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Why do we study the ? Psalm 1 Blessed indeed are those who Not so are the wicked, not so! follow not the counsel of the wicked, For they, like winnowed chaff, nor stand in the path with sinners, shall be driven away by the wind. nor abide in the company of scorners, When the wicked are judged but whose delight they shall not rise, is the law of the Lord, nor shall sinners in the council of the and who ponder God’s law righteous; day and night. for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, Such people are like trees but the way of the wicked will perish. (Please stand and let’s this Psalm and Glory that are planted Be together. Mention the Glory Be.) beside the flowing waters, (Please bow) that yield their fruit in due season, Glory to the Father and to the Son, and whose leaves shall never fade; and to the Holy Spirit. and all that they do shall prosper. (Rise, pause & breathe) As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Luke 2:22‐39 The Feast of the Presentation When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of , they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord," and to offer the sacrifice of "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons," in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord. (Luke is educating his non‐Jewish audience. Purification for whom? See Lev 12:6‐7) Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was . This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Messiah of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple. When the parents brought in the child to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying: "Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in sight of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.“ (What audience is listed first?) The child's father and mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, "Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted, and you yourself a sword will pierce, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.“

• Night prayer canticle (Song of Simeon) is found here. Many liturgical canticles come from Luke. • Divine Reversal is predicted by Simeon.

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Luke 2:22‐39 The Feast of the Presentation There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the . She was advanced in years, having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage, and then as a widow until she was eighty‐four. She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day with and prayer. And coming forward at that very time, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem. When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions of the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. • Luke frequently balances male and female counterparts in this . • In the Presentation of Jesus, we see Simeon, male, and Anna, female. • Another example: Mary gives the (sung at Evening Prayer) and Zechariah give the Benedictus (sung at Morning Prayer). Why the order? When does the Jewish day begin? • Reader for Reflection (on your table) by Mary Stommes on our prophetic call and waiting…Let us pray…

St. Lenten Retreat • “Stewardship: Becoming Sons & Daughters of God” • Saturday, March 16 • 8:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. in Marian Hall, with lunch and child care. • Jay Landry will give two talks. One, the Encounter of Jesus & the Rich Young Man and two, the Encounter of Jesus & . • The rest of the day includes quiet time in prayer and hearing testimonies from people who experienced conversion where they fell in love and it changed how they saw and stewarded their lives, property, and vocation.

• This includes Marci McCarthy (St. Basil) and Fr. Ken Schmidt (St. Catherine). • Please RSVP to Jay [email protected] or 269‐978‐2331 if you wish to come by Thursday, March 14 and earlier if you need child care.

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Review ‐ Disciples & Apostles • What is a ? A disciple is one who follows. a. A disciple follows a teacher, master, or Rabbi and they imitate how they do everything: eat, speak, rest, teach, grow in holiness, etc. b. This is how Jesus forms disciples: they become his apprentices and they gradually learn by “observing” all that he does and then gradually doing it alongside him.

• What is an apostle? An apostle is one who is sent. a. An apostle is one who is sent by a teacher, master, Rabbi, or Messiah to do the work of that person. b. Jesus forms followers as disciples before they can be sent out as apostles. c. Jesus sends out his disciples to proclaim the Reign of God, to teach, to heal, to raise the dead, to feed, to expel demons, etc.

Luke 5:17‐26 One day as Jesus was teaching, and teachers of the law were sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was with him for healing. And some men brought on a stretcher a man who was paralyzed; they were trying to bring him in and set him in his presence. But not finding a way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on the stretcher through the tiles into the middle in front of Jesus. When he saw their faith, Jesus said, “Child, your sins are forgiven.“ Then the scribes and Pharisees began to ask themselves, "Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who but God alone can forgive sins?" Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them in reply, "What are you thinking in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"‐‐ he said to the man who was paralyzed, "I say to you, rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home." He stood up immediately before them, picked up what he had been lying on, and went home, glorifying God. Then astonishment seized them all and they glorified God, and, struck with awe, they said, "We have seen incredible things today.“

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Luke 5:17‐26 • Lectio Divina – need 2 readers. • Jay Read it first – repeat words and phrases, watch video 2:05:13 • 3rd read – what strikes you? How do you interpret it? • Question: for what sin do you wish to be forgiven? • 85% of Catholics leave the by age 23. • 83% of our youth leave the Catholic Church after Confirmation. Why? • Are we inviting them into a love relationship with Jesus where sin is freely forgiven like Jesus does with this paralyzed man? • The first great Divine Reversal: forgiveness is never something that we merit or earn. It is grace, freely given, of God’s love. • 4th time: “Look at Jesus in your heart and tell him what sin you want to be forgiven of.” After, partner, please pray for this. It is up to you if you want to share the sin with your partner.

