Made God's "Polished Arrow" and Hidden in God's Quiver

 In today's first reading, Isaiah 49: 1-6,  the prophet speaks of his calling, telling us that "the Lord called  [him] from birth, from [his] mother's womb he gave [him his] name.  He made of me," Isaiah says to us,   "a sharp-edged sword and concealed me in the shadow of his arm. He made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me. You are my servant, he said to me...through whom I show my glory." 

What an affirmation of being God's servant and, obviously protected by God as a prophet who would come under attack for speaking in God's name, challenging injustice and sinful ways.  He would be "a sharp-edged sword,...concealed...in the shadow of [God's] arm,"  uprooting evil. As he carried out his mission as God's prophet and servant, God's glory would be shown through him!

The goal of his prophetic ministry was that "Jacob may be brought back to [God] and Israel gathered to [God]. There were times, Isaiah tells us, when he thought he "had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly spent [his] strength."  How did he keep going when the times got rough?  He says:  "[M]y reward is with the Lord, my recompense is with my God."   Telling himself that truth, I believe,  gave him the strength he needed, especially when he wondered whether he was working "in vain, uselessly[spending] his strength."

Like Isaiah, you and I were also called from our mother's womb to be a servant of the Lord, to be someone through whom God's glory would be revealed.  In challenging times, God, as He did with Isaiah, hides us 
"in the shadow of his arm."   When going into warfare, that is, fighting spiritual battles against Satan, God makes us " a polished arrow!"  We win the spiritual battles we face on our way to eternity because God is at our side as a Warrior God, stronger than Satan. When God is with us--and He always is--Satan does not have a chance to win any battle we face as God's servants or God's prophets in this world!

God Sets Up His Sanctuary Among Us Forever

 In today's first reading,  Ezekiel 37: 21-28, the Lord promises that there will "be one prince" for the Chosen People and that "never again shall they be two nations" and neither shall they ever again "be divided into two kingdoms.."   God promises that he will deliver them from "their sins of apostasy, and cleanse them so that they may be my people and I may be their God.....I will...put my sanctuary  among them forever. My dwelling shall be with them; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Thus the nations shall know that it is I, the Lord, who make Israel holy, when my sanctuary shall be set up among them forever." In the responsorial psalm, Psalm 31:10, 11-12abcd, 13, the same promises are stated in the words: "He who scattered Israel, now gathers them together, he guards them, as a shepherd his flock...he shall redeem him from the hand of his conqueror....I will turn their mourning into joy, and I will console and gladden them after their sorrows."

In the Gospel, John 11: 45-56, we are told that the chief priests and the Pharisees are afraid that, because Jesus' popularity is growing in leaps and bounds and more and more people are coming to believe in Him,  the Romans will come and take away both their land and their nation."  In the midst of all of that turmoil,  Caiaphas prophesizes that "Jesus is going to die for the  nation, and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to kill him."  Truly, the promise made by Ezekiel that God will deliver us from our "sins of apostasy and cleanse [us]" becomes a reality--God makes us holy.   When Jesus is lifted up on the cross, dies and is risen to new life, we, too, are risen to new life in Christ Jesus! At our baptisms, we truly become God's sanctuary; God dwells with us forever!

"Behold the Handmaid of the Lord!"

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation! Mary says "yes" to God's plan for our salvation--your salvation and mine! Yes--the salvation of the entire world: saint and sinner, criminal and law-abiding citizens of every nation on earth, men and women of every race, of every nationality, of every ethnicity!

Imagine being a 13 or 14 year-old Jewish teenager engaged to her future husband, Joseph!  Suddenly, standing before her is an angel "sent from God," Luke tells us in today's Gospel. Mary was greatly troubled, Luke tells us!  Coming toward her, the angel says: "Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you."  Mary, I imagine, must have said to herself: "What's going on here? Am I going crazy? Am I hallucinating? Help."   Seeing Mary's reaction, the angels says to her: "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end." And Mary simply asks "How will this happen? I have had no relations with a man!" And the angels responds: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God...."  Hearing the angel's response, Mary says: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to hour word." What faith! What humility! What courage! Mary knows that in her culture that a woman pregnant outside of marriage could be stoned to death!  So, how does she handle this possibility? How does she tell Joseph  to whom she is engaged? How does she tell her parents and her friends?  We do not know the answer to those questions but we do know that Mary had faith and faith moves mountains, even the mountains of possible death!

