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,
1 Thessalonians 5:1
you have no need for anything to be written to you.
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:
an unrequested assignment
an unexpected pregnancy
a demanding opportunity
the summer of:
a long wait
an exhausting pilgrimage
a listless dailyness
the autumn of:
unchosen changes
physical diminishments
waning energies
the winter of:
cooling enthusiasm
shadowy futures
darkened understanding
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,
1 Thessalonians 5:9
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.
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
Lavish Mercy 