Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent

“Accordingly Moses made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever the serpent bit someone, the person looked at the bronze serpent and recovered.” (Numbers 21:9.)

Saint Justin of Rome comments on this verse from the First Reading proclaimed at Mass today:

“Tell me, did not God, through Moses, forbid the making of an image or likeness of anything in the heavens or on earth? Yet didn’t he himself have Moses construct the brazen serpent in the desert? Moses set it up as a sign by which those who had been bitten by the serpents were healed. In doing so, was Moses not free of any sin? By this, as I stated above, God through Moses announced a mystery by which he proclaimed that he would break the power of the serpent, who prompted the sin of Adam. He promises that he would deliver from the bites of the serpent (that is, evil actions, idolatries and other sins) all those who believe in him who was to be put to death by this sign, namely, the cross.” (Dialogue with Trypho, 94)

Collect

Grant us, we pray, O Lord,
perseverance in obeying Your will,
that in our days
the people dedicated to Your service
may grow in both merit and number.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

Top

The cross of Christ is the source ofall blessings, the cause of all graces

Pope Saint Leo the Great

Bishop of Rome and Great Western Father of the Church

An excerpt from his On the Lord’s Passion, Sermon 8

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Our understanding, which is enlightened by the Spirit of truth, should receive with purity and freedom of heart the glory of the cross as it shines in heaven and on earth. It should see with inner vision the meaning of the Lord’s words when he spoke of the imminence of his passion: The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Afterward he said: Now my soul is troubled, and what am I to say? Father, save me from this hour. But it was for this that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your Son. When the voice of the Father came from heaven, saying, I have glorified him, and will glorify him again, Jesus said in reply to those around him: It was not for me that this voice spoke, but for you. Now is the judgment of the world, now will the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself.

How marvellous the power of the cross; how great beyond all telling the glory of the passion: here is the judgment-seat of the Lord, the condemnation of the world, the supremacy of Christ crucified.

Lord, you drew all things to yourself so that the devotion of all peoples everywhere might celebrate, in a sacrament made perfect and visible, what was carried out in the one temple of Judea under obscure foreshadowings.

Now there is a more distinguished order of Levites, a greater dignity for the rank of elders, a more sacred anointing for the priesthood, because your cross is the source of all blessings, the cause of all graces. Through the cross the faithful receive strength from weakness, glory from dishonor, life from death.

The different sacrifices of animals are no more: the one offering of your body and blood is the fulfillment of all the different sacrificial offerings, for you are the true Lamb of God: you take away the sins of the world. In yourself you bring to perfection all mysteries, so that, as there is one sacrifice in place of all other sacrificial offerings, there is also one kingdom gathered from all peoples.

Dearly beloved, let us then acknowledge what Saint Paul, the teacher of the nations, acknowledged so exultantly: This is a saying worthy of trust, worthy of complete acceptance: Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners. God’s compassion for us is all the more wonderful because Christ died, not for the righteous or the holy but for the wicked and the sinful, and, though the divine nature could not be touched by the sting of death, he took to himself, through his birth as one of us, something he could offer on our behalf.

The power of his death once confronted our death. In the words of Hosea the prophet: Death, I shall be your death; grave, I shall swallow you up. By dying he submitted to the laws of the underworld; by rising again he destroyed them. He did away with the everlasting character of death so as to make death a thing of time, not of eternity. As all die in Adam, so all will be brought to life in Christ.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

Top

Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

“Yet it is better for me not to do it and to fall into your power than to sin before the Lord.” (Daniel 13:23.)

