Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
October 12, 2023
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101223.cfm
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, both our readings are replete with images regarding how we earn or access our heavenly reward.
Malachi presents us with the image of a record book wherein the names of the just are recorded:
Then they who fear the LORD spoke with one another,
Malachi 3: 16-17
and the LORD listened attentively;
And a record book was written before him
of those who fear the LORD and trust in his name.
And they shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts,
my own special possession, on the day I take action.
And I will have compassion on them,
as a man has compassion on his son who serves him.
It’s an image that has stuck with people throughout the centuries. Kind of reminds you of Santa Claus, doesn’t it – “making a list, checking it twice. Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice.” We’ve all seen depictions of St. Peter, at the “pearly gates”, checking that Book for someone who seems to have forgotten their reservation!
Such images illustrate our natural desire to understand the afterlife and its relationship to our moral choices. And guess what! Forget it! We are never going to comprehend or control that dynamic, because God isn’t Santa Claus, doesn’t have a little black book, and there are no gates in heaven.
In our Gospel today, Jesus tells us the only thing we can be sure of – that God is our Friend and desires to be one with us in the Holy Spirit.
If you then, who are wicked,
Luke 11:13
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask him?”
And Jesus says it’s not all that hard – just ask, seek, and knock. Of course, it matters what we are asking, seeking, and knocking FOR. It must be FOR deeper intimacy with God lived out in a grateful and generous life. This kind of holy relationship eradicates any need to manufacture worries about a record book or locked gates.
I tell you, ask and you will receive;
Luke 11: 9-10
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Poetry: You, Neighbor God – Rainer Maria Rilke
You, neighbor God, if sometimes in the night
I rouse you with loud knocking, I do so
only because I seldom hear you breathe
and know: you are alone.
And should you need a drink, no one is there
to reach it to you, groping in the dark.
Always I hearken. Give but a small sign.
I am quite near.
Between us there is but a narrow wall,
and by sheer chance; for it would take
merely a call from your lips or from mine
to break it down,
and that without a sound.
The wall is builded of your images.
They stand before you hiding you like names.
And when the light within me blazes high
that in my inmost soul I know you by,
the radiance is squandered on their frames.
And then my senses, which too soon grow lame,
exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.
Music: God Hears Our Prayers – Mandy Lining
I think this song is very beautiful in its simplicity. I hope you like it.
Lavish Mercy 