Meditations on Weekday Gospels, February 8 - 13,  2010
Fifth Week of the Year

(You need a Bible to read the Gospel selections as indicated in the citation of the Gospel, chapter and verses; the meditation follows.)

Monday
Mark 6.53-56
The basis of quiet prayer is an intentional resting in the power of Christ. His power is present to heal us. “To be healed,” “to get well,” “to be saved,” all are expressions of the same purpose of the Gospel text. In our quiet prayer we do not dwell upon the specifics of our infirmities and sinfulness or upon the needs of our friends and of the human family. Our prayer in Christ is our resting in his power and love. Our prayer is the touching of his cloak without needing to use words. Jesus holds us in his love. We consent. We are healed.

Tuesday
Mark 7.1-13
Each day I enter into the word of God. But by my behavior and attitudes do I then make "void the Word of God?" Do I bore a hole right through the Word's deepest meaning in order to conform it to my own agenda? My prayer's purpose is that my "heart be not far from" God. My rule must be to seek to pray simply, opening to the Spirit who is the anointing of discernment. Then I must be attentive to my participation in the Eucharist. I must adhere to the living Tradition of the Church that keeps me from man-made traditions. I must meet each person with kindness and forgiveness, each cross and setback with patience. These are the elements of my discipline so that my heart, purified and transformed, is in all that I am and do. That my heart reborn in grace is in all that I do and say.

Wednesday
Mark 7.14-23
What comes out of me is the product of my inner motivations and attitudes, of my habits and of negative emotions. The fruits display the kind of tree that I am in my roots. Silent prayer quickly makes clear the extent and quality of these fruits that defile me. The work of prayer is purification that yields transformation into the image of the glorious state of Christ who dwells within me in the Spirit. My prayer is consent to this work of transformation.

Thursday (Memorial of our Lady of Lourdes; meditation on the weekday Gospel)
Mark 7.24-30
The Syrophoenician woman holds nothing back from Jesus. Everything flows right out of her heart. She knows her deepest need and expresses it. The illness of her daughter is the most crucial aspect of her life. She looks right into Christ and sees in him the power of God to heal. She goes out of herself to seek the solution in the Source of all power, Christ the savior. She is not caught up in the self-pity of being on the outside of the national boundaries wherein God is said to be working, that is, among the children of Israel. She speaks out of her most fundamental and undeniable belonging to God as a creature. She knows that God does not hold his creatures as nothing and that each has an identity. Confident in her identity, she is willing to take the lowest place. From that grasp of reality which is humility and from the stirrings of faith, her response goes right to the heart of Jesus. This was a prayer encounter. A miracle ensues.

Friday
Mark 7.31-37
After the days of creation, the angels must have sung the same praise: "He has done all things well…." The words of cure, "Ephaphatha--Be opened," was once a part of the rite of Baptism. Baptism is the opening of our ears in faith and our mouths in professing our faith. Christ demonstrates that the rites of spittle and touching, water and washing, immersion in the creation become the sacrament of God's redemptive work. My prayer also is physical, creaturely. It is not entirely a matter of spirit and consciousness. It is bringing my total self together in quiet and attentive sitting. It is feeling the hand and touch of Jesus upon me in my physicality of time and space, of posture and attentiveness to the work of healing. I am his patient, a patient of the one who does so wonderfully with my illness, the physician who heals my wounds and restores health to the soul.

Saturday
Mark 8.1-10
My deepest, silent, contemplative-like prayer is never far from the reality of the Holy Eucharist. Adoration of the Presence in the reserved Eucharist blends into the discipline of silent, centering prayer. My prayer is communion that is the result of feeding upon the Mystery of Christ made real to me in the Spirit. From that communion the words of faith take on substance. Then in turn the words sustain the silent Spirit. Union with the Spirit within in us is one with union with the Eucharistic Lord who multiplies the bread and offers the wine so that under the forms we are in communion with the Holy Trinity, substantially, really present in the Eucharist. I am never sent away hungry from Jesus after having followed him into the desert of prayer.
 



--William Fredrickson, Obl.OSB, D.Min.