Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Readings of the day: RB 36 The Care of the Sick in the Monastery

Mass: Ex 32:7-14; Resp Ps 106; Jn 5:31-47

This is how you will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one another.

(Jn 13:35)

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God; he who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

(1 Jn 4:7-8)

Thinking about the reading from the Book of Exodus and being ‘stiff-necked’, I reflect on St Leo the Great’s comments on the passages from the Evangelist:

The faithful should therefore enter into themselves and make a true judgment on their attitudes of mind and heart. If they find some store of love’s fruit in their hearts, they must not doubt God’s presence within them. If they would increase their capacity to receive so great a guest, they should practice greater generosity in doing good, with persevering charity.

If God is love, charity should know no limit, for God cannot be confined.

HOW GOES YOUR ATTITUDE OF MIND AND HEART THIS DAY?

THE LOVE OF GOD KNOWS NO BOUNDS.

Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent

Readings of the day: RB 30 The Correction of the Children

Mass: Dt 4:1, 5-9; Resp Ps 147; Mt 5:17-19

If sometimes the flame of charity seems to die in our hearts,

it never dies in the heart of God!

(Pope Francis, Twitter, March 7, 2018)

This morning I returned to Pope Francis’ 2018 Lenten Message. The Holy Father suggests we ask ourselves ‘how it happens that charity can turn cold within us.’ In other words, ‘What are the signs that indicate that our love is beginning to cool?’ If we notice signs of love grown cold, as I like to call it, he suggests ‘the soothing remedy of prayer, almsgiving and fasting.’

Pope Francis elaborates:

By devoting more time to prayer, we enable our hearts to root out our secret lies and forms of self-deception, and then to find the consolation God offers. He is our Father and he wants us to live life well.

Almsgiving sets us free from greed and helps us to regard our neighbor as a brother or sister…If through me God helps someone today, will he not tomorrow provide for my own needs? For no one is more generous than God.

Fasting weakens our tendency to violence; it disarms us and becomes an important opportunity for growth. On the one hand, it allows us to experience what the destitute and the starving have to endure. On the other hand, it expresses our own spiritual hunger and thirst for life in God. Fasting wakes us up.

Is there a remedy that needs to be applied today?

YOU WILL SHOW ME THE PATH OF LIFE,

THE FULLNESS OF JOY IN YOUR PRESENCE, O LORD.

(Communion Antiphon, Mass)

Tuesday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: RB 36

Mass: Wisdom 2:23-3:9; Resp. Psalm 34; Luke 17:7-10

 

Foot Washing on Holy Thursday

The readings from the Rule of Saint Benedict for today and tomorrow introduce us to today’s Gospel from Saint Luke. RB 36, “Care of the Sick,” reads in part: “Care of the sick must rank above and before all else, so that they may truly be served as Christ. Sick sisters must be patiently borne with, because serving them leads to a greater reward. Consequently, the abbess should be extremely careful that they suffer no neglect” (RB 36:1,6). Ch. 37, “Care for the Elderly and the Young,” begins, “Although human nature itself is inclined to be compassionate toward the old and the young, the authority of the rule should also provide for them” (RB 37:1). The chapters flow from Ch. 35, “Kitchen Servers of the Week.” The first verse, “The sisters should serve one another,” is the center of our communal life, namely living charity—Loving and serving God with our whole heart, mind, and soul, and loving and serving our neighbor (RB 4:1). All that we do in the monastery flows from charity and leads to charity. We are called to foster good zeal with fervent love, respect one another, support one another with patience, compete in obedience to one another, and pursue what is better for the other instead of what is better for myself. We are to show the pure love of sisters. (RB 72) The precepts presented us by Saint Benedict are not optional; our monastic vocations call us to grow in charity through a life of service to one another, as do all Christian vocations. We stumble and fall yet the Living God sustains us with LOVE and MERCY so that we can serve one another with love and mercy. The sisters are obliged to love and serve the sick, elderly, and young—no one should suffer neglect.

WE ARE UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS;

WE HAVE DONE WHAT WE ARE OBLIGED TO DO.

Luke 17:10

What you did for one of the least of these you did for me.

(RB 36:3/Matt. 25:30).

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: RB 22

Mass: Exodus 22:20-26; Resp. Psalm 18; 1 Thess. 1:5c-10; Matthew 22:34-40

The Pharisees throw one of their scholars into the ring to test Jesus: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Without hesitation, Jesus answers:

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.

What next? Saint Matthew doesn’t tell us. Saint Mark, with a different version of the exchange (12:28-34), relates, “No one dared to ask Jesus any more questions.”

My question: Jesus, how can I live this love? Some answers came during the reading at vigils. What follows is from Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, In the School of Love:

The person whose soul has been enlarged through love may be described as someone who takes pity and lends, who is disposed to be compassionate, quick to render assistance, who believes that there is more to happiness in giving than in receiving, who easily forgives but is not easily angered, who will never seek to be avenged and will in all things take thought of his neighbor’s needs as if they were his own.

Those who love one another are pleasant and temperate, without grudging; they neither deceive nor attack nor offend another; they never exalt themselves nor promote themselves at another’s expense, but offer their services generously as they accept those of others.

 

Living and true God, grant us the grace.

Amen.