Wednesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
October 14, 2020
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 1.
Patrick D. Miller, Hebrew Scriptures scholar, suggests that Psalm 1 “sets the agenda for the Psalter through its identification of the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked as well as their respective fates” along with “its emphasis on the Torah, the joy of studying it and its positive benefits for those who do“.
Blessed the one who follows not
Psalm 1:1-2
the counsel of the wicked
Nor walks in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the company of the insolent,
But delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on God’s law day and night.
What does it really mean to “meditate on God’s law day and night”? Become a monk? Read the Bible all day? Never sleep?
Of course not. I think it means to live in the firm belief that God is in everything, and to train our hearts to see and respond to that Omnipresent Love.
We all know people who, no matter the circumstances, are focused on good and radiate a joyful confidence. There is a light within them and a peace around them. The living of their ordinary lives is a meditation on God’s order in all things.
Such a person …
… is like a tree
Psalm 1:3
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever that faithful one does, prospers.
It doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges … even protests, righteous anger, sadness and pain. Think of Jesus as he overturned the Temple tables!
It means rather that the focus is never lost because …
my transliteration of Psalm 1:2
Creation’s sacred order is our Light;
and God’s law has taught ours hearts
to find our joy in its Beauty.
Let’s be that tree near
the running water of Grace!🙏
Poem: On Beauty by Khalil Gibran
And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.
And he answered:
Where shall you seek beauty, and how
shall you find her unless she herself be your
way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except
she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say,
“Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her
own glory she walks among us.”
And the passionate say, “Nay, beauty is
a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth
beneath us and the sky above us.”
The tired and the weary say, “Beauty is
of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint
light that quivers in fear of the shadow.”
But the restless say, “We have heard her
shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of
hoofs, and the beating of wings and
the roaring of lions.”
At night the watchmen of the city say,
“Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the
east.”
And at noontide the toilers and
the wayfarers say,
“We have seen her leaning over
the earth from the windows of the sunset.”
In winter say the snow-bound, “She shall
come with the spring leaping upon the hills.”
And in the summer heat the reapers say,
“We have seen her dancing with the autumn
leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.”
All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of
needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty
hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the
song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you
close your eyes and a song you hear though
you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark,
nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and
a flock of angels for ever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when
life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Music: I Delight in You, Lord – David Baroni
Lavish Mercy 