Today, in Mercy, we celebrate the feast of St. John of the Cross, a great mystic of the 16th century, one of the 36 Doctors of the Church, and an influential Spanish writer.
John, with Teresa of Ávila, founded the Discalced Carmelites. His poetry and prose recount the journey of the soul as it grows more deeply into God.
Much of his poetic writing can surprise, perhaps even shock, with its passionate tone. But John’s love for God is so profound that he uses the symbols of deepest human intimacy to convey his passion.These are the most beautiful images he has to express his total gift of self to the Divine.
Through the darkness of profound personal suffering, John found Light by nurturing this extraordinary spiritual intimacy with God.
John is a perfect inspiration for the Advent journey as we move through darkness to the Light of Christmas.
Many of us will have favorite passages from this prolific and passionate writer.Mine is this:
“In the evening of our lives,
we will judged on love.
Learn, therefore, to love God
as God wishes to be loved.”
Music: John Michael Talbot tries to capture the mysticism of John’s writings.
Today, in Mercy, we celebrate the feast of St. Lucy, patroness of the blind. Lucy was a brave young woman, martyred during the persecutions.
Her name meaning “Light”, she has been venerated for millennia as one who can bring clarity and insight to places of darkness.
Today’s first reading shows us what our Radiant God can do for those who live in darkness, destitution and fear.
As the year moves closer to its time of deepest darkness, may we know God’s brightness in our hearts. May we sense God lighting, once again, the dark places in our lives and in our world.
We all have painful situations, unanswered hopes, lingering fears.Let us bring them out of the shadows today with the help of St. Lucy and our Brilliant God who made the stars to give us hope.
Music:Hail, Gladdening Light – Etcetera: the Civil Service Choir
Today, in Mercy, our Advent readings increase in joyously expectant tone:
Isaiah’s exultant description of the Peaceful Kingdom
the Psamist’s confidence in God’s intervention
Jesus’s miracle, and probable delight, for the paralyzed man lowered through the roof!
We have seen incredible things.. Luke 5:26
These passages are filled with an exuberant expectation, much like children feel as they discover an amazing gift. May we open our hearts with innocent hope toward God’s promise.
If you can, take the time today to read these passages slowly, listening for the particular word that will fall upon your heart like a blossom of hope.
Music: O Come, Divine Messiah – Jennie Lee Riddle and Robbie Seay
Today, in Mercy, we come to the end of our readings from Revelation.They have been challenging, to say the least.
The passage from Luke’s Gospel today is just as confronting.These are not easy times.
Our prayer over these past few days has led us to deeper understanding of this hard truth: life as we know it will be transformed and we will be judged at the transformation.
But hopefully our reflections have also assured us that the Master and Judge of Life is the same merciful God who forgave and healed the sinful and suffering.
By our faithfulness to this merciful God, we will be redeemed. Revelation puts it this way:
The servants of God
will look upon his face,
and his name
will be on their foreheads.
When a person is filled with goodness (or evil), we often say it is “written all over her face”.So it is with those who love and long for God and for God’s peaceable kingdom.
God will recognize us at the judgment because our hope and desire for God are written all over our face. And God’s love for us will be written all over that Divine Countenance.
Today in Mercy, our readings from Revelation and Luke are truly terrible, in the full meaning of that word: extremely distressing, causing terror. They’re intended to be.
They describe and warn against times of destruction. Revelation describes the fall of Babylon. The Gospel relates the destruction of Jerusalem.
But neither reading is history. They are not offered so that we get the facts, the way a newspaper or encyclopedia reports a story.
These readings are given to us, and to the audiences they were originally written for, so that we might understand clearly this important reality: we live in two worlds, the material and the spiritual.
These worlds are intended by God to be united in one Creation, joined at the wedding feast of the Lamb. But we humans fail. We exalt and distort the power of the material world to the destruction of the spiritual. We split what God intended to be whole.
In other words, we build both global and personal kingdoms and governments that have no heart, have no soul.
