A Daily Lent

Attachments, Beliefs, and Fears Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent – March 17, 2020 In yesterday’s readings, Anthony de Mello mentioned the filters through which we experience life: attachments, beliefs, and fears. These filters, according to de Mello, hinder us from love. In today’s reading, de Mello says more about attachments, beliefs, and fears. He is not interested in softening his message. De Mello is interested in speaking the truth about God, life, and love. Your attachments: You will inevitably look for what fosters or threatens them and turn a blind eye to the rest. You won’t be interested in the rest anymore than the avaricious businessman is interested in anything that does not involve the making of money. Your beliefs: Just take a look at a fanatic who only notices what confirms his/her belief and blocks out whatever threatens it and you will understand what your beliefs are doing to you. And then your fears: If you knew you were to be executed in a week’s time it ...

Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent Daily Reading : John 4:43 – 54 Focus Passage : "Unless you people see signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe." The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies." "Go," Jesus replied, "your son will live." The man took Jesus at his word and departed. (Jn. 4:49 – 50) The official with the sick son “took Jesus at his word.” What does it mean to “take Jesus at his word”? Some contemporary expressions of Christianity reduce faith to a system of assertions and propositions we are to believe intellectually. They suggest that we agree with certain statements about God and Jesus. If we agree with those statements, especially in public, we believe. Many Christians think that such belief in and of itself is the extent of Christian faith, reducing life with God to mental assent. I can speak about this mindset, because I’ve spent a good part...

Saturday of the Second Week of Lent Daily Reading : Luke 15:1 – 3; 11 – 32 Focus Passage : Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them. "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. "When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and ...

Monday of the Third Week of Lent Luke 4:24 – 30 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. There is a part of each person’s make-up attributable to cultural conditioning. Cultural conditioning includes belief systems that come from the groups with which we identify. We hold certain beliefs ab...

John 3:14 - 21 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. "Whoever believes in him" . . . . Rea...

Matthew 5:19 "Whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." The kingdom of heaven is not a kingdom of right belief. It is not a kingdom of orthodox thinking. It is an enacted kingdom, a kingdom of living, practicing, experiential belief. Ultimately, what you believe in your head may seem important, but it matters little if it is not soaking into your life, if it doesn't get down to where your roots grow, if it doesn't inform your speaking and living, if it doesn't shape who you are in connection with God, self, others, and the world. Belief, in and of itself, is very hollow and has almost no power to transform. In the United States, current conversations nationally and politically are being shaped by those who adhere to particular beliefs and who project themselves as people of principle. By their public discourse, they imply that belief and principle are the most important things. Not surprisingly, they say little a...

Luke 4:24 - 30 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “prophets are not accepted in their hometowns. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Jesus gave two examples from Israel's history of God extending mercy, generosity, and healing to foreigners -- the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian. Those who heard him in the synagogue were furious that he included ...

John 4:43 – 54 After the two days he left for Galilee. (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that prophets have no honor in their own country.) When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there. Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death. "Unless you people see signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe." The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies." "Go," Jesus replied, "your son will live." The man took Jesus at his word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his bo...