Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary
June 20, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062023.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we receive an in-depth teaching on Christian generosity.

In the early Church, as in the Church today, evangelism and ministry require material support. In Paul’s time, the mother Church in Jerusalem needed funds to support ongoing mission activity.

In our first reading, Paul writes a “fund-raising” letter to the Greek Corinthians. He challenges them to be generous by raising up to them the outstanding example of the Macedonian churches (Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea). These communities, despite their current hardship, gave beyond expectation to the Church’s need.

Macedonia and Greece had a competitive political relationship. Whether or not Paul was using this contention to stoke a response in Corinthian generosity, we can only guess. However, Paul is very clear about what should motivate the Christian heart to charity:

For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that for your sake he became poor although he was rich,
so that by his poverty you might become rich.

2 Corinthians 8:9

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While Paul has offered a tutorial on material giving, Jesus inspires us to a much deeper generosity. Jesus asks us to imitate God in our loving benevolence:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

Matthew 5:43-45

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God’s generosity – God’s beautiful Mercy – does not distiguish between who is deserving and who is not. God’s love is universal and irrevocable. Jesus, who is the enfleshment of God’s Love, explains that God’s perfection consists in this Absolute Mercy. He tells us that we should strive to live a life in imitation of this Merciful Perfection.

For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Matthew 5:46-48

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Jesus is telling us that by living in generous mercy, beyond worldly expectation, we become “perfect” or whole in the Wholeness of God. Mercy heals not only those we touch, it heals us.

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Poetry: To Live in the Mercy of God – Denise Levertov

To lie back under the tallest
oldest trees. How far the stems
rise, rise
                 before ribs of shelter
                                                 open!

To live in the mercy of God. The complete
sentence too adequate, has no give.
Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of
stony wood beneath lenient
moss bed.

And awe suddenly
passing beyond itself. Becomes
a form of comfort.
                         Becomes the steady
air you glide on, arms
stretched like the wings of flying foxes.
To hear the multiple silence
of trees, the rainy
forest depths of their listening.

To float, upheld,
                  as salt water
                  would hold you,
                                              once you dared.

To live in the mercy of God.

To feel vibrate the enraptured

waterfall flinging itself
unabating down and down
                                   to clenched fists of rock.
Swiftness of plunge,
hour after year after century,
                                                          O or Ah
uninterrupted, voice
many-stranded.
                                  To breathe
spray. The smoke of it.
                                  Arcs
of steelwhite foam, glissades
of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—
rage or joy?
                                  Thus, not mild, not temperate,
God’s love for the world. Vast
flood of mercy
                         flung on resistance.

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Music: Mormon Tabernacle Choir – Holy Art Thou »-(adapted from Handel’s Largo “Ombra mai fu” in “Xerxes”. A beautiful instrumental version is under the hymn lyrics below.)

Holy art Thou, Holy art Thou, Lord God Almighty
Glory and Majesty, in Heav′n are Thine
Earth’s lowly bending, swells the full harmony
Blessing and Glory to the Lamb, forevermore
For worthy, worthy art Thou
Worthy art Thou

Let all nations and kindreds and peoples
Give thanks to Thee, forevermore
Give thanks forevermore

Let all nations and kindreds and peoples
Give thanks to Thee, forevermore