This week’s readings are about the Last judgment and the end times, the time when the material world ends.
The first reading tells us that this future time will be one “unsurpassed in distress” (Daniel 12:1). The passage continues:
“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace.
“But the wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever.”
Daniel 12:2-3
The psalm promises that God guides and protects all who turn to God in times of great distress.
The epistle reminds us that Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross is God’s ultimate act of salvation. It’s the ultimate act to defend the human race and the human spirit against whatever opposes divine love. Christ’s sacrifice was offered once, and yet we can receive the graces of that sacrifice again and again. The key is that we seek those graces.
In the Gospel passage, Jesus describes what the end times will be like. They will be characterized by the destruction of the material world and by His return. He suggests there will be signs that these events are upon us, but signs are not definite indicators. No one can say for sure when these times will come. Therefore, we aren’t called to make looking for signs of the world’s end the purpose of our lives. We’re called to live according to Christ’s words and example.
What I’m Saying (to the Readings and Beyond) This Week:
In addition to prophesying about the end times, do this week’s readings invite me to see times of “distress” as times of purification? (Daniel 12:1) These are times to get a clearer vision of what’s fleeting and what lasts. These are times to reconnect with God, with each other and our purpose and through these connections, to grow stronger.
What Someone Else Is Sharing About This Week’s Readings:
When we feel the most despair, the most fear, the most anxiety, that is when God is the closest to us. That is when we are the least alone. That is when the Promised One is right at our door.
to approach the world around me with humility. Remember that I don’t yet have the fullness of God’s vision or understanding.
that God’s vision wants only the prosperity and growth of God’s family. God’s instructions serve only these purposes. With this understanding, we receive the words of Moses to the people of Israel:
“[Y]ou shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. (Deut. 6:5-6).
The psalm features the perspective of someone permeated by the above instruction from Moses. The permeation spills into the person’s recollections and words. I imagine voicing the recollections helps them keep their power for the narrator.
The epistle for October 26th focused on Jesus’ humanity in his role as the perfect high priest. The epistle for November 3rd focuses on his divinity in his role as the perfect high priest. He can live Moses’ his teaching more fully than any other human being because of his divine nature. This nature also allows Him to continue living Moses’ teaching. He has conquered death because he is fully human and fully divine. A priest who isn’t fully human and fully divine can’t conquer death on his own.
Often, Gospel passages provide insight into Old Testament passages. However, the November 3rd Gospel passage simply reminds hearers and readers of the central message of the Old Testament passage. It urges hearers and readers to put that message into practice.
What I’m saying (to the readings and beyond) this week:
The commandment from Deuteronomy is beyond hard to live out. If I said “I lov[ed] God with all [my] heart, all [my] soul, and with all [my] strength [emphasis mine],” I’d be lying to myself, to you, and to the Lord (Deut. 6:5-6) .
First, the verse prompts me to think about what it means to love. I’ve often heard in churches that love is an action, not just a feeling. But I experience love as a feeling. It’s a feeling that’s a response to an action or years of actions, but a feeling, nonetheless. And it’s beyond hard to have that feeling for Someone I can’t see. Sure, I can use my mind to accept what I’ve been told about the Lord. I can also accept what I’ve been told the Lord does and has done for me. My heart, however, seems to have a difficult time letting the reality of it all sink in. I have a hard time experiencing it, and I’m a person who wants to experience intense feelings. I long for concrete experiences of God’s presence.
As for a soul, how does it love? By obeying and imitating God? As I consider this as a possible answer, I think of the verse that talks about the disciples being friends of Jesus rather than his slaves (John 15:16). They’re his friends because they know what he’s doing. He’s shared everything with them. They know Him intimately. They collaborate with Him because they want what He does, not because they’re afraid of Him.
When I think of loving with all my strength, I imagine hanging onto the edge of a cliff. I hang there until I have no energy left to hold on. I suppose God is the cliff. However, I can’t lose my grip on God unless I shove myself away from the ledge.
It seems impossible to love God with every last drop of energy, endurance, and maybe even blood. Yet Jesus did it. And I remember reading that “nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). I try to think of times in my life when what seemed impossible became possible. Nothing comes to mind right now. I can think of times when I did what was difficult, but difficult is different than impossible.
