MONDAY OF THE THIRD WEEK OF LENT - 2021

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

My soul is waiting for the Lord,
I count on his word,
because with the Lord there is mercy
and fullness of redemption. PS 129:5,7

2 KINGS 5:1-15 ©

My Soul's Beloved, 

Naaman was a gentile yet unbeknownst to him the Lord was with him granting him victory over the king's enemies winning him his respect and favor. God truly has no favorites, we all belong to Him, we are all His children. And we are all saved through You whether we believe it or not, whether we are aware of it or not, whether we acknowledge it or. We belong to Him - this is an irrefutable fact. Another fact about Naaman was that he was a leper. How deep must have been his distress at being afflicted in this way. He could not be completely happy until he found a way to be rid of the disease.

God uses the testimony of a little Jewish girl abducted from Israel who now served his wife, to reveal the power of the prophet Elisha to cure him. She urged her mistress to speak to her husband of him. Naaman, only too eager to do anything and go anywhere to be healed, obtained permission from his master to go to Samaria and meet the prophet.

The king gladly let him go with a letter to the king of Israel instructing him to cure Naaman. He went laden with gifts and presented the letter to the king who became distraught after reading it for he believed the impossible request was just a ruse to attack him. ‘Am I a god to give death and life that he sends a man to me and asks me to cure him of his leprosy? Listen to this, and take note of it and see how he intends to pick a quarrel with me.’ Clearly, the king of Israel himself lacked faith that the God he worshipped had the power to cure Naaman.

The prophet Elisha though had no such fears and sent a message to the king, ‘Why did you tear your garments? Let him come to me, and he will find there is a prophet in Israel.’ When Naaman arrived at the prophet's house a messenger came to deliver this message, ‘Go and bathe seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will become clean once more.’

Naaman's pride was stung. He had envisioned in his mind exactly how the healing would take place and was most indignant at what he perceived to be disrespect to himself, ‘Here was I thinking he would be sure to come out to me, and stand there, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprous part. Surely Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, are better than any water in Israel? Could I not bathe in them and become clean?’ And he turned round and went off in a rage.

How often, we too are guilty of expecting God to follow our instructions and we get upset when God acts contrary to our expectations. It took Naaman's servants, who obviously had an affection for him, to convince him to the simple thing that was required of him in order to obtain the cure that he so had desired so deeply and for so long. ‘My father, if the prophet had asked you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? All the more reason, then, when he says to you, “Bathe, and you will become clean.”’

Realizing they were right he obediently and humbly went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan. The waters of the Jordan represent baptism and the number seven represents the seven deadly sins. As soon as he did what the prophet commanded his flesh became clean once more like the flesh of a little child. Then he testified to all who were with him, ‘Now I know’ he said ‘that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.’

Faith in carrying out Your commands in humility and obedience has the power to move mountains whereas pride, conceit, and arrogance achieve nothing. 

PSALM 42:2-3, 43:3-4 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

Today I want to thank You for the wonderful grace, the privilege, the goodness of God, in granting us the greatest of all gifts and making it accessible and available to all who are members of Your Body, the Church.

You quench the thirsty soul, You feed the hungry heart, You invite all who come to You to the greatest of all the Sacraments, the Sacrament par excellence, the Holy Mass. Here we receive streams of lifegiving water that pour out of Your Sacred Heart and flood our soul with a superabundance of graces and blessings. 

In the time of this pandemic, we understand the plaintive cry of the psalmist. We who had feasted on Your Flesh and drunk deeply of Your Blood have been deprived of this heavenly food and drink for so long. 

It is only when our churches were shut, our adoration chapels closed and we were denied access to You that we understood how blessed we were. We longed for the days when there was no hindrance keeping us from You and yet so very often we took these great gifts for granted, we were complacent often indifferent, and casual. 

As normalcy slowly returns grant us the grace never again to approach You without being aware of the unimaginable grace and privilege accorded to us as we approach the Banquet of Love and taste the delights denied to the angels. 

LUKE 4:24-30 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

The disservice we generally do to people we once knew is our tendency to freeze them in the past even though we are ignorant of the persons they have become since then. 

This is exactly what the people in Your hometown did and You upbraided them for it when You addressed them in the synagogue: ‘I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country.' 

You drove home the message forcefully when You spoke of their lack of faith and pointed out that God singled out pagans when he sent His prophets Elijah and Elisha to aid a widow at Zarephath and healed Naaman, a Syrian. Although there were many widows as well as lepers in Israel none of them were recipients of such great blessings.  

The truth is often most unpalatable to the proud, the haughty, the conceited, and the self-righteous. The people of Nazareth were so enraged they were prepared to throw You down the cliff. But the evangelist tells us that no one could lay a hand on You. Your hour had not yet come and You slipped through the crowd and went away.