I Know You are Faithful and Keep Your Promises
Today we acknowledge God’s faithfulness. If you are new to mental prayer, we invite you to visit our guide on how to pray to learn more.
We begin Day 12 of our Lenten Challenge 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 faithfulness and love in my heart. 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 know you are faithful and keep your promises. I want to follow you all the way to Calvary, Jesus, and I want to do it with my whole heart.
AMEN.
I Know You are Faithful and Keep Your Promises
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Let’s begin Day 12 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.
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 going to hear a desperate prayer from the prophet Jeremiah whose adversaries were part of the elite political and religious establishment. These priests were considered the “wise” counselors of his day, and some were also false prophets. They were so threatened by Jeremiah’s prophecies that they conspired to slander him so they wouldn’t have to listen to him anymore. They even went as far as digging a pit, hoping he would fall into it and die. Slowly imagine this scene in your mind as you read. Imagine yourself physically there, in Jeremiah’s shoes. In your mind, find yourself with Jeremiah, contemplate how his life is so closely aligned to the will of God that he even foreshadows the Lord…
Must Good be Repaid with Evil?
Jeremiah 18:18-20
“Come,” they said, “let us devise a plot against Jeremiah, for instruction will not perish from the priests, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophets. Come, let us destroy him by his own tongue. Let us pay careful attention to his every word.”
Pay attention to me, O LORD, and listen to what my adversaries say. Must good be repaid with evil that they should dig a pit to take my life?
Remember that I stood before you to speak on their behalf, to turn your wrath away from them.
Reflection:
Let us take a moment to reflect on the message in the First Reading.
Did you envision yourself listening the prophet Jeremiah begging God for vengeance against his enemies who are plotting to destroy him? Have you ever felt at odds with someone who has paid attention to your every word and has tried to destroy you by using your own words against you?
Now let’s personalize this passage from our First Reading…
Be Completely Real…
Take a moment and think about the LORD and how he sees all, things not yet come to pass. Take a moment to ponder this and how the LORD might see you and your descendants and a way you cannot comprehend. Consider your worries, cares, wants and desires. Recognize that the LORD is faithful and he keeps his promises, even if you do not see it in your lifetime, you can trust in the LORD to be faithful and just.
Can you see why it is important you submit to his ways, even when you don’t understand? Think about ways you have not done this in the past. Is there a situation in your life right now, maybe with someone contentious, that you need to fully surrender to God? Talk to the LORD from your heart about it.
Give the Holy Spirit time to respond.
In the next part we will read a prayer of petition from Psalms. Pray this from your heart, contemplating the wisdom of the LORD and his eternal glory. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you pray the words with a faithful heart of love.
Let us continue our mental prayer with today’s Responsorial Psalm:
My Destiny is in God's Hands
Psalm 31:5-6, 14-16
Free me from the net they have set for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hands I commend my spirit; you will redeem me, LORD, God of truth.
I hear the whispers of the crowd; terrors are all around me. They conspire together against me; they plot to take my life.
But I trust in you, LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My destiny is in your hands, rescue me from my enemies, from the hands of my pursuers.
Visualize Christ…
Have you noticed something about this passage? Think about the phrase written here, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” This prayer was written by King David, during a time of severe persecution and betrayal by his friends. He had plots against his life, just like Jeremiah. Despite his distress, David offers a prayer of total and absolute faith in God. He even concludes saying his “destiny” is in God’s hands.
Do you recall Jesus saying these same words in the Gospels? [Luke 23:46].
Read this passage twice, the second time more slowly, pausing on a word or phrase that speaks to your heart. Then prayerfully speak to the LORD about whether or not you believe in His faithfulness and trust that your destiny is in His hands?
Jesus Foretells His Destiny
Matthew 20:17-28
As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve [disciples] aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
The Request of James and John
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached him with her sons and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something. He said to her, “What do you wish?”
She answered him, “Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom.”
Jesus said in reply, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?”
They said to him, “We can.”
He replied, “My cup you will indeed drink, but to sit at my right and at my left [, this] is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”
When the ten heard this, they became indignant at the two brothers.
But Jesus summoned them and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Are You Listening?
We know what Jesus meant in this Gospel reading because we see the future to come in this story that the disciples couldn’t.
The disciples, like Jeremiah, wanted something they thought was good, yet Jesus, like David, know that the Eternal Father is faithful and keeps His promises, so they are resigned to live according to His will. For Jesus, this meant dying on a Cross in order to ransom you and rescue you from death. For David, that meant reigning over the people of Israel for 40 years and dying of natural causes at an old age.
When you are able to surrender completely to the will of God for your life you are filled with the grace necessary to live with eternal purpose and be at peace.
Ask yourself, am I able to surrender completely to the will of God? Do I know that God is truly faithful and will keep His promises? Can I trust that He loves me and will lead me even when I feel uncertain and afraid about my situation?
Take 1-3 minutes to be with the Lord and speak from your heart.
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 13 Lenten Meditation
I Turn My Heart To You and Away from Evil
“I Turn My Heart to You and Away From Evil” – Join us in our 13th Lenten reflection for Liturgical Year I