Saturday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 19, a hymn to the beauty of God’s Law.
The law of the LORD is perfect,
Psalm 19: 8
refreshing the soul;
The decree of the LORD is trustworthy,
giving wisdom to the simple.
Placed as it is in today’s liturgy, the psalm brings added emphasis to our exquisite first reading from Hebrews:
The Word of God is living and effective,
Hebrews 4: 12
sharper than any two-edged sword,
penetrating even between soul and spirit,
joints and marrow,
and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
LAW…WORD…TRUST…TRUTH…WISDOM…SPIRIT
These themes shout out to us from today’s readings. And they need to shout in order to be heard above the clamor of a culture that has so enfeebled “truth” that it can barely speak.
At the electoral confirmation hearings, after the Capitol insurrection, Mitt Romney bravely said, “The best way we could show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth”.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a novel idea in our fallacious political culture.
Praying Psalm 19 challenges me to recognize my role in reclaiming a mutually truthful, respectful, and reverently attentive society. It also summons me to demand the same from my political and religious leaders.
Poetry: two poems today
truth - Gwendolyn Brooks
And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?
Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?
Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?
Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.
The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.
And this one from a Franciscan friend and revered mentor in social justice – Marie Lucey, OSF
A Justice- Seeker’s Journey In high school art class—and in life-- I stayed within the lines. “Timid soul,” the teacher branded me. In English class I stood—green girl in more ways than uniform-- to argue with the wiser nun that men were more intelligent than women. (Forgive me, God, and sisters!) How did I get from there—a lifetime ago-- to here? Over time layers of knowing peeled away, core truths revealed. Cries of people suffering—oppression, injustice, human cruelty, and my own dark nights, insisted that I stand up, speak up, act up, kneel down, reach out, reach in, march, be cuffed and fined, and even jailed just once. Neither brave nor timid I try to follow Jesus who walked outside the lines.
Music: The Trouble with Truth – Joan Baez
Oh the trouble with the truth
Is it’s always the same old thing
So hard to forget, so impossible for me to change
Every time I try to fight it
I know I’ll be left to blame.
Oh the trouble with the truth
Is it’s always the same old thing
And the trouble with the truth
Is it’s just what I need to hear
Ringing so right, deep down inside my ear.
And it’s everything I want
And it’s everything I fear
Oh the trouble with the truth
Is it’s just what I need to hear
It had ruined the taste of the sweetest lies
Burned through my best alibis
Every sin that I deny
Keeps hanging round my door
Oh the trouble with the truth
Is it always begs for more
That’s the trouble, trouble with the truth
That’s the trouble, trouble with the truth
And the trouble with the truth
Is it just won’t let me rest
I run and hide, but there’s always another test
And I know that it won’t let me be
‘Till I’ve given it my best
The trouble with the truth
Is it just won’t let me rest
Lavish Mercy 