Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 103 whose verses this morning remind us of God’s munificence.
Munificent – it’s a wonderful word whose Latin roots literally mean gift-making, abundant generosity.
Merciful and gracious is the LORD, slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
Psalm 103:8
Praying this morning, I realize that I can’t even begin to number the gifts God has given me.
But like Moses in today’s first reading, I want to visit God in the sacred tent of prayer – learning, thanking and awakening to the Mercy in my life.
… and, like Moses, to invite God into every moment, to ask God to keep company with me on my journey:
Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship. Then he said, “If I find favor with you, O LORD, do come along in our company.
Poetry: Bearing the Light – Denise Levertov
Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds — the indivisible shared out in endless abundance.
Music: In the Garden – written by C. Austin Miles in 1912. Miles wrote nearly 400 hymns, this one the most famous.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 103, always a source of sweet reflection on God’s mercy.
From today’s verses, this line rings out:
All my being, bless God’s holy name.
Psalm 103:1
It’s a call to make our lives a total prayer – every moment lived in and with the Presence of God.
The truth is that this is already our reality. God is present to our every moment because it is God’s Life which breathes within us.
The psalm’s call is really to our awareness – the mandate fully to realize that God is living God’s life through us.
The psalm tells us to remember that, in order to so live in us, God is continually merciful. And so God:
pardons all our iniquities
heals all your ills
redeems our life from destruction
and ultimately crowns us with kindness and compassion.
In other words, when we are open to Grace, God makes the best even of our mistakes – always allowing us repent, change, and deepen in love and mercy.
God redeems our life from every darkness and crowns us with mercy and compassion, God fills our days with light, renews our young enthusiasm with the eagle’s strength.
Psalm 103:3-5
Poetry: The Presence of Love – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
And in Life's noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy. You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within; And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulse's beat; You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light, Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake. And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you, How oft! I bless the Lot that made me love you.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 33 in which the psalmist is clearly awestruck by both the power and the mercy of God. It is a prayer of radical awareness that God is Creator and we are creature.
According to Walter Brueggemann, Psalm 33 describes Yahweh as the settled sovereign, securely in control, who need only speak to have the command fulfilled.
The psalm has two divisions. In part one, the community is called to praise God because God deserves it.
Rejoice, you righteous, in the LORD; praise from the upright is fitting.
Give thanks to the LORD on the harp; on the ten-stringed lyre offer praise.
Sing to God a new song; skillfully play with joyful chant.
For the LORD’s word is upright; and works are trustworthy.
Psalm 33: 1-4
In part two, that praise is articulated by recounting God’s caring intervention in the community’s experience.
From heaven the LORD looks down and observes the children of Adam,
From that dwelling place surveying all who dwell on earth.
The One who fashioned together their hearts and who knows all their works.
Psalm 33: 13-15
Psalm 33 can be summarized in this way:
Because Yahweh rules with righteousness, justice, and unfailing love, we must worship Yahweh with songs and praise and by rejecting all false sources of salvation.
Lynn Jost, Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies – Tabor College, Kansas
Praying Psalm 33 reminds me that one can never demand mercy. We cannot require the other to hold us in continual compassion. We can only hope and be grateful.
Mercy is the gift of a heart moved beyond itself by love and tenderness. Such outpouring is the very nature of God in whose image we are created.
Thus for God, and for us, to be unmerciful is to be unnatural. In Psalm 33, we pray not only to receive mercy, but to become mercy.
Psalm 33 closes with a plea for our hearts to be deepened in their affinity to God, to mirror God by our patience, joy, hope, and mercy.
Our soul waits for the LORD, Who is our help and shield.
For in God our hearts rejoice; in God’s holy name we trust.
May your mercy, LORD, be upon us; as we put our hope in you.
