Daily Mass Reflection & Daily Mass Readings

Daily Mass Reflection & Daily Mass Readings

Daily Mass Reflection & Daily Mass Readings are vital for nurturing spiritual growth and maintaining a strong connection to one’s faith. These practices offer a dedicated time to meditate on the scriptures and the teachings of the homily, helping individuals internalize the lessons and apply them to their daily lives. Regular engagement with the readings fosters a deeper understanding of religious texts, while the reflection period allows for personal introspection and spiritual renewal. Together, they provide a foundation for a more meaningful and conscious practice of faith, promoting a sense of peace, guidance, and communal belonging.

9th March – Monday, Third Week of Lent

We are all familiar with the emotion of anger. We probably have to deal with it on a regular basis. Sometimes my anger can be saying something about what is going on in me. I blow my top for no reason and I realize it is because I am stressed out. At other times my anger can be in response to something beyond me, perhaps what someone says or does. It is also possible that my anger can come from a combination of both what is going on within me and beyond me. In today’s gospel reading, it is said that everyone in the synagogue of Nazareth was enraged by Jesus. Their anger seems to have resulted from a combination of what Jesus said in the synagogue and what was going on within them. Jesus identified himself with two prophets who had ministered to people in great need who lived far beyond Israel, a woman from Sidon in Phoenicia and a man from Syria, a widow and a military commander. Phoenicia and Syria were the traditional enemies of Israel. This didn’t go down well with the people of Nazareth because their understanding of the God of Israel seems to have been much narrower than Jesus’ understanding. As Son of God, Jesus knew God better than anyone else. He knew that God’s loving concern embraced all of humanity, including those traditionally regarded as the enemies of Israel. This was the God whom Jesus revealed by his words and his deeds, and it made many people uncomfortable, and, sometimes, very angry. Jesus’ very generous vision of God will always stretch us in some way. If we are really attentive to the Jesus of the gospels, now risen Lord, we will often find ourselves having to rethink how we see God and how we see others.

8th March – Third Sunday of Lent

In this part of the world we easily take running water for granted. If the water gets cut off, for some reason, we can find ourselves a bit disorientated. It isn’t that long ago when people in villages here in Ireland would have gone to the local well or pump for water. That would certainly have been the case here in Finglas village. It is still the case today in many parts of the world. The village well or pump was a great meeting place. You would expect to meet other people from the village community there and even strangers who needed refreshing water on their journey. Many a conversation would have been had at the village well.

The setting for today’s gospel reading was the local well of the Samaritan town, Sychar. Journeying from Judea in the south to Galilee in the north, Jesus and his disciples stop there. We have an image of Jesus as a tired and thirsty traveller. He is a stranger in those parts and at the well he meets a woman who is on home ground. He starts a conversation by asking her for a drink, because she had a bucket that could draw water from the well. Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus identifies himself with the thirsty who long for water, ‘I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink’. On this occasion the woman seems reluctant to grant Jesus’ request. He was a Jew and she was a Samaritan and, at that time, there was great hostility between Jews and Samaritans, not unlike the hostility between Jews and Palestinians today. There was a barrier between the woman and Jesus and the woman was very aware of it. Jesus seemed indifferent to this barrier. God was always at work through Jesus trying to overcome ancient hostilities. Having received a rather frosty reply to his request for a drink, Jesus went on to say that through him God was offering her something much more wonderful than water from the well. God was offering her ‘living water’, a gift that could permanently satisfy thirst, a gift which, if received, would become a spring deep inside her welling up to eternal life. What is this gift from God that Jesus was offering her?

