and in silence consider these points:

• To know the outcome of the journey is to trust God less.

• If the Spirit leads us, the journey is not ours alone.

• A journey of clarity and ease cannot reach a God of mystery and love.

• The experience of uncertainty brings us closer to our companions on the journey.

• No matter how unsettling the journey may be at times, God will not permit us to be lost.

from A Retreat with Thomas Merton by Anthony Padovano, p.10

The next poem is one we might pray when we are too enmeshed in what we want or need in this world:

A story that will save us
Tell us a story that will save us
(and that will have been enough):
all the great songs have been prayed
save only one
Tell us a story that will save us:
Go down Lord
& bring us home.
May our promises free us
not chain us
May what we desire fill us
not entrap us
May those persons we love finish us
not bind us
Go down Lord
& bring us home.
You are our history, Lord,
We neither begin nor end
outside you
May you be for us not weapon,
not answer, but cause of peace
May our questions show us not division
but the smallness of human answers
Go down Lord
& bring us home.
May our words create
not destroy
May our hands nurture
not break
May our dreams lead and encourage us
not trap us in despair
Go down Lord
& bring us home.
We are anxious about many things
We are lost in many ways
Go down Lord
& bring us home.
—by Fr. Ed Ingebretzen, from Psalms of the Still Country