Monday of the Third Week of Lent

Reading 1 2 Kgs 5:1-15ab

Responsorial Psalm 42:2, 3; 43:3, 4

Gospel Lk 4:24-30

The story of Naaman in the second Book of Kings teaches us so much about the value of the Sacramental economy. A man of great power and status, Naaman sets out with a vast allotment of wealth, hoping that by doing so he might somehow be able to buy his way toward healing from his leprosy. In doing so, he exhibits a rudimentary kind of faith in God’s healing power, but it is obvious that his faith hasn’t yet gone beyond the level of his own self-interest. He still views his interactions with the divine in terms of “transactional relationship”— what Fr. Thomas Acklin and Fr. Boniface Hicks describe in their book Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father’s Love. It is the kind of thinking which asserts, “I am giving you a certain amount of thing X, therefore you owe me a certain amount of thing Y in return.” It is the language of contract not covenant, and it is no surprise then that Naaman becomes indignant when Elisha the prophet asks him to do something humble and seemingly trivial.

We can fall into this same pragmatic, worldly kind of thinking in the way we approach the sacraments.
Do I really need to confess my sins to an old, eccentric priest? Am I really supposed to believe that a wafer becomes the very substance of he risen Christ? Like the Jews in today’s Gospel, we risk finding ourselves victims of the age-old adage that familiarity breeds contempt. Let us pray then for the grace to receive that sense of humble wonder which Naaman eventually discovered. In doing so, we shall make the words of the psalmist our own: “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for
you, O God” (Ps 42:1).

Do I exhibit a transactional relationship with God?

Do I pray and fast and give alms with the expectation that I am thereby earning and deserving of more blessings?

How can I begin to grow beyond the transactional and instead foster a relationship with God based on disinterested love?

Reference:

Journey Through Lent: Reflections on the Daily Mass Readings by Clement Harrold