If you think these readings describe only past civilizations, then look to the Mexican-US border. Look at the starving people of Yemen. Look at the devastation of the rainforest. Look at our drug-infested, gun-enthralled culture.
Jesus knew that his followers would battle these forces forever. He tells us that, in the midst of these destructive signs, we should
“ … stand erect and raise your heads
because your redemption is at hand.”
Jesus’s followers must stand as a sign of another way. We must raise our heads to say “No” to the heartless moral choices of our time. We cannot allow ourselves to be swept up in a culture of lies, political expediency, material greed, and dehumanization of whole peoples. We must break through the cabled propaganda we are fed to find God’s Word to us.
Our readings today ask us to take a good look at ourselves. How complicit are we in our own destruction by our failure to choose, speak, and act for Gospel justice in our world?
Today, in Mercy,our Responsorial Verse captures the essence of all the readings:
It’s one of those scripture passages that makes one want to say, “Oh, really? Is that all?”
Because, you know, it’s a pretty tall order to remain faithful until death. Sometimes it’s a real pinch to remain faithful for a week!
Remember that exercise bike you bought in January 1999? Yeah, that one with your yoga pants, umbrella, and assorted gift bags hanging on it.
Or what about that South Beach diet book you’re using to prop open the closet door? How did all that faithfulness work out?
So, given our very human condition, what is the “faithfulness” these readings enjoin?
I believe it is not a faithfulness that never fails. Rather, it tries. When it does fail, it believes in and seeks forgiveness. It trusts, even in its weakness. It is grateful, abiding, and loving. It is not afraid to begin again and again, because our faithfulness depends on God’s mercy not our strength.
When we were young nuns making our final vows, this phrase was part of our commitment:
“… and to persevere, until death …”
One of our wise leaders, Mother Bernard, told us, “Don’t pray for final perseverance. Pray to be worthy of it.”
I think we become worthy of it by that trusting faithfulness which turns again and again into Mercy’s waiting, understanding arms. It is a faithfulness that fully believes these words from the Book of Lamentations:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
God’s mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
so great is your faithfulness.
Today, in Mercy, we are struck with Revelation’s images of the end time!
a crowned Christ wielding a sharp sickle
angels commanding the final harvest of the earth
and perhaps the most powerful
the earth’s vintage thrown into the great winepress of God’s fury!
This author could write! We can almost imagine the scene, filmed with all the pyro-technics of today’s computer age.
But besides the amazing imagery, what does the passage say to our hearts?
In Biblical symbolism, the winepress almost always stands for judgment. The passage reminds us that we all will be judged.The divine winepress will compress the sinful gaps that plague our human existence.In the end time, there will be no “other” — no judgmental spaces separating us from one another.We will all be one, like wine mingled.
We will be judged on how we lived that oneness in this life, on where we have stood in the gap between the:
rich and poor
well and sick
citizen and refugee
abled and disabled
powerful and vulnerable
Do we live in ignorance or indifference to those who suffer on the other side of the human scale? Have we been impervious to the imbalances of justice and charity in this world?
And how do we respond? The passage suggests that we do some weeding of our spiritual gardens before the harvest of our souls. The intention of this fiery writer is to tell us that we still have a little time.
Music:The Day Is Surely Drawing Near – written by the prolific 16th century Lutheran hymnist Bartholomaüs Ringwaldt. This piece is a majestic instrumental rendering, but if you would like to see the words, they are below.
1 The day is surely drawing near
When Jesus, God’s anointed,
In all His power shall appear
As judge whom God appointed. Then fright shall banish idle mirth,
And flames on flames shall ravage earth
As Scripture long has warned us.
2 The final trumpet then shall sound
And all the earth be shaken,
And all who rest beneath the ground
Shall from their sleep awaken.
But all who live will in that hour,
By God’s almighty, boundless pow’r,
Be changed at His commanding.
3 The books are opened then to all,
A record truly telling
What each has done, both great and small,
When he on earth was dwelling,
And ev’ry heart be clearly seen,
And all be known as they have been
In thoughts and words and actions.
