Sunday Lectio 025: Fourth Sunday of Lent

[Music] welcome to godsplaining contemplative preachers contemporary age each week join the dominican friars as they consider all things catholic [Music] welcome to godsplaining uh this is the fourth sunday of lent les tarres sunday not to be confused with gaudete sunday which is during advent it's lestar sunday fourth sunday of line uh i'm father jacob burton janzik i'm here with father gregory pine father patrick briscoe hi fathers welcome to the show this could be the sort of like sesame street episode right l for later and for losing on our lenten promises oh my gosh this is a real uh motif that's my theme you're doing turning left it's only god's grace can heal you it's great yup well that's true that's true um right so this fourth sunday of lent we wear the color what was it father patrick rose please it's just pink it's just pink just say what you see it is pink okay we wear pink um because why well because we're halfway through lent so i guess right i don't know the numbers always are confusing but we're in the middle of lent and in the middle of lent the church gives us a day to rejoice and a day to sort of have um yeah a bit of celebration lenten celebration uh to sort of encourage us to carry on with the rest of the season so here we are so we'll do our normal sunday lectio with you all get to our readings reflect on the readings for this sunday's gospel to share with you some of our brilliant insights that rival those of the fathers and uh here we go we'll start with the collect and then we'll dive in in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen oh god who through your word reconcile the human race to yourself in a wonderful way grant we pray that with prompt devotion and eager faith the christian people may hasten toward the solemn celebrations to come through our lord jesus christ your son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit god for ever and ever amen in the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit all right father gregory is going to take us to the first reading first reading is from the second book of chronicles in those days all the princes of judah the priests and the people added infidelity to infidelity practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the lord's temple which he had consecrated in jerusalem early and often did the lord the god of their fathers send his messengers to them for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place but they mocked the messengers of god despised his warnings and scoffed at his prophets until the anger of the lord against his people was so inflamed that there was no remedy their enemies burnt the house of god tore down the walls of jerusalem set all its palaces of fire and destroyed all its precious objects those who escaped the sword were carried captive to babylon where they became servants of the king of the chaldeans and his sons until the kingdom of the persians came to power all this was to fulfill the word of the lord spoken by jeremiah until the land has retrieved its lost sabbaths during all the time it lies waste it shall have rest while seventy years are fulfilled in the first year of cyrus king of persia in order to fulfill the word of the lord spoken by jeremiah the lord inspired king cyrus of persia to issue this proclamation throughout his kingdom both by word of mouth and in writing thus says cyrus king of persia all the kingdoms of the earth the lord the god of heaven has given to me and he has also charged me to build him a house in jerusalem which is in judah whoever therefore among you belongs to any part of his people let him go up and may his god be with him the word of the lord thanks be to god there's this folksy irish idea of this thing called thin places and uh you know other cultures have it too in a thin place it can be kind of a natural place um or or any other place where one is close to the sacred and this is an idea that i think we have some kind of natural inclination to right like especially if we look upon a a natural vista you know say for example the swiss alps um you know when we see the magnificence of god and we can we can feel like that place is a thin place we can feel very close to god there um but it also maps on to what the lord has revealed about himself that he dedicates some places as thin places some places that are the actual dwelling places of god so this is what this is what the lord promises to the jewish people that he will be with them that there will be a place where god can be found where god can be worshipped a place where heaven and earth will always meet a place where people below can contact can touch the things of above so this is the idea between behind rather all the holiness codes of leviticus and other books of the old testament where the lord where the lord promises that um by by these rituals places will be cleansed and will be readied for him one of the things that i love about our catholic faith is that we have much the same ideas we we we don't just bless our churches we dedicate or solemnly consecrate them you know we drive out the spirits of evil from their very walls so as to make fitting dwelling places for god um they are actually sacred spaces because god we we think that god actually lives there and what we see in this first reading is the importance of cleansing such a place when it has been defiled so you'll read um you know in the news we've seen last year the uptick of uh catholic churches that have been attacked um which is a terrible thing that these sacred