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Lenten Weekday
Daniel 9:4B-10
Psalm 79:8, 9, 11 & 13
Luke 6:36-38
S
UMMARY
In the first reading the Lord’s people are asking for passion and forgiveness even
though they have not followed his commandments. The Psalm pleads very specifically,
“Lord do not deal with us according to our sins”. In the Gospel Jesus says to his disci-
ples, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. For the measure with which you meas-
ure will in return be measured out to you”.
R
EFLECTION
As we journey through Lent each of us should be spending time examining how we
have been living our lives and asking ourselves if we have been living as Beloved Disci-
ples of Christ. Now in the second week of Lent we may be feeling good about our-
selves as we are following our Lenten challenges of giving up something in our lives
that we feel will be an expression of our commitment to follow Jesus, things like watch-
ing less TV (easier for some now that football season is over) or giving up chocolate
(easier for some if our New Year’s resolution was to lose weight) or giving up some-
thing that we think is very important to us.
But here is a real challenge: How about doing something that will identify us
as followers of Christ. Following our Parish’s theme of Living as a Beloved
Disciple of Christ calls us to live our lives in this modern world in a way that
expresses who we are as Catholics and to bear witness to God’s love.
This coming Sunday’s gospel is the Transfiguration. This should also be a
calling to each of us to examine where we need to be transformed so that we
can be living examples of God’s love and compassion. In today’s Gospel Je-
sus says: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful”. For some of us this
may be as easy as not hitting our little brother to see if he can take a punch;
for others it might be, not borrowing sister’s clothes without asking. But for
most of us it will take a little more consideration and effort.
In our modern world there is so much gray in all that we experience. It is al-
most a throwback to the 1960’s theme: “if it feels good, do it”. Much of what
we experience today is measured by how you define the terms of the situa-
tion so whatever we do can be made acceptable, almost the norm. I remem-
ber an occasion when my mother asked me about something that had hap-