The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today challenge us to contemplate the dying to self that will be so salient in our coming Holy Week liturgies even as we wrestle with the actions of those who act as enemies toward us.
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| Those who oppose |
The 1st reading portrays Jeremiah lamenting his interior crisis.
* [20:14–18] Deception, sorrow and terror have brought the prophet to the point of despair; nevertheless he maintains confidence in God (vv. 11–13); cf. Jb 3:3–12.1
Psalm 18 reports of divine rescue from defeat.
* [Psalm 18] A royal thanksgiving for a military victory, duplicated in 2 Sm 22. Thanksgiving Psalms are in essence reports of divine rescue. The Psalm has two parallel reports of rescue, the first told from a heavenly perspective (Ps 18:5–20),2
In the Gospel from John the Jewish leaders accuse Jesus of blasphemy at the Feast of the Dedication.
* [10:34] This is a reference to the judges of Israel who, since they exercised the divine prerogative to judge (Dt 1:17), were called “gods”; cf. Ex 21:6, besides Ps 82:6 from which the quotation comes.3
George Butterfield asks “Do we not have enemies?” Is it inappropriate to refer to an enemy as an enemy?
That's not nice. I am of the opinion that we do well to know who our enemies are. If you work in any type of group, you will likely have enemies - people who want to see you get hurt, people who want you gone, even if they might not want you dead. Jesus teaches us to love our enemies.4
Don Schwager quotes “The sacrifice of Christ,” by Saint Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.
"Even though the man Christ Jesus, in the form of God together with the Father with whom He is one God, accepts our sacrifice, nonetheless He has chosen in the form of a servant to be the sacrifice rather than to accept it. Therefore, He is the priest Himself Who presents the offering, and He Himself is what is offered." (excerpt from City of God, 10,20) 5
The Word Among Us Meditation on John 10:31-42 asks “How could we possibly keep quiet about God, our heavenly Father?” He is the One who sent Jesus to redeem us. He is the One behind all the works of mercy that the Church does around the world. He is the One behind every word of love, reconciliation, and hope that we speak. It is his own Spirit who gives us our strength. It is only because he has touched our hearts, forgiven our sins, and filled us with his love that we can share that love with other people.
If you want to stay strong as Jesus did when faced with opposition, stay connected to the Father. Strive to put your relationship with him above everything else. That way, you’ll be able to receive his inspiration, his strength, and his grace. Then, when your faith is challenged, you can respond with the one thing that will convince any skeptical heart: the love of God. When people see your Father shining through your words and actions, they’ll be drawn to him, and they’ll come to know that he is the answer they’ve been looking for.6
Frances Murphy reflects on the second Station of the Cross where Jesus accepts his cross. People often say they are ‘accepting fate’ when they are sorrowfully resigning themselves to a chain of events that they do not want to happen, and it is tempting to think that that is what Jesus is doing.
We know from his prayer in Gethsemane that Jesus is not bowing his head in passive defeat: he can truly accept the cross because he knows what it means, that it is the beginning of something. The chief priests ‘accept’ Jesus in a different way; their acceptance is a conclusion of a process, a shrug of the shoulders, a closing off of possibilities.
Lent is a time in which we try to cultivate habits that allow us to see that little bit more clearly the world as it is, in all its need, and how we relate to it. If we use this time to orient ourselves properly to God, others and the world, our acceptance will be a beginning, too.7
Friar Jude Winkler concludes that the “confessions of Jeremiah” are encounters with God where the prophet seeks vengeance during a difficult time when he wants to be protected from his enemies. The prophet continues even when he feels betrayed by God. Friar Jude reminds that Jesus example of intimate relationship with God was a very difficult concept for the Jewish culture of His time.
Cynthia Bourgeault shares reflections, drawn from her book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene. When Mary Magdalene is returned to her traditional role as the anointer of Jesus, a very important symmetry is also restored. We see that Jesus’s passage through death is framed on either side by her parallel acts of anointing. At Bethany she sends him forth to the cross wearing the unction of her love. And on Easter morning he awakens to that same fragrance of love as she arrives at the tomb with her spices and perfumes, expecting to anoint his body for death. He has been held in love throughout his entire passage…The real domain of the Paschal Mystery is not dying but dying-to-self. It serves as the archetype for all of our personal experiences of dying and rising to new life along the pathway of kenotic transformation, reminding us that it is not only possible but imperative to fall through fear into love because that is the only way we will ever truly know what it means to be alive.
As Bruce Chilton succinctly summarizes: “She connects his death and Resurrection.” [1] And she accomplishes this precisely by bracketing the entire experience in the parallel rituals of anointing. In so doing, Chilton adds, “Mary Magdalene established the place of anointing as the central ritual in Christianity, recollecting Jesus’s death and pointing forward to his resurrection.”8
The experience of Jesus in living with His enemies calls us to examine our attitudes about the necessary death to self on our journey to full life.
References
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(n.d.). Jeremiah's Interior Crisis - usccb. Retrieved April 12, 2019, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/jeremiah/jeremiah20.htm
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(n.d.). Psalms, chapter 18 - usccb. Retrieved April 12, 2019, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/psalms/18
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(n.d.). Creighton U Daily Reflections - OnlineMinistries - Creighton University. Retrieved April 12, 2019, from http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html
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(n.d.). Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved April 12, 2019, from https://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/
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(n.d.). 5th Week of Lent - Mass Readings and Catholic Daily Meditations for .... Retrieved April 12, 2019, from https://wau.org/meditations/2019/04/12/
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(2019, March 14). Stations of the Cross: 2. Jesus accepts his cross | Thinking Faith: The .... Retrieved April 12, 2019, from https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/stations-cross-2-jesus-accepts-his-cross
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(n.d.). Daily Meditations Archive: April 2018 - Daily Meditations Archives .... Retrieved April 12, 2019, from https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/2018/04/
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