Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent
March 22, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032224.cfm

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I hear the whisperings of many:
“Terror on every side!
Denounce! let us denounce him!”
All those who were my friends
are on the watch for any misstep of mine.

Jeremiah 20:10

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Oh, the deadly power of a fragile whisper! Its insidious influence seeps into souls, germinates, and grows into fictional suggestions, untested prejudices, and effective shunning by the “in” set.

Whispers are the emanations of fear – we may fear what is different, what we cannot control, what challenges us, what actually exposes pretense in us.

Jeremiah and Jesus encountered the ugly entanglement of such whispers. But they were not trapped because they believed.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray their prayer for ourselves and for all who suffer the persecution of “whisperings”.

The LORD is with me, like a mighty champion:
my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph.
O LORD of hosts, you who test the just,
who probe mind and heart,
Let me witness the recompense you take on them,
for to You I have entrusted my cause.

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Poetry: A Word – Emily Dickinson

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

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Music: from Handel’s Messiah: He trusted in God that He would deliver him