Sunday Lectio 023: Second Sunday of Lent

welcome to godsplaining contemplative preachers contemporary age each week join the dominican friars as they consider all things catholic [Music] hello friends and welcome back to godsplaining it is the second week of lent which means all of you have already broken your london promises well maybe maybe you have and i have sort of a i tend to more total depravity in my own view of the goodness of nature which i realize in in some ways is a betrayal of the dominican tradition but um i'm a little bit skeptical of all of our ability to do all this without the immediate act of divine grace upon our wills um so as to fortify us but maybe you are doing well with your life tonight i certainly hope that's the case i hope that you're having a great plant you know um this lent of 2020 which has never ended just sort of i disagree with the premise that lent 2021 is its own thing like lent of 2020 has just continued right um and we're still in it again uh but here we are on the second sunday of lent which i guess is actually lent of 2021 um i am father patrick briscoe and i'm joined today by father gregory pine and father jacob bertrand janzek say hello to the good listeners fathers you first oh my gosh she said your name first oh really is that how it works i'm embarrassed well it's a pleasure to be with you i'm father gregory and is there a way that it works well it certainly didn't work the way we just did it so now that's true you can cross that one off the list abundant testimony i pointed at you but it was below the frame and then i brought it into frame but it was too late and also this is why father jacob bertrand makes me write everything out that i don't do that you know i followed the instructions here nice work hey you're killing it thank you uh pleasure to be here and i don't know what i would say in addition to that but i'll figure out something to say because i always do and with that i hand it over as long as it's not clear and artistic or clear as to who should be talking we'll be golden we'll keep going so just fine yeah you know if you tuned into last last sunday's episode father patrick left us with some great sort of spiritual direction advice of either you can swim in the what those pools of like uh suburbia completely urban pools yeah or you can go into the desert and feel something this land this you know and as he continues with his sort of spiritual guidance he's already despaired on your life so uh it's beautiful so stay tuned for his next my father's this is the nugget of wisdom yeah so now it's beautiful but uh yeah thank you well as father jacob bertrand noticed this is a episode so we're helping you to pray through the sunday readings in this lent so um yeah let's do that let us pray oh god who have commanded us to listen to your beloved son be pleased we pray to nourish us inwardly by your word that with spiritual sight made pure we may rejoice to behold your glory through our lord jesus christ your son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit god forever and ever amen all right for the first reading uh as it was taken from last week is from the book of genesis god put abraham to the test he called to him abraham here i am he replied then god said take your son isaac your only one whom you love and go to the land of moriah there you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that i will point out to you when they came to the place of which god had told him abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son but the lord's messenger called to him from heaven abraham abraham here i am he answered do not lay your hand on the boy said the messenger do not do the least thing to him i know now how devoted you are to god since you did not withhold for me your own beloved son as abraham looked about he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket so he went and took the ram and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son again the lord's messenger called to abraham from heaven and said i swear by myself declares the lord that because you acted as you did and not withholding from your beloved son i will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing all this because you obeyed my command the word of the lord thanks be to god i have in my office a i'm going to use a very technical term here ginormous copy of francisco de zubron's on you stay so this is a painting of a big ram horns and all bound and ready for slaughter but not yet dead which is very important so i got this painting when i was serving in saint pius and the parish business manager came in and she saw and she shrieked she said oh a dead lamb i said it's not dead islam has all but then prepared for sacrifice and so i have much the same effect now that i'm a college chaplain um people wander into my office and they say oh father what's with the dead lamb and i love this painting so much because it's an opportunity to explain to them about the nature of christianity which is sacrifice and conforming oneself to christ and not being afraid to give over to god what is properly his this is part of the mystery of the sacrifice of abraham it's a return to god what is god's own and this is really important for us to understand this lent that lent isn't a process of of giving or creating it's a process of reclaiming and returning so we talk about repentance and returning to the lord and offering back up to him the things that are properly his in our lives things which often we keep for our own selves whether whether it's our time whether it's uh you know and offering back to god more time and prayer whether it's our money and offering back to god more money for uh god's works um you know so thinking of all the traditional latin disciplines not as things that we create