Resonance and Results

The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today connect a resonance of love and compassion, a discipline of daily prayer, and results in an attitude of nonviolence toward all God’s Creation.

Care for Creation

The poetry of Hosea invites a change of heart in an abandonment of the previous ways of conflict.

* [14:4] These good intentions promise a reversal of Israel’s sins: no more reliance on “Assyria,” i.e., on foreign alliances (see notes on 8:9 and 12:2), on “horses,” i.e., on human power (10:13), and on idolatry (8:4–6; 13:2). Israel will trust in the Lord alone.

Psalm 81 captures the otherness of the Word of God and how it resonates with our being.

* [81:7] I heard a tongue I did not know: a Temple official speaks the word of God (Ps 81:5b–16), which is authoritative and unlike merely human words (cf. Nm 24:4, 16).

In the Gospel from Mark, the response of Jesus to the question of the scribe strikes a note of deep wisdom in which Jesus commends the closeness of His interrogator to the Truth.

* [12:13–34] In the ensuing conflicts (cf. also Mk 2:1–3:6) Jesus vanquishes his adversaries by his responses to their questions and reduces them to silence (Mk 12:34).

Larry Gillick, S.J. reflects that the faithful Jew (to the Shema) recalls often the unique relationship God has with him/her. As a consequence, loving that God will be a “want-to” rather than a “Have-to.” The more we experience being loved, the less loving is burdensome.

Jesus then reminds the scribe, and us as well, that the love of God is more than a personal validation or embrace or a celebration of singularity. We are so selective about many things and unfortunately about many other persons. We pray these days of Lent to expand our personal boundaries, but not with walls, but welcomes, not with “who can make us greater,’ but “to whom can we reveal the same saving-love of the One God, Our God, the God of us all?"
Listen! Listen! Listen to who we are. Listen to who she is, he is. We are not, the others are not, objects to be selected/rejected, but similar “others” whom God loves as well.

Don Schwager quotes Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D., on the fire of God's love.

"Gravity keeps everything in its own place. Fire climbs up, while a stone goes down. Elements that are not in their own place are restless until they find it. This applies also to us. My weight is my love; wherever I go, I am driven by it. By the love of God we catch fire ourselves and, by moving up, find our place and our rest." (excerpt from Confessions 13,9)

Friar Jude Winkler develops the case for the Incredible compassion of God to the people of Israel and how they will be restored though they do not deserve it. The Shema Israel commits our intellect, our persecution, our clear conscience, and our possessions for the Lord. Jesus extends our commitment to loving the other as ourselves.

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, exhorts us to live nonviolently—both toward humans and nature— This requires that we recognize God’s image in each living thing. He shares thoughts from friend and nonviolent activist John Dear’s new book, They Will Inherit the Earth.

This is the journey we are all called to live, to make the connection between active nonviolence and oneness with creation, so that we all might dwell peacefully in this paradise. . . . I [see] not just the vision of peace and nonviolence, but the vision of a new creation, where we all live as one in peace with one another, Mother Earth and her glorious creatures. It’s that vision of peace, nonviolence, and the new creation, the vision of the promised land before us, the practice of proactive nonviolence, that offers a way out of environmental destruction, as well as permanent war, corporate greed, systemic racism, and extreme poverty.

The recognition by the scribes of the wisdom of Jesus is a place for us to begin to deepen our commitment to action in His Name.

References:


(n.d.). Hosea, chapter 14 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved March 9, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/hosea/14

(n.d.). Psalms, chapter 81 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved March 9, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/psalms/81

(n.d.). Mark, chapter 12 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved March 9, 2018, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/mark/12

(n.d.). Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved March 9, 2018, from http://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/

(2017, December 30). 2018 Daily Meditations - Center for Action and Contemplation. Retrieved March 9, 2018, from https://cac.org/2018-daily-meditations/