Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
September 11, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091123.cfm

---

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings affirm this fundamental truth: God’s greatest desire for us is our wholeness.

Paul’s impassioned verses to the Colossians demonstrate how he suffered to assure their spiritual integrity:

Brothers and sisters:
I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake…
… in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me
to bring to completion for you the word of God,
the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.

Colossians 4:24;28

---

False teachers are the cause of the suffering Paul describes. They are charismatic but ill-intentioned people who latch on to a good thing distorting it for their own purposes.

We are painfully familiar with these devious strategies in our own time. For example, good things such as the internet, artificial intelligence, and various drug therapies are discovered and introduced into our culture. These can enhance our lives but, sadly, can also be manipulated to victimize us.

It is profoundly sinful when religion and spirituality are perverted in this way. Yet that is what Paul contended with as he worked for the spread of the Gospel in Asia Minor.

---

We are not free of such false teachers in our day. For the sake of money, power, and political influence, counterfeit prophets and evangelists abound throughout history. Jesus encountered such duplicitous leaders in his ministry as well:

The scribes and the Pharisees watched Jesus closely
to see if he would cure on the sabbath
so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.
But he realized their intentions
and said to the man with the withered hand,
“Come up and stand before us.”

Luke 6:7-8

---

How do we avoid such entrapments that feed on our desire for honest spiritual fulfillment? Today’s Gospel offers a clue:

Then Jesus said to them,
“I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath
rather than to do evil,
to save life rather than to destroy it?”

Luke 6:9

Anything that inhibits or destroys the sacred life within us or others can never be of God. The Pharisees misinterpreted and misused the Law. They would have invoked “the sabbath” in order to leave this poor man crippled. But Jesus countermanded them, restoring the man’s right hand, and exposing them for the hypocrites they were.

---

Around our world today, how many spurious “laws” are promoted by those who profit from the constraint of others, or who feed their own egos by a controlling prejudice toward anyone different from themselves! How many prejudicial codes inhibit freedom and life for women, refugees, people of color, and those burdened by poverty, disability, or homophobia.

These vulnerable persons come before our prayerful consciousness today just as the man with the withered hand came before Jesus. How do we respond – like Jesus or like the self-deceived Pharisees? Or perhaps we respond somewhere indifferently in-between which is its own kind of sinfulness.

---

Prose: from Peter Wehner, Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum

The aggressive, disruptive, and unforgiving mindset
that characterizes so much of our politics
has found a home in many American churches.

When the Christian faith is politicized,
churches become repositories
not of grace but of grievances,
places where tribal identities are reinforced,
where fears are nurtured,
and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized.

---

Music:Take All the Lost Home – Joe Wise

September 9, 2023

Good day, dear friends,

As you may have already discovered, I hit the wrong timing button for tomorrow’s (Sunday’s) reflection. So you have two reflections in your mailbox early today. Make sure you’re reading the one you want today and tomorrow. Sorry about that!

---

While I have you here for a minute, I wanted to let you know that Lavish Mercy passed a half million views last week. Also last week, I posted my 2000th reflection. Thanks so much to all of you for your support over these five years of Lavish Mercy. As a little “Thank You”, here’s a re-post of a September reflection for this beautiful Saturday.

---

Beautiful September

Being a long-ago teacher, I have always loved September.  It is the sense of new beginning that accompanies these crisp, blue and golden days. 

Remember the fresh batch of school supplies you got every year: 

• that marble copybook that invited you to a heightened level of neatness (perhaps never achieved !)? 
• that perfectly compact and complete pencil box with the little sharpener on the end, promising you clear and accurate answers?
• that un-smudged and malleable soap eraser that would redeem you from any mistake? 
• and that wonderful box of fresh crayons, each standing at attention, ready to translate your genius into a rainbow of creativity?

What a gift it is in life to be given the opportunity for a new beginning.  Every one of us has grown richer in our hearts by both giving and receiving these opportunities.  Every act of inclusion, forgiveness, encouragement, mentoring and graciousness we have given or received has brought a new dawn to our spirits. 

We see so much violence, hatred and meanness in our world. We all mourn its ugly reappearance unrelentingly in the evening news, especially the lives lost of those who hungered for peace. But we must never allow ourselves to be poisoned or diminished by evil. Good will always overcome evil.

How wise it was of the Universal Spirit to give us both day and night.  Their dance of light and dark is a daily reminder to us that with the evening comes refreshment and with the morning renewed joy.  Every day, the Great Hand of Mercy reaches down into our darkness and lifts us up into the drenching light of hope. Do we ever take a moment to let ourselves be awed by that gift? 

