Pray for me Virgin Mary, so that by believing in Jesus I can trust with both my mind and my heart in the love of God and forgiveness of all my sins. Pray that I do not despair as Judas Iscariot did. I want to be believing in Jesus like Mary Magdalene. I too am anointing him with my love, trusting in all his promises of redemption. I am pouring out all that I have to give in gratitude for what he has suffered for my sake. Blessed Mother, please ask the Lord to help me contemplate his Passion and death so that I might grow to love him even more and serve him for the rest of my life. AMEN.
Monday of Holy Week (Liturgical Year B)
Believing in Jesus and Anointing Him with My Love
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Join me in a prayerful reflection and meditation for your Lenten journey with Christ to Jerusalem.
Believing in Jesus and Anointing Him with My Love
Opening Prayer
Enter into the prayer of silence before the Lord
Eternal Father,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I desire to be present to you. Guide my heart and mind toward believing in Jesus and in the forgiveness of my sins. Speak to my heart today and show me how I might pick up my cross and follow Jesus in obedience to your holy will. I know that you love me with infinite love. I know Jesus laid down his life so that I could be in union with the Holy Trinity and be filled with the Spirit. I acknowledge my past sins and by believing in Jesus and amending my life, I trust that I will be transformed by the renewal of my mind into a new creation. As I contemplate his suffering and death to atone for my sins I am anointing him with my love and gratitude.
I am here, Lord, because I am believing in Jesus and the power of the Cross. Please send me your Spirit so that I can worship you with a pure heart and without distraction. Help me to separate myself from all worldly attachments and spend these 15 minutes reflecting on believing in Jesus with all my heart and mind. Jesus, look at me with the eyes of a Savior and let me anoint your feet with my tears of gratitude. You know all my weaknesses and that I can’t elevate my heart or my mind without your help.
Please give me the grace right now to pray my mental prayer well and to love you in a way that is pleasing to you. I want to grow to love you more perfectly. Thank you, Lord, for every consolation, desolation, time of silence, difficult trial, and temptation of the evil one. I understand that everything that happens in my life is by your holy will, whether it be your divine providence or your permissive will due to my sin and negligence.
Please humble me as I walk with you toward Jerusalem. Help me carry my cross well and do so with great love in my heart for you.
AMEN.
Say Nothing Just Take Him In
Spend 1-3 minutes in silence gazing at the Lord with love and gratitude, in a prayer of silent contemplation.
Now we will contemplate the Lord by listening to him speak to us in the Gospels. Slowly meditate on the following passage. Take your time. Pause over a word or phrase that speaks to your heart. Reread the passage again, and then ask Jesus a question if you have one.
Believing in Jesus and Anointing Him with My Love
Anointing Him with Oil
John 12:1-11
Reflection:
Let us meditate on this passage. What sticks out most to you? How do you see the actions of both Judas and Mary in this scene? Which one tugs your conscience? Do you identify more with one than the other?
Take a moment to contemplate this scene with the Lord.
In what ways do you anoint the Lord with your love? Is there something you have given to him that is costly? Is he asking you to surrender something costly for his sake? Is it an attachment you have to a material thing? A place? A person?
Take a few moments to speak from your heart to the Lord. Listen for his response to your heartfelt prayer. Linger a few moments and wait for the Holy Spirit. What is he saying to you?
Let us continue our mental prayer with a meditation from Saint Augustine of Hippo:
Believing in Jesus and Anointing Him with My Love
Right Love versus Disordered Love
By St. Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions, Book II)
I Will now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul, not because I love them, but that I may love You, O my God. For love of Your love do I it, recalling, in the very bitterness of my remembrance, my most vicious ways, that You may grow sweet to me — Thou sweetness without deception! Thou sweetness happy and assured!— and re-collecting myself out of that my dissipation, in which I was torn to pieces, while, turned away from You the One, I lost myself among many vanities.
For I even longed in my youth formerly to be satisfied with worldly things, and I dared to grow wild again with various and shadowy loves; my form consumed away, and I became corrupt in Your eyes, pleasing myself, and eager to please in the eyes of men.