spaces would be defiled um or even uh god save us but we've seen the sins of the clergy where places have been defiled and we've seen our bishops and other leaders in the church reconsecrating sacred places we have that happen to us here at providence college when our cemetery was defiled bishop tobin came and reconsecrated our cemetery blessed it drove you know drove forth the spirits of evil from it so that our brothers could continue to rest there in peace i think this is very important to us that we need we need to recall this to say it to teach it to our children um and to really believe it in our hearts that it's different to go to a sacred place than it is to not be in a sacred place one way to to read scripture one way to well a good way there are many ways but a good way to read scripture is to look at look at what is given to us in the word and ask the question of what does this teach us what does this teach me about god what do i what is god revealing in these words uh and then also what is god revealing about me in these words what is he teaching whether that's about like humanity whether it's about me as an individual we can do this on you know any kind of different level sort of the macro macro cosmic level microcosmic level but it's it's a good exercise when we're looking at scriptures to ask what does it teach about god and what does it teach about me and and not in disjointed ways but in in a connected way so what does it mean then about my relationship with god and if we were to look at this first reading in that way um that we have today there's sort of a summary of of what's gone on in the book of chronicles right so you have you have the the israelites the chosen people of god who behaved unrighteously and to scorn the prophets uh you have their the ensuing babylonian exile their punishment their self-inflicted punishment really for rejecting god and then you have king cyrus the persian who recalls or reorders as father patrick was describing the this temple this temple worship who brings the israelites and not a persian who brings the israelites back to the temples you kind of this this this track here that we can follow it describes on a macro cosmic level what happened with the israelites but we can also think about these steps with respect to ourselves you know that remember to recall our baptisms that in our baptism we are made um we're made holy in the eyes of god we're made sacred we're made we're become the adopted sons and daughters of god but our sin also um our sin has that is self-inflicted that we choose to do ruptures ruins hurts that relationship with god um but we're also called as father patrick was describing to through the sacrament of penance and through the graces of the sacraments to return to be reconsecrated as a sort um to be healed and and put back into right relationship with god so when we read these old testament readings that can sometimes see sort of seem sort of i don't know kind of hard to kind of enter into or kind of just so far away or kind of so chock full of details and people and places that it just kind of seems to be an unrelatable thing remember that in these in these circumstances and in these um in these recounting of israelite history and these sorts of things that our lord is also revealing to to me to you um so how is it that you fit in well remember that that we are in virtue of our baptism we are god's sons and daughters his adopted sons and daughters that we have sinned we are sinners but there's a savior that god wants to continually re-create us in his grace this is we kind of fall neatly in that way into the into the story of salvation history which is i think pretty pretty cool but also uh pretty a great cause of of hope of hope just to pick up a little bit on something that father patrick described um this idea that god is wed to a place i'm struck by the line for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place you don't typically think of compassion as you know potentially ordered to a place but it goes to show the kind of peculiar logic of the temple and its cult in the life of israel um because not only is the lord present to it you know in a kind of morally neutral or aloof way as if he were to kind of visit himself on the temple but without any real affection for the spot it's it's just the case that the lord when he draws near to his people and his tabernacle in glory uh he expresses it in terms of love right he expresses it in terms of solicitude in terms of compassion and so you see like the whole trajectory of salvation history is an expression of this love for his people and his temple and you see that come to fulfillment you see it come to perfection in christ so last week the gospel was taken from john 2 with the cleansing of the temple and in part that gesture uh or by that gesture the lord himself identifies uh his body as the new temple in which we'll worship in john 4 he talks you know you're not going to worship on mount zion or on mount gerizim you're going to worship in spirit and truth which in john 1 is identified with the logos with specifically the flesh of the logos so whereas you know the lord's compassion and love is localized in the cult of the people of israel on the temple mount when the lord comes to fill the temple with his presence but also to bring that presence into the life of the church and into the sacramental order he changes the way in which the lord's compassion is is kind of ordered as it were not that there's a change in god but there's a change in our appreciation of his