The entire Passion account moves so quickly. It begins with a peaceful Passover meal, then moves to the Garden, where, after his Agony, the soldiers come with swords and torches. He asks why they put on such a big show when they could have arrested him at any time during the day. But, he says, “This is your hour, the time for the power of darkness.”

There are times when the power of darkness seems to take hold of previously good and reasonable people. Nazi Germany comes to mind. Looking at videos of those ghastly rallies, with thousands giving the Nazi salute, it’s impossible to imagine that darkness could take hold so quickly, but in less than six months the concentration camps were turned into extermination camps.

When we visited Yam Vashem, the museum in Jerusalem that remembers the Holocaust, our guides wondered that Germany could have been the locus of the viciousness against the Jews. It had, just before Hitler took power, been the image of democratic discourse.

Perhaps the most compelling moment of Luke’s account, though, remembers that there were two thieves crucified on either side of Jesus. One was belligerent until the end, while the other was profoundly moved by his encounter with Jesus.

I want to be the thief who is deeply touched and converted by Jesus. I want to release all my defensiveness and arrogance. I want all my sinfulness to melt at the feet of Jesus. I want to say, “I am guilty, after all. Please heal me, Jesus.”  

Are you ready to release all your unhealed wounds unto the foot of the Cross? Jesus, remember us when you come into your kingdom.

What bitterness are you willing to release this Palm Sunday?

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on John 8:1-11

That poor woman. How terrifying to be dragged in front of all those righteous men, so thrilled to finally have an actual, breathing sinner in front of them, and stones to boot! But I’ve always thought this event was a set-up. Yes, they may have known that a woman was consorting with a man not her husband. But perhaps this situation provided the perfect trap for Jesus, the Jew who preached compassion when faced with the rigors of the Law.

It must have been soul-deadening to walk around under the weight of those 619 laws.

I imagine those scribes and Pharisees had to have found the Law onerous as well. Had they noticed Jesus during the Festival, and assumed he’d be back in the Temple area the next day? Did they take advantage of the situation with the woman, and use her to force a confrontation with Jesus about compassion? The truth is, there isn’t a single known event of Jews stoning a woman caught in adultery.

I wonder if that proscription, coming all the way back in Leviticus 20:10, was something that bothered the Jews. Were they hoping Jesus would give them a way out of a terrible death penalty they would never have exacted anyway?

He did give them a way out, twice. The first was when he suggested that the one who was without sin throw the first stone. Whew! We’re all saved! We don’t have to pretend that we were actually going to kill her.

The second time Jesus offered a way out, of course, was on the Cross. That’s our way out from revenge, and violence. We should go, then, and not sin anymore.

How does your compassion offer a way out to people in your life?

Kathy  McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32

I know you’ve heard my story: how I shamefully commanded my father to give me my share of my inheritance right then.

Now, let me explain a few things. Because I was the younger son, my inheritance would be a LOT less than that of my older brother. Not only that, but he would inherit the house and the farm, too.

So when I rudely demanded my share that day, I knew it would not be much. But have you ever tried to get food from the earth in the hot sun? Year after year, the work never ends. And, too, just a few miles away was the Roman city, Sepphoris. I wanted to there, see the dancing girls, and drink the delicious Roman beers.

The lure of that exciting city was too much for me. I wanted to see the Roman plays, go to the gymnasiums, and assimilate into the Roman culture.

Well, I ran out of money fast, and all my friends disappeared. The work dried up, and soon I was sinning against the Torah more than ever, feeding the pigs and even eating in their troughs!

And I had family back home! I was starving. And here came my noble father, lifting his robe and running toward me! (He had to run fast, too, because the vengeful neighbors were coming towards me, ready to beat me for my disgraceful behavior.)

How good his arms felt! I was finally safe. And yes, I made it up to my brother, taking his work as my own. I share the majority of the workload now—I am younger, after all.

I wonder. Do you have someone who needs your forgiveness?

Are you still resentful of family injustices from decades before?

Kathy McGovern ©2025 

Reflecting on Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15

This mysterious God who speaks to Moses from the burning bush is exactly the God we all pray to hear. We long for the God who says, “ I have witnessed your sufferings. I have felt your anxieties. I have heard your prayers for healing of the illnesses and sorrows of your loved ones. I am not far away; I am not indifferent. I have been with you all along, and I am going to act in your regard.”

This God was a wholly new experience for Moses. He had forgotten that he was specially called, and that this was the God who called his father Abraham to travel to a new and distant land eight hundred years earlier.

