Lord, you redeem me and set me free from snares. 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 12 of our Lenten Challenge with this opening prayer:
TRUST AND BELIEVE...
Lord Jesus,
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 pray the next 15 minutes with my heart fully open to grace.
I am grateful for all you have done for me and your unconditional love. You truly are my refuge; you have restored my peace. I know I am a sinner and can only be made clean by you. You redeem me.
I thank you and I praise you for having restored me with your sacrificial love. I have cried out to you in desperation and you saved me. You took away all my doubt and replaced it with a firm faith in your love. Thank you, Jesus, my Lord, my redeemer.
Jesus Christ, you are my beloved Savior and I love you.
AMEN.
Wednesday of the 2nd Week of Lent(Liturgical Year II)
Lord You Redeem Me
A Reflection for Prayerful Meditation
Join me in a prayerful meditation for your Lenten journey with Jesus, our Lord and Refuge.
Lord You Redeem Me
Prayer to the Holy Spirit
TRUST AND BELIEVE...
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 hold close to my heart the price Jesus has paid to redeem me. I don’t want to ever take it for granted.
Jesus has paid the price for my sins and is my light and my refuge.
Breath 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 the Lord 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. Take your time. Pause over a moment that really tugs at your heart. Reread the passage again, this time imagine yourself physically there in the scene. What do you hear? See? Feel? Sense?
Lord You Redeem Me
Must Good be Repaid with Evil?
Jeremiah 18:18-20
The people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem said, “Come, let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah. It will not mean the loss of instruction from the priests, nor of counsel from the wise, nor of messages from the prophets. And so, let us destroy him by his own tongue; let us carefully note his every word.”
Heed 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 in their behalf, to turn away your wrath from them.
Reflection:
Let us take a moment to reflect on the message in the first reading.
Some theologians say the prophet Jeremiah is a ‘type’ of Christ. He’s known as the weeping prophet because he spent 50 years telling the people to repent of their sins. They did not obey him and instead, he was stoned him to death because the truth of his words pierced their consciences and their hearts were so hard the refused to listen.
What part of this passage from Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, sticks out to you?
“Must good be repaid with evil that they should dig a pit to take my life?”
Doesn’t this remind you of what happened to Jesus during his Passion? How did this move your heart?
Now let’s personalize this passage from our first reading…
How have you experienced good being returned for evil in your life? Did this experience help you feel a deeper love for Jesus and all that he suffered for our sins?
Let’s Pray:
Lord, let me repay your good with a heart of pure gratitude. I can truly never repay you for all you have done to save me from my sins. I want to love you with a pure heart because I am eternally grateful for your loving sacrifice. You redeem me. AMEN.
Be Completely Real...
Spend a moment with your eyes closed and imagine Jesus on the Cross, gazing into you eyes and saying, “I love you.”
Open your heart in a prayer of silence and love him back…
Now we will contemplate the Lord by listening to him speak to us in the Gospels.
Visualize Christ
You are with Jesus, and about to leave Jericho. Jesus has just healed two blind men, and upon hearing that he is leaving for Jerusalem with his 12 disciples, these two men decide to also follow Jesus there.
It is a 15 mile journey by foot to Jerusalem, and to your surprise, a small crowd has assembled to follow in the footsteps of the two blind men. Other close followers of Jesus, the companions of his disciples, are also on this final journey with our Lord to Jerusalem. You are encouraged by all the love, admiration, and support these followers give Jesus and it fills you with hope.
This journey takes about 6 hours to travel by foot, and you are traveling at a brisk pace, as Passover is nearing. As you walk through all the familiar places of your time with Jesus, you begin contemplating what he means to you and it fills your heart with joy.
As you are walking, Jesus indicates to everyone that it is time to stop for a moment. There is something important he needs to share privately with his disciples, so you gather around him to listen to him speak to you as the crowd behind you takes their rest for a few moments….
Lord You Redeem Me
Giving Your Life as a Ransom for Many
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.”
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.”
Reflection:
The mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, requested that Jesus: “Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom.” She wanted her boys to receive a special honor for their discipleship. She was thinking in selfish terms and it caused anger and division.
