Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
March 13, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031324.cfm

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But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me;
my Lord has forgotten me.”
Can a mother forget her infant,
be without tenderness for the child of her womb?
Even should she forget,
I will never forget you.

Isaiah 49: 14-15

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In our Gospel, Jesus tells his questioners that he and the Creator are One. Jesus uses the imagery of “Father” to connote his oneness with the Creator. Isaiah uses the imagery of a “Mother” to convey the depth of loving relationship we are given in God.

Throughout Scripture and through the long spiritual legacy of the Church, many images of God have been offered to deepen our prayer.

• Scripture gives us God as King, Suffering Servant, Rock, Fortress, Shepherd …
• John of the Cross imaged God as Lover, Francis of Assisi and Hadewijch of Brabant found God in Creation. Therese of Lisieux knew herself as a child of God.
• The poet Francis Thompson sees God as the Hound of Heaven, William Blake as a Lamb.

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

Depending on our human relationships and experiences, some of these images help us with our prayer and some do not.

Today we might consider how we relate to our Invisible God. Our prayer can open our understanding to allow God’s Love to come nearer to us. This is something Isaiah understood when he imaged God as Mother, and that Jesus understood when he called God “Father”.

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Poetry: The Divine Feminine – by Hildegard of Bingen who is only the fourth woman in history to be declared a Doctor of the Church, joining the names of Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux.

I heard a voice speaking to me: 
‘The young woman whom you see is Love. 
She has her tent in eternity… 
It was love that was the source of this creation 
in the beginning when God said: ‘Let it be!’ 
And it was. 

As though in the blinking of an eye, 
the whole creation was formed through love. 
The young woman is radiant 
in such a clear, lightning-like brilliance of countenance 
that you can’t fully look at her… 
She holds the sun and moon in her right hand 
and embraces them tenderly…
 
The whole of creation calls this maiden ‘Lady.’ 
For it was from her that all of creation proceeded, 
since Love was the first. She made everything… 
Love was in eternity and brought forth,
in the beginning of all holiness, 
all creatures without any admixture of evil. 
Adam and Eve, as well were produced by love 
from the pure nature of the Earth.”

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Music: 1,000 Names – Phil Wickham