Saint Augustine of Hippo comments on this verse from the First Reading proclaimed at Mass today:

“It is better for me not to escape your hands than to sin in front of God.” She refused the proposals she heard because she feared him who she could not see and to whose divine gaze, however, she was very visible. Because she did not happen, in fact, to see God does not mean that God did not see her. God saw what he was building up: he inspected his work, inhabited his temple. He was there; he was answering their insidious trap. If the giver of chastity had abandoned her, chastity also would have been extinguished. Therefore she said, “I am trapped on every side.” But she waited for the one who would save her from weakness of spirit and from the fury of the false witnesses who were like stormy winds. Between these winds and that storm, however, chastity did not suffer shipwreck because the Lord guided the route. She screamed. People came. The process began, and the case came up for judgment. The servants of Susanna believed what the imposter elders said against their mistress. It seemed to them that it would be against their religion not to believe the elders, even though the innocent and stainless life Susanna had led up to this point seemed to offer valid testimony of her chastity. No such chatter had been made on her account. There they were, false witnesses, but God noticed. The household believed one thing; God saw another. But what God saw, human beings did not know, and it seemed right to believe the elders. Therefore she had to die, but if her flesh were to die, her chastity still would have triumphed. Instead, Lord was present to whom she prayed, and he heard because he knew her.” (Sermon 343)

Collect

O God, by Whose wondrous grace
we are enriched with every blessing,
grant us so to pass
from former ways to newness of life,
that we may be made ready
for the glory of the heavenly Kingdom.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

Top

If anyone has sinned,we have an advocate with the Father

Saint John Fisher

Bishop and Martyr

An excerpt from a Commentary on Psalm 129

Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Our high priest is Christ Jesus, our sacrifice is his precious body which he immolated on the altar of the cross for the salvation of all men.

The blood that was poured out for our redemption was not that of goats and calves (as in the old law) but that of the most innocent lamb, Christ Jesus our Savior.

The temple in which our high priest offered sacrifice was not one made by hands but built by the power of God alone. For he shed his blood in the sight of the world, a temple fashioned by the hand of God alone.

This temple, however, has two parts. The first is the earth, which we now inhabit. The second is as yet unknown to us mortals.

Christ offered sacrifice here on earth, when he underwent his most bitter death. Then, clothed in the new garment of immortality, with his own blood he entered into the holy of holies, that is, into heaven. There he also displayed before the throne of the heavenly Father that blood of immeasurable price which he had poured out seven times on behalf of all men subject to sin.

This sacrifice is so pleasing and acceptable to God that as soon as he has seen it he must immediately have pity on us and extend clemency to all who are truly repentant.

Moreover, it is eternal. It is offered not only each year (as with the Jews) but also each day for our consolation, and indeed at every hour and moment as well, so that we may have the strongest reason for comfort. That is why the Apostle adds: He has secured an eternal redemption.

All who have embarked on true contrition and penance for the sins they have committed, and are firmly resolved not to commit sins again for the future but to persevere constantly in that pursuit of virtues which they have now begun, all these become sharers in this holy and eternal sacrifice.

Saint John sets this before us in these words: My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. And he is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for our sins but also for those of the whole world.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

Top

"straining forward" and theFifth Sunday of Lent

εὐαγγελίζω (euaggelizo)
“to announce the Good News of victory in battle”

“It is not that I have already taken hold of it
or have already attained perfect maturity,
but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it,
since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, I for my part
do not consider myself to have taken possession.
Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind
but straining forward (ἐπεκτεινόμενος, epekteinomenos)
to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 3:12-14.
Fifth Sunday of Lent

θεωρέω (theoreo)
(“to perceive, discover, ponder a deeper meaning”)

Saint Paul had a special place in his heart for the Christians at Philippi. He could count on them for assistance in any endeavor throughout his missionary travel and ministry. In the Letter to the Philippians he encourages them to live humbly with lives focused always on the Person Jesus (2:6-11). Such living is balanced between extremes of legalism (beginning section of chapter 3) and hedonism (last part of chapter 3) with Jesus Himself the goal in the center. In this Sunday’s proclamation, we listen to the middle section of chapter 3 in which Saint Paul views his own life as a response to what Jesus has already done. Jesus has taken hold of Paul and for Paul, the only response is one of continuous growth (straining forward) in the life of Jesus Christ.

