Open with a prayer: Good and gracious God, thank you for gathering us together to share life and your Word. This week your Word speaks about your great love for us. Through our sharing and prayer together, may we come to know your love a little more deeply and respond to it in our love for others. Amen.
Sharing of life: What are you most and least grateful for this week?
Facilitator reads focus statement: The first and third readings speak about God and our relationship with him in marital images. In the second reading, Paul tells us that his Corinthian community is his letter of recommendation.
Read the three readings and the Psalm. Pause briefly after each reading
FIRST READING: Hosea 2:16b, 17b, 21-22
The book of Hosea is the sad story told by a husband who uses his own marital story to speak to us about God and his relationship with Israel. Hosea married a known prostitute named Gomer hoping perhaps that his love for her would draw her away from her sinful ways. But after the birth of their first child, Gomer went back to her former way of life.
Despite her repeated infidelities, Hosea continued to love Gomer and refused to end the relationship. In the Biblical tradition, God's relationship with Israel is often spoken about in marital terms. Just as Gomer was repeatedly unfaithful to Hosea, so was Israel repeatedly unfaithful to God. But, like Hosea, God was always willing to take back his unfaithful bride and start anew with her.
Today's reading speaks of God's intention to take Israel back to the desert, where she can break free of her other lovers and idols and totally focus on God. Hopefully she will fall in love with him again as in the days of her youth.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM 103
This is a hymn of praise to God who is full of compassion, slow to anger and rich in mercy and healing.
SECOND READING: 2 Corinthians 3:1b-6
Letters of recommendation were generally presented by itinerant preachers to legitimize their mission. In today's passage, Paul tells his readers that they are his letter of recommendation. Moreover, they are a letter from Christ for whom Paul serves as a scribal servant. The community, in accepting and living the message of Christ, becomes his letter to the world. Finally, Paul states that his certification comes from God alone. His confidence is rooted in his call from God through Christ.
GOSPEL: Mark 2:18-22
Mark's gospel has a series of what scholars call "conflict stories". Usually the conflict is between Jesus and the Jewish leaders. In today's conflict people ask Jesus: "Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not?" Jesus uses the occasion to speak of himself as the messianic bridegroom a role usually ascribed to God. Then Jesus likens the reign of God to a wedding feast. Just as it would be inappropriate for people to fast at a wedding, so is it inappropriate for his disciples to fast while he is in their midst. When he is taken away, they can fast. In order to underline his point, Jesus uses two more images to speak about the New Age he is inaugurating and to speak about the inflexibility and rigidity of the Pharisees. Cloth that has been shrunken has no give. Wineskins that have been stretched with fermenting wine are stiff and rigid. Because the Pharisees are rigid and set in their ways, they are unable to receive the new wine, the new teaching and way that Jesus is offering.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. What verse or image spoke to you and why?
2. Our first reading speaks of God leading Israel out into the desert to purify her of idols. Next Wednesday we begin our Lenten season. We will be invited to go out in Spirit into the desert. What does this invitation mean to you?
3. Paul says that the Corinthians are his letter of recommendation. To what extent is your community a good letter of recommendation or witness to the Gospel of Christ?
4. What "new wine" might the Spirit be seeking to offer us individually or as a church today?
RESPONDING TO GOD'S WORD
Name one way you can act on today's readings. Suggestion: Spend time asking the Holy Spirit to help you decide on Lenten spiritual exercises that will help you to grow as a faithful disciple of Christ.
CONCLUDE WITH PRAYERS OF PETITION AND INTERCESSION.
Pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance as you seek to decide what Lenten spiritual exercises will help you to walk closer to Christ and his ways.