Sunday, February 22nd
To complete today's challenge, find time to prayerfully read through the reflections below, attend a recovery meeting, and share what's on your heart and mind on today's discussion board.
REFLECT
Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Gospel reading has always been a source of identification and hope for me. I have felt like the leper on so many levels in my disease of addiction. Under the old law, lepers were isolated from the community. They could not interact with others, were denied access to the temple for worship, and were confined to camps. If anyone came near one they were obliged to call out “unclean,” and touching a leper would render a person unclean and ritually defiled. Yet, as we see today, Jesus is not defiled as He touches and heals the man.
Instead of staying away from the crowds and Jesus, the leper boldly approaches Jesus and asks to be healed. The leper exhibits amazing faith and courage. In my active disease, I identified with the leper coming to Jesus, first out of desperate hopelessness and into powerlessness (Step 1), and then by saying, “Do for me what I cannot do for myself” (Step 2). I became willing, telling the Lord, “I am entirely ready to have you heal me, change me. I am yours, I belong to you, I give you my will and my life now (Step 3); take away all that is objectionable to me and offensive to you (Step 6); I Humbly ask you to remove all that makes me ‘unclean,’ isolated, alone, defective, unfree, and shameful.”
Jesus could have healed the leper from afar, yet He chooses to come close and touch the man and then commands him to show himself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses prescribed. This is similar to what we’re called to do in recovery. We are invited to seek and show ourselves to God, self, and another human being in Step Four and Step Five, becoming transparent, vulnerable, and receptive to God’s healing grace and power. And in response to this healing, we are called to then offer our lives and hearts to God and others by living sober, clean, and free.
The leper gives us an example of how to reverently approach Jesus in humility, honesty, and dependence. And he also gives us an example of how we should encounter the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, whispering quietly each time, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean” (Matthew 8:2).
Reflection Questions
- How have you approached Jesus for help and in what specific ways have you experienced the healing touch of Jesus from active addiction, compulsions, and unhealthy attachments?
- In what specific ways do you respond to God in gratitude for the gift of life, healing, and recovery? Can you respond to Jesus in the Eucharist with gratitude today?
Daily Mass Readings
First Reading: 2 Kings 25:1-12
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 137:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6
Gospel: Matthew 8:1-4
Reflection by Marybeth B.
Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer
(1902-1975) — Saint Josemaría was a Spanish priest who founded Opus Dei in 1928, a Catholic institution of laypeople and priests that focuses on the universal call to holiness and sanctification of ordinary daily work. He experienced hardships and poverty in family life and religious persecution during the Spanish Civil War. Saint Josemaría Escrivá dedicated his life to the building of God’s Kingdom through the apostolate of Opus Dei.
Pope Saint John Paul II summed up Saint Josemaría’s message at the canonization Mass on October 6, 2002: “Work and any other activity, carried out with the help of grace, is converted into a means of daily sanctification.” Take some time to reflect on how addiction and recovery have each affected your work. How have they affected your sanctification?
“Abandonment to the will of God is the secret of happiness on earth. Say, then: meus cibus est, ut faciam voluntatem ejus, my food is to do his will” (Saint Josemaria Escriva, The Way).
Other Saints
Discuss
Share your thoughts and connect with others on this journey.
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I am on day 4 of my new recovery journey and have not yet noticed a pull back toward my behaviors that caused my relapse, however I remember from today's gospel that it was after Jesus completed 40 days that the devil tempted him. I believe that it will be after lent that temptation will be stronger to drive me away from God.
Prayer and fasting will keep me closer to God by keeping me focused on His unconditional love for me and my recovery into to person he created me to be.