that are our own that are properly ours but things that belong to god which which are to be handed back over to him which are truly to be sacrificed this is the essence of christianity and this is why i have a bound not dead lamb over my desk it is a beautiful painting i have i have well i've seen it but i've also seen it in your office so thank you i like the frame too i don't remember that it draws out the kind of possibility okay when i was a student brother uh many many many years ago uh my sister uh i don't know if she'll appreciate this shout out but oh well uh she emailed me or called me or something she was taking uh she went to a catholic college and she was taking a class in the theology department and they were reading um they were reading this story and she called me and she said my teacher we were reading this and my my professor uh used this sort of example to show why god is really such a bad person and why you know the patriarchy is awful and uh this whole thing and she said i know he's wrong i'm not sure what to say and reply but i know he's wrong and you know that that's a great sense good job good there you know good on her for recognizing that that uh what she was being sort of taught was wrong but it does you know the the scene of from from this chapter in genesis does in some reading convey or it might convey the idea as it did last week with the flood and noah that that god is somehow um throwing these sort of cruel circumstances on his creation to sort of see if they can endorse see what they would give up for him and i guess on a super official reading and if you want to read through that lens you could see how that could be the conclusion but the reality is is that god doesn't test abraham god doesn't test us through the season of lent so as to give so as to sort of prove ourselves to him god doesn't need us to be tested the testing is not for god but it's it's in a sense for us as father patrick was saying it's an opportunity to give back to god what is god's not so that god can destroy it but so that god can bring it to fulfillment so that god can bring us to fulfillment and i think one of the pains here one of the difficulties here that we all face is is is when we're faced with with these sort of questions do i want to give this to god do i want to give this part of my life to god do i want this to be converted and to be changed and it's it's our freedom that that often is you know it's something how we image god that we are free in our will but it's often the point of of difficulty do i want to is my will ready do i do i have the ability to do it the beauty is that god doesn't impose himself on our freedom we are radically free we do not have to heed the gospel command to repent and believe in the gospel we don't have to it's up to us we're made for it we long for it in some way but we're free in this and we're free in this because if it were otherwise to repent and believe in the gospel would be something of manipulation not of love we can't be forced to love and through the season of lent as where as we're given this time to sort of hand back the things of god even our own lives to god it's really a matter of love do we respond to the mercy and love of god in a way proportionate as we can as human beings as as god loves us with everything that we are again not so that god can crush and destroy and manipulate but so that he can fulfill and redeem and bring to everlasting life and i think that's a way in which we ought to approach our penance and the season of lent and our penance in the whole christian life is it's a matter of being recreated as father patrick said not being sort of destroyed or manipulated by by the divine yeah and i think um to draw out comments from both i think that as we go through the readings for this sunday we find that all of them not that they evade us but they elude us or that they are beyond our comprehension and so part of the process of you know being shaped by the grace of the lord jesus christ part of this process of you know like the sacrifice described with a bound lamb and like the religious imagery that's brought to bear in these mysteries is that we're not going to always understand it right but that we can love it now mind you you can't love what you don't understand at all um and and knowledge kind of does precede or present the presence of love um but but love is actually a form of knowing um because when you have sympathy with the god who presents himself under sacred veils then you can kind of not grasp so much as suffer more perfectly what it is that he reveals so i think that yeah there's there's like i don't know 20th 21st century there's this real big emphasis on being able to understand everything that's said all the words 100 comprehension and making it so that nothing is said over the head of anyone it's like i don't know because god speaks over our head mind you he abbreviates the word he condescends to our level but he's always going to be bigger than our minds and hearts and i think that we you know it's part of trusting in him with this this recognition that that we can love what he gives us to be loved and in loving it we'll come to know it right so not only do you have faith seeking understanding but you have you have love seeking understanding with that we turn to our second reading a reading from the letter of saint paul to the romans brothers and sisters if god is for us who can be against us he who did not spare his own son but handed him over for us all how will he not also give us everything else along with him who will bring a charge against god's chosen ones it is god who acquits us who will condemn christ jesus it is who died or rather was raised who also is at the right hand of god who indeed intercedes for us the word of the lord