Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, each of our readings encourages us to live a life of prayer – with fervor, perseverance, and childlike simplicity
The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.
James 5:16
O LORD, to you I call; hasten to me; hearken to my voice when I call upon you. Let my prayer come like incense before you; the lifting up of my hands, like the evening sacrifice.
Psalm 141:1-2
Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
Mark 10:14
Rather than make any theological comment on prayer, I thought I might simply offer some of my own poetry-prayers today, if you would care to pray with them.
Awaking
Sunrise paints
the hedge's morning side
rosy gold.
But I choose
the western side.
There, midnight's purple leaves
awake in lazy grey,
then stripes
of green and silver.
There, the awesome
grace of living
rises slowly in the heart,
a liquor savored,
a prayer lingering
In genuflected silence
Photo credit: Mary Pat Garvin, RSM
Prayer
Still ourselves, we are more one than separate now, Heart over heart, heart within Heart, like a word's meaning held within its sound.
I drink from that union like the verdant earth drinks from its deep reserve of water. It is Your color that flushes every blossom sprung from me.
But that water, once tasted precludes satiety by any other water. There is no return for me now to a season not fed by You.
What I have given You, then is the whole seed of my life.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings instruct us on one of life’s most important realities: truthful relationship – with God, nature, other people, and ourselves.
James reminds us that the prophets spoke the truth at great personal cost.
Take as an example of hardship and patience, brothers and sisters, the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Indeed we call blessed those who have persevered.
James 5:10
Culture sometimes characterizes a “prophet” as one who can foresee the future, one who has a greater capacity than the normal person. And indeed there are great leaders who fit that understanding. They see things rightly and help us to realign our vision.
But, in an everyday sense, a prophet is simply someone who sees the truth and is unafraid to speak it. A prophet doesn’t pretend, deflect, lie, ignore, hide, distort or abuse Truth. The call to this kind of prophecy is one that we all share.
Such a call requires that we are honest, first and foremost, with God and with ourselves. It asks that we live a discerning and courageous life, reverently telling our truth as best we understand before God:
… let your “Yes” mean “Yes” and your “No” mean “No,” that you may not incur condemnation.
James 5:12
In our Gospel, we find the Pharisees trying trip up Jesus with their pretend concern for the Law. Instead, what they are really concerned about is that they could lose their hold on power if the people turn to Jesus and his teaching.
Jesus calls them “hard of heart” because they are not open to the Spirit. They hide in a labyrinth of minutiae rather than the clarity of Love and Truth.
Living in the Truth of God’s grace and mercy, we grow in our ability to be prophetic. It means that people know they will get the truth from us — not opinion or advice; not bluntness or unnecessary critique — but a discernment offered in love, reverence, and mutual hope.
Like the biblical prophets, and like Jesus himself, we will meet people who don’t want that kind of truth. They haven’t been able to espouse it in themselves, so they don’t want to hear it from us. We see this played out daily in a sham political world that continually creates its own version of reality to suit its selfish ends.
In such situations, James would offer us this encouragement:
You have heard of the perseverance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, because the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
And our Alleluia Verse offers us a prayer for such times:
Your word, O Lord, is truth; consecrate us in the truth.
So persevere. Seek your truth in prayer. Give it to the world generously with compassion and mercy.
Poetry: A Legend of Truth – Rudyard Kipling “A Friend of the Family” From “Debits and Credits” (1919-1923)
Once on a time, the ancient legends tell, Truth, rising from the bottom of her well, Looked on the world, but, hearing how it lied, Returned to her seclusion horrified. There she abode, so conscious of her worth, Not even Pilate’s Question called her forth, Nor Galileo, kneeling to deny The Laws that hold our Planet ‘neath the sky. Meantime, her kindlier sister, whom men call Fiction, did all her work and more than all, With so much zeal, devotion, tact, and care, That no one noticed Truth was otherwhere.
Then came a War when, bombed and gassed and mined, Truth rose once more, perforce, to meet mankind, And through the dust and glare and wreck of things, Beheld a phantom on unbalanced wings, Reeling and groping, dazed, dishevelled, dumb, But semaphoring direr deeds to come.
Truth hailed and bade her stand; the quavering shade Clung to her knees and babbled, “Sister, aid! I am–I was–thy Deputy, and men Besought me for my useful tongue or pen To gloss their gentle deeds, and I complied, And they, and thy demands, were satisfied. But this–” she pointed o’er the blistered plain, Where men as Gods and devils wrought amain– “This is beyond me! Take thy work again.”
