Lent

Jan 08 2025

Scripture Study for

In the Bible, God typically chooses leaders who, while always flawed and sometimes sinful, nevertheless are fundamentally obedient and loyal to God. An exception to this rule was the first king chosen to lead Israel, Saul, who proved to be unwilling to listen to God’s spokesman, the prophet Samuel. Now God chooses another king, the youngest son of Jesse, who will turn out to be a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22). God looks past David’s youth and sees a child who, with divine help, will be capable of following God “wholeheartedly.” And so immediately the newly chosen king receives God’s Spirit, equipping him to rule God’s people.

The New Testament letters make it clear that receiving new life in Christ entails personal transformation right now, not just forgiveness of past sins and future beatitude. To be reborn in Christ is to be rescued from the darkness of the world and to live in the light of the Lord. This light allows Christians to assess reality from the divine perspective, exposing “the fruitless works of darkness.” It also allows for transformation, producing in the individual “every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth.” It is in this sense that Christians have already woken up from the death of darkness and now walk in the life of Christ’s light.

At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus says he came so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind. The blind man received healing because he knew he could not see (i.e., was a sinner), and knowing it left him open to spiritual healing. The physically sighted leaders, who do see, paradoxically do not see their sinfulness. Their “sight” is illusory; they are just as “spiritually blind” as the blind man, but they don’t know it. Jesus forces a choice on them: will they recognize that they do not see, or will their hardheartedness lead them to reject the light of the world (John 1:9) and thus become truly blind.

Jan 08 2025

The Tender Voice of Jesus

Around the corner from my office is a statue by sculptor Ivan Mestrovic of the encounter between Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well. The Lord is looking straight at the woman. The woman is clinging to a large jar and looking down. It is midday. What did this woman expect when she woke up that day? Another dry and empty day as the pariah of the town? In Mosaic law, it is the husband who divorces the wife, so she has already been cast off five times. And her current live-in has not married her. Yet here is a bone weary male Jewish stranger, asking her for a drink. Asking her for a drink. Apparently from her bucket. No wonder she is looking down. This statue on the Notre Dame campus freezes time right there. But in the Gospel, we hear Jesus tenderly poke and prod and speak to her until she opens up and lifts her head. He holds out to her an abundance of the water of life, greater than she has ever imagined. And she takes it.

She drops her bucket (to which she clings so tightly in the statue) and runs to tell the news about the stranger. When she comes back, she doesn’t bring a bucket; she brings a whole village!

In art, we look at spaces, not just objects. What most impresses me about Mestrovic’s statue is the tenderness in the space between the two characters. Some of us are preachers, some are teachers. Whatever our ministry in life, when we seek to help people come to God, it is that tone of tenderness that crosses divides. More important than words, come into the space with gentleness. Living water will flow.

Consider/Discuss

Jesus also entrusts his thirst to us. We encounter him in order to be filled. Yet he has no bucket but ours. What is our role in fulfilling Jesus’ mission to the thirsty world in which we live?
Read through the Gospel again, this time imagining great tenderness in the voice of Jesus. How do you hear the passage differently?

Living and Praying with the Word

Like the woman at the well and the Israelites in the desert, Lord, sometimes we wonder if you—or anyone—cares. Yet you continue to tenderly poke and prod and speak to us. Help us to raise our eyes and see you looking at us with love. As we continue on through this Lent, bring us to repentance and to glory, but also deepen our tenderness in our mission to bring living water to those who thirst for you.

Jan 08 2025

Scripture Study for

After their deliverance from Egypt, the work of forming Israel into God’s people continues. Although they have seen God’s power to save, they have not experienced God’s ability to provide. Until they come to trust that their God is capable of meeting all of their needs, they will not be able to be faithful to the covenant relationship. The cry for water, revealing doubts that God is “in their midst,” is thus a “test” of God’s trustworthiness. God’s quick provision is intended not only to provide life-giving water, but also to inspire trust in the God with whom they will shortly enter into covenant relationship.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul explains that, whereas sin alienates us from God, faith in Christ brings about peace with God. More than this, Christ makes it possible to share in the divine life, which gives hope of future glory. This hope is firm because the believer already experiences the “love of God,” which can mean God’s love for the believer, the believer’s love of God, or both. In the first case, the Spirit and the life of grace are from God, a gift of love and a firm promise for the future. In the second case, the believer is able to love God through the transforming power of grace.