Every day is a new box of crayons!  Every day, we can give and receive the chance to start fresh!  How do I want to color my world differently today?  What do I want to outline more clearly in my life?  What gaps in my life are longing to be filled in with the rainbow of my creativity, courage and love? How will I blend the shades of peace into the world around me?

A beautiful verse from the Hebrew Scriptures puts it this way:  

God’s mercies are renewed each morning, 
so great is His faithfulness.

Let yourself bask in that promise, especially in this golden September. It will renew your hope and strength.

---

Music: by the way, September is Classical Music Month! Here’s one of my favorites.

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 10, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091023.cfm

---

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 95, a favorite of liturgists, and one we have met several times before. What different light might it offer us today as we pray?

The psalm today serves as a bridge between powerful readings about neighborly love and fraternal correction. These readings tell us to listen for God’s heartbeat in our world and to enter its rhythm.

They also tell us to love our neighbor enough that, if she or he is out of synch with God’s rhythm, we help align them by our counsel and example.

Have you ever tried to do that? It’s really tough!

---

First of all, we have to be so vigilant about the purity of our own intentions. We can’t instruct our friends in righteousness out of our own confusion. So often, our desire for others to “improve” grows out of our opinionated self-interest. You might remember what Jesus said about extracting the plank from our own eye before removing the splinter from our neighbor’s!

---

Next we really have to love our sister or brother and sincerely want their good. We have to forgive them any hurt they have caused us. We have to be bigger than most of us, speaking for myself, are inclined to be.

As the psalm tells us, we can’t have hard hearts. As we approach our sister or brother, our hearts must be softened by listening, patience, understanding, humility and hope. We have to be sure the “voice” we’re sharing comes from God not self.

Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.

And the flip of all this, of course, is that when we are the one out of rhythm, we receive loving correction in the same spirit of openness.

Lots of Grace is needed on both sides of this dance! May we learn and receive it!

---

Poetry: The Gift by Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he’d removed
the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy’s palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he’s given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

Music: Let Me Hear Your Voice – Francesca LaRose

Memorial of Saint Peter Claver, Priest

September 9, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090923.cfm

---

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings reveal the freedom that comes with living in the Holy Spirit.

Paul tells his listeners, “You were once alienated and hostile … but God has reconciled you … in the hope of the Gospel.”

The passage doesn’t specify what the Colossians were “alienated and hostile” about, but one can hazard a guess. They had been struggling to find spiritual meaning in a delusive culture. I think we know how they felt!

Paul writes that we have been reconciled – re-balanced – in the death of Christ. What does that mean?

God has now reconciled you
in the fleshly Body of Christ through his death,
to present you holy, without blemish,
and irreproachable before him,
provided that you persevere in the faith,
firmly grounded, stable,
and not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that you heard,

---

Our Alleluia Verse offers an answer:

I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord;
no one comes to the Father except through me.

---

In our daily lives, we can get so mixed up about which way to go, what is the truth, and what gives us life.

Commercial voices tell us the “way” to happiness is to have more of everything, that we will never have all we need, and that our possessions are the measure of our value.

Political voices often tell us a “truth” adapted to their own agendas.

Our socio-economic constructs allow us to value some “lives” over others by draining and directing resources from the powerless to the powerful.

Even our religious hierarchies can manipulate “law” so that it becomes self-serving rather than life-giving.

---

Jesus confronts this kind of fallacy in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees thrived on a self-advancing manipulation of the Law. They used the Law as a means to control the social complex to their economic and political advantage.

Jesus tells them the “law” is meaningless if it no longer embodies the spirit. He references David who, on his good days, lived in genuine and direct relationship with God:

Have you not read what David did
when he and those who were with him were hungry?
How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering,
which only the priests could lawfully eat,
ate of it, and shared it with his companions?”
Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”

---

Our readings assure us that through our faithful Gospel lives we will find sacred reconciliation in God.

…. provided that you persevere in the faith,
firmly grounded, stable,
and not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that you heard ..

---

Poetry: excerpt from “The Great Wagon” by Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

---

Music: Deep Peace – Elaine Hagenberg

Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary September 8, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090823.cfm

---

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, on our Blessed Mother’s birthday, we pray with the beautiful final verses of Psalm 13.

These verses embody an immense shift in form from the psalm’s early lines. Early on, the psalmist cries out four times, “How long, O Lord?”.

