Do not distress yourself on account of any distaste or dryness you experience in God's service. He wills that you should serve Him fervently and constantly it is true, but without any other help than simple faith, and thus your love will be more disinterested, and your service the more pleasing to Him.
-- St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
TODAY'S READINGS
Saturday after Ash Wednesday
Lectionary: 222
Reading I
Is 58:9b-14
Thus says the LORD:
If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
He will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose water never fails.
The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake,
and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up;
""Repairer of the breach,"" they shall call you,
""Restorer of ruined homesteads.""
If you hold back your foot on the sabbath
from following your own pursuits on my holy day;
If you call the sabbath a delight,
and the LORD's holy day honorable;
If you honor it by not following your ways,
seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice--
Then you shall delight in the LORD,
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
I will nourish you with the heritage of Jacob, your father,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 86:1-2, 3-4, 5-6
R. (11ab) Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.
Incline your ear, O LORD; answer me,
for I am afflicted and poor.
Keep my life, for I am devoted to you;
save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God.
R. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.
Have mercy on me, O Lord,
for to you I call all the day.
Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
R. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.
For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in kindness to all who call upon you.
Hearken, O LORD, to my prayer
and attend to the sound of my pleading.
R. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.
Alleluia
Praise to you O Christ, King of eternal glory
I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, says the Lord,
but rather in his conversion, that he may live.
Praise to you O Christ, King of eternal glory
Gospel Lk 5:27-32
Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, "Follow me."
And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him.
Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house,
and a large crowd of tax collectors
and others were at table with them.
The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying,
"Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"
Jesus said to them in reply,
"Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.
I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners."
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The Good Thing About Temptations
It is often said that the battle for the soul takes place in the mind.
When your mind wanders, where does it go? Does it follow Christ or is it enslaved to worldly ideas? During times of stress, what fills your mind? Prayers and trust in Jesus? Or complaints and misery?
Or both?
We all have vulnerabilities that demons take advantage of when given the opportunity. For example, recently I had good cause to be upset with a certain priest. He had been rude and demanding to someone that I care very much about. My anger was justified. I’m sure that even God was angry about it. But what happened next would determine whether it would lead me closer to Christ or ensnare me in the devil’s trap.
Whenever we cling to righteous anger — dwelling on the reasons for our anger — a tempter is taking notice, hoping to turn it into sinful anger. To remain holy, we need to relinquish to God the justice we desire. I wanted to tell the priest how wrong he had been. I rehearsed in my head what I could say to him. There would have been nothing wrong about the truths I would speak, but God rescued me from the trap that I was falling into.
There’s a defining moment when a righteous idea, a holy motive, or an innocent reaction turns into self-idolatry. It’s the moment when we want to take matters into our own hands. Temptation says (with a very strong voice): “You be the judge and the jury and mete out the justice.”
If we repent of this natural desire, we hear God telling us to let him mete out the justice in his own good time and in his own good way. Meanwhile, we pray for the person who offended us. We choose to love our enemy. We only reprove him (if and when God sets the stage first) with words that build him up and release the goodness that’s within him.
Lent is an exercise of gaining strength over temptations. Winning this battle is not as difficult as it feels. When we face our weaknesses, we give God the freedom to be strong for us. If we turn to him in prayer and in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and in the Eucharist, he sets us free from our enslavement to sin through what Jesus did for us on the cross and through our personal relationship with the Holy Spirit.
Every time our minds go in a direction where Jesus is not found, we have a very important opportunity to repent — which means change direction. It’s a wonderful thing! Our sin-directed minds are revealing to us the next step in our sainthood.
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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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