Liturgy 018: Third Monday of Lent | Jesus is Not Richard Rohr
🙏 Recentering Ourselves Half Way through the Season of Lent
🙏 Prayer of Confession
Take several slow deep deliberate breaths to quiet your mind, and be centered in your soul. Then, acknowledging the presence of God, pray the following words:
Merciful God, I confess I have sinned against you. With my thoughts, words, and deeds. With what I’ve done and left undone. I have loved you with portions of my heart, but not my whole heart. I have not been merciful with my neighbors. For your sake, Lord Jesus — forgive me and renew me. And this day, may I delight in your will and your way, as I live in your presence. Amen.
📖 Lectio Divina
Read the following words slowly.
Listen for a personal word from the Holy Spirit.
John 2:14-17
In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”
His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
🖼️ Reflection
This passage reminds me that Jesus is not Richard Rohr (who I imagine to be a man who smiles at all times in contemplative prayer without any expression of anger). This passage also gets my mind reeling with cynical reflections around the financial arrangements we have set up in our churches.
But when I consider that the Temple of God according to Paul is our actual bodies, I stop dead in my tracks.
Don’t you know that you are God’s Temple and God’s Spirit lives in you?
1 Corinthians 3:16
And then, I imagine.
What areas of my life would Christ overturn with zeal?
What habits, ambitions, or relationships would prompt him to say, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market?”
🧘 Second Half of Lent
This week, we reach day 20 in the season of Lent — this season set aside for turning our hearts back to God with greater intention.
I don’t know about you, but I need recentering this morning.
Consider this prompt for prayerful reflection and breath prayer:
Over these next 20+ days leading up to Easter, what attitude, behavior, or anxiety is the Spirit inviting me to let go of?
Breath Prayer
Inhale Jesus, Son of God
Exhale May My Heart Be Your Home
💡 Quote
It is necessary to destroy utterly the first evil.
It is impossible to flee the Egyptian life in any other way.
— Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses
🕊️ Blessing
May you allow Jesus to cleanse the Temple of your Inner Life. May you know the dignity of surrendering the usage of God for your own gain. May you know the joy of becoming a dwelling place for God.
Amen.