I wonder when faith softens impossible into difficult and when the impossible becoming possible is nothing less than a miracle. But then I suppose faith is a type of miracle too. Maybe it often goes unappreciated for the miracle it is.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Lord, may we experience the grace of Your presence in our lives every day. May we recognize that You are the source of all that lives and all that provides. Help us to share everything with You and to receive everything you share with us. Help us to remember that love in all its forms begins with listening. It continues with discerning and is made authentic by responding to careful discernment with action. Amen.
Work cited:
The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
This week’s readings are a reminder that we need a Savior and that we have one. In the first passage, the Lord unites the scattered tribes of Israel and leads them out of captivity and mourning. The psalm praises God for this liberation, this cause for joy. It expresses faith that God’s providence and never ceases. Working for the Lord, though often difficult, will bear good fruit. The epistle identifies Christ as the Savior whose liberating power, mercy, and providence are never-ending. The Gospel passage is a reminder. God wants us to be equally unrelenting. We should continuously ask for Divine liberation, mercy, and providence.
God wants us to participate in these gifts because participation, not passivity, allows for spiritual growth and relationships. So do the following:
recognizing that God is in our midst. This presence is reflected in so many ways and is recognizable to each of us in unique ways
recognizing the desire within us for God
continuing to call out to God despite fear, doubt, and other resistance from within and resistance from without.
trusting that God responds when we persevere in faith
What I’m saying (to the readings and beyond) this week:
I wish I were as persistent as the blind man in the Gospel passage. I also wish God’s responses to my prayers were as direct and as Jesus’ response is in the Gospel passage. I also wish God’s responses addressed my desires as clearly as Jesus does the blind man’s desire in the Gospel passage. Maybe part of the problem is my ability (or lack thereof) to perceive the response. Likely another factor is my inability to understand how my desires and God’s responses to them fit into God’s vision.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
In a reflection on this week’s gospel passage, Courtney Esteves explores the implications of the question, “What do you want?” She invites us to think about what it tells us about Jesus. It also reveals something about ourselves. Additionally, it informs us about others whom we ask the question. She encourages us to be open to various responses to that question. These responses offer insight we see them as significant or insignificant.
This week’s prayer:
Lord, help me to be persistent in turning to You to satisfy my desires. Help me to perceive Your responses and to recognize in them Your wisdom and love. Amen.
The theme I’m getting from this week’s readings is that God understands us. However, we don’t understand God, at least not fully.
The first reading is a reminder to me that Christ experienced the frailty that is inherent to the human condition. In the crucifixion, He also endured suffering that comparatively few have experienced. But His suffering isn’t in vain. His entry into death defeats death by because He’s life in the flesh. Because of this, he conquers his death and ours. This defeat of our deaths occurs when we surrender to Christ whatever comes between us and life.
The passage reminds me that Christ offered his life to God and to us as a healing balm for the effects of sin. I can do the same. I can offer my life and what I value for the same purpose.
The psalm reminds me that God is “trustworthy” (Psalm 33:4). The gifts that come from God’s goodness are everywhere. It also promises that the more I’m open to God’s presence and guidance, the more I’ll experience it. As I experience it more, I’ll become more open to it. This openness will continue regardless of the circumstances I find myself in. It reminds me to seek faith and to ask God for help in recognizing God’s care.
The epistle reminds me that God understands my weaknesses and is waiting for me to turn to Him so that I don’t mistake those weaknesses for sources of freedom. He recognizes that I need his help not to confuse those weaknesses for him, in other words.
The Gospel passage reminds me that while I want to experience Christ’s presence, I tend not prepared to do what it takes to experience that presence. I’m prone to confusing being in God’s presence with bowing to the imposter god of human pride.
The gospel passage shows the sons of Zebedee having the same tendency. This tendency means they don’t understand what their wants and needs will ask of them and of God. They understand that abiding in God with Christ will satisfy those wants and needs. But they don’t understand that abiding in God with Christ requires surrender more than attainment. And surrender is often uncomfortable to the human ego. Surrender often feels impossible.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
The first thing this week’s readings say to me is something I heard in the homily last week: (I paraphrase here, even though I’m putting the following in quotation marks): “Read all Scripture in light of Christ.” If I apply this instruction, Jesus Christ is “the just one” and “the wicked” are those who crucified Him (The New American Bible, Wisd. 2:12) It also characterizes “the wicked” as:
finding it extremely distasteful when someone else takes a stand against the self-serving things they do and voices opposition to these activities, holding them accountable and wanting their actions to reflect the good they’ve been taught to do
trying to trap the person who does justice, make that person look untrustworthy and to stop others from doing what he does and says
taking the name of God in vain, in a way, by talking about God as if their faith in God excused them from acting with justice themselves
Plotting to break the resolve of just one through violence and then justifying their actions by saying that God would spare him from this violence if, in fact, God were on his side.