Grant it, I am not Mary, But  what if, as I am doing my chores, I look up and there, not only stands an angel but he says to me: "Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you!"  Thoughts such as the following might flood my mind:  "What? Am I going crazy? Am I hallucinating? What's going on?" And the angel says: "Do not be afraid...for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and  bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus...."  My thoughts: "Wait a minute! I've not had no relations with a man! Get pregnant? These have got to be auditory hallucinations!  I need help!" But the angel reassures me when I asked how any of this could possibly happen. The angel responds: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you...."

You and I, like Mary, have faced difficult situations, have been asked to do things that, no way, could we have accomplished without divine intervention!  God does not asks us to do anything that He does not equip us to to or that He does not remove  the obstacles to the tasks being accomplished in His name, we we, too, are God's handmaidens and sons!

Trusting the Lord

 In today's first reading, Daniel 3: 14-20, 91-92, 92,  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship a golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar set up as his god. The king was enraged with anger when the three men said to him:  "There is no need for us to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from  your hands, O king, may  he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue that you set up."  The men were bound up and thrown into a furnace that was heated seven times more than usual. To the king's amazement, when he looks into the furnace, he sees four men walking among the flames.  "Did we not  cast three men bound into the fire? ...I see four men unfettered and unhurt, walking in the fire, and the fourth looks like a son of God." None of them is harmed by the flames.  

May you and I, as did Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, trust God whenever we encounter "furnaces" in our lives and, in faith, embrace the challenge to do what is right. May we never forget  that God stands by waiting of us to call upon Him for the strength we need to do His will. He is always at our side protecting us from being harmed by the Evil One. 

Jesus: The I AM

 In today's Gospel, John 8: 21-30, Jesus says to us:  "...[I]f you do not believe that I AM you will die in your sins....When you lift up the Son of Man, they you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to  him."

Recall Moses' question to the Lord when sent to lead the people out of the land of slavery to the Promised Land. "Who do I say sent me, Moses asked God.  What is your name?" And God replied: "Tell them "I AM sent you."  The New Moses is Jesus, who leads us out of the slavery of sin and opens the door to eternal life!

If I do not believe in Jesus, if I do not come to realize and believe that Jesus is the I AM, that is, God in the living flesh, I am left in my sin of disbelief. 

Think of the following facts about what the Chosen People who lived in Jesus' time witnessed about Jesus: the dead were raised to life, the sick were healed, the blind enabled to see and the deaf to hear, demons were cast out of persons, fierce storms were quieted, 1000s and 1000s of people fed with five loaves and two fishes, women were spoken to and included in His ministry just like men were (the apostle to the apostles was a woman and it was a woman who was the first to proclaim Jesus' resurrection from the dead in a culture where women had no voice or no place in public life); sinners were forgiven and shown mercy (recall Jesus' mercy toward the woman caught in adultery--the Jews of Jesus' time claimed that they had a right to stone her to death); children were received with open arms in a culture where, like women, were not counted.

What happened? The leaders of the people had had enough and were determined to put Jesus to death and so they did! He was turned over to the Romans who occupied Israel at the time and was cruelly crucified as a criminal! And one Roman soldier who looked upon the crucified Jesus said, in effect: "Truly, He was the Son of God!" And one of the thieves crucified with him turned to him as both were dying on the cross and said: "Remember me in your Kingdom, Lord," recognizing that Jesus was truly the Son of God, the I AM,  whose Kingdom was not of this world. The other thief made fun of Jesus upon the cross: "If you are the Christ, save yourself and us, meaning release us from these crosses, take us off theses crosses and let us walk away free,. You are the Son of God, aren't you?"

