Toward Easter - Daily Readings & Meditations for Lent 2025 - Day 37

The transformative power of forgiveness takes center stage as we journey through the Thursday of Passion Week, with just nine days remaining until Easter. Through the moving Gospel story of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus' feet with her tears, we discover the perfect counterpart to the parable of the Prodigal Son—a firsthand account of divine mercy from the recipient's perspective.

Mary Magdalene's encounter with Christ reveals how true conversion happens: having sought happiness in worldly pleasures and finding only emptiness, she sees in Jesus something authentic and beautiful that awakens her soul. Her silent tears and humble gestures speak volumes, and Christ's response teaches us everything about genuine forgiveness. Unlike Simon, Jesus—though perfectly pure—accepts her touch, her repentance, and simply tells her, "Go in peace." No lecture, no conditions—just complete restoration.

This meditation arrives at the perfect moment as we prepare for Holy Week. St. John Vianney reminds us that "it is not the sinner who comes to God to ask forgiveness, but God himself who runs after the sinner." His warning that claiming our sins are too great for God's mercy is "a great blasphemy" challenges us to trust in limitless divine forgiveness. Whether you've maintained regular confession or haven't been in years, what better time than Passion Week to experience the mercy Christ offers? Our twofold resolution emerges clearly: prepare carefully for Easter confession with genuine contrition, and extend that same forgiveness to others who have wronged us. Share your thoughts on forgiveness and join us tomorrow as we contemplate Our Lady of Compassion through the beautiful Stabat Mater.

Chapters

• 0:00 Lenten Journey Countdown and Palm Sunday Plans
• 5:24 The Folly of Love: Mary Magdalene's Story
• 10:58 Thoughts from St. John Marie Vianney
• 11:38 Confession and Forgiveness Resolutions
• 15:07 Reflection on Forgiveness and Future Plans
• 18:58 Looking Forward to Holy Week

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:00

Choir singing. Good morning everyone and welcome to day 37 of Lent. We are on Thursday in Passion Week, so we have nine days left of Lent, just slightly over a week. So yeah, a week from today will be Holy Thursday, maundy Thursday, the beginning of the Easter Triduum, and then Good Friday, holy Saturday and then, of course, easter. So we are, man, we are close Sunday, you know. Just one.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Three days from now is Palm Sunday and I'm very excited because right now, as the plan for my family this year is to attend attend our very first not only our first TLM Palm Sunday, even though we've, you know, palm Sunday, even though we've, you know, we've been so-called trads for well for basically five years now, we've never had the chance to make that drive on Palm Sunday because it's a long drive to the local TLM. But we'll be having the chance to actually go to our first pre-55 Palm Sunday and I am very excited for that. So, yeah, so, without further ado, let's get into our reading and meditation today. And just so everyone knows the response to my question yesterday of whether or not you'd all like me to finish the book off basically because it does go through the octave of easter and continue to do these meditations that it gives us through that. You know that octave of easter will, um, the response was unanimously yes, you would like that. So I will do that, um, and then I'm considering I I will probably take then the rest of uh of eastertide off. Doing these in the morning does mean about an hour less sleep every day, um, but after easteride, uh, maybe starting with Pentecost, maybe not going to promise anything here, folks. Maybe starting with Pentecost, uh, I will maybe just do these daily forever. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see. Um, if I were I don't know if I know Father Trodeck here has other books in the series. I don't know if he has them for the entire year or not, but I could do something like the readings from Divine Intimacy every day or something of that, maybe even readings from Dom Guernsey's the Liturgical Year Daily, maybe, who knows, there's different options. I'm considering it. I'm not going to promise it because, like I said, it's actually a fair amount of work, but we'll see. But let's at least continue with what we have now. So, without further ado, let me put up an image and we'll continue with Thursday and Passion Week. So, without further ado, let me put up an image and we'll continue with Thursday and Passion Week. Thursday and Passion Week the Folly of Love.

