Reflections, prayers, meditations and poetry will be continually added to this page throughout the Lenten season. Continue to check back here for more updates and resources.
Meditation: Adapted from Prophets Now by Brandt/Corita
God will judge – God does judge – the world’s institutions,
political, commercial, educational, religious,
that knowingly or unwittingly are leading people astray.
God does not stop there, however,
for according to Micah, ultimate judgment
falls upon the people themselves.
It is people who make up nations and institutions;
it is people who must inevitably face up
to the true God.
And it is these people who seek their own personal welfare
and whose self-seeking and luxurious living
perpetrate injustice and oppression and deprivation
upon humankind about them.
They create their own gods or religions
that condone their avaricious activities
and many of these people are foolish enough
to call such Christianity.
“There is still hope,” proclaimed Micah.
”There is a remnant scattered throughout the land.
It consists of those who are leaning what it means
to follow Jesus Christ.
They have not only embraced the righteousness of God
as revealed through God’s Son,
but they have responded to God’s gift of grace
in dedicating their lives to God’s purposes.
And those purposes, they are discovering lead them
to forsake self-seeking and luxurious living
and to enlist in the mission of communicating God’s love
and saving power to their brothers and sisters in the human family.
Such a course will be threatening to their national security –
even their reputations, their social status – if not their very lives.
It is the course Jesus took before them and which for Him involved suffering and struggle and death
on a cross.
It mean putting the concerns and needs of others even above one’s own.
It is the course, however, that leads to genuine fulfillment in this life
and everlasting joy and contentment in the life and kindom of God,
which is soon to be fully revealed.”
Meditation: The Roots of Our Tears
Let your soul lend its ear to every cry of pain
as a lotus bares its heart to drink the morning sun.
Let not the fierce sun dry one tear of pain before
you yourself have wiped it from the sufferer’s eye.
But let each burning human tear fall on your heart
and there remain, nor ever brush it off
until the pain that caused it is removed.
Reflection from Archbishop Oscar Romero (Martyred on March 24, 1980)
This Lent...
ought to presage a transfiguration
of our people,
a resurrection of our nation.
The Church invites us to a modern
form of penance,
of fasting and prayer,
perennial Christian practices,
but adapted to the circumstances
of each person.
Feeling in one's own flesh
the consequences of sin and injustice
one is stimulated to work for
social justice
and a genuine love for the poor.
Our Lent should awaken a sense of
social justice.
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