This Sunday we have Sr Mary Helen OP giving us a beautiful reflection on St John’s Gospel 12:20-33.

The Greeks asked if they could see Jesus. Do we acknowledge that desire in the depths of our hearts to see Him too? St Augustine says “our hearts are restless til they rest in You”. It will give us immeasurable peace if we just rest in Christ. In his gaze.

It is interesting to think that in order for Jesus to be “visible” to those outside the chosen people, he had to die.

What does this mean in our lives? It means that we are now God’s chosen people, and for Christ to be made present to the world, we have to die to ourselves too. There is no point to evangelisation if you aren’t prepared to do what is necessary to follow him. To be a witness to the Cross.

Gospel Reading Audio 

Reflection on the Gospel by Sr Mary Helen OP

reflection sheet

We have provided a number of reflection questions based on the video above. You don’t need to answer them all. They are just a guide to help you reflect on what was said. You can pick as many or as few as you wish. It really depends on the time you have through the week and what really spoke to you. Click the image to download the sheet.

Further reading

Here we are listing a number of other resources that you might like to look at. Of course you don’t need to use any at all or even just in Lent! It is mainly for those who wish to delve more deeply into themes or ideas that have been looked into this week.

Scripture Readings
Click here for the other reading from Mass today.

Prayer
The Stations of the cross are an integral part of out Christian lives. We see them every time we go into our Churches, here’s a little bit of the history of them. 

Here is a great little podcast on the stations and ways to help you pray them.

We are very much encouraged over Lent to do the Stations of the cross, so many holy people have given us their reflections as we pause and pray at each one. People like Mother Angelica, Cardinal John Henry Newman and St Alphonsus Liguori. For those whom time is limited there are also these ones. 

These are all based on the traditional stations that are found in every Church and then there are also the “scriptural stations” that St John Paul II put together.

This prayer of the Church really helps to focus out minds at this time and helps to put us there, gazing at Christ as he walks the road to our salvation.

Books
(You can buy these books from anywhere you like –  links are given just for information)

Here is a little illustrated booklet that goes through St John Paul II’s scriptural Stations of the Cross.

Sister Mary Helen mentions St Catherine of Siena, the great doctor of the Church and mystic. She had much of her dialogues with Christ written down and this is still considered to be a classic for spiritual reading.

Scott Hanh has a very timely new book out called “The Fourth Cup – unveiling the Mystery of the Last Supper and the Cross” He documents his own conversion from Evangelical Protestantism as well as looks at the importance of our Jewish roots to understand the death and resurrection of Christ. Perhaps you might not be able to get it until after Easter but it sounds like a wonderful book for any time of year.

If you are looking for a fiction read for this time of year, Helena by Evelyn Waugh is a good option. We have mentioned this in a blog post before, but it is a really clever story about St Helena who discovered the True cross some 300 years or so after Christ’s death. It is also a commentary on our own world today. This article is a really good overview of Waugh’s style and perhaps what he was trying to convey.

 

Articles/Blog Posts
On our blog this week we have a homily from Fr Anthony Denton on this Sunday’s Gospel. He talks about how wanting to see Jesus means that first we need to recognise who He is.

There’s a little bit of a Dominican theme this week! This is an article from a  Dominican priest who writes about the Great Gaze of Jesus which might help us as we reflect on Sr Mary Helen’s talk and what the merciful gaze of Jesus means.

This is another article from a Dominican, who writes on his reflections of doing the stations of the Cross in his community and how the stations remind us of the ugliness and danger of sin.

Suffering and Love. It is the constant paradoxical theme of Lent. This is an article by Alice von Hildebrand which looks into this deeply profound paradox.

Fr Denton in his homily in the link above gives us some lines from a homily from Cardinal John Henry Newman on the Cross of Christ as the Measure of the World. This is that homily. 

Audio
Scott Hahn has a short reflection on this week’s Gospel.

We talk a lot here at Anima about our need for silence in our over noisy world. Edward Sri and his wife in his podcast talk about how they this Lent brought more silence into their very busy home, how they manage to do this with eight children and what they have found.

To add to the music list below we also have a beautiful musical meditation on the Stations of the Cross by the Dominican Sister’s of St Cecelia in Nashville, the order of Dominicans that Sister Mary Helen belongs.

Lenten Music

Click here for a YouTube playlist of music for this week.
It is meant to be a tool for prayer, but also can be played through your day to help keep the season in mind. Apologies for any advertisements that may interrupt your listening!

~ Just a note, when we link to a site we are not always endorsing the site as a whole,  we are just highlighting the post of interest on the site.