Father Matthew Wiering Podcast

In today's Gospel two disciples lose hope in Jesus and leave Jerusalem and walk in the opposite direction. They go astray. Can we relate to these disciples? Disillusioned, disappointed, we too can feel like Jesus has let us down, that he is not the one we thought he was. Losing our hope in him, we too can walk the wrong path and go astray. In today's Gospel we see how Jesus comes to walk with those who are walking away from him, and how he leads them, through the Scriptures and the breaking of the bread to an encounter with Him. The encounter with Jesus moves the disciples to turn around and walk in the right direction again.

In all four Gospels, it is women who are the first witnesses of the empty tomb and the Resurrected Christ. But they did not go to the tomb believing that they would discover Christ alive, but rather they went to the one they thought was dead. They were sorrowful, disappointed, and hopeless. But they went to the tomb anyway. There is much that we can learn from these women. When we are sorrowful, disappointed, and hopeless, let us go to the One we think is dead, so that He who Lives can encounter us and bring our death back to life.

There's a shocking contrast between the two Gospels proclaimed at today's Palm Sunday liturgy. In the first, heard right at the beginning of Mass, we hear of the crowd accompanying Jesus as he entered Jerusalem the last time. In reverence towards their Messiah-King, they laid down their cloaks and branches. In amazement of him, they sang, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" But in an extremely short time, the crowd in Jerusalem will receive the same Lord with great hostility, crying out, "Let him be crucified!" We ourselves shout this as we participate in the reading of the Passion account. This Holy Week how will we respond to Jesus, crucified for our sins and out of love for you and me?

Three times in the Gospels Jesus performs the spectacular miracle of raising from the dead. He raises the little daughter of Jairus, the widow's son at Nain, and, as we hear in today's gospel, Jesus's friend Lazarus. The Fathers of the Church saw these resurrections as Jesus's saving response to the spiritual death that is sin. In the little girl, they saw one who had just began to be touched by sin. In the young man, one who had begun to cling to sin more persistently. And in Lazarus, the powerlessness of one completely overwhelmed in their sins. And for each one, Jesus is the remedy. Let us let him be the remedy for our own sin this Lent!

Whenever we are reading from John's Gospel, we have to keep in mind that he is recounting stories from the ministry of Jesus using symbolism to communicate a deeper meaning. In today's Gospel Jesus heals a man born blind. This blindness contracted from birth is a symbol of the spiritual affliction that we also have from the beginning of our human existence: original sin. What is the remedy for this? It is the person of Jesus Himself, who communicates to us the divine life from the Sacraments, beginning with Baptism. This is the remedy for the spiritual blindness caused by sin that allows us to enter into a living relationship with God, who helps us to grow in holiness as we walk with him. Let's thank God (and our parents) for this gift of spiritual rebirth in the Sacrament of Baptism and pray for those who are preparing to receive this magnificent Sacrament.

Today's Gospel takes place at a well where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman. She has to keep coming back to the well over and over because or her thirst, like she keeps going from man to man searching for something that no one has yet been able to give her. The first thing Jesus does is ask her for a drink. He, too, is thirsty. Ultimately, she thirsts for him who has for her living water for her soul. But he too thirsts for her faith. And mine. And yours. Will we quench the thirst of Jesus today?

The Gospel for the 2nd Sunday of Lent is always one of the strange and wonderful accounts of the Transfiguration. While the astonishing event seems so unique in Jesus's life, there are Old Testament resonances that help us to interpret what God is communicating here. In particular, the connection with the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah, where Isaac is referred to several times as the only beloved Son, coupled with the placement of this text in Matthew's Gospel, helps us to remember that the Glory that shines out from Jesus is intimately linked to his self-sacrifice on the Cross. The Cross is the means -- the way -- to Glory. For us, too, our Cross, is the means -- the way -- to our Glory.

Today's readings take us back to the beginning and the story of Creation and the Fall. When we discover the symbolism of these ancient texts, we come to realize that we're not talking about a man and woman tricked by a snake into eating an apple and then getting punished by God. Instead, we see how immensely blessed by God the man and woman were but instead listened to the lies of the Enemy of their human nature. They chose to reject God's authority and took the prerogative of deciding what is true and false, good and evil, right and wrong upon themselves. This was the actual original sin, and we can see it all over the place, including, if we're honest, in our own hearts. The Lent the Church invites us to repent of this tendency to want to make ourselves the arbiters of right and wrong so that we might submit to God the Father's authority over us and be truly his children.

Today's Gospel from the Sermon on the Mount can be very confusing. Jesus says, "Give no resistance to one who is evil." Is Jesus saying that we do not have the right to defend our self? Does someone in a situation of abuse need to tolerate it? We see from the examples that follow that clearly the answer to these questions is, "No." But Jesus is saying that we must let go of those (relatively) small, personal slights committed against us -- those things that often leave us holding grudges and resentments. To let these things go is to "be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect." Because Jesus lived this way, he expected that we do too.

In our Gospel today Jesus says something that would have shocked his listeners. He says, "You have heard that it was said..." (indicating something that God taught in the Sacred Scriptures) and then adds to it: "But I say to you..." In taking upon himself the prerogative to add to and intensify God's word, he is claiming for himself God's own authority. He is acting as only God can act. And in doing so, he makes the Law much more demanding: Not only are his disciples to follow the law on an external level ("You shall not kill") but also on the internal level of the heart: ("You shall not be angry with your brother"). Here we see the all-encompassing demand that Jesus makes upon our moral life. He demands everything and at the same time receives us with infinite mercy as we struggle in our task of becoming "perfect as our Father is perfect".