thanks be to god i think the greatness of saint paul or a way in which we can see the greatness of saint paul is in his direct delivery he he kind of pulls no punches he just gives it to you when he see you know if you look through his letters he he has no problem calling people out for their moral debauchery he has no problem calling out saint peter he has no problem calling out the roman you know he's he's just there and he's going to tell you like it is and as such is the case with today's reading um to in the this passage from the letter of romans um that that line towards the end of that first paragraph well i guess if you're the text that i'm looking at the first paragraph where he says he who did not spare his own son but handed him over for us all how will he not also give us everything else along with him uh i think we need to take a moment to reflect on that on that reality that god who gave who created us and recreates us and saves us through his son there's really nothing greater to be given and if god is willing to sacrifice his own son if god is willing to give us everything in that then why would he why would he withhold anything else from us that we need it's less i think in the christian life of a matter of sort of getting what we what we want from god and much more the whole the whole life of conversion is much more about uh being attuned to god through his grace and desiring the things that are good for us that often aren't at odds but are you know it's more of an aligning than a sort of uh demanding in our relationship with god and this sort of objective presentation this this very basic god gave us everything already in his son so why would we expect him not to come through on the rest of his promises is a sort of uh invitation to enter into the objective reality of who christ is and what the christian life is about and in that it should be a great consolation should be a great consolation that in the second week of lent as you know as you've as father patrick's describes you've already sort of failed in all your atlanta promises the desert we've gone back to the pool left the desert you know all these things have happened well you know what great well we can take it up again start again but what really matters here is the objective reality that christ came christ died christ rose from the dead that's that's that's the bottom line and there's saint paul has no problem delivering it to us that simply and it's a beautiful reminder a calming reminder and one that you know ought to kindle that hope in the resurrection for our own lives so this idea of you know meditating on the the very person the identity of the lord jesus christ and having that before our minds and hearts uh is of central importance and i love the line with which saint paul begins this idea of christ being for us and in general right we can kind of reason from how christ engages with us back to how god is in his inmost identity and now we don't want to like anthropomorphize that's a big word meaning like take human things that christ does and just say like god is basically a big human so we don't want to say that right but we do want to say that what christ does in the flesh is revelatory of what christ does in the heart of the trinity right or in the bosom of the father and it is said you know and we see in living technicolor that that christ is for us and and so what does that mean well you can think about it in terms of the life of the most blessed trinity you know christ is a word breathing forth love right the second person of the trinity the word begotten by the father breathes forth love from all eternity and that gift of the spirit right which abides at the heart of the trinity is you know kind of spills over into creation and so we see that christ is for us and we know from that revelation that in god you know in in god in whom we have a place we will experience this if we persevere in grace and if we attain to glory so sometimes authors refer to this as christ's pro-existence probing you know like i am pro this thing or i'm pro that thing i'm for it right so christ is for us and it reveals to us at the heart of the trinity that god is for us not because god needs creation as we've mentioned on a variety of occasions but because god shows who he is in his interaction with us and we know from those interactions that he is good i always read this line and maybe i'm just becoming a salty new englander which is tragic you know my midwesternism is fading slowly away and becoming more skeptical it puts a smile on my face grouchy it's the winters it's the darkness it's a dark place why is there no light here uh be the light father patrick be the light so i read that's beautiful father gregory thank you uh so i read this line and i say if god is for us who can be against us i'm like well a lot of people [Laughter] well actually like have you taken a look like there are lots of people against us and so i want to say to saint paul like dude you know where were you on that one but st paul's situation was not any different than our own in terms of what the world thought vis-a-vis christianity i mean in fact uh we're in a better situation than saint paul in terms of the number of people that are actually for us you know in saint paul's day there wasn't one-sixth of the world's population that was catholic um there is now so we got that going for us you know one-sixth of the people are for us um five six of the people question mark um maybe maybe against us maybe kind of for us um you know but but at least question mark but to answer this question who can be against us i wish to i wish to echo what father jacob bertrand was saying is that we ought to have a deep confidence in the work of christ and like saint paul we should never hesitate from declaring