Making Hope a Habit

The texts today from the Roman Catholic Lectionary bring us to the geography of The Holy Land and some of the hope and despair which is in our spiritual heritage. The Land of Egypt which welcomed Joseph and his family was at that time controlled in the north by Hyksos, a Semitic people from Palestine. When the authority in Egypt returned to native people, Friar Jude Winkler reminds us that the Israelites were persecuted and the male children killed. The passage from Exodus today places Moses in the care of the daughter of Pharaoh until his rash action in killing an Egyptian, forces his exile to Midian in the Sinaitic Peninsula. The despair which prompted Moses to flee Egypt reminds us of those situations which are echoed in the prayer of the psalmist when we know that God will act in our lives at the acceptable time.  Friar Jude notes rabbinic tradition that Moses lived 40 years in each of three places, Egypt, Midian and the Sinai desert. We continue to put one foot in front of the other trusting in the abundance of the steadfast love of God. We will receive an answer to our petition. Our faithfulness is to continue to “Listen.” The residents of the cities around Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee have not heard the Word spoken by Jesus. We feel the distress in the expression of Jesus concern in the Gospel of Matthew about the woe they are bringing upon themselves. The feast, today, of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is tied to the geography of the region of northwesternIsrael near Haifa and the Mediterranean Sea. A Carmelite monastery was founded at the site shortly after the order itself was created, and was dedicated to Mary, in her aspect of Star of the Sea (stella maris in Latin) This is a common medieval presentation of Mary and one which is familiar in l’Acadie. The despair about the many persecutions raised against the Order of Mount Carmel, when it was newly arrived in Europe, prompted Saint Simon Stock, General of the Order, to turn with filial confidence to the Blessed Mother of God. As he knelt in prayer on July 16, 1251, in the White Friars’ convent at Cambridge, she appeared before him and presented him with the well-known brown scapular, a loose sleeveless garment destined for the Order of Carmel. Friar Jude encourages us to listen and live the Word we have heard from Jesus to avoid the fate of those cities mentioned in the Gospel today.