Speaker 1: 4:44

From the Gospel of St Luke, chapter 7, verses 48 and 50. Jesus said to the woman Thy sins are forgiven thee, thy faith has saved thee. Go in peace.

Speaker 1: 5:05

The story of Mary Magdalene is one of the most moving passages in the Gospel. It is the perfect counterpart to the story of the prodigal son. This woman had been leading a worldly and sinful life. She had sought happiness in the disorder of sin and had found only emptiness and shame. But as soon as she hears the word of Jesus, as soon as she sees him so dignified, so majestic and at the same time so good, so merciful, so indulgent toward the small and the weak, there awakens in her soul a sense for the true, the beautiful and the good. Now she has before her eyes a model to which she compares everything that surrounds her and what she is herself. And she is seized with loathing, both for the world and for herself. And she is seized with loathing both for the world and for herself. Remorse burns in her heart so intensely that she begins to detest sin. She kneels at the feet of Jesus, she washes them with the tears of repentance. She wipes them with her hair, of which she had once been so proud. It is the silent admission, holding nothing back, which tells everything and begs for pity.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Jesus lets her go on. He does not push away this woman of evil life. He accepts that she touch his very pure flesh and this contact purifies her. Not a word of reproach, not a word that might confound her. On the contrary, magdalene is forgiven, justified, transformed. Go in peace. He does not even tell her sin, no more. It is done. Jesus alone has the goodness to forgive with so much delicacy. Simon would have pushed the sinner away. He would have said get out of here. I am pure, pure. Who was as pure as Jesus? He is true in his purity. He does not make a parade of it. He understands human misery and he reaches out toward it. He lets her kiss his feet. It is over, everything is forgiven. Go in peace.

Speaker 1: 7:25

I thank thee, my God, on behalf of all of us poor sinners, all of us poor sinners. Lord Jesus, may I have the same spirit as Mary Magdalene in every one of my confessions. And now our prayer is from Father Gabriel, st Mary Magdalene, from Divine Intimacy, volume 2, page 106. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen. By the merits of thy passion, grant me, o Lord, to bring always to thy tribunal of penance a heart truly humble and contrite, a sorrow ever more perfect for my sins, or a horror ever more sincere and profound for all that offends thee. My God, amen. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, amen.

Speaker 1: 8:26

Both of our two thoughts today are from St John Marie Vianney. The first it is not the sinner who comes to God to ask him for forgiveness. But it is not the sinner who comes to God to ask him for forgiveness, but it is God himself who runs after the sinner and makes him come back to him. And our second thought there are some who say I have done too many evil things, god cannot forgive me. That is a great blasphemy. It places a limit on the mercy of God and it has none. It is infinite.

Speaker 1: 9:11

And we have two resolutions for today. Number one every Catholic must make an Easter confession. It has to be carefully prepared. Let us arrange things so as to have time to prepare and make this confession in calm and serenity. Number two to forgive offenses and therefore to do everything we can to forget them. And that is the reading for today. Um, part of that meditation, so, between that little bit of the gospel and the, the prayer from divine, about half of that meditation, is a quote that Father included from Father DA Mordier, from the Order of Preachers, from the book the Dominican Liturgy, volume 4. So that was a quote from a Dominican priest that he included. So today, yeah, forgiveness, forgiveness.

Speaker 1: 10:29

Confession when we go to confession which we should do often, at least monthly when we go to confession, if we truly have contrition, if we truly have an amendment of purpose, we should come over to that confessional with an absolute loathing and hatred for sin. That should be what our Lord inspires in us. You know, his purity, his goodness, his mercy, his love for us, his goodness, his mercy, his love for us, the love that we will see on the cross here in just over a week's time, that should all inspire in us an absolute loathing for sin. Now, that loathing, that hatred, that shouldn't extend to ourselves or to other sinners. You know, we should never believe we are beyond that mercy because, as St John Vianney says, that is a great blasphemy, that despair is a sin against the Holy, holy ghost. Um, so, yeah, we can't let that. You know that hatred or or or loathing cause us to despair, but we do need to have that hatred and loathing for sin itself, that that will be what what stops us from committing those same sins in the future. Um, and his father says here uh, we must make an Easter confession.