The Great Banquet at Levi’s House Luke 5:27‐32 After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. He said to him, "Follow me." And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them.

The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" Jesus said to them in reply, "Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners."

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Jesus’ Approach of Inspiring People to Change

• Let’s read the handouts on your tables by Richard Rohr, OFM about Jesus’ approach that inspires people to change. • And the handout on Meals & Encounters with Jesus in Luke. • Anytime Jesus encounters people or eats with them in Luke, I invite us to look for transformation through the encounter. • A result of transformation is gratitude or thankfulness, which inspires us to follow Jesus. • Thus, these encounters and meals with Jesus carry deep overtones of Eucharist, because people are usually overwhelmed with love for Jesus for his first loving us, which transforms us and sends us to be his followers. • This is his mission he announces in :18‐19 and then lives it after announcing it.

Disciples Testimony • In each session, we will hear from a disciple of Jesus about what it means for them to follow Jesus today. • Today, we hear from folks who follow Jesus by participating in St. Vincent de Paul here at St. Catherine of Siena.

• Morning – Brenda Panone

• Evening – Joyce Draper • Closing Prayer

(Please bow) Glory to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. (Rise, pause & breathe) As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

5 Wrapped in Joy and Sorrow Mary Stommes

ead by bead, prayer by prayer, we call to mind the B tender scene. The Fourth Joyful Mystery: The Presen- tation in the Temple. All eyes, of course, are on the Child. But the sentiment of great joy comes to us mostly by way of the aged Simeon and Anna. Just think of it. They’d waited for the Messiah. And waited and waited and waited. Days became weeks, became months, became years. Became decades. And that’s a long, long time. At least Simeon had a holy hunch that he would meet the Messiah before he died. The Holy Spirit promised him as much. But Anna the prophetess, the widow who spent all her days and nights in the temple, how could she have waited so long and not lost hope? Divine genetics, perhaps. Coming from a long line of , Anna knew she was chosen by God from before time, to speak God’s word in her own time. That said, the sum total of her eighty-four years was just a blip on the time line of salvation history. In this sacred and very long history, it is best not to underestimate the poten- tial of a prophetic blip, most especially that of an octoge- narian who spends her every waking—and, apparently, sleeping—moment in prayer. The psalms, it’s a safe guess, would have helped Anna hold on to hope and not fret the math: “A thousand years in your eyes are merely a day gone by . . . Seventy is the sum of our years, or eighty, if we are strong . . .” (Ps 90:4, 10). But with the psalmist, and on behalf of all God’s people, Anna the prophetess could go on to ask God the painfully honest question, “How long?” (v. 13). How long before you will break in and show us your face? We are suffering and 5 6 longing. We need you. Please, God, “Fill us at daybreak with your mercy, that all our days we may sing for joy” (v. 14). Mercy and joy. All our days. And then one momentous day, right there in the temple, right before Anna’s eyes, there Mercy was. This Child was worth every second of her waiting. First things first: she thanked God. And then she told all the other “waiters” that the One they longed for had finally arrived. What a joyful story to tell. Yet a sorrowful story too. Simeon is credited with the , though Anna surely knew it. One doesn’t spend her entire life praying and fasting without gaining the insight that to love is to suffer. And the greater the love, the greater the suffering. Oh, the sword of sorrow that would pierce Mary’s heart. And that pierces her heart still. Every child—every per- son of every age—is as precious to Mary as the Child she and presented to God in the temple. If we claim to love and adore that Child, we will hold up the dignity of all human beings, from womb to tomb and everywhere in between. This means migrant children will not be ripped from their parents. Victims of sexual assault will not be derided and taunted in public. Or private. Children will not be sexually abused by clergy. Or anyone. And no one’s dying breath will be caused by senseless gun violence. We wait for that day. We wait and wait and wait, forget- ting that the Child who gave Simeon and Anna so much joy was a sign that would be—and still is—contradicted. Hard as it is, we keep our eyes on that Child. We lend him our ears. He waits for us in the temple of our hearts, challenging us to never doubt the joyful power of our prophetic potential. Mary Stommes is an oblate of St. Benedict and editor of Give Us This Day. Meals in the - From Eugene Laverdiere, Dining in the Kingdom of God

