Today, in Mercy, our readings are about being at home with God.
In our passage from 2 Samuel, a highly anthropomorphized God informs David that He is sick of living in a tent while being carried to and fro. God goes on to recount for David all that God has done for him, demonstrating that David can fully trust God.
God wants a home. In other words, it’s time to make a permanent commitment and “move in together” into each other’s hearts.
In today’s Gospel, we find the familiar story of the Sower and the Seed. While the story doesn’t specifically mention “home”, Jesus indicates that only those “at home” with God’s Word will understand the true meaning of the parables.
You may have had the joy of visiting friends who greet you with the invitation, “Make yourself at home”. These friends will have done everything they can to make that possible – clean house, fresh bed linens, your brand of coffee, your favorite meals. They want you to be completely comfortable for your stay.
Well, God wants to stay forever within us. And God wants us to stay forever in God. That mutuality of homecoming is the whole purpose of our lives.
We know how to create this sacred hospitality for our friends. Let today’s reading remind us to do this for God as well by:
“learning” God within the Sacred Word of scripture
joy and awe at God’s desire to be with us
attention to those tendernesses that invite and welcome God
continual gratitude for God’s Presence
delighting God by our acts of love and hospitality
Music: Welcome to My Heart – Dean Martin
(Even though the song was not directed toward God, it works for me. I hope it does for you too.)
(Sorry for the late post. I had a brief episode of social life this afternoon. 🙂 )
Today, in Mercy, our readings talk about the polar opposites of unity and division.
Our first reading gives us David, embraced by his kinsmen, and anointed King. Strong in his unified reign, David leads his people to victory over all their enemies. His is the idyllic kingdom – the “Camelot” of the Old Testament.
Then Mark gives us Jesus, of whom David was but a pale foreshadowing. Today’s passage follows the incident in which Jesus’s kinsmen, rather than embrace him, try to “seize”him because they think he’s “out of his mind”.
Clearly, the Kingdom of Mercy for sinners and outcasts is not as acceptable as David’s kingdom of prosperity and military might. Jesus had a hard sell on his hands as his listeners have their old definitions and expectations shattered. His family can’t accept his challenge – they think he’s crazy. And now his neighbors say he is possessed by the devil!
Pretty dispiriting for Jesus, right?
No way! Here, very early in Mark, Jesus – despite challenge – emerges as “the stronger one”:
But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man.
Jesus’s strength lies in his Oneness with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Divine Community that embraces and inspires his mission. Human rejection, even in the ultimate form of Calvary, will not change or diminish his Truth.
When Jesus talks about blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, it is that kind of rejection he is describing – that place where a human heart is hardened against an abandonment to grace.
Here the sin is unforgivable because those who charge Jesus
with demonic possession see goodness as evil, and therefore
are closed to the action of God’s Spirit. This makes sense for
Mark’s readers only in terms of the preceding narrative
where Jesus, endowed with the Spirit, preaches the good news of God. The unforgivable sin in biblical thought is similar to “hardness of heart”.
The Gospel of Mark ~ John R. Donahue, SJ, Daniel J. Harrington, SJ
Today’s Gospel reminds us to continually purify that inner heart where God wants to dwell in us. The demons that would petrify us are often more subtle than the ones in our Gospel story. They masquerade under the guise of a false “gospel” that fails to require our inner conversion to mercy, justice and love.
May we pray with today’s Responsorial Psalm that God’s faithfulness and mercy guide us as we seek to deepen in the Mystery of Christ.
Today, in Mercy, our readings are all about redemption… and what a free and glorious gift it is.
How thrilling are these verses?
Anguish has taken wing, dispelled is darkness: for there is no gloom where but now there was distress. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.
When I read them, I so much want to meet Isaiah, to get him to sign my Bible, to come to my house for soup and bread! Because he is filled with hope and exultation at the Mercy of God, just like I want my life to be!
Paul, sensing some jealous competition in his Corinthian buddies, tells them — Get a grip! You are obsessing over incidentals when we have been redeemed and made one in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ!
Then, when I read these beautiful, lilting lines in the Gospel …
He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, that what had been said through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled:
Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light,
on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death
light has arisen.
…I so want to go live with Jesus too, right there on Capernaum’s shores, because he was the very House of Mercy inviting us all to dwell anew in him.
Jesus is the Living Redemption prophesied by Isaiah. He is the reason Paul turned his life upside down. Jesus is the Great Light in our darkness.
Today, in Mercy, we ride with Paul on the road to Damascus, there to be struck with him by a Godly Light.
The Conversion of St. Paul — Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Have you ever been knocked off your “high horse” by the sudden realization of something to which you had been totally blind? It’s shocking, isn’t it?
