How often do we listen without really hearing? How often do we pass along information we believe to be correct but which is, in fact, not true? In the enormous universe of God’s love, we find that we are given countless opportunities to be open to the voice of God.
Some people brought him a man who was deaf and could hardly speak, and they begged Jesus to place his hands on him.
How often do we believe that we cannot bear to hear the day’s news? How often do we turn away from information we cannot take in? In the infinite presence of Christ’s healing, we discover that we have endless access to understanding.
So Jesus took him off alone, away from the crowd, put his fingers in the man’s ears, spat, and touched the man’s tongue.
How often do we grope to comprehend the purpose of the conflict that surrounds us? How often do we open ourselves to healing and transformation? In the immeasurable gift that is the presence of the Spirit, we encounter consolation that changes us forever.
When we do not feel Christ’s presence in our lives, when we fear that we will not hear God’s voice, when we look for consolation we believe will never arrive, we might offer our deafness to the one who created us, in the Advent hope of the presence of God among us.
When we compare differing translations of these verses, we find that our deafness might be more gift than curse.
Like Bartimaeus, we call out to Christ when we find ourselves in search of consolation. “Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy on me!”
We might be startled to hear the response from Jesus, “What do you want me to do for you?”
Jesus knows what Bartimaeus needs, but still he asks. Persistent in his petitioning, Bartimaeus was much like the persistent widow who constantly asks the corrupt judge for justice – which she ultimately receive. And like Bartimaeus, we too can receive new sight, fresh eyes, another lease on life.
God knows what we need and want, but we must ask. We are to be persistent. Asking puts us in proper relationship with God the Father who created us, with Christ who walks and lives in each of us, with the Holy Spirit who heals and comforts us. Our persistence is a sign of our act of faith – that we believe and will not waiver, our act of hope – that we know that with God all things are possible, and our act of love – that we understand and follow Jesus who prayed for his enemies. Because we are created in God’s image, we can forgive and heal our enemies with our intercessory prayer, just as Jesus did. We can abide with and inspire those who suffer as the Holy Spirit does. And we can be faithful to the covenant promises we have with God the Father, just as God the Father is.
Today we, like Bartimaeus, ask for clarity, fresh sight, new vision and understanding. Today we take consolation in our recovery from blindness.
When we compare varying versions of this story, we open ourselves to a new way of seeing all that we thought we knew.
Carl Bloch: Jesus Heals the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethzatha (Bethesda)
When fear paralyzes us, how do we react? Do we listen for the words whispered in our ears? Get up and start walking.
When worry saps our strength, why do we shoulder blame that is not ours? Do we turn to the one who can handle all our apprehension? Get up. Take your bedroll and go home.
When fear paralyzes us, how do we react? Do we believe the healing words of Christ who says: Get up and start walking.
When anxiety steals our serenity, who among us turns to the Creator for help? Who better to do the impossible? Get up. Take your bedroll and go home.
When darkness overcomes us, what light do we find? Who else but Jesus the Christ? Get up and start walking.Get up. Take your bedroll and go home.
When trouble assails us and shatters our calm, do we have the faith to rise, to take up the circumstances that have held us away from God, and to go home.
When we compare varying versions of these verses, we find healing for all that paralyzes us.
Be comforted, be comforted, my people, saith your God. Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem, and call to her, for her evil is come to an end, her iniquity is forgiven; she hath received of the hand of the Lord double for all her sins. The voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness the paths of our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh together shall see that the mouth of the Lord hath spoken . . . Behold the Lord God shall come with strength, and his arm shall rule. Behold his reward is with him and his work is before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and shall take them up on his bosom, and he himself shall carry them that are young . . .
From time to time we reflect on the ideas of exile and doom . . . today’s dawn brings consolation.
Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and weighed the heavens in his palm? Who has poised with three fingers the bulk of the earth, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?
After the darkness . . . comes the light . . . more revealing and more wonderful than we have ever imagined.
Do you not know? Hath it not been heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood the foundations of the earth? . . . And to whom have ye likened me, or made me equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see the one who has created these things . . . not one of them was missing.
The holy ones who wait and watch and witness . . . will receive their comfort . . . a consolation more intense and enduring than they have ever dreamed.
