Friday, September 17, 2021
God Shows the Way – Part I
The Lord is good and upright. He shows the path to those who stray, he guides the humble in the right path; he teaches his way to the poor.
The humble, the poor, and those who stray. God tends to those who stumble along The Way Christ shows us.
My eyes are always on the Lord; for he rescues my feet from the snare. Turn to me for I am poor and lonely.
These words touch a chord within us and it may be for this reason that Psalm 25 is frequently used at funerals. We are sending a loved one off on a journey that each of us will take . . . and we are not always certain of the way we ought to go.
Psalm 25 is an acrostic with the first letter of each verse being a successive letter of the alphabet. As we sing this song, “the palmist mixes ardent pleas (1-2, 16-22) with expressions of confidence in God who forgives and guides”. (Senior 661)
John 14:1-12 is also often read at a funeral Mass because it brings us comfort to know that there really is no mystery about how to live our lives or what we are to do when we die.
Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.”
When we are able to find a pocket of calm from which to assess our lives, we know that in subtle ways, and sometimes not so subtle ways, God provides us with a map for our lives. And when we can trust God enough to relax into the goodness that God is, we also realize we are sent suggestions for our lives much like the directions we receive when we plug in a GPS (Global Positioning System). God constantly warns, guides, prods, encourages and finally shows us The Way we are to go. We have only to relax and follow.
From today’s MAGNIFICAT (315) Day by Day reflection by Heather King, a spiritual writer and a convert to Catholicism: This was a God who was with us in our darkest human moments, who had suffered every insult, humiliation, confusion, loneliness that we have. I’d think, he knew what it is to yearn, to feel like a loser, a failure, and a misfit . . . I began to see that this God – who had the power to do anything; who commanded the sun and stars – had instead consented to empty himself and become the hardest thing in the universe it is possible to be: a mortal being. He’s become human in order to enter into our daily lives, to be with us every waking and sleeping moment, to fulfill the deepest desire of the human heart: to not be so eternally, everlastingly alone. In a way I was becoming a believer just because Christ did fulfill the deepest desire of the heart: isn’t it our greatest wish that God not be some faraway abstract entity, but somehow like us? That God walks among us is so simple we refuse to believe it; it so fulfills our deepest yearning we’re blind to the fact that it actually has been fulfilled . . . Christ is [not] a fairy tale, or wishful thinking, or an illusion. We can bring things into being only by believing them with the purest of hearts. We can bring into being only the true and the real – “I am the way the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) – what already exists in a sense.
Jeremiah tells us that God has a plan in mind for us, a plan for our joy and not our woe. As we search for The Way, we humble ourselves . . . as God faithfully shows us The Way.
Tomorrow, how can we not follow? God shows the way, part two.
Cameron, Peter John. “Meditation of the Day.” MAGNIFICAT. 22.5 (2011): 315. Print.
Senior, Donald, ed. THE CATHOLIC STUDY BIBLE. New York, Oxford University Press, 1990.661. Print.
Adapted from a reflection written on May 22, 2011.
Image from: http://pamandersonblog.com/2013/07/
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