boldly and brazenly the simple fact that well christ is going to win christ is winning christ has won and the mystery of lent is to enter into the battle which was fought and to fight it again in our own lives and to allow ourselves to be victorious with christ as father gregory was saying christ is the one who is for us so allow christ to be for you in your life by entering into the ways that you must fight the battles of the spiritual life that are before us so with that let us turn uh father jacob burch into the gospel a reading from the holy gospel according to mark jesus took peter james and john and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves and he was transfigured before them and his clothes became dazzling white such as no fuller on earth could bleach them then elijah appeared to them along with moses and they were conversing with jesus then peter said to jesus in reply rabbi it is good that we are here let us make three tents one for you one for moses and one for elijah he hardly knew what to say they were so terrified then a cloud came casting a shadow over them from the cloud came a voice this is my beloved son listen to him suddenly looking around they no longer saw anyone but jesus alone with them as they were coming down from the mountain he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone except when the son of man had risen from the dead so they kept the matter to themselves questioning what rising from the dead meant the gospel of the lord praise to you lord jesus christ so we often will state or we'll hear it professed in the context of the sacred liturgy or in catechesis or in preaching that jesus christ takes everything that is proper to human nature so he has a human soul and a human body as a human intellect and will passions he suffers hunger and thirst and death etc so he takes everything that's property humanity because what he has not assumed says saint gregory nazianzus um he has not redeemed so there's this real insistence on the integrity of the lord's humanity but it's not only a kind of vertical thing where you know he takes all of the aspects of a human nature but it's also a horizontal thing where he takes all of the aspects of a human life lived in time you know like lived step by step or lived over the course of years so there's something that's necessary to every aspect of christ's life like christ could have saved the world in any way he saw fit but he chose this particular way and so there's a wisdom to it there's a deep deep wisdom to it and it gives us the courage to live life according to that wisdom because you know if life were just a matter of dying in a state of grace then you know we'd find non-culpable ways of getting kind of shoved off a cliff after immediately after our baptism and then just like call it a victory but that's not the case you know it's like it's not the case that we just want to avoid big sins after our baptism we want to live a life that's graced because we want to follow in the footsteps of the lord who did the same and and here he shows us what's the key like what is it that helps us to understand this whole trajectory and it's the resurrection right because if christ is not risen from the dead then our faith is in vain and our preaching is in vain he died to no purpose we are most pitied most to be pitied of men and it's just it's just absurd it's just you and the void and sometimes it smiles back and sometimes it doesn't um so i think that like here the lord anticipates the trials the temptations the difficulties of his apostles and he begins to turn the key he shows them that by my death you will die to sin and by my resurrection you will rise to new life so all of the mysteries of my life um are meaningful and all of them are you know like they bear content and when they are applied to your lives through the sacramental dispensation of grace that you are going to be made like me and that's the point not just to die in a state of grace but rather to become like christ so it's beautiful just to orient us here in this second sunday of lent as we look forward to easter which you know still a month away but the the light of which already burns brilliantly in our minds and hearts so i've been looking at the studio monitor as it were as we've been recording and i was thinking to myself man i touched my face a lot i'm just sort of sitting here pawing my cheeks rubbing my neck scratching my eye that is so disgusting that of course that of course is um one of the great cova no no's um the other great kova nono is appearing without a mask on and part of part of me has such a visceral reaction to this um because of what it means for us spiritually i mean the whole of the old testament one of the great themes of the whole the old testament is a longing for god to reveal his face in fact that's um that's the antiphon for the mass for the second sunday of lent it is your face oh lord that i see not your face from me and the kind of facelessness of life right now um is soul crushing i mean it's it's another application of distance and separation and unknowingness and the extraordinary thing about the mystery of the transfiguration is that there god reveals his face so said thomas aquinas and other theologians believe that what the apostles saw in the vision of the transfigure christ was that they saw the resurrected christ they saw the the full perfection of christ christ's deity um was unveiled and unmasked for a brief moment and that was the that was the overwhelming vision that they experienced all of us have um experiences well i hope that all of us have had experiences like that in the spiritual life where god has been unmasked where we where we feel like we where we feel like we have seen his face um if not literally metaphorically and so the mystery