Tuesday 8 March 2022
Tuesday of the 1st week of Lent
(optional commemoration of Saint John of God, Religious)
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Tuesday of the 1st week of Lent
From a treatise on the Lord's Prayer by Saint Cyprian, bishop and martyr
He has given us life: he has also taught us how to pray
Dear brothers, the commands of the Gospel are nothing else than God’s lessons, the foundations on which to build up hope, the supports for strengthening faith, the food that nourishes the heart. They are the rudder for keeping us on the right course, the protection that keeps our salvation secure. As they instruct the receptive minds of believers on earth, they lead safely to the kingdom of heaven.
God willed that many things should be said by the prophets, his servants, and listened to by his people. How much greater are the things spoken by the Son. These are now witnessed to by the very Word of God who spoke through the prophets. The Word of God does not now command us to prepare the way for his coming: he comes in person and opens up the way for us and directs us towards it. Before, we wandered in the darkness of death, aimlessly and blindly. Now we are enlightened by the light of grace, and are to keep to the highway of life, with the Lord to precede and direct us.
The Lord has given us many counsels and commandments to help us towards salvation. He has even given us a pattern of prayer, instructing us on how we are to pray. He has given us life, and with his accustomed generosity, he has also taught us how to pray. He has made it easy for us to be heard as we pray to the Father in the words taught us by the Son.
He had already foretold that the hour was coming when true worshippers would worship the Father in spirit and in truth. He fulfilled what he had promised before, so that we who have received the spirit and the truth through the holiness he has given us may worship in truth and in the spirit through the prayer he has taught.
What prayer could be more a prayer in the spirit than the one given us by Christ, by whom the Holy Spirit was sent upon us? What prayer could be more a prayer in the truth than the one spoken by the lips of the Son, who is truth himself? It follows that to pray in any other way than the Son has taught us is not only the result of ignorance but of sin. He himself has commanded it, and has said: You reject the command of God, to set up your own tradition.
So, my brothers, let us pray as God our master has taught us. To ask the Father in words his Son has given us, to let him hear the prayer of Christ ringing in his ears, is to make our prayer one of friendship, a family prayer. Let the Father recognise the words of his Son. Let the Son who lives in our hearts be also on our lips. We have him as an advocate for sinners before the Father; when we ask forgiveness for our sins, let us use the words given by our advocate. He tells us: Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. What more effective prayer could we then make in the name of Christ than in the words of his own prayer?
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Other choices for today:
Saint John of God, Religious
St John of God with the Archangel Gabriel (c.1672), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682).
From a letter by Saint John of God, religious
Christ is faithful and provides all things
If we look forward to receiving God’s mercy, we can never fail to do good so long as we have the strength. For if we share with the poor, out of love for God, whatever he has given to us, we shall receive according to his promise a hundredfold in eternal happiness. What a fine profit, what a blessed reward! Who would not entrust his possessions to this best of merchants, who handles our affairs so well? With outstretched arms he begs us to turn towards him, to weep for our sins, and to become the servants of love, first for ourselves, then for our neighbours. Just as water extinguishes a fire, so love wipes away sin.
So many poor people come here that I very often wonder how we can care for them all, but Jesus Christ provides all things and nourishes everyone. Many of them come to the house of God, because the city of Granada is large and very cold, especially now in winter. More than a hundred and ten are now living here, sick and healthy, servants and pilgrims. Since this house is open to everyone, it receives the sick of every type and condition: the crippled, the disabled, lepers, mutes, the insane, paralytics, those suffering from scurvy and those bearing the afflictions of old age, many children, and above all countless pilgrims and travellers, who come here, and for whom we furnish the fire, water, and salt, as well as the utensils to cook their food. And for all of this no payment is requested, yet Christ provides.
I work here on borrowed money, a prisoner for the sake of Jesus Christ. And often my debts are so pressing that I dare not go out of the house for fear of being seized by my creditors. Whenever I see so many poor brothers and neighbours of mine suffering beyond their strength and overwhelmed with so many physical or mental ills which I cannot alleviate, then I become exceedingly sorrowful; but I trust in Christ, who knows my heart. And so I say: “Woe to the man who trusts in men rather than in Christ.” Whether you like it or not, you will grow apart from men, but Christ is faithful and always with you, for Christ provides all things. Let us always give thanks to him. Amen.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Saint Felix, Bishop
From the Commentary of St Hilary on Psalm 126
God builds and guards his city
‘Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.’ ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in you? ‘ This is the house and this is the temple of God, full of the precepts and of the energies of God, and capable of receiving the divine indwelling by holiness of heart, about which the same prophet has borne witness. ‘Holy is your temple, wondrous in justice.’ Holiness, justice, human temperance — this is the temple of God.
This house, therefore, must be built by the agency of God, for one which is constructed by human efforts does not endure, nor does it stand firm when reared by the teachings of this age, nor will it be kept safe by the care of vain toil and of our anxiety.
It must be constructed in another way, it must be guarded in another way; it must not have its beginnings upon slippery and shifting sand, but its foundations must be laid firmly upon the prophets and apostles.
It must be increased with living stones, and held together by the corner-stone. It must be built up by an increase of mutual connections until it reaches to ‘mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’. It must be adorned by the beauty and ornament of spiritual graces.
So this house which is built by God, that is by his teachings, will not collapse. This house will grow and expand into several houses as the divine buildings of the faithful make for the adornment and increase of the blessed community in each one of us.
The Lord has been the watchful guardian of this community now for a long time, when he protected Abraham on his journeys, when he intervened to save Isaac as he was being sacrificed, when he enriched Jacob in his time of bondage, when he placed over the land of Egypt Joseph, who had been sold as a slave, when he strengthened Moses against Pharaoh, when he chose Joshua as leader in the wars, when he freed David from all his dangers, when he rewarded Solomon with the gift of wisdom, when he came to the aid of the prophets, when he translated Elijah, when he chose Elisha, when he fed Daniel, when he poured moisture on the young men in the fiery furnace and as a fourth aided the three, when through the angel he instructed Joseph about his own birth from the virgin, when he encouraged Mary, and sent John as his forerunner, when he chose the apostles, when he prayed to the Father, ‘Holy Father, keep them; while I was with them I kept them in your name,’ and when finally he himself after his passion promised the watchful care of his eternal guardianship over us in these words, ‘Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.’
This is God’s eternal protection of his holy and blessed community which is formed by the coming together of many into one and which is in each individual one of us. Therefore it must be built by the agency of the Lord that it may grow up to reach the fullness of its consummation. The building already begun has not reached perfection, but through its building the completion of its perfection is being achieved.
Copyright © 1996-2022 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.