How long: 

• Will you forget me?
• Will you hide your face from me?
• Must I carry sorrow in my soul?
• Will my enemy triumph over me?

Referring to these early verses reminds us that Mary’s life was full of sorrow as well as joy. On a feast like today, we think of Mary in her heavenly glory. But in her lifetime, Mary suffered many sorrows. She was an unwed mother, a refugee, and a widow. She was the mother of an executed “criminal” and a leader of his persecuted band.

---

What was it that allowed Mary to transcend sorrow and claim joy? Our psalm verses today help us to understand. They show the psalmist turning to heartfelt prayer, trusting God’s abiding protection.

Look upon me, answer me, LORD, my God!
Give light to my eyes lest I sleep in death,
Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed,”
lest my foes rejoice at my downfall.

---

That deep trust ultimately yields not only peace,
but joy.
Mary, singer of the Magnificat,
is the quintessence of that holy joy.

---

But I trust in your mercy.
Grant my heart joy in your salvation,
I will sing to the LORD,
Who has dealt bountifully with me!

Today, in our prayer, we ask Mary to love and guide us through the challenges of our lives.

---

Poetry: Three Days – Madeleine L’Engle

Friday:
When you agree to be the mother of God
you make no conditions, no stipulations.
You flinch before neither cruel thorn nor rod.
You accept the tears; you endure the tribulations.
But, my God, I didn't know it would be like this.
I didn't ask for a child so different from others.
I wanted only the ordinary bliss,
to be the most mundane of mothers.

Saturday:
When I first saw the mystery of the Word
made flesh I never thought that in his side
I'd see the callous wound of Roman sword
piercing my heart on the hill where he died.
How can the Word be silenced? Where has it gone?
Where are the angel voices that sang at his birth?
My frail heart falters. I need the light of the Son.
What is this darkness over the face of the earth?

Sunday:
Dear God, He has come, the Word has come again.
There is no terror left in silence, in clouds, in gloom.
He has conquered the hate; he has overcome the pain.
Where, days ago, was death lies only an empty tomb.
The secret should have come to me with his birth,
when glory shone through darkness, peace through strife.
For every birth follows a kind of death, 
and only after pain comes life.

---

Music: Magnificat – Daughters of Mary

Thursday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

September 7, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090723.cfm

---

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Paul gives us a textbook on how to pray for one another.

I don’t know about you, but when I pray for other people, it’s usually a prayer like this:

“Dear God, please let Drusilla pass her nursing exam this eighth time trying.” or

“Dear God, please help Joe get well and recover from his unfortunate fall out of the air balloon.”

In other words, I often have a specific result in mind when I pray like this. I tell God how I’d like things to turn out – especially when I pray for myself. 😉

---

Paul’s prayer is different. He doesn’t pray for specific results for his Colossian friends. Rather, he prays for those spiritual gifts which will allow his friends to grow fully in grace and holiness, no matter the result of their circumstances:

• to have knowledge of God’s will
• to grow in spiritual wisdom and understanding
• to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord
• to be fully pleasing to God
• to bear fruit in every good work
• to grow in the knowledge of God
• to be strengthened with every power
• to have endurance and patience
• to joyfully give thanks to God

---

As you can see, even if Drusilla fails again and Joe ends up with aerophobia, they would still be blessed beyond measure by gifts like the ones Paul prays for.

---

In our Gospel, Jesus wants his friends to grow in spiritual gifts as well. To encourage that, he performs a delightful and astounding miracle to shore up his followers’ faith.

Just put yourself on that seashore that morning when two ramshackle boats nearly sank with a tsunami of magic fish! Picture Jesus enjoying his friends’ amazement as the fish tails flew up and wagged in the early morning sunlight. Imagine the profound response this miracle inspired, enough to leave everything behind to embrace its Source!

… astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized Peter
and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
who were partners of Simon.
Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching men.”
When they brought their boats to the shore,
they left everything and followed him.

---

God’s miraculous gifts pour into our lives every day, often by virtue of our friends’ prayers and love. May we receive them with open hearts and pray for them for those whose names we speak to God.

---

Poetry: excerpts from A Prayer for My Daughter by W.B. Yeats

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend….

…. In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place…

---

Music: The Prayer – written by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa and Tony Renis

Wednesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

September 6, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090623.cfm

---

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we begin about two weeks of readings from Paul’s letters to the Colossians and to Timothy. These epistles often express personal tones not as evident in his other letters like Hebrews or Romans.

