Peter approached Jesus and asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
Matthew 18: 21-22
Today’s parable reminds us that often our desire to be forgiven does not match our desire to forgive others. Of course, we understand our personal circumstances and see clearly how they deserve leniency. Can’t you hear yourself saying:
“I didn’t mean it!”
“I just forgot.”
“Give me another chance!”
“I won’t let it happen again.”
Many times people do hurtful things because of their own fears. Mercy calls us to receive and forgive those fears and limitations with the same generous grace as God receives us. And our merciful openness must extend endlessly .. “77 times”. That kind of sincere forgiveness takes a lot of grace. Let’s pray for it today.
Poetry: Forgiveness – George MacDonald
God gives his child upon his slate a sum – To find eternity in hours and years; With both sides covered, back the child doth come, His dim eyes swollen with shed and unshed tears; God smiles, wipes clean the upper side and nether, And says, ‘Now, dear, we’ll do the sum together!’
… We proclaim Christ crucified, … … Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
1 Corinthians 1: 22-25
This is a great mystery of our faith: that the all-powerful One chose to redeem us by assuming our human weakness, suffering torment, and dying an ignominious death.
When my three-year-old grand-niece visited our convent, she enjoyed walking through the huge motherhouse pointing out every statue of Our Lady of Mercy.
With each discovery she would pronounce the title: “Jeezie and his Mommy”. At the end of a very long corridor, we came to a life-size wooden carving of Jesus Crucified. Little Claire studied it, looked up at me and asked, “Who is that?”.
I simply said, “I don’t know” because her sweet little heart could not bear to learn, or to possibly understand, what happened to her “Jeezie”.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Lent is the time to deepen our understanding of what happened to Jesus because of the “foolishness of God”. That Omnipotent Love suffered, died, and rose for us so that we would understand and embrace the meaning of Love in our own lives.
Let’s pray today for a fuller awareness that our lives are a continuing participation in the Great Love. Let us use these Lenten days to find the pattern of the Cross in our world, and to look within it for the Light of the Resurrection.
Poetry: The Foolishness of God – Luci Shaw
Perform impossibilities or perish. Thrust out now the unseasonal ripe figs among your leaves. Expect the mountain to be moved. Hate parents, friends, and all materiality. Love every enemy. Forgive more times than seventy- seven. Camel-like, squeeze by into the kingdom through the needle’s eye. All fear quell. Hack off your hand, or else, unbloodied, go to hell.
Thus the divine unreason. Despairing now, you cry with earthy logic – How? And I, your God, reply: Leap from your weedy shallows. Dive into the moving water. Eyeless, learn to see truly. Find in my folly your true sanity. Then Spirit-driven, run on my narrow way, sure as a child. Probe, hold my unhealed hand, and bloody, enter heaven.
Music: The Cross is Foolishness – John Michael Talbot (lyrics below)
CHORUS: The Cross is foolishness to those who perish But for us it has become the wisdom of God The Cross is foolishness to those who perish But for us it is salvation and power from God
Some look for miracles, some look for wisdom But we preach only Jesus crucified It seems absurdity, it seems so foolish But to us it is the wisdom of God
(CHORUS)
(CHORUS)
Eye has never seen, ear has never heard Nor has it dawned on the limits of the mind What God has surely prepared For those who love Him He reveals this wisdom through the Spirit of God
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons and asked … “Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom.” Jesus said in reply, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?” They said to him, “We can.” He replied, “My chalice you will indeed drink, but to sit at my right and at my left, this is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”
Mark 10:20-23
In our Gospel, Jesus makes it clear that the path to heavenly glory is bound by a spiritual discipline that, in this contrary world, will cause us suffering. The cup is that chasm in life where we must choose peace over violence, generosity over selfishness, mercy over judgment, truth over deception, love over indifference. There will be resistance, both within us and around us, when we make such choices.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Let’s be honest with ourselves as we answer Jesus’s question: “Can you drink the cup that I will drink?” Let’s pray for the grace to drink that cup as it comes to us in the particularities of our own lives. Let’s ask for the spiritual confidence and understanding that the cup – our cup – leads to eternal life.
Poetry: Can You Drink the Cup? – by Scott Surrency, O.F.M. Cap. (2015)
Can you drink the cup? Drink, not survey or analyze, ponder or scrutinize – from a distance. But drink – imbibe, ingest, take into you so that it becomes a piece of your inmost self. And not with cautious sips that barely moisten your lips, but with audacious drafts that spill down your chin and onto your chest. (Forget decorum – reserve would give offense.) Can you drink the cup? The cup of rejection and opposition, betrayal and regret. Like vinegar and gall, pungent and tart, making you wince and recoil. But not only that – for the cup is deceptively deep – there are hopes and joys in there, too, like thrilling champagne with bubbles that tickle your nose on New Year’s Eve, and fleeting moments of almost – almost – sheer ecstasy that last as long as an eye-blink, or a champagne bubble, but mysteriously satisfy and sustain. Can you drink the cup? Yes, you — with your insecurities, visible and invisible. You with the doubts that nibble around the edges and the ones that devour in one great big gulp. You with your impetuous starts and youth-like bursts of love and devotion. You with your giving up too soon – or too late – and being tyrannically hard on yourself. You with your Yes, but’s and I’m sorry’s – again. Yes, you – but with my grace. Can you drink the cup? Can I drink the cup? Yes.
