Fourth Sunday of Lent Reflection
Brother Alan Parham, FSC Spiritual Advisor Lent is all about walking in the Light. It is an opportunity to come into the Light again if we have strayed. Once we become more attentive to the Gospel, the challenge of Lent is to embrace what we know to be true once again, or, as today’s Gospel says: “Whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God” (John 3:21). When King Cyrus wanted to restore the Temple (2 Chronicles 36), it must have been quite a surprise because he was the ruler of the Persians. For about seventy years, the Jews were captives in Babylon; the Persians conquered the Babylonians, and thus emerged the benign King Cyrus. We too need restoration at times. That is what coming back to the Light is all about. As Christians, we are actually temples of the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?” Lent gives us the chance of restoration, to reclaim our identity as followers of Christ. I was monk for few years. After I left the monastery, I had an identity crisis. Fortunately, the first job I found was to prepare a Geology Camp for its summer program. It was on a mountain overlooking Dayton, TN. I was alone for three weeks before the college students arrived. As I sorted and somewhat grieved, I also understood who I was. I was not an ex-monk. I was still a disciple of Christ, and I still had a call, though not to monastic life. After that, it took me many years to find the path I wanted to follow and to discern where and how I could live out my baptismal call. But the invitation was clear, that this temple of the Holy Spirit could be restored. Now, as I look back at those weeks on the mountain, I am simply grateful for the chance to clarify my call and the restoration which took place in my spirit.
Third Sunday of Lent Reflection
Sister Belinda Monahan, OSB Board of Directors and Spiritual Advisor Readings: Exodus: 20:1-17 Psalm 19:8, 9, 10-11 Second Reading: 1 Cor 1:22-25 Gospel: John 2:13-25 At first today’s gospel seems incongruous in this Lenten season. We might find Jesus’s actions—bordering on violence—almost unseemly and wonder how they relate to “repenting and believing the Gospel” as we were exhorted to do on Ash Wednesday. But Jesus’s actions are a reminder that what we are to focus on in Lent—indeed what we are to focus on always—is, as the psalmist reminds us “Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.” In removing the money changers and the sellers of animals from the temple, Jesus is doing more than venting righteous anger. He is reminding us that—at all times, but especially during worship—we need to be about God’s business, not the practice of holding up traditions for their own sake. The first reading enumerates the ten commandments, the original set of laws which form the core of the relationship between God and the Hebrew people. And subsequently us. Jesus, as an observant Jew, adhered to these practices and upheld many of those traditions. He was, after all, in Jerusalem for the Passover. And both his words and his actions call us to do the same. But his actions in the temple in today’s Gospel caution us against blind adherence to traditions that might get in the way of following God. Not all traditions should be upheld. Being able to distinguish between the traditions which lead us, all of God’s children, toward God and the traditions which do not, is not always easy, but Jesus’s words in the today’s gospel provide a path toward clarity. He refers to the temple as “my Father’s house,” and calls us to the same, familiar, intimate relationship with God. As we too, listen to and for God, we too will recognize when God is speaking the “words of everlasting life.” |
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