Lent 2015: Pray - Study - Act
In This Issue
PRAY: A contemporary adaptation of Isaiah 58
STUDY: Reflection for the Third Sunday of Lent
ACT: Fast for climate justice on March 16
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Third Week of Lent, March 8-14, 2015
  
 
This is our third PSA e-bulletin (Pray-Study-Act) for the 2015 Lenten season. If you missed previous ones, you can see them, as well as other reflections, on our Lent 2015 webpage where we'll archive all of our Lenten resources. 
    We also wanted to draw your attention to the passing of a prophetic figure within the national Catholic peace movement earlier this week. Fr. Bill Bichsel, SJ, better known as Bix. Nick Mele wrote a special obituary for our website which you can read by clicking here.
    We hope that the peace of Christ dwells deeply in your hearts during this Lenten season.

 

In peace,

Johnny Zokovitch
Director of Communications, Pax Christi USA
 PRAY: A contemporary adaptation of Is 58
by Art Laffin

 

Shout out, don't hold back.

Lift up your voice like a trumpet.

The U.S. empire is the greatest purveyor of violence 

in the world today!

The Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and corporate, political, 

and military powers worldwide conspire to control the earth,

crush the poor, and persecute the peace and justice makers.

 

Yet, day after day, 

the rulers and countless people invoke my name,

as if they practiced righteousness 

and did not forsake the ordinance of their God.

They delight to invoke my name to bless their violent deeds.

They even use my name to bless their wars and their weapons.

We practice good religion, they say.

We pray and serve our country well.

We keep good law and order.

 

Look, you serve your own interests, not mine says Yahweh...

 

Read the entire prayer by clicking here.

STUDY: 
Reflection for the Third Sunday of Lent

By Joe Nangle, ofm

  

Ex 20:1-17 | 1 Cor 1:22-23 | Jn 2:13-25

 

Cleansing the temple It's a scene that makes us uneasy - Jesus causing conflict. The modern view makes him out to be a consoler, a comfortable presence, just a nice guy. He is there to make us feel good about ourselves, not rocking our boats.

   Yet in the Gospel today he's on a rampage, throwing the idolaters of money out of the temple's sacred space, then confronting those who challenge his right to this consuming zeal for God's house.

   An angry Jesus, a Jesus who gets into disputes and shows himself disagreeable, throws us off. As products of our culture, we avoid confrontation. We like to be liked and likable. Yet here we have the Teacher being anything but likable-he's downright obnoxious as he drives the money-makers out of the Temple, knocking over their tables and spilling their coveted coins all over the place in the process.

  The lesson for us is clear, a Lenten meditation. If our discipleship is authentic, we cannot avoid conflict any more than Jesus could. In fact, as the daily Lenten readings begin to remind us, a constant reality of Jesus's ministry was confrontation. As his public life unfolded and his agenda became known to the power structure of that time, he found himself in serious disagreement on a daily basis with those who had most to lose as a result of what he was saying.... 

 
ACT: Fast for climate justice on March 16

From the Franciscan Action Network

 

Franciscan Action Network is coordinating the American leg of the Global Catholic Climate Movement's Hunger Fast. If your health permits you to join the American Hunger Fast on March 16, please sign up to join us. 

   Beginning Lent (February 18 - April 2) 2015, the Global Catholic Climate Movement (GCCM) would like to urge Catholics around the world to pray and fast in solidarity with those who are most affected by the changing global climate. The traditional fast on Ash Wednesday (February 18) will commence the global effort and we ask that Catholics in every country include in their daily prayers our troubled Earth and especially those who are affected most by its violent climate shifts; the poor and those who live along coastal communities. Each subsequent day of Lent, will be assigned to a different country.

 

Click here for more information.