Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent
March 11, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031124.cfm

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Thus says the LORD:
Lo, I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
The things of the past shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness
in what I create;
For I create Jerusalem to be a joy
and its people to be a delight;
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and exult in my people.

Isaiah 65: 17-19a

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To create – not just “to make”, the way we make a cake, or a snowball, or a campfire which always depends on our ideation for existence.

But rather to generate something new, fully enlivened and freed by our faith, hope, and love – to be no longer what was made, but to become itself.

This is how God dreamed Creation to Life, around us and in us. This is how we and all Creation are re-created in the Paschal Mystery and in the Eucharist.

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, let’s pray with this powerful act of praise over a New Creation:

from The Mass on the World – Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

“Since once again, Lord - though this time not in the forests of the Aisne but in the steppes of Asia - I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the Real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world.

Over there, on the horizon, the sun has just touched with light the outermost fringe of the eastern sky. Once again, beneath this moving sheet of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles, and once again begins its fearful travail. I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labour. Into my chalice I shall pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth’s fruits.

My paten and my chalice are the depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from every corner of the earth and converge upon the Spirit. Grant me the remembrance and the mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to the new day . . .

Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day say again the words: ‘This is my Body’. And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: ‘This is my Blood’.”

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Music: Essence – Peter Kater