Wednesday 10 March 2021
Wednesday of the 3rd week of Lent
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Wednesday of the 3rd week of Lent
From the book addressed to Autolycus by Saint Theophilus of Antioch, bishop
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God
If you say, “Show me your God,” I will say to you, “Show me what kind of person you are, and I will show you my God.” Show me then whether the eyes of your mind can see, and the ears of your heart hear.
It is like this. Those who can see with the eyes of their bodies are aware of what is happening in this life on earth. They get to know things that are different from each other. They distinguish light and darkness, black and white, ugliness and beauty, elegance and inelegance, proportion and lack of proportion, excess and defect. The same is true of the sounds we hear: high or low or pleasant. So it is with the ears of our heart and the eyes of our mind in their capacity to hear or see God.
God is seen by those who have the capacity to see him, provided that they keep the eyes of their mind open. All have eyes, but some have eyes that are shrouded in darkness, unable to see the light of the sun. Because the blind cannot see it, it does not follow that the sun does not shine. The blind must trace the cause back to themselves and their eyes. In the same way, you have eyes in your mind that are shrouded in darkness because of your sins and evil deeds.
A person’s soul should be clean, like a mirror reflecting light. If there is rust on the mirror his face cannot be seen in it. In the same way, no one who has sin within him can see God.
But if you will you can be healed. Hand yourself over to the doctor, and he will open the eyes of your mind and heart. Who is to be the doctor? It is God, who heals and gives life through his Word and wisdom. Through his Word and wisdom he created the universe, for by his Word the heavens were established, and by his Spirit all their array. His wisdom is supreme. God by wisdom founded the earth, by understanding he arranged the heavens, by his knowledge the depths broke forth and the clouds poured out the dew.
If you understand this, and live in purity and holiness and justice, you may see God. But, before all, faith and the fear of God must take the first place in your heart, and then you will understand all this. When you have laid aside mortality and been clothed in immortality, then you will see God according to your merits. God raises up your flesh to immortality along with your soul, and then, once made immortal, you will see the immortal One, if you believe in him now.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Saint John Ogilvie, Priest, Martyr
Cornelius a Lapide: Commentary on Isaiah
The reward of the martyrs
Christ, therefore, in his Passion stood unmoved, unbeaten, unshaken… as a rock against which the waves dashed themselves only to be flung back in foam. He was as the adamant which the blows of iron cannot break, but which shivers the hammer itself. So should we be on Christ’s behalf.
Such were the soldiers whom the heavenly Captain used to lead into battle. They were true as steel; they even spurred on their torturers whose hands had tired, for they counted relief but a delay in their path to Christ.
Such also was Ogilvy, a martyr in Scotland, at one time my catechumen at Louvain, and lately of our Society. It is clear from the account of his martyrdom that he astonished the Calvinists, for though unconquered by torture and still bold and ready in debate, he opened not his mouth against his tormentors.
What do deeds such as these mean to us? We praise these men like heroes, we long to be like them. But only at the altar, only in words no further than in penance. Well did John à Kempis say (as it is put in his life): ‘We like to be humble without humiliation, to be obedient without being under authority, to be poor but to lack nothing, to be virtuous without a struggle, to be loved without goodness, to be thought much of without holiness.’ But Christ our God did not, nor was this his teaching. He promised heaven to those who do violence to self; he will reward with glory and honour those who endure injury, and he will leave no evil deed unpunished.
Copyright © 1996-2021 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.