Tablets and pen transferred, she fled afar, And Truth assumed the record of the War… She saw, she heard, she read, she tried to tell Facts beyond precedent and parallel– Unfit to hint or breathe, much less to write, But happening every minute, day and night. She called for proof. It came. The dossiers grew. She marked them, first, “Return. This can’t be true.” Then, underneath the cold official word: “This is not really half of what occurred.”
She faced herself at last, the story runs, And telegraphed her sister: “Come at once. Facts out of hand. Unable overtake Without your aid. Come back for Truth’s own sake! Co-equal rank and powers if you agree. They need us both, but you far more than me
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, both James and Jesus pepper us with some fire and brimstone.
James is preaching against the sin of exploitation, especially as it relates to economic justice, the sanctity of work, and reverence for the worker.
Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries… Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud; and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
James 5: 1;4
James, in his time, is condemning a sin that has endured throughout history. In a 2020 address, Pope Francis confronted the same evil:
The pandemic has exposed and aggravated social problems, above all that of inequality…These symptoms of inequality reveal a social illness; it is a virus that comes from a sick economy. And we must say it simply: the economy is sick. It has become ill. It is the fruit of unequal economic growth — this is the illness: the fruit of unequal economic growth — that disregards fundamental human values. In today’s world, a few wealthy people possess more than all the rest of humanity. I will repeat this so that it makes us think: a few wealthy people, a small group, possess more than all the rest of humanity. This is pure statistics. This is an injustice that cries out to heaven!
General Audience, August 26, 2020
James and Francis – speaking the same message for different times.
In our Gospel, Jesus teaches that the rewards of a well-lived life are measured in mutuality and generosity, not dollars:
In concluding his above referenced address, Pope Francis, like Jesus, focused on children:
Let us think about the children. Read the statistics: how many children today are dying of hunger because of broken distribution of riches, because of a sick economic system; and how many children today do not have the right to education for the same reason. May this image of children in want due to hunger and the lack of education help us understand that after this pandemic crisis we must learn and do better.
Jesus too measured a soul’s health by its effect on children:
Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
Mark 9:42
These readings teach hard lessons, lessons which society still seems unable to learn. Let’s ask for the grace to see our own role in helping to realize the sacred balance of goods that Jesus, James, and Francis call for.
Let us not tire in advocating for social Justice because, as our Gospel warns:
Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavor?
Mark 9:49
Poetry and Music: Salt of the Earth – The Rolling Stones In this song, Mick Jagger writes an anthem to the working class. But in a twice-repeated stanza, the singer professes a distance from this very group, perhaps loosing touch because of his own material success:
And when I search a faceless crowd A swirling mass of grey and black and white They don’t look real to meIn fact, they look so strange
The song uses a quote that refers to a passage in the Bible where Jesus encourages people to give the best of themselves:
You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned ? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, James continues to “tell it like it is”.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing business, and make a profit”– you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow.
James 4: 13
James offers that hard truth to his listeners, Jewish Christians dispersed outside of Israel. It’s an insight many of us might not like hearing, because we thrive on making plans for future growth and improvement.
When a current situation is looking a little dim, we like to think that “there is always tomorrow”. James says, “Maybe not! Make sure you humbly do all that you can TODAY.”
James reminds me of my Nana.
My great-grandmother was born in Ireland in 1869. She was no-nonsense Irish, probably because of the no-nonsense times during which she grew up. She was highly religious and stringently moral, and she worked to insure that the family benefitted from all the lessons she had learned in her challenging life.
Her accent was as thick as porridge, but after a while I, a perspicacious little toddler, began imitating it. I listened intently to her oft-repeated phrases and folded them into my own conversations. One such phrase made an indelible impression on me to the point that I can hear it even now in her soft, rolling brogue.
When one of the family retired for the night, it was common to say, ” Good night. God bless you.” Sometimes we added, ” I’ll see you in the morning” and if we did, Nana invariably responded:
if God spares us!
I think that is exactly what James is saying in his no-nonsense epistles.
We depend on God’s goodness and mercy for everything. We need to remember and acknowledge that truth, and to live in hopeful gratitude.
… you should say, “If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that.” But instead you are boasting in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So for one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, it is a sin.
I think that most of us aren’t really arrogant. We just forget. We get confused. We let our lives slip off their center on God. And then we might start to think that we are the center of everything! Big mistake!