love and now it's not so much that you know like the lord dwells in this particular space behind the veil in the holy of holies where pleasing sacrifice is offered once a year and other sacrifices are offered daily but it's that the one sacrifice in our lord jesus christ has been offered once and for all and that his solicitude his love his compassion now comes to reach us because he's already taken our human flesh and that flesh is you know associated with him as an instrument for our salvation you know like there's nothing of our humanity that is foreign to him never was but especially in the incarnation he makes it known that he's taking all of it to himself so that he can love us so that he can express his solicitude so that he can express his compassion through all of it um so it's yeah it's i mean there's this this passage at the end of second chronicles which is not really the most inspiring book of the bible it's like long lists of weird names and things like that and here you have like salvation history encapsulated in exile and all of it just comes to this kind of anticipatory fever pitch which sets the stage for the coming of christ who loves us in a in a very peculiar way with that we will move to the to the second reading father patrick will take us there a reading from the letter of saint paul to the ephesians brothers and sisters god who is rich in mercy because of the great love he had for us even when we were dead in our transgressions brought us to life with christ by grace you have been saved raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in christ jesus that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in christ jesus for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not from you it is the gift of god it is not from his works so no one may boast for we are his handiwork created in christ jesus for the good works that god had prepared in advance that we should live in them the word of the lord thanks be to god so often i get asked as a well i guess in as a vocation director perhaps more but also as a dominican who you know as being a member of a religious community what is dominican spirituality what does dominican spirituality looks like or what does it look like and i don't think that i think it's a bit anachronistic to say there is this is dominican spirituality i think there is dominican life that we live but um and that contributes to a larger picture and i think that that is the same with respect to the christian life so you can say well what does it mean to have a christian spirituality or what is christian or catholic spirituality and we could describe various things you know the sacramental life the under a proper understanding of grace and and all these kind of things um uh but i don't know if we can say that there is one this is what it is and if you don't meet all these these sort of checklists then somehow uh and somehow there's some deficiency um what i do think we can identify though is different ways by which to approach our relationship with christ and i think here in saint paul's letter to the ephesians um that he gives us one one way and a way to shape our relationship with christ and shape our spiritual life and that is this this idea of participation this whole section from uh from ephesians is all about our sort of understanding that you know as saint paul says in here that we are god's handiwork that we are saved through him and in in in the fifth and sixth verses here of the second chapter um saint paul does something pretty pretty interesting or sort of catch our attention he says that the the line says brought us that christ brought us to life with christ by the grace you have been saved by grace you have been saved raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens this threefold repetition of with with with reminds us of christ's christ's command or explanation that that without him we can do nothing but with him we can you know with him we can be raised with him we can be transformed and i think this ought to inform uh our our our life of pursuing virtue our life of grace our life of uh our spiritual life our prayer life that it's it's with him everything that we do as as catholics is is aimed at being more receptive being better able to receive the grace that he's giving us and being better able to respond to participate to participate in the divine life that's on offer with christ with him so i think it's beautiful that saint paul gives this sort of this reminder halfway through lent as the church gives it to us for this for this reading that what we're doing in this time of lent in our whole christian life what our whole spiritual life as christians if we want to say that should look like is a with christ god first moving but with him and in that there there's great power there's great strength as a christian um yes so just to draw out this theme of being with christ um there's this character of christ's life that's exemplary right so christ lives in his flesh what we are meant to live in ours and we are saved to the degree and extent that our lives are conformed to his and as a result of which i mean every aspect of christ's life matters because every aspect of christ's life is addressed to us as salvation and here on literary sunday it's funny like the readings give you a sense of both the passion and the resurrection so on the first reading you know it was spoken of the the time of exile right the destruction of the temple but with the kind of hopeful looking forward to the fulfillment of the promise of jeremiah the