Today’s readings for mass doesn’t seem to fit with ordinary time in the calendar year of the church. The first reading is about mourning and weeping and looking, “on him whom they have pierced”. It goes on to say that from the house of David a fountain would be opened that would cleanse people from their sins. This sounds a lot like John’s baptism with water and Christ’s crucifixion and death. The Gospel reading today also speaks of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection. These verses seem a little baffling, as to why they appear during ordinary time in the middle of the summer. The readings begin to fit the Easter season even more when you read the second reading from the book of Galatians: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.” These are the same words that are said to the catechumens right after their baptism at the Easter vigil “you have been baptized and have put on Christ”. All of the readings seem to be a flashback from the Lenten and Easter season in the church. Why is that?
Perhaps we are having these readings for mass in the middle of the summer because the church does not want us to forget what we learned and how we grew in holiness during our Lenten observances. Just because Easter came and went doesn’t mean we should just forget the good things we began during Lent this year. Have we slacked off in our prayer life lately? What about alms giving and acts of charity? Have we been to confession since Lent? It’s summer right now and the weather is nice and many of us are having fun camping, at the beach, cooking out, fishing, playing golf or playing with our children in the backyard. Hopefully, we are a little more busy than usual spending time with our family and friends during the summer, but that doesn’t mean we should pay less attention to our spiritual life now that Easter is over.
Sometimes it seems, there are too many things going on that is distracting us from our prayer life. Even when we do manage to pray, are we able to sit still and quiet our thoughts long enough to truly enter into prayer in a more prayerful and reflective way? Something that is pretty simple to do in the summer is to carry a rosary in your pocket when you go on a walk, or spend time camping or golfing or during other outdoor activities. No one even needs to be aware that you are praying the rosary if it is in your pocket and you pray it as you walk. A few minutes of silence is all that is really needed and it will surely help bring a lot of peace into your day if you take time to pray. We receive a lot of grace from praying the rosary, especially when it is difficult to find the time to do so. It can even help a lot to pray the sorrowful mysteries when we have troubles or sadness of any kind in our lives. We can join our troubles and sufferings with Christ’s and then leave it in his hands.
Jesus himself was in the midst of his disciples, when he took time out to go pray. In the last verses of the Gospel today, Jesus said “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.”
We lose a little bit of our life, when we take time out away from our own family and friends to go pray. Yes, there are a million other things we could do with our time. It may seem inconvenient to just stop everything and go pray, or go to confession. We may think we have better things to do than stop for an hour of adoration or to attend a daily mass during the week, but these little minutes of time out of our life could not be better spent.
During the coming week, maybe we could resolve to re-capture a little of our Lenten observances and get back in touch with Jesus through the sacraments and in our daily prayer life. The church may have been quite wise to give us this little reminder in the scriptures today, just when we need to hear it the most.