Music: We Will Drink the Cup
We will drink the cup. We will win the fight. We will stand against the darkness of the night. We will run the race And see God’s face, And build the Kingdom of love.
Do not fear for I am with you. Be still and know that I am God.
You will run and not grow weary, For I your God will be your strength. Refrain
We are the Church, we are the Body. We are God’s great work of art.
Come now, let us set things right, 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.
Isaiah 1:18
The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
Matthew 22:12
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.
“Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a mountain that I will point out to you.”
Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
Often it is at the height of our joy, or the height of our sorrow that we feel closest to God. Intense experiences can bring us unequaled grace and opportunity for spiritual growth.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
In our prayer, we may gratefully remember the “mountains” of our lives, those times when joy, hope, pain, or anxiety built almost insurmountably in our hearts. How did God meet us in those moments? How did we meet God? How have our “mountains” transformed our lives?
Poetry: Unveiling the Heart’s Mirror – Rumi
All through eternity Beauty unveils His exquisite form in the solitude of nothingness; He holds a mirror to His Face and beholds His own beauty. he is the knower and the known, the seer and the seen; No eye but His own has ever looked upon this Universe. His every quality finds an expression: Eternity becomes the verdant field of Time and Space; Love, the life-giving garden of this world. Every branch and leaf and fruit Reveals an aspect of His perfection. The cypress gives hint of His majesty, The rose gives tidings of His beauty. Whenever Beauty looks, Love is also there; Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek Love lights Her fire from that flame. When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night Love comes and finds a heart entangled in tresses. Beauty and Love are as body and soul. Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond. They have together since the beginning of time- Side by side, step by step. I swear, since seeing Your face, the whole world is fraud and fantasy The garden is bewildered as to what is leaf or blossom. The distracted birds can’t distinguish the birdseed from the snare. A house of love with no limits, a presence more beautiful than venus or the moon, a beauty whose image fills the mirror of the heart.
Moses spoke to the people, saying: “This day the LORD, your God, commands you to observe these statutes and decrees. Be careful, then, to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deuteronomy 26:16
… you are to be a people peculiarly God’s own, as promised you; and provided you keep all his commandments,
Deuteronomy 26:18
… and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God, as he promised.”
Deuteronomy 26:19
Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:48
In our readings today, God calls us to BE in the fullness of grace. For the people of the Old Testament, that path was found in the Law and Commandments. For Christians, that fullness is found in patterning our lives on Jesus. He showed us that God’s perfection is beyond Law. It is absolute Love and Mercy.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
In our prayer, we might ask for a deeper understanding of the “perfection” God asks of us – not a measurable, demonstrable alignment with subjective guidelines, but an unlimited openness to grace. God’s perfection is a Love without boundaries. Jesus is that Love made Flesh. In God, we are called to live in their example.
Poetry: Easy to Love a Perfect God – Shams-i of Tabrizi
Shams-i Tabrīzī (1185–1248) was a Persian poet who is credited as the spiritual instructor of Rumi and is referenced with great reverence in Rumi’s poetic collection. The tomb of Shams-i Tabrīzī was recently nominated to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It’s easy to love a perfect God, unblemished and infallible that God is. What is far more difficult is to love fellow human beings with all their imperfections and defects. Remember, only you can know what you are capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love. Unless we learn to love God’s creation, we can neither truly love nor truly know God.
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here.
Luke 11: 30-31
Just like the Ninevites in Jonah’s time, we are called to turn our hearts fully to God. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, many prophets were sent with this message. But we have been given One greater than any of these prophets. Jesus is the ultimate Sign of God’s desire for our faith, love, and hope. We are called to live according to his Word.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy,
We might ask ourselves how free we are of the need to demand signs from God. When we live in deep relationship with another person, we trust their good will and loving intention toward us. We don’t have to ask them every five minutes if they still love us. We don’t have to pick apart their actions to test their intentions. We trust that they want only the best for us. How much more we can trust God who sent God’s own Beloved Son to redeem us!
Music: Two hymns today.