But what was it that I delighted in save to love and to be beloved? But I held it not in moderation, mind to mind, the bright path of friendship, but out of the dark concupiscence of the flesh and the effervescence of youth exhalations came forth which obscured and overcast my heart, so that I was unable to discern pure affection from unholy desire. Both boiled confusedly within me, dragged away my unstable youth into the rough places of unchaste desires, and plunged me into a gulf of infamy.
Your anger had overshadowed me, and I knew it not. I was become deaf by the rattling of the chains of my mortality, the punishment for my soul’s pride; and I wandered farther from You, and You suffered me; and I was tossed to and fro, and wasted, and poured out, and boiled over in my fornications, and You held Your peace, O Thou my tardy joy! Thou then held Your peace, and I wandered still farther from You, into more and more barren seed-plots of sorrows, with proud dejection and restless lassitude….
But I, poor fool, seethed as does the sea, and, forsaking You, followed the violent course of my own stream, and exceeded all Your limitations; nor did I escape Your scourges. For what mortal can do so? But You were always by me, mercifully angry, and dashing with the bitterest vexations all my illicit pleasures, in order that I might seek pleasures free from vexation. But where I could meet with such except in You, O Lord, I could not find — except in You, who teaches by sorrow, and wounds us to heal us, and kills us that we may not die from You.
Reflection:
Contemplate all the ways you have pursued the things of this world and your attachments to things and people over your love of God and desire to do his will. Have you loved him as he wills or have you, like St. Augustine, “followed the violent course of my own stream”?
Take a moment to ask the Lord to give your the grace needed to overcome unholy attachments. Ask the Lord to wound you in order to heal you, to help you enter into sorrow so that you can know the value of his gift, so that you will anoint him with your love and believe in him in all things.
Lord Jesus Christ, You know my heart. You know all things. Please probe my mind and show me all the disordered love in my life. Convict my heart of my attachments to things, and my attachments to people, and my pride of desiring worldly status through these attachments.
Lord, where in my life do these attachments cause me to do evil things? How do these unholy attachments cause me to have an evil disordered love? How can I love you more perfectly and humbly? St. Augustine says disordered love causes you to be mercifully angry and even mercifully punish us so that we might be healed of this affliction. Lord, please heal me of it. AMEN.
Next, let us meditate on Isaiah 42. Prayerfully reflect on the words and reread them, pausing on a passage that speaks to you.
Believing in Jesus and Anointing Him with My Love
My Chosen One with Whom I am Pleased
Isaiah 42:1-7
Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased, Upon whom I have put my Spirit; he shall bring forth justice to the nations, Not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street.
A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench, Until he establishes justice on the earth; the coastlands will wait for his teaching.
Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spreads out the earth with its crops, Who gives breath to its people and spirit to those who walk on it: I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice, I have grasped you by the hand; I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, To open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.
Reflection:
Let us pray and reflect on the words of Isaiah 42.
Jesus, please, establish your justice in my heart. Put your Spirit in me and let me be an instrument of your will for all nations. Believing in you, I come to you now, anointing you with my love and asking to be formed. Grasp me by my hand, Lord, and open my blind eyes to see the light of the truth. Then let me be a disciple that brings your Spirit to my neighbors to whom you have given me to serve. AMEN.
Believing in Jesus and Anointing Him with My Love
My Heart will Not Fear
Psalms 27:1-3, 13-14
The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom should I fear?
The LORD is my life’s refuge;
of whom should I be afraid?
When evildoers come at me
to devour my flesh,
My foes and my enemies
themselves stumble and fall.
Though an army encamp against me,
my heart will not fear;
Though war be waged upon me,
even then will I trust.
I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD with courage;
be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.
Reflection:
Contemplate the passages we have read today in light of the death and resurrection of Christ. Consider everything that God has promised us through his covenant and how Jesus has redeemed us in his Blood.
Consider your promise to be a true disciple of Christ. Take up your Cross to renew yourself, to overcome all disordered love, and to follow him without fear, believing in Jesus and anointing him with your love.
Take a moment to be with the Lord and answer his call. Take 1-3 minutes to listen for his response to your heartfelt prayer.
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 41 Mental Prayer Meditation
Let me Never Betray You or Deny You in Life
Lord Jesus Christ, Let me never betray you or deny you in life. May I always love and serve you according to your will for me.
