March 28, 2025 // Friday of the Third Week of Lent
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Hosea 14:2-10
Reflect on the Word //
The bells barely finished their tolling for Mass as I slipped into the far corner of the last pew in the small white wooden church. Seconds before the opening hymn I dropped to my knees and my head fell into my hands. I didn’t want to be seen, noticed, spoken to, or acknowledged. I didn’t really want to be at Mass that Sunday morning, but I also didn’t want to compound the weight of the guilt I was already feeling by skipping Mass too. Besides, I was the “good girl” on my heavily secular college campus. I always went to Mass on Sunday. If I didn’t go, surely someone would suspect. So, there I was, the “good girl” college sophomore, feeling anything but good.
Lord, You don’t suspect. You know. You know every inward thought and movement of the heart. You look on me with love and call me back to You when I feel far away, stumbling in my iniquity, just like You never ceased to call Israel to return to You (see Hosea 14:2). You see us collapsed in our guilt, yet You urge us on to return to You, our Lord and God, You Who forgive every iniquity, in Whom the orphan and the sinner find compassion (see Hosea 14:3-4). Lord, Your words wash over me like a cleansing flood. Your words of healing and the gaze of Your heart, given freely in love, call me back to the path You have set before me, away from the gods in whom I once chose to put my trust, whom I fashioned by the work of my hands (see Hosea 14:4).
You heal our defection, love us freely and turn away Your wrath from us (see Hosea 14:5). We have no need to hide from You, the One Who bids us to rise from our guilt and return to You. May the healing dew (see Hosea 14:6) of Your mercy soften our hearts, that forgiven, restored, healed by Your grace we might walk the straight paths You set before those who are just (see Hosea 14:10).
Relate to the Lord // Pray with the First Reading today. What does it reveal to you personally about the Lord’s saving love?
Sister Maria Fatima grew up in Rhode Island and entered the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in 2005. She holds a MA in Theology from the Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity. Sister is in her eleventh year of enlightening middle school minds and drawing hearts to Jesus while teaching religion and history. She currently resides at the motherhouse in Ann Arbor, MI, having previously taught in Texas, Florida, and Ohio. She is a contributing author to our Lent devotional All She Had.
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