Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we stand on the far western shore of the Year of Our Lord, 2022.
It is well near evening. Our memories are silhouetted against the deep purple sky as they sail beyond the shimmering horizon. In 2022, we have lived, laughed, lost and loved in ways never to be repeated, yet never to be forgotten. The great turning of time goes relentlessly on, but we have written our story in its indelible trail. It’s an awesome realization.
John, when writing the first reading, seems to have felt some of tonight’s emotions:
Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the evil one is among us,
But you have the anointing that comes from the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.
Slightly later on in the epistle, John finishes the thought:
Let what you heard from the beginning remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, then you will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made us: eternal life.
With fireworks and reveling, popular culture will invite us to the brash celebration of our presence within this point in history. But, at the altar of our hearts, we recognize this long evening of reminiscence as a time of quiet thanksgiving and petition. It is a time of awe and trust. It is an evening when we balance “time” against the promise of “eternity”.
Like flint struck against the almighty soul of God, we have been given life. We are God’s fire at this moment in time’s long unwinding. Tonight, we turn our spirits to those beside us, behind us, before us and we pray in thanksgiving and hope for them.
Together, we sink into the Dark Infinity of our Creator who sustains all life beyond our worries, fears and limitations. With innumerable universes, God balances us in the Palm of Mercy. As the midnight shadows fall, God closes the fingertips of grace and protection over us.
In the split moment between two years, we too become infinite – fire in God’s darkness, spark redeemed beyond time.
In 2023, we will forget this transcendent moment. The bright light of daily living will blind us to that piece of divinity shining in our souls. But tonight, let us remember. As midnight passes by, may our spirits kneel within us to the Awesome Mystery who holds us, as one, eternally within Itself.
A truly blessed New Year to you and your beloveds, my friends.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Malachi preaches the news of God’s Coming with dramatic authority! He tells us that the Lord is sending a messenger, somewhat in the mode of John the Baptist, to prepare the Lord’s way.
Thus says the Lord GOD: Lo, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me; And suddenly there will come to the temple the LORD whom you seek, And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire. Yes, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who will endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears?
Malachi 3:1-4
The passage is so dramatic that it inspired Handel to include it in his magnificent “Messiah”. Handel captures Malachi’s ominous tone, asking the key question: Who shall abide the day of his coming?
These are words of purification and judgement, with tiny tinges of fire and brimstone! Indeed the Lord’s coming is often stunningly fast and awesome. Just last week, our dear Sister Rosemary Herron passed away suddenly and unexpectedly while enjoying a holiday evening. Her death left all who knew her in a state of utter shock and heartbreak.
As we read Malachi today, we might wonder, “Was she ready?” Could she “withstand the Day of His Coming”? What was it like to have her world spun from earth to heaven in the matter of a few moments?
The second part of our reading gives us an answer.
Lo, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, Before the day of the LORD comes, the great and terrible day, To turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents, Lest I come and strike the land with doom.
Malachi 3:23-24
If our hearts have been turned toward one another in this world, and if our time on earth has been spent in so turning others, then the Lord’s coming is not a “terrible day”. As Malachi alludes, our lives refine us like gold or silver. At the Lord’s coming, these precious elements will be tested.
Did we love inclusively?
Did we turn others toward love?
Did we try to turn the selfish worldly tide toward love?
All who knew Sister Rosemary know that she was pure gold, already refined by her lifelong choice to be Mercy in the world. That’s what makes her sudden passing so very difficult to cope with. But for Rosemary, that Divine Coming must have been a glorious surprise when she no doubt heard the words of Matthew’s Gospel:
Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
Matthew 25:34-36
Perhaps all of you kind readers would offer a prayer of consolation today for our Sister Rosemary’s family and friends, for her beloved school community at Mercy Career and Technical High School, for her religious community – the Sisters of Mercy, and for the many people she influenced throughout her very generous life.
