Daily Retreat 09/09/07
2007 Sep 9 SUN: TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Wis 9: 13-18b/ Ps 89(90): 3-4. 5-6. 12-13. 14-17 (1)/ Phlm 9-10. 12-17/ Lk 14: 25- 33
From today’s readings: “ When things are in Heaven, who can search them out?... In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.... I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary.... Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”
God’s Perspective on Life
Who can deny that life is horribly complicated? How wonderful it would be if everything were just simply "the way it ought to be." Too many people underrate faith as just another major complicating factor of life, when actually, faith is the only way one can get a hold of life and put everything in proper perspective.
Because ultimately, the only proper perspective is God's perspective, and the whole of revelation is God's invitation (and recommendation!) for us to see things His way! The first reading, from the book of Wisdom, reflects on how difficult it is even to make sense of earthly realities (let alone divine realities!) and yet God makes His own Wisdom accessible in His revelation, and as the psalm extols, how blessed are they who gain wisdom of heart by recognizing God as the rock of reference for all reality!
So it is that every word spoken by Jesus challenges us to transcend our limited perspectives on life in favor of seeing things the way God sees them. Certainly He whose death on the Cross showed us the meaning of "God is Love" did not command us to literally hate the closest members of our family - that much is clear, although the wording of the Gospel is deliberately shocking so as to awake us to the radical realignment of priorities necessary if we are truly to embrace God's perspective, which entails demoting everyone, and everything, and our very selves, in order to truly establish God as the center of our lives. We must take up our cross then; or, perhaps we could better say, we must suffer to be taken up in His Cross, because it is only the vantage point of the Cross which gives us God's perspective.
Wis 9: 13-18b/ Ps 89(90): 3-4. 5-6. 12-13. 14-17 (1)/ Phlm 9-10. 12-17/ Lk 14: 25- 33
From today’s readings: “ When things are in Heaven, who can search them out?... In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.... I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary.... Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”
God’s Perspective on Life
Who can deny that life is horribly complicated? How wonderful it would be if everything were just simply "the way it ought to be." Too many people underrate faith as just another major complicating factor of life, when actually, faith is the only way one can get a hold of life and put everything in proper perspective.
Because ultimately, the only proper perspective is God's perspective, and the whole of revelation is God's invitation (and recommendation!) for us to see things His way! The first reading, from the book of Wisdom, reflects on how difficult it is even to make sense of earthly realities (let alone divine realities!) and yet God makes His own Wisdom accessible in His revelation, and as the psalm extols, how blessed are they who gain wisdom of heart by recognizing God as the rock of reference for all reality!
So it is that every word spoken by Jesus challenges us to transcend our limited perspectives on life in favor of seeing things the way God sees them. Certainly He whose death on the Cross showed us the meaning of "God is Love" did not command us to literally hate the closest members of our family - that much is clear, although the wording of the Gospel is deliberately shocking so as to awake us to the radical realignment of priorities necessary if we are truly to embrace God's perspective, which entails demoting everyone, and everything, and our very selves, in order to truly establish God as the center of our lives. We must take up our cross then; or, perhaps we could better say, we must suffer to be taken up in His Cross, because it is only the vantage point of the Cross which gives us God's perspective.
posted by FrPitstick | 9/06/2007
<< Home