MEDITATIO

The loving gesture of Jesus, who goes up to lepers to comfort and heal them, has its full and mysterious expression in his Passion. Tortured and disfigured by his bloody sweat, scourging, crowning with thorns and crucifixion, abandoned by those who forgot his good deeds, Jesus is identified with lepers in his Passion. He becomes both their image and their symbol, as the prophet Isaiah intuited when he contemplated the mystery of the Servant of the Lord: “There was in him no beauty nor appearance. (…) He was despised and rejected by men and as one from whom others hide their faces. (…) And we, we accounted him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted” (Is 53:2-4). Yet it is precisely from the wounds on the tortured body of Jesus and from the power of his resurrection that life and hope spring up for all those who are struck down by evil and infirmity. The Church has always been faithful to its mission of proclaiming the word of Christ, united to concrete acts of mercy showing solidarity towards the humblest and least. Throughout the centuries there has been a crescendo of stunning and exceptional devotion on behalf of those struck down by what are, humanly speaking, the most repulsive of illnesses. History clearly brings to light the fact that christians have been the first to become involved in the problem of lepers. Christ’s example led the way. He bore much fruit in selfless deeds of solidarity, devotion, generosity and charity.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team

Suffering reminds us that faith’s service to the common good is always one of hope — a hope which looks ever ahead in the knowledge that only from God, from the future which comes from the risen Jesus, can our society find solid and lasting foundations. In this sense faith is linked to hope, for even if our dwelling place here below is wasting away, we have an eternal dwelling place which God has already prepared in Christ, in his body (2 Cor 4:16-5,5). The dynamic of faith, hope and charity (1 Th 1:3; 1 Cor 13:13) thus leads us to embrace the concerns of all men and women on our journey towards that city “whose architect and builder is God” (Heb 11:10), for “hope does not disappoint” (Rm 5:5). In union with faith and charity, hope propels us towards a sure future, set against a different horizon with regard to the illusory enticements of the idols of this world yet granting new momentum and strength to our daily lives. Let us refuse to be robbed of hope, or to allow our hope to be dimmed by facile answers and solutions which block our progress, “fragmenting” time and changing it into space. Time is always much greater than space. Space hardens processes, whereas time propels towards the future and encourages us to go forward in hope.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team

I do not think that all the different kinds of prayer can be grasped without great purity of heart and soul and the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. For as many characteristics can be produced as there are conditions in one soul and, indeed, in all souls. (…) According to the degree of purity to which each mind has attained, and according to the nature of the condition either to which it has declined because of what has happened to it or to which it has renewed itself by its own efforts, these change at every moment. Therefore it is absolutely certain that no one’s prayers can be uniform. For a person prays one way when he is happy and another way when he is burdened by a weight of sadness or despair; one way when he is enjoying spiritual successes and another way when he is oppressed by numerous attacks; one way when he is begging pardon for sins and another way when he is asking for grace or some virtue or, of course for the annihilation of some vice; one way when he is struck with compunction by reflecting on Gehenna and by fear of future judgment and another way when he is inflamed by the hope and desire for future goods; one way when he is needy and in danger and another way when he is safe and at peace; one way when he is enlightened by revelations of heavenly mysteries and another way when he is fettered by sterility of virtue and dryness of thought. (…) And so a still more sublime and exalted condition follows upon these kinds of prayer. It is fashioned by the contemplation of God alone and by fervent charity, by which the mind, having been dissolved and flung into love of him, speaks most familiarly and with particular devotion to God as to its own father.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team