R. Alleluia, alleluia. O King of all nations and keystone of the Church; come and save your beloved, whom you formed from the dust! R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Poetry:Good-bye Poem – Meg Bowman
Life is but weak if we waste it in weeping: So, she has left you, she would soon or late. Death from our lives takes all in her keeping, Nothing we do can our sorrow abate.
Love, be it ever so deep and entire, Asks that we strive for the end that she sought: Catch the tossed torch! Take up the fire! Light up our world, and teach as she taught.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, as the anticipation of Christmas builds to a crescendo, we have the tender and sublime images of the Song of Songs.
Hark! my lover–here he comes springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills. My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. Here he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattices.
Song of Songs 2:8-9
This book of the Bible is unique in that “it shows no interest in Law or Covenant or the God of Israel, nor does it teach or explore wisdom like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes. Jewish tradition reads it as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel; Christianity, as an allegory of Christ and his bride, the Church.” (Wikipedia)
Like all enduring poetry, the Song of Songs invites us to match its images with our own understanding of God. Of course, God is more than any image we can humanly create, but our relationship with God has the characteristics of a human relationship because WE are human.
As we read this passage, we might pray with thoughts like these:
God loves me – and all Creation – passionately.
God wants and waits for me to notice the loving Divine Presence in my life
God’s love is energetic and attentive. God is at the center and edge of all my existence.
Added to all that, God wants us to live in the world as people who already see the Spring of Eternal Life. Living with that kind of faith and hope allows us not only to find God, but to reflect God’s Presence to all around us.
For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of pruning the vines has come, and the song of the dove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance. Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come!
Songs of Songs 8: 11-13
On this day of Winter Solstice, when – depending on our hemisphere – we are ultimately close or far from our Sunstar, this particular passage is so comforting. In our everyday life we will still experience a rollercoaster of seasons – sadness and joy and everything in between. But beyond all the seasons, the Verdant Eastertide has already redeemed our lives. With deep faith and hope, we can always live with the Spring’s abundance.
The Visitation by Raphael
In our Gospel, we are given a beautiful picture of Mary and Elizabeth, with in-vitro Jesus and John – dancing in the graces of this holy Springtime. Join them as we sing of O Antiphon for today:
R. Alleluia, alleluia. O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law: come to save us, Lord our God! R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Poetry: May is Mary’s Month – Gerard Manley Hopkins
May is Mary’s month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season—
Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?
Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?
Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?—
Growth in every thing—
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested
Cluster of bugle* blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.
All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.
Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.
Well but there was more than this:
Spring’s universal bliss
Much, had much to say
To offering Mary May.
When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp† are merry
With silver-surfèd cherry
And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes‡ wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all—
This ecstasy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Isaiah uses powerful, passionate images to describe the relationship between God and Israel.
The Lord calls you back, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, A wife married in youth and then cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back. In an outburst of wrath, for a moment I hid my face from you; But with enduring love I take pity on you, says the Lord, your redeemer.
Isaiah 54:6-7
This relationship is best conceptualized as COVENANT. The great prophets use human covenants as images to help describe an otherwise indescribable God. For example, there are biblical passages which imagine God as Father, Mother, Friend, King, Shepherd, Lover, and Spouse.
Of course, God is infinitely more than any one of these relationships, but that “more” is beyond our human capacity to comprehend. So these human images give us some starting point to open ourselves in prayer as to how God wants to be with us at particular times in our lives.
In today’s passage, Isaiah speaks to a people devastated by captivity in Babylon. Jerusalem is occupied, their Temple is destroyed, and their reality is particularly bleak. They feel abandoned by the God who once companioned them to the Promised Land. And they feel like they brought the abandonment on themselves by their faithlessness to the Covenant.
What does the passage say to me?
Have I ever felt forgotten by God? Or at least invisible and unimportant?
Do I regret a bit of “faithlessness” in my own life?
Do I wonder if some of the difficulties in my life are merited because my faith is weak?
