Third 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.

Looking at the art:

Paired in the museum with the stained glass window of the Nativity by the same artist, this window depicts the last moments of Jesus’s life on the cross. With his eyes raised to heaven and his body lacking the scars and blood of flogging, Jesus hardly looks in pain. In fact, he looks resting on the cross rather than hanging with drooping arms and collapsed torso as is often depicted. Looking up at him on Jesus’s right is his mother Mary and on his left standing is his beloved disciple John and kneeling is Mary Magdalene. This composite of the four haloed figures is the traditional representation of the Crucifixion, here so stylized that it is devoid of emotion. Like in the Nativity, this Crucifixion is cast within an ornate frame of architecture that is part of the stained-glass window itself reminding us that this is a window within a window. Beyond the window can be seen the outline of the city of Jerusalem, a dimming sky and closer even a few trees to fill in the scene and give the viewer the illusion of looking out a window.

Reflection

As Brother Leonard has pointed out, this is a crucifixion scene without emotion, sanitized so that we are no longer offended. Over the years we have removed the blood and gore from the cross and with that we have also removed the overwhelming power of the cross. Not that blood and gore are what the crucifixion is all about! But when we have sanitized it so much that we can walk by a depiction of it and not even notice it, then we have robbed it of its power. The Carthusian motto, “Stands the Cross, Still point of the turning world” would have resonated with the gospel writers. Each gospel, in its own way leads up to the cross and then leads from the cross.  Is the cross the center of my life or, as Saint La Salle asks each one of us, are we willing to “Throw yourself into God’s arms. He will carry you when the road is rough” (Meditation for Palm Sunday). During this Lent am I letting go of my own ideas of what I want, what I think is best for me and listening quietly to what the cross holds out for me?