Day 20

Today's Scripture is suitable to use with Imaginative Contemplation or Lectio Divina

Stilling: Come into the presence of God and still yourself

Grace: In this time of anxiety, to see your life more as God sees it. To see with God your deeper self, the person behind all the activity, a person made in God’s image.

John 11:28-37 HCSB

Jesus Shares the Sorrow of Death

Having said this, she went back and called her sister Mary,

saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”

As soon as she heard this, she got up quickly and went to Him.

Jesus had not yet come into the village but was still in the place where Martha had met Him.

The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw that Mary got up quickly and went out.

So they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to cry there.

When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet and told Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died!”

When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, He was angry in His spirit and deeply moved.

“Where have you put him?” He asked.

“Lord,” they told Him, “come and see.”

Jesus wept.

So the Jews said, “See how He loved him!”

But some of them said, “Couldn’t He who opened the blind man’s eyes also have kept this man from dying?”

Conversation: This story of the death of Lazarus might have said something to you about death in this time of pandemic. Speak with Jesus about whatever was brought up for you. Be honest. Note any strong or unexpected reactions or feelings that surface and stay with these in the time of prayer.

Finish with a final prayer such as the Lord's Prayer/Our Father

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears it is as well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are but more often than not God is speaking to you through the mystery of them of where you have come from and where, if your soul is to saved, you should perhaps go to next. (Frederick Buechner https://youtu.be/H1RLZGtDtrc? list=PLFDBD718438095F3A )

A Thought for Today

“I think of so many people crying:

isolated people in quarantine, lonely elderly people,

hospitalised people, people in therapy,

parents who see that since there is no salary they will not be able to feed their children,”

Many people cry.

We too, from our hearts, accompany them.

And it won't hurt us to cry a little with the Lord's weeping for all of his people,”

“How tenderly Jesus weeps!”

“He cries from the heart,

cries with love,

cries with his people who cry.”

Pope Francis, homily 29/3/20

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