Thursday, August 16, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081618.cfm

Today, in Mercy, our readings leave us wondering, “Can God get angry?” It’s hard for us, who think of God as Lavish Mercy, to imagine that God would be irrevocably angry with us.

Today’s readings are examples of the ways in which both the Hebrew prophets and Jesus tried to describe the Indescribable God in words we might understand. Sometimes in scripture we find an angry God, an impatient God, a frustrated God, a vengeful God- even a bullying God. All these stories make God seem very human. But God is not like us, just as many other scripture passages assure us.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:8-9

What we do know for certain is that God is Love, because only Love could have breathed forth Creation. All the other descriptions are our imaginative struggles to comprehend how God might react to our human situation.

Today, as the news describes the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report on over 300 abusive priests, I cannot imagine how God is not heartbroken and angry. Can there be a greater sacrilege than the savaging of innocence by those proclaiming to sanctify it?

Let us pray for Mercy today for victims and survivors, that they may find some healing in the telling of their tragedies and the affirmation of their courage. 

Let us pray for ourselves, a broken Church, where an idolatrous “priesthood” has killed the image of Christ it was thought to represent, where the façade of trust lies dissolved in the tears of children, and the hope of transformation is elusive.

Let our spirits weep with the God of Love, and ask for Mercy to show us the way back to the pure heart of our faith.

Music: Mercy ~ Matthew Redman