Psalm 33: 20-22
Poetry: To Live in the Mercy of God BY DENISE LEVERTOV
To lie back under the tallest oldest trees. How far the stems rise, rise before ribs of shelter open! To live in the mercy of God. The complete sentence too adequate, has no give. Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of stony wood beneath lenient moss bed. And awe suddenly passing beyond itself. Becomes a form of comfort. Becomes the steady air you glide on, arms stretched like the wings of flying foxes. To hear the multiple silence of trees, the rainy forest depths of their listening. To float, upheld, as salt water would hold you, once you dared. . To live in the mercy of God. To feel vibrate the enraptured waterfall flinging itself unabating down and down to clenched fists of rock. Swiftness of plunge, hour after year after century, O or Ah uninterrupted, voice many-stranded. To breathe spray. The smoke of it. Arcs of steelwhite foam, glissades of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion— rage or joy? Thus, not mild, not temperate, God’s love for the world. Vast flood of mercy flung on resistance.
Music: As you listen to David Arkenstone’s instrumental, you may want to remember Shakespeare’s famous description of mercy. See below the music.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 17, a prayer which captures our deep desire to live in the Light of God’s Face.
We, like the psalmist and like Jacob in our first reading, want to know, to understand, to name the Holy in our experience.
From you let my judgment come; your eyes behold what is right. Though you test my heart, searching it in the night, though you try me with fire, you shall find no malice in me.
Psalm 17:6-7
When Jacob struggles with the heavenly visitor, he wants a blessing and the visitor’s name. Jacob wants to define what has happened to him in the night.
The man then said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
Genesis 32:27-28
The Spirit does bless Jacob, but remains nameless, beyond the confines of Jacob’s definition. It is only after the visitor has departed that Jacob realizes whom he has encountered:
With that, the visitor bade him farewell. Jacob named the place Peniel, “Because I have seen God face to face,” he said, “yet my life has been spared.”
Genesis 32:30-31
In our own lives, Heaven visits us constantly though we may be unaware. Discovering God’s Face depends so much on where we look and how we have learned to see.
Psalm 17 tells us that, if we stand in the light of justice and mercy, God’s face is revealed to us.
This was the light in which Jesus lived – to the point that, as we read in today’s Gospel, he could discover God’s face even under the guise of a poor demoniac.
Poetry: God BY KAHLIL GIBRAN
In the ancient days, when the first quiver of speech came to my lips, I ascended the holy mountain and spoke unto God, saying, “Master, I am thy slave. Thy hidden will is my law and I shall obey thee for ever more.”
But God made no answer, and like a mighty tempest passed away.
And after a thousand years I ascended the holy mountain and again spoke unto God, saying, “Creator, I am thy creation. Out of clay hast thou fashioned me and to thee I owe mine all.”
And God made no answer, but like a thousand swift wings passed away.
And after a thousand years I climbed the holy mountain and spoke unto God again, saying, “Father, I am thy child. In pity and love thou hast given me birth, and through love and worship I shall inherit thy kingdom.”
And God made no answer, and like the mist that veils the distant hills he passed away.
And after a thousand years I climbed the sacred mountain and again spoke unto God, saying, “My God, my aim and my fulfillment; I am thy yesterday and thou are my tomorrow. I am thy root in the earth and thou art my flower in the sky, and together we grow before the face of the sun.”
Then God leaned over me, and in my ears whispered words of sweetness, and even as the sea that enfoldeth a brook that runneth down to her, he enfolded me. And when I descended to the valleys and the plains God was there also.
Music:
We behold the splendor of God shining on the face of Jesus. We behold the splendor of God shining on the face of the Son.
[Verse1] And oh, how his beauty transforms us, the wonder of presence abiding. Transparent hearts give reflection of Tabor’s light within, of Tabor’s light within.
(Repeat Chorus)
[Verse 2] Jesus, Lord of Glory, Jesus, Beloved Son, oh, how good to be with you; ow good to share your light; how good to share your light.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with the beautiful Psalm 91, so full of images to help us experience the steadfast tenderness of God.
Our Gospel shows us this tender mercy in the story of Jesus and two complementary healings – the woman who suffered for twelve years, and the young girl who has lived only twelve years.
