Monday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
January 11,2021
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 97 which reminds us that, as Jesus begins his earthly ministry, he is accompanied by the unseen powers of heaven.
The heavens proclaim his justice,
Psalm 97: 6-7
and all peoples see his glory.
Let all his angels worship him.
The psalm is reflective of the glorious passage from our first reading describing the Divinity of Jesus:
The Son of God is…
Hebrews 1: 3-4
the refulgence of God’s glory,
the very imprint of God’s being,
who sustains all things by his mighty word.
When he had accomplished purification from sins,
he took his seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
as far superior to the angels
as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
These seem perfect readings to begin a season described as “Ordinary Time” because they remind us that the power of Jesus Christ is far from ordinary.
And our days do not feel like ordinary times, do they? They are both fraught with threat and charged with hope.
They are times belabored by pandemic struggle, political vitriol, climate dissolution, global strife and systemic oppression.
But they are also times bristling with breakthrough discovery, civic renewal, social consciousness, communal courage and spiritual awakening.
Just as in our Gospel on this first day of “Ordinary Time”, Jesus asks his disciples to “Come”, dream extraordinary dreams with him, so he asks us.
– He asks us to believe
that there are unseen angels attending us.
– He asks us to remember that we, like him,
are made in the refulgent image of God.
– He calls us, like Simon and Andrew, to believe
that our “ordinary time” is actually the “time of fulfillment”:
This is the time of fulfillment.
Mark 1:15
The Kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the Gospel.
Poetry: Maya Angelou – Touched by an Angel
We, unaccustomed to courage, exiles from delight, live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love's light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.
Music: Ordinary Time – Marie Bellet
There will come a day for quiet kitchen mornings Lunches with the girls, book clubs in the afternoon There will come a day for chintz flowers on my sofa Just the perfect lipstick, matching purse and shoes. There will come a day without constant interruption Confusing all my senses, my reason and my rhyme But for now I trip on the backpacks in the hallway Scrub the crayon from the walls that mark this ordinary time. There will come a day for uneventful dinners When no one drops their fork or spills their milk upon the floor There will come a day, I’ll be wiser, I’ll be thinner I will finish conversations before running out the door. Well, isn’t that the way it is for all those happy women Who smile at me from magazines there in the checkout line? What about the tired, the simple and forgotten? Blessed be the ordinary here in ordinary time. He said “Who will feed my sheep? Who will heed their cry?” I said “I am vain and weak But surely I will try. You know everything And You know that I’m Just an ordinary woman here in ordinary time”. There will come a day when everything is order And I will be the queen of everything I see But how my heart will leap to find one backpack in the hallway With the promise of a face, and a story just for me. So may I never yearn for those cocktail conversations Clever observations made for fashionable minds May I finally learn to be happy and have patience With the constant changing rhythm of this ordinary time, The constant changing rhythm of this ordinary time.
Lavish Mercy 