4TH WEEK OF LENT
Psalter: Week 4 / (Violet)
Ps 30:2 & 4, 5-6, 11-12a & 13b
I will praise you, Lord,
for you have rescued me.
1st Reading: Is 65:17-21
I now create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind again. Be glad forever and rejoice in what I create; for I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people. The sound of distress and the voice of weeping will not be heard in it any more.
You will no longer know of dead children or of adults who do not live out a lifetime. One who reaches a hundred years will have died a mere youth, but one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.
They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant crops and eat their fruit.
Gospel: Jn 4:43-54
When the two days were over, Jesus left for Galilee. Jesus himself said that no prophet is recognized in his own country. Yet the Galileans welcomed him when he arrived, because of all the things which he had done in Jerusalem during the Festival, and which they had seen. For they, too, had gone to the feast.
Jesus went back to Cana of Galilee, where he had changed the water into wine. At Capernaum there was an official, whose son was ill, and when he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and asked him to come and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.
Jesus said, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe!” The official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” And Jesus replied, “Go, your son lives!”
The man had faith in the word that Jesus spoke to him, and went his way. As he was approaching his house, his servants met him, and gave him the good news, “Your son has recovered!” So he asked them at what hour the child began to recover, and they said to him, “The fever left him yesterday, at about one o’clock in the afternoon.” And the father realized that that was the time when Jesus had told him, “Your son lives!” And he became a believer, he and all his family.
Jesus performed this second miraculous sign when he returned from Judea to Galilee.
Reflections
UNLESS YOU SEE SIGNS
AND WONDERS
YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE
We all long for certainty. When we pray we wish God would show us a sign about what we have prayed for or a sign to confirm a decision we have made. But the Scriptures have shown that in spite of signs and wonders, people still didn’t believe. In the Old Testament, when the rich man asked Lazarus to give a sign to warn people, he said there is no use because people will still not believe. Jesus did a lot of miracles in his time and also his apostles, but there were those who still did not believe. Thomas the apostle did not believe that Jesus had risen until the resurrected Christ put his hand on his wound. What we most need is faith and not signs and wonders. Because if we have faith we will see the confirmation of our prayers through people, through ordinary occurrences in our lives, through our own inner certainty.
Daily Reflection 2018
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Biblical Texts are taken from Christian Community Bible, Catholic Pastoral Edition (57th Edition) The New English Translation for the ROMAN MISSAL
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