October 20, 2021
Wednesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 124, a dramatic psalm stretched between early desperation and ultimate freedom.
In the psalmist’s prayer, Israel is called to realize that it has narrowly escaped from a mortal danger, never specified, but only alluded to in phrases such as:
- would have swallowed us alive
- fury was inflamed against us
- waters have overwhelmed us
- torrent swept over us
- swept over by the raging waters
- not leave us a prey to their teeth
This is some serious trouble! And because of this blessed escape, the community is called to a life of freely given service and praise.
In our readings, Paul and Jesus both instruct and challenge their listeners and us to a similar response for all the graces we have received – especially being rescued from sin in the life-saving waters of Baptism.
Paul wants us to understand that, through our Baptism, we are living in a whole new power for goodness and grace. The world may look the same as it did before we belonged to Christ, but it isn’t.
To use a phrase from the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
If we see with the new eyes of grace, we will be able to respond to Jesus’s challenge:
Stay awake!
For you do not know
when the Son of Man will come.
Stay awake. See the world and life as they truly are – places where God awaits us in every moment. This is the amazing power we have received through our Baptism!
So let’s open our hearts to listen lovingly to the sound of the Holy Spirit in our lives. That freed and obedient heart is precious to God, and is the catalyst to a transformed life!
Poetry: Song for Autumn – Mary Oliver
In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
Music: Speak, O Lord – Kristyn Getty
Lavish Mercy 