The soul cannot have true knowledge of God through its own efforts or by means of any created thing, but only by divine light and by a special gift of divine grace. I believe there is no quicker or easier way for the soul to obtain this divine grace from God, supreme Good and supreme Love, than by a devout, pure, humble, continual, and determined prayer.
- St. Angela of Foligno -
(Prayer deepens the faith that we exercise in the act of praying. Take more time for prayer during this Holy Week of remembering Christ's passion and resurrection.)
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Is 49:1-6; Psalm 71:1-2, 3-4a, 5ab-6ab, 15 and 17
Jn 13:21-33, 36-38
Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
The disciples looked at one another, at a loss as to whom he meant.
One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved,
was reclining at Jesus’ side.
So Simon Peter nodded to him to find out whom he meant.
He leaned back against Jesus’ chest and said to him,
“Master, who is it?”
Jesus answered,
“It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it.”
So he dipped the morsel and took it and handed it to Judas,
son of Simon the Iscariot.
After Judas took the morsel, Satan entered him.
So Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.”
Now none of those reclining at table realized why he said this to him.
Some thought that since Judas kept the money bag, Jesus had told him,
“Buy what we need for the feast,”
or to give something to the poor.
So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.
When he had left, Jesus said,
“Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself,
and he will glorify him at once.
My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.
You will look for me, and as I told the Jews,
‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you.”
Simon Peter said to him, “Master, where are you going?”
Jesus answered him,
“Where I am going, you cannot follow me now,
though you will follow later.”
Peter said to him,
“Master, why can I not follow you now?
I will lay down my life for you.”
Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me?
Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow
before you deny me three times.”
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Reflection on the Scriptures
(A non-biblical parable). God asks a man to push against a gigantic rock. The man does so, day after day, but the rock doesn’t move. The man starts thinking, “What is the point of spending my effort on this? I’m not accomplishing anything – this rock is never going to move!” He is ready to put in minimal effort or even quit, but he takes his concerns back to God first, saying, “I’ve been doing what you asked. Why am I
failing?” God responds, “I didn’t ask you to move the rock. I asked you to push against it. Because you did what I asked, you are much stronger now than you were before.” At the end of the parable, God moves the rock.
The moral that I take from that story today is that God’s goal might be different than I imagine, and therefore my definition of failure might be different than God’s. At the very least, moving “the rock” is not all up to me. The important thing is to trust God and to keep communicating with God. In the second half of the first reading, Isaiah rejoices because of what God did after he seemed to work in vain for so long. God made
him more than a servant to Israel, but a light to the whole world! We respond with the psalm, “I will sing of your salvation. … For you are my hope, O LORD; my trust, O God, from my youth.” This is where we’re headed this week, and where Jesus is situated in today’s Gospel: it’s about to look like all his ministry and promise was for nothing, a failure. And yet! The glory of the Resurrection is around the corner, and that Easter morning light will gild everything that came before
it.
- by Molly Mattingly
The Son of God Became Human
From The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Part One, Section Two, Chapter Two
Article 3: He Was Conceived by the Power of the Holy Spirit, and Born of the Virgin Mary
Paragraph 1: The Son of God Became Man
VI. CHRIST'S HUMAN WILL
475 Similarly, at the sixth ecumenical council, Constantinople III in 681, the Church confessed that Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations, divine and human. They are not opposed to each other, but co-operate in such a way that the Word made flesh willed humanly in obedience to his Father all that he had decided divinely with the Father and the Holy Spirit for our salvation.110 Christ's human
will "does not resist or oppose but rather submits to his divine and almighty will."111
(Footnote references in the Catechism.)
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