Jesus began to reproach the towns where most of his mighty deeds had been done, since they had not repented. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes. Matthew 11:20-21
Chorazin and Bethsaida were privileged. They had been blessed to see God’s power miraculously displayed in Jesus. And yet they failed to believe! How can that be? Hard-heartedness? Stupidity?
I think that, more likely, it was fear – the woeful condition that holds us back from giving ourselves to the truth. What would be required of them if they believed? What changes would they have to make in their lives? How would their comfortable world be turned upside-down?
Repentance: that would be the fruit of faith in Jesus. Many of them just couldn’t face it.
Today in God’s Lavish Mercy:
How committed is my faith? How is the Truth of Jesus alive in my life? What repentance, large or small, do I need to offer God?
Poetry: Savior – Maya Angelou
Petulant priests, greedy centurions, and one million incensed gestures stand between your love and me.
Your agape sacrifice is reduced to colored glass, vapid penance, and the tedium of ritual.
Your footprints yet mark the crest of billowing seas but your joy fades upon the tablets of ordained prophets.
Visit us again, Savior. Your children, burdened with disbelief, blinded by a patina of wisdom, carom down this vale of fear. We cry for you although we have lost your name.
Jesus said to his Apostles: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household. Matthew 10:34-36
I would not have liked hearing these words from Jesus, would you? The last thing I would have ever wanted was to be set against my precious mother! So WHAT is Jesus talking about?
These words are central to Christ’s mandate to his disciples. He is telling them that they will inevitably meet painful conflict while living out his mission. Sometimes the conflict will even be within their families and among their friends.
This is because God’s Peace is not quiet indifference but the striving for just equanimity for all people. This is the sword of discipleship – we must cut ourselves away from anything that turns us from a just and merciful God.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, We pray for graced insight that we may see where the sword is pointing in our lives, and for courage that we may do the necessary cutting to be worthy disciples and build an honest peace in our world.
Poetry: Swords Into Plowshares – Daniel Berrigan, SJ This poem was written in response to the conviction of the Plowshares Eight, of whom Berrigan was a member, for their civil disobedience against nuclear war.
In all wisdom and insight, God has made known to us the mystery of the Divine Will in accord with the favor set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth. Ephesians 1:9-10
In this tiny passage from Ephesians, Paul describes infinite realities – that our Creator has shared with us a Divine Mystery that we will never fully understand in this life. The Mystery has been embodied in the life and Person of Jesus Christ so that we may see and imitate what Divine Love looks like. That alignment with Love is the Will of our God for us.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ask that our simple faith may open itself to the Mystery of God’s Love. God is not a problem to be solved. Nor are God’s ways fully comprehensible to us. But Jesus has lived Love in our midst so that we can see the only thing we need to understand.
Poetry: Love’s Choice – Malcolm Guite
This bread is light, dissolving, almost air, A little visitation on my tongue, A wafer-thin sensation, hardly there. This taste of wine is brief in flavour, flung A moment to the palate’s roof and fled, Even its aftertaste a memory. Yet this is how He comes. Through wine and bread Love chooses to be emptied into me. He does not come in unimagined light Too bright to be denied, too absolute For consciousness, too strong for sight, Leaving the seer blind, the poet mute; Chooses instead to seep into each sense, To dye himself into experience.