We might react by castigating ourselves with remarks like:
How could I have missed that?
Wow, I was really stupid, or foolish, or naïve, or prejudiced, or misled, or … or what?
God, in a kind of ironic twist, strikes Paul blind in order to cure him of his real blindness: the right he claimed to persecute others for a faith he didn’t understand.
Sometimes God has to be pretty tough with us to wake us up to the truth of our souls. John Donne, the pre-eminent English metaphysical poet, prayed for that kind of Divine Toughness in his poem Batter my heart, three-personed God.
Since I have blogged twice previously about this feast,
I thought my readers might like to pray with Donne’s poem, read by Tom O’Bedlam
Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person’d God
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp’d town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain, But am betroth’d unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Here also is a musical interpretation of the poem.
The University of South Florida Chamber Singers perform Richard Nance’s “Batter my heart” under the direction of Dr. James Bass
Today, in Mercy, our first reading is stuff worthy of an action movie! Even today, in my seventh decade, I remember the first time I heard it as a spellbound child. Could young, virtually unarmed David really conquer a GIANT!
Wrapped in the story, of course, is the spiritual nugget we are meant to take to our own heart:
…thus the whole land shall learn that Israel has a God. All this multitude, too, shall learn that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves. For the battle is the LORD’s and he shall deliver you into our hands.
We have battles of every description all around us: military, political, economic, cultural, moral, and personal. Today’s Day of Prayer highlights one of those battles – the right to life for unborn children.
On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in favor of Roe that held that women in the United States have a fundamental right to choose whether or not to have abortions without excessive government restriction, and struck down Texas’s abortion ban as unconstitutional. (Wikipedia)
Since that fateful day, many people of faith, and certainly the Catholic Church, have fought this decision. It has been a contentious and divisive battle which has divided people into pro and anti-abortion factions.
From my perspective, one unfortunate dimension of the situation is an insufficient effort by Catholic bishops to provide wholistic definition, research, teaching, and support to Catholics on the moral imperative for the right to life in all its aspects.
Episcopal support for right to life often degenerates into a single-issue approach which fails to instruct on other life issues such as war, death penalty, poverty, adequate health care, civil and women’s rights, and environmental justice.
At the same time, morality statements around these issues often fail to address legitimate concerns around birth control, maternity care, newborn nutritional programs, and other issues parents struggle with.
Probably what most infuriates me is the political hijacking of this single issue by those whose own moral and policy choices mock a comprehensive culture of life.
Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister said this in a 2004 interview:
“I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”
Personally, I am deeply opposed to abortion. And I am just as deeply opposed to an inconsistent morality and a policy-making which isolates this issue to the point of stagnating ignorance and indifference on other critical life issues.
A phrase in today’s Gospel struck me as I prayed on these things. Perhaps it will strike you as well:
Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath
rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?
Jesus acknowledges that finding moral perfection requires a balancing of goods, some of which are weightier than others. The Sabbath laws were designed to foster the spiritual life. But if their observance consigns this crippled man to hopelessness, have the laws met their goal?
If indeed a life is saved from abortion, society must continue to save that life by fostering a culture which supports it for ALL of its life..
Some of us begin this day simply grateful for a holiday. Perhaps some of us forget, or some are too young to remember, how this “holiday” came to be.
But there are some among us who are old enough to remember his actual voice; to have listened — live – on that sweltering August day in 1963 when he inspired us with the words:
I have a dream.
There are some of us who saw him stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on that golden day, the personification of President Lincoln’s vision of justice and equality.
There are some of us who listened and watched every step he took, every prayer he said, every challenge he met with equanimity and courage.
There are some of us who remember the very night he told us:
I have been to the mountaintop and I have seen the Promised Land.
I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know that we,
as a people,
will get to the promised land.
There was a whole world of us who cried when he was martyred the very next day.
Monday is no mere holiday. It is the commemoration of a giant soul who changed the world forever. And he did it not in the way that many have done it throughout history — through wars and conquest.
Martin Luther King changed the world by non-violent protest, by a leadership of love, by a faith that endures beyond the assassin’s gun.
Say his name in reverence on this commemorative day. He has given all of us — no matter our color — the hope of a more human existence. If you have not had the gift of living in his time, ask your elders who remember his face, his sound, his power to tell you the story of the freedom God gave each of us.
In his memory, and to continue to realize his dream, we might consider these 12 steps to non-violence for our own lives.
12 Steps to Non-Violence
Acknowledge your powerlessness — that our lives/culture are co-opted by subversive and pervasive violence
Believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to right relationship.