laying fallow of the land and the bursting forth into new life with dispensation of the second temple and then here there's this idea okay we were dead in our transgressions but we're brought to life with christ and then as we'll see in the gospel there's this idea of exaltation which carries with it the sense of both crucifixion and of resurrection um and when saint thomas reads passages on the passion death and resurrection of our lord he says that we can kind of see a correspondence between the mysteries of christ's life and our own spiritual lives in the sense that by his passion he puts to death sin in our members and by his resurrection he raises us to new life so if you think about it in terms of merit for instance all of the the deeds of our lord jesus christ are infinitely meritorious so all of them are sufficient to save us right so like at his conception the lord performs an infinitely meritorious act which is enough to save us but he lives a whole human life he lives an integral human life from start to finish right from conception to death to unnatural death and as a result of which all of the details of that life are addressed to us as part of our own maturation in the life of grace as part of our own confirmation to him and as part of our being drawn in to the life of the most blessed trinity so i just let you know on lehtare sunday as we mark a kind of mid-point in lent as we look both towards the passion and the resurrection with a kind of you know dreadful expectation which breaks forth into new life we have this sense that we are to be conformed both to his passion and to his resurrection and that you cannot have the one without the other but we would not have it otherwise at great risk of sounding like i have a heart um i'm going to talk a little bit about divine mercy um the uh recently we have celebrated the anniversary of the revelations of the divine mercy image to saint faustina said it was the 90th anniversary of these um of these revelations that the lord gave to her and divine mercy is such an interesting theological concept i mean it's actually very rich and you don't need to be stuck in in just some kind of saccharine or sentimental piety to be to be talking seriously about divine mercy because god's mercy is so very rich and one of the things that i like to think about are the motives for god's mercy um you know where does it come from why does it come to us um our god who is rich in mercy what does this mean i'm to say that this love of god uh you know extends even to us um so i think one one place we have to start is that mercy is a manifestation of god's own glory um that mercy is a divine action um reaching out to us and it shows that only only a glorious god would do such a thing i think that i think that we have to think about divine mercy as revealing um the holiness of god that mercy is the kind of thing when extended to us makes us like god it doesn't get stuck or mired in our human condition but rather shapes our own hearts and that we are by we are made likened to god um so it's so it's a it's connected to god's holiness and being poured out for us um divine mercy extends to us through the love that the father has for the son so we are conformed to the son by virtue of our baptism we're made like unto christ and it's through that love that the son and father share you know particularly that love that the father has for the son that we're able to encounter um god's love to encounter his mercy um i think this this is very this is so very incredible um that we're sharing this kind of um this this love which is manifested to us through the sun this love which is at the heart of who um god is in himself um is being poured out on us and we call that mercy when it's poured out on us um and the shrine of divine mercy in krakow in poland the new basilica is very modern and if you look up pictures of it you'll see um in its artwork you'll see a little golden globe and then there's kind of a halo over the globe and a and a little red a little red splotch a little red heart or flame or something i'm not even sure what the red thing is but i do know that it refers to i do know it refers to this this idea that jesus gave to saint faustina that the lord told her that this spark of mercy would come from poland and that it would reach the whole world and i i will say this that it is incredible the number of people that have been reached by st faustina's teachings by her vision by their experience of seeing the image of divine mercy and by meditating on this incredible love for god um and by the way this very holy very saintly sister presents it so that's all for you father bonaventure not that you'll listen to this but um for those of you that don't know fontbonne adventure is very devoted to divine mercy well with divine mercy we will move on to the gospel so here we go a reading from the holy gospel according to john jesus said to nicodemus just as moses lifted up the serpent in the desert so must the son of man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life for god so loved the world that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life for god did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him whoever believes in him will not be condemned but whoever does not believe has already been condemned because he has not believed in the name of the only son of god and this is the verdict that the light came into the world but people preferred darkness to light because their works were evil for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light so