---

In today’s reading we meet Paul’s beloved companions, Timothy and Epaphras. We will hear much more about Timothy later, but today let’s look at the snippets about Epaphras.

Just as in the whole world the Gospel is bearing fruit and growing,
so also among you,
from the day you heard it and came to know the grace of God in truth,
as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow slave,
who is a trustworthy minister of Christ on your behalf
and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

---

Tradition holds that Paul may never have visited Colossae. He mentored and depended on Epaphras to build up the Church in that community. To report on his ministry, Epaphras visited Paul in Roman prison, and was arrested himself for a time. (Thus the reference “fellow slave”)

---

Praying with Colossians this morning, I am reminded of the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Paul obviously did not build up the Pauline Churches alone. His letters are filled with names of those inspired with his same passion for the Gospel. Together, they shaped the early Church which is our heritage.

---

In our Gospel, Jesus ventures out on his own missionary journey. But he does so in the company of Peter and others, valued companions as was Epaphras to Paul.

---

Our faith communities need each one of us, too, to invest our committed energy for the building up of the whole. As we offer our gifts to the Body of Christ, we need the blessing of holy companionship, as did Jesus and Paul.

---

I pray in thanksgiving today for my Sisters, for our Associates in Mercy, for my co-ministers over many years, for my dear family and friends, for all those “trustworthy” and “beloved” companions on our journey of faith together. You may want to do the same.

---

Poetry: honor the roots- by Rupi Kour

remember the body of your community 
breathe in the people
who sewed you whole
it is you who became yourself
but those before you
are a part of your fabric

---

Music: walking Each Other Home – Dierks Bentley

Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time September 5, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090523.cfm

---

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our first reading seems so in synch with the cycle of the seasons.

Concerning times and seasons, brothers and sisters,
you have no need for anything to be written to you.

1 Thessalonians 5:1

Paul goes on to describe the rhythms of days and nights, lights and darknesses that flow through every life. Like the passing of the seasons, our life changes can inspire in us awe, wonder, and praise. But, at times, they can also leave us a little speechless, fearful, and confused.

Each season, though full of beauty, has its taxes and turns, for example:

the spring of:

---

the summer of:

---

the autumn of:

---

the winter of:

---

Paul assures us that the light of faith guides and sustains us through our life’s changes and challenges:

But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness,
for that day to overtake you like a thief.
For all of you are children of the light
and children of the day.
We are not of the night or of darkness.

1 Thessalonians 5:9

---

At our Baptism, an unquenchable pilot light was ignited deep in our hearts. We are fueled by the fire of God. As the earth’s phases transpire, they teach us to honor our own seasons by stilling ourselves in that Luminous Flame.

---

Poetry: Twilight by Louise Glück

All day he works at his cousin’s mill,
so when he gets home at night, he always sits at this one window,
sees one time of day, twilight.
There should be more time like this, to sit and dream.
It’s as his cousin says:
Living—living takes you away from sitting.

In the window, not the world but a squared-off landscape
representing the world. The seasons change,
each visible only a few hours a day.
Green things followed by golden things followed by whiteness—
abstractions from which come intense pleasures,
like the figs on the table.

At dusk, the sun goes down in a haze of red fire between two poplars.
It goes down late in summer—sometimes it’s hard to stay awake.

Then everything falls away.
The world for a little longer
is something to see, then only something to hear,
crickets, cicadas.
Or to smell sometimes, aroma of lemon trees, of orange trees.
Then sleep takes this away also.

But it’s easy to give things up like this, experimentally,
for a matter of hours.

I open my fingers—
I let everything go.

Visual world, language,
rustling of leaves in the night,
smell of high grass, of woodsmoke.

I let it go, then I light the candle.

---

Music: Wind in the Tall Autumn Grass – Kathryn Kaye

Monday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time September 4, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090423.cfm

---

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings each describe times of fulfillment.

In prose rich with imagery, Paul paints a picture of the final coming of Christ. Many early Christians had expected this Second Coming to occur very quickly after the Resurrection. When it did not, they became confused and wondered what it meant for those who died in the meantime.

