A time of Lexio devena for the discerning heart.

Saturday in the fifth week of Lent.

As you begin, take a deep breath and exhale slowly.

For the next few moments, surrender all the cares and concerns of the stay to the Lord.

Say slowly from your heart, Jesus, I trust in heard deep within your heart.

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John 11 verses 45 through 56.

Many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him,

but some of them went to tell the Pharisees what Jesus had done.

Then the chief priests and Pharisees called a meeting.

Here is this man working all these signs, they said, and what action are we taking?

If we let him go on in this way, everybody will believe in him, and the Romans will come and

destroy the holy place and our nation.

One of them, Caiaphas, the high priest that year, said,

you do not seem to have grasped this situation at all. You fail to see that it is better for one

man to die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed. He did not speak in his own person.

It was as high priest that he made this prophecy

that Jesus was to die for the nation,

and not for the nation only,

but to gather together in unity the scattered children of God.

From that day they were determined to kill him. So Jesus no longer went about

openly among the Jews, but left the district for a town called Ephraim in the country bordering on

the desert and stayed there with his disciples. The Jewish Passover drew near, and many of the country people who had gone up to Jerusalem to purify themselves looked out for Jesus, saying to one another as they stood about in the temple,

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