of the transfiguration is um about going down and how we live in the world having seen the face of god being able to go from the deep expanse of that mystery to to head down the mountain to be able to share that with with others who like us long in the depths of their being to see his holy face the uh the gospel of the transfiguration is always something that kind of catches my attention as father patrick continues to touch his face if you're watching on youtube you can see that disgusting reality uh well yeah so the the transfiguration has always been a kind of powerful uh passage of the scriptures for me and one of the reasons why i asked for the name jacob is because of james i mean jacob is a derivative of james yacobos in the latin because of james's privilege of being at this great mystery in this great moment in christ's earthly life but rather than focusing on james and talking about him uh we're going to talk about peter i just wanted to mention james because it's pretty awesome awesome apostle for me this this reading the gospel reading stands in stark contrast uh in some ways with respect to peter as compared to the second reading from from the letter of saint paul to the romans where saint paul as i mentioned in in my thoughts on that is so direct and so clear about his thoughts we have peter here yet again not knowing what to do another moment of peter's sort of lack of lack of poise lack of clarity and mark reports that he he didn't know what to say so he offers building these tents for you know as patrick said what's thought to be the resurrected christ he probably doesn't need a tent but of course that's calling back to the old testament and the ark of the covenant and the dwelling for the ark but um peter again is on is on this sort of display of not a bumbling fool but sometimes pretty close to it so the gospel of matthew mark reveals this to us too mark is perhaps more harsh than matthew but through the gospels we have this over and again so peter walks out on the water and he doubts and then he begins to sink peter denies the crucifix crucifixion after calling our our lord god after naming him god and our lord has to tell him that famous sign get behind me satan then threefold denial of of christ at the at the crucifixion during christ's passion and hear this sort of i don't know what to do and you can't really blame peter here for not knowing what to do but um i don't know what i would do if the heavens were opened and elijah and moses were there and like christ in all his glory i would i would be at a loss too but it's that it's that being at a loss too that i think is that that i think is is so powerful because we can identify with peter because we are so like peter in so many ways that we our life is full of these sort of gaffes in our relationship with christ and yet that's not why peter is famous peter's famous for his faith for his love for his repentance and and you know that's that's that's the identity of a christian of loving god of repenting of clinging to him despite our sort of not knowing what to do all the time i think peter is peter's a great great example here and a great promise for us too that despite peter's you know uh failures he remained faithful he remained with god and even in this life was given a foretaste of heaven that's on offer for us too in our relationship with christ to be given a foretaste of heaven as father patrick mentioned these little glimpses into who god is as a promise of what's to come as a promise of what's to come you know there's peter is our is our great example on this and and is sort of a motto he is a motto for the christian life especially during lent well thank you to those of you who regularly listen to the podcast we appreciate you liking and sharing posts on social media on following our accounts we have now expanded the gods planning empire so if you if you'd like to continue your financial support we're grateful to those of you who have given to the podcast so that we can continue to improve um the quality of our recordings um so thank you to all of those who support us on patreon and know that that's available we also have merchandise so you can um proudly display your godspeeding pride at your local saint thomas aquinas study chapter so when you meet in person there will be no doubt about your loyalty to the order of preachers and to the truth uh led by our great guide the angelic doctor um as we continue this lent of 2021 the only lent of 2021 we're going to get we're thankful for the ways that god is active in our life we pray that he would allow us to see his graces more clearly and that we would respond more readily to each and every one of those opportunities and so i invite you to conclude now this time of reflection with me in prayer bless your faithful we pray o lord with a blessing that endures forever keep them faithful to the gospel of your only begotten son so that they may always desire and at last attain that glory whose beauty he showed in his own body to the amazement of his apostles through christ our lord amen thanks for listening to god's planning a work of the dominican friars of the province of saint joseph follow us on facebook twitter and instagram leave a review on your podcast app and visit us at godsplaining.org you

Channel: Godsplaining Podcast

Views: 821

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: catholic, dominican friars, theology, philosophy, religion, faith, order of preachers, godsplaining, seekers, Truth, preaching, questions, searching, prayer, meditation, frgregorypine, gregorypine, vocations, lectio, lent, catholicpriest, dominicanhouseofstudies, opeast, bible, church, orderofpreachers, romancatholic

Id: w3FJaZ7nVt8

Length: 30min 24sec (1824 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021