Second Week of Lent

Lenten reflection:

March 18, 2025

Isaiah 1: 10, 16-20
Matthew 23: 1-12

In today’s readings, we are invited to listen, to observe and to serve. Isaiah assures us if we listen to God’s word and are obedient to them, we set things right with the Lord.    At its root, obedience denotes deep listening; listening from heart. As a Lasallian community we traditionally conclude our prayer, our classes and our gatherings with the short prayer, “Live Jesus in our hearts. Forever.”  For we believe at the center of our being, in the recesses of our hearts, Jesus abides.  This short prayer invites us to periodically pause to listen for, and respond to, God voice.

When Jesus tells his disciples and the people to observe all the things the Scribes and Pharisees do and do what they tell you but not follow their example “for they preach but they do not practice,” the admonition applies to us as well.  Lent is a time, an opportunity, to reflect on those occasions we do not practice what we preach, whether with our students, our children, our spouses and friends.

Listening to the words of Jesus from the heart encourages us to better serve one another.  Take the opportunity today to meet a need of another, to drive someone to a store, for example, or to take a moment to converse with someone that we haven’t spoken to in some time.  Small acts on our part but perhaps, a significant encounter for the other.

March 20, 2025

Jeremiah 17: 5-10
Luke 16: 19-31

In an age where the gap between the rich and the poor is becoming a chasm, and where billionaires enrich themselves at the expense of the working class, sending them to the unemployment line, today’s Gospel message is a stark reminder of God’s justice and love for the poor.

In this familiar parable, we read again that the poor man, Lazarus, is denied scraps from the rich man’s table.  He eventually dies and is “carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham.”  Soon after, rich man dies and suffers the torments of the netherworld.  Too late he realized that he, and we, are called to be people of mercy and compassion to our sisters and brothers, especially those most in need.

The passage echoes the words from Mary’s Magnificat in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, where she proclaims, the Lord “has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty.”

When the opportunity arises today, and every day, let us reach out a hand to lift a sister or brother up and praise our God for the good things he has done for us.

Brother Robert Schieler, ’72, FSC, Ed.D.

Looking at the art:

This sculpture in bronze tells the story recounted in John’s Gospel where Jesus arrives in Bethany after the death of his dear friend Lazarus. Weeping over the death, Jesus raises his friend from the tomb where he had been buried four days earlier. Cairns’ Lazarus is a slender, floating figure portrayed in rigid metal. Although Lazarus is brought back to life, the sculpture’s rough surface evokes bodily decomposition and also makes visible the artist’s assertive hand. Not only do we see the body elevated but we also see it wrapped in its funeral garments. The entire light-colored composite is set against a darker brown backdrop in the museum, which serves to highlight the victory of life over death and thus presage Jesus’s own resurrection.

Reflection

There is so much in this story from John’s Gospel. To say that the raising of Lazarus is a foreshadowing of the Resurrection of Jesus is to miss much of what is presented to us. Here are a few points that I have always thought about with this passage.

One is that Jesus had friends. He had special feelings for Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. He cries. This happens only one other time in the Gospels when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. The crowd comments on how much he must have loved Lazarus, yet he did not hurry to be with his friends. When he shows up, Martha takes him to task: “If you had been here, Lazarus would not have died.” Jesus’s reply, theological and concise, does not seem to comfort: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

And then the miracle: after four days, a decaying body bounds out of the tomb at the command of Jesus and is restored to his family. The Paschal mystery restores us to full life with Jesus. What we have now is nothing compared to what we will have. What we have now are friends, relationships that model our relationship with Jesus.

During this Lenten journey, we should take stock of our relationship with Jesus. Is it honest? Is it really one of deep friendship where I trust him enough to chide him when I need to? Do I trust that, while I may not understand the how or the timing, whatever I need will always be taken care of? Do I hear his voice calling me from the tomb, from death, to come out into his light? Let this be my Lenten journey.