Music: The Mystery – Michael Card and John Michael Talbot
Could you be findin’ the mystery You have been lookin’ for A kingdom where servants will come to be kings Are you lookin’ for And you’ll know That the sweet paradoxes unfold And the mystery will clearly show And you’ll know And you’ll know
Jesus, paint my life (Could you be findin’ the mystery) Jesus, paint my life (Could you be findin’ the mystery) Jesus, paint my life (Could you be findin’ the mystery)
And we know You are the Master of painters Comin’ the true Prince of Peace And we know You are the Tue Creator Comin’ the King of kings
Jesus, paint my life with charity Paint my life with mercy Paint my life
Can you be the light of the world Can you be the light Then take the light that’s given to you Can you be the light
Can you give your love to the world Can you give your love Take the love that’s given to you Can you give your love
Jesus, paint my life with charity Paint my life with mercy Paint my life Paint my life
Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time July 10, 2024
Jesus sent out these Twelve after instructing them thus, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” Matthew 10: 5-7
In this passage, Jesus is concerned with those who were offered faith in One God but have lost touch with it — “lost sheep of the house of Israel”. He wants these lost believers to be given the message, “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
While the message conveys a sense of urgency (Hurry up and get your act together), it also offers a calming security. When something is “at hand”, we can touch it. We can hold on to it for balance. We can feel support and accompaniment as we we hold hands with a Loving Presence.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We may hear Jesus’s words either as a warning or an invitation to intimacy. Love is at hand for us, even if our faith has become distracted and our direction “lost”. We are invited to reach out to the God Who waits for us.
Poetry:
“The Beloved is with you in the midst of your seeking! God holds your hand wherever you wander.
Rumi
Music: Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand – Jennie Bain Wilson (1857) Sung here by Lynda Randle
Time is filled with swift transition, Naught of earth unmoved can stand, Build your hopes on things eternal, Hold to God’s unchanging hand. Refrain: Hold to God’s unchanging hand, Hold to God’s unchanging hand; Build your hopes on things eternal, Hold to God’s unchanging hand.
Trust in Him who will not leave you, Whatsoever years may bring, If by earthly friends forsaken Still more closely to Him cling.
When your journey is completed, If to God you have been true, Fair and bright the home in glory Your enraptured soul will view.
Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, and curing every disease and illness. At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:32-38
Have you ever felt your heart constrict or your belly drop in the face of deep sadness or shock? If so, you have felt “splancha”, the Greek word for that profound compassion that wells up from our innards for the sake of a suffering person.
Matthew tells us that Jesus felt “splancha” for the crowds because they were troubled and abandoned. They had lost their way to God and had no one to help them find it. Thus he reaches out to heal and teach them about God’s Lavish Mercy.
Today, in that same Lavish Mercy: By the grace of God may we, and all who are in need of grace, be healed of trouble and abandonment to find our way to God through the Mercy of Jesus.
Poetry: Mercy by John F. Dean
Unholy we sang this morning, and prayed as if we were not broken, crooked the Christ-figure hung, splayed on bloodied beams above us; devious God, dweller in shadows, mercy on us; immortal, cross-shattered Christ— your gentling grace down upon us.
Music: Merciful God – The Gettys and Stuart Townend
The disciples of John approached Jesus and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” Matthew 9:14-17
Jesus tells the Baptist’s questioning disciples that his is a new world. The confines of the Old Law will no longer contain the new grace of the Paschal Mystery and the Gospel.
Old wineskins become brittle with overuse. The analogy is applicable to many realities in life. Often, as time passes, we pay less attention to some important things or people. We may take them for granted, over-depend on their effectiveness, fail to effectively communicate, surrender to that famous “contemptuous familiarity”.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: Immobilizing constriction can affect our faith too. Jesus encourages us to keep faith “fresh” by prayer, communal reflection, and practice. Neither our personal nor our communal faith is static. Grace offers us the invitation to become ever deeper in our understanding of God. The current Synodal process within the Catholic Church is a wonderful example of openness to fresh, new “wineskins” for our faith.
Poetry: Wine Skins – Evelyn McNulta This is a simple poem with devout sentiments, but what struck me most about it is where I found it – in a public newspaper, The Atlanta Chronicle. The poem reminded me of a poet some of my older local readers might remember – James Metcalfe. His “Daily Poem Portraits” were published in The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin during the 1950s. They were a great favorite of my Dad.
My hands are uplifted in homage to Him, They're not empty. They hold loosely those sins that cause separation of His spirit and mine.
