Friday, March 17, 2023

Friday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

(Hosea 14:2-10; Mark 12:28-34)

 It is said that no prophet expresses God’s love – God’s hesed ­ -- better than Hosea.  With brilliant images Hosea shows how God’s tender mercy calls, transforms, and blesses the people of Israel.

Today’s first reading amply illustrates Hosea’s vision of God’s love.  It says that God’s love is like a morning dew which enables lilies to bloom.  It also softens the ground to allow trees to plant their shoots for future beauty, shade, and fruit. 

God’s calls us throughout our lives, but never with greater urgency in liturgical readings than during Lent.  We are to turn away from power, pleasure, and prestige to follow His way of selfless love.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

 (Jeremiah 7:23-28; Luke 11:14-23)

 Hesed is the Hebrew word for steadfast love. It epitomizes God's disposition toward humans and belies human relations with God. Where God is always merciful, ready to forgive human failings, people almost invariably evade completion of God's will. As the Lord tells Jeremiah in the first reading, "Faithfulness has disappeared..."

What is true in Jeremiah's time applies to Jesus' day. In today’s gospel some refuse to accept his message with the excuse that Jesus is in league with the devil. It characterizes as well the position of many today who will not acknowledge that humanity has been spared of sin through the cross of Jesus.  They deny the  reality of sin saying that human actions are not free, or they ignore the cross questioning its efficacy.

We can do better. Formed by Jesus' teaching, we can be faithful to the covenant that he established between us and the Father. Yes, it will entail measurable sacrifice as anything worthwhile does. But it foresees an immeasurable reward because its guarantor is the ever faithful God.

St. Therese of the Child Jesus, virgin and doctor of the Church

(Nehemiah 8:1-4.5-6.7b-12; Luke10:1-12)

We have all heard the mistaken notion that in the Old Testament God reveals Himself as the mighty Lord demanding justice while in the New Testament Christ reveals Him to be a loving Father. Such an error comes from frequent references in the Prophets to God punishing His chosen people for their sins while forgetting that Jesus too speaks of “wailing and gnashing of teeth.” No, God can be recognized in both parts of the Bible as full of hesed, the Hebrew word for merciful love.

Why else would the Jews break out in tears when they hear "the law" read to them in the reading from Nehemiah today? Certainly there is something more at play than words of a legal code provoking such pathos. Law here means Torah, the first five books of what we call the Old Testament, which tell of God carefully forming Abraham and his descendants into a holy people like Himself and then rescuing them from the tyranny of Pharaoh.

But we must not be too hard on those who find God as revealed by Jesus somehow superior to the One the Jews had known. After all, in time God truly did perform the unimaginable. He came to us in the flesh so that we might have a personal experience of His goodness. God did not change, but we became aware of the depth and breath of His love. St. Therese was aware of this as much as just about anyone. She prescribed the appropriate human response to God when she wrote, “Love is repaid by love alone.”