Well, if so, then Isaiah 54 was written for me, because the God who is in covenant with me is ever-faithful, loving and forgiving. God is always with me and for me. Despite my worries, ideations, or scruples, God is eternally committed to me:
Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, My love shall never leave you nor my covenant of peace be shaken, says the Lord, who has mercy on you.
Isaiah 54:10
Jesus Christ is the infinitely gracious fulfillment of this Covenant. Advent invites us to draw ever closer to such Wondrous Faithful Love.
Poetry: Where Is God? – Mark Nepo is a poet and spiritual adviser who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 40 years. Nepo is best known for his New York Times #1 bestseller,The Book of Awakening. A cancer survivor, Nepo writes and teaches about the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship.
It’s as if what is unbreakable— the very pulse of life—waits for everything else to be torn away, and then in the bareness that only silence and suffering and great love can expose, it dares to speak through us and to us.
It seems to say, if you want to last,
hold on to nothing. If you want
to know love, let in everything.
If you want to feel the presence
of everything, stop counting the
things that break along the way.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we feel the Church moving ever closer to the miracle of Christmas. The prophet Zephaniah, not quite as lyrically as Isaiah, paints a picture of who is ready for that miracle – because it is a fact: some will be able to receive it, and some will not.
Thus says the LORD: Woe to the city, rebellious and polluted, to the tyrannical city! She hears no voice, accepts no correction; In the LORD she has not trusted, to her God she has not drawn near.
Zephaniah 3:1-2
But the prophet also makes clear that there will be a “remnant people” in whose hearts the miracle will take life:
I will leave as a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly, Who shall take refuge in the name of the LORD: the remnant of Israel. They shall do no wrong and speak no lies; Nor shall there be found in their mouths a deceitful tongue; They shall pasture and couch their flocks with none to disturb them..
Zephaniah 3:12-13
As Jesus told the chief priests and elders in our Gospel:
“Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you. When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him.”
Matthew 21: 31-32
Our readings today reiterate a truth that threads through all of scripture: the “Kingdom” is composed of the least likely in the world’s eyes. Wealth, power, influence, or appearances don’t cut it. Faith and dependence on God define the “remnant” who are God’s people.
I don’t think there are a lot of tax collectors among my readers, and probably not too many prostitutes either. 🙂 So who are we when we take a good look at ourselves? Are we our power, money or upper hand in the world? Or are we faithful souls who try to keep our hearts open to the Divine call to love God and our neighbor?
The more we try to be the latter, the more we will comprehend the Miracle we celebrate just twelve days from now.
Prose: Advent Credo – Allan Boesak (from Walking Among Thorns)
It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss— This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life;
It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction— This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.
It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever— This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful councilor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of peace.
It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world— This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even until the end of the world.
It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers— This is true: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams.
It is not true that our hopes for liberation of humankind, of justice, of human dignity of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history— This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.
So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope.
Let us see visions of love and peace and justice.
Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage:
Jesus Christ—the life of the world.
Music: Just after today’s passage from Zephaniah, the prophet preaches in a more reassuring tone in verse 17. I thought you might like to pray with it.
(Today, I am re-publishing an earlier blog. I used it for my own prayer this morning and I thought it really deserved another read.I hope you agree.)
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 1 and its confident responsorial verse.
Last night we watched a public television Christmas special, “Rick Steves’s European Christmas“. From its many beautiful scenes, one in particular remained with me: a little group of friends tobogganing down a snow covered hill at night. Their only lights came from the small lanterns they held and the full moon’s generous luster against the white snow.
My first reaction to the scene was to wonder, “What if their light goes out?”. Then I realized that there was a light beyond them which would guide their way.
There are times in our lives when the light, if it doesn’t go out, at least flickers. I wrote about that awareness in this story a few years ago:
She had arranged to visit with an old college friend. They had been separated too long by the distancing choices that life often demands. She wanted to reconnect to that rare experience of shared transparency found just once or twice in a lifetime – the gift of a real friend.