Decide to turn our will and our lives over to that Power.
Examine fearlessly our own violent inclinations.
Admit to that Power, to ourselves and to another person the exact nature of our own violence.
Be open to have that inclination removed.
Ask to have all violence removed from our hearts and actions.
List all persons to whom we have been violent by word or deed and be willing to make amends to them.
Amend directly to these people wherever possible and prudent.
Self-examine continuously; promptly admit recurring violence in ourselves.
Seek through prayer and meditation to know the nature of Peace and Mercy.
Carry the message of non-violence to others and practice it in all our interactions.
Music: “Abraham, Martin and John” is a 1968 song written by Dick Holler and sung here by Marvin Gaye. It is a tribute to the memory of four assassinated Americans, all icons of social change: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. It was written in response to the assassination of King and that of Robert Kennedy in April and June 1968, respectively. (Wikipedia)
The song reflects the mix of awe, hope, sorrow and disappointment the nation felt in those tumultuous times.
Today, in Mercy, as we memorialize the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., our readings speak about leadership and its continuing call to renew the world in the image of its Creator.
In our first reading, Samuel relays God’s displeasure to Saul who, though a conquering hero, has failed in humility and obedience before the Lord.
In the story, God has given a clear direction to Saul to obliterate Israel’s centuries-old enemy, the Amalekites. Instead Saul, after executing the masses, keeps the enemy king alive as a war trophy. He appropriates the cattle as personal spoil. He also sets up a shrine to commemorate the victory as his own.
God is not happy. When we profess to lead in God’s name we must act as God directs us. In order to understand God’s direction, we must cultivate an honest, just and merciful heart.
Martin Luther King was such a leader. By his faithful obedience to God’s inspiration, Martin, at the ultimate cost, turned the tides of history toward justice and freedom.
But the tides still need turning, because there will always be those who seek “war trophies”, and personal spoil, and domination for themselves. Our times are tortured by such selfish and failed leadership, just as all of history has been from ancient Israel until 1968 and until now.
Today, as we pray with this great prophet and leader, we ask that selfless, merciful and faith-impelled souls continue to hear the call to justice in our day. May Martin’s witness strengthen and inspire us.
Music: Precious Lord, Take My Hand – Mahalia Jackson (Lyrics below)
Per Dr. King’s request, his good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”, though not as part of the morning funeral service but later that day at a second open-air service at Morehouse College.
Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on through the light
Take my hand, precious Lord
And lead me home
When my way grows dreary
Precious Lord, lead me near
When my life is almost gone
At the river I will stand
Guide my feet, hold my hand
Take my hand, precious Lord
And lead me home
Today, in Mercy, our readings invite us to witness the debut of Jesus Christ as he begins his public ministry.The world has been waiting since the beginning of time and now… here He is!
Now the LORD has spoken who formed me as his servant from the womb, that Jacob may be brought back to him and Israel gathered to him; and I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD, and my God is now my strength!
Remember when Pope Francis visited Philadelphia in 2015? The excitement? The preparation? The fanfare? What was that all about?
from phillyvoice.com
I think that, in one form or another, we all wanted to see and be touched by goodness. We wanted to see someone who confirmed that the world could be better than our current experience. We wanted to see the beauty of God in a human being.
The people of Jesus’s time wanted the same things. They longed for a wholeness that was beyond their grasp. They longed for healing that had continually eluded them. They longed to be renewed in faith, hope and love.
That deep longing is universal in every human life. Seeing the Pope on the Parkway won’t fill it. Even seeing Jesus one afternoon in Capernaum won’t do that. Our Alleluia Verse from John’s Gospel tells us the only way to such fulfillment:
The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.
To those who accepted him,
he gave power to become children of God.
In our Gospel, we see John the Baptist’s full acceptance of Jesus into his life. After that moment in the Jordan River when the Spirit descended, John’s life changed. It became a life patterned on and completed in the reality of Jesus Christ, not only his expectation.
John changed because he saw and believed. Our Gospel today invites us to the same kind of witness and testimony in our lives:
John testified further, saying, “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven and remain upon him. I did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.
May God give us the grace to see and respond to the reality of Christ in our own lives – in the poor, the sick, the persecuted, those longing to know God. Drawing on the beautiful Light of Christ, may we also be a testimony to God’s Merciful Presence in our world.
Music: He Shall Come Again in Glory – Philip Webb (Lyrics below)
This majestic modern hymn proclaims the hope of Christ’s second coming. Crafted for success; the arrangement captures the mystery and majesty of the text and delivers it adroitly to the choir loft with full; satisfying harmonies.Powerful! (from the East Coast Music website)
He who wept above the grave
Who stilled the raging of the wave
Meek to suffering, strong to save,
He shall come again in glory
He who sorrow’s pathway trod
He that every good bestowed
Son of Man, Son of God,
He shall come again in glory.
