Saturday of the fifth week in Lent

Invitation

May I hereby draw your attention to

the daily reading of the Gospel?

This invitation wants to share with You the joy

of the Gospel. Everyone, no one excepted,

can experience that joy by opening their hearts

to the healing power of God’s word.

Available every day.

Not all prophets proclaim doom. Ezekiel foretells blessed and promising times. He speaks of unity and peace. In the midst of all the difficulties the people knew, Ezekiel kept hope alive. In sharp contrast, the gospel sounds in which the atmosphere around Jesus becomes tense, grim, dogged. The decision is clear: He must die. There is no turning back. Jesus realises this and still wants to be with his disciples ‘near the desert’ and from there make the final journey to Jerusalem. Glorification and humiliation will be his portion there.

Thus says God the Lord :

“I will make the children of Israel ,

who are scattered everywhere among the heathen nations,

gather them together and bring them back to their own soil.

“I will make them a single people ,

in the land, on the mountains of Israel,

and one king will rule over them all.

“No longer will they be two nations,

no longer be divided between two kingdoms.

“No longer shall they defile themselves with their idols ,

their abominations and all their crimes.

“From the faithlessnesses to which they have sinned

I will deliver them and I will cleanse them,

so that they may be my people and I their God.

“Then My servant David will be king over them ;

they shall all have one shepherd.

“They shall live according to my commandments

and keep my laws truly.

“They shall dwell in the land

which I have given my servant Jacob,

the land where their fathers dwelt ;

they and their children and their grandchildren

shall dwell there forever,

and my servant David shall be their prince forever.

“I will make with them a covenant of peace :

an everlasting covenant it shall be.

“I will give them a dwelling place,

I will make them numerous

and establish my sanctuary among them forever.

“My dwelling place will be with them.

“So the Gentile nations will know ,

that I, the Lord, am making Israel holy,

because My sanctuary is among them forever.”

The Lord will preserve us, like a shepherd his flock.

Peoples, then hear the word of the Lord,

give notice of it on distant shores.

He who once scattered Israel

will gather it, will guard it

as a shepherd shepherds his flock.

Jacob will be delivered by the Lord,

loose from the grip of him who robbed it.

Jubilantly they shall enter Zion again,

set down where the Lord blesses them.

Girls dance a dance of joy

together with boys and greybeards.

Then I bring joy instead of mourning,

comfort and joy after all their sadness.

So much did God love the world

That He gave His only begotten Son,

that whoever believes in Him shall not perish.

Many Jews who had come to Mary in those days

and saw what Jesus had done,

believed in Him.

Some of them, however, went to the Pharisees

to tell them what Jesus had done.

The high priests and Pharisees

thereupon convened a session of the Sanhedrin and said :

“What do we do?

“For that man is performing many miracles.

“If we let Him have His way

they will all believe in Him.

“Then the Romans will come

and with the holy place also wipe out our people.”

But one of them,

Cadaphas, who was high priest that year said to them :

“Thou understandest nothing ;

ye think not, that it is better for you ,

that one man should die for the people

than for the whole people to perish.”

This he said not by himself,

but as high priest of that year, he prophesied

that Jesus would die for the people,

and not for the people alone

but also to bring the scattered children of God together.

From that day on, they were resolved to kill Him.

Jesus therefore no longer moved openly among the Jews,

but departed from there to the region near the desert,

to the city of Ephraim, where He stayed with His disciples.

However, when the Passover of the Jews was imminent

many from the region before Easter went to Jerusalem

to cleanse themselves.

They looked for Jesus

and said to one another as they stood in the temple :

“What do you think?

Would He not come to the feast?”

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Laudato Si

Encyclic of

POPE FRANCIS

235. The Sacraments are a privileged way in which the nature of God is assumed and transformed into a mediation of the supernatural life. Through worship, we are invited to embrace the world on another level. Water, oil, fire and colours are accepted with all their symbolic power and are included in praise. The blessing hand is instrument of the love of God and reflection of the nearness of Christ, who has come to accompany us on the path of life. The water poured over the child’s body at Baptism is sign of new life. We do not flee the world, nor do we ignore nature, when we want to meet God. This can be particularly sensed in the spirituality of the Christian East: “Everywhere beauty becomes visible, one of the most beloved terms in the East to express the divine harmony and model of glorified humanity: in the form of the Church, the sounds, the colours, the lights, the smells”.  For the Christian experience, all the creatures of the material universe find their true meaning in the Incarnate Word, because God’s Son has absorbed in his person a part of the material universe, where he has planted a seed of definitive change: “Christianity is not dismissive of matter, corporeality; on the contrary, it allows it to come into its own fully in the liturgical action in which the human body shows itself to be deeply temple of the Holy Spirit and in which it unites with Jesus the Lord, who also took on a body for the salvation of the world.”

To be continued

The Bible text in this issue is taken from The New Bible Translation,

©Dutch Bible Society 2004/2007.

Considerations from Liturgical suggestions for weekdays and Sundays

Laudato Si Official English translation

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