Salesian Sisters South Pacific Region

From the Word of the Day

As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the Twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
                    Matthew 20: 17-19

How should we live this Word

Jesus is going up to Jerusalem.  His hour is near.  His Pasch is about to be accomplished.  Like the disciples, what is asked of us during this Lenten journey that leads to Golgotha, under the Lord’s cross, is to listen to the proclamation of His passion and resurrection.

Even today, the Lord takes us aside along the way and prepares us with His Word to live the grand event of salvation that He is preparing for us.  This is the third time in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus predicts His passion-resurrection to His disciples.  After the first time, there was Peter’s ‘satanic’ reaction and Jesus’ counter reaction (Mt. 16: 22-23).  The second time, the disciples react with desolation and sadness (Mt. 17: 22-23).  Now their lack of understanding becomes general and open.  In fact, the passage is a contrast between two glories, that of the Son of man and that of humans.  The first glory consists in handing oneself over by serving and giving one’s life.  The second consists in possessing, asserting oneself, and bringing death.

Today as I pause for silent contemplation, I will compare my interior reactions to the announcement of the Lord’s Pasch with that of the disciples.  I will be attentive not to mistake my eventual indifference to Jesus’ cross as spiritual progress in respect to the twelve.

Lord, if Your passion does not cause me sorrow, does not leave me shaken and divided, is it perhaps because I am not able to listen in depth to the enormity of the difference between Your announcement and my life?

The voice of Angelus Silesius, German poet and mystic

To be derided and abandoned, to suffer much in life, to have nothing, to have no power, to be nothing: this is my glory.

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House of Prayer “San Biagio” – 00028 SUBIACO RM     casale 106    
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