Rev. James A. Wallace, C.Ss.R.

Jan 14 2025

Lent as Inner Journey

Sometimes a journey of great significance covers a very short distance, geo-graphically speaking. Flannery O’Connor once said that everything important happened to her between the back door of the house and the chicken coop. Moses led the people of Israel from grumbling and complaining to a renewed faith by walking a few feet to tap a rock.

The journey in today’s Gospel is an inner journey into faith in Jesus. Notice how the woman’s perspective changes as the story progresses. With that change of perception comes a change of heart. Her first response to Jesus’ request for a drink of water is curt: “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (John 4:9). But after Jesus speaks about being able to give her living water, she sees him as one who will relieve her of the burdensome daily trip to the well, or even of ever being thirsty again.

Another shift comes after he tells her of her broken marriages. She recognizes him as a prophet. There is yet one more step to take, and Jesus helps her by offering a vision of a future time when all will worship together, and then confessing to her that he is the Messiah, the Christ. Through her witness, the village comes to meet Jesus and then finally to recognize him as savior of the world.

Lent invites us to journey with this woman and recognize Jesus in his fullness: as one who thirsts for us, who also brings us the life-giving water of baptism, who is a prophet speaking for God, who is the promised Messiah, and most especially, who has come to save us.

Consider/Discuss

What do you thirst for?
How do you relate to Jesus? Do you recognize him as truly human, as a prophet, as the promised Messiah, as the Savior and Son of God?

Responding to the Word

We can pray that Jesus will bring us to see him as living water that can satisfy us. We pray for all those preparing to be washed in the waters of baptism, that they will recognize in Jesus the source of eternal life.

Jan 14 2025

Destination 2—The Mountain

Lent is an invitation to journey more deeply into the heart of God. What God asks of Abram is a willingness to trust that God will lead him. Abram is called from the very beginning to place his trust in the Lord and in the Lord’s promises. We are told that Abram is seventy years old at the time he goes forth. I remember someone remarking, “Imagine coming in the house and saying to your wife, ‘Honey, we have to pack up and go I know not where.’ ” We are told simply: “Abram went as the Lord directed him” (Genesis 12:4a). Abram’s faith translates into trust that God is leading him.

Jesus brought the three apostles up a high mountain. Mountains often served as the meeting place of God and the prophets—Moses and Elijah come to mind. When Jesus and the three reach their destination, Jesus is transformed before them, face and clothes shining. Suddenly Moses and Elijah are talking with him. You can understand Peter wanting to stay there. But this is not journey’s end. That will happen on a hill outside Jerusalem. For now, they hear words meant also for us this day: “This is my beloved Son . . . listen to him” (Matthew 17:5).

We are asked to journey with Jesus for forty days—sometimes it may be into the desert of testing, sometimes up a mountain for a moment of blinding clarity. In both places we know Jesus as the beloved Son who trusts in the Father’s will. Lent invites us to make that same journey into trusting the Father.

Consider/Discuss

Have you had a “mountain experience” when you came to know Jesus as God’s beloved Son? Was your reaction similar to that of Peter, who did not want it to end?
How is God calling you to trust? How is God calling you to listen to Jesus?

Responding to the Word

God has called us to a holy life (1 Timothy 1:9). This week, as we journey with Jesus into the presence of the Father, listen for how the Father may be speaking to you now. Ask God to open your ears and eyes to recognize the beloved Son’s presence.

Jan 14 2025

Destination 1—The Desert

Twice a year the Gospels take us to the desert. John the Baptist cries out on two Sundays every Advent, and Jesus encounters Satan every Lent. What makes the desert so ideal a setting as we prepare to celebrate the two great mysteries of our faith?

The desert is a place of testing, as God’s people learned when they wandered around it for forty years. With hardened hearts, they had rejected the God who had liberated them from slavery in Egypt, losing faith even while God was talking to Moses and setting down the conditions for their adoption. Up went the golden calf and out went the memory of what God had just done for them.

