Come to Stillness: Take
a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.
Opening
Prayer: Lord I so want to make all
of me ready and attentive and available to you.
Please help me to clarify and purify my intentions. I have so many contradictory desires. I get preoccupied with things that don’t
really matter or last.
I know that if I give you
my heart whatever I do will follow my new heart. In all that I am today, all that I try to do,
all my encounters, reflections, even the frustrations and failings and
especially in this time of prayer, in all of this, may I place my life in your
hands. Lord I am yours, make of me what
you will.
~Ignatius of Loyola
Scripture
Reading for the Day: Psalm 84:5-7
Reading for
Reflection:
The
Lenten journey is very much a pilgrimage. It is a time where we, like Jesus,
set our faces to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51 ESV). It is a journey to the cross, a journey that
passes through the Valley of Weeping, but ultimately ends up at the place of
springs—of new life and of resurrection.
So what does it look like to set our hearts on pilgrimage? Does it simply mean to follow, wherever the
hard and lonely path may lead, trusting that Jesus knows the way to life? Does it mean to embrace, rather than avoid or
deny, the struggle and pain and brokenness of the season—and of my own
heart—knowing that this is the soil in which new life is born? Does it mean simply putting one foot in front
of the other as we willingly follow our Savior into a scary and vulnerable
land—the land of denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him? Does it mean being stripped down to the core
of who we really are, and who He really is, in order that we may really become
all that He desires us to be? Does it
mean a putting off of all that is false within us, in order to put on all that
is genuinely true? Does it mean the putting
to death of the false self in order that we may be the true self we were intended
to be? If that is indeed what it means,
then by all means, O Lord, set our hearts on pilgrimage—as you set your face to
go to Jerusalem—that we may really know, and really love, you and you alone.
Reflection and Listening: silent and written
Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself
Closing Prayer: Lord, give me the faith and courage to follow
you, wherever it may lead. For the sake
of Jesus. Amen.
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