Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Isaiah,
Chapter 25, verse 3
Therefore,
a strong people will honor you, ruthless nations will FEAR you.
Pope
Emiratis Benedict XVI wrote in his Theology of the
Covenant
that we are a people of many faiths with one covenant with God. Therefore it is
reasonable that strong people will honor us in our faith as we have the same
covenant with the living God but may worship in a different way.
What
are some of the traits we and our cousins in the covenant may have as strong
people? According to the daily elite-the voice of generation Y there are 20
things that strong people DON’T do[1]:
What Strong
people DON’T do.
1.
Dwell
on the past (but stay in the present).
2.
Stay
in their comfort zone.
3.
Refuse
to listen to the opinion of others.
4.
Avoid
change.
5.
Keep
a closed mind (but are open to new ideas).
6.
Let
others make decisions for them.
7.
Get
jealous over the success of others.
8.
Dwell
on the possibility of failure (they keep a positive perspective).
9.
Feel
sorry for their selves.
10. Focus on their
weaknesses.
11. Try to please
people.
12. Blame themselves
for things outside their control.
13. Be impatient.
14. Let
misunderstandings continue.
15. Feel they are
entitled or privileged.
16. Repeat mistakes.
17. Give into their fears.
18. Act without using
prudence.
19. Refuse to help.
20. Quit.
However,
on the other hand, we must realize that ruthless nations will fear a covenant people because
ruthless nations are made up of ruthless people and ruthless people fear what they cannot control.
These
are 6 assumptions that the ruthless people make according to Askmen.com.
· Emotion is to be
avoided in all decision making.
· No tolerance for
incompetence.
· Never forgive.
· Punish quickly and
brutally.
· Instill fear in others.
· Stay focused and
determined.
To be a
people of the covenant we must remember the urgings of Christ that “This is the time of fulfillment.
The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent,
and believe in the Gospel.” (Mark
1:15). “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law
of the prophets.” (Mt. 7:12)
Prayer.
O
God, Who renewest the world by unspeakable mysteries, grant, we beseech Thee,
that Thy Church may profit by Thy eternal institutions, and not be deprived of
Thy temporal assistance.
EPISTLE,
m. Kings xvii. 17-24.
In those days the
son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick, and the sickness was
very grievous, so that there was no breath left in him. And she said to Elias:
What have I to do with thee, thou man of God? art thou come to me that my
iniquities should be remembered, and that thou shouldst kill my son?
And Elias said to her:
Give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom, and carried him into the
upper chamber where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed. And he cried to
the Lord, and said: O Lord my God, hast Thou afflicted also the widow, with
whom I am after a sort maintained, so as to kill her son?
And he stretched,
and measured himself upon the child three times, and cried to the Lord, and said:
O Lord my God, let the soul of this child, I beseech Thee, return into his
body. And the Lord heard the voice of Elias: and the soul of the child returned
into him, and he revived. And Elias took the child, and brought him down from
the upper chamber to the house below, and delivered him to his mother, and said
to her: Behold thy son liveth. And the woman said to Elias: Now, by this I know
that thou art a man of God, and the word of the Lord in thy mouth is true.
GOSPEL.
John xi. 1-45.
At that time: There was a certain man sick named
Lazarus, of Bethania, of the town of Mary and of Martha her sister. (And Mary
was she that anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair:
whose brother Lazarus was sick.) His sisters therefore sent to Him, saying:
Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick. And Jesus hearing it, said to them:
This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God: that the Son of God
may be glorified by it. Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister Mary, and
Lazarus. When He had heard therefore that he was sick, He still remained in the
same place two days: then after that He said to His disciples: Let us go into
Judea again. The disciples say to Him: Rabbi, the Jews but now sought to stone Thee:
and goest Thou thither again?
Jesus answered: Are there not twelve hours of the day?
If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world:
but if he walk in the night, he stumbleth, because the light is not in him.
