Wednesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
October 21, 2020
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Isaiah for our Responsorial Psalm.
God indeed is my savior;
Isaiah 12: 2-3
I am confident and unafraid.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
Who has been my savior.
But how do we get to the degree of steadfast faith described here by Isaiah, a faith that is confident, unafraid, strong and courageous? Isaiah says it is like satisfying a deep thirst at a flowing fountain.
We all know how unpleasant it is to be thirsty, but what about really thirsty?
I’m a pretty big fan of old cowboy movies. A standard scene in many of these is the forlorn rider traversing a parched plain, longing for water.
Now that’s “thirsty”! And that is the degree of longing Paul describes in today’s passage from Ephesians, a longing for that “water” that had been hidden through the ages:
To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given,
to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ,
and to bring to light for all what is the plan of the mystery
hidden from ages past in God who created all things,
so that the manifold wisdom of God
might now be made known …
… the inscrutable riches of Christ…
This is the Fountain to which we are invited as we open ourselves through the Word of God in scripture, sacrament, and sacred circumstance of our lives.
Sing praise to the LORD for his glorious achievement;
Isaiah 12: 5-6
let this be known throughout all the earth.
Shout with exultation, O city of Zion,
for great in your midst
is the Holy One of Israel!
The “glorious achievement” proclaimed by Isaiah is the same “manifold wisdom” to which Paul says we all have access by faith:
… the manifold wisdom of God …
Ephesians 3: 10-12
… accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord,
in whom we have boldness of speech
and confidence of access through faith in him.
In our Gospel, Jesus tells that this gift, this Fountain, once opened to us, demands our faithful response:
Much will be required of the person entrusted with much,
and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.
So as we drink deeply of this Fountain, let us pray for a grateful, responsive fidelity for the gift we have been given.
Poem: excerpt from “Water Sign Woman” by Lucille Clifton
the woman who feels everything sits in her new house waiting for someone to come who knows how to carry water without spilling, who knows why the desert is sprinkled with salt, why tomorrow is such a long and ominous word. they say to the feel things woman that little she dreams is possible, that there is only so much joy to go around, only so much water. there are no questions for this, no arguments. she has to forget to remember the edge of the sea, they say, to forget how to swim to the edge, she has to forget how to feel. the woman who feels everything sits in her new house retaining the secret the desert knew when it walked up from the ocean, the desert, so beautiful in her eyes; water will come again if you can wait for it. she feels what the desert feels. she waits.
Music: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing written by Robert Robinson (1758) sung here by Fernando Ortega
Lavish Mercy 