Listen to God's Instructions

In today's first reading, Isaiah 1: 10, 16-20, the prophet Isaiah asks to: Hear the word of the Lord...Listen to the instruction of our God...Wash yourselves clean, the prophet Isaiah says to us, "Put away  your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil; learn to do good. Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan's plea, defend the widow. Come now, let us set things right...Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as show; Though they be crimson red, they may become white as wool."

"Cease doing evil,"  O people of the U.S., of North Korea, of Russia, of the Middle East, of North and South and Central America, of Africa and New Mexico, of Australia and New Zealand, of Iceland, Greenland and Europe, of Italy, Ireland and England, of Denmark, Switzerland, Scotland and Wales, of China and Japan and any other nation any where in the world! "Learn to do good!"

God says to you and me: "Listen to God's instruction" one day at a time and  "Learn to do good"  one day at a time.  Every morning when you and are awakened--it is God who does the awakening--God gives us one more day to learn to do what is right, to learn to be just and holy, to learn to defend the defenseless, to speak for those who have no voice, to set things right with those we have wronged or who have wronged us!  God gives us this day, the now, to find Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in the daily tasks that confront us each day!  "Why," God asks us in today's responsorial psalm, "do you recite my statues, and profess my covenant with your mouth, though you hate discipline and cast my words behind  you?"  Why do you ignore your spouse's request to help with the children, to prepare a meal, to do the grocery shopping, to take out the garbage, to shovel the driveway, to fix that leaking faucet? Why do you not read to the elderly person who is blind, take time to comfort the person who recently lost a loved one or spend time with a someone who is lonely or who is confused because of severe dementia?  "When you do [not] do these things," asks the psalmist, "shall I be deaf to it?"

In today's Gospel acclamation, the Lord asks us to "[c]ast away from you all [selfish and sloth-some ways]...and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit" (Ez 18:31)  and promises "those who go the right way" that they will be shown "the salvation of God"  (today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 50).