In Galilee

1. A Great Banquet at the House of Levi – 5:27-39 2. Dining at the House of – 7:36-50 3. Breaking of Bread with Thousands in Bethsaida – 9:10-17

On the Journey from Galilee to Jerusalem

4. Hospitality at the Home of & Mary – 10:38-42 5. Dining at Noon at the Home of a Pharisee – 11:37-54 6. A Sabbath Dinner at the Home of A Leading Pharisee – 14:1-24 7. Hospitality at the Home of Zacchaeus – 19:1-10

Jerusalem

8. Preparing the Passover – 22:7-13 9. The Passover – Last Supper – 22:14-38

The Death &

10. Breaking of Bread at Emmaus – 24:13-35 11. Dining with the Community in Jerusalem – 24:36-53 • A meal is not so much about food as it is about people. In all meals, it is the guest list, not the menu, that matters.

• Blessings and , liturgical and non-liturgical, have to do with the people who have come together to share the meal. That is what we hear in the words of Jesus, and that is what we hear from the participant who exclaimed, “Blessed is the one who will dine in the kingdom of God” (:15).

• The family meal is certainly a manifestation of the church community. The family meal is celebrated in the domestic church, the home. Like all prayer, it is eucharistic where even the most ordinary of meals reach their highest expression in self-offering and communion.

• Every Christian meal reveals aspects of the Kingdom of God where  Guests are welcome  People share with one another  We encounter Jesus Christ  The most broken of people can find new life and hope – transformation  We all sin and can find conversion and new life - transformation  Broken covenants can be renewed - transformation  Reconciliation can happen - transformation

• The Eucharist reveals all of these aspects of the Kingdom of God as well as its universality. All, including the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, the excluded and all of us – sinners - are invited to the table of the Lord. Encounters With Jesus in Luke

Note 1: We focus on encounters with Jesus and we pray with passages in Luke to encounter Jesus, so that in this encounter, we might experience his love, forgiveness, hope, and be transformed and see anew, so that we can follow him anew. This is the journey of salvation.

Note 2: These are not all the encounters with Jesus in Luke nor all that he taught. They are, however, what we might be able to cover. We will try to cover the liturgical ones when we get to them at Mass.

Galilee • 3:15-22 & Jesus’ Baptism • 4:1-14 The Temptations • 4:16-30 Jesus’ Announces His Mission in the Nazareth Synagogue • 4:31-44 Jesus Preaches & Heals • 5:1-11 Call of the First Disciples • 5:12-16 Healing of a Leper • 5:17-26 Healing of a Paralytic Who Enters through Roof • 5:27-32 Call of Levi • 6:1-11 Debates about the Sabbath • 6:12-16 Calling of Apostles • 6:20-26 Jesus Teaches – The Sermon the Plain - the & Woes • 6:27-36 The – Jesus Preaches the Love of Enemies • 7:1-10 Healing of A Centurion’s Slave • 7:11-17 Raising of the Widow’s Son • 7:18-23 Messengers from John the Baptist: Are you the One to Come? • 8:1-3 Galilean Women who follow Jesus and provide for him • 9:1-6 Mission of the Twelve • 9:28-36 The

Journeying from Galilee to Jerusalem • 9:51-56 Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem • 10:25-37 The Greatest Commandment – Parable of the Good Samaritan • 11:1-4 The Lord’s Prayer • 12:22-34 Jesus Teaches – The Sermon on the Plain • 15:11-32 Parable of the Lost Sons • 17:11-19 Cleansing of the Ten Lepers • 18:9-14 Parable of the Pharisee & the Tax Collector • 18:18-23 The Rich Official

Jerusalem • 19:28-44 Entry into & Lament for Jerusalem • 19:45-48 Cleansing of the Temple • 20:20-26 Paying Taxes to Caesar • 21:1-4 The Poor Widow’s Stewardship • 22:39-46 The Agony in the Garden • 22:47-71 The Betrayal, Arrest, & Condemnation of Jesus • 23:1-25 Jesus before Pilate & Herod • 23:33-49 The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus • 23:50-56 The • 24:1-53 The Resurrection of Jesus Jesus: A Whole New Way of Inspiring People to Change Written by Richard Rohr, OFM Adapted by Jay Landry

Jesus clearly believed in change. In fact, the first public word out of his mouth was later translated into the Greek imperative verb “metanoeite,” which literally means “change your mind” or “go beyond your mind.” Luke, on the other hand, realizes that this will be easily misinterpreted as “Change your behavior first and then God will love you.” Thus, rather than have Jesus in his first words, as we find in Mark and Matthew, say “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (see Matthew 4:17 and Mark 1:15), Luke, instead, has Jesus say something radically different in Luke 4:18-19 where the focus in on what Jesus has been sent, as the Messiah, to do by God.

