We begin Day 19 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 steadfastness and love. 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 harden my resolve and soften my heart to follow your will for my life. I want to follow you all the way to Calvary, Jesus, and I want to do it with my whole heart.
AMEN.
Thursday of the Third week of Lent (Liturgical Year I)
Harden My Resolve and Soften My Heart Jesus
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Let’s begin Day 19 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.
Harden My Resolve and Soften My Heart Jesus
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. Slowly imagine this scene in your mind as you read. You are at the Temple Gate, and you see Jeremiah approach. The Lord has instructed him to stand here, at the gate of the Lord’s house in Jerusalem, and proclaim a message to the people of Judah. He is a loathed prophet by the people, always exposing their false religious practices and immorality. They trust in the temple and in their religious rituals to be enough, and their hardness of heart keeps them living in wickedness. Imagine yourself physically there in the scene. Watch Jeremiah approach and give his message, and see how the hard hearted people of Judah respond to him.
Harden My Resolve and Soften My Heart Jesus
I Will Not Walk With Hardness of Heart
Jeremiah 7:23-28
Thus says the LORD: This is what I commanded my people: Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people. Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper.
But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed. They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts and turned their backs, not their faces, to me. From the day that your fathers left the land of Egypt even to this day, I have sent you untiringly all my servants the prophets. Yet they have not obeyed me nor paid heed; they have stiffened their necks and done worse than their fathers. When you speak all these words to them, they will not listen to you either; when you call to them, they will not answer you.
Say to them: This is the nation which does not listen to the voice of the LORD, its God, or take correction. Faithfulness has disappeared; the word itself is banished from their speech.
Reflection:
Let us take a moment to reflect on the message in the First Reading.
Did you envision yourself listening to Jeremiah in the crowd? Did you see the people ignore him and walk past him, paying no attention to his warning? Did they make eye contact, or just pretend he wasn’t there? Did anyone listen? How does this make you feel?
Now let’s personalize this passage from our First Reading…
Be Completely Real…
Ask the Lord if your heart is deaf to his messages. Do you ignore the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in your life, walk right past people that God is trying to communicate to you through?
Do you recognize when the Lord is trying to correct you? Are you humble when corrected, or do you instinctively reject correction?
Give the Holy Spirit time to respond.
Be honest with the Lord. Self-reflect on the way you handle correction from others. If the Holy Spirit reminds you of a time when you did not receive correction with humility, linger in that moment and remind yourself of the people of Judah’s response to Jeremiah. Did you respond similarly? Thank the Holy Spirit for revealing this to you. In the next part, we will read a prayer of thanksgivig from Psalms. Pray this with a softened heart.
Let us continue our mental prayer with today’s Responsorial Psalm:
Harden My Resolve and Soften My Heart Jesus
I Am the Sheep of Your Flock, Lord
Psalms 95:1-2,6-9
Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD;
let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us joyfully sing psalms to him.
Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.
Oh, that today you would hear his voice:
“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.”
Visualize Christ…
Next, try to put yourself in the presence of Christ by visualizing Jesus in an intimate way. Picture him praying in a certain place. You are with him and the other disciples traveling on the way to Jerusalem, and he chooses to find this secluded place to pray. As he is praying a crowd begins to form, and a man is among them who is seeking healing. He cannot speak, but you can see the desperation in his eyes. He needs Jesus and he is waiting for him to return from prayer.
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. After reading, prayerfully speak to Jesus about what stirred your heart. What do you want to tell him?
Harden My Resolve and Soften My Heart Jesus
Let Me be Strong and Steadfast in Faith
Luke 11:14-23
If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
Are You Listening?
Contemplate this miraculous healing, and consider the hardened hearts of the crowd who wanted to deny what they just saw as a miracle of God. Now imagine Jesus looking at you as he speaks. “When you are strong the attacks of the evil one will not overcome you.”
Take a moment now to speak from your heart. Tell Jeus, “Let me be strong and steadfast, harden my resolve and soften my heart.” Ask him to help you recognize the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, and give you the humility to obey when your heart is convicted of truth. Finally, ask the Lord to protect you from thoughts and actions that deny the truth and cause you to fall away from God’s grace.
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 20 Lenten Meditation
Help Me Take The Right Path and Not Stumble
“Help Me Take The Right Path and Not Stumble” -Join us in our 20th Lenten reflection for Liturgical Year I
2 Responses
Hi beloved blessed beautiful brother’s and sister’s am still far from reaching my 32 meditation of Lenten. Am still journey to promised land am still on the journey🙏.
God bless you.
Hi Imanuel! I’m so glad you posted a message. You came to my mind this weekend randomly, and I didn’t even know you had posted! I was on a short trip with family and away from my computer. May God continue to bless you and keep you.