Centuries after Saint Paul, a saintly bishop in the province of Cappadocia (located in modern day Turkey), Gregory of Nyssa, penned a number of works concerning the virtuous life (what we would call today spiritual living). Among his more famous works is The Life of Moses wherein Gregory grounded his entire theology in Saint Paul’s “staining forward” (epektasis) and presented Moses as a type or analogy of the entire spiritual life. Consider the following from The Life of Moses:

“The perfection of everything which can be measured by the senses is marked off by certain definite boundaries. Quantity, for example, admits both continuity and limitation. The person who looks at the number ten knows that its perfection consists in the fact that it has both a beginning and an end. But in the case of virtue we have learned from the Apostle that its one limit of perfection is the fact that it has no limit. For that divine Apostle, great and lofty in understanding, ever running the course of virtue, never ceased straining toward those things that are still to come. Coming to a stop in the race was not safe for him. Why? Because no Good has a limit in its own nature but is limited by the presence of its opposite, as life is limited by death and light by darkness. And every good thing generally ends with all those things which are perceived to be contrary to the good (I, 5).”

Later in the same work Gregory writes, “If nothing comes from above to hinder its upward thrust (for the nature of the Good attracts to itself those who look to it), the soul rises ever higher and will always make its flight yet higher – by its desire of the heavenly things straining ahead for what is still to come, as the Apostle says. Made to desire and not abandon the transcendent height by the things already attained, it makes its way upward without ceasing, ever through its prior accomplishments renewing its intensity for the flight. Activity directed toward virtue causes its capacity to grow through exertion; this kind of activity alone does not slacken its intensity by the effort, but increases it (II, 225, 226).”

These excerpts from Gregory’s work, with their emphasis on eternal progress, properly form an approach to living life with Jesus. His life is not grasped or taken. His life is given as gift and thereby received and done so graciously. The reception of Jesus is never a goal in-and-of-itself. It is not the conquering of bad habits and vices leading to personal, triumphant celebration. Rather as Saint Paul so keenly knew and Saint Gregory elaborated, the life of Jesus is a continuous response to His call, a ‘call up’ that is ever growing, deepening, and maturing.

Fifth Sunday of Lent

“... She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, [and] from now on do not sin any more.” (John 8:11.)

Saint Augustine of Hippo comments on this verse from the Gospel proclaimed during today’s Mass:

“Neither will I condemn you.” What is this, O Lord? Do you therefore favor sins? Not so, evidently. Mark what follows: “Go and sin no more.” Therefore the Lord did also condemn, but condemned sins, not the sinner. For if he was a patron of sin, he would say, Neither will I condemn you; go, live as you will; be secure in my deliverance, however much you will to sin. I will deliver you from all punishment even of hell, and from the tormentors of the infernal world. He did not say this. Let them pay attention, then, who love his gentleness in the Lord, and let them fear his truth. For “the Lord is sweet and right.” You love him because he is sweet; fear him because he is right. As the meek one he said, “I held my peace,” but as the just one he said, “Shall I always be silent?” “The Lord is merciful and pitiful.” He certainly is. He is also “long suffering” “and very full of pity.” But most fearful is what comes last, “He is true.” For those whom he now bears with as sinners, he will judge as despisers: “Or do you despise the riches of his long suffering and gentleness; not knowing that the forbearance of God leads you to repentance? But you, after your hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up for yourself wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God who will render to every man according to his deeds.” The Lord is gentle, the Lord is long suffering, the Lord is full of pity; but the Lord is also just, the Lord is also true. He bestows on you an interval for correction, but you love the delay of judgment more than the amendment of your ways. Were you a bad person yesterday? Today be a good person. Have you gone on in your wickedness today? At any rate, change tomorrow. You always expect and make exceedingly great promises to yourself, [presuming on] the mercy of God. It is as if he, who has promised you pardon through repentance, promised you also a longer life. How do you know what tomorrow may bring? Rightly you say in your heart: When I shall have corrected my ways, God will put all my sins away. God has promised pardon to anyone who amends his life. But show me where God has promised you a long life.” (Tractates on John, 33.)

