Memorial of Saint Stanislaus, Bishop and Martyr April 11, 2024
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041124.cfm
For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God.
John 3:33-36
He does not ration his gift of the Spirit.
The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life,
In Acts today, the Apostles are ordered to stop preaching. The suggestion is that if they lie low – ration their enthusiasm – they will not be bothered about their faith.
But our Gospel assures us that this was not Jesus’s way. He did not ration God’s gift. Jesus gave it all. We are called to imitate his faithful self-donation.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
It’s hard to live our Christian life on full power. It’s hard to live the Works of Mercy in every circumstance. It’s hard to fully pattern our life on the Gospel. It would be so much easier to ration our commitment to Christ’s call.
Let’s pray to give God the full flow of our love, not rationed droplets of pretense. God did not ration love for us, but has filled us with the Holy Spirit. Let’s not mince that incredible gift by an uncourageous, ungenerous life!
Poetry: To Live in the Mercy of God – Denise Levertov
To lie back under the tallest
oldest trees. How far the stems
rise, rise
before ribs of shelter
open!
To live in the mercy of God. The complete
sentence too adequate, has no give.
Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of
stony wood beneath lenient
moss bed.
And awe suddenly
passing beyond itself. Becomes
a form of comfort.
Becomes the steady
air you glide on, arms
stretched like the wings of flying foxes.
To hear the multiple silence
of trees, the rainy
forest depths of their listening.
To float, upheld,
as salt water
would hold you,
once you dared.
.
To live in the mercy of God.
To feel vibrate the enraptured
waterfall flinging itself
unabating down and down
to clenched fists of rock.
Swiftness of plunge,
hour after year after century,
O or Ah
uninterrupted, voice
many-stranded.
To breathe
spray. The smoke of it.
Arcs
of steelwhite foam, glissades
of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—
rage or joy?
Thus, not mild, not temperate,
God’s love for the world. Vast
flood of mercy
flung on resistance.
Music: Take, Lord, Receive – John Foley, SJ
Lavish Mercy 