In both cases Jesus, by a touch received or given, gathers a broken soul under Mercy’s wing. In the mystery of that grace-filled shade, the soul is restored to the fullness of Light.
As we pray Psalm 91 today let us, like the Gospel’s woman and young girl, reach for any healing and wholeness we long for.
Is there something in us that has died too soon and longs to be reborn?
Is there something crippled in us that longs to leap once more and run free?
May we find new life under God’s infinitely caring wing which ever hovers over us in love.
Poetry: A video mix of Rumi and Hafiz, a dynamite combo!
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 123.
… eyes fixed on the Lord, pleading for mercy.
Psalm 123:2
This starkly passionate response, repeated throughout the psalm, struck an image in my imagination – an ardent tango with the Beloved, eyes fixed in hope.
Often in my prayer I just dance or sing with God – sometimes with sound and movement, sometimes in still silence. The dances are varied depending on the prayer and the day’s circumstances.
Today’s readings, filled with Israel’s resistance, Paul’s thorn, and Nazarene recalcitrance drew an energetic tango in my mind.
It is a dance between Mercy and Resistance. In my prayer, I searched for where that dance resides in me.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 117. We do so in the spirit of Thomas, who now offers his unquestioning faith to our patient and forgiving Jesus.
Praise the LORD, all you nations; glorify him, all you peoples! For steadfast is his kindness for us, and the fidelity of the LORD endures forever
Psalm 117: 1-2
Faith is not a commodity or an achievement. Faith is relationship and a journey.
It is a gift and an exercise of grace. Never stretched, it withers like a brittle ligament.
It ebbs and flows with our personal and communal dramas. It deepens with prayer, silent reaching, and a listening obedience to our lives. It shallows with our demands, like Thomas’s, only to see and to touch.
It is fed by the Lavish Mercy of God Who never cuts its flow to our souls if we but take down the seawall around our heart.
On this day when we celebrate the power of tested and proven faith, may we bring our needs into the circle gathered in that Upper Room.
Standing beside Thomas today in our prayer, may we place our trust in the glorified wounds of Christ.
A video today for our prayer: Blessed Are They That Have Not Seen
Music: Healing Touch – Deuter
As we reach out in faith with Thomas to touch Christ’s wounds, let us open our hearts to receive the returning touch of God’s Lavish Mercy.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 106 which is a prayerful inventory of Israel’s long story with God. In today’s liturgy, the psalm follows a similar Genesis recounting of the story of the Abraham-Sarah family.
These two readings remind me of my own family as we have gathered, in our many configurations, over the seven decades of my life. For many early years, I was the listener to the old tales and legends. Gradually, as new generations were born, I became a guardian and teller of our history.
Psalmist 106 is a teller of Israel’s many ups and downs to the place where they now find themselves. By remembering both the darkness and light, the calms and the storms, our psalm testifies to God’s faithful and enduring mercy.
Blessed are they who observe what is right, who do always what is just. Remember us, O LORD, as you favor your people.
That testimony encourages the listeners that this faithful God can be trusted now and in the future – to abide, forgive, renew, and call believers.
It holds out for us a heritage of fidelity promising to bless the generations with whom we share it.
If you sat down with your life at the table of holy memory, what would your stories be? What storms and rainbows mark your journey? How would your psalm of memory and gratitude read? How is your faith life transmitting this heritage to the next generations?
Visit me with your saving help, That I may see the prosperity of your chosen ones, rejoice in the joy of your people, and glory with your inheritance.
Poetry: Naked Truth – A Jewish tale retold as a poem by Heather Forest
Naked Truth walked down the street one day.
People turned their eyes away.
Parable arrived, draped in decoration.
People greeted Parable with celebration.
Naked Truth sat alone, sad and unattired,
“Why are you so miserable?” Parable inquired.
Naked Truth replied, “I’m not welcome anymore.
No one wants to see me. They chase me from the door.”