The psalm is written from the perspective of a person of faith who strives to act with justice. It acknowledges the power of God — even the power of God’s name. It calls out to that power for help. The speaker is frank with God about the suffering he’s experiencing. But after talking to God about his suffering, he reminds himself that God “is [his] helper, by resolving to give of himself to God and to just causes, and to recall God’s faithfulness even in the midst of circumstances that tempt him to doubt.
The epistle gives answers as to what leads to the “wicked” behavior described in the first reading: “jealousy and selfish ambition” (Wisd. 2:12; Jas. 3:16).
Behavior that’s inspired by wisdom from above, on the other hand, is “first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity and the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace” (Jas. 3:17).
Conflicts great and small come from “passions” — selfish desires, the passage says (Jas. 4:1). The footnote on James 4:1-3 in The New American Bible Revised Edition says:
Passions: the Greek word here (literally, “pleasures”) does not indicate that pleasure is evil. Rather, as the text points out (Jas 4:2–3), it is the manner in which one deals with needs and desires that determines good or bad. The motivation for any action can be wrong, especially if one does not pray properly but seeks only selfish enjoyment.
In the Gospel passage, I see the apostles struggling with letting their “passions” get the better of them (Jas. 4:1). When Jesus tells them he “is to be handed over to man and they will kill him” (Mark 9:31). I imagine the apostles’ primary response to have been fear. Maybe doubt and discouragement joined the fear.
Maybe their desire to counteract these uncomfortable feelings tempts them to be jealous and selfishly ambitious. The passage tells us that after Jesus warns them that he won’t resist the violence of his opponents, and this lack of resistance will lead to his suffering and death, they discuss “among themselves…who is the greatest” (Mark 9:34). Jesus tells them that the one who is “the greatest” is the one who doesn’t wish or strive to be and instead serves everyone else, especially those who are humblest and most vulnerable.
What I’m saying (to the readings and beyond) this week:
I’ve heard or read most of the passages often enough that I accept their teachings as truth, even though my desires don’t always counteract what the first reading describes as “wicked[ness] (New American Bible, Wisd. 2:12). The first reading feels less familiar. It also uses the sharpest language. Maybe that’s why I reacted most strongly to it.
The passage prompts me to ask myself when someone rubs me the wrong way, why is that? Is he or she mirroring my flaws, and some part of me knows that? Sometimes that’s what’s going on.
Am I tempted to highlight or to bring out someone else’s flaws to avoid confronting my own flaws and to make me feel better about myself? Too often.
How often do I think of prayer as a substitute for doing something to solve a problem rather than as a way of discerning how I can take part in solutions? Sometimes – because I like comfort. I get extremely anxious about the cost of taking stands. At other times, the problems just seem too big, and I can’t see how to break them into small parts, to take part in the small steps.
Are my decisions based on wanting to be a minister of justice? What does being a minister of justice means to me? It means being fair and merciful, seeking to take part in righting wrongs. As I’ve written on this blog before, the quest to right wrongs must be about more than punishing the person who makes poor choices and harms others.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
While often translated as “betray,” the meaning of “to be handed over” [in the Gospel passage] can be understood—as one scripture scholar notes—“as the idea of God’s plan unfolding.”
Ms. Wright explores what the way we translate that phrase means for our understanding of God and the roles in bringing about God’s vision.
This week’s prayer:
Lord, You know I’m neither totally wicked nor perfectly just. Thank You for allowing me and everyone around me to bear Your image. Grant us the grace to become better and better servant-leaders. Thank You for the servant-leaders among us, of which You are the foremost. Amen.
The readings for September 8 give me more to work with in the exploration of what justice means that I began in last week’s post. The passages tell me that doing justice means making sure that everyone has what they need to thrive physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Justice serves what gives life by looking beneath the surface for signs of that life. It doesn’t serve that which is fleeting or artificial—except when what is fleeting or artificial serves what’s good and eternal.
