Palm Sunday: The King meek and humble of heart
April 17, 2011 | XXXI.Grace: To wonder at Jesus entrance into His kingly glory, that is His suffering, for me.
Text for Prayer: Luke 19:28-44
Reflection: Today, Palm Sunday, begins in earnest our celebration of Jesus’ Passion. Jesus sets Himself with unshakeable determination toward Jerusalem, toward the ultimate purpose of His coming to earth.
Even though Jesus knows what awaits Him this week, the people of Jerusalem still do not understand. They acclaim Him as the king who will set them free, but Jesus is not the kind of Messiah they imagine. Rather, He is the meek and suffering King of Mercy who enters Jerusalem on a donkey and assumes His throne upon the Cross. All of this He does willingly, for me.
Posted by Mr. Andrij Hlabse, S.J. in XXXI.Entering Into the Passion
April 16, 2011 | XXX.Grace: To feel sorrow, compassion, and shame because the Lord is going to His suffering for my sins.
Text for Prayer: John 6:44-63
Reflection: In his book Life of Christ, Archbishop Sheen notes about Jesus that “every other person who ever came into this world came into it to live. He came into it to die.” Socrates also suffered an unjust death, but his death interrupted his life’s teachings. Jesus’ death, on the other hand, was the culmination of His teachings. From the start of the Exercises, we have seen God’s total self-gift to humanity, putting Himself into creation and loving us into existence; entering into the world to save us; walking with us and guiding us on our journeys. Now, as we enter into Holy Week, we prepare to see Jesus give even His very life for us. Absolutely nothing is held back. This is what is needed to accomplish the Father’s will and help us attain salvation. It is the same total giving of self that we see in the Trinity, the perfect community where each of the three Persons gives all to the others, and in the Eucharist, where Jesus offers His body and blood to us.
In John 6, Jesus says that “he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in him” (v. 56). Here, we will see the sacrifice literally re-presented in the Eucharist at each Mass, where Jesus gives His body and blood over for our sakes. With this, He will abide in us and we in Him, and Jesus will truly become food for our soul as we travel along our lives.
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in XXX.The Raising of Lazarus: Our Divine Friend
April 15, 2011 | XXIX.Grace: To know Jesus more intimately, so that I may follow him with all my heart.
Text: John 11:1-44
Reflection: As we follow Jesus, praying and begging for the grace to know Him in the deepest part of our hearts, we hear that His dear friend Lazarus is sick. Martha and Mary have desperately sent urgent word to Jesus so that He may save Lazarus from an untimely death. And despite the urgency of this news, Jesus chooses to wait, saying, “This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it.” There are divine plans at work here, plans that we can only glimpse. Jesus asks for our trust.
Upon deciding to see His cherished friends, Jesus hears the disciples voice their doubts: Hadn’t they just narrowly escaped the wrath of the Jews who tried to stone Jesus to death? Why on earth would He go back? Jesus remains firm. He is walking in the light of God—He is the light of God. This is the light that scatters all fear and sin. We can hear the fear in Thomas’ voice when he says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
Posted by Mr. Mikey Wood, S.J. in XXIX.Christ Upon the Waters
April 14, 2011 | XXVIII.Grace: To know Jesus more intimately, to love Him more devotedly, and to follow him more whole-heartedly.
Text for Prayer: Mt. 14:22-33
Reflection: The passage from Matthew’s Gospel that will be the subject of today’s prayer describes an unlikely encounter of the apostles (and particularly Peter) with Jesus during a journey at sea. Asked to go ahead of Him while He goes up to a mountaintop to pray, they are not aware of Jesus’s presence with them and are startled by His appearance upon the waters.
Not sure of what to make of what he seems to be seeing, Peter tests the vision in order to determine whether it is Jesus or only a ghost. He asks the Lord to bid him to come out to Him, walking on the water, and Jesus says, “Come.” At first, all is well and Peter is able to walk toward Jesus. But he then falls into fear of the waves and the wind. While he first is filled with amazement at his own walking on water, Peter realizes after a few steps that he is no longer relying upon himself, and this terrifies him.
Posted by Mr. Michael Wegenka, S.J. in XXVIII.The Sermon on the Mount
April 13, 2011 | XXVII.Grace: To see Jesus more clearly, to love Him more dearly and to follow Him more nearly.
Text: Matthew 5: 1-20
Reflection: Ignatius recommends praying with three points from the Sermon on the Mount: the Beatitudes, the exhortation to be the light of the world, and Christ as the fulfillment of the law.
Someone once told me he found it much easier to follow the Ten Commandments than to follow the Beatitudes. I think a lot of people would agree; the commandments are more direct, their expectations clearer. But the flipside is the inexhaustible riches of the Beatitudes (a word that means profound and lasting happiness).
Why do the Beatitudes follow the model of ‘Blessed are…for they shall?’ At first glance, we might expect ‘Blessed will the meek be, for they shall inherit the earth’ or ‘Blessed are the meek, for they have inherited the earth.’ But instead we have a combination of times, the present and the future. The Lord is calling us to let our future happiness flow into our present lives, allowing us to experience a profound happiness now despite the circumstances in which we may find ourselves.
Posted by Mr. Stephen Wolfe, S.J. in XXVII.The Call of the Apostles: The First Citizens of the Kingdom
April 12, 2011 | XXVI.Grace: An intimate knowledge of our Lord, Who has become man for me, that I may love Him more and follow Him more closely.