Speaker 1: 12:30

Um, well, you know what, what better time to to have, you know, a conversion, an amendment of life, than you know at the time of Christ's passion and death and resurrection? So if you have not number one, if you have not been to confession in a long time, you know, if you're say what many would call a fallen away Catholic, lapsed Catholic or whatever, and for whatever reason you're listening to these, I mean, now's the time. You know what better time to come back to the church than during Passion Tide, than during, you know, holy Week, than during Easter. So go to confession, get back to Mass. You know, if Mary Magdalene can be redeemed, so go to confession, get back to mass. You know, if, if, if, mary Magdalene can be redeemed and become a, a great saint, you know one of the greatest saints, then then you can too, you know. So there's no better time than the present, no better time than now. But even if you uh, even if you know you, you go to confession monthly, you know let's, let's all get to confession, uh, throughout holy week, um prior to easter. So we're all ready for Christ's resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Speaker 1: 14:20

And then, of course, there's also our second resolution today, where Father calls us to forgive offenses and to do everything we can to forget them. We are all called to forgive offenses, or at the very least to offer that forgiveness. Forgiveness does need to be accepted, on the other end, for someone to be forgiven, of course. But we must offer forgiveness and to the amount that it is prudent, we should also try to forget offenses now. We shouldn't, you know, forget an offense you know that, say, could cause us danger. Right, if someone has, say, physically hurt us in the past or or even mentally, emotionally, you, you know, you know, caused us harm, you don't want to necessarily forget that, you know, just due to prudence, we uh in order to protect other people in the future. But to the extent that it is possible or prudent to forget the offense that someone has caused, you should, um trying to think if there's anything else here that kind of hit me as we read. Not so much, sorry guys. I, toward the end of the weeks here, I get a little burnt out. I fell asleep at like 8 o'clock last night. Still does not feel like enough, let me see. Okay, so I think that's everything we have today.

Speaker 1: 16:20

Tomorrow, friday, during Passion Week, we will talk about Our Lady of Compassion. We will talk about Our Lady of Compassion and the, not scripture. It's not scripture, but the, so the kind of the reading right. That first little part. We, that is usually the gospel that we read every day. You know that's taken from that day's liturgy. So it's not always the gospel or it's not always even scripture, it's just some part of that liturgy. So tomorrow what we will read is taken from the Stabat Mater. So, anthony, if you're listening to this, make sure to listen to tomorrow, since you didn't know what the Stabat Mater was. So, yeah, tomorrow we will talk about Our Lady of Compassion, and then, of course, we have Saturday and Passion Week, but then after that we begin Holy Week. So only two more days until Holy Week. But thank you all for joining these.

Speaker 1: 17:25

Like I said, you were all unanimous yesterday in your desire for these to continue throughout the Easter octave. So we will do that. Whether or not these become a permanent feature on the channel, I don't know yet. I am considering it but it is a lot of work. I'm not saying I don't want to do it, but it is a lot of work and it makes me less available, say, to get up with one of the kids in the morning Instead of hope if I'm. You know it makes it hard to do that when I have to do these two.

Speaker 1: 18:04

So we'll see, I'll think about it to do these two. So we'll see, I'll think about it. Maybe maybe we'll do meditations for certain feasts throughout the year, or I don't know. Let me know what you think. You know, if you really want them daily throughout the year, let me know If you'd be okay, fine with them, just say being for certain feasts and entire liturgical seasons like Advent and Lent. Let me know that, let me know what you think. But thank you all. I hope you all have a great day and we will see you tomorrow, on Friday in Passion Week. Thank you.