They sat on a porch overlooking a gentle pond. The day was bright, the coffee hot, the chairs comfortable. But the magic was gone. Only half her friend had arrived for the cherished conversation. The other half – joy, adventure and the excess of youthful hope – had been lost. Somewhere in the intervening years, the light had gone out. Her friend had suffered a wound she did not share. This one afternoon would be too short a time to give that wound a name.
During our Advent journey, God is waiting in the seeming darkness to guide us. God already knows the wounds we carry. God sees where our heart’s light has dimmed. Holding our half-heartedness next to the Divine Heart, God yearns to rekindle us.
Today’s psalm reminds us that there is a always Light waiting beyond us to guide our way.
Blessed the one follows not the counsel of darkness nor walks in it ways, nor remains in the company of the insolent, But delights in the law of the LORD and meditates on its Light day and night.
Psalm 1:1-2
Poetry: from Mary Oliver
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the belief that Mary was conceived without the mark of Original Sin.
Beyond the intricate theology underlying the feast, what we treasure is that Mary made a holy place for Christ to dwell as he became incarnate, grew, lived and redeemed the world in loving mercy.
Mary chose to be God’s partner in our salvation!
Our Gospel story today invites us to pray with the most important word Mary ever said, “Yes. Fiat.” Think about it. Mary was not TOLD to become the mother of Jesus. She was asked. She could have said, “No” … for any number of logical reasons.
I’m too young.
I’ve got other plans.
Joseph won’t like this!
I don’t trust angels.
I’m afraid.
I’m sure all of us can think of a few more very rational excuses to tell our “angels” that we’re not ready for transforming grace. I know I have quite a few of them tucked away from over the years. But Mary calls us to something more – she calls us to an “irrational season” of love which responds to the irrational love God has for us!
Mary chose to say “Yes.” She may not have had to work too hard to find the courage for it within her heart. She was already “full of grace”, having lived her short young life with a faithfulness that made her ready to bear Christ to the world.
We pray that, with Mary’s love and guidance, we too may find the courage to make choices that sanctify our hearts, readying them to receive God.
God will come to us today – not on angel’s word – but in the human form of someone poor, sick, desperate, heart-broken, lonely, or just plain tired. May our faith allow us to respond as Mary did, with a grace-fullness that invites God into the situation.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 103 which bursts with music even as we silently read it!
Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all my being, bless God’s holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits.
Psalm 103:1–2
Our psalm rests today between two Advent readings that pick up its melody of grace and mercy.
In our first reading, Isaiah has just finished praising the Creator in the magnificence of nature. Today’s verses continue that praise and awed wonderment. As we read, we can picture God, robed in glory, marching out the sun, moon, stars …
Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these things: He leads out their army and numbers them, calling them all by name. By his great might and the strength of his power not one of them is missing!
Isaiah 40:26
When we take the time to appreciate a sunrise or sunset, or to trace the constellations across the dark December sky, we are doing what Isaiah encourages his listeners to do – trusting our all-powerful God. If our Creator can hold the heaven’s together in eternal beauty, we can expect the same to be done for us who are the most cherished of God’s creatures.
Do you not know or have you not heard? The LORD is the eternal God, creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint nor grow weary, and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny. He gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound.
Isaiah 40:28-29
In our Gospel, Jesus puts God’s abiding promise into a comforting invitation:
Jesus said to the crowds: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
Matthew 11:28-30
As we continue our Advent journey with Isaiah and Jesus, maybe we might like to catch a sunset or sunrise … or go out and look up at the winter stars. Doing so, let’s give ourselves fully in faith to our Creator’s promise to be with us in every rising and setting of our lives. Let us act as people who fully hope and believe:
They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.
Isaiah 40:31
Poetry: Come – Christina Rossetti
‘Come,’ Thou dost say to Angels, To blessed Spirits, ‘Come’: ‘Come,’ to the lambs of Thine own flock, Thy little ones, ‘Come home.’