Even Eden wasn’t enough to keep the human heart open. Even there it was clear that we could be seduced by anything that looked good and promised more than it could deliver. But Jesus showed that one of us could measure up to the test and reveal himself as the “beloved Son” that he had been called at his baptism (Matthew 3:17).

The desert is also for wooing. The prophet Hosea quotes God saying, “So I will allure her [Israel]; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart” (Hosea 2:16). And when Satan left Jesus, God sent “angels [who] came and ministered to him” (Matthew 4:11).

So we come to this Lent and the possibility that God wishes to draw us out into a quiet, lonely place to have us meet the One who made us, redeemed us, and continues to shape us into temples of the Holy Spirit.

Consider/Discuss

What do you associate with the desert?
Is there any particular place you consider “the desert” where God meets you?
Are you being tested today in terms of living out the baptismal call to be a beloved son or daughter?

Responding to the Word

We pray that this Lent will be a time of deeper understanding of what it means to be God’s beloved child. We ask God to open our eyes to recognize those things that draw us away and to be open to how God might be drawing us closer.

Jan 14 2025

Words to Build a Life On

The poet Anne Sexton once wrote that words may be both daisies and bruises. We live in a time when words seem to wound and divide people more than heal and unite them. Whether in the realm of politics or religion, words have become weapons more often than bridges to understanding and cooperation. But we are a people who over the centuries have been formed by the word of God in both the Old and New Testament.

Both Moses and Jesus knew the power of words that have taken root in the human heart and carry over into action. In the book of Deuteronomy Moses gives his final speech to the people he has led out of bondage and brought to the border of the Promised Land. He calls them not only to wear these words on their body as emblems of faith, but to “take these words of mine into your heart and soul” (Deuteronomy 11:18).

Jesus begins by saying that words alone are not enough; what matters in the end is doing the will of the Father. And what is the Father’s will? Go back and read the entire Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1 — 7:29). The call to live in a way that brings the law of Moses to fulfillment is to be heard, taken to heart, and carried into action. The instruction given to the disciples remains an urgent command to bring about the kingdom of heaven now. Jesus’ words will be a sturdy shelter that protects them when battering storms threaten to overwhelm.

Consider/Discuss

Take some time to reread the Sermon on the Mount.

Which of Jesus’ words do you find most challenging?
Which do you feel are particularly addressed to you at this time of your life?
Is there a word that you are hearing for the first time?

Responding to the Word

We pray that our lives will have a strong foundation on the teachings of Jesus. We pray that his words will be seeds that bear fruit in lives of justice, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness. We ask that these words find a home in our heart and soul.

Jan 14 2025

God Is Trustworthy

I am writing this in the aftermath of the earthquake that shattered Haiti. The devastation has been beyond words. Newspapers and telecasts were filled with pictures of the dead and heart-breaking stories. As of this writing over 150,000 are presumed dead—perhaps many more—and thousands upon thousands are wounded. There is little food, water, or shelter, and few medical supplies. Yet even in the face of this tragic event, an evening news program two nights after the earthquake had footage of a large group in Port au Prince lifting their voices and hands in prayer, praising God.

This radical faith in God is what Jesus calls his disciples to have. The Father did not intervene to save his Son from death, but neither did he allow death to have the final word. He raised his Son from the dead. This saving death has remained the sign above all signs that God wills us to have eternal life. It can seem impossible at times not to worry about tomorrow. But Jesus assures us that the Father does not abandon us—ever!

We are all called to be stewards of the mysteries of the faith that is centered in the person and saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are to hand on what has been handed down to us: that Jesus is God’s only Son, who suffered and died and was raised for our salvation, and by our baptism we are brought into this mystery of living, dying, and rising in Christ.

Consider/Discuss

Has your faith in God’s care been tested?
How do you respond to Jesus’ words about God as a loving father and to Isaiah’s words about God as a loving mother?
Do you need to ask God to restore your trust in God?

Responding to the Word

Today’s psalm response is a wonderful prayer of the heart to carry through the week: “Rest in God alone, my soul” (Psalm 62:6a). We can pray with the psalmist that we find our peace in God who is our rock and our salvation, our stronghold. Let us trust in God at all times and pour out our hearts to our loving God.