Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini
Monday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
November 13, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111323.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we have only three weeks left in Ordinary Time before Advent. Today, we begin a week of first readings from the beautifully written Book of Wisdom.

These will be counterpointed by readings from Luke 17, filled with familiar images like millstones, mustard seeds, ungrateful lepers, a grateful one, and the one plowman taken from a field while the shocked other is left.

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While our Gospel readings call us to be alert to the end of time and the coming of the Reign of God, our Wisdom readings – while cautionary – stretch us beyond time to the awareness of an Eternal Love rooted in our own hearts:

For wisdom is a kindly spirit,
yet she acquits not the blasphemer of their guilty lips;
Because God is the witness of the inmost self
and the sure observer of the heart
and the listener to the tongue.
For the Spirit of the Lord fills the world,
is all-embracing, and knows what the human heart says.

Wisdom 1: 6-7

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In our Gospel, Jesus calls us to model goodness, practice forgiveness, and exercise an outrageous faith.

And the Apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”
The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,
you would say to this mulberry tree,
‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Luke 17: 5-6

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Perhaps we’re not really too interested in throwing a mulberry tree into the sea, but let’s desire to live our faith so fully that the world considers us outrageously foolish for the sake of Christ.

Thinking about that this morning, I remember dear Mr. Stein, the owner of the delicatessen where I worked throughout my high school years. The Stein family loved me and all were so kind to me. But when I told them I would be leaving to enter the convent, they were shocked and terribly upset. You would have thought I was leaving for a life sentence in Sing Sing! Mr. Stein took me aside and said, “Renee, please don’t be so foolish and waste your life! I’ll buy you a new car if you don’t go!”

Besides the fact that I didn’t drive at the time, Mr. Stein’s offer didn’t sway me. I knew the treasure I had found. I just hoped that, watching my life unfold over the coming years, Mr. Stein (and quite a few other skeptics!) might recognize the treasure too.
(P.S. I didn’t learn to drive for almost another twenty years!)

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Poetry: The Mustard Seed – Meister Eckhart

I.

In the Beginning
High above understanding
Is ever the Word.
O rich treasure,
There the Beginning always bore the Beginning.
O Father’s Breast,
From thy delight
The Word ever flows!
Yet the bosom
Retains the Word, truly.

II.

From the two as one source,
The fire of love.
The bond of both,
Known to both,
Flows the All-Sweet Spirit
Co-equal,
Undivided
The Three are One.
Do you understand why? No.
It best understands itself.

III.

The bond of three
Causes deep fear.
Of this circle
There is no understanding.
Here is a depth without ground.
Check and mate
To time, forms, place!
The wondrous circle
Is the Principle,
Its point never moves.

IV.

The mountain of this point
Ascend without activity.
O intellect!
The road leads you
Into a marvelous desert,
So broad, so wide,
It stretches out immeasurably.
The desert has,
Neither time nor place,
Its mode of being is singular.

V.

The good desert
No foot disturbs it,
Created being
Never enters there:
It is, and no one knows why.

It is here, it is there,
It is far, it is near,
It is deep, it is high,
It is in such a way
That it is neither this nor that.

VI.

It is light, it is clear,
It is totally dark,
It is unnamed,
It is unknown,
Free of beginning or end.
It stands still,
Pure, unclothed.
Who knows its dwelling?
Let him come forth
And tells us what sort it is.

VII.

Become like a child,
Become deaf, become blind.
Your own something
Must become nothing;
Drive away all something, all nothing!
Leave place, leave time,
Avoid even image!
Go without a way
On the narrow path,
Then you will find the desert’s track.

VIII.

O my soul,
Go out, let God in!
Sink all my something
In God’s nothing.
Sink in the bottomless flood!
If I flee from You,
You come to me.
If I lose myself,
Then I find You,
O Goodness above being!

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Music: This Ancient Love – Carolyn McDade