Lenten Meditations: Sunday 26 March
| Sun Mar 26 |
am: 126 pm: 145 |
Isaiah 43:16-21 | Phil 3:8-14 | John 8:1-11 |
FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT – Sometimes known as Passion Sunday
LITURGICAL THEME FOR THE DAY: Until 1959, the fifth Sunday of Lent was known as Passion Sunday. It marked the beginning of a two-week-long period known as Passiontide, which is still observed by some Anglicans, Lutherans and various traditionalist Latin Catholics. This transition in the modern liturgical movement began in 1960, with Pope John XXIII Code of Rubrics, which changed the name for this Sunday to “First Sunday of the Passion” bringing liturgical consistency with what was established five years earlier in 1955 by Pius XII when the Sixth Sunday of Lent, became known as the “Second Sunday of the Passion or Palm Sunday”.
BIBLICAL MEDITATION OF THE DAY : The idea of complete and total loss is frightening to us. We see and hear the fear in people when they have the idea that they have lost everything in the stock market or in the flood that has ripped through their town and home. Paul writes in this powerful chapter continuing the theme established in the opening chapter, that all that we could have accomplished is rubbish when compared to knowing the saving power of Jesus Christ in our lives. The looming questions of Holy Week will challenge whether we believe that to be true in each and every one of our lives. Is Christ Life to us, is all else loss without him? If so, how does our life reflect that inestimable gain? How do we forget what is behind us and run the race to the finish?
The question we should start to consider, (just as the catechumens are considering these questions as they prepare for Holy Week) is do I accept that as a person who has been baptized into Christ and is letting Jesus be his or her authority in all things is living a “life crucified worthy of this calling? Is able to stretch oneself and focus on the prize straining ahead? Or we could not assess ourselves at all and do what the Pharisees so in today Gospel and assess the moral and spiritual worth of another instead of self?
PRAYER OF THE DAY: By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God, may we walk eagerly in that same charity with which, out of love for the world, your Son handed himself over to death. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
ANCIENT WISDOM/PRESENT GRACE: “Let me receive pure light; when I shall have arrived there, then shall I be a man”. — St. Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Rom., 6, 1-2: Apostolic Fathers, II/2,
Lenten Discipline – Go through your house and let go of things that are obstacles to your living a life worthy of your calling. Do our possessions possess us or do we possess them. Leave them behind and make your way toward the finish line.
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