Holy Week, Wednesday, March 31
Isaiah 50:4-9 / Matthew 26:14-25
Jesus speaks about his betrayer; Judas said, "Surely it is not I?"
Judas was able to conceal his plan from the other disciples, but he wasn't able to conceal it from Jesus. And this allows us to see how Jesus deals with sinners. One of the greatest mysteries of life is the tremendous respect God has for the free will of people.
Tuesday of Holy Week, March 30
Isaiah 49:1-6 / John 13:21-33, 36-38
Jesus talks about betrayal; The disciples were amazed at Jesus' words.
The surprising thing about Judas' plan to betray Jesus is that the other disciples had no idea of it. How could they have lived so close to Judas and been so blind to what was going on in his mind? There are two lessons here. First, our external words and actions may deceive others, but they will never deceive God.
Weekday homilies
for the Holy Week:
March 29 Monday: Jn 12:1-11: 1 Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 There they made him a supper; Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”
5th Week of Lent, Saturday, March 27
Ezekiel 37:21-28 / John 11:45-56
Jesus does remarkable things: Many people put
their trust in him.
There's a scene in My Fair Lady in which Eliza Doolittle grows weary of Freddy's daily letters, telling her how much he loves her. In a burst of frustration, she begins to sing the song "Show Me." In the song she says she's sick of words. She's sick of all this talk of stars "burning above." "If there's really any love burning in your heart, show me." (adapted) Jesus had done everything he could do to show the Jews his love for them. Some Jews eventually saw it and "began to believe in him"; many others did not.
5th Week of Lent, Friday, March 26
One night the Philadelphia Orchestra, under the baton of Leopold Stokowski, was performing a Beethoven overture. In it, a part for a trumpet is played offstage. When the time came for the offstage trumpet, there was no sound. Stokowski was furious. Again, the time came for the offstage trumpet. Again, there was only silence. After the overture ended, Stokowski stormed off the stage to find the trumpet player. There he was, his arms pinned to his side by a burly security guard who said, "This nut was trying to play his horn while your concert was going on out there." In a similar way, the people were frustrating God's plan by failing to recognize Jesus' role in it.
When Jesus said, "Where I am going you cannot come," the Pharisees wondered if he was planning to take his own life. Rabbis held that people who took their life went to the deepest part of the nether world. This shows how terribly the Pharisees had misread Jesus and how far from the truth they were. What Jesus actually meant was that he was returning to his Father in heaven. Spiritual blindness is a terrible sin. It implies a deliberate closing of one's eyes to the truth. This seems to have been the situation of the Pharisees. This is why Jesus told the Pharisees, "You will die in your sins."
These lines by an unknown poet strike a universal chord: "How I wish that there was some wonderful place Called the Land of Beginning Again, Where all our mistakes and all our headaches . . .
4th Week of Lent, Wednesday, March 17
Isaiah 49:8-15 / John 5:17-30
Jesus speaks to the people; "I seek not my will but God's."
Hikers and mountain climbers sometimes experience incredible highs. A Swiss hiker describes such a high. It took place on the sixth day of a hike with a group of friends. All of a sudden, she had the feeling of being raised out of herself. She says: "I felt the presence of God…