Beyond this week’s readings:
In the previous section, I wrote that justice removes barriers rather than that justice heals, even though the readings for September 8 contain more than one reference to what are often called healings. I wrote to “removes barriers” because I’d like to propose that the references to physical healing in the readings don’t have to be as much about removing this physical impairment or that one – any physical impairment, for that matter — as we may be accustomed to thinking they are. (By the way, these perspectives on physical impairment and their relationship to well-known accounts in Scripture are far from unique to me. Ms. Iozzio, whose reflection is linked in the next section, offers a perspective that relates to my own.)
Healing is involved, but I propose that more is being healed than seems apparent. A man’s physical Deafness is removed, and his difficulties with speech are removed so that he can connect with and contribute to his community in different ways than he has before. The event inspires his faith in Jesus as God incarnate.
I find it revealing that Jesus doesn’t say to the man “hear” and “speak clearly” when he lays hands on the man. Instead, He says, “Be opened!” (Mark 7:34). Granted, I can imagine ancient peoples explaining Deafness as being caused by the ears being closed. But I can also see “Be opened!” meaning, “Be open to faith.” For this man, Jesus is also opening the door to relating to his community in a new way. I invite you to read more about that new way of relating by clicking the link in the next section.
Each of us, regardless of what our limitations are and what causes them, are our most God-like selves when we’re open to faith and community. There are multiple ways to facilitate this openness. Healing impairments is only one of them. We can remove barriers. We can also be open to alternate ways of communicating and seeing. Impairments do no mean that a person reflects God’s image any less clearly than someone who seems to be without impairments. Being a member of the Deaf community or having a disability or illness doesn’t make anyone any less complete than anyone else. This perspective affects everyone because no one on this side of heaven has an invincible body.
New Testament support passages support the perspective that, though we are called to do our best to take care of what we have, and God is present to us to us so that we can share our desire to be well, having certain abilities isn’t the ultimate goal of the spiritual life. Consider that:
Jesus tells his apostles that a man’s blindness is not reflection of his own sinfulness or the sinfulness of his parents (John 9:1-3).
Saul, who will become Paul, goes blind when Jesus speaks to him on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:7).
Jesus heals a paralyzed man, telling him to get up and walk so that [onlookers] “may know [He has] the authority to forgive sins (Mark 2:9-12).
After healing a woman who’s had a hemorrhage for years, Jesus says to her, “your faith has saved you (Luke 7:50).
The human conditions in the examples above aren’t punishments. Even in Paul’s case, I think it’s the brightness of the light that blinds him, and the blindness helps him rely on God and the people around him (Acts 9:8). Blindness means the loss of physical vision for Paul, but it also means the acquisition of clearer spiritual vision for him.
However, it’s important to note that, in the same way that having an impairment doesn’t make a person less complete, than a person without that impairment, the condition also doesn’t necessarily make a person more spiritually insightful than a person without the same impairment. It’s also important to note that God is at work in different ways in different situations and to be cautious about presuming to understand why circumstances are what they are. Every situation presents its own challenges and its own opportunities for grace.
In each of the examples above, the physical healing isn’t the only or even the primary gift Jesus offers. The miracles treat sick souls, and not just the soul of the person who experiences a physical impact, but also the souls of the people who witness the impact or learn of it more than 2,000 years later.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Lord, help us to be open to You and to one another. Help us to respond to Your invitation to healthy relationships, which are two-way streets that can be built in many ways. Amen.
I think I’ll use a very current term to distill what the first reading says to me this time. It’s about the importance of self-care. When the passage begins, it seems like Elijah is physically and spiritually depleted. He asks God to end his life because he’s “no better” than anyone who came before him. (1Kings 19:4). I imagine him thanking that realizing this must mean he’s failed at the mission God has given him. After all, how can someone who’s no better than anyone who came before him be an effective prophet?
The situation is a reminder that God is at work even when we’re depleted. Sometimes, we’re most open to God working within and around us precisely when we feel we have nothing left to give. If we turn to God at no other time, many of us do so when we can’t see anywhere else to turn. I acknowledge this truth of human experience not to say that God wants us to be depleted. The Old Testament passage gives evidence to the contrary.
God knows that we need food, drink, rest, and to feel cared about to do our work and to be whole. God usually doesn’t force what we need upon us. Instead, God offers it, and it’s up to us to receive it. It was up to Elijah to acknowledge to God that he felt defeated and depleted, to rest, and then to take the nourishment that God offered.
