The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today resonate with our desire to understand the role of our relationship to God in fulfilling our lives.
Fullness of Life
The reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah describes the Omnipotent God.
* [45:18] Empty waste: an allusion to Gn 1:2, where the earth is waste and void; the same Hebrew word, tohu, is used in both passages. Here it points to devastated Judah and Jerusalem, where God wishes to resettle the returning exiles.1
Psalm 85 is a prayer for the Restoration of God’s Favour.
* [Psalm 85] A national lament reminding God of past favors and forgiveness (Ps 85:2–4) and begging for forgiveness and grace now (Ps 85:5–8). A speaker represents the people who wait humbly with open hearts (Ps 85:9–10): God will be active on their behalf (Ps 85:11–13). The situation suggests the conditions of Judea during the early postexilic period, the fifth century B.C.; the thoughts are similar to those of postexilic prophets (Hg 1:5–11; 2:6–9).2
In the Gospel of Luke, messengers from John the Baptist witness the actions of Jesus.
* [7:23] Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me: this beatitude is pronounced on the person who recognizes Jesus’ true identity in spite of previous expectations of what “the one who is to come” would be like.3
Steve Scholer comments on “For thus says the LORD, The creator of the heavens, who is God, The designer and maker of the earth who established it, Not creating it to be a waste, but designing it be lived in: I am the LORD, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45.18) These lines resonate in our world today. With concerns of climate change all around us, we have a heightened sense of how fragile our planet is. But let’s keep in mind that not only did God create this wonderful, beautiful earth; he created us. And like the earth, he did not create us to be a waste, but to live full and productive lives in service to him, to our faith, to our families and to those we encounter each day.
Maybe silencing our cellphones for a few hours a day so we have more time to dwell on our relationship with God and realize he is there by our side each day might be a good place to start. Maybe showing more gratitude for the little things that people do as we go about our lives, from the sacker at the grocery store to the Salvation Army volunteer bell ringer on the corner. Maybe stopping to spend an hour at church in prayer and reflection instead of running to the mall to get one last present that really isn’t necessary.4
Don Schwager quotes “Miracles testify that Jesus is the Messiah,” by Cyril of Alexandria (376-444 AD).
"'In that same hour he healed many of sicknesses and of scourges, and of evil spirits; and gave sight to many that were blind.' He made them spectators and eyewitnesses of his greatness and gathered into them a great admiration of his power and ability. They then bring forward the question and beg in John's name to be informed whether he is 'he who comes.' Here see, I ask, the beautiful art of the Savior's management. He does not simply say, 'I am.' If he had spoken this, it would have been true. He leads them to the proof given by the works themselves. In order that having accepted faith in him on good grounds and being furnished with knowledge from what had been done, they may return to him who sent them. 'Go' he says, 'tell John the things that you have seen and heard.' 'For you have heard indeed,' he says, 'that I have raised the dead by the all-powerful word and by the touch of the hand. While you stood by, you have also seen that those things that were spoken of old time by the holy prophets are accomplished: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dumb hear, the dead rise, and the poor are preached to. The blessed prophets had announced all these things before, as about in due time to be accomplish by my hands. I bring to pass those things that were prophesied long before, and you are yourselves spectators of them. Return and tell those things that you have seen with your own eyes accomplished by my might and ability, and which at various times the blessed prophets foretold.'" (excerpt from COMMENTARY ON LUKE, HOMILY 37)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Isaiah 45:6-8, 18, 21-25 comments that as it was back then, so it is today. God’s justice is constantly raining down on the just and the unjust alike, and he is constantly urging us to receive it (Matthew 5:45). At every moment of every day, every person on earth can hear his call: “Turn to me and be safe” (Isaiah 45:22). His cry goes out to the cancer patient in the hospital, the inmate on death row, the woman with postpartum depression, and the couple struggling to make ends meet. It goes out to the businessperson in the midst of a shady deal, the frightened soldier on the front lines, the wayward husband caught in infidelity, and the teenager tempted by drugs. There is not a single person whom God doesn’t want to heal, deliver, comfort, strengthen, or guide.
Let this truth, like God’s justice itself, sink into your heart. Let it give you hope for the people you know who are suffering in any way. Let it give you confidence as you lay their needs before the Lord in prayer. By all means, keep asking God to heal them or protect them or bring them to conversion. But pray just as much for them to open their hearts to the Lord and receive his grace. And while you’re at it, ask the Lord to help you open your heart to him as well. There’s no end to the grace he wants to give you! “Lord, let your justice find its way into every person’s heart today!”6
Friar Jude Winkler sets the passage from Deutero Isaiah in the environment of Babylon as the exiles need to remember Yahweh in the midst of the pagan culture. John the Baptist sets up his disciples to see the actions of Jesus. Friar Jude notes the tendency of Luke to underline curing of illness by Jesus in a culture that often considered illness as punishment from God.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, believes that contemplative practice is key to developing a heart-centered faith.
Many are convinced that rituals and “practices” like a contemplative Eucharist, the rosary, processions and pilgrimages, repetitive chants, genuflections and prostrations, physically blessing oneself (as with the sign of the cross), singing, and silence have operated as a kind of body-based rewiring. Such practices allow us to know Reality mystically and contemplatively from a unitive consciousness… Mindless repetition of any practice, with no clear goal or purification of intention, can in fact keep us quite unconscious—unless the practices keep breaking us into new insight, desire, compassion, and an ever-larger notion of God and ourselves…. It’s a paradox that God’s gifts are totally free and unearned, and yet God does not give them except to people who really want them, choose them, and say “yes” to them. This is the fully symbiotic nature of grace. Divine Loving is so pure that it never manipulates, shames, or forces itself on anyone. Love waits to be invited and desired, and only then rushes in.7
In our contemplation, we become open to understanding of the invitation of God to our fullness of life.
References
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