Dear Father, take them and fill me with new wine. The wine skins of my life are brittle and hard, They can't hold your new wine because they are marred. Please replace them with supple new skins
That can be distended again and again. These wine skins are vessels that hold Your concerns, Help me remember the things I have learned. The more I am emptied of selfish desires,
The more You can cleanse me with Your cleansing fire. You'll burn away malice, ill-temper and greed, And open my eyes to Your people in need. You'll put unforgiveness also in Your fire,
And fill my heart with the burning desire To worship, to honor, to praise Your dear name. Your new wine remakes hearts, they're never the same. Take mine, Holy Father, change what you will,
I'm nothing without You, I need You to fill Each crevice, and corner and nook of my heart. There's much to be changed, I'm asking, please start.
Our Gospel today recounts the call of Matthew to be Jesus’ disciple. The master artist Caravaggio has beautifully captured that “Who me?” moment. We see the summoning hand of Jesus out of the shadows on the right. Matthew and his companion are flushed with Light. Matthew, on the left, points to his chest in the implied question, “Are you talking to me?”.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: Yes, God is talking to me. Do I see God’s Presence, perhaps out of the shadowy circumstances of my life? Do I listen? What do I hear? Do I follow?.
Matthew stood right up and followed. What can we learn from him?
Poetry: The Calling of St. Matthew – James Lasdun
Not the abrupt way, frozen In the one glance of a painter’s frame Christ in the doorway pointing. Matthew’s face Bright with perplexity, the glaze Of a lifetime at the countinghouse Cracked in the split second’s bolt of being chosen.
But over the years, slowly, Hinted at, an invisible curve; Persistent bias always favoring Backwardly the relinquished thing Over the kept, the gold signet ring Dropped in a beggar’s bowl, the eye not fully
Comprehending the hand, not yet; Heirloom damask thrust in a passing Stranger’s hand, the ceremonial saddle (Looped coins, crushed clouds of inline pearl) Given on an irresistible impulse to a servant. Where it sat
A saddle-shaped emptiness Briefly, obscurely brimming … Flagons Cellars of wine, then as impulse steadied into habit, habit to need, Need to compulsion, the whole vineyard The land itself, graves, herds, the ancestral house,
Given away, each object’s Hollowed-out void successively More vivid in him than the thing itself, As if renouncing merely gave Density to having; as if He’s glimpsed in nothingness a derelict’s
Secret of unabated, Inverse possession … And only then, Almost superfluous, does the figure Step softly to the shelter door; Casual, foreknown, almost familiar, Calmly received, like someone long awaited.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But Thomas said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” John 20:25
There’s that tiny word for which, despite a magnanimously holy life, Thomas remains famous:
Unless …
At that particular moment in his life, Thomas’s faith was conditional. He would not believe Jesus was alive unless he saw and touched him.
I doubt that Thomas was alone in his “conditionality”. The faith of many of those scared disciples was probably a bit shaky. Thomas was just more forthcoming in his doubts and hadn’t, like some of them, already seen the Risen Lord.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We all know what it’s like to have doubts – about big things, like our faith, and about little things like our appearance. It feels like we’re being dropped into a safety net that might have a hole in it. Will it hold, or will it fall through? And what happens to us in either case!
Decades ago, when I taught eighth grade, one of my brightest students asked me this: “Sister, you’ve dedicated your whole life for the faith. What if, in the end, there is no God or heaven?”
I’m not going to tell you my answer. I’m going to suggest that you consider what your own answer would be. Is your faith conditional or unconditional?
Poetry: St. Thomas the Apostle – Bishop Edward Henry Bickersteth (1825-1906)
The Paschal feast was ended. Multitudes, Unweeting what was done, that day had left The gates of Zion for their far-off homes; And there was silence, where but yesterday Had been the hum of thousands. Olivet Slept calmly underneath the waning moon, And darkening shadows fell across the steeps And hollows of Jerusalem. Deep night Had drench'd the eyes of thousands. But, behold, Within the upper room where Jesus broke The bread of life, and pour'd the mystic wine The night before He suffer'd, once again The little band of those who loved Him most Were gather'd. On the morrow morn they thought To leave the holy city, holier now Than ever in their eyes, and go to meet Their Lord upon the Galilean hill.