These things He said; and after that He said to them: Lazarus our friend
sleepeth: but I go that I may awake him out of sleep. His disciples therefore said:
Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. But Jesus spoke of his death; and they
thought that He spoke of the repose of sleep. Then therefore Jesus said to them
plainly: Lazarus is dead; and I am glad for your sakes, that I was not there,
that you may believe but let us go to him. Thomas, therefore, who is called
Didymus, said to his fellow- disciples: Let us also go, that we may die with
Him. Jesus therefore came and found that he had been four days already in the
grave. (Now Bethania was near Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off.) And many
of the Jews were come to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their
brother. Martha, therefore, as soon as she heard that Jesus was come, went to
meet Him; but Mary sat at home. Martha therefore said to Jesus: Lord, if Thou
hadst been here, my brother had not died. But now also I know that whatsoever
Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee. Jesus saith to her: Thy brother
shall rise again. Martha saith to Him: I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day. Jesus said to her: I am the resurrection and the life:
he that believeth in Me although he be dead, shall live: and everyone that
liveth and believeth in Me, shall not die forever. Believest thou this? She
saith to Him: Yea, Lord, I have believed that Thou art Christ the Son of the
living God, Who art come into this world. And when she had said these things,
she went, and called her sister Mary secretly, saying: The Master is come and
calleth for thee. She, as soon as she heard this, riseth quickly and cometh to
Him. For Jesus was not yet come into the town: but He was still in that place
where Martha had met Him. The Jews, therefore, who were with her in the house
and comforted her, when they saw Mary that she rose up speedily and went out,
followed her, saying: She goeth to the grave, to weep there. When Mary
therefore was come where Jesus was, seeing Him, she fell down at His feet, and
saith to Him: Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. Jesus,
therefore, when He saw her weeping, and the Jews that were come with her,
weeping, groaned in the spirit, and troubled Himself, and said: Where have you
laid him? They said to Him: Lord, come and see. And Jesus wept. The Jews
therefore said: Behold how He loved him. But some of them said: Could not He
that opened the eyes of the man born blind, have caused that this man should
not die? Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the sepulcher: now
it was a cave; and a stone was laid over it. Jesus saith: Take away the stone.
Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith to Him: Lord, by this time he
stinketh. for he is now of four days. Jesus saith to her: Did not I say to
thee, that if thou believe, thou shalt see the glory of God? They took
therefore the stone away. And Jesus lifting up His eyes said: Father, I give
Thee thanks that Thou hast heard Me. And I knew that Thou hearest Me always,
but because of the people who stand about have I said it: that they may believe
that Thou hast sent Me. When He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice:
Lazarus, come forth. And presently he that had been dead came forth, bound feet
and hands with winding-bands, and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus
said to them: Loose him and let him go. Many therefore of the Jews who were
come to Mary and Martha, and had seen the things that Jesus did, believed in
Him.
“The fear of the
elderly who are alone in nursing homes, or hospitals, or in their own homes,
and don't know what will happen. The fear of those who don’t have regular jobs
and are thinking about how to feed their children. They foresee they may go
hungry. The fear of many civil servants. At this moment they're working to keep
society functioning and they might get sick. There’s also the fear, the fears,
of each one of us. Each one knows what their own fears are. We pray to the Lord
that He might help us to trust, and to tolerate and conquer these fears.”
From
the Living God to idols
“It was a true
apostasy. From the Living God to idolatry not knowing how to wait for the
Living God. This nostalgia is an illness, which is ours. We begin to walk
enthusiastically toward freedom, but then the complaining begins: ‘This is
really difficult. It's a desert. I’m thirsty. I want water. I want meat… In
Egypt we ate good things. There's nothing here’.
Idolatry
is selective
Idolatry
takes everything
“This mechanism also
happens to us. When we do things that lead us to idolatry, we become attached
to things that distance us from God. We make another god with the gifts that
the Lord has given us: with our intelligence, our will, our love, our heart. We
use God’s very gifts to make idols.”
Idols
in our hearts
The
question today
“May the Lord not
find us at the end of our lives and say to us: ‘You apostatized. You deviated
from the way that I marked out. You prostrated yourself before an idol’. We ask
the Lord for the grace of recognizing our own idols.”
Daily
Devotions
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