The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite us to contemplate the teaching of God that we need to share in a heart connection with the people in our lives.
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| Making connection |
The reading from the Prophet Isaiah proclaims that God shall help us to understand his teaching clearly.
* [30:20] Teacher: God, who in the past made the people blind and deaf through the prophetic message (6:9–10) and who in his anger hid his face from the house of Jacob (8:17), shall in the future help them to understand his teaching clearly (cf. Jer 31:34).1
Psalm 147 is praise for God’s care for Jerusalem.
* [Psalm 147] The hymn is divided into three sections by the calls to praise in Ps 147:1, 7, 12. The first section praises the powerful creator who restores exiled Judah (Ps 147:1–6); the second section, the creator who provides food to animals and human beings; the third and climactic section exhorts the holy city to recognize it has been re-created and made the place of disclosure for God’s word, a word as life-giving as water.2
In the Gospel of Matthew we hear the harvest is great but the labourers few. The Twelve Apostles are given a mission to heal and proclaim the Kingdom.
* [9:37–38] This Q saying (see Lk 10:2) is only imperfectly related to this context. It presupposes that only God (the master of the harvest) can take the initiative in sending out preachers of the gospel, whereas in Matthew’s setting it leads into Mt 10 where Jesus does so.3
Larry Hopp shares that the scriptures today provide solid direction for those times when we catch ourselves feeling abandoned and hopeless.
It is hard to miss this stark example, this directive. Rather than focusing on our trials, we have the responsibility of seeking Jesus’ eyes and ears, to notice those He has placed in our lives. To see their hurts and to actually do something about them. We know that Jesus’ care and love will always be with us throughout every moment of our lives. Jesus clearly reminds us that we are to extend this care and love to those we encounter each and every day. We need to take this directive seriously – as the harvest is indeed abundant in today’s world. How will you choose to answer this call? 4
Don Schwager quotes “In remembrance of heavenly life,” by Bede the Venerable, 672-735 A.D.
"Why should the lunar reckoning be calculated from the noontide hours, seeing that the moon had not yet been placed in the heavens or gone forth over the earth? On the contrary, none of the feast days of the law began and ended at noon or in the afternoon, but all did so in the evening. Or else perchance it is because sinful Adam was reproached by the Lord 'in the cool of the afternoon' (Genesis 3:8) and thrust out from the joys of Paradise. In remembrance of that heavenly life which we changed for the tribulation of this world, the change of the moon, which imitates our toil by its everlasting waxing and waning, ought specifically to be observed at the hour in which we began our exile. In this way every day we may be reminded by the hour of the moon's changing of that verse, 'a fool changes as the moon' (Sirach 27:11) while the wise man 'shall live as long as the sun' (Psalm 72:5), and that we may sigh more ardently for that life, supremely blessed in eternal peace, when 'the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.' Indeed, because (as it is written) 'from the moon is the sign of the feast day' (Sirach 43:7), and just as the first light of the moon was shed upon the world at eventide, so in the law it is compulsory that every feast day begin in the evening and end in the evening (see Exodus 12:18). (excerpt from THE RECKONING OF TIME 3.43)5
Friar Jude Winkler explains the images of food and instruction in Isaiah. The work of a converted Pharisee may be seen in the Kingdom phrase in the Gospel. Friar Jude reminds us that the Kingdom resides in the person of Jesus.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, shares a practice for bringing our attention to our heart and considering our connection with other hearts.
In the wonderful little book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the Little Prince discovers inner power when the tamed fox shares a secret with these evocative words: “One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” [2] Spirituality invites us to look with a different pair of eyes, beyond what Thomas Merton called “the shadow and the disguise” [3] of things until we can know them in their connectedness and wholeness. The nondual or mystical mind fully experiences and learns to love limited ordinary things and peeks through the clouds to glimpse infinite and seemingly invisible things. The contemplative mind “knows spiritual things in a spiritual way” (1 Corinthians 2:13). [4]6
Our Advent spiritual practice is preparation to open our hearts to others.
References
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