All bosoms swell'd with gladness, all save one; One heart amid that group of light and love Was desolate and dark: nine weary days Of doubt, which shadow'd all eternity, Had written years of suffering on his brow. The worst he fear'd to him was realized, Life quench'd, for ever quench'd, and death supreme. Jesus was dead. And vainly others told, How they had seen and heard their risen Lord; Himself had seen the lifeless body hang Upon the cross; and, till he saw like them And like them touch'd the prints in hands and side, He would not, for he could not, hope again.
But there has been enough of sorrow now For that true mourner, sorely tried but true: And as they communed of an absent Lord Jesus was there, though doors were shut and barr'd, There in the midst of them; and from His lips, Who is Himself our Peace, the words of peace Fell as of old like dew on every heart, But surely sweetest, calmest, tenderest On one most torn and tost. The waves were still; Day broke; the shadows fled: nor this alone, Love offer'd all which bitterest grief had ask'd, And laying bare the inly bleeding wound Heal'd it, which haply else had bled afresh In after years, till faith adoring claim'd In One, whom sense no longer sought to touch, The Lord of life, the everlasting God.
O Master, though our eyes have never look'd Upon Thy blessèd face and glorious form, Grant us to trust Thee with a perfect trust, And love Thee and rejoice in Thee unseen, And prove the heaven of Thy beatitude On those who, though they see Thee not, believe.
Music: When I Survey The Wondrous Cross – Keith & Kristyn Getty
A scribe approached and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” But Jesus answered him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.” Matthew 8: 19-22
The scribe. What was Jesus driving home to this learned interpreter of the Law who now bursts with enthusiasm for discipleship? Perhaps Jesus looked up to a small nest in a nearby tree. Maybe he pointed to it and told the scribe, ” You have to spread your wings and fly with God if you follow me!”
Basically, I think Jesus is saying this:
Think about it. It’s a way very different from your present comfortable life.
We are itinerant preachers, going out to the whole world. We are not intrenched in the Law, commanding people to come to us.
Even the core responsibilities to which you are devoted will be secondary to your Gospel ministry.
The whole foundation of your life will be turned upside-down.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We want to serve God by living the Gospel with a steadfast and enthusiastic heart. We pray for the grace and courage to do so, understanding clearly where our first responsibilities lie as a committed Christian.
Prose from: The Wisdom of the Carpenter by Ron Miller
Jesus walked the earth as a homeless vagrant and identified his disciples by their concern for the most marginalized people in the community. It’s such a simple criterion and yet one so easily forgotten. Daily Prayer: Help me to be especially attentive to You today in those who have so little of the world’s wealth.
Music: He Had Not Where To Lay His Head Score: Alison Willis Text:Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825 – 1911)
Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. Matthew 7:24-25
When the storm comes, who doesn’t want their house to be built on rock – steady, constant, imperturbable ROCK! But take a good look at the picture above. How hard do you think it was for the builders to:
penetrate that rock for a new foundation
transport and maintain building materials on to that precipice
Jesus recognizes that such commitment is not easy, but the rewards are incomparable. He teaches the people that empty proclamations will not sustain a spiritual life. Such stability is achieved only by committed “building” – by opening ourselves to God’s word and acting on it.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We pray for the courage and vision to sincerely engage God’s word by our actions for mercy and justice.
Poetry: Psalm 18 – interpreted by Christine Robinson
I open my heart to you, O God for you are my strength, my fortress, the rock on whom I build my life. I have been lost in my fears and my angers caught up in falseness, fearful, and furious I cried to you in my anguish. You have brought me to an open space. You saved me because you took delight in me.
I try to be good, to be just, to be generous to walk in your ways. I fail, but you are my lamp. You make my darkness bright With your help, I continue to scale the walls and break down the barriers that fragment me. I would be whole, and happy, and wise and know your love Always.
Music: O Lord, My Rock and My Redeemer – Prayers of the Saints Alive
Lavish Mercy 