Lenten Retreat (Zoom and on-site)
Lessons from the Passion of Christ
March 12, 2022 (Saturday)
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. CST
|
|
Living in the present means squarely accepting and responding to it as God's moment for you now while it is called "today" rather than wishing it were yesterday or tomorrow.
- Evelyn Underhill
(You can always handle what's happening in the present moment if you adopt an attitude of loving service.)
|
1 Pt 1:10-16; Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4
Mk 10:28-31
Peter began to say to Jesus,
“We have given up everything and followed you.”
Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you,
there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands
for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel
who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age:
houses and brothers and sisters
and mothers and children and lands,
with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.
But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
Reflection on the Scriptures
Happy Mardi Gras, everyone! Today’s readings provide a somewhat telescopic view of Peter’s journey of faith. We hear his words to communities following Christ after the Resurrection, then we affirm that we are one of those communities (“Yes, the Lord has made his salvation known!”), then proclaim that God reveals the mysteries of the kingdom to “little ones,” and finally arrive towards the beginning of Peter’s
journey, as he was following Jesus.
“Peter began to say…”
It sounds like he had more to say, but Jesus answered him after the first sentence. What would the second sentence have been? Remembering yesterday’s Gospel, Jesus has just told them that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. The disciples asked, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus answers, “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God.
All things are possible for God.” In other words, we cannot save ourselves. . . .
Many of us are probably fasting from something during Lent. It will probably not be on the scale of Peter leaving behind his family and livelihood, or Jesus freely giving his life for us. But what might Peter’s words offer us today, as we begin this season? Perhaps encouragement echoing through the centuries that if we give or fast from a desire to know God better, our small sacrifices will be worth it. We are
called to holiness and the example of Christ, as members of the body of Christ.
- by Molly Mattingly
The Existence of God
by Francois Fenelon
SECTION VI. Second Comparison, drawn from the Sound of Instruments.
If we heard in a room, from behind a curtain, a soft and harmonious instrument, should we believe that chance, without the help of any human hand, could have formed such an instrument? Should we say that the strings of a violin, for instance, had of their own accord ranged and extended themselves on a wooden frame, whose several parts had glued themselves together to form a cavity with regular apertures?
Should we maintain that the bow formed without art should be pushed by the wind to touch every string so variously, and with such nice justness? What rational man could seriously entertain a doubt whether a human hand touched such an instrument with so much harmony? Would he not cry out, "It is a masterly hand that plays upon it?" Let us proceed to inculcate the same truth.
|
|