Collect

By Your help, we beseech You, Lord our God,
may we walk eagerly in that same charity
with which, out of love for the world,
Your Son handed Himself over to death.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

Top

We keep the coming feast of the Lord through deeds, not words

Saint Athanasius of Alexandria

Bishop and Great Eastern Father of the Church

An excerpt from his Letter 14: Easter

Fifth Sunday of Lent

The Word who became all things for us is close to us, our Lord Jesus Christ who promises to remain with us always. He cries out, saying: See, I am with you all the days of this age. He is himself the shepherd, the high priest, the way and the door, and has become all things at once for us. In the same way, he has come among us as our feast and holy day as well. The blessed Apostle says of him who was awaited: Christ has been sacrificed as our Passover. It was Christ who shed his light on the psalmist as he prayed: You are my joy, deliver me from those surrounding me. True joy, genuine festival, means the casting out of wickedness. To achieve this one must live a life of perfect goodness and, in the serenity of the fear of God, practice contemplation in one’s heart.

This was the way of the saints, who in their lifetime and at every stage of life rejoiced as at a feast. Blessed David, for example, not once but seven times rose at night to win God’s favor through prayer. The great Moses was full of joy as he sang God’s praises in hymns of victory for the defeat of Pharaoh and the oppressors of the Hebrew people. Others had hearts filled always with gladness as they performed their sacred duty of worship, like the great Samuel and the blessed Elijah. Because of their holy lives they gained freedom, and now keep festival in heaven. They rejoice after their pilgrimage in shadows, and now distinguish the reality from the promise.

When we celebrate the feast in our own day, what path are we to take? As we draw near to this feast, who is to be our guide? Beloved, it must be none other than the one whom you will address with me as our Lord Jesus Christ. He says: I am the way. As blessed John tells us: it is Christ who takes away the sin of the world. It is he who purifies our souls, as the prophet Jeremiah says: Stand upon the ways; look and see which is the good path, and you will find in it the way of amendment for your souls.

In former times the blood of goats and the ashes of a calf were sprinkled on those who were unclean, but they were able to purify only the body. Now through the grace of God’s Word everyone is made abundantly clean. If we follow Christ closely we shall be allowed, even on this earth, to stand as it were on the threshold of the heavenly Jerusalem, and enjoy the contemplation of that everlasting feast, like the blessed apostles, who in following the Savior as their leader, showed, and still show, the way to obtain the same gift from God. They said: See, we have left all things and followed you. We too follow the Lord, and we keep his feast by deeds rather than by words.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

Top

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

“I knew it because the LORD informed me: at that time you showed me their doings.” (Jeremiah 11:18.)

Saint Jerome offers the following insight on this verses from today’s First Reading:

“It is the consensus of all the church that these words are spoken by Christ through the person of Jeremiah. For the Father made it known to him how he should speak and revealed to him the zealotry of the Jews — he who was led like a lamb to the slaughter, not opening his mouth and not knowing. But the word sin is implicitly added to this last phrase, in agreement with what was said by the apostle: “When he did not know sin, he was made to be sin on our account.” And they said, “Let us put wood on his bread,” clearly referring to the cross on the body of the Savior, for he is the one who said, “I am the bread that descended from heaven.”

They also said “let us destroy (or eradicate) him from the land of the living.” And they conceived the evil in their soul that they would delete his name forever. In response to this, from the sacrament of the assumed body, the Son speaks to the Father and invokes his judgment while praising his justice and acknowledging him as the God who inspects the interior and the heart. He asks that the Father would return to the people what they deserve, saying, “Let me see your vengeance on them,” obviously referring only to those who continue in sin, not to those who repent. Concerning the latter, he said on the cross: “Father forgive them, for they do not realize what they are doing.” He also “disclosed his cause” to the Father, that he was crucified not because he deserved it but for the sins of the people, as he declared: “Behold, the prince of the world came and found nothing against me.” The Jews and our Judaizers believe that all of this was said only by Jeremiah, arguing from prophecy that the people have sustained these evils in their captivity. But I fail to see how they hope to prove that Jeremiah was the one crucified, since such an event is nowhere recorded in Scripture. Perhaps it is just a figment of their imagination.” (Six Books on Jeremiah, 2.)

