Welcoming & Embracing the Stranger: Lenten Reflections with the Artwork of James Tissot

March 4, 2026 - Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent

In today’s Gospel, Our Lord foretells His coming Passion, death, and Resurrection. A contemporary reader might object: Why would he say such a thing? Does He not care about His disciples’ mental well-being? Does He realize the anxiety such words might trigger? The Fathers of the Church also asked why Christ would foretell of the Cross yet answered differently. 

St. Jerome writes: “When He is about to go to Jerusalem, leading the apostles with Him, He prepares them to be tested, lest when the persecution comes they be scandalized by the disgrace of the cross.”

Christ prepares His disciples because He knows the cross will be a scandal– a stumbling stone– for His disciples. He knows this because the fallen world is often inhospitable to the Word of God, to the way of God. This is the same Jesus who tells his disciples at the Last Supper, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you,” and, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (Jn. 15:18, 20). 

We witness this same inhospitability in the first reading. The prophet Jeremiah, the bearer of God’s Word, hears those around him “contriving a plot” against him (Jer. 18:18). To them, Jeremiah is expendable, and the Word he carries is unnecessary. “It will not mean the loss of instruction from the priests, nor of counsel from the wise, nor of messages from the prophets” (Jer. 18:18). The Word can be dismissed; the messenger eliminated. 

What, then, does it mean to be hospitable to the Word? 

Christ tells Peter the secret when Peter recoiled from the cross: set your mind on the things of God, not the things of men (Mt. 16:23). The Cross– and our own crosses– demand that we think differently. St. Basil of Caesarea points to this as the root of every scandal: we fail to lift our minds to the things of God. We become hospitable to the Word when we allow it to illumine our minds. James Tissot’s painting of the Transfiguration captures this vividly. The three disciples respond differently to the brilliant reality of Christ. One recoils almost in pain; another strains to look. And Peter– good, impetuous Peter!– basks in a light, overwhelmed yet willing to dwell in the in presence of One he cannot completely comprehend. He is open to the Word, welcoming it. 

In becoming hospitable to the Word, we become hospitable to a world that may be inhospitable to us. It is the Word who teaches us hospitability, first to Him, then to our neighbor. We learn it by opening our arms, like Peter, to the Word made flesh, who declares: “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt. 20:28). 

Keep your family, O Lord, schooled always in good works, and so comfort them with your protection here as to lead them graciously to gifts on high. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. (Roman Missal)

Justin M. Anderson, Department Chair and Professor, Moral Theology

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