Holy Spirit help me listen to Jesus, the Beloved Son
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We begin Week 2 of our Sunday Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
Trust And Believe
Lord,
I believe you want to give me the grace to go deeper in prayer this Lent. Help me to be present to you so that I’ll intimately pray these next 15 minutes with my heart fully open and willing to receive that grace. Please help me open my heart and pray with more intensity. I want to be able to visualize myself with you so I can feel your presence more intimately in my life this Lent. Lord, give me the grace I need as I strive to complete these 6 days of Sunday Lenten meditations. I am choosing to take up my cross and humbly follow you all the way to Calvary and I want to do it with my whole heart.
AMEN.
Holy Spirit Help Me Listen
What does it mean to be transfigured, transformed, and fully embracing your Eternal purpose in life? We will contemplate the mysteries of Eternal life in today’s Sunday Lenten meditation together. Let’s open our hearts in prayer so that we are open to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Opening Prayer
Holy Spirit, my Paraclete,
I believe you are truly here and present to me right now. I desire to be present to you. Guide my heart and mind to listen to Jesus, the Beloved Son. Holy Spirit help me, please speak loudly today. Holy Spirit, you are the breath of God, a spiration of love between the Father and the Son. I thank you and I praise you for guiding me since my Baptism by your inspirations. Holy Spirit please enkindle in me the fire of your Love so that I might grow in faith, hope, and charity.
Holy Spirit of God, I want to worship you with a pure heart and without distraction. Help me to separate myself from all worldly attachments and spend these 15 minutes with my heart and mind completely fixated on you.
My Paraclete, breathe into my soul the fire of your love. 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, Spirit of Truth, 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.
Make a Movie in Your Mind
Three days you’ve been walking from Beersheba, the donkey plodding steadily beneath a load of firewood, Abraham silent for most of the journey, his face unreadable. You’ve watched him eat little, sleep little, his eyes fixed on something far past the road itself. Now you’re climbing the last stretch toward the summit of Moriah — a sparse, sun-scorched mountaintop scattered with thorn bushes and wind-bent trees, the ground rocky and uneven beneath your sandals. Isaac walks just ahead of you, a bundle of dry logs strapped to his own back, heavier than a boy his age should carry alone. He doesn’t yet know why.
You watch him glance up at his father and ask the question that’s been sitting in your own chest since Beersheba: “Father… here is the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the holocaust?”
Abraham’s answer comes quiet, and strange: “God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust, my son.” You keep climbing, the silence between them thick enough to touch…
I Will Bless you Abundantly
Genesis 22:1-2,9-13,15-18
God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am!” he replied.
Then God said: “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.”
When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. Next he tied up his son Isaac, and put him on top of the wood on the altar.
Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the LORD’S messenger called to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!”
“Yes, Lord,” he answered.
“Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the messenger. “Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.”
As Abraham looked about, he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. So he went and took the ram and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son.
Again the LORD’S messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said: “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies,
and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing–all this because you obeyed my command.’
Be Completely Real
Let’s contemplate this passage “I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.”
The obedience of Abraham; his love for God, pleased the Lord so much that he was promised an abundant blessing.
Abraham did not have to sacrifice his beloved son, But the Eternal Father did so that through Jesus we could receive the Holy Spirit of Truth.
Paul hears this same echo centuries later, writing to the Romans: “He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” (Romans 8:32). What was only asked of Abraham—and mercifully stopped by the ram caught in the thicket—was not stopped for God the Father. He let it go all the way.
Imagine Jesus gazing at you and he says to you, “If you love me, keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth” John 14:15-17.
You have a choice. Will you keep his commandments? In what tangible way can you start to do this? Do you know what they are? How can you learn? 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.
Visualize Christ
Imagine yourself walking up the side of Mount Tabor with Jesus, Peter, James, and John. The climb is steep, and by midday the sun presses down without mercy—you can feel sweat gathering at your brow, dust settling into the creases of your sandals. Cicadas hum steadily in the dry grass around you, the only sound besides your own breathing and the crunch of loose stone underfoot.