“It is hard to look at Naked Truth,”Parable explained.
“Let me dress you up a bit. Your welcome will be gained.”
Parable dressed Naked Truth in story’s fine attire,
with metaphor, poignant prose, and plots to inspire.
With laughter and tears and adventure to unveil,
Together they went forth to spin a tale.
People opened their doors and served them their best.
Naked Truth dressed in story was a welcome guest.
Music: Heritage of Faith – Babbie Mason (lyrics below)
The patriarchs of old
The saints that now are gone
To their great reward
Held fast to the struggle
Persistent through the years
Forging through their fears
They fought to change their world
For the sake of the gospel
May their love for Jesus
Never go unnoticed
May they spur us on to all
That lies before us
This heritage of faith
This legacy of love
We must pass to our daughters
Hand down to our sons
We must raise the standard high
And proclaim the name of Christ
That others may know the way
And this heritage of faith
In my heart I hear the call
That echoes from the cross
Where the sacrifice for man
Was freely rendered
It's the call to stand for right
Keep the faith and fight the fight
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Isaiah for our Responsorial Psalm:
God indeed is my savior; I am confident and unafraid. My strength and my courage is the LORD, who has been my savior. With joy you will draw water at the fountain of salvation.
Isaiah 12:2-3
This fountain of salvation is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
I woke up before dawn today. Not really wanting to formally begin my day, I lingered on the pillows for my early morning prayer. Having always loved this feast, I began placing all my suffering loved ones into Jesus’s heart – one by one, asking for their strength and healing.
The list was long, because there are all kinds of suffering, and I love a lot of people – even ones I don’t know personally! Finally I said to Jesus, “You know, life is HARD!”
And in my spirit, I heard this answer, “I know. I lived it for the love of every one of you.”
To me, this is the meaning of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – that merciful companionship which Infinity assumed for us in the person of Jesus Christ.
That fountain of love and mercy continues to nourish our lives in the Eucharistic community of faith practicing the works of mercy. We are the threads which bind one other to God’s heart.
Paul knew this. That’s why he prayed this beautiful prayer for his beloved Ephesian community. Our second reading offers an example of Paul’s magnificent benedictions and doxologies. As he prays for the Ephesians, so he prays for us. These prayers are exalted, yet simple. They thrill the soul who prays them. They place us, in awe and thanksgiving, fully in the divinely generous, Sweet Heart of Christ.
Let’s pray for our beloveds today and for the world:
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Music: Two songs today:
Threads – by David Leonard
We beseech the Sacred Heart today that all who suffer any kind of fragmentation may find tenderness, wholeness, and comfort in him. (To hear the song, click on “Watch on YouTube” in the black clock below.)
This one is old school, but it still works for me:
Today, let’s pray with 119 in the light of Paul’s words to the Corinthians:
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, … was not “yes” and “no,” but always “YES”. God’s promises … find their “Yes” in him.
2 Corinthians 1:19-20
Here’s what those slightly cryptic but profoundly meaningful phrases mean to me.
No doubt, sometime in your life you have heard someone powerful say “No” to you. Or perhaps life itself has said it with some insurmountable limitations.
It is in those moments that we truly understand what “Yes” means because it has eluded us!
That meaning takes various forms depending on our circumstances. “Yes” can mean freedom, love, mercy, forgiveness, renewal, possibility, hope, fulfillment.
And “Yes” is always a beginning … a mystery that longs to be unfurled, unpeeled – like this beautiful red onion ( that I bought yesterday for a salad that turned into a reflection!)
Psalm 119 “unpeels” the layers of our relationship with God. Here’s how I hear it in my prayer:
O Lovely God, You are wonderful. You are my Light. You amaze me by the “Yes” of your Love. You fire my spirit to love You in return.
Lavish Mercy, turn to me because I love You. Steady me in my shadows. Draw my “yes” into the Light of your beautiful Face.
based on Psalm 119:129-135
Poem: love is a place – e.e.cummings
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
Lavish Mercy 