Yet, here was this VOICE speaking to him on the holy ground of the Burning Bush, compelling him to believe that there was a good God, a God who remembered the promises made to his ancestors, a God who had held him and watched over him from before he was born.

We don’t have the same dramatic story that Moses had. We weren’t placed in a basket and sent down the Nile River, praying that a kind Egyptian princess might find and save us. But maybe we DO have our own precious memory of being held by a loving God, our own experience of a God who is present, who tells us to be not afraid (365 times, by the way).

Be silent today. Listen for the voice that speaks to your heart, telling you again that your life and your sufferings are precious to God, and that God will hear and answer you. We are all praying for you.

                  What do you long to hear from God?

Kathy McGovern c. 2025

Reflecting on Luke 9: 28b-36

Lord, it is good for us to be here. Not on Mount Tabor—an exceedingly scary mountain during the muddy season, by the way—but here, in our own cities, and in our own skin.  The Mount of Transfiguration is the perfect place to visit every year on the second Sunday of Lent. It’s good for us to remember Jesus, transfigured in Light, and his heavenly companions, Moses and Elijah.

It’s also good to consider those most intimate of his male disciples, Peter, James, and John, whom he often singled out to accompany him on transformative events. They saw him raise Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5: 37-43) from death to life. That soul-shattering experience must have transfigured them in ways not recorded in the gospels. And it was those three again who were with him in the Garden, during his agonized prayer, and when the soldiers came to arrest him (Mk. 14:33).

With the flash of the soldier’s swords, did they remember the flash of Light on Tabor? Did they see Jesus transfigured then, as he was led away? Or was it they who were transfigured, not at that terrifying moment, but a mere three days later, when the transfigured women—forever changed and forever remembered as the first witnesses of the resurrection—came running from the Empty Tomb?

It’s good for us to be HERE, with all our stuff. We need transfiguring so badly. We need our laziness transfigured into a fiery energy for good. We need our unhealthy habits transfigured into light-filled  habits of returning phone calls, checking in on lonely neighbors, and returning to warm engagement with our families.

It’s finally Lent. Let your LIGHT shine.

What changes are you already making this Lent?

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 4: 1-13

When Jesus defeats Satan in the desert, Mark, at his usual breakneck speed, tells the whole Temptation story in one sentence. Matthew ends the story with, “And then Satan left him.” John doesn’t tell it at all, although there are some parallels in his gospel, particularly when Jesus is tempted to make bread in the wilderness (6:26).

But it’s Luke who ends his narrative with that intriguing last sentence, “he departed from him for a time” (4:13). Ah. Isn’t that always the way? Is there anyone who has “conquered” an addiction problem who would say that they have never been tempted again, that they don’t walk one day at a time, deeply grateful for every moment of freedom?

I wonder if Jesus knew, in the desert, that even though he had just vanquished the Enemy, he wouldn’t go away forever, but would lay in wait for three years? Then, like a ravenous lion, he would reappear, “entering into Judas Iscariot “ (22:3), who turned Jesus over to the chief priests (22:4).

And thus, it began. Next, Jesus told Simon Peter at the Last Supper that Satan had asked to sift him like wheat” (22:31). We know that Peter did not withstand that challenge, but denied Jesus three times in Caiaphas’s courtyard (22:55-62).

But don’t miss this: that’s not the end of Peter’s story. Jesus comforts him at the Last Supper, promising him that he has prayed for him, that he will not fail forever, and that, afterward, he will strengthen the Twelve.

Imagine Jesus saying that to you today. I have prayed for you, that you have the strength to begin again. O Jesus, who vanquished our Enemy, pray for us.

Readers, please choose an unknown person in this reading audience to pray for this Lent.

Kathy McGovern ©2025

Reflecting on Luke 22:14-23;56

It’s only in Luke’s gospel that Jesus lifts his heart up to the Lord In the Garden, and is in such agony that that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground (22:44).

I notice that Jesus keeps going back to his sleeping friends, begging them to pray that they would not be put to the test.

I never thought of it before this year, but I think the reason they could sleep while their Rabbi was in agony was that they didn’t realize what was soon going to happen. They may have had some intuition about something happening at Passover, but even as late as this event they still didn’t realize what his “kingdom” meant. They were waiting for him to bring the kingdom of God, which, in spite of all the ways he tried to dissuade them, they still thought meant finally calling down fire from heaven and bringing the Romans to their knees.

He knew, of course, that it was not for this that he came into the world. Earthly kingdoms come and go. He was establishing the kingdom in our hearts, and thus in all history. But our dear Jesus begged God that the cup of suffering would pass over him. He was so terrified—and who wouldn’t be?—that his sweat became blood. Oh, Jesus, we weep with you.

