Faith in your words turns death into life. If you are new to mental prayer, we invite you to visit our page on the ways of mental prayer, Don’t know how to Pray to God, to learn more.
We begin Day 22 of this Lenten prayer journey with this opening prayer :
Trust and Believe…
Lord,
I know you love me intimately. Please help me prepare my heart as I begin these 15 minutes of mental prayer with you. Lord, let me be present to you and aware of the movements of the Holy Spirit in my heart, receiving the grace you give with humility and contrition. Lord, help me visualize you in my presence right now as I strive to complete this Lenten reflection. Let me fully contemplate the readings as I ponder what it means to have faith in your words because faith turns death into life. I want to follow you all the way to Calvary, Jesus, and I want to do it with my whole heart.
AMEN.
Monday of the Fourth week of Lent (Liturgical Year I)
Faith in Your Words Turns Death into Life
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Let’s begin Day 22 of our Lenten journey as we continue traveling with Jesus in our hearts and minds toward Calvary by meditating on the daily Mass readings for today: the First Reading, the Psalms, and the Gospel Reading. As you make your self-reflection, feel free to journal your responses to the Lord. This meditation is suited for prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, but you can also pray this meditation while looking at a Crucifix or an image of Jesus that you have.
Faith in Your Words Turns Death into Life
Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Start with Love…
Holy Spirit,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I desire to be present to you. Guide my heart and mind and show me how I might pick up my cross and follow Jesus all the way to Calvary. Help me turn my heart more fully to God so that I might better understand God’s love for me.
Breathe on me as I spend these next 15 minutes fixated on today’s Mass readings. Holy Spirit, help me pray with humility, honesty, love and affection. I want to grow in virtue and holiness.
Thank you, Holy Spirit, for every consolation, desolation, time of silence, difficult trial, and temptation of the evil one. I understand that you love me and that everything in my life happens by God’s holy will, whether it be divine providence or God’s permissive will due to my sin and negligence.
Please humble me as I walk with Jesus toward Calvary.
AMEN.
Say Nothing Just Take Him In
Spend 1-3 minutes in silence gazing at Jesus with love and gratitude, in a prayer of silent contemplation.
Make a Movie in Your Mind…
Now we will contemplate the First Reading. We are traveling to the 8th century BC, to the land of Judah in the south. The passage we are about to read is written to encourage the people who had returned to their homeland after the Babylonian exile. Their homeland had been ravaged; their city and temple had been destroyed and now they were in the restoration and rebuilding phase. We can imagine the prophet Isaiah speaking to a crowd of repatriots as reconstruction of the city and temple have already begun.
You will hear Isaiah talk about a place of joy and gladness, where sorrow and suffering end, and people live in together with God in harmony. Imagine this as a representation of a future state of salvation and peace and consider your relationship with Jesus as you read these words of Isaiah.
Slowly imagine yourself physically there in the scene. What do you hear? See? Feel? Sense?
Faith in Your Words Turns Death into Life
The Things of the Past You Do Not Remember
Isaiah 65:17-21
Thus says the LORD: Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; The things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind.
Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create; For I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight; I will rejoice in Jerusalem and exult in my people. No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there, or the sound of crying; No longer shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not round out his full lifetime; He dies a mere youth who reaches but a hundred years, and he who fails of a hundred shall be thought accursed.
They shall live in the houses they build, and eat the fruit of the vineyards they plant.
Reflection:
Let us take a moment to reflect on the message in the First Reading.
Did you envision yourself listening to the voice of Isaiah preach? Could you hear the joy in his voice and see the rebuilding going on all around you? Could you see the men in the distance rebuilding the temple that was destroyed? Did this mercy of God move your heart? What emotion does it create in you?
Now let’s personalize this passage from our First Reading…
Be Completely Real…
We could see how God’s mercy made the people of Jerusalem feel joy and gratitude. It gave them a desire to be what God wanted them to be all along, a holy people set apart by God and made to worship God with their whole hearts. Consider all these things and you enter into dialogue with the Lord.
Give the Holy Spirit time to respond.
Maybe you want to self-reflect on your own people and ways the Lord has shown both justice and mercy in your homeland. What do you want to say to the Lord? Take some time to reflect on what you have read and how the Holy Spirit is speaking to your heart. In the next part we will read a prayer of thanksgiving from Psalms. Pray this with faith and joy.
Let us continue our mental prayer with today’s Responsorial Psalm:
Faith in Your Words Turns Death into Life
You Preserve Me From Death
Psalms 30:2, 4-6,11-13
I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear
and did not let my enemies rejoice over me.
O LORD, you brought me up from the nether world;
you preserved me from among those going down into the pit.
Sing praise to the LORD, you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger lasts but a moment;
a lifetime, his good will.
At nightfall, weeping enters in,
but with the dawn, rejoicing.
Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me;
O LORD, be my helper.”
You changed my mourning into dancing;
O LORD, my God, forever will I give you thanks.
Visualize Christ…
Next, try to put yourself in the presence of Christ by visualizing Jesus in an intimate way. Take a moment to close your eyes and picture him walking beside you. It is a short journey to an obscure village an hour’s walk traveling northeast from Nazareth. You are tired and thirsty, but you can see people there, awaiting your arrival and wanting to speak with Jesus. One of them looks like a man of importance, a royal official. He wore a long, loose-sleeved tunic with a mantle over it that was embellished with embroidery.
Now we are ready to take our image of Jesus and visualize today’s Gospel Reading. Put yourself in this scene much like you did in the First Reading. Then prayerfully speak to Jesus about what stirred your heart. What do you want to tell him?
Faith in Your Words Turns Death into Life
The Man Believed What Jesus Said
John 4:43-54
At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his native place. When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves had gone to the feast.
Then he returned to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death.
Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
The royal official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.”
The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. While he was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, “The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.” The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he and his whole household came to believe.
(Now) this was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea.
Are You Listening?
Contemplate Jesus looking at you with a deep loving gaze. He speaks to you next, after the royal official, and says: “Believe my words. Trust in me and I will give you joy and gladness even in the midst of your trials.”
Take a moment now to speak from your heart. Jesus is asking you to trust him completely. He will bring you from death into life. Ask for the gift of faith and the virtue of obedience to his words.
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 23 Lenten Meditation
From the Heart of God Flow Waters of Mercy
“From the Heart of God Flow Waters of Mercy” – Join us in our 23rd Lenten reflection for Liturgical Year I