Second Week of Lent

 

Climb the Mountain

Be Transformed

  

Mount Tabor for most Christians is a Holy mountain - "the mount of Transfiguration"

“transfigure us, O Lord… transfigure us O Lord”

We follow Jesus with Peter, James and John up the mountain of transfiguration.  It is good for us too to experience mystical moments with Jesus.  To recognize the ‘Beloved’ sent by the Father in the people and events of our lives.  And to ‘listen to him’. Especially we have gathered as a community or group.   (Mark 9: 2-10)

  

Who are the people and what are the events of our lives today?  As I listen I hear the many angry voices of our youth after another senseless school shooting in Parkland, Florida.  As I listen to the Word of God and the Voice of Jesus this week I am challenged to let my words and actions transform hearts and minds. 

  

Let us reflect together as a national community and join in pledging  to … choose Gospel non-violence as our way of being in all situations at all times.

As Jesus, Peter, James and John came down from the mountain Jesus instructed them not to tell what they had seen to anyone until the ‘Son of Man had risen from the dead’.

We might ask ourselves, is this a moment in which Jesus rises from the dead today, NOW?  Is this a time of Resurrection? A time of Transformation? A time to make all things New?

Let our words, our actions and our political will join with so many of our young people so that ‘Never Again’ will such violence happen in our land.

See https://paxchristiusa.org/resources/vow-of-nonviolence/

  

Let Us Pray:

Help Me To Serve The Global Grassroots Movement Of Nonviolence

Dear God,

Help me to serve your reign of peace
by serving the global grassroots movement of nonviolence
for the coming of your reign of peace here on earth.

Make me an instrument of your peace,
that I might do my small part to help abolish
war, poverty, hunger, executions, nuclear weapons,
systemic injustice and environmental destruction,
to make your nonviolent reign of peace more palpable everywhere.

But more, help me when I’m discouraged,
when I think there’s no hope,
when I give up on others and give up on myself,
when I sense the dread of despair and apathy sneaking up on me.
Raise me up, keep me going, use me for your work for justice and peace,
and most of all, keep me faithful to the lifelong journey of justice and peace.

Let my entire life be a struggle for justice and peace,
one long campaign for a new world of nonviolence.
Let my life bear tremendous good fruit for others,
and inspire others to join that struggle.
Give me good cheer, a good heart,
a sense of humor, a spirit of peace and love,
and that revolutionary patience needed
for the lifelong long-haul work of peacemaking.

Help me like the saints and prophets of old
to live a full life in your service of justice and peace
that I may join them one day in that place
where the nonviolent revolution has come true and is permanent,
that together, we might all praise you and your boundless peace.


Amen.             - John Dear, ‘Radical Prayers On Peace, Love & Nonviolence

First Week of Lent

Driven Into The Desert

“lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil” 

Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert and is tempted by the devil.  Desert dryness and desert thirst.  A place of wilderness and danger.  A place of beauty, silence and peace.

With Jesus today we call upon the same Spirit to lead us in moments of temptation.  In the desert we recognize our thirst and hunger to know and love our God more deeply, more completely.  Jesus is the Living Water and Bread of life.

Action:           Renew your Baptismal Commitment, be washed clean and anointed as disciple of Christ.

Renewal of Baptismal Promises

V. Do you renounce sin, so as to live in the freedom of the children of God?
R. I do.

V. Do you renounce the lure of evil, so that sin may have no mastery over you?
R. I do.

V. Do you renounce Satan, the author and prince of sin?
R. I do.

V. Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth?
R. I do.

V. Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered death and was buried, rose again from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father?
R. I do.

V. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?
R. I do.

V. And may almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given us new birth by water and the Holy Spirit and bestowed on us forgiveness of our sins, keep us by his grace, in Christ Jesus our Lord, for eternal life.

R. Amen.