Our Responsorial Psalm for today reinforces these truths. I love the way Pastor Christine Robinson has interpreted Psalm 49:
Here is my wisdom—Listen to my song! I am surrounded by those who put their trust in possessions and money I am not taken in.
What is precious in life can’t be had in the marketplace What is important about us is not what we acquire, but what we do to add love, goodness, and beauty to the world.
It’s the size of our hearts, not the size of our houses, It’s our understanding, not our fame. What we own is taken from the earth and from others. It returns to them when we die.
But love, wisdom, and beauty, they strengthen the fabric of creation. They accrue to God, enlarge our very souls. These are our true legacy and our ongoing life.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings invite to consider God’s naming us – calling us.
We celebrate wonderful Saint Peter – so fully human, so fully holy, so fully in love with God! As we pray the Gospel of Peter’s naming, may we deepen in understanding our own naming by God.
Once, Jesus asked Peter what he believed. Peter answered, simply and magnificently: “YOU ARE THE CHRIST, THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD.” Peter was an ordinary man who responded to Jesus with a clear and extraordinary faith.
One June morning, nearly fifty years ago, I sat in a sun-drenched field in the Golan Heights of Israel at a spot called Caesarea Philippi. Thirty other pilgrims composed the group as we heard today’s Gospel being read. Listening, I watched the rising sun grow brilliant on the majestic rock face in the near distance.
I thought how Peter might have watched his day’s sun playing against the same powerful cliffs as Jesus spoke his name:
Jesus said to him, You are Peter (which means “Rock”), and upon this Rock I will build my Church.
A few years later, I stood at the center of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Looking up, I saw these words emblazoned around the awesome rotunda dome:
Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam.
On that sunlit afternoon two-thousand years ago, Peter could never have imagined what God already saw for him. Yet, Peter responded – with his whole life. This is what makes a Saint.
Jesus calls us to be saints too. He lovingly speaks our name into a sacred future we cannot even imagine. But if, like Peter, we trust and believe, God does the rest.
Poetry: Peter by John Poch. The poem captures the transformation of Peter’s humanness into God’s hope for him – the “changing” of his name.
There are three things which are too wonderful for me, Yes, four which I do not understand. The way of an eagle in the air, The way of a serpent on a rock, The way of a ship in the heart of the sea, And the way of a man with a maid –Prov. 30:18, 19
I Contagious as a yawn, denial poured over me like a soft fall fog, a girl on a carnation strewn parade float, waving at everyone and no one, boring and bored. There actually was a robed commotion parading. I turned and turned away and turned. A swirl of wind pulled back my hood, a fire of coal brightened my face, and those around me whispered: You’re one of them, aren’t you? You smell like fish. And wine, someone else joked. That’s brutal. That’s cold, I said, and then they knew me by my speech. They let me stay and we told jokes like fisher- men and houseboys. We gossiped till the cock crowed, his head a small volcano raised to mock stone.
II Who could believe a woman’s word, perfumed in death? I did. I ran and was outrun before I reached the empty tomb. I stepped inside an empty shining shell of a room, sans pearl. I walked back home alone and wept again. At dinner. His face shone like the sun. I went out into the night. I was a sailor and my father’s nets were calling. It was high tide, I brought the others. Nothing, the emptiness of business, the hypnotic waves of failure. But a voice from shore, a familiar fire, and the nets were full. I wouldn’t be outswum, denied this time. The coal-fire before me, the netted fish behind. I’m carried where I will not wish.
Music: Peter’s Song – Face to Face – Michael O’Brien
I recall something in the way you called my name, an ordinary fisherman you called me friend and took me in. How everything had changed because then I knew I’d never be the same.
Love came and rescued me. I gave up my everything to follow. Now I know. All that I was before won’t matter anymore for I am a new man because I have seen my Savior face-to-face.
I recall standing in the courtyard by the fire, words still ringing in my head, three times before the break of dawn you would be denied. And yet I saw no judgment in your eyes.
Love came and died for me. I gave up my everything, gave up my everything to follow. Now I know all that I was before is dead and it lives no more for I am a new man because I have seen my savior face-to-face.
The dark night, the new day – The stone was rolled away – my Savior, You are the Light You are alive! Ascended to heaven. I know that you will come again.
That moment I will arise to worship before your throne, to bow down for you alone are worthy, so worthy and there with saints of old, I’ll sing a brand new song in heaven forever where I will see my Savior face-to-face.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, the deep undercurrent of our readings is about the power and difficulties of faith.