Texts for Prayer: Matthew 4.18-22, Mark 1.16-20, Luke 5.1-11, or John 1.35-51
Reflection: We begin the Exercises by contemplating our sins, and how God’s love calls us to reform our ways. But the call does not stop there. From the start of the Second Week, with the call of Christ the King, we have been considering and mulling over in our hearts and minds what more the Father calls us to in the context of Jesus’ example of continually responding to the Father. Now, we see the call of the apostles, the first citizens of the kingdom that Christ is establishing “on earth as it is in heaven.”
As C.S. Lewis was fond of saying about Christianity, “it’s a religion you couldn’t have guessed.” This is certainly true with the call of the apostles. No theological training beyond whatever catechesis any Jew of the day would have gotten, no special eloquence, not even a high success rate at being disciples once they were called. It seems as though half the stories in the gospels about the apostles are about how they were getting things wrong. But with every failure they got back up and continued to follow Christ; eventually even Peter, who out of fear denied knowing Jesus at all, asked out of love for Jesus not to be crucified in the same way Jesus was, as he was not worthy to die in the same manner as the Lord.
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in XXVI.Jesus in the Desert
April 11, 2011 | XXV.Grace: To know how Jesus prepared Himself for His mission, to love Him more, and to imitate Him more closely.
Text: Matthew 4:1-11
Reflection: After His Baptism, Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the desert. The desert has been a rich image throughout the history of Christianity. It has symbolized the spiritual difficulties that believers encounter, just as the Israelites struggled for forty years in crossing the desert. It has also symbolized a place of encounter with the Lord, as so many of the Desert Fathers discovered in the early Church.
Jesus is tempted three times. First, He is tempted to turn stones into bread to feed Himself. Second, He is tempted to throw Himself down from a parapet and be saved by angels. Third, He is tempted to worship the tempter in exchange for all earthly power.
Posted by Mr. Stephen Wolfe, S.J. in XXV.Choosing Christ
April 9, 2011This week, we have had what seems like a break from the gospel narrative. The prayers seen are what are sometimes called “election” prayers, prayers that can help us as we make a decision– where to go to school, a new job, marriage, etc. First, in the Two Standards, St. Ignatius has us pray over the “playing field,” to understand the two sides that struggle for our hearts, the methods of each side, and what they ultimately offer us. Then, we look at what attachments we have to things of this world that keep us from choosing God, and pray to God that He help us to be free of them. All of this culminates in praying over Jesus’s baptism, that moment where He stands shoulder to shoulder with sinners as He takes on the baptism that will mark the beginning of His public ministry. Our own baptism is both the starting point and end goal of our response to God’s call. From the moment of our baptism, God says “you are my beloved son (or daughter), in whom I am well pleased,” and calls us to Himself. From then on, with the help of God’s grace we try and grow more fully into this role of being a child of God. But we can only do so by looking at the example of Jesus. Without the living example of the Son, we would have a hard time imagining what it means to be a child of God, and a hard time knowing how to make choices that express the fact that we are God’s children. So we pray about choices that we must make in the context of praying over the life of Jesus, to help us better see how the choice fits into our vocation as children of God.
If you have a major choice that you are making, you may find it helpful to go back to one of the prayers from this week (or even go back to the Call of Christ the King), renew that desire to live out your baptismal call to be a child of God, and take a look at what is keeping you from living out your call. That alone will go a long way in laying the foundation for making a good choice in Christ. If you aren’t faced with a major choice right now, you can still renew that desire to live out your baptism, and resolve to follow God in all the smaller choices that we all face in our day-to-day lives.
Posted by Mr. David Paternostro, S.J. in Weekend RepetitionThe Baptism of Christ: The Divine King Starts His Campaign
April 8, 2011 | XXIV.Grace: For an intimate knowledge of Jesus, who for me was baptized in order that I may be saved.
Text: Matthew 3:13-17
Reflection: There came a point in Jesus’ life when He made the decision to leave His home in order to fulfill His saving mission. Since His public ministry lasted about three years, and He died around the age of thirty-three, it is likely that Jesus stayed home until His late twenties or early thirties. As Luke says after Jesus decided to return to Nazareth with His parents instead of staying in the temple at twelve years old, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk 2:52).
It is generally thought that by this time Joseph had passed away. Mary and Jesus had to fend for themselves. How hard it must have been for Jesus to depart! How much trust and faith He must have had in His Father! When we think of Jesus’ prayer leading up to this point, we can see how His determination to fulfill His mission must have grown with each moment. Jesus’ perfect unity with the Father through the Spirit led Him to this crucial decision: to leave Nazareth and set out for Jordan, where John was baptizing.
Posted by Mr. Mikey Wood, S.J. in XXIV.Reform: Shaping our Lives Anew
April 7, 2011 | XXIII.Grace: To sense more deeply the possibility of deep renewal and reform in my life and the desire in God’s heart for that renewal of me.
Text for prayer: Lk. 18:18-27
Reflection: In Georges Bernanos’s classic The Diary of a Country Priest, Monsieur le Curé writes,
“No, I have not lost my faith. The expression ‘to lose one’s faith,’ as one might a purse or a ring of keys, has always seemed to me rather foolish… Faith is not a thing which one ‘loses’; we merely cease to shape our lives by it.”
The enemy of shaping our life by faith is acedia, that classic Greek concept of living “without care” (a+ kedos) of the virtues. More commonly, we refer to this as sloth or apathy. We tend toward sloth when we cease to hold our desires, actions, and thoughts up to the purifying light of God and presume to go it alone. And that is how the slow, lazy drift away from God and His plan for us occurs. We have all experienced tepidity or vague disinterest in living a life of faith and virtue at different times. So how do we to turn things around and ‘reignite the fire of faith’?
Posted by Mr. Joseph Simmons, S.J. in XXIII.