The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today resonate with our experience of peace in compassionate service of others.
Our loving service
The reading from the Prophet Zechariah declares God’s promises to Zion.
* [8:3] Faithful city: a unique biblical epithet for Jerusalem, signaling the importance of the holy city and its leaders for establishing justice in society (see also vv. 8, 16, 19). Holy mountain: Jerusalem and its Temple, the sacred center of the holy land (2:16) and of the whole world.1
Psalm 102 is a prayer to the Eternal King for Help.
* [Psalm 102] A lament, one of the Penitential Psalms. The psalmist, experiencing psychological and bodily disintegration (Ps 102:4–12), cries out to God (Ps 102:1–3). In the Temple precincts where God has promised to be present, the psalmist recalls God’s venerable promises to save the poor (Ps 102:13–23). The final part (Ps 102:24–28) restates the original complaint and prayer, and emphasizes God’s eternity.2
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus teaches true greatness in service and acceptance of others doing God’s work.
* [9:46–50] These two incidents focus on attitudes that are opposed to Christian discipleship: rivalry and intolerance of outsiders.3
Julie Kalkowski reflects that this year people have repeatedly faced horrific situations… Her friend Nancy decided the one thing she could do was to help with the newly arrived refugees from Afghanistan. She felt a bit of hope seeping back into a mother from Afghanistan as she began to hear her children laughing and playing.
“The city (Jerusalem) shall be filled with girls and boys playing in the streets.” Nancy told me that hearing the laughter get louder and louder was the best medicine for that despairing mother. She knows it is a drop in the bucket, but it’s a start. Sometimes just sitting with people in their pain is all we can do, but it helps not to be alone. So, we do what we can where we are and trust in our God to see us through these ‘impossible days’.4
Don Schwager quotes “Jesus, the Physician of souls, amputates vainglory,“ by Cyril of Alexandria (376-444 AD).
"The passion and lust of pride attacked some of the holy apostles. The mere argument about who of them was the greatest is the mark of an ambitious person, eager to stand at the head of the rest. Christ, who did not sleep, knows how to deliver. He saw this thought in the disciple's mind, springing up, in the words of Scripture (Hebrews 12:15), like some bitter plant. He saw the weeds, the work of the wicked sower. Before it grew up tall, struck its root down deep, grew strong, and took possession of the heart, he tears up the evil by the very root..."In what way does the Physician of souls amputate pride’s passion? How does he deliver the beloved disciple from being the prey of the enemy and from a thing hateful to God and man? "He took a child," it says, "and set it by him." He made the event a means of benefiting both the holy apostles themselves and us their successors. This illness, as a rule, preys upon all those who are in any respect superior to other people".(excerpt from COMMENTARY ON LUKE, HOMILY 54.2)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Luke 9:46-50 comments that St. Vincent de Paul, whom we celebrate today, liked to tell his followers, “Go to the poor. You will find God.” Sometimes we can harbor attitudes of judgment or superiority toward the people we are trying to help, and that can make them feel small or ashamed.
Jesus comes to meet us in the “least among us,” who are truly the greatest. Let’s take the risk of going out to the poor so that we can, as St. Vincent says, “Find God.” “Jesus, I don’t want to miss the opportunities to meet you in those the world might consider least.”6
Franciscan Media notes that Saint Vincent de Paul was by temperament a very irascible person—even his friends admitted it. He said that except for the grace of God he would have been “hard and repulsive, rough and cross.” But he became a tender and affectionate man, very sensitive to the needs of others.
The Church is for all God’s children, rich and poor, peasants and scholars, the sophisticated and the simple. But obviously the greatest concern of the Church must be for those who need the most help—those made helpless by sickness, poverty, ignorance, or cruelty. Vincent de Paul is a particularly appropriate patron for all Christians today, when hunger has become starvation, and the high living of the rich stands in more and more glaring contrast to the physical and moral degradation in which many of God’s children are forced to live.7
Friar Jude Winkler discusses the images of normality that Zachariah understands that God will return to Jerusalem. Jesus uses the child to underline our mission to serve those who cannot pay us back. Friar Jude reminds us to rejoice in the actions of those not of our faith who do the works of service from their hearts.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, introduces Quaker author Richard Foster who has long written on themes of prayer and spiritual practice. Focusing on the Hebrew word ‘hesed’, Foster explores the many ways that compassion shows up in the Hebrew Bible, both in God and in how people relate to one another. Theologian Elizabeth Johnson understands acting with compassion to others in need as participating in the flow of God’s compassion.
But the great challenge for us is that this covenant love, this durable mercy that is so central to the character of God, is to be reflected in us as well. Through Hosea the prophet, God declares, “I desire steadfast love [hesed] and not sacrifice, / the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6).8
We witness so many needs among people we encounter and we pray to be able to serve them with compassion.
References
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