Remember Again

"We are praying with great memories in our liturgy. There are scenes of violence, betrayal, surrender, and regret. We pray with the fidelity and trust with which Jesus walks towards his saving death.

We pray as well with the violence within and around us these days. Humanity is suffering from terrible insults to its being in Christ. We pray with our own sense of helplessness, as did his loving mother and even his friends who denied him and abandoned him. We are praying intensely with our desires to be freed again from the slavery of forgetfulness. We pray to remember again who Jesus is saying we all are by his life of faithful trust. We gather together to do the ancient rituals by which we are saved in our times." By Larry Gillick, S.J., in Daily Reflection, Creighton University. Read it all HERE.

Seen above: Altar Waiting for Palm Sunday by The Rev. Scott Fisher, St. Matthew's, Fairbanks.

Right Relationships

Half way through Lent and we find ourselves praying for more cleansing and more purity in our relationship with Jesus. Purity in the time and setting of Jesus meant ordered ness. It meant having right relationships with God and thereby with all others and all of creation. We are freed through our faith in Jesus and his resurrection, but we are not freed from our own self-imposed exiles. Israel was loved always by God, but they did not always use well the freedom which that love provided. We can grow quite accustomed and flippant with our being loved through Jesus, taking it for granted rather than as granted through the Spirit.

These days of Lent we can go, Nicodemus-like, in the secrecy of our private prayer, to celebrate more publicly, the death and resurrection which infinitely consummates God’s love for us. We can pray with the realization of our little exiles, our secret ways of avoiding our living faithfully God’s calls and invitations. Lent is a prayerful time to rake away the coverings of deadly winter so that Jesus’ personal love can rise, spring-like in our spirits and actions. By Larry Gillick, S.J., in Daily Reflection, Creighton University. Read it all HERE.

Seen above: "Face of Christ" by Mary Jane Miller. The artist says that this is a copy of Rublevs Icon, of which legends say it was found as a stair-riser to the choir loft in a small church. It had been turned upside down and used for wood, and because of that the image was preserved.