Monday of the Third Week of Lent
This Week’s Intention: For those who suffer from psychological or emotional trauma or disorders, and for those who love them and suffer with them, that God may strengthen them through our understanding and support.
Today’s Gospel | Luke 4: 24-30
Jesus said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth: “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
Lenten Reflection
A popular topic these days at leadership workshops and seminars is how to manage change. Apparently, this stems from the fact that organizational change, which is so necessary for viability and efficacy, is difficult for many organizations because so many of their members resist it. People do not like change. They struggle with its risk, with its disruption and, most of all, with its implications. Change is work and change is personal. If things are going to change, then I am going to have to change.
It is one of the paradoxes of our human condition that people often want life to be different but rarely are willing to accept the need for change within their own lives. In Luke’s narrative on Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth, it is worth noting that Jesus was speaking to an audience made up largely of people who knew him and probably were prepared to hear a familiar and comfortable message from him. What they expected to hear was that God’s Kingdom was coming and that they all were to be saved. What Jesus told them was that God’s Kingdom was already upon them and had found them unwilling to recognize it. His message was pointed: will you accept the truth about yourselves in order for God’s salvation to visit you? Their vitriol was their answer: No.
Questioning the status quo can be a disquieting act. It can threaten our sense of control over who we are and how we live, disturbing our small and carefully constructed worlds with a larger reality of relationships and responsibilities. Change disturbs us, as do the bringers of change. It takes an open and inspired heart to trust change, let alone welcome it. It takes a heart not hardened by self-interest and self-delusion, one that allows us to see ourselves as we truly are and to see God at work within us, both calming our fears and wounding our pride for the sake of that sacred journey for which we all were made.
Journalist Herbert Agar once observed, “The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.” While we are anxious for life to get better, we sometimes do not want to be held accountable for what we either must do or cease doing in order for this to happen. The time of Lent is a good time for us to work harder at coming to terms with our own culpability for the presence of sin in our world, and to humbly accept the grace to change and grow that a patient and loving God is offering to us.
Prayer
Eternal Father, you are always with us, calling us to faithfulness, to follow your ways. Forgive us for the times when we have made ourselves blind to your presence and deaf to your voice. In this Lent, help us to recognize you in the gifts that surround us in the people we know and in the chances that we receive each day to celebrate life and make the world better. Strengthen us to endure the trials that doing your will may bring and to stay fixed on building your Kingdom. We ask this of you who lives and reigns with your Son and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.
St. John Baptist de La Salle, pray for us.
Live Jesus in our hearts forever.