4 Then woe to those who scorned the Lord
And sought but carnal pleasures,
Who here despised His precious Word
And loved their earthly treasures!
With shame and trembling they will stand
And at the judge’s stern command
To Satan be delivered.
5 My Savior paid the debt I owe
And for my sin was smitten;
Within the Book of Life I know
My name has now been written.
I will not doubt, for I am free,
And Satan cannot threaten me;
There is no condemnation!
6 May Christ our intercessor be
And through His blood and merit
Read from His book that we are free
With all who life inherit.
Then we shall see Him face to face,
With all His saints in that blest place
Which He has purchased for us.
7 O Jesus Christ, do not delay,
But hasten our salvation;
We often tremble on our way
In fear and tribulation.
O hear and grant our fervent plea;
Come, mighty judge, and make us free
From death and ev’ry evil.
Today, in Mercy, our first reading from Revelation describes what has come to be known in modern culture as “the Rapture”. It’s a concept probably more popularized by modern fiction than by our devotion to scripture.
Maybe you are one of the60 million readers of the “Left Behind” books by Jenkins and LaHaye. This popular series captures our fascination with “the end times”.
The writer of Revelation is doing the same thing. This highly imaginative ancient author -adept at symbols, allegory, and poetry – writes to awake and engage us in our own salvation.
Whether or not his visions predict facts is not the point. The point is that there will come an end time to every life. When it comes to us, we want to have already become God’s familiar and beloved friend.
A second point is that this world, as we know it, is passing. We should not make our heart’s investment here. Our lasting treasure lies in God’s realm which, while present here, is often rendered invisible by our human hungers and distractions.
Revelation enjoins us to wake up, see beyond the visible, and live a life worthy of eternity.
How? The true and simple answer is in today’s Gospel:
“When Jesus looked up he saw some wealthy people
putting their offerings into the treasure
and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins.
He said, “I tell you truly,
this poor widow put in more than all the rest;
for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth,
but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.”
This blessed widow, even in her impoverished circumstances, understood where her true treasure lay. She was already counted among the sainted“hundred and forty-four thousand”.
Music: When I read these apocalyptic passages, I like to imagine the scene by listening to compatible music. One of my favorite accompaniments is Richard Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries. Just imagine Jesus riding into our lives on these exalted melodies!
Revelation, a very complex book of the Bible, uses symbols, prophecies and allegorical references to make its point. There are huge bodies of scholarship written in the attempt to interpret these passages. Our Gospel has Jesus describing what it will be like in heaven – when our human perceptions will be erased and we will finally be absorbed into God’s understanding.
These are BIG thoughts and my mind, at least, needs some more manageable inspirations for my morning prayer. 😉 So here’s how I prayed with these readings today.
What both passages share are continual references to time – past, present and future. They reference then-time, now-time, and to-be-time. These passages, and others in Scripture like them, talk about time like this:
“in the days before”
“in the days after”
“in the day of”
So what is this day, November 24th, for me? How is God revealing Love to me in this, my time?
Today is still among “the days after” Thanksgiving. The lingering familial and community blessings of Thursday continue to bless my prayer.
However, it is also among “the days before” the next big events of my life. So my prayer includes a petition for new and continued blessings.
And, most importantly, today is “a day of”. I ask God to help me see and receive the graces of this present moment – not to miss them because I am looking only back or forward. Let me look God square in the eye on this day, which is the only place that I can really find the God Who is always Now.
The entire liturgical year is built on this understanding of time.
Advent and Lent are “the days before”, the days of preparation, anticipation, imagining, creating, hoping.
The feasts like Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are “the days of”, days of celebrating, loving, being with.
The various Octaves are “the days after”, days of remembering, thanking, appreciating, understanding, mourning, forgiving and savoring
Where are you today in the times of your life? It may be in a very different place from what is printed on the calendar. The events of our lives create their own personal liturgies. No matter where that happens to be, let us meet God there with full and open hearts.
Lavish Mercy 