Tuesday, March 3rd
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
Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church
Today’s first reading is a familiar one to many of us. It cites the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden after they have eaten from the “Tree of Life.” When God asks Adam to account for this, he blames Eve, and then she blames the serpent. I too have followed this erroneous way of relating to others by blaming them for my sick and selfish ways and unhealthy choices. In other words, I too have taken others’ inventories as opposed to my own.
I have also had the experience of being in the garden, where it was initially peaceful and beautiful before I departed for the rough terrain of addiction, sin, brokenness, and shame. My disease made me naked, vulnerable, alone, and afraid. In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, we read, “I was without power to change the course my life had taken.” And again like Adam and Eve, I was powerless and hiding from God in fear, immobilized without knowing a way out of my current course of life.
In today’s Gospel reading, we are challenged to recall the suffering and death of our Lord on the cross and the great love and self-sacrifice He demonstrated for us. A new covenant is given to us through our Lord’s blood, one that invites us to turn away from our old life and enter a new one. This is the way of our recovery, too, as we read in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, “And so it is, the beginning of the end of the old life, and the beginning of [one’s] emergence into a new one.”
We find restoration from our life of addiction at the foot of the cross. From there, the Lord mercifully gazes at us, shedding His blood for our sake. God shows us how to lay down our lives for others—how to die to ourselves for the love of God and our neighbor. When we do this, we receive life in abundance: sobriety as well as health and healing from the depths of our woundedness, brokenness, unhealthy attachments, and the bondage of self. As a result of the Twelve Steps of recovery and the sacraments of the Catholic Church, God gives us a way out of our disease and our destructive patterns, character defects, and shortcomings, and a way back into the “garden” of recovery and God’s unending love.
Reflection Questions
- In reviewing your past and present, do you have anything you’re hiding, feeling shame about, or defending by blaming others? How can you surrender these to God?
- In what ways has God offered you a way out of your addiction, compulsions, or unhealthy attachments and a way into recovery and healing?
Daily Mass Readings
First Reading: Genesis 3:9-15, 20
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 87:1-2, 3 and 5, 6-7
Gospel: John 19:25-34
Reflection by Marybeth B.
Saint Bede the Venerable, Priest and Doctor of the Church
(672-735) — Saint Bede was an English Benedictine monk who was a Bible scholar, theologian, scientist, and historian. He is considered the most educated man of his time and is the “father” of English history. During his life, he was sought out for both his spiritual and intellectual gifts. He is the first English Doctor of the Church.
Bede was thought to be the smartest person in the room, yet he had humility and open-mindedness to be teachable and continue to learn. These characteristics are essential, along with a willingness to try something new. Both recovery and the spiritual life are about relationship, not technique. Are you still humble, open-minded, and willing in your recovery and in your pilgrimage to the Father?
“So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are entirely ignorant” (Saint Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England).
Reflection by Brad Farmer
Other Saints
Discuss
Share your thoughts and connect with others on this journey.
Log in to join the discussion.
Fear keeps me in bondage for not knowing how to let go and let God. I want to turn my will over to God but I do not know how to. I pray and pray and pray but I still hold on tight to something that I do not want. I want to give it all to God. Please my Lord take it from me, you be in control. Please pray for me to let go and let God!
Fear of the opinion of others has kept me in AA from sharing my story which is one of a catholic experiencing periodic spiritual battle for my soul. I now turn to God in pray "Lord, empty me, fill me, use me" whenever my thoughts turn negative, and I have included it and the Litany for Humility into my morning prayers. For me this has been working very well.
I’ve pretended to be okay, capable and at full capacity. I tumbled pretty far down.
* How does fear keep you in bondage to self-will and how might you turn your will and life over to Christ, the true master, each and every day this Lent?
Fear of my husband of vulnerability of what could happen. Fear of losing this life I’ve worked so hard to build. Fear of losing my independence, having to do things I don’t feel like or want to do with/for husband. Bondage of self will… it definitely makes it really hard to see what is good, what I need to do, what I need to let go of, with the right thing to do is. I can only pray and every day ask thy will not mine. Be willing to see past the fear, be willing to operate from a place of love and not fear and not control.