Patrick Comerford
We are in the middle of Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025), and yesterday was the Third Sunday in Lent (Lent III). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Walter Hilton of Thurgarton (1396), Augustinian canon and mystic; Paul Couturier (1953), priest and ecumenist; and Oscar Romero (1980), Archbishop of San Salvador and martyr.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 4: 24-30 (NRSVA):
24 And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’ 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
Today’s Reflection:
In pastoral and parish ministry, priests find few crisis moments where they are confronted with the needs and challenges of kings and generals, but on a daily basis we come close to the plight of widows and the marginalised.
The prophets Jesus names in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 4: 24-30), Elijah and Elisha, respond to the plight of a king’s general and a widow in crisis moments, and both are outsiders.
The king’s general, Naaman the Syrian, is a gentile, an Aramean, who is afflicted with a skin disease. When he seeks help from King Jehoram of Israel, his appeal is misinterpreted as a threat, yet he is healed trough the intervention of Elisha. Naaman was unclean, a gentile and a perceived enemy. But his story holds out the promise of all being counted in when it comes to the fulfilment of God’s promises.
The widow at Zarephath offers to share with the Prophet Elijah what might have been the last supper she and her son can put on their table. In turn, they find their food does not run out and Elijah brings the widow’s dying son back to life. Commentators note the parallels in this story with the story of the raising of the son of the widow of Nain later in Luke 7. But there are parallels too with the story of the Syrophoenician woman from Tyre and Sidon and her daughter, which is not found in Saint Luke’s Gospel (see Matthew 15: 21-28; Mark 7: 24-30).
This unnamed widow is a reminder of the central role widows, often unnamed, play in the Bible. Think of the widowed Naomi and her widowed daughter-in-law Ruth; the widowed Anna in the Temple (Luke 2: 37); the widowed mother of Peter and Andrew; the poor widow who offers all she has in the Temple Treasury (Mark 12: 42-43); Mary the widowed mother of Jesus; or how the office of deacon is created in the early church in response to the needs of the widows (Acts 6: 1-6).
Today’s Gospel reading follows on from the temptations in the wilderness (Luke 4: 1-13), where Jesus too was confronted with the prospect from being hurled from precipices, and comes immediately after reads from the scroll in the synagogue and the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4: 18-19).
In ministry, it is easier to succumb to the temptations offered by the kingdoms and kings of the world, seldom though they may be, than it is to deal with the day-to-day, everyday problems faced by the widows, those in need of health care and the misunderstood, of the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed.
When priests side with the powerful and presidents, generals and despots, we have our rewards on this earth; when we name with empathy the needs of those who would remain nameless on the margins, we are vilified from bring politics into religion.
Last week, Saint Joseph’s Day (19 March) was marked at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, private club in Palm Beach with a $1,500-a-head cocktail reception and dinner, at which the speakers included Bishop Joseph Strickland, who was forced by Pope Francis to stand down as Bishop of Tyler, Texas, in 2023 because of his extreme views.
Strickland’s cosying up to the Trump regime is in sharp contrast to the empathy and prophetic bravery expressed by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde in Washington two months ago, or to the life and death of Bishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered on this day 45 years ago [24 April 1980].
I was reminded of Oscar Romero once again, while Strickland was dining at Mar-a-Lago and hundreds of migrants were being deported by the Trump regime forcibly and illegally to El Salvador.
Saint Oscar Romero (1917-1980) became a diocesan bishop in 1974 and Archbishop of San Salvador in February 1977. That month, a crowd of protesters were attacked by soldiers in the square in San Salvador. A month later, Father Rutilio Grande was murdered but there was no official inquiry. Romero realised how power rests in the hands of violent men who can murder with impunity, how the wealthy sanction the violence that maintains them, and that men and women disappeared without account.
Oscar Romero became committed to the poor and the persecuted, spoke out about the abuse of human rights, and became the catalyst for radical moral prophecy in the church and in society. He became increasingly isolated in the Church while the threats against him mounted outside it. He was shot dead on 24 March 1980 while celebrating Mass in the chapel of the hospital where he lived.
He once declared: ‘I must tell you, as a Christian, I do not believe in death without resurrection. If I am killed, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people.’
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus faces death threats after he challenges the authority of religious and civil leaders of the day, and he does so by quoting from Scripture, with Biblical authority. He speaks truth to power, and the crowd tries to kill him.
Being a true prophet is risky and dangerous. Lent leads us to the Cross, but it also brings the promise of Resurrection.
Today’s Prayers (Monday 24 March 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Towards Reconciliation and Renewal’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update by the Revd Canon Dr Carlton J Turner, Anglican Tutor in Contextual Theology and Mission Studies and Deputy Director of Research at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 24 March 2025) invites us to pray:
Lord, we pray for healing from the legacies of enslavement around the world. Help us to bring repair and renewal to all people who have been traumatised.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Merciful Lord,
grant your people grace to withstand the temptations
of the world, the flesh and the devil,
and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Eternal God,
give us insight
to discern your will for us,
to give up what harms us,
and to seek the perfection we are promised
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect on the Eve of The Annunciation:
We beseech you, O Lord,
pour your grace into our hearts,
that as we have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ
by the message of an angel,
so by his cross and passion
we may be brought to the glory of his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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