James talks about how our faith can be choked by the weeds of “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition”. These chokers make us “boast and be false to the truth”. They fill us with a “pretend wisdom” that is not from the Holy Spirit.
Praying with this passage, I asked myself why we allow these ugly constraints to grasp our souls when the alternative James describes is so beautiful:
… the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace.
James 3:17-18
The Gospel helped me with an answer.
Unconditional faith is scary. It requires us to give control over to God. It asks us to let go of fear and to trust God’s Spirit within us. It needs us to empty our hearts of pretense and self-protection in order to make room for God’s transforming Mercy and Love.
This kind of faith will change us. It will make us “foolish” and insecure in worldly terms. It will cause us to live from a Wisdom the world misunderstands and mocks.
It’s hard to live that kind of faith. The dad in today’s Gospel admits it. He wants to have a faith that invites Christ’s power into his life. But he’s afraid. What if God wants something different for him and his son? What happens if he gives control over to God?
This yearning father confesses his ambivalence in a plea for Christ’s assistance: Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief!
We all find ourselves within that plea sometimes in our lives. It’s a faith of “if”, “maybe”, and “but” – all of which are hardly faith at all. Unconditional faith is “Yes”, no matter what. It is the place where Faith and Love merge.
Our faithful “Yes”, as the e.e.cummings poem might describe it:
love is a place & through this place of love move (with brightness of peace) all places
yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skillfully curled) all worlds
Music:When we live this “Yes Faith”, God’s love, God’s heart lives in us. This song by Michael Hedges, based on another poem by e.e.cummings, can be a prayer for us. We may be unused to calling God “my dear”, “my darling”. But a loving name for God can be helpful to our prayer. And it is an ancient practice of mystics like St. John of the Cross. Use whatever might feel natural for you. Don’t be hesitant about being in love with God❤️
I Carry Your Heart – Michael Hedges (Lyrics below)
I carry your heart with me I carry it in my heart I am never without it Anywhere i go you go, my dear And whatever is done by only me Is your doing, my darling.
I fear no fate For you are my fate, my sweet I want no world For beautiful you are my world, my true And it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant And whatever a sun will always sing is you
Here is the deepest secret nobody knows Here is the root of the root And the bud of the bud And the sky of the sky Of a tree called life; Which grows higher than the soul can hope Or mind can hide And this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart I carry your heart I carry it in my heart
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our reading from 1 Samuel tells the intriguing tale of David’s magnanimity toward Saul. Saul is enraged and jealous of David whom Samuel has anointed as king to replace Saul. David is continually in Saul’s crosshairs.
David Spares Saul – William Brassey Hole
But one night, David stealthily enters Saul’s camp. Even though he has a chance to kill Saul, David spares his life out of respect for his kingship.
While it’s not exactly “love for his enemies”, David does demonstrate a largeness of spirit that foretells today’s Gospel. This gracious spirit demonstrates that David is in right relationship (covenant) with God.
Our Gospel is part of Jesus’s Great Sermon in which he restates and renews the covenant of right relationship. If our spirits are true to God, we will love as God loves. We are to be merciful as God is merciful.
This Law of Love is the essence of life in Christ. It is a profoundly challenging call.
How hard it must have been for David as he stood, spear in hand, over his sleeping enemy – over the one trying to kill him!
How hard it is for us not to be vengeful, retaliatory, and parsimonious when we feel threatened or exploited.
But we are called, in Christ, to the New Covenant of love. By that call, we are endowed with a right spirit.
Today, Jesus asks us to love, forgive, and judge all others as we ourselves would want to be treated. He asks us to live with a divinely magnanimous heart.
Let us pray for the strength to respond.
Prose: from To Love as God Loves by Roberta C. Bondi, professor emerita of church history and spirituality, Candler School of Theology, Emory University.
Love as a disposition does not primarily act on abstract principle. Instead it is a way of seeing habitually and responding to the real, separate, individual needs of each of the people we encounter in our lives every single day.
Music: O Mercy – Stu Garrard, Matt Maher and Audrey Assad
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, I pause in my scriptural reflections to ask all of you to join in prayer for peace in Ukraine. As I typed today’s date, it hit me that we can’t just watch the evolution of this crisis on the news, as if it were a movie that isn’t really happening. We have a responsibility to be active peacemakers in our volatile world, and to foster a resolution that honors all human life.
I’ll tell you why Saturday’s date struck my heart so forcibly.
