Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(Lent is a time to give up “cheap grace” and embrace the “costly grace” of sacrifice, discipline, and the cross.)
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HOS 14:2-10;
PS 81:6C-8A, 8BC-9, 10-11AB, 14 AND 17
MK 12:28-34
One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,
"Which is the first of all the commandments?"
Jesus replied, "The first is this:
Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our
God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these."
The scribe said to him, "Well said, teacher.
You are right in saying,
He is One and there is no other than he.
And to love him with all your heart,
with all your understanding,
with
all your strength,
and to love your neighbor as yourself
is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding,
he said to him,
"You are not far from the Kingdom of God."
And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Reflection on the
Scriptures |
Who is my neighbor? 37 years ago on this day Archbishop Oscar Romero was killed after calling for an end to the violence in El Salvador. Like our Savior, Romero was moved by the plight of the poor. He awakened from his cautious reserve and could remain silent no longer. Like bread broken, he offered his life: “may my blood be the seed of liberty.” Rooted in love, the Blessed Romero bears
fruit.
John Kavanaugh, S.J., taught and wrote at St. Louis University for many years until his death in 2012. John was a philosopher of liberation. For John, human life is ineluctably religious: each person embodies a book of revelation. What functions as God in my life? Which gospel
do I live by?
How am I saved? In a consumer society, everything appears to have a price.
Prodigious love is confounding. What’s the catch? Get real!
Wary and spent, we prodigals again hear the call: come back.
- by Jeanne Schuler Revelations of Divine
Love - by Julian of Norwich
Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 36 “My sin shall
not hinder His Goodness working. . . . A deed shall be done—as we come to Heaven—and it may be known here in part;—though it be truly taken for the general Man, yet it excludeth not the special. For what our good Lord will do by His poor creatures, it is now unknown to me”
But what this deed should be was kept secret from me.
And in this I saw that He willeth not that we dread to know the things that He
sheweth: He sheweth them because He would have us know them; by which knowing He would have us love Him and have pleasure and endlessly enjoy in Him. For the great love that He hath to us He sheweth us all that is worshipful and profitable for the time. And the things that He will now have privy, yet of His great goodness He sheweth them close: in which shewing He willeth that we believe and understand that we shall see the same verily in His endless bliss. Then ought we to rejoice in Him for
all that He sheweth and all that He hideth; and if we steadily [114] and meekly do thus, we shall find therein great ease; and endless thanks we shall have of Him therefor. |
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