‘Come,’ from the many-mansioned house The gracious word is sent; ‘Come,’ from the ivory palaces Unto the Penitent.
O Lord, restore us deaf and blind, Unclose our lips though dumb: Then say to us, ‘I will come with speed,’ And we will answer, ‘Come.’
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Isaiah once again promises light despite the darkness, understanding despite the emptiness, life despite the devastating hold of poverty.
Thus says the Lord GOD: But a very little while, and Lebanon shall be changed into an orchard, and the orchard be regarded as a forest! On that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book; And out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see. The lowly will ever find joy in the LORD, and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
Isaiah 29:18-19
Isaiah’s promises shone a beacon of hope to the oppressed people of his time. As I pray with his words today, I am deeply aware of the oppressions of our own time and the people who suffer under them.
Over the course of these days, I am praying with a delegation of people currently in Central America to remember, bless, learn from, and bear witness to the lives of four martyrs.
The Roses in December delegation marks the 42nd anniversary of the martyrdom of four U.S. women religious. On December 2, 1980, members of the U.S.-trained-Salvadoran National Guard raped and killed lay worker Jean Donovan, Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford, MM, and Maura Clarke, MM, and Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, OSU. The women had been accompanying the Salvadoran people displaced by war and poverty. Their witness cost them their lives. Their deaths shook the world and were emblematic of the violence suffered by the Salvadoran people and the power of accompaniment.
These women lived with the kind of hope and faith Isaiah describes. It is an active faith necessary in all times because, sadly, in all times there will be brutal and inhuman oppression of the vulnerable by the powerful. These woman chose to stand for the Gospel instead.
During an earlier anniversary of the Roses in December event, social justice activist Jean Stolkan asked the question, “What do these women call us to today?” Jean served in El Salvador herself and has continued to advocate for human rights and social justice. Jean is currently Social Justice Coordinator for the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. She offered these insights in answer to her question:
The challenges we face today are different from the challenges we faced when the four church women died. They call for new perspectives and new structures, new vision and new social movements to adequately respond to the need for justice for present and future generations.
Today our hearts go out to the peoples of El Salvador and Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, as they struggle with basic issues of survival and rebuilding of their lives after so many disasters: hurricanes and earthquakes, but also violence and poverty. We pray for an outpouring of compassion and solidarity, that we may continue to address in systemic ways the underlying human failings – structural poverty, racism, violation of human rights, destruction of the environment – that these and other natural and human disasters unmask with such brutal clarity.
Please join your own prayer today for a new flowering of social justice, respect for human rights, and a mutual reverence for our common home as we remember these valiant Gospel women.
Poetry: El Salvador – Javier Zamora
( Poet Javier Zamora was born in the small El Salvadoran coastal fishing town of La Herradura and immigrated to the United States at the age of nine, joining his parents in California. He earned a BA at the University of California-Berkeley and an MFA at New York University and was a 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.)
Salvador, if I return on a summer day, so humid my thumb
will clean your beard of salt, and if I touch your volcanic face,
kiss your pumice breath, please don’t let cops say: he’s gangster.
Don’t let gangsters say: he’s wrong barrio. Your barrios
stain you with pollen, red liquid pollen. Every day cops
and gangsters pick at you with their metallic beaks,
and presidents, guilty. Dad swears he’ll never return,
Mom wants to see her mom, and in the news:
every day black bags, more and more of us leave. Parents say:
don’t go; you have tattoos. It’s the law; you don’t know
what law means there. ¿But what do they know? We don’t
have greencards. Grandparents say: nothing happens here.
Cousin says: here, it’s worse. Don’t come, you could be ...
Stupid Salvador, you see our black bags,
our empty homes, our fear to say: the war has never stopped,
and still you lie and say: I’m fine, I’m fine,
but if I don’t brush Abuelita’s hair, wash her pots and pans,
I cry. Like tonight, when I wish you made it
easier to love you, Salvador. Make it easier
to never have to risk our lives.
