RB: Ch 21 The Deans of the Monastery
Mass: Si 4:11-19; Resp Ps 119; Mk 9:38-40
O Lord, great peace have they who love your law.
We are one week away from Ash Wednesday so it is not too early to think about the holy season of Lent and our approach to it. In a paragraph of this year's Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for Lent, the Holy Father writes of the traditional practices of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving:
Fasting, that is, learning to change our
attitude towards others and all of creation, turning away from the temptation
to “devour” everything to satisfy our voracity and being ready to suffer for
love, which can fill the emptiness of our hearts. Prayer, which teaches us to
abandon idolatry and the self-sufficiency of our ego, and to acknowledge our
need of the Lord and his mercy. Almsgiving, whereby we escape from the insanity
of hoarding everything for ourselves in the illusory belief that we can secure
a future that does not belong to us. And thus to rediscover the joy of God’s
plan for creation and for each of us, which is to love him, our brothers and
sisters, and the entire world, and to find in this love our true happiness.
We might begin to reflect on one thing we will undertake in each area of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving so that our minds and hearts turn more and more towards the Lord and further away from sin. We can pray for the gift of wisdom using the first reading at Mass: The one who loves wisdom loves life; those who seek her will be embraced by the Lord. We are also reminded in the Gospel that our lives are about following Jesus, not about following ourselves: There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us.
I AM THE WAY AND THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE, SAYS THE LORD; NO ONE COMES TO THE FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH ME.
(Gospel Acclamation, Mass)
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