Jeremiah 20:11,13

The Lord is with me like a dread warrior;
    therefore my persecutors will stumble and 
    they will not prevail.
They will be greatly shamed 
    for they will not succeed, 
Their eternal dishonor
    will never be forgotten. 
Sing to the Lord;
    praise the Lord!
For he has delivered the life of the needy 
    from the hands of evildoers.

There is no commandment that says we have to be upset by the way other people treat us. The reason we are upset is because we have an emotional program that says, "If someone is nasty to me, I cannot be happy or feel good about myself." It is true that there is psychological and sometimes physical pain involved in not being treated as a human being. In such situations, we have every right to be indignant and to take steps to remedy them. But apart from such circumstances, instead of reacting compulsively and retaliating, we could enjoy our freedom as human beings and refuse to be upset.

Once on the spiritual, journey, we begin to perceive that our emotional programs for happiness prevent us from reacting to other people and their needs. When locked into our private worlds of narcissistic desires, we are not present to the needs of others when they seek help. The clarity with which we see other people's needs and respond to them is in direct proportion to our interior freedom.

~ Invitation to Love

Prayer

O Holy Spirit,
in all our temptations, calm our rebellious passions
and quiet our fears when we feel overwhelmed.

Faith

Saturday

John 11:45

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

Faith is the essential means of attaining salvation. We cannot reach faith by reasoning. It is like an intuition. We can prepare for it by reflection, by longing for it, and by pleading for it. But it can only come as a gift. Once it has been given, life assumes a new direction. A Christian is like someone getting on an elevator Such a person is not interested in going anywhere horizontally; his or her desire is to go up.

If we conceptualize the Christian life as an ascent toward God, getting on an elevator for the first time and closing the door is an act of faith. We do not know what will happen. The door may open on the second, third, or fourth floor and, to our amazement, we find a new perspective of the world stretching out before us. After having enjoyed the vista on one floor, we get back on the elevator and enter once again into darkness. We have to make a new act of faith in order to get to the next level; that is, we have to go through the pain of passing through the transition from one level to the next.

Faith is not just the assent of our minds to a series of dogmas. Such a superficial view drains it of its full meaning. Faith is basically the surrender of our will. It is not a matter of understanding with our heads; it is the gift of our entire being to God--to the ultimate reality. It orients us definitively in God's direction.

~ The Heart of the World

Prayer

O Holy Spirit,
grant us an abiding awareness of Your boundless
Presence, so all-embracing and yet free.

The New Creation

Palm Sunday

John 12:12-13

The great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,
    "Hosanna! 
    Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord--
        the King of Israel! "

Jesus is the paradigm of humanity, the universal human being, God's idea of human nature with its enormous potentialities. According to the great hymn of Paul to God's humility, the divine Person of the Word, source of everything that exists, did not cling to his divine dignity or prerogatives, but threw them all away. In God there seems to be the need not to be God. In creating, God, in a sense, dies, because he is no longer alone; he is completely involved in the evolution of these creatures whom he has made so lovable.

Christ emptied himself of the divine power that could have protected him and opened himself in total vulnerability as he stretched out his arms on the cross to embrace all human suffering. In the most real sense, we too are the body of God; we too are a new humanity in which the

Word becomes flesh; we too can put ourselves in the service of the divine Word. Then God is experiencing human life through our senses, our emotions, and our thoughts. Each of us can give the eternal Word a new way in which he discovers his own infinite potentiality. Thus, God knows himself in us and experiences the human condition in all its ramifications. The Word lives in us, or more exactly, lives us. We are incorporated into the new creation that Christ has brought into the world by becoming a human being. We leave behind the false self and solidarity with Adam, which is solidarity in sin, death, and human misery. Jesus invites us to experience his consciousness of the Father, the Abba of infinite concern, the God who transcends both suffering and joy and manifests equally in both.

Christ on the donkey, waving aside the cheers of the crowd, is riding to his death. This is his way of revealing the heart of God once and for all in such a way that no one can ever doubt God's infinite mercy. The priest says over the bread and wine, "This is my Body." The power of those words extends to each of us as Christ awakens and celebrates his great sacrifice in our own hearts saying, "You are my body. You are my blood" You, with all of humanity, are a manifestation in the flesh of the new creation.

~ Awakenings

Prayer

Come Holy Spirit,
giver of divine Gifts,
and share with us the supreme Gift,
the Gift of Yourself.

The Anointing at Bethany

Monday in Holy Week

John 12:1-3

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

The dinner at Bethany was given in honor of Jesus six days before his passion and death. The Jewish authorities were now plotting vigorously for his destruction. Judas had already decided to betray him into the hands of his enemies. Simon the leper was the host at the dinner Martha was fulfilling her customary role as perfect hostess, and Lazarus was one of the guests at table. It was an interesting group of people: Jesus the Messiah, Mary the contemplative, Martha the activist, Simon the leper, Judas the thief, and Lazarus the former corpse.

Everyone was reclining at table except Mary When she walked in, all eyes turned toward her Everybody knew she had a deep love for Jesus. She was carrying an alabaster jar in which there was a pound of nard perfume. A pound of nard perfume was extremely expensive. Later we learn that it was worth three hundred denarii, an amount that represented the ordinary workingman's wages for an entire year.

She entered the room carrying the alabaster jar filled to the brim with the precious nard perfume and came to where Jesus was reclining. Suddenly, without a word, she smashed the bottle and poured the entire contents over his head. Out poured a pound of the incredibly costly perfume. The delicious odor billowed forth, filling the whole house with its fragrance. John adds that Mary also anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped them with her hair.

Mary was aware of what was being plotted by the authorities and wanted to affirm the depth of her faith in Jesus in a way that could not possibly be misunderstood. Some gesture had to be made before it was too late. Everyone recognized that by anointing him with expensive perfume, the symbol of her love, she was expressing her devotion to him and manifesting the gift of herself. But the deepest meaning of her symbolic gesture was not simply the gift of herself but the totality of that gift. Not only did she anoint him with the costly perfume; she smashed the bottle and emptied its entire contents over his head! She threw herself away, so to speak, emptying every last drop of the perfume in superabundant expression of the total gift of herself. This is the meaning of her extraordinary gesture as Jesus perceived it and which so moved him. "You always have the poor with you," he said, "but you do not always have me. She did what she could: by anointing my body, she prepared it for burial just in time."

In this remarkable incident, Mary manifests her intuition into what Jesus is about to do. Moreover, she identifies with him to such an intimate degree that she manifests the same disposition of total self-giving that he is about to manifest on the cross. She had learned from Jesus how to throw herself away and become like God. That is why this story must be proclaimed wherever the Gospel is preached. "To perpetuate Mary's memory" is to fill the whole world with the perfume of God's love, the love that is totally self-giving. In the concrete, it is to anoint the poor and the afflicted, the favored members of Christ's Body with this love.

~ The Mystery of Christ

Prayer

O Holy Spirit,
through Your Gift of Counsel,
be our companion in each moment of our lives
so that we can manifest Your goodness in every action.