Friday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
October 27, 2023
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102723.cfm
Today, in God’s Mercy, Paul sounds a lot like someone approaching the microphone at “Sinners Anonymous“:
I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh.
Romans 7:18-19
The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not.
For I do not do the good I want,
but I do the evil I do not want.
Paul basically attests to the fact that for human beings, even him, will and actions often don’t synch up. Sure, we want to be good people, but as Nike says, do we:
Paul says no, we don’t. The only way we do the good we will to do is by the grace of Jesus Christ.
In our Gospel, Jesus affirms the slowness of the human spirit to act on the realities around us. In some translations, Jesus uses a phrase which caught on with the architects of Vatican II: the signs of the times.
You hypocrites!
Luke 12:56-57
You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky;
why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
“Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?
Jesus is telling his listeners and us that we need to be alert to the circumstances of our world. It both weeps and rejoices. Where it weeps, we must be a source of mercy and healing. Where it rejoices, we must foster and celebrate the Presence of the Spirit.
In the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World), we read:
In every age, the church carries the responsibility
of reading the signs of the times and of
interpreting them in the light of the Gospel,
if it is to carry out its task.
In language intelligible to every generation,
it should be able to answer the ever recurring questions
which people ask about the meaning
of this present life and of the life to come,
and how one is related to the other.
We must be aware of and understand the aspirations,
the yearnings, and the often dramatic features
of the world in which we live.
While we look forward hopefully to the communications that will come from the current Synod on Synodality, the Documents of Vatican II have everlasting meaning for the Church. Although written in the 1960s, these powerful words hold true today. We are the Church of which the document speaks. We are the ones whom Jesus calls to respond with authentic justice and mercy to the signs of the times. Read the newspaper in that light today. Watch the news in that light. Meet your brothers and sisters in that light today.
Poetry: The Right Thing – Theodore Roethke
Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will —
The right thing happens to the happy man.
The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.
God bless the roots! Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Child of the dark, he can outleap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,
And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Music: The Times They Are A’changin’ – Bob Dylan whose songs in the 50s and 60sbecame anthems for the Civil Rights and anti-war movements. His lyrics during this period incorporated a wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defied popular music conventions and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. (Wikipedia) (Ah, it was a good time to be young!)
The Swedish Academy awarded Dylan the 2016 Nobel Prize inLiterature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.
Lavish Mercy 