that his works might not be exposed but whoever lives the truth comes to the light so that his works may be clearly seen as done in god the gospel of the lord praise to you lord jesus christ the gospel begins with this passage just as moses lifted up the serpent in the desert so must the son of man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life and the passage refers back to the scene in exodus when the lord sent seraph serpents among the israelites and all who were bit fell ill but those who looked on a brazen serpent held by moses were subsequently cured and you know it's a it's a reference to the cross in the sense that the son of man will be lifted up on the cross but there's an ambivalence about the term lifted up because it also denotes a kind of exaltation and you might think at first you know what's exalted about the cross it seems you know awful in every respect i mean the lord is raised on an engine of torture how can we how can we exalt that in any way shape or form and yet you know we hang the crucifix on our walls and around our necks so there's the sense in which the crosses is revelatory of a deeper mystery it's revelatory both of the very nature of god and also of our destiny as christians so uh saint paul comments in philippians 2 with this beautiful christological hymn that though christ was in the form of god he did not deem equality with god something to be grasped at but rather emptied himself taking the form of a slave and you follow that hymn through its initial verses in this kind of movement of self-emptying this movement of descent but then the subsequent you know parts of the passage describe a movement of exaltation and you know you might think okay that's i mean that's a historical movement of salvation history that's the historical movement of christ's life but it also reveals something of the inner life of god and you know there are some theologians who say that like god is deprived of you're the christ is deprived of a sense of god on the cross and we wouldn't hold for that because father thomas joseph who taught us christology would not abide such a thinking but also because it's not true um but there is the sense in which that you see a kind of self-emptying in the life of the trinity not that god ceases to be god or that christ you know somehow seeds his godhead but that the very nature of god is a kind of giving forth right so the father from all eternity begets the son and the son and father the father and the son from all eternity breathe forth the holy spirit and you know you see this uh in the in the crucifixion in a special way when the lord gives up his spirit right it says that he he breathes forth the spirit so on on the cross at the end of his earthly life the lord conjures the power the strength to kind of bellow as it were it is finished and then he breathes forth the spirit he sends forth the spirit in the life of the church he sends forth the spirit through the sacraments right which flow from his pierced side and when we witness all these things we see you know who who the lord jesus christ is but also who is god right not just the second person of the most blessed trinity but the very trinitarian life in all of its totality and that becomes for us a pattern of our own salvation so it's it's inescapable right that our lives are meant to be poured out um you know married people know this and saint paul reflects on it in ephesians 5 that the very shape of married life is sacrificed but that's more broadly true of christian life in general uh you know they'll know we are christians by our love by our love uh but but you know without without the song having to be sung right they'll know we are christians because we bear in our bodies the very marks of christ and we bear in our bodies the very marks of christ unto the revelation of a god who is love poured out right from all eternity love poured out in creation love poured out in redemption and love poured out in his body the church so that becomes for us a kind of object of contemplation during the season of lent so that we who are lazy selfish weak otherwise in bent might be broken open to the revelation of who god is so that we might become more like him in generosity of spirit and in service to our brothers and sisters one of the unique qualities about the the gospel of john or unique characteristics i guess that's the same thing as quality but uh is that in the gospel of john there are a series of of um episodes where our lord has these sort of long dialogues where either he's speaking with somebody or speaking um on his own praying on his own so we have here in in john 3 the sort of end of his interactions with nicodemus and then you have the samaritan woman in john 4 and if we look at the end of the gospel just by way of one more example you have the last supper discourses and this this is unique especially compared to the gospel of mark which is kind of quick moving and these kind of things but even with matthew and luke you don't have these long discourses and part of the the reality of these long discourses is um is a sort of fulfillment of what is begun at or what is at the beginning of the gospel of john that the word became flesh that the word of god is is living and dwelling among us and that the the people with whom our lord interacts with um you know he interacts with as god he interacts with as their savior um he interacts with as as the one who is truth um so in that in that interaction in that sort of salvific um relationship is is presented this idea of eternal life and this