Saturday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 3, 2024
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080324.cfm
In today’s readings, both Jeremiah and John the Baptist encounter persecution. Jeremiah is saved, but John is not. Maybe both of them had questions about how, when they were so dedicated to God, evil yet pursued them. Perhaps they felt they had run into a spiritual wall. Ever felt like that?
Our Responsorial Psalm captures the longing for an answer – an understanding of how and why God works in our lives.
Lord, in your great love,
Psalm 69:14
answer me.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
I think it’s safe to say that we all have questions about life and death, good and evil, grace and darkness, worldly success and spiritual peace, God’s Presence and God’s apparent absence.
Poetry: The Answer – Carl Sandberg
You have spoken the answer.
A child searches far sometimes
Into the red dust
On a dark rose leaf
And so you have gone far
For the answer is:
Silence.
In the republic
Of the winking stars
and spent cataclysms
Sure we are it is off there the answer is hidden and folded over,
Sleeping in the sun, careless whether it is Sunday or any other
day of the week,
Knowing silence will bring all one way or another.
Have we not seen
Purple of the pansy
out of the mulch
and mold
crawl
into a dusk
of velvet?
blur of yellow?
Almost we thought from nowhere but it was the silence,
the future,
working.
Music: Popule Meus – Motet by Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611)
Ecce lignum crucis:
In quo salus mundi pependit,
Venite, adoremus.
Popule meus, quid feci tibi?
Aut in quo contristavi te?
Responde mihi.
Quia eduxi te de terra Aegypti,
Parasti Crucem Salvatori tuo.
Hagios o Theos. Sanctus Deus.
Hagios Ischyros. Sanctus Fortis.
Hagios Athanatos, eleison himas.
Sanctus Immortalis, miserere nobis.
Quia eduxi te per desertum
Quadraginta annis,
Et manna cibavi te,
Et introduxi te in terram satis bonam,
Parasti Crucem Salvatori tuo.
Hagios o Theos. Sanctus Deus.
Hagios Ischyros. Sanctus Fortis.
Hagios Athanatos, eleison himas.
Sanctus Immortalis, miserere nobis.
Ego propter te flagellavi Aegyptum
Cum primogenitis suis:
Et tu me flagellatum tradidisti.
Popule meus, quid feci tibi?
Aut in quo contristavi te?
Responde mihi.
Ego te eduxi de Aegypto,
Demerso Pharone in mare Rubrum,
Et tu me tradidisti
Principibus sacerdotum.
Popule meus, quid feci tibi?
Aut in quo contristavi te?
Responde mihi.
Ego ante te aperui mare,
Et tu aperuisti lancea latus meum.
Popule meus, quid feci tibi?
Aut in quo contristavi te?
Responde mihi.
Behold the wood of the cross:
On which hung the salvation of the world,
Come, let us adore.
O my people, what have I done to you?
Or wherein have I grieved you?
Answer me.
Because I led you out of the land of Egypt:
You have prepared a Cross for your Saviour.
O Holy God. O Holy God.
O Holy Strong One. O Holy Strong One.
O Holy and Immortal, have mercy upon us.
O Holy and Immortal, have mercy upon us.
Because I led you through the desert,
For forty years,
And fed you with manna,
And brought you into a land exceeding good,
You have prepared a Cross for your Savior.
O Holy God. O Holy God.
O Holy Strong One. O Holy Strong One.
O Holy and Immortal, have mercy upon us.
O Holy and Immortal, have mercy upon us.
For you I scourged Egypt,
And its firstborn,
And you have delivered me to be scourged.
O my people, what have I done to you?
Or wherein have I grieved you?
Answer me.
I brought you out of Egypt,
And sank Pharaoh in the Red Sea,
And you bave delivered Me
To the chief priests.
O my people, what have I done to you?
Or wherein have I grieved you?
Answer me.
I opened the sea before you,
And you have opened my side with a spear.
O my people, what have I done to you?
Or wherein have I grieved you?
Answer me.
Lavish Mercy 
Answers come in silence. The poem is awesome. “Silence, the future working.” The how’s and why’s can surely help put up that wall. Silence with God can bring them down.
Thanks S. Renee
LikeLiked by 1 person
❤️🙏
LikeLike
Good to listen to this at times other than only Lent. Thanks.
LikeLiked by 1 person