Youths shall faint and labor, and young men shall fall by infirmity. But they that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall take wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
Last Christmas Day we read and reflected upon the beginning of Romans 11 in which St. Paul brings to us, God’s Remnant, the message of our creator’s Providenceand Fidelity. He reminds us that God understands the human condition and that he sends us his grace to overcome our fears and the darkness. God also understands rupture and the deepest places of the heart that suffer from the pain of disconnection and separation . . . and God wants to heal this . . . to call us back . . . to gather us in his arms. God wants to give us his Consolation.God is the Forgiving Father of the Prodigal Son story. We may be either the Straying Child who has spent his gifts carelessly, or the Remaining Child who is jealous and bitter at the Father’s generosity toward those who return. Or perhaps we have found a place where we can numb ourselves . . . remain aloof . . . protect ourselves from the suffering and undergoing of life that we are meant to experience. Or maybe we are Children of the Light . . . who struggle with self . . . who rise to the undergoing . . . who falter and stumble but who turn to God always as the first and last source and sustenance. Most likely we are all of these . . . and we do well when we reflect that our true Consolation rests in openness to reconciliation with God and with others. We do well to rely on God’s Providence and Fidelity and meditate on this idea, as we do on Christmas Day each year, that we are to be God to one another.
So on this Sunday of joy amidst darkness and waiting we, like God, are to abide with those who have broken faith with us. We are to remain faithful, remain present but without participating in any dysfunction. We are to be hopeful, to be open to the potential of something greater which God sends through his grace rather than our works. We are to abide withoutfear, because God is with us, especially in our moments of deepest terror. And we are to remain merciful, imitating Christ, because God always comes to his remnant, to those who wait, and hope and seek.
I do not know why I worry that perhaps God has no provisions to fix things that go wrong. God sends us the message constantly that God is capable of handling all things. Jesus feeds thousands from a small meal. Why do I worry?
God multiplies God’s self in us each day. Luke records (1:46-55) how Mary intoned her beautiful Magnificat when she heard Gabriel’s words . . . My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord . . . I must remember that my being must magnify the plans and works of God and not diminish them . . . just as Jesus multiplies food to sustain those who follow him.
The intercessions and Morning Prayer from today’s MAGNIFICAT align with these thoughts.
You are our life and our salvation!
Yours is the night and yours the day: enlighten us with your wisdom at every hour of our lives. You are our life and our salvation!
Yours are the years and yours the season: teach us to trust in your provident designs. You are our life and our salvation!
Yours is the fullness of life: bring us to dwell in your presence for ever. You are our life and our salvation!
Lord, God of timelessness, you order all things according to your wise designs. Grant us discerning hearts, that we may know and love and serve your plan, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Cameron, Peter John. “Prayer for the Morning.” MAGNIFICAT. 2.3 (2011): 30. Print.
I have a friend who – whenever life gets a bit sticky for her or her children – is suddenly presented with hearts. Heart-shaped leaves, heart-shaped clouds, even heart-shaped patterns of toothpaste left in the bathroom sink. Today she told me that she was thinking: Who keeps leaving these for me? She believes that she has the answer, someone she knows through family photographs and family stories, someone whom she has not met in this life but who knows her in any case. She believes that it is her grandmother. So do I. Love knows no bounds.
In today’s Noontime we read about the love that God has for us, for his creation. This love is so great that land creatures survive in the sea; sea creatures walk on land. Fire in water maintains its strength; yet flames do not consume flesh. With these powerful images, we understand how strong God is; we understand how much God loves us.
The Meditation in MAGNIFICAT today is from Father John Tauler, a Dominican priest, a popular preacher and mystical theologian who died in 1361. This is what he has to say about God’s love.
Especially cherish firm trust in God’s love: if that weakens, your longing for God sinks away, and the hidden love is soon quenched within you . . . If one now questions whether or not he has true love, let him search deep in his soul and ever deeper, and light will be granted to him to know how he stands towards this degree of love. All the harm that can befall you is in this: you cannot fathom your inmost soul, or perhaps you will not. Once you enter there, God’s grace awaits you, admonishing you incessantly to keep up a courageous spirit about your standing with him. But many a one resists his inner voice and keeps on going so until he at last becomes unworthy of it and it ceases to be heard, and that forever. The cause of this misfortune is nothing else than self-trust. But if only one be humbly submissive to the divine guidance, it will finally lead him into such a divine union, that he shall enjoy in this life something of the bliss proper only to life eternal. May God grant that this shall happen to us all.
Our self-trust, rather than trust in God, is what often prohibits us from seeing the glory that is God each day. Miracles happen around us and to us constantly, yet we worry so, and fly through life at such a rapid pace that we may miss these glorious hearts being left for us along the way. We miss the times when breaches are bridged, when wounds are healed, when the dead rise . . . and so we do not praise God because we walk past the many ways in which he loves us each morning, each noon, each night.
For myself, I will make a special resolution to be on the look-out for the heart-shaped messages God is sending to me. And then I will pause to praise God. I will begin to cherish a firm trust in God’s love for me, I will search my soul even deeper, I will look for the ways in which I have been magnified and glorified by God . . . and I will look more carefully for that divine union in this life.