Son of God – by Starfield
God’s Own Son, Most Holy – by Ryan Flanagan
Verse 1: (From Christian Worship: a Lutheran hymnal #17) God’s own son, most holy Came a servant lowly Came to live among us Came to suffer for us Bore the cross to save us Hope and freedom gave us
Verse 2: (From The 1982 Hymnal: Episcopal, #53) Still he comes within us Still his voice would win us From the sins that hurt us Would the truth convert us Not in torment hold us But in love enfold us
Chorus: (Derived from 4th verse Common Service Book Lutheran #10 and Lutheran Service Book ) Come, O come, Lord Jesus From our sins release us Let us here confess you God’s own Son
Verse 3 Thus, if we have known him Not ashamed to own him Nor have loved him coldly But will trust him boldly He will then receive us Heal us and forgive us
Chorus Come, O come, Lord Jesus From our sins release us Let us here confess you God’s own Son, most holy Keep our hearts believing That we, grace receiving Ever may confess you God’s own Son, most holy
Verse 4 (From: The Chorale Book for England #26, changed to new English first person plural) But through many a trial Deepest self denial Long and brave endurance Must we win assurance That his own he makes us And no more forsakes us
Jesus said to his disciples: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Matthew 6: 7-8
I enjoy when Jesus is bluntly funny with his followers, as in today’s “Don’t babble!“. But my enjoyment wanes when I realize that he’s talking to me too. What about the quality of my prayer? Where do I fall on the “babble scale”?
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We might consider the quality of our prayer, just as we might consider the quality of our conversation with anyone we dearly love. Do we talk with them enough? Do we listen to them well? Do we talk about things that matter? Do we say “the important things” to one another? Do we know and love each other well enough that we can communicate without even speaking?
That deep silent dialogue with God is referred to as contemplative prayer. The site below is a great place to enrich our practice of this type of prayer.
One of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation, Jorie Graham is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1992 (1995) winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has taught for many years at Harvard University as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, the first woman to be given this position, which was previously held by Seamus Heaney and many other writers dating back to the first Boylston Professor, John Quincy Adams.
Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re- infolding, entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by minutest fractions the water’s downdrafts and upswirls, the dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing motion that forces change
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself, also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go. I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never. It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.
Music: The Prayer – written by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa and Tony Renis
The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the whole assembly of the children of Israel and tell them: Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.
Leviticus 19:1
How do we become more like our loving, merciful God? How do we become holy? Today’s reading offers us a series of “shall nots” and “shalls” to guide us: (Click on the picture if you want to see it bigger.)
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy
Let’s hold our lives in prayer beside these images.
Are there “nots” we wish to eradicate?
Are there imperatives we wish to live by?
Poetry: I Too Am Alone in the World – from “The Book of Hours” by Rainer Maria Rilkē
I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough to make every minute holy. I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing, shrewd and secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action, and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to be a mirror for your whole body, and I never want to be blind, or to be too old to hold up your heavy and swaying picture. I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie. And I want my grasp of things true before you. I want to describe myself like a painting that I looked at closely for a long time, like a saying that I finally understood, like the pitcher I use every day, like the face of my mother, like a ship that took me safely through the wildest storm of all.
Music: Holy God, We Praise Thy Name – Ignaz Franz
Holy God, We Praise Thy Name” (original German: “Großer Gott, wir loben dich”) is a Christian hymn, a paraphrase of the Te Deum. The German Catholic priest Ignaz Franz wrote the original German lyrics in 1771 as a paraphrase of the Te Deum, a Christian hymn in Latin from the 4th century.
The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.
Mark 1:12-13
Isn’t it shocking that even our Godly Jesus experienced temptation?
There is a devotional tradition that considers temptation an act of God to test us. You have probably heard the tired old adage, “God will never test us beyond our endurance.”
I think that this is a limited and skewed image of God! God is not our Tester, our Tormentor, or our Tease. God is our Creator and Lover.
It is LIFE that tests us, and God abides with us in every aspect of that testing, just as the Father did with Jesus in the desert.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Let us go with Jesus to the desert in our prayer today, asking his enlightenment over any dark corners of our faith, hope, and love. Life can tempt us to choose less than God desires for us. Let us ask for the strength to always choose God Who is Love.
Poetry: THE TESTING (A TRIPTYCH) – Irene Zimmerman, OSF This is part 2 of a three-part poem by Irene Zimmerman. I highly recommend her beautiful spiritual poetry which illuminates the sacred scriptures.
Higher and yet higher he was led till all the kingdoms of the world lay spread before his eyes, more splendid still than he had ever dreamed. “Worship me and these are yours,” the Tempter said. Mountains boomed and echoed a thundering “No!” The Son of Man would choose instead to go where he was sent, to have no place to lay his head, to be content to spread himself cross-beamed above a common hill.
Music: Jesus Tempted in the Desert – text by Herman G. Stuempfle (1923 – 2007); tune by Thomas J. Williams (1890)
Lavish Mercy 