Music: El Salvador – Peter, Paul and Mary
“El Salvador” is a 1982 protest song about United States involvement in the Salvadoran Civil War, written by Noel Paul Stookey and performed by Peter, Paul and Mary. The song originally appeared on the 1986 album No Easy Walk To Freedom.
There’s a sunny little country south of Mexico Where the winds are gentle and the waters flow But breezes aren’t the only things that blow in El Salvador
If you took the little lady for a moonlight drive Odds are still good you’d come back alive But everyone is innocent until they arrive in El Salvador
If the rebels take a bus on the grand highway The government destroys a village miles away The man on the radio says: “now, we’ll play South of the Border”
And in the morning the natives say “We’re happy you have lived another day Last night a thousand more passed away in El Salvador” Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
There’s a television crew here from ABC Filming Rio Lempe and the refugees Calling murdered children: “The Tragedy of El Salvador”
Before the government camera twenty feet away Another man is asking for continued aid Food and medicine and hand grenades for El Salvador
There’s a thump, a rumble, and the buildings sway A soldier fires the acid spray The public address system starts to play: “South of the Border”
You run for cover and hide your eyes You hear the screams from paradise They’ve fallen further than you realize in El Salvador La la la, la la la la La la la, la la la la la Ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh
Just like Poland is protected by her Russian friends The junta is assisted by Americans And if sixty million dollars seems too much to spend in El Salvador
They say for half a billion they could do it right Bomb all day and burn all night Until there’s not a living thing upright in El Salvador
And they’ll continue training troops in the USA And watch the nuns that got away And teach the military bands to play: “South of the Border”
Killed the people to set them free Who put this price on their liberty Don’t you think it’s time to leave El Salvador? Oh, oh oh oh oh Oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Isaiah tells us that – “on that Day“, God’s People will sing a new song:
On that day they will sing this song in the land of Judah: “A strong city have we; God sets up walls and ramparts to protect us. Open up the gates to let in a nation that is just, one that keeps faith.
Isaiah 26:1-2
It is the song of a People who have recognized God’s abiding, protective Presence in their lives. That realization impels them to respond in faith and to open their lives ever more radically to God’s constant graces.
And so it is with us. As we deepen in our trust that God is with us in every circumstance, and as we choose to live out of that trust, our hearts too open to ever deeper relationship with the Holy.
In our Gospel, Jesus says that this kind of faith is more than words. It is action, choice, presence, witness — all of which declare, “I choose to anchor my life in God and to invite God’s Mercy to live through me.”
Jesus said to his disciples: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise person who built their house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house.”
Matthew 7: 21;24-25
Just what are “these words” of Jesus to which we must listen and respond?
Today’s Gospel passage comes from the first of the Five Discourses in Matthew’s Gospel by which Jesus teaches the New Law of Love. This first discourse holds treasures like the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule.
These are the “words” Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel passage — words we must hear and act on in order that God will recognize us “on that Day“. Maybe, if you have a little time, you might like to read through Matthew, chapters 5-7, to savor this First Discourse.
Poetry: Let’s use today’s Responsorial Psalm as our poem-prayer. In it, God’s People celebrate God’s Mercy which has brought them to the “gate” of a new relationship of gratitude and trust with the Holy One.
Give thanks to the LORD, Who is good, Whose mercy endures forever. It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in human appearances. It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in human power.
Open to me the gates of justice and mercy; I will enter them and give thanks to the LORD. This gate is the LORD’s; the just shall enter it. I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me and have been my savior.
O LORD, grant salvation! O LORD, grant prosperity! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD; we bless you from the house of the LORD. The LORD is God, and has given us Light.
Psalm 118:1 and 8-9, 19-21, 25-27a
Music: The Breath at Dawn – Gary Schmidt – some lovely music to start your “new day”.
Lavish Mercy 