4 March 2026 (Wednesday) / Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent. Lenten Weekday/ Saint Casimir

4 March 2026 (Wednesday)

Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent.
Lenten Weekday/ Saint Casimir.

Readings from the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church:

First Reading: Jeremiah 18: 18-20
Responsorial Psalm: Psalms 31: 5-6, 14, 15-16
Verse Before the Gospel: John 8: 12
Gospel: Matthew 20: 17-28

First Reading: Jeremiah 18: 18-20

18 And they said: Come, and let us invent devices against Jeremias: for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet: come, and let us strike him with the tongue, and let us give no heed to all his words.
19 Give heed to me, O Lord, and hear the voice of my adversaries.
20 Shall evil be rendered for good, because they have digged a pit for my soul? Remember that I have stood in thy sight, so speak good for them, and turn away thy indignation from them.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalms 31: 5-6, 14, 15-16

R. (17b) Save me, O Lord, in your kindness.
5 Thou wilt bring me out of this snare, which they have hidden for me: for thou art my protector.
6 Into thy hands I commend my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, the God of truth.
R. Save me, O Lord, in your kindness.
14 For I have heard the blame of many that dwell round about. While they assembled together against me, they consulted to take away my life.
R. Save me, O Lord, in your kindness.
15 But I have put my trust in thee, O Lord: I said: Thou art my God.
16 My lots are in thy hands. Deliver me out of the hands of my enemies; and from them that persecute me.
R. Save me, O Lord, in your kindness.

Verse Before the Gospel: John 8: 12
12 I am the light of the world, says the Lord; whoever follows me will have the light of life.

Gospel: Matthew 20: 17-28

17 And Jesus going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples apart, and said to them:
18 Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death.
19 And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to be mocked, and scourged, and crucified, and the third day he shall rise again.
20 Then came to him the mother of the sons of Zebedee with her sons, adoring and asking something of him.
21 Who said to her: What wilt thou? She saith to him: Say that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left, in thy kingdom.
22 And Jesus answering, said: You know not what you ask. Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink? They say to him: We can.
23 He saith to them: My chalice indeed you shall drink; but to sit on my right or left hand, is not mine to give to you, but to them for whom it is prepared by my Father.
24 And the ten hearing it, were moved with indignation against the two brethren.
25 But Jesus called them to him, and said: You know that the princes of the Gentiles lord it over them; and they that are the greater, exercise power upon them.
26 It shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be the greater among you, let him be your minister:
27 And he that will be first among you, shall be your servant.
28 Even as the Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a redemption for many.

For our reflection today:

Let us continue to pray for the sick because of this epidemic. And today, in a special way, I would
like to pray for prisoners, for our brothers and our sisters who are detained in prisons. They suffer,
and we must be near to them with our prayer, so that the Lord might help them, might console
them in this difficult moment.

The First Reading, a passage from the prophet Jeremiah (18:18-20), is truly a prophecy of the
Passion of the Lord. What do the enemies say? “Come, let us destroy him by his own tongue; let
us carefully note his every word”, “Let’s contrive a plot against him”. It does not say, “Let’s conquer
him, let’s get rid of him”, no. To make his life difficult, to torment him. It is the suffering of the
prophet, but there is a prophecy of Jesus. In the Gospel (Mt 20:17-28), Jesus Himself talks to us
about this: “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man is about to be handed over to the
chief priests and scribes.

They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the pagans to be mocked and scourged and crucified” (vv. 18-19). It is not only a death sentence: there is more than that. There is humiliation, hounding. When there is the dogged persecution of a Christian, of a person, the devil is there. The devil has two styles: seduction, with worldly promises, as he wanted to do with Jesus in the desert, to seduce him, and with seduction to make him change the plan of redemption; and, if this does not work, doggedness. The devil has no half measures. His pride is so great that he tries to destroy. He destroys enjoying the destruction with dogged fury.

Let us think of the persecution of so many saints, of so many Christians: their persecutors do not kill them at once, but make them suffer and try to humiliate them in all sorts of ways, to the end. We must not confuse a simple social, political and religious persecution with the dogged fury of the devil. The devil hounds in order to destroy. Let us think of Revelation: he wanted to devour the woman’s child who is about to be born (cf. 12:4). The two thieves who were crucified with Jesus were condemned, crucified and left to die in peace. Nobody insulted them: no one was interested. The insult was only for Jesus, against Jesus. Jesus tells the apostles that He will be condemned to death, but He will be “mocked and scourged and crucified”... They mock him. And the way out of the devil’s fury, out of this destruction, is the worldly spirit, what the mother
asks for her children, the children of Zebedee (cf. Mt 20:20-21).

Jesus speaks of humiliation, which is His own destiny, and right then and there they ask Him for visibility, for power. Vanity, the worldly spirit, is precisely the way the devil offers to distance onself from Christ’s Cross. One’s own fulfilment, careerism, worldly success: they are all non-Christian roads, they are all roads for obscuring the Cross of Jesus. May the Lord give us the grace to know how to discern when the spirit that wants to destroy us with doggedness is present, and when the same spirit wants to console us with the appearances of the world, with vanity. But let us not forget: when there is dogged fury, there is hatred, the vengeance of the defeated devil. This is how it is until today, in the Church. Think of so many Christians, how cruelly persecuted they are. In recent days the newspapers have been talkingcabout Asia Bibi: nine years in prison, suffering. It is the devil’s dogged fury. May the Lord give us the grace to discern the Lord’s way, which is the Cross, from the way of the world, which is vanity, appearance, maquillage. (Pope Francis, Vanity distances us from Christ’s Cross").

Jonathan Fabian Ginunggil,
Pelayan Atasan Tertinggi / Most High Servant,
Yesus, Maria, Yusuf Pelayanan Kasih / Jesus, Mary, Joseph Ministry of Love 
(Blessed and Saints and the Nine Choirs of Angels)

My vocation is Blessed and Saints.

"I am the most humble of all the Saints in Heaven" Mary, Mother of God.

"I am the handmaid of the Lord, said Mary ‘let what you have said be done to me."

Mother Mary is the most humble Saint in Heaven and she is also the Mother of God for us all
(Luke 1:38)