sort of fleshing out through the gospel of what it is um that is um that christ has come to bring us you know namely eternal life but often our mind might think eternal life or sort of divine life as something that's in the future that's something that comes after we die but what the lord shows us through these conversations in the gospel through his interactions um throughout his earthly ministry is that the divine life eternal life at least in its quality not in its duration but in its sort of qualitative realities that we can we can live with and live in certain characteristics of eternal life now of the divine life now if we are sort of willing to step into the light as this as as this gospel passage teaches us that in interacting with and being in the presence of um in offering our lives as father gregory was describing in this sort of sacrificial way to the word to christ we in turn being you know receiving his mercy receiving his grace are able to share in that promise of eternal life now we're given a foretaste of that um we are called to live with him um you know not in the fullness of heavenly beatitude but with with a bit of a sort of preview a bit of a foretaste of what's to come um simply by being with him so through the gospel as we you know our midway through lent as we're getting closer to easter our lord is preparing our hearts and preparing our minds and and saying to us you know listen i'm here before you now i will be before you in glory at the resurrection but i'm i'm working i'm working to be with you you know to soften your heart to receive me now and that is an offer for us each of us the house of studies uh at least when we were in in our formation years and the house of studies played annually the marians of the immaculate conception in a softball game and uh as as listeners might know the marians of the immaculate conception are dedicated uh particularly to the spreading of this message of divine mercy um they run in fact the national shrine for divine mercy in stockbridge massachusetts so anyway we were playing them in um this annual softball game and one friar came down from the house and he had prepared a sign you know people uh people prepare signs for ball games and uh on his sign which he had mounted to the top of i think a mop or something right um this sign said no mercy um and it was this uh it was hilarious he marched around with it um and uh it made our our softball game very much like an actual sports encounter um you know some friars are decent enough at sports and others of us excel at uh sitting on the sidelines and then some get up to antics like uh signs you know that say no mercy against the uh the immaculate conception the point is uh we can consider this all game we can play around uh we can we can send our slogans out we can recognize john 3 16 at a softball game or we can dig in and embrace what the lord is offering us and allow his grace as father jacob urgent was saying to transform our hearts all right well as we end our discussion our lectio on this sundays on laytari sunday's readings um we'll we will um well i was going to say we're going to pray we'll save that for the end because i think you know announcements first you know like mass you know do the announcements the german says announcement exactly yeah you know i was but i had gotten confused you know it pardoned me forgive me that's why you have to write everything down from the jacob urchin i keep trying to tell you this but you don't listen to me that's cute i'm about to mute your mic in a second [Laughter] all right so announcements just like sunday mass everybody please be seated for some announcements um so if as always if you think someone might enjoy this episode please share it with them i think on our last lectio father gregory might have explained the the joys of sharing and the simplicity of sharing podcasts so um i forgot what he said but you can do that it's joyful and it's simple so feel free to share with somebody who you think might benefit from a little reflection on this sunday's readings um if you wouldn't mind give us a like somewhere on youtube podcast things facebook twitter instagram super helpful for us you can always check out our website godsplaining.org if you're looking to support to continue to give alms during during the lenten season you know we receive alms during the lenten season and outside lent but you know lent is a good time to do that uh there's also some merchandise on our website some pretty sweet stickers i'm pushing the fanny pack it's not you know that that's a new we might be trendsetters there nice fanny pack you know check that out um otherwise we will certainly be praying for you as we always do but we will continue especially during the season of lent pray for us too and uh with that we will will conclude with the prayer over the people for the first fourth sunday of lent in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen look upon those who call to you o lord and sustain the weak give life by your unfailing light to those who walk in the shadow of death and bring those rescued by your mercy from every evil to reach the highest good through christ our lord amen in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit until next time god bless 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 [Music]

Channel: Godsplaining Podcast

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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: -4EeYfwRyqw

Length: 35min 11sec (2111 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021