Prayfor2

While many of us shudder at the thought of going to confession, I’d like to you to contemplate it in a new way. This Sunday we hear from the Gospel of Saint John Chapter 11, relating the story of raising Lazarus. His sisters take Jesus to the tomb, where their brother Lazarus has already been dead four days. Jesus famously brings Lazarus to life, but listen what he adds at the end.

So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that you hear me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that you did send me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Laz'arus, come out." The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him;

Jesus doesn’t just want to give you new life – he wants to unwrap you from the bondage of sin. Freed of that constraint, you are free to live a life of true and holy freedom.

Father of Grace and Mercy – You are the ultimate emancipier – freeing us from the bondage and death of sin. May we approach confession confident that you want nothing more than to say, “unbind them, and let them go!” Amen

Tune in to Redeemer Radio for more reflections as we walk through this Lenten season together or pray with them anytime on the Redeemer Radio app.

I recently drove an older woman home, and asked what has kept her from growing in her faith. She’s incredibly intelligent, and has a sharp wit, with an even sharper east coast accent. She responded, “angah!”

She admitted accumulating and holding onto anger for years, which had become a wedge between her and God.

Harboring anger is like wishing ill upon another person and drinking the poison yourself. And while our anger is often justified, we are called to something higher than justice – we are called to be merciful.

Listen to Tuesday’s first reading from Deuteronomy, Chapter 3.

“Do not let us be put to shame, but deal with us in your kindness and great mercy.”

The writer is asking God not to give them what they deserve, but rather to forgive them in spite of what they deserve.

Do you have trouble letting go when someone wrongs you? What is the first step you need to root out anger from your heart? Who do you need to forgive today? Pray with me for the grace to take that first step.

Father of grace and mercy – you are truly right and just, and yet you set the bar even higher by asking us to be merciful. Help rid our hearts of the poison of anger and unforgiveness. Help us to see others as you see us – as flawed yet beloved sons and daughters of you our loving Father. Please forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Grant us your heart of love and mercy. Amen

Are you darkness or are you light? Do you light other’s candles, or do you snuff them out? Jesus Christ has always been a polarizing figure precisely because he cuts to the very heart of our humanity. He’s compared to a sword so sharp it separates bone from marrow. We are given stark choices – follow God and be light or deny God and be darkness.

Listen to Saint Paul share this contrast with the Ephesians in Chapter 5 of this Sunday’s readings.

Brothers and sisters: once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is a shame even to speak of the things that they do in secret; but when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it is said, "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light."

Notice Paul doesn’t say we were once IN darkness and are now IN light, but rather, we were once darkness itself, and are now light in Christ.

Father of Grace and Mercy – we were once darkness, and are now light in you and through you. Help us be fed by your brilliance, so we may be light amid the darkness. Amen.

Almsgiving is one of the pillars of our journey through Lent. What is at the heart of Almsgiving? Charity, or said another way, love. We come to realize how good we have it with the love that God pours into us, that we naturally spill that love back out onto others.

And our love should always find preference in the poor – those who shoulder a heavier worldly burden on behalf of the whole of the body of Christ. Our alms can be financial – say donating your daily pocket change to a rice bowl, but it can also be lifting the poor in spirit through affirming words and deeds.

Listen to Jesus distill the hundreds of Jewish laws down to two, centered on almsgiving, in Friday’s gospel from Mark chapter 12:

"Which commandment is the first of all?" Jesus answered, "The first is… you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

Let’s pray - Father of Grace and Mercy – You pour your love into our hearts through your Spirit. May we recognize the immensity of your love for us, so we would be compelled to pour that love out to others in our almsgiving this Lent. Help us to love one another as unconditionally as you love us. Amen.

Our 40 days of Lent are supposed to mirror Jesus’s time in the desert, a place of physical desolation and sacrifice that heightens our awareness of our reliance on God for all.

In Sunday’s first reading from Exodus, Moses and his people are in the desert, and aren’t happy about it.

“But the people thirsted there for water, and the people murmured against Moses, and said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?"

Don’t we all feel like that during Lent? We can be tempted to think our sacrifices are trivial, and more trouble than they are worth.

Yet we trust that our time in the desert bears good fruit. The thirst we feel for what we give up points us toward a thirst for what is eternal.

Listen to Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well in the gospel of John chapter 4.

“Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."

Father of Grace and mercy – help us to embrace our Lenten walk in the desert. May our spirit of fasting be joy filled, thirsting for things of heaven in lieu of those of this earth. Amen.