Unfortunately, in the fourth century, St. translated the word into Latin as “paenitentia” (“repent” or “do penance”), initiating a host of moralistic connotations that have colored Christians’ understanding of the ever since. The word “metanoeite” referred to a primal change of mind, worldview, or way of processing and perceiving—and only by corollary about a specific change in behavior. This common misunderstanding puts the cart before the horse; we think we can change a few externals while our underlying worldview often remains narcissistic and self-referential (about me).

This misunderstanding contributed to a puritanical, externalized, and largely static notion of the Christian message that has followed us to this day. Faith became about external requirements that could be enforced, punished, and rewarded, much more than an actual change of heart and mind, that Pharisees and scribes built into a worthiness contest where they make up rules and place burdens on others that they are not willing to follow.

Rather than focus on a worthiness contest that left the Pharisees and scribes accusing people from a distance and not letting them near the holy of holies – God – until they passed the worthiness test, Jesus bonded with them in a meal, he sat down and embraced their brokenness, fears, and ways that they felt made them unworthy of God’s presence. Jesus, rather than focusing on holy performance, allowed unclean people with leprosy to touch him, he allowed “impure” women to touch him and anoint his feet with perfume, and he ate with supposed external sinners like prostitutes and tax collectors (:2). This drives the Pharisees and scribes crazy, because they see their holiness as based in accusing others of sins that they know nothing about and standing apart from them, including NEVER eating with them, because that would bond them with sinners, which is exactly what Jesus did. Why? He knew it communicated God’s outrageous love to them.

Jesus didn’t focus on individual sin outside or over there, where we can point to it, punish it, and try to change it. That is too easy and mostly ineffective. Without making light of evil, he showed how to actually overcome and heal it. Sin, for Jesus, was the very act of accusing ( means “the accuser”). Whenever we try to expel and accuse others, and somehow leave ourselves or our group out of the equation, we end up “sinning.” We must first recognize our own complicity in evil before we can transform it. We see this pattern when Jesus himself was faced with three temptations to power (Luke 4:1-13). Until we face our own demons, none of us are prepared to fight evil elsewhere.

Jesus thus stood in solidarity with individuals who were excluded, deemed unworthy, or demonized. Why? Because the excluded from any group always reveal the unquestioned idolatries of that group! He even partied with sinners and tax collectors, and the “pure” hated him for it (see Luke 15:2). The way Jesus tried to change people was by loving and healing them, accusing only their accusers. Why did we not notice that? His harshest words of judgment were reserved for those who perpetuated systems of inequality and oppression and who, through religion itself, thought they were sinless and untouchable.

Jesus did not so much love people once they changed, but he first loved people so that they could change. Jesus did not expect people to repent and later he would forgive them. Rather, he forgave them freely, showering them with unconditional acceptance, knowing that there is nothing greater in the universe that will inspire people to change, to repent, than their knowing that they are loved and cherished by God and God’s Son just as they are. This empowers people to truly change, to follow Jesus in hope that through God’s grace, not our own power in the worthiness contest, we can change. This leads to gratitude and joy, not to self-righteousness where we place ourselves above others, believing we are better than them, more loved by God because of our better behavior, as Jesus harshly criticizes in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in :9-14.

The primary way that Jesus loved people, inviting them to change, was eating with them, embracing them in their exclusion and external labeling as sinners, and in all his encounters with people, forgiving them without precondition or demanding that they do anything for him to love or forgive them. Do I need proof of this? Who did Jesus exclude from any table or his presence? Who did Jesus refuse to forgive? Rather, Jesus often offered forgiveness and healing before people felt worthy of it, which melts the human heart, which transforms us. See the Parable of the Prodigal Son where the father forgives his son and throws a party, simply because his son came home. This is conversion. This is new life in Jesus Christ.

These meals and encounters are what we eventually call the Eucharist.

The Eucharist celebrates the life, death, resurrection, and Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit, so that we might have radical union with God, what we call “salvation.” All this is happening now…right now.

The Eucharist is not something that we become worthy of participating in. Rather, the Eucharist is an invitation from Jesus to join him at the table where his unconditional love and forgiveness are the message and mode of transformation. God transforms us through grace, inviting us to come to the table, surrendering all our fears, pettiness, and self-preservation, while also offering up our gratitude and blessings, for “Eucharist” in Greek means “Thank you!”