Lenten Reflection – 28 March – Thursday of the Third Week of Lent, Year C
The Readings
Jeremiah 7:23-28; Psalms 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9; Luke 11:14-23
“Whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
Luke 11:23St Simeon the New Theologian (949-1022)
Catechesis 27Your Master is not disturbed by mockery and do you get upset? He bears spittle, blows, strokes of the lash and can you not take a harsh word? He accepts the cross, a humiliating death, the torture of the nails and can you not undertake to carry out the lowliest of tasks? How can you become a sharer in His glory (1 Pt 5:1) if you will not consent to become a sharer in His humiliating death?
Your having forsaken your wealth is truly useless if you have no wish to take up the cross, as He Himself commanded with His word of truth. “Sell what you have and give to the poor,” stipulated Christ to the young man, as also to ourselves, “Take up your cross”, “Come, follow me” (Mt 19:21; 16:24). You may indeed have shared out your goods yet without consenting to take up your cross, that is to say, courageously enduring the attack of all kinds of trials. You have strayed on the path of life and, to your own misfortune, have parted from your most sweet God and Master.
I implore you, my brethren, let us observe all Christ’s commands, let us bear until death, for love of the Kingdom of heaven, the trials that assail us so that we may have communion with the glory of Jesus, share in eternal life and inherit the joy of those good things that cannot be expressed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Daily Meditation:
May our love grow each day.
We are at the half-way point in our Lenten journey today.
There is so much yet to learn, to examine, to heal, to renew.
We have a sense of the patterns we are naming and a sense of the graces we are asking for,
as well as the ways God is working in us.
We want to be ready and our Lord wants us to be confident.
So we keep asking and we keep giving thanks, throughout our day.
‘Obey my voice and I will be your God
and you shall be my people
and walk in all the way that I command you,
that it may be well with you.’
Jeremiah 7:23
Closing Prayer:
Loving God,
I hear Your invitation, “Come back to me”
and I am filled with such a longing to return to You.
Show me the way to return.
Lead me this day in good works I do in Your name
and send Your Spirit to guide me and strengthen my faith.
I ask only to feel Your love in my life today.
May the Lord bless us,
protect us from all evil
and bring us to everlasting life.
Amen.
AnaStpaul 