Saturday - April 02, 2022
TODAY'S READINGS
SATURDAY OF THE FOURTH WEEK OF LENT
Lectionary: 249
Jer 11:18-20
I knew their plot because the LORD informed me;
at that time you, O LORD, showed me their doings.
Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter,
had not realized that they were hatching plots against me:
“Let us destroy the tree in its vigor;
let us cut him off from the land of the living,
so that his name will be spoken no more.”
But, you, O LORD of hosts, O just Judge,
searcher of mind and heart,
Let me witness the vengeance you take on them,
for to you I have entrusted my cause!
Responsorial Psalm 7:2-3, 9bc-10, 11-12
R. (2a) O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
O LORD, my God, in you I take refuge;
save me from all my pursuers and rescue me,
Lest I become like the lion’s prey,
to be torn to pieces, with no one to rescue me.
R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
Do me justice, O LORD, because I am just,
and because of the innocence that is mine.
Let the malice of the wicked come to an end,
but sustain the just,
O searcher of heart and soul, O just God.
R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
A shield before me is God,
who saves the upright of heart;
A just judge is God,
a God who punishes day by day.
R. O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.
Verse Before the Gospel Lk 8:15
Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart
and yield a harvest through perseverance.
Gospel Jn 7:40-53
Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said,
“This is truly the Prophet.”
Others said, “This is the Christ.”
But others said, “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?
Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family
and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”
So a division occurred in the crowd because of him.
Some of them even wanted to arrest him,
but no one laid hands on him.
So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees,
who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?”
The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.”
So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived?
Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?
But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.”
Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them,
“Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him
and finds out what he is doing?”
They answered and said to him,
“You are not from Galilee also, are you?
Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”
Then each went to his own house.
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How to Heal from the Sting of Rejection
To be "holy" means to be different from the world. Counter-cultural. Making no compromises in the moral teachings of the Church. Being bold and daring enough, and confident in Christ enough, and in love with God enough to stand firm in what is right and true regardless of the consequences.
This is not easy. No sacrifice is easy or else it is not truly sacrificial. And today's world preaches that sacrifices are a bad thing, that instead of making sacrifices we should cater to ourselves, our desires, and our ideas of what's right and what's wrong. Because of this, making sacrifices today is more distasteful than ever! It takes a lot of self-discipline to make sacrifices without complaining and grumbling.
But even when we learn to stand strong in the truth regardless of the sacrifices this requires, the rejection by loved ones is heartbreaking. And that heartache cannot heal until we see Christ's victory in their lives. And yet, God is bigger than that. He can heal our hearts.
I learned this years ago when God miraculously took away the pain I felt from the complete rejection of my son: my son, who had helped build Good News Ministries while he was a teenager. In 2004, he announced, while I was in the middle of teaching a week-long school of evangelization in a seminary in Malawi, that he would never speak to us again.
For the first several years of his rejection, God the Father allowed me to suffer the pain of it keenly, showing me that this is a tiny, little bit of how he feels about every child on the earth who is rejecting him. He allowed me to unite to him in this suffering. It increased my determination to be a faith-builder, to help others avoid the traps of Satan's lies. And it's given me a strong compassion for other parents who are being rejected (it happens in so many good Catholic families that it's a spiritual pandemic).
What have the sufferings of your sacrifices motivated you to do?
One morning to my prayer time, while I was moaning and crying to the Father, begging to know why prayers for my son's rescue have not produced results yet, God took my pain away. In one instant, it was gone. It's weird! Ever since then (about 10 years now), I've continued to feel sorrow for my son's (and now my daughter's, too) loss of faith and the demonic traps they're caught in. I grieve over the wrongness of their rejection of Christ and their rejection of my husband, Ralph, and me, but my heart does not feel broken. I grieve without mourning -- does that make sense?
What's the Lord cooking up?
Who are you grieving for? Remember this: Your prayers for them are like the heat of a stove. Before we begin to pray for something, God already has all the ingredients together, waiting for us to turn on the stove. The moment we begin to pray, he begins to cook up the answer.
The ingredients include our lives, the hardships we are undergoing, the various people involved, the hardships they need to endure, our trust in God, our faith growth and purification, etc.
Before you started praying, he already knew what the end result is going to be. He already knew the recipe and how to prepare the ingredients. He even already began dicing the vegetables and seasoning the meat. And he knows how long to cook each part of the recipe so that when everything is all put together, we will be able to dine with him enjoying a most scrumptious meal.
Who is the lost loved one for whom you've been praying the longest? What is the healing you've been asking for that has not yet occurred? Remember this: The yummiest foods are those that have marinated the longest!
Sacrifices conquer the devil when we unite them to the Passion of Christ. Keep your eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of your faith (Hebrews 12:2-3). He understood the joy of enduring the cross, scorning its shame, because he knew it meant victory. Keep your eyes on him who endured tremendous opposition from sinners, and you will not grow weary and lose heart.
And ask Father God to give you a great big hug, like he did for me. His hug will heal you from the sting of rejection. Repeat this prayer meditation as often as needed.
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The mother of Jesus promised St. Dominic that, “one day through the rosary & the scapular I shall save the world!”
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