Friday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 12, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071224.cfm

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I will heal their defection, says the LORD,
I will love them freely;
for my wrath is turned away from them.
I will be like the dew for Israel:
he shall blossom like the lily;
He shall strike root like the Lebanon cedar,
and put forth his shoots.
His splendor shall be like the olive tree
and his fragrance like the Lebanon cedar.
Again they shall dwell in his shade
and raise grain;
They shall blossom like the vine,
and his fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon.
Hosea 14:5-8

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Hosea describes God’s love for Israel – and for us – in tender, lavish images. We can picture the droughty land longing for refreshment the way a human heart longs for ease in suffering. God promises Israel a turn toward new life, fresh hope, the rooted security of covenantal relationship.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
God promises the same to us, pouring the dew of Lavish Mercy over our longing spirits. Our part is to open our hearts to that promise, to wait, and to receive.

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Poetry: Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

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Music: Dew on the Grass – Me-Do Meditation Music