Wednesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 2, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080223.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Moses descends the mountain and returns to the people, his face shining with the glory of God.

As Moses came down from Mount Sinai
with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands,
he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant
while he conversed with the LORD.

Exodus 34:29

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Moses’s appearance frightened the Israelites. They weren’t accustomed to being this close to “The God Effect”. Moses had to veil his face until the people became a little more comfortable with his transformed self.

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People who are close to God do have a certain “shine”. I know, because I live with a houseful of them! Most of these wonderful women are well into their years, and will moan occasionally about their ever-increasing wrinkles. Like most of us, they don’t see their own beauty, nor the fact that an inimitable loveliness radiates from their fundamental goodness.

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Once again in today’s Gospel, as in this past Sunday’s, Jesus encourages his followers to live in that irradiating Presence. Finding that Presence is like finding a treasure or a pearl of great price. The Gospel searcher is filled with abundant “joy” upon the discovery. That joy, no doubt, lit up that finder the way Moses was fired by God’s Glory.

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We all want to have that kind of joy. It is the true fulfillment of life. Jesus wants us to have it too as recorded in today’s Alleluia Verse:

I call you my friends, says the Lord,
for I have made known to you all that the Father has told me.

John 15:15

By studying, praying with, and imitating the life of Christ, we too – like the moon emblazoned by the Sun – will come to reflect an Immense Love.

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Poetry: As Kingfishers Catch Fire – Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

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Music: Variations on a Theme From Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major – David Lanz