Jesus was offering her the living water of the Holy Spirit. Through Jesus, God wanted to pour the Spirit of his love into this woman’s heart. The Spirit of God’s love would satisfy the deepest thirst in her life, the thirst for a love that was unconditional, faithful, renewing. On her own admission, she had failed to find such a love in her human relationships. As Jesus continued to engage her in conversation, she became more aware of this deeper thirst in her life for God. Jesus brought her deep spiritual thirst to the surface. She started to speak about the things of God, how God was best to be worshipped. She went on to speak of her longing for a Messiah who would tell us everything. That was the opening for Jesus to make that wonderful revelation to her, ‘I who am speaking to you, I am he’. She suddenly lost all interest in her chore of fetching water from the will. Leaving her bucket there, she went and shared her emerging faith in Jesus with her townspeople. She brought them to the well to meet Jesus and they in turn brought Jesus to their homes in the town, and soon they came to confess him as ‘Saviour of the world’. The woman became a powerful witness to Jesus. He brought her on a journey from an initial dismissal of him to a hugely influential labourer in God’s harvest.

The story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman is also our story. The way Jesus related to her is how he relates to each one of us. Jesus met her as she was, while going about her daily chores. The Lord meets us too at the heart of our daily lives. He comes to us as we are, carrying as we all do the impacts of past struggles and disappointments. He tries to tap into the deeper thirsts in our lives, our thirst for a love that is reliable, a thirst for peace of mind and heart, a thirst for a way of life that corresponds to our identity as beloved sons and daughters of God. He continues to stand before us, offering us the same gift from God that he offered the woman, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God’s love. As Saint Paul says in today’s second reading, ‘the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us’. We already received that gift of the living water of the Spirit at our baptism. Sometimes we can forget what we have been given, this great gift that can satisfy the deepest thirst in our hearts. We can be tempted to go to other, inferior, wells, whose waters cannot truly satisfy. Yet, even if this happens, the Lord continues to meet us where we are. He always stands ready to pour afresh the living water of the Spirit of God’s love into our hearts. If we welcome and receive this gift, the Spirit will empower us to create openings for others to receive this same gift afresh, just as the Samaritan woman did.

9th March >> Mass Readings

Monday, Third Week of Lent

(optional commemoration of Saint Frances of Rome, Religious)

Liturgical Colour: Violet. Year: A(II).

First Reading 2 Kings 5:1-15 There were many lepers in Israel, but only Naaman, the Syrian, was cured.

Naaman, army commander to the king of Aram, was a man who enjoyed his master’s respect and favour, since through him the Lord had granted victory to the Aramaeans. But the man was a leper. Now on one of their raids, the Aramaeans had carried off from the land of Israel a little girl who had become a servant of Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, ‘If only my master would approach the prophet of Samaria. He would cure him of his leprosy.’ Naaman went and told his master. ‘This and this’ he reported ‘is what the girl from the land of Israel said.’ ‘Go by all means,’ said the king of Aram ‘I will send a letter to the king of Israel.’ So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten festal robes. He presented the letter to the king of Israel. It read: ‘With this letter, I am sending my servant Naaman to you for you to cure him of his leprosy.’ When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his garments. ‘Am I a god to give death and life,’ he said ‘that he sends a man to me and asks me to cure him of his leprosy? Listen to this, and take note of it and see how he intends to pick a quarrel with me.’ When Elisha heard that the king of Israel had torn his garments, he sent word to the king, ‘Why did you tear your garments? Let him come to me, and he will find there is a prophet in Israel.’ So Naaman came with his team and chariot and drew up at the door of Elisha’s house. And Elisha sent him a messenger to say, ‘Go and bathe seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will become clean once more.’ But Naaman was indignant and went off, saying, ‘Here was I thinking he would be sure to come out to me, and stand there, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprous part. Surely Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, are better than any water in Israel? Could I not bathe in them and become clean?’ And he turned round and went off in a rage. But his servants approached him and said, ‘My father, if the prophet had asked you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? All the more reason, then, when he says to you, “Bathe, and you will become clean.”’ So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, as Elisha had told him to do. And his flesh became clean once more like the flesh of a little child. Returning to Elisha with his whole escort, he went in and stood before him. ‘Now I know’ he said ‘that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.’

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 41(42):2-3,42:3-4