Memorial of St. Bonaventure
Saturday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 15, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071523.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, both our readings express the character of farewells or life testaments.

In our first reading, we close out our few weeks’ journey through Genesis with Jacob’s instructions to his posterity. These directives attach his passing and their future to Israel’s ancestral roots:

Jacob gave his sons this charge:
“Since I am about to be taken to my people,
bury me with my fathers in the cave that lies
in the field of Ephron the Hittite,
the cave in the field of Machpelah,
facing on Mamre, in the land of Canaan,
the field that Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite
for a burial ground.

Genesis 49:29-30

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Reading these verses, I remembered two sets of similar instructions that I had once received.

The first set was given to me and my brother.

Our beloved mother had just died after a few months’ illness. We were about the business of preparing for her burial. Our family storage systems were very simple but definite. Confident that no thief would want to do any tailoring while burglarizing the house, we kept important documents in an old tin sewing box. Jim and I knew the cemetery deed would be there, top shelf of the living room closet, under a couple of afghans.

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What we didn’t know was that Mom, never much for sad or purple prose, had left us a letter in that box. The letter, penned in a strong hand, anticipated her death and counseled us for a future without her. Surprisingly, her letter had been written long before her terminal diagnosis, prompted no doubt by my Dad’s sudden death about a decade before.

Mom was brief but direct in her hopes and instructions, the core of which was this:

Know that I loved the two of you
more than anything in the world.
Love and care for each other when I am gone.

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The second set of instructions was not the fruit of a bloodline inheritance, but of a spiritual one: my call to Mercy. My dear sponsor, realizing at my Silver Jubilee that the years were passing for us both, offered this wisdom so typical of her direct and good-natured style:

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In our Gospel, Jesus anticipates a time when his disciples will be without his guiding presence. Like Jacob, and like my Mom and my sponsor, Jesus wants his beloved descendants to recognize, and find courage in, the amazing love which is their inheritance.

Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?
Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.
Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Everyone who acknowledges me before others
I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.

Matthew 10:29-32

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As we pray with today’s scriptures, we might give thanks for the blessings we have received from our ancestors, be they of blood or spirit.

Further, we might prayerfully consider those who need and deserve our blessing as they assume the future we will not see — our children, nieces, nephews, sisters and brothers in religious formation — any number of disciples and pupils who look to us for hopeful and grateful witness.

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Poetry: My Legacy – Lucy Maude Montgomery
Lucy Maud Montgomery OBE (1874 – 1942), was a Canadian author best known for a collection of novels, essays, short stories, and poetry beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables.

My friend has gone away from me
From shadow into perfect light,
But leaving a sweet legacy.

My heart shall hold it long in fee­
A grand ideal, calm and bright,
A song of hope for ministry,

A faith of unstained purity,
A thought of beauty for delight­
These did my friend bequeath to me;

And, more than even these can be,
The worthy pattern of a white,
Unmarred life lived most graciously.

Dear comrade, loyal thanks to thee
Who now hath fared beyond my sight,
My friend has gone away from me,
But leaving a sweet legacy.

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Music: Standing on the Shoulders – Joyce Rouse