Do you/do I believe that Jesus is the I AM?

Jesus Learned Obedience through Suffering

 In today's second reading, Hebrews 5: 7-9, we are told that Jesus "learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him." 

What amazes me is the statement that Jesus "learned obedience from what he suffered."   Jesus is the Son of God!  Why would He need to learn obedience from the sufferings He endured?  Is it that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life and through Jesus we learn to obey God through the sufferings we endure, especially those sufferings that result in our disobedience, the sufferings that are the consequences of our walking away from God and doing things our way, not God's?  Jesus in our teacher! Jesus is our Way! Jesus is our Truth! Jesus is not an exception but the example of what being a brother or a sister to Jesus/to God means!

In today's Gospel, John 12: 20-33, Jesus says that "the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit." Jesus' death and resurrection continues, to this very day, to bear fruit in the life of believers.

Unlike Jesus, whose ego died to the spirit's obedience to the Father's will, our ego wants to be in charge of our lives and opposes the One who is truly in control of our lives.  When we die to the ego's way of doing things and follow the will of God for us--that we love as He loves us--it is then that we "bear much fruit."  We find life, John tells us, by losing life, that is by dying to selfishness and narcissism, to  "I'll-do-it- my-way; thank-you" stance or to defiantly proclaiming that "nobody-tells-me-what-to-do" that we truly bear fruit that will last!  By dying to selfish attitudes we are truly glorified. That hour to be glorified approaches whenever we are faced with the call to serve others in self-sacrificing love:   a baby cries or a child asks for help, a teen wants to learn to drive,  a  spouse needs us to share the responsibility of running a household. Or, if we are members of a religious community, a community member needs us to drop what we are doing to help an elderly, sick member or to listen to someone who is grieving a significant loss: the loss of independence, the loss of hearing, the loss of memory, the loss of a close friend or family member, the loss of a sense of belonging and so on!

What "death" am I being called to embrace in order to know new life, to experience a resurrection?  What suffering, today, will teach me obedience?

Letting God Direct us, as Joseph Did

 Today we celebrate the feast of St. Joseph, the husband of Mary, the Mother of God and the foster father of Jesus. In today's Gospel, Matthew 1: 2q6, 18-21, 24a, we learn that Joseph found Mary pregnant prior to their marriage and decides to divorce her privately so as not "to expose her to shame."   An angel intervenes and says to Joseph in a dream: "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."  Joseph  did "as the angel of the Lord had commanded him..."   When Jesus is born out in the cold in a manger where animals took shelter and after being visited by Magi from the East, the Lord again appears to Joseph in a dream at night and says to him: "Get up, take the child and his mother with you, and escape into Egypt, and stay there until I tell  you, because Herod intends to search for the child and do away with him.'"  Joseph does as the Lord commanded him. In Egypt, after Herod's death, the Lord again appears to Joseph in a dream at night and says to him:  "'Get up, take the child and his mother with you and go back to the land of Israel, for those who wanted to kill the child are dead.'"  Joseph does as the Lord asks of him.  As he approaches the land of Israel, Joseph learned that Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod as ruler of Judea. Joseph is afraid to enter that land. "[B]eing warned in a dream, he left for the region of Galilee" instead and settled in Nazareth.

May you and I be as attentive to the warnings that God sends us, as Joseph was. May we, like Joseph, recognize God's voice and the ways in which He directs us, protects us from evil, and guides us to make choices that are safe and which enable us to thrive as we care for others!

God Makes All Things New

 In today's first reading,  Ezekiel 47: 1-9, 12, an angel brings Ezekiel to the entrance of the temple of the Lord. he sees water flowing out from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east and from other directions as well.  He wades through the water until it is waist deep and a river is flowing through the waters and too deep to wade through.  The angel then had Ezekiel sit down on the bank of the river and said to him:  "This water...empties into the sea, the salt waters, which it makes fresh. Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creatures that can multiply shall live, and there shall be abundant fish, for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh. Along both banks of the river, fruit trees of every kind shall grow; their leaves shall not fade, nor their fruit fail. Every month they shall bear fresh fruit, for they shall be watered by he flow from the sanctuary. Their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine."