The Ukrainians are in the hearts of all of us on this Palm/Passion Sunday. We wept with them as we watched them saying goodbye at train stations. We’ve prayed fervently, begging God to take the cup of war away from them.

How will it all end? We lift our hearts up to the Lord

At what times in  your life have you begged God to take the cup away from you?

Kathy McGovern ©2022

Reflecting on John 8:1-11

Wouldn’t you love to know what Jesus was writing in the sand while the Pharisees were trying to get him all worked up? I love that he was so detached from their hysteria, so utterly uninterested in the drama they were fomenting. If I were to guess, I’d vote for the very scripture from Isaiah 43 that is the first reading today. Remember not the events of the past; the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new! Do you not perceive it?

I’ll bet that’s what Jesus wanted to say to that poor woman: Try to forget this trauma and humiliation. These Pharisees are just using you to get at me. God is doing something new in your life! Do you not perceive it?

Those are timely words for us today, traumatized as we are by this terrible war, the photos of millions of desperate people fleeing from war zones around the world, and our own horrors of school shootings, grocery store shootings, and fires that wipe out a thousand residential homes. We pray to “remember not” every single dreadful thing.

We don’t know what happened next to that “woman caught in adultery.”  I’ll bet she never forgot the moment when she met the Mercy of God. We just have to feel so sad for the guy she was with. Had he somehow found a way to become invisible in the crowd, and then joined in getting the stones ready? Either way, his “privilege” as the man in this episode kept him from the only real privilege there is, which is a one-on-one encounter with Jesus. I hope he found his way to Jesus too.

How have you found peace in letting go of some of the events of the past?

Kathy McGovern ©2022

Reflecting on Lk. 15:1-3, 11-32

Grr. You have to feel for that elder son. He’d been working the family farm— ranch?—pretty much by himself because his worthless brat of a little brother staged a big scene and got the old man to give him his inheritance and then ran off to squander it.

Now, truth be told, it wasn’t that much of an inheritance, since, according to Moses, the first-born son got twice as much as the younger brother: But he shall acknowledge the first-born…by giving a double portion of all he has; for he is the first-fruits of his strength, the right of the first-born is his (Dt. 21:17).

So, yeah, there’s that. But he had to work twice as hard for that twice-as-large inheritance! The little brother was supposed to stay and work, and the older brother was supposed to reap the benefits of that set-up. That’s how God wants it.

Here’s a thought: maybe that runaway son was taking a stand against a system that worked two sons the same, but one benefitted twice as much.

Greg Boyle, SJ admits that he won the race, zip code, parents, and siblings lottery when he was born. Me too. I wonder if I make assumptions about the life I get to live, in contrast to the way the family sleeping in their van in the empty parking lot is living theirs right now.

The younger son looked at “the way God wants it” and said, “I don’t think so.” I hope the van-family doesn’t think God set things up so I get to be warm and they have to be cold. Come to think of it, I hope I don’t think that too.

Are there inequities in the economic system that are making you feel like running away?

Kathy McGovern ©2022

Reflecting on Luke 13:1-9

Second chances. What a gift they are. I’m thinking of that kind teacher who said, halfway through the quarter on Algebra II so many years ago, “You know, Kathy, your talents could be used elsewhere. Let’s transfer you out of this class before too much times goes by.”

Ha! From this long distance I can still hear her voice, but of course today I can hear what she was really saying: “You are NEVER going to get this! You are EXASPERATING your teacher and everyone else in the class. We’re transferring you out before EVERYONE DESPAIRS.”

Even now I remember the relief of that undeserved kindness, that grace. That moment became a turning point in my life. Those of us who had kind parents can trace grace in a thousand ways. I pray for those who did not receive that grace, who have had to find kindness from other sources than their families of origin. I pray that grace has found them, and strengthened them throughout their lives.

That barren fig tree got a second chance, because the kind Gardener resolved to give it extra attention, extra effort. Do you have some fig trees hanging around in your life, maybe some bad habits that could be transformed with some discipline and pruning? Are you spinning your wheels on the same old vices, recognizing that they do not satisfy, but too invested in them to step away?

Let this be the Lent you submit to the grace of second chances. Let the Gardener show you the dead branches in your life, the secrets that aren’t keeping you safe, the fruit that’s been waiting to grow from your freshly repaired life.

What dead growth are you resolved to attack and master this season?

Kathy McGovern ©2022