Collect

May the working of Your mercy,
O Lord, we pray,
direct our hearts aright,
for without Your grace
we cannot find favor in Your sight.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

Top

All human activity is to find itspurification in the paschal mystery

Second Vatican Council

An excerpt from Gaudium et Spes, 37-38.

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Holy Scripture, with which the experience of the ages is in agreement, teaches the human family that human progress, though it is a great blessing for man, brings with it a great temptation. When the scale of values is disturbed and evil becomes mixed with good, individuals and groups consider only their own interests, not those of others.

The result is that the world is not yet a home of true brotherhood, while the increased power of mankind already threatens to destroy the human race itself.

If it is asked how this unhappy state of affairs can be set right, Christians state their belief that all human activity, in daily jeopardy through pride and inordinate self-love, is to find its purification and its perfection in the cross and resurrection of Christ.

Man, redeemed by Christ and made a new creation in the Holy Spirit, can and must love the very things created by God. For he receives them from God, and sees and reveres them as coming from the hand of God.

As he gives thanks for them to his Benefactor, and uses and enjoys them in a spirit of poverty and freedom, he enters into true possession of the world, as one having nothing and possessing all things. For all things are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

The Word of God, through whom all things were made, himself became man and lived in the world of men. As perfect man he has entered into the history of the world, taking it up into himself and bringing it into unity as its head. He reveals to us that God is love, and at the same time teaches us that the fundamental law of human perfection, and therefore of the transformation of the world, is the new commandment of love.

He assures those who have faith in God’s love that the way of love is open to all men, and that the effort to restore universal brotherhood is not in vain. At the same time he warns us that this love is not to be sought after only in great things but also, and above all, in the ordinary circumstances of life.

He suffered death for us all, sinners as we are, and by his example he teaches us that we also have to carry that cross which the flesh and the world lay on the shoulders of those who strive for peace and justice.

Constituted as the Lord by his resurrection, Christ, to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been given, is still at work in the hearts of men through the power of his Spirit. Not only does he awaken in them a longing for the world to come, but by that very fact he also inspires, purifies and strengthens those generous desires by which the human family seeks to make its own life more human and to achieve the same goal for the whole world.

The gifts of the Spirit are manifold. He calls some to bear open witness to the longing for a dwelling place in heaven, and to keep this fresh in the minds of all mankind; he calls others to dedicate themselves to the service of men here on earth, preparing by this ministry the material for the kingdom of heaven.

Yet he makes all free, so that, by denying their love of self and taking up all earth’s resources into the life of man, all may reach out to the future, when humanity itself will become an offering acceptable to God.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

Top

 

Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

“For, not thinking rightly, they said among themselves: “Brief and troubled is our lifetime; there is no remedy for our dying, nor is anyone known to have come back from Hades.” (Wisdom 2:1.)

Saint Augustine of Hippo comments on this verse from the First Reading proclaimed at Mass today:

“They are corrupt, they do abominable things, no one does what is right.” Listen to these corrupt people. They in fact “have spoken among themselves, reasoning unsoundly.” Corruption begins with bad faith. From there it passes to depraved habits, later leading to the most violent injustice. This is, in general, the ladder one climbs. What, then, did they say among themselves, thinking badly, “our life is short and sorrowful”? From this mistaken conviction proceeds what the apostle also spoke of: “Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we die.” But in the book of Wisdom this wantonness is described more thoroughly: “Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither. Let us leave signs of our enjoyment.” And after this more thorough description of wantonness, what do we read? “Let us kill the poor, just person,” which is as much as to say, “God does not exist.” (Exposition of the Psalms)

Collect

O God, Who have prepared
fitting helps for us in our weakness,
grant, we pray, that we may receive
their healing effects with joy
and reflect them in a holy way of life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

Top