3RD WEEK OF LENT
Psalter: Week 3 / (Violet)
Ps 42:2, 3; 43:3, 4
Athirst is my soul for the living God.
When shall I go and behold the face of God?
1st Reading: 2 K 5:1-15b*
Naaman was the army commander of the king of Aram. This man was highly regarded and enjoyed the king’s favor, for Yahweh had helped him lead the army of the Arameans to victory. But this valiant man was sick with leprosy. (…)
Naaman went to tell the king what the young Israelite maidservant had said. The king of Aram said to him, “Go to the prophet, and I shall also send a letter to the king of Israel.”
So Naaman went and took with him ten silver talents, six thousand gold pieces and ten festal garments. (…)
When the king read the letter, he tore his clothes to show his indignation, “I am not God to give life or death. (…)
”Elisha, the man of God, came to know that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, so he sent this message to him: (…) Let the man come to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.”
So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and stopped before the house of Elisha. Elisha then sent a messenger to tell him, “Go to the river Jordan and wash seven times, and your flesh shall be as it was before, and you shall be cleansed.”
Naaman was angry, so he went away. He thought: “On my arrival, he should have personally come out, and then paused and called on the name of Yahweh, his God. (…)
His servants approached him and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had ordered you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? But how much easier when he said: ‘Take a bath and you will be cleansed.’
”So Naaman went down to the Jordan where he washed himself seven times as Elisha had ordered. His skin became soft like that of a child and he was cleansed.
Then Naaman returned to the man of God with all his men. He entered and said to him, “Now I know that there is no other God anywhere in the world but in Israel.
Gospel: Lk 4:24-30
Jesus added, “No prophet is honored in his own country. Truly, I say to you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens withheld rain for three years and six months and a great famine came over the whole land. Yet, Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow of Zarephath, in the country of Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha, the prophet; and no one was healed except Naaman, the Syrian.”
On hearing these words, the whole assembly became indignant. They rose up and brought him out of the town, to the edge of the hill on which Nazareth is built, intending to throw him down the cliff. But he passed through their midst and went his way.
Reflections
NO ONE IS A PROPHET
IN HIS OWN COUNTRY
First of all, it is hard enough to be called to be a prophet. It is not something you choose to be. You are chosen to be such. But of course the kern of prophecy has been embedded in us since we are baptized. And if we are religious that kern has grown into a full blown plant. In our present society, there are many situations that call for our prophetic response. There is the chronic poverty that is caused not by lack of resources but by the unequal distribution of wealth and the foreign control of our economy. The endemic and systemic corruption that riddles our society from top to bottom daunting to say the least. When you try to awaken people to these evils in our society, in our homes, convents, or communities, people can oppose us, criticize us, become suspicious of us or even publicly denounce us. Since they know us or even grew up with us, they cannot believe that we have truly been converted from our egoistic selves and are now engaged in this altruistic endeavor. But we have to expect this. Like the biblical prophets we can have “our heads cut off” figuratively, but as I tell my co-activist: “Don’t worry, it will grow again.”
Daily Reflection 2018
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