Wonder from where your freshness comes? The water Ezekiel saw, I believe, flows in the form of grace throughout our days, grace that promotes life in the entire universe. Day in and day out, you and I have the freshness we need to bear fruit in our encounters, our endeavors, our efforts to do good and confront evil!  Every day, birds are singing, animals prancing, fruit trees and gardens bearing products that give us nourishment! 

All things are made new each day by the "river" of God's creative love flowing in abundance throughout the lands in which we live.  May God be praised morning, noon and night for His goodness to us!

The Other: A Mirror of Myself!

 In today's first reading, Isaiah 65: 17-21, the Lord gives us the following message through the prophet Isaiah:  "Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind. Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create; for I create Jerusalem to be as joy and its people to be a delight; I will rejoice in Jerusalem and exult in my people." 

We are approaching spring and all things will be recreated: the bare trees, the leafless bushes and the brown laws will become green again.  Birds will lay eggs and a variety of animals and fishes will mate.  New life will appear throughout this spring season!  God's creative power of love is forever bringing forth new life within the universe and within ourselves, even when we do not see the newness.   

And as at the first creation, God looks upon His creation and says: "It is very good!"  In this passage from Isaiah, God says:  "...I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight!"  Yes, God, says to you and to me: I have created you "to be a delight; I...exult in my people,"  that is, I exult in you, (insert your name)!

What keeps you/me from realizing that God exults in us? What keeps you/me from exulting in another person? Am I/are you, in fact, looking for the good in another, in ourselves or are we focused on weaknesses and faults in the other, in ourselves?  What if we changed our focus and looked for the good in another person and in ourselves each day! It is important to remember that what bothers me about another person is that that same weakness/sin exists in me! What I despise or condemn in another person is what I despise and condemn in me!  And the good I admire in another, also, exists in me!

God's Law of Love

 In today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 19, we praise the Lord for having "the words of everlasting life,"
 and for the fact that His law "is perfect,...refreshing the soul,...giving wisdom to the simple,...rejoicing the heart,...[and] enlightening the eyes."  

God's law is written on our hearts, a law that Jesus summarizes into two parts. The first part is: "Love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole mind."  The second part of the law is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself."    In short, the law that God has written on our hearts is the law of love!  And even more amazing is the truth that God does not ask us to do anything without giving us the ability and the grace to do it!

You and I might think: how foolish is God to write the law of love on the hearts of humankind! From the very beginning of the Scriptures, we prove how foolish and weak humankind is! Our first parents succumb to temptation and are cast out of paradise. Cain kills Abel and the earth that received Abel's blood rebels, making it difficult for humankind to cultivate crops without encountering thistles and weeds and rocks and parched, and sometimes, land overly saturated with rain! Bringing new life into the world is also painful and risky! Yes, the history of humankind's inhumanity to humanity flourishes throughout the Scriptures and into this mess God sends His only begotten son, who, in turn, is crucified by men in authority jealous of Him and threatened by Him, even during His infancy when Herod vowed to kill Him even then.

In today's second reading, 1 Corinthians 1: 22-25, Paul reminds us, however, that "the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."  In eyes without faith, however,  God's plan seems crazy!  We may argue with God that our history proves how fickle we are, how irresponsible and prone to evil and that it is not safe for the Son of God to become one of us.  And God says, perhaps: It is not about safety as you define it but for your eternal safety, your salvation. My Son will show you how to deal with  man's inhumanity to humankind: how to live in a way that you grow strong in grace, in a way that you experience the power of my resurrection/my triumph over evil.

As with my Son, God says to us, I will show you how to surrender to My plan for your salvation. You will learn that I have "the words of everlasting life," and that My law of love "is perfect,...refreshing the soul,...giving wisdom to the simple,...rejoicing the heart,...[and] enlightening the eye."

O Jesus, may I learn this truth over and over and over again!