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When Saint Francis met the leper, it was Jesus he’d met, and the Lord was saying, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matthew 25:35–37).
First Sunday of Lent | Readings: Mark 1:12–15; Matthew 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13
Saturday After Ash Wednesday | Isaiah 58:9b–14; Luke 5:27–32
Reflection
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Friday After Ash Wednesday | Readings: Isaiah 58:1–9a; Matthew 9:14–15
Early in the Gospel of Mark (2:18-22), Jesus runs into a series of conflicts with the Jewish religious leaders. One such conflict involved the law of fasting.
Thursday After Ash Wednesday | Readings: Deuteronomy 30:15–20; Luke 9:22–25
There’s something about Ash Wednesday that draws us in, calls us to return to sanity, to a change of heart and mind.
Lent doesn’t take us away from our ordinary lives, but rather it invites us to bring a new and holy attention to those activities. This should be the way with all of our spiritual practices. We take time apart in order to return to our daily activities with new inspiration. God will always surprise us with possibilities when we least expect them. Let this Lent be one of those surprises.
Reflection
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2 Corinthians 5:20—6:2
In its fullness, prayer is an encounter with God that transforms the way we see and interact with the world. It is like a bright light that reveals what we otherwise do not see: When we wear glasses or look through a window away from the light, we can believe that the glass is perfectly clean. But turn our perspective and hold it up to the light, all of a sudden we are able to see smudges, scratches, and cracks that have been there all along but completely hidden to our normal consciousness. That is the effect that an encounter with God can have on our lives.
Like visiting any monastery, in watching Paterson, what you find is that simplicity is the opposite of boring—it is profound.
