23 March 2018

Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

What is it that we look for in our brothers and sisters? In our thoughts and conversations, many of us think and judge others critically, in the way that Jeremiah indicates in today’s first reading: “all those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine” ( Jer 20). If we feel smug about our capacity to unmask the falsehood and faults in others, perhaps we ought to reflect a bit more deeply on the fact that in sacred scripture, the one called the “accuser” is not God, but Satan (on this point, please see http://www.magisspirituality.org/ignatian_reflection/17-09-16/).

When we accuse others, without realizing it, we often accuse God as well. This is what we see in John 10, when Jesus says, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?” Those accusing Jesus respond that they are not stoning Jesus for his works, but for what he is saying. They are unable to see that what Jesus says and does are bound up as a single reality. Through Jesus’ works, they ought to have been able to discern that what Jesus was saying is true. Instead, they separate the two, ignoring the witness of the concrete reality that stands before them and preferring instead the  security that their “know-it-all” attitude offers them. But, in the world that God creates, reality is always greater than our ideas (Cf. Evangelii gaudium 233). Let us ask God to help us never let our ideas get in the way of the reality that God wishes to reveal to us in Christ through the concreteness of the world around us, illuminated by his Word.