Cameron, Peter John. “Meditation of the Day.” MAGNIFICAT. 20.1 (2010). Print.
We often take a look at how the exiled people prepared to return to Jerusalem; we also reflect on how the people who journeyed home depending on God to protect them rather than troops and arms. Today we a look at the same story a little further along, and from a different perspective – that of the builder/administrator Nehemiah.
This rebuilding of all that has been lost is not an easy task; it is a long and arduous process and nothing ever feels complete. Indeed, the writer records that the enemies of Israel, once they hear that the walls and gates of that great city have been rebuilt, plot to bring the nation down again; yet even so, the people are exhorted to confide in God alone. We hear in Nehemiah’s own words (6:15) that our enemies lost much face in the eyes of the nations, for they knew that it was with God’s help that this work [of rebuilding] had been completed. Reading further, we see how plots and their schemers roil around these people who huddle in the ruined glory of their ancestors as they try to rebuild. The remnant nation is shielded from her enemies as restoration – through God – transforms rubble to beauty.
Once the outer structure is established, Nehemiah begins to re-organize within and he re-arranges the people to protect the little gain they have purchased. Being wise and following the call of Yahweh, Nehemiah knows that greed will spark jealousy in their enemies and so he takes a census to count the flock, to present them as delivered by their God.
We have visited with Ezra and Nehemiah before in the Noontimes, and we have watched this pair of men – the priest and the administrator – work in concord to save a humbled nation from harm as she returns home. We might marvel at the trust they place in God as they take on the responsibility of shepherding these faithful in their process of restoration.
When we allow God to assist us in our recovery from calamity . . . and when we have rebuilt the doors and gates of our precinct . . . when we have set up gatekeepers and appoint night watchmen to guard against further damage by old and wily foes . . . we must rely on God to put into our hands all the tools that we will continue to need as we once again flourish in the sun. For if we have trusted God with the great misfortunes on our lives, so must we trust him with the many small mishaps of the day. This God who loves us is capable of great and small deeds. When we find ourselves at stopping points in our process of rebirth, we will also need encouragement to continue to progress to full and joyful renewal and rejuvenation. When we place our trust in God, when we turn the long and difficult process over to the one who creates all good . . . then we too will want to take our census and to count ourselves as present and as saved by our God.
This is one of my favorite Psalms. The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear? The Lord is my life’s refuge, of whom am I afraid?
We all seek God’s face. This is what we miss so much in our pilgrimage on this planet. Where do we find this face? The psalmist tells us: In the temple.
This week’s Mass readings are from Exodus and we hear again the story of how Moses erected a desert tent as the templethat housed the covenant promise that the people held with God. And God came down to speak with Moses and to the people in the form of a fiery column of smoke. This column was both guide and protector. The temple eventually traveled to various cities in the Kingdom of Israel, Jericho, Shiloh, and others, until it eventually rested in Jerusalem – where it ceased to travel and became permanent . . . and corrupt.
The Messiah arrived to replace that temple and to tell us that each one of us is a temple– to be kept holy and sacred for the Spirit’s in-dwelling, to be God’s presence in a struggling world. And this is what we agree to as part of our own personal covenant with our creator. That we will trust God and live in accordance with God’s statutes, that we will love God and practice the Greatest Commandment daily, that we will do our best to be People of Hope as we follow The Way that Jesus walked while here on earth. As the psalmist says, I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy.And the sacrifices I offer are the little and big trials which I undergo daily.
We are all apostles sent forth with this message. We are journeying together with a clear map to follow. Again the psalmist, aware that enemies lurk along the roadside, says, Lord, show me your way; lead me on a level path because of my enemies.
The final exhortation sung by the psalmist is, Wait for the Lord, take courage; be stouthearted, wait for the Lord!
And the people say . . . Amen.
Adapted from a Favorite written on August 2, 2007.
Jesus tells us that the Creator remains with us in the form of the Spirit.
The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and make you remember all that I have told you. (GNT)
Jesus tells us that the Spirit abides in us through all our suffering and all our joy.
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. (NRSV)
Jesus tells us that although he is no longer visible to us in his original form, he is still with us through the hands and feet, words and healing of others.
But the Counselor, the Ruach HaKodesh, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything; that is, he will remind you of everything I have said to you. (CJB)
Jesus tells us that the Creator’s wisdom resides in us in the form of God’s Spirit.
I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. (MSG)
Jesus tells us that we have an advocate who brings healing and restoration, we have an advocate who promises justice and mercy, we have an advocate we can trust. Let us share this good news today in the way we live and love.
When we compare varying translations of these verses, we find that we have an advocate we can trust, the healing, transformative presence of God.
For a prayer based on this verse, enter the words Prayer for Understanding into the blog search bar.
The Noontimes 