To answer their concerns, Paul draws on the images Jesus himself used:

At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

Mark 13:26-27

---

In today’s Gospel, Jesus announces that the First Coming has occurred. His listeners, too, had expected the Messiah for ages. And now he was here – no clouds, no trumpets, no attending angels. Just the quiet unrolling of a scroll and the simple proclamation, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

---

I like to pray with this passage by imagining myself somewhere in that synagogue, hearing those astounding words. Would I be the person who had longed to hear them and who responded wholeheartedly? Or would I hardly be paying attention, so distracted by my many concerns? Maybe I would be the skeptic who took any religious comment with a grain of salt and a drop of vinegar. Or maybe I would feel my heart fully embraced by that “Gracious Word” who is Jesus Christ.

And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.

---

“Gracious” is such a beautiful word. The early Greek transcripts denote it as a word akin to “charity” or selfless love

χάριτος – charitos

As we try to imagine Jesus at this opening moment of his ministry, we might think of the most gracious person we know and multiply that by infinity.

---

Poetry: Thou Gracious Power – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Thou gracious Power,
whose mercy lends
The light of home, the smile of friends,
Our families in Thine arms enfold
As in the peaceful days of old.


Wilt Thou not hear us while we raise,
In sweet accord of solemn praise,
The voices that have mingled long
In joyous flow of mirth and song?


For all the blessings life has brought,
For all its sorrowing hours have taught,
For all we mourn, for all we keep,
The hands we clasp,
the loved that sleep.


The noontide sunshine of the past,
These brief, bright
moments fading fast,
The stars that gild our darkening years,
The twilight ray from holier spheres.


We thank Thee, Father; let Thy grace
Our narrowing circle still embrace,
Thy mercy shed its heavenly store,
Thy peace be with us evermore.

---

Music: How Deep, How Simple – Kathryn Kaye

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 3, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090323.cfm

---

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, on this first Sunday in September, there is change in the air. Vacations are over. Schools are open. Autumn sale announcements are stuffed into the newspaper. Some of us are even thinking of a pumpkin latte after Sunday Mass.

We feel a change of mood in our Sunday readings too, and the mood is solemn.

---

Just last Sunday, Jesus gave the “keys” over to Peter, alerting him that he would soon be driving the boat. But in today’s Gospel, Jesus gets intense about how that transition will occur. And it’s not going to be pretty.

---

The angst within today’s scripture readings shouts loudly to us in the passage from Jeremiah foreshadowing the Passion of Christ. Jeremiah wrote during the downfall of Jerusalem to its Babylonian captors. When his and his community’s faith was tested beyond endurance, Jeremiah called his people to fidelity and hope. He gave expression to the deep pain of loss and failure yet holding up an unquenchable trust. The people derided him from their desolation and he let God know how he suffered:

Whenever I speak, I must cry out,
violence and outrage is my message;
the word of the LORD has brought me
derision and reproach all the day.

I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.

Jeremiah 20: 8-9

---

Jesus is more subtle with his words but they too reveal a heart that is breaking because, in worldly terms, the dream appears to be untenable:

Jesus began to show his disciples
that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly
from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised.

Matthew 16:21

---

One might read today’s scriptures and ask why it had to be so hard for Jesus, so hard for the Jeremiah community. Why is it so hard for us to live a peaceful, faithful life in the world? Why doesn’t God just make it all work?

Praying with those questions, I come up with one answer: free will. God created us to choose freely to love and live in God. Programming that love into us would make the love meaningless. We have to choose it. And not everyone does. Those choices contradictory to God’s love create the kind of suffering Jesus and Jeremiah describe.

---

Certainly we experience other kinds of anguish in life not controlled by our choices. These are associated with the natural life cycle of birth, growth, diminishment and death. As Christians, we believe that it is within the mystery of these joys and sorrows, lived in the pattern of Christ, that we come fully to a life resurrected in God.

---

Poetry from Scripture: Psalm 63:

Seeking the gift of trust, we pray:

O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water. 

You are my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
My soul clings fast to you;
your right hand upholds me.

---

Music: The Circle of Life – from The Lion King

From the day we arrive on the planet

And blinkin’, step into the sun

There’s more to see than can ever be seen

More to do than can ever be done

Some say, “Eat or be eaten”

Some say, “Live and let live”

But all are agreed as they join the stampede

You should never take more than you give

In the circle of life

It’s the wheel of fortune

It’s the leap of faith

It’s the band of hope

‘Til we find our place

On the path unwinding

In the circle, the circle of life

Some of us fall by the wayside

And some of us soar to the stars

And some of us sail through our troubles

And some have to live with the scars

There’s far too much to take in here

More to find than can ever be found

But the sun rollin’ high

Through the sapphire sky

Keeps great and small on the endless round