Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 6, 2022
Today’s Readings
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070622.cfm
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our first reading and Responsorial Psalm encourage us to seek God.
Sow for yourselves justice,
reap the fruit of piety;
break up for yourselves a new field,
for it is time to seek the LORD …
And our Gospel proclaims that we have already found God through Jesus Christ.
Jesus sent out these Twelve
after instructing them thus,
…. “As you go, make this proclamation:
‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”
The word “seek” is one we don’t use frequently, except to describe games that hide things from us – “Seek and Find”, “Hide and Seek”. In these games, someone is trying to fool us or outwit us.
But God is not trying to hide from us. Our scriptures are about a whole different kind of seeking. We might think of it like this:
Have you ever opened a kitchen drawer looking for a particular utensil but been unable to find it? You might exclaim aloud, “Where’s that darn corkscrew???!!!”, just as your sister leans in and picks it out of the drawer for you.
It was right there in front of you all the time. You just couldn’t see it — couldn’t put your hand on it.
Jesus tells us it is like that with the Kingdom of Heaven. We may be seeking it with all our effort while all the while it is right at hand. We sometimes fail to see the “touchable grace” in our lives because we throw a camouflage of unawareness or ingratitude over it.
Alleluia, alleluia.
The Kingdom of God is at hand:
repent and believe in the Gospel.
The poet Mary Oliver offers the antidote to that kind of blindness:
Instructions for living a life.
Mary Oliver
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Today, let’s pay attention to the wonder of our lives. Let’s seek God’s face in our ordinary circumstances. God is not hiding – we just have to look with the insightful eyes of faith, love, and hope.
Poetry: Rumi
Your task is not
to seek for love,
but merely
to seek and find
all the barriers
within yourself
that you have built
against it.
Music: Seek God’s Face – Jules Riding
Lavish Mercy 