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“Dismiss all anger and look into yourself a little. Remember that he of whom you are speaking is your brother, and as he is in the way of salvation, God can make him a saint, in spite of his present weakness.”
— St. Thomas of Villanova
//The Catholic Company//
“There is good reason to be astonished that men should sin so boldly in the sight of Heaven and earth and show so little fear of the most high God. Yet it is a much greater cause of astonishment that while we multiply our iniquities beyond the sands of the sea and have so great a need for God to be kind and indulgent, we are nevertheless so demanding ourselves. Such indignity and such injustice! We want God to suffer everything from us, and we are not able to suffer anything from anyone. We exaggerate beyond measure the faults committed against us; worms that we are, we take the slightest pressure exerted on us to be an enormous attack. Meanwhile, we count as nothing what we undertake proudly against the sovereign majesty of God and the rights of his empire! Blind and wretched mortals: will we always be so sensitive and delicate? Will we never open our eyes to the truth? Will we never understand that the one who does injury to us is always much more to be pitied than are we who receive the injury? . . . Since those who do evil to us are unhealthy in mind, why do we embitter them by our cruel vengeance? Why do we not rather seek to bring them back to reason by our patience and mildness? Yet we are far removed from these charitable dispositions. Far from making the effort at self-command that would enable us to endure an injury, we think that we are lowering ourselves if we do not take pride in being delicate in points of honor. We even think well of ourselves for our extreme sensitivity. And we carry our resentment beyond all measure . . . All of this must stop . . . We must take care of what we say and bridle our malicious anger and unruly tongues. For there is a God in Heaven who has told us that he will demand a reckoning of our ‘careless words’ (Matt. 12:36): what recompense shall he exact for those which are harmful and malicious? We ought, therefore, to revere his eyes and his presence. Let us ponder the fact that he will judge us as we have judged our neighbor.”— Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, p. 49-51
//The Catholic Company//
“I entrust myself to you because you do not disappoint; I do not understand, but even without understanding, I entrust myself to your hands.—Pope Francis
The plight of Susanna in today’s first reading from the Book of Daniel (13:1-62) is familiar to anyone who has been abused by someone with greater power, more authority, a high reputation in the community. The judges used their position to take advantage of someone with no power, no voice, seemingly no defense. In a similar way, the woman in our Gospel reading is brought before Jesus by those who are more interested in defending their authority than in treating her as a fellow human being. In each case, someone steps forward to defend the innocent, to raise up the oppressed, to speak for justice and righteousness. But we know all too well that this doesn’t always happen. Even in the Gospel, those who drifted away at Jesus’s challenge returned to kill him and so reject his law of compassion. And so we come to the pope’s words. Trusting God when we are suffering, when we are being treated unjustly, when we are abused goes against everything our human instincts tell us is right. We long for a Daniel to swoop in to vanquish the villains and save the day. We want a super hero. But the Gospel reminds us that what we have is in fact a savior, an advocate. But sometimes we have to wait for the plan to unfold fully.
Call to mind an experience of injustice from your own life or the life of someone you love. Recall your response to the situation, your anger, your hopes, your fears. Take all of those feelings and offer them to God. Let your heart struggle to feel the faith and the trust that all will be well.
— from the book The Hope of Lent: Daily Reflections from Pope Francis
by Diane M. Houdek
//Franciscan Media//
“ O almighty and merciful God, Lord of the universe and of history. All that You have created is good and your compassion for the mistakes of mankind knows no limits. We come to You today to ask You to keep in peace the world and its people, to keep far away from it the devastating wave of terrorism, to restore friendship and instill in the hearts of your creatures the gift of trust and of readiness to forgive.”—Pope Francis
Pope Francis never hesitates to turn the light of truth inward as well as outward. The Gospel, especially as John tells it, reminds us that Jesus suffered as much at the hands of those who shared his religious faith as he did at the hands of outsiders. Persecution happens because of misguided power, anger at perceived injustice, fear of those who are not like us, who don’t share our beliefs and sometimes even our opinions. What begins as a disagreement over ideas can be magnified and escalated into rejection, ostracism, violence, and even death. And it can—and does—happen among Catholics of different philosophies, between Catholics and other Christians, between Christians and those of other faiths. In today’s Gospel the Pharisees sneer at Nicodemus when they ask if he, too, is from Galilee, a rural region that the residents of Jerusalem considered backward and inferior. We do this even today. We think we know how people will behave based on what part of the country they’re from. We divide our own cities and towns into good areas and bad areas. We absorb the prejudices of lifelong citizens even when we’re new to an area. Often we wouldn’t think of going to another part of town because of what we think we know about it, often based only on what we hear from others. Spend some time today learning about another faith, another culture, another set of beliefs. Set aside as much as is humanly possible the division of us and them, me and other. Look at the world from someone else’s perspective.
— from the book The Hope of Lent: Daily Reflections from Pope Francis
by Diane M. Houdek
//Franciscan Media//
“The fast of Lent has no advantage to us unless it brings about our spiritual renewal. It is necessary while fasting to change our whole life and practice virtue. Turning away from all wickedness means keeping our tongue in check, restraining our anger, avoiding all gossip, lying and swearing. To abstain from these things—herein lies the true value of the fast.” — St. John Chrysostom
“Put aside your hatred and animosity. Take pains to refrain from sharp words. If they escape your lips, do not be ashamed to let your lips produce the remedy, since they have caused the wounds. Pardon one another so that later on you will not remember the injury. The recollection of an injury is itself wrong. It adds to our anger, nurtures our sin and hates what is good. It is a rusty arrow and poison for the soul. It puts all virtue to flight.”
— St. Francis of Paola