When you look down the mountainside, you can see the Jezreel Valley spread out beneath you, ruled by the Romans, but populated with Jewish farmers and craftsmen, their fields gone gold and dry with the summer heat. As you climb higher, you pass through a forested area of oak, pistachio, carob, and turpentine trees, their leaves dusty but still holding a deep green against the parched hillside. The air is thick with the resin-sweet smell of turpentine sap warming in the sun.
By the time you near the summit, the air has cooled slightly, carried by a breeze you didn’t feel lower down. Peter, James, and John are breathing hard, glad to finally rest. Jesus moves a little apart from you, as he often does, to pray. You settle down in the shade of a broad oak, watching him kneel, his lips moving silently. The disciples’ eyes grow heavy in the stillness—the climb, the heat, the quiet all pulling them toward sleep. You fight to stay awake yourself, watching Jesus pray. All of a sudden you notice something has begun to change about him, a light gathering where there was only sunlight before…
Blinding Light of Christ
Mark 9:2-10
Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.
Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.
Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; then from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”
Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them.
As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.
Jesus Christ’s glorified body was so dazzling and bright that the disciples could not even describe the brilliance of his appearance.
Let’s listen to the final part, “So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.”
They were confused.
Use your imagination to envision this scene. I see myself walking down the mountain with Peter, James, and John, about 20 paces behind Jesus…. just out of earshot. I imagine they are whispering among themselves about what just happened and sharing what each thought it all meant, this cryptic statement of Jesus. Meanwhile, Jesus is ahead quite a few paces and probably praying to the Father.
We can see in hindsight the folly of Peter, James, and John’s reaction in this passage. They just didn’t understand the fullness of what Jesus was revealing. Of course our modern audience ‘knows the whole story’ and we can see the ignorance of these three future Apostles as they hike together down that mountain— pontificating.
Why didn’t they just ask Jesus? Wouldn’t that have just been the prudent thing to do in that situation? But they didn’t. They chose to stay confused and rely on their own understanding. This kind of self-reliance is a form of spiritual pride, but we can’t be too harsh on Peter, James, and John here. After all, they did not have the Holy Spirit yet.
But if you have been Baptized, you DO.
So, let me ask you, then—
When you are confused, do you ask Jesus? Do you pray, “Holy Spirit help me”? Or do you stay confused and rely on your understanding like Peter, James, and John did in this passage?
Think about a spiritual consolation that you have had in your life that you did not fully understand. At the time did you continue praying about it with great patience asking the Holy Spirit to help you discern? Over time, did the Lord slowly reveal to you things that you did not originally see or understand?
Sometimes Jesus wants us to ‘exercise’ our spiritual muscles. He reveals a little but we have to ‘hike a bit further’ down the spiritual path before he will reveal a bit more. It is a mercy that he does this because we are so ignorant and uncharitable. He feeds us what we are able to digest, always with the end goal of our eternal salvation in mind. We have to stick with it, and invest a little ‘sweat equity’ in our spiritual walk with Christ, trusting in him like children who know he knows better.
Are You Listening?
Think back to the mountain—the dazzling light, the voice from the cloud, the confusion in Peter, James, and John’s hearts as they walked back down in silence. And think of Abraham, walking home from Moriah with his son restored to him, having glimpsed the true weight of what he had almost given, and what God was one day going to give freely, without holding back.
Paul asks us the same question on our own walk down our own mountains of doubt and confusion: “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?” (Romans 8:31-32).
Whatever confusion you are carrying today, whatever mountaintop experience you don’t yet fully understand, you are not walking alone, and you are not walking unloved.
Paul reminds us that it is Christ himself, “at the right hand of God,” who “indeed intercedes for us” (Romans 8:34)—even now, even in your confusion. He does not condemn you for not yet understanding. He simply asks you to keep listening.
Ask yourself honestly: when you don’t understand what God is doing in your life, do you bring that confusion to him in prayer, or do you carry it alone, the way Peter, James, and John did on their walk down the mountain?
Take a moment now to bring him whatever you don’t yet understand, and ask the Holy Spirit to help you listen for his answer, in his own time.
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
The Third Sunday of Lent, Year B
You are Merciful to Me, I Love You Lord, I’ll Obey Your Laws
Third Sunday of Lent, Year B. God’s law is mercy in disguise, and Jesus cleanses the Temple to make room for true worship.