Jesus is the light of truth. Always, he speaks wisdom and love to us, and his children who know his voice and obey him will follow, even when he rebukes us, it is done with charity.
We have to trust him. Just like the sons of thunder and their mother, we don’t see where we are going when we follow Jesus. The Lord knows where you are going, so rest in him.
He speaks in a way that feeds us where we are at, he consoles our hearts and offers peace to our feeble minds. His words do not cause us to fear the future that will come. This is because we love him and we want to be with him for eternity.
Our deep abiding love of Christ and our steadfast faith gives us confidence, faith, courage and fortitude.
This is why we must have humility and always obey the Lord. He knows everything. He knows your future to come. Assent to his will and drink the cup he offers you.
Let us continue our mental prayer with a meditation from Saint Faustina on the beauty of suffering for Jesus for the love for sinners.
Lord You Redeem Me
The Mystery Hidden Within Christ Jesus
By Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, (Notebook II, 942,943,948)
Today is Friday. During Mass, I suffered pain in my body: in my hands, my feet and my side. Jesus is sending me this kind of suffering that I may make reparation for sinners. The pain is brief, but very severe. I do not suffer for more than a couple of minutes, but the impression remains for a long time and is very vivid.
Today I feel such desolation in my soul that I do not know how to explain it even to myself. I would like to hide from people and cry endlessly. No one understands a heart wounded by love, and when such a heart feels itself abandoned interiorly, no one can comfort it. O souls of sinners, you have taken the Lord away from me, but all right, all right: you get to know how sweet the Lord is, and let the whole sea of bitterness flood my heart. I have given all my divine comforts to you.
Today, during the Passion Service, I saw Jesus being tortured and crowned with thorns and holding a reed in His hand. Jesus was silent as the soldiers were bustling about, vying with each other in torturing Him. Jesus said nothing, but just looked at me, and in the gaze I felt His pain, so terrible that we have not the faintest idea of how much He suffered for us before He was crucified. My soul was filled with pain and longing; in my soul, I felt great hatred for sin, and even the smallest infidelity on my part seemed to me like a huge mountain for which I must expiate my mortification and penance. When I see Jesus tormented, my heart is torn to pieces, and I think: what will become of sinners if they do not take advantage of the Passion of Jesus: In His Passion, I see a whole sea of mercy.
Reflection:
Saint Faustina is describing a charism given by the Spirit that allows a soul to mystically suffer the wounds of Christ crucified. It’s called a stigmata.
Saint Faustina’s was willing to suffer these mystical pains for hardened sinners needing the grace of repentance.
Saint Faustina offers her pain along with prayers of reparation out of love. She knows that the Lord is offended by grave sins of mankind and in her hidden life she intercede for these souls as the Spirit instructs her.
There is a beautiful sacrificial love that only a soul who suffers physically for Christ feels. It’s a union of wills, that of the soul’s and of God’s. And a deep love for the sinner and desire for conversion will rise up in the soul’s heart at the moment of pain. Then the soul will pray fervently to God for mercy until the pain subsides. And then often times, grace comes to the sinner because God loves cooperation with grace and when we love the sinner as he does.
Let’s Pray:
Thank you Jesus for the pains you suffered to save my soul, and for all the intercessors you have called upon to pray for me when I was away from grace and not seeking you. I love you Jesus, you redeem me. AMEN.
Are You Listening?
The ‘weeping’ prophet, Jeremiah prayed day and night for 50 years, with tears and groaning, for sinners who were unrepentant and wanted to injure him and kill him.
Six hundred years later, Jesus Christ, our great high priest, offered up prayers and supplications with cries and tears to the Father for the sinners of the world, consummating his love when he mounted the Cross after his own people had convicted him.
Jesus cried out: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
We must imitate Christ.
Pray the next Lenten Meditation
Day 13 Mental Prayer Meditation
Probe my Mind and Test My Heart Lord, I Trust in You
Probe my mind and test my heart Lord. I desire you above all things. Reward me according to your ways; I trust in you.