Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent
February 27, 2024
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022724.cfm
Come now, let us set things right,
Isaiah 1:18
says the LORD:
Though your sins be like scarlet,
they may become white as snow;
Though they be crimson red,
they may become white as wool.
The greatest among you must be your servant.
Matthew 22:12
Whoever exalts himself will be humbled;
but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
Today’s readings are studies in contrasts – white/scarlet; exaltation/humility.
Isaiah promises a transformative grace changing scarlet sins to snow-white goodness. In our Gospel, Jesus teaches the crowds that the way to holiness is in exact contrast to the practices of the Pharisees. The Gospel turns the patterns of the world upside down. Lent is the time to enter that turning.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Let’s pray for the humility that will allow us to open ourselves to God’s transforming grace – that wash of insight over our spirits, cleansing us of spiritual confusion.
Humility can be a tricky virtue. Its essence is not a sense of worthlessness or “less-ness”. Humility is instead a profound awareness that all belongs to God, and that we are privileged to share in that Abundant Life. Humility does not concentrate on the Self. It looks at the Other in grateful and expectant obedience.
Poetry: A Woman in Winter – from In Wisdom’s Path: Discovering the Sacred in Every Season by Jan L. Richardson.
A woman in winter
is winter:
turning inward,
deepening,
elemental force,
time’s reckoning;
sudden frost
and fire’s warming,
depth of loss
and edge of storming.
She is avalanche,
quiet hungering,
utter stillness,
snowfall brewing;
hollowed, hallowed,
shadows casting,
field in fallow,
wisdom gathering.
Waiting, watching,
darkness craving,
shedding, touching,
reaching, laboring;
burning, carrying fire
within her,
a woman turning,
becoming winter.
Music: White As Snow – Maranatha Singers
Lavish Mercy 