Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 2, 2020
Previous Prayer on Today’s Readings
June 30, 2016: Today, in Mercy, we pray in praise of God’s laws which hold the sun and moon in place, and make night and day turn softly into each other. We pray to love God’s law in our own hearts, respecting life in all its stages and expressions. May we see our own life as a marvelous manifestation of God’s divine balance, and may we so honor its risings and settings.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 19. The entire psalm opens with a familiar hymn to the Beauty of God’s Creation. and closes with a meditation on the beauty of God’s Law. Today’s verses focus on the psalm’s second half, lauding God’s flawless law.
In both cadence and meaning, Psalm 19 is a song of balance. It dances back and forth between the immutable elegance of God’s Law and the perfection it offers to those who pursue it.
The concept of “law” might not immediately engender spiritual enthusiasm in our hearts. In our modern culture, the word “law” has become removed from the biblical sense of “justice”.
In modern parlance, “law” is a set proclamations we may or may not agree with. The validity of this “law” depends on the morality of those who make it.
But law and justice in scripture are meant to be reflections of God’s perfection . They are the means to attaining right-balance in our lives, and in all Creation, according the God’s desire for us.
In fact, living a true biblical dimension of law and justice may require us, at times, to live outside a cultural sense of these words. This happens when we protest “unjust laws” – a phrase whose seeming contradiction shows us just how difficult living justly might be.
How do we stay sharply and accurately aware of those contradictions so that we may discern a life of true Godly justice and right-balance in a culture that has become confused and calloused?
Psalm 19 is a good guide. Trusting its advice, we will find the virtues that lead to joy and peace.
Any “law” which does not lead to these blessings needs to be examined in the light of this beautiful psalm.
Poetry: God’s Grandeur– In Gerard Manley Hopkins’s exquisite poem, we see the magnificence of nature juxtaposed with human fragility.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Music: More Precious Than Gold – Acappella
They are more precious than gold
Sweeter than the honey
They are more precious than gold
And the honey comb
The laws of the Lord are perfect
Reviving the soul, reviving the soul
Reviving the soul
They are more precious than gold
Sweeter than the honey
They are more precious than gold
And the honey comb
They make wise the simple
They give joy to the heart
Light to the eyes
Enduring forever
Righteous altogether
They bring great reward
The laws of the Lord are perfect
Reviving the soul, reviving the soul
Reviving the soul
May the words of my mouth
And the meditation of my heart
Be pleasing in your sight
O Lord my rock
My rock and my redeemer
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer
The laws of the Lord are perfect
Reviving the soul, reviving the soul
Reviving the soul
They are more precious than gold Sweeter than the honey
They are more precious than gold
And the honey comb
Lavish Mercy 