Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 18, 2023
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/061823.cfm
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our beautiful readings this Sunday paint the picture of a God Who is eternally in love with us.
The writer of Exodus twenty-five hundred years ago knew this.
Then the LORD called to Moses and said,
Exodus 19:3-5
“Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob;
tell the Israelites:
You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians
and how I bore you up on eagle wings
and brought you here to myself.
Therefore, if you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant,
you shall be my special possession,
dearer to me than all other people,
though all the earth is mine.
Yes, God is eternally in love with us. Paul knew this when he wrote to the Romans about a half-century after Jesus lived on earth.
For Christ, while we were still helpless,
Romans 5:6-8
yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us in that
while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
And Matthew knew that God is eternally in love with us when he recorded this memory of his beloved Jesus:
At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them
Matthew 9:36; 10:5-8
because they were troubled and abandoned,
like sheep without a shepherd.
….
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.’
Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons.
If God has loved us this long and this much, isn’t it time for us to really love God back?
In the above situations, and in our own lives, all that God ever asks for is faithfulness – through ups and downs, through ins and outs – God longs for our unwavering relationship.
A deep loving relationship like that requires our complete attention toward the Beloved.
How’re you doing with that?
It’s a question I’ll be asking myself – and God – in my prayer today.
Poetry: from Love’s Fire: Re-Creations of Rumi by Andrew Harvey
It is He who suffers his absence in me
Who through me cries out to himself.
Love’s most strange, most holy mystery--
We are intimate beyond belief.
Music: The Everlasting Love of God – Matt Boswell and Matt Papa
Lavish Mercy 