He who bled with scourgings sore,
He who scarlet meekly wore,
He who every sorrow bore,
He shall come again in glory.
Monarch of the smitten cheek,
Scorn of Jew and scorn of Greek,
Priest and King divinely meek,
He shall come again glory.
He who died to set us free,
He Who comes whom I shall see,
Jesus, only, only He,
He shall ever reign in glory.
Today, in Mercy, Samuel anoints Saul King of Israel.
Then, from a flask he had with him, Samuel poured oil on Saul’s head; he also kissed him, saying: “The LORD anoints you commander over his heritage. You are to govern the LORD’s people Israel, and to save them from the grasp of their enemies.
Throughout Scripture, the act of anointing signifies being blessed, commissioned by grace. The sacred oil heals and strengthens the anointed to do the work of God.
We share in the grace of anointing through the sacraments – Baptism, Confirmation and Anointing of the Sick. We may not think about the power these rituals give us to live our lives in the pattern of Christ. But it is an amazing power which creates saints out of ordinary human beings like you and me!
Caritas, The Seven Acts of Mercy, pen and ink drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559. Counter-clockwise from lower right: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, ransom the captive, bury the dead, shelter the stranger, comfort the sick, and clothe the naked
In a less formal way, we can anoint one another by our acts of generosity, honesty, justice and love. Think of the woman who anointed Jesus with nard from her alabaster jar. How that act strengthened him for the suffering he had to face!
There are so many chaffed and sore places in our world awaiting the oil of mercy!
We can also “anoint” our own life by gratefully remembering God’s presence in our lives: the blessings we have received, the challenges we have gracefully met, the love we have both given and received – all that strengthened us to do the work of God over our lifetime.
1 Samuel 8:19 – Israel demands a king. J. Winter – from “The Bible and its Story” book, authored by Charles Horne, 1909
Today, in Mercy, our first reading startles us with how foolish the Israelites are about their leaders. Oh, wait a minute, why are we so surprised? Don’t we see the same dynamics all around us?
Israel is desperate for a “strong man” who will mimic the tyrants leading their enemies. They say a king will “rule us and to lead us in warfare and fight our battles.” They begin to envision a nation of their own design, not God’s.
They believe that having an absolute leader will make them strong. They are indifferent to Samuel’s warnings that such a choice will usurp their freedom, and lead to their devastation and enslavement.
This leaf is distinguished by a large initial P depicting Samuel, the last and one of the greatest of Israel’s judges. It introduces the text Preparte corda vestra domino et servite (“Prepare your hearts for the Lord and serve”). In the lower margin are the arms of the Visconti family, rulers of Milan, featuring an eagle (left) and a coiled serpent (right). At bottom center is the emblem of the Olivetan Order, a reformed branch of the Benedictines founded in 1319 known as the “white monks.” The Olivetan monastery in Milan was founded in 1400 and it appears that this leaf belonged to a set of choral books presented to the monastery by one of the Visconti, perhaps about 1439–47. The so-called Olivetan Master takes his name from a luxuriously illustrated psalter made for the order’s monastery in Milan, where he was undoubtedly a monk
God tells Samuel that, in rejecting the choice for responsible, spiritually-grounded, and mutually sustained leadership, the people are rejecting God and God’s plan for them.
In a nutshell, Israel’s problem is this: they have forgotten who and whose they are. For the sake of expected political dominance, they are willing to sacrifice their identity as a people formed and led by God.
Centuries later, in today’s Gospel, Jesus comes among these dispirited people. Their choice hasn’t worked. They are still a politically dominated nation. Their religious practice has lost its vigor, denigrating into lifeless rules and practices. A corrupt religious class manipulates them.
Jesus, ignoring their religiously manufactured limitations on the Spirit, cures a paralytic. The scribes are scandalized. But Jesus confronts their equivocation:
Jesus said, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth” –he said to the paralytic, “I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.” He rose, picked up his mat at once, and went away in the sight of everyone. They were all astounded and glorified God …
What would the world be like if we left ourselves so open to grace and mercy thatGod could work through us for the good of all Creation? Can we even imagine such freedom and trust? Can we even imagine the marriage of our faith and politics to the point that we all live for the common good?
In today’s Gospel, we find the familiar story of the Sower and the Seed. While the story doesn’t specifically mention “home”, Jesus indicates that only those “at home” with God’s Word will understand the true meaning of the parables.
Lavish Mercy 