February 19, 1945
I was not even alive yet. I was kicking around inside my Mom and waiting to be born exactly two months later. There was joyful expectation in my family that afternoon, as you can imagine. What they did not expect was that at that very moment, my mother’s nineteen year old brother had bled to death on the shores of Iwo Jima.
When the word finally reached my family, Jimmy had already been buried at sea. The coordinates are noted in the WWII War Logs: 21°N latitude; 111° E longitude. That’s where he is buried, somewhere in the middle of the Philippine Sea. It feels so very lonely when you look at it on a map.
His death, his slaughter, wounded my mother so deeply that it reached into my incipient spirit. I never knew him, but have never forgotten, my Uncle Jim. Some of you will understand how that can be.
No young man or woman should be left alone forever at the bottom of the sea, or in an mountain gorge, or under the flaming sand. No human being should suffer and die because of war, because of the bloated egos and stunted imaginations of undraftable world leaders who pretend it is the means to peace.
It may seem that we can do little to prevent these travesties, but that’s not true. We can vote; we can lobby; we can advocate for international justice and equity that ameliorate the catalysts to war: poverty, hunger, and political and economic domination.
And we can pray.
We have the power through prayer and political action to fuel the demand for peaceful and diplomatic relationships in our world. These powerful interventions can confront our unexamined militarism and transform it.
Pope Francis has said:
“The news coming out of Ukraine is very worrying. I entrust to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, and to the conscience of political leaders, every effort on behalf of peace. Let us pray in silence.”
Mother of Sorrows – Batolome Murillo
But the responsibility belongs to us as well. Will you join me on this Saturday of the Blessed Virgin Mary to ask her powerful intercession in this outrageous situation in Ukraine?
The following prayer was very meaningful to me and you may want to pray with it:
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, James actually made me chuckle out loud! In today’s celebrated passage about faith and works, James – ever direct and uncompromising – really takes it home. Get this verse:
Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless?
James 2:20
OK, James! Tell us what you really think!😂
Well, here’s what he really thinks:
For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
James 2:26
In our Gospel, Jesus says that living a life of good works is hard. He did it through the Cross and says we must follow his example:
Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it.
Mark 8:34-35
The Gospel Jesus is talking about, and the “works” James refers to, are summarized like this:
Corporal Works of Mercy
feed the hungry. give water to the thirsty. clothe the naked. shelter the homeless. visit the sick. visit the imprisoned, ransom the captive. bury the dead.
Spiritual Works of Mercy
instruct the ignorant. counsel the doubtful. admonish the sinners. bear patiently those who wrong us. forgive offenses. comfort the afflicted. pray for the living and the dead.
If we live by these admonitions, we will find the Cross – but we will also surely find the Crown.
Poetry: Listen to RS Thomas read his own poem about the struggle to live a Christian life:
Music: Lose My Soul – TobyMac, a multi-award winning Christian hip-hop singer.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, two disciples of Jesus are our teachers. James advises us on what to do. Beloved Peter, as so often is the case, shows us what not to do.
James tells us to show no partiality. He makes clear that he is talking about impartiality toward those who are materially poor. It’s a maxim that Jesus gave us time and again in the Gospel.
James reminds us that Jesus is not just impartial toward those who are poor, he actually has a preferential love for them. So Jesus was partial to the poor, right? Hmm!
Yes, I think that’s right. In order to balance our human inclination to the richest, best, strongest, etc., Jesus teaches us to go all out in the other direction.
It’s like this great cartoon that popped up on Facebook a while ago:
Our Gospel picks up the theme.
Because of his great love for the poor and his passion for mercy, Jesus tells his followers that suffering is coming. Peter doesn’t like hearing that. Can you see Peter take Jesus aside and say, “Listen, Jesus, negative talk is going to hurt your campaign. You’re God! You can just zap suffering out of your life!”
Jesus responds to Peter definitively: “Get thee behind me, Satan!”
James Tissot: Get Thee Behind me, Satan
Wow! That must have stung! But that’s how important it was to Jesus that his followers understood his mission: to preach Mercy to the poor, sick, and broken by sharing and transforming their experience.
Jesus wants us to understand that too.
Prose: from St. Oscar Romero
It is no honor for the Church to be on good terms with the powerful. The honor of the Church consists in this, that the poor feel at home in her, that she fulfils her mission on earth, that she challenges everyone, the rich as well, to repent and work out their salvation, but starting from the world of the poor, for they, they alone are the ones who are blessed.
Lavish Mercy 