Saturday, March 27, 2010

Saturday in the Fifth Week of Lent

FIRST READING (Ezekiel 37:21-28)
Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all sides, and bring them to their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all; and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms.

They shall not defile themselves any more with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions; but I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

"My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall follow my ordinances and be careful to observe my statutes. They shall dwell in the land where your fathers dwelt that I gave to my servant Jacob; they and their children and their children's children shall dwell there for ever; and David my servant shall be their prince for ever.

"I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I will bless them and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.

"My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I the Lord sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary is in the midst of them for evermore."


GOSPEL (John 11:45-57)
Many of the Jews who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him; but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, "What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation."

But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish." He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on they took counsel how to put him to death.

Jesus therefore no longer went about openly among the Jews, but went from there to the country near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim; and there he stayed with the disciples.

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover, to purify themselves. They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, "What do you think? That he will not come to the feast?"

Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if any one knew where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him.


REFLECTIONS
Jesus set his face like flint toward Jerusalem
(Word of Life Community)


Standing on the threshold of Holy Week
(Robert P. Heaney)

What makes a family
(Terry Nance)



FURTHERMORE . . .

Supposing you were at the gate of death and Christ stood there and said: "Do you want to come back?' And you said: "Yes", - doesn't it imply that you are coming back on absolutely new terms? Think of the rising of Lazarus. He had died, he had had the total experience of death and then he was brought back. Do you think that he possibly could return to the life he led with all its smallness, all the things that were not worthy of what truly a human being is, of the greatness of man? Of course not. And again in small it is the same with our illnesses. We come back to health and this health is a new birth, it's a new beginning, it's an offer given us by God to start life again. Physically and mentally it does come to this. I know that in my small experience, for about fifty years I have had a dislocated back. The moment this back was put right a few years ago I felt new life was given and that this life, this back of mine was to be used to the full, was to be used in a way in which I could not use the old one, the broken one, the dislocated one. And this does apply to all conditions in which healing comes to us.

I think we must realise that when we speak of healing in Christian terms we do not speak simply of a power possessed by God or by His saints or by people who being neither saints nor God are possessed of a natural gift to restore health for us to continue to live in the way in which we lived before, to remain the same unchanged. God does not heal us in order that we should go back to our sinful condition. He offers us newness of life, not the old life which we have already lost. And the new life which is offered us is no longer ours in a way, it is His, it's a gift of His, a present. It was Mine to give, take it... And it seems to me that thinking in spiritual terms, it is true. Because what is sin? We define sin all the time as moral infringement but it is much more than this: it is the very thing of which I was speaking, it is the lack of wholeness. When you think of yourself - or perhaps, I think of myself if you are that better than I which I doubt, - if we think of ourselves: I am divided - mind against heart, heart against will, body against all the rest. We are all not only schizophrenic, but schizo-everything, we are just like a broken mirror and so that is the condition of sin: it is not so much that the mirror doesn't reflect well, it is the fact that it is broken that is the problem. You can, of course, try to take a small piece of it and see what you can see, but it is still a broken mirror. And this brokenness of ours within corresponds to a brokenness in our relationships with other people. We are afraid of them, we are envious of them, we are greedy, what not. So it creates a whole relational sinfulness and indeed it applies supremely to God because it all results from our having lost our harmony with God. The saints are people who are in harmony with Him, nothing more, nothing less, simply that. And as the result of being in harmony they can be in harmony within themselves and with other people.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh - excerpt from a talk


PRAYER
Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ,
for all the benefits thou hast won for me,
for all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother,
may I know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly:
for ever and ever. Amen.
St Richard of Chichester (1197-1253)

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