A common element of the daily readings is a thread that ties the Old Testament, Psalm and Gospel readings together. The thread in Saturday’s Lenten readings is mercy.

Our relationship with God often looks like a pendulum – we swing into His love, then swing away. Back and forth we go – accepting, defying, and reconciling.

What does any good parent or coach do when we swing off course? Gently correct us – sharing truth in love. If God wasn’t love, he would let us continue to drift away.

Listen to the Old Testament reading from Micah….

Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your inheritance. …. Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger for ever because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion upon us, he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.

Father of Grace and mercy – like a pendulum, you know we drift…back and forth….in and out of your merciful embrace. Help us to see the grace of your guiding staff, correcting our momentum back into the heart of your love. Thank you for your unending love and mercy – the fount of unending water that quenches our eternal thirst for you. Amen.

In Matthew 6 we hear the only prayer attributed to Jesus in the Gospels – the Our Father. Jesus doesn’t pray to “my Father”, but rather “Our Father”, because our relationship is never about just, “me and Jesus.” Our Father is the loving, agape Father of the whole body of Christ. We are organically bound even in our prayer.

I hope you will hear another line in a new way – “Give us this day our daily bread.” Many of us are mired in the guilt of past, anxiety about the future, or both.

But God doesn’t ask us to relive the past or shoulder the obligations of the future. He just asks us to live this moment, giving us the grace we need for each moment in that moment. We are given each day precisely the type and amount of grace we need for whatever God will put before us.

"This is how you are to pray: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Let’s pray….Father of Grace and Mercy – Our Father – hallowed be thy name. Help us to shed the guilt of the past and the anxiety of the future, so can be fully present to all we will encounter this day. Give us this day our daily bread.

Today’s Lenten reflection on the daily readings is on the Commandments. In Monday’s reading from Leviticus 19, Moses is given the 10 commandments, and in Saturday’s first reading from Deuteronomy 26, we hear that, “you are to be a people peculiarly His own, provided you keep all his commandments.”

Many of us bristle at commandments, thinking they infringe upon our freedom. We can even fall into the trap of thinking religion is all about rules, when it is about a loving relationship.

And yet, like the banks of a river, God’s commandments shape and guide us, allowing us to thrive as we were designed to. After all, a river without its banks is a puddle. It loses all of its purpose and power. Do we trust that God’s commandments guide us to true freedom and happiness?

Saturday’s prayer from Psalm 119 can help us open our hearts and minds to accepting His commands,

“Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD! Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart… You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes! I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous ordinances. I will observe your statutes; O forsake me not utterly!”

The daily readings of the Church help us read the whole bible over a three year period, and provide both context and inspiration along our earthly journey with God.

Consider making the daily readings part of your prayer life.

I will trust in you. Especially when we are struggling, these words can be especially hard to say. We can lose sight that even our sufferings are part of God’s overarching plan of love, for God is love.

As we work through Lent to grow in relationship with God through prayer, know that it is a true act of trust in faith, aspiring in hope, when we reach out to God in our struggles.

In this third week of Lent, we hear on Wednesday from Psalm 31,

“But I trust in you, O LORD, I say, "You are my God." My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors! Let your face shine on your servant; save me in your steadfast love!”

There is also a current song by Lauren Daigle, called, “I Will Trust In You.” As we work to improve our prayer through Lent, pray this with me,

“When you don’t move the mountains, / I’m needing you to move / When you don’t part the waters / I wish I could walk through / When you don’t give the answers / As I cry out to you, / I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in you.” / Amen.

As we journey through Lent together in prayerful reflection, picture the daily readings as a love letter from God. The words transcend centuries to speak directly to you each and every day. Praying the readings will help you know the heart of God, and His unfathomable love for you, even in the midst of struggles. The daily readings help us to say, “Lord, I trust in you.”

If there is one universal throughout Christianity, it is our struggle with prayer. How do we effectively approach the very Creator of the Universe?

We have been gifted within the Catholic tradition with 2000 years of the most beautiful and profound prayers ever composed. And central within that treasury are the Psalms of the Old Testament.

The psalms are 150 prayers composed by David to God the Father – ranging from gratitude to laments. The Psalms are also central to the Divine Office that the clergy prays daily. But perhaps most significantly, these are the prayers that Jesus would have learned to pray living as a Jew is his day.

Let’s reread one of the most familiar Psalms, Psalm 23, featured on Thursday this second week of Lent. Instead of just reading it, let’s PRAY it, picturing Jesus right beside us and praying along with us.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever. Amen.