The psalm reinforces that God provides for those who are open to receiving what God offers and to doing God’s work. It also reinforces the role the speaker has in finding what he needs, but it does so in a different way than the Old Testament passage does. The speaker says, “I will bless the Lord at all times” (Psalm 34: 2).
I had a gut reaction to this line, especially because it’s the first one included in this week’s psalm reading. I thought, “I don’t, and I won’t because there’s a lot that happens in the world that doesn’t seem like the will of a loving God, and I don’t understand why God, who I choose to believe is love, would allow these things to happen.
Thankfully, because I believe God is love, I also believe that a lot of things that happen grieve God. And I believe that sharing my grief and anger at what happens around me built as much of a connection to God is giving praise for God’s providence does.
My gut reaction also begins to feel different when I read later in this week’s psalm excerpt that the speaker “sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears” (Psalm 34:5). Maybe having a record and so being able to remind himself of the ways the Lord “answered [him] and delivered [him] from all [his] fears is the reason [“God’s] praise shall be ever in [his] mouth” (Psalm 34: 2; 5).
It might be helpful to consider the ways each of us can keep a record of times we’ve felt we’ve had what we needed and were seen and heard. Keeping such a record in whatever way makes sense for each of us may give us strength in those times when we don’t feel we have what we need or when we don’t feel seen and heard.
Maybe keeping a record of those experiences of abundance and connection, of grace, will help us glorify the Holy Spirit rather than “griev[ing]” it (Eph. 4:30). Maybe this practice will help us avoid what the epistle is urging us to avoid and to embrace what the epistle is asking us to embrace. I find the excerpt’s message easy to hear but difficult to put into practice. Maybe keeping track of empowering memories is a way of experiencing God’s presence with us when we find ourselves in situations that feel less empowering.
In the Gospel passage, Jesus’ contemporaries are having trouble recognizing that He’s God in their midst and that learning from Him, imitating him, and taking His words to heart would feed them, giving them life, not only in that moment, but eternally. Listening to Him and receiving what He provides leads to God, and recognizing how God has guided and provided in the past makes God present among us in the current moment. It points to Christ.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
When we are called on to make sacred sacrifices in order to ‘live in love’ – it is not our very self – our created self- that we are losing. It is the assumptions and projections of who we should be, the expectations and external pressures of others laid onto us by others.
The path to true peace, joy, and freedom — which is to say the path to union with God — isn’t often the same as the path to comfort. The first path I mentioned will require setting off without knowing what the journey will involve or what the destination will be like. In other words, following the path to union with God will ask us to trust what lies beyond our wounds, fears, and desires.
The journey will remind us that listening only to our instinct for self-preservation has led us astray in the past. It has isolated us, keeping us from finding true peace, joy, and freedom together, which is the only way we can find these gifts. We can’t find them alone.
We’re relational creatures who find our deepest sense of meaning beyond ourselves and our experiences, even beyond the communities we build with each other. We find lasting peace, joy, and true freedom when we recognize that while it’s essential to acknowledge our experiences and communities, as well as our practical needs, there is Someone who promises to provide for all of our needs and more, and we’re able to live in this reality.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
“That feeling of holy discontent doesn’t mean that yesterday’s prayer didn’t work; it means that God is building a relationship of trust with you. Just like the Israelites’ physical hunger kept them looking to the heavens for manna, our spiritual hunger turns us toward God.”
Lord, help me not to confuse comfort with true peace, joy, and freedom. Give me the faith and courage to trust you and to follow You when doing so feels most difficult so that I can find true peace, joy, and freedom. Amen.
I’m used to hearing that this week’s readings are about the following:
God’s providence
God’s power over nature, demonstrated differently than in the calming of the storm
Christ feeding His spiritual family members his own Body and Blood, an ongoing act of love that comes to us from His apostles because He extended it to them on the night of his Last Supper.
And it is all of the above, but I feel prompted to highlight what else stood out to me as I read the passages this time around:
A man came from Baal-shalishah bringing to Elisha, the man of God, twenty barley loaves made from the firstfruits, . . . . Elisha said, “Give it to the people to eat.” But his servant objected, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” . . . . And when they had eaten, there was some left over, as the LORD had said.