Today’s Johannine reading dramatizes a central theme found in the Prologue. Just as the Word was in the world but the world did not know or accept him (1:10–11), so at first the woman resists Jesus, “knowing” only that he is a Jew, estranged from Samaritans. But Jesus persists, declaring that if she really knew who he was she would have asked for “living water” from him, a metaphor for divine life and grace (“to those who did accept him, he gave power to become children of God” [1:12]). Eventually the woman comes to believe that he might “possibly be the Christ.” As a result of her testimony, others encounter Jesus and come to “know that he is truly the savior of the world.”

Jan 08 2025

The Divine Brilliance

I have been to the Holy Land once. I recall sitting on the bus with the sunshine of the morning sky flickering through the windows. As we bounced along, I realized how my early sandbox experiences of the warmth of the sun have deeply impacted my image of God.

As we drove north from Nazareth, I wondered how the radiance of the sunshine also impacted Jesus’ youngest images of his God as Father. Jesus rested by the Sea of Galilee that shimmers in the midday sun. Jesus climbed Mount Tabor that radiates with light. Jesus prayed on the Mount of Olives, where the clouds and the sky gleam with vibrant color. What stands out in my memory is the Holy Land’s brilliance. The Word became flesh in a place of luminous beauty.

In today’s readings, Abram and Paul and the apostles have glimpsed that radiance. Later in Genesis, Abram senses glory in the splendor of the stars in a deeply black sky, and believes. Paul himself has obviously experienced that magnificence, for he calls Timothy to grab hold of it. The apostles see it in the person of Jesus, transfigured in front of them. He is dazzling! He is radiant! He is bright! This is the deeper reality of the glory of the Son of God. Peter and James and John get a preview of that glory and they don’t really know what to do with it.

We may have also seen flickers of God’s glory. Yet more radiance surrounds us than meets the eye. What we may have glimpsed is as faint as the light of a candle compared to the brilliance of the sun. The dazzling One surrounds us and enfolds us at all times. The holy Light will transform us if we let it.

Consider/Discuss

In prayer, have you seen it? Have you ever felt your rib cage so swell up with holy warmth that you almost could burst? Have you seen that Radiance? Have you felt just on the edge of that “more?” Share your story with another believer whom you trust.
We see the grandeur of a sunset, dazzling sparkles in the snow, or the shimmer of light on the water. In our sacramental understanding of the created world, flashes of earthly beauty lead us to the grandeur of God. This week, take a few extra moments to absorb and delight in the radiant beauty that surrounds you.

Living and Praying with the Word

Shower your steadfast light upon us, O Lord. You have flashed, you have revealed, and you have bathed us with your glory. Yet we cannot begin to contain your luminous beauty. Cleanse us this Lent so that we are more fitting vessels for your grandeur. Stir the spark of our faith until it has been stirred into a living flame of love. Then help us to overflow with your joy so that others may behold you as well.

Jan 08 2025

Scripture Study for

The early chapters of Genesis display the repercussions of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, passed on as an inclination to sin. In the call of Abram we see the beginning of a long-term divine plan to deal with the problem of the human heart. In the promise that initiates the relationship that will eventually lead to the creation of God’s covenant partner, Israel, God assures Abram not only of descendants and land, but also that “all the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.” It is through Israel that God will bring all humanity back into that harmonious relationship with God they originally enjoyed in the Garden.

In his letter to Timothy, Paul reminds the young man that he has received a gift from God that must be “stirred into flame” (2 Timothy 1:6). Timothy has received a commission to teach the Christian message in its integrity. This task will bring hardship, yet Timothy is to take heart and be strong; like all Christians, he has been saved and called by Christ to a holy life. This is not the result of anything Timothy has done, but is purely through the design and call of God. The “life and immortality” that Christ brings is a pure gift, but it calls for a response: a holy life that manifests the “light” of the gospel that Timothy is called to proclaim.

On a mountain called Sinai (or Horeb), God appeared to Moses, the people of Israel met their Deliverer, and Elijah encountered God in silence. It is fitting, then, that the divine sonship of Christ, just confessed by Peter (16:16), should now be confirmed on a mountain. The Transfiguration of Jesus reveals not only his identity and authority as God’s beloved Son, and as the fulfillment of the law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah), but also a hint of his post-resurrection glory. Since the truth revealed on the mountain can only be understood and accepted in light of that future event, the disciples are ordered not to speak of it for the time being.