5th Week of Lent 2019 - Friday - A pattern emerges

Just one week from Good Friday, our daily readings have grown more ominous. Particularly today, though, we detect striking similarities between Jesus and the prophet Jeremiah. Both Jeremiah and Jesus are denounced, criticized, abandoned by friends, and persecuted.

Jeremiah was sent by God to the Jews of Jerusalem who had allowed much corruption to enter into their religious life. Jesus was quoting Jeremiah when he cleansed the temple, condemning the religious leaders for making the temple into a “den of thieves”. For speaking against the corrupt religious authorities, Jeremiah was scourged. Like Jesus, Israel’s leaders similarly schemed against Jeremiah.  “Come they said, let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah…let us destroy him by his own tongue; let us carefully watch his every word.”

Like Jesus in the Gospel today, Jeremiah is often found appealing to his divine mission and to the works he is performing: that in hardening your heart against his call to conversion, you are hardening your heart toward God.

In the reading today Jeremiah said, not only his enemies, but his friends were watching him intensely just looking for an opportunity to denounce him. This reminds us of the apostle Judas, who Jesus had called “his friend”, who next week goes looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus. And also how the scribes and Pharisees, his fellow Jews plotted and conspired to bring Jesus to death. In today’s Gospel, things have reached such a fervor that they have rocks in their hands, ready to stone him to death.

These similarities between Jeremiah and Jesus show us that there is a pattern to how God works. He calls sinners to repentance. And our readings should increase our conviction that, like Jeremiah, Jesus is the one sent by God for our redemption. But today’s readings also show us that there is a pattern to how evil works as well. Evil hardens our hearts against the call to conversion, it criticizes what is good, what is from God, it leads people to conspire against God’s prophets, it ignores and even encourages corruption in God’s temple in the Church.

Let us ensure that as we enter into Holy Week, we’ve acknowledged and repented of the times when we have silenced the word of God speaking to us, calling us to conversion, perhaps even times when we have called evil “good” and good “evil”. By pondering the word of God may we grow attuned to those holy inspirations from God’s Spirit. And through our final Lenten penances, may we console Jesus as he prepares to endure tremendous suffering for our redemption, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the Church will experience the graces of profound renewal during this season of Lent.  That we may grow in our eagerness in spreading the Gospel of Christ.

That all Christian families will recommit themselves to putting Christ at the center of their family life, so as to grow in faith, hope, and love.  We pray to the Lord.

For an end to abortion and for the reverence and protection of human life.  We pray to the Lord.
For the young people of our Church. May they be strengthened to be witnesses to the Gospel of mercy and work for a future that embodies a genuine culture of life.

For those preparing to enter the Church at Easter: that they will be profoundly blessed in their preparation for full initiation into the Body of Christ.  We pray to the Lord.

For the needs of the poor, the hungry, the homeless, those who are sick, unemployed, or suffering from addiction, mental, or physical illness, imprisoned, and those most in need: that the Lord in his goodness will be close to them in their trials.  We pray to the Lord.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

Mercifully hear, O Lord, the prayers of your Church and turn with compassion to the hearts that bow before you, that those you make sharers in your divine mystery may always benefit from your assistance.