2 Kings 4:42-44
This passage and the New Testament one tell me that questions and doubts are only obstacles to God to the extent that they keep a person from acting with faith. In both passages, people act as God inspires them to do, and God works with what they give. God keeps his promises and gives more than the people hope for.
The eyes of all look hopefully to you, and you give them their food in due season . . .
Psalm 145:15
This verse reminds me that God’s timing may be different from mine. It doesn’t say God will give me what I want right now. Instead, it says God will give me what I need indue season — when the timing is best for me and for the overall plan.
Brothers and sisters: I, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience . . .
Ephesians 4:1-2
This excerpt relates to how God provides for us by giving Himself because we need God’s humility, gentleness, and patience to allow God to provide for us in other ways. God doesn’t force-feed us. Instead, God waits for us to be open to receiving Him.
Trusting in God, who isn’t limited by our sense of time and timing also takes patience.
Feeding others from the gifts we have received, in other words, making Christ visible in what we do, requires the virtues mentioned in this excerpt as well.
“’Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.'”
John 6:12
In addition to reinforcing the lessons of the Old Testament passage, the New Testament passage includes the above instruction. Not only does God give us more than we hope for in due season, but also we must be careful not to waste the abundance we receive. What we don’t waste can meet future needs.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Dr. Alice Prince points out that the virtues highlighted in this week’s epistle don’t just make room to receive God’s abundance. God’s abundance is one of those proverbial two-way streets. Receiving God’s abundance helps us experience and practice those virtues.
Beyond this week’s readings:
It’s easy enough to quote Scripture passages as evidence that God provides. I even posted last week about the ways I’ve noticed God providing for me lately. Even so, I know there are plenty of situations in which it doesn’t seem like God provides. I listed some of those situations at the end of last week’s post. I find myself asking, “Lord, if you can use five loaves and two fish to feed more than 5,000 people, why aren’t you making sure everyone in Gaza, the U.S. or everywhere else in the world has enough to eat right now? Don’t you care about food insecure and starving people anymore?
Faith tells me the answer is “yes.” But I wonder how often humans get in the way of God’s providence. I know that too often what’s left over gets wasted and doesn’t make it to the people who need it.
This week’s prayer:
May we never interfere with God’s providence. May we participate in it instead. And may we never waste what we have to share, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Note: I won’t have much time for the blog for the next two or three weeks. Until I have more time to devote to Sitting with the Sacred, I’m planning on keeping this section brief, perhaps by pointing out an overall theme or lesson that stands out to me. So, what’s going to come to me this week?
On my first read-through of the readings for June 23, I noticed lots of imagery relating to stormy seas, the Lord having power over them, and as a result, people being kept safe amid destructive forces.
But the passage from 2 Corinthians doesn’t immediately seem to fit in with this theme. I’ve struggled to unpack it’s meaning, but I think the gist of its meaning is familiar: because Christ withheld nothing from us — not even His life so that he could conquer death and stop it from having the final say, we should withhold nothing from Him. We must instead ask for the grace not to see others only in terms of what is transitory, such as looks and abilities, or in terms of what they can do for us. All of these can and do change.
We are also being encouraged to ask for the grace not to view others in terms of the harm they’ve caused. Looks, abilities, what we can do for each other, and the ways we can hurt each other — none of these things remain as they are. They’re transformed by Christ’s resurrection. So are understandings of what it means to be saved and to die. I suppose that’s why, in the Gospel passage, Jesus is able to sleep while the apostles are terrified of drowning in the storm. He knows that neither the storm nor death have ultimate power over anyone in the boat. He and our free will have the ultimate power — because He and God are one, and it is God’s love that gives life and the freedom to receive God’s love or reject it.
It’s not trusting that love that brings about spiritual death. At one time or another, each of us will undergo physical death. But whenever we trust in God’s love and share it, we receive new life in our spirits.
This week’s prayer:
Lord, protect us as we face the literal and figurative storms of life on Earth. Thank You for being with us in the midst of the storms of all kinds that life sends our way. Help us to experience that storms don’t have the final say — no matter how much they hurt us. Help us to experience that it’s okay to have questions and be angry and afraid when they hurt us.
This week especially, we bring to prayer residents of coastal communities, seafarers, police, firefighters, healthcare workers, lifeguards, pastors, ministers, counselors, aid workers and many others who offer rescue in all its forms. Amen. We offer this prayer in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Sitting with the Sacred 