Memorial of Saint Peter Claver, Priest

September 9, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090923.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings reveal the freedom that comes with living in the Holy Spirit.

Paul tells his listeners, “You were once alienated and hostile … but God has reconciled you … in the hope of the Gospel.”

The passage doesn’t specify what the Colossians were “alienated and hostile” about, but one can hazard a guess. They had been struggling to find spiritual meaning in a delusive culture. I think we know how they felt!

Paul writes that we have been reconciled – re-balanced – in the death of Christ. What does that mean?

God has now reconciled you
in the fleshly Body of Christ through his death,
to present you holy, without blemish,
and irreproachable before him,
provided that you persevere in the faith,
firmly grounded, stable,
and not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that you heard,

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Our Alleluia Verse offers an answer:

I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord;
no one comes to the Father except through me.

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In our daily lives, we can get so mixed up about which way to go, what is the truth, and what gives us life.

Commercial voices tell us the “way” to happiness is to have more of everything, that we will never have all we need, and that our possessions are the measure of our value.

Political voices often tell us a “truth” adapted to their own agendas.

Our socio-economic constructs allow us to value some “lives” over others by draining and directing resources from the powerless to the powerful.

Even our religious hierarchies can manipulate “law” so that it becomes self-serving rather than life-giving.

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Jesus confronts this kind of fallacy in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees thrived on a self-advancing manipulation of the Law. They used the Law as a means to control the social complex to their economic and political advantage.

Jesus tells them the “law” is meaningless if it no longer embodies the spirit. He references David who, on his good days, lived in genuine and direct relationship with God:

Have you not read what David did
when he and those who were with him were hungry?
How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering,
which only the priests could lawfully eat,
ate of it, and shared it with his companions?”
Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”

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Our readings assure us that through our faithful Gospel lives we will find sacred reconciliation in God.

…. provided that you persevere in the faith,
firmly grounded, stable,
and not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that you heard ..

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Poetry: excerpt from “The Great Wagon” by Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

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Music: Deep Peace – Elaine Hagenberg