Lord, Let Your Face Shine on Us! (Psalm 4)

 In today's first reading, Acts 3: 13-15, 17-19, Peter contrasts God's actions with the actions of the people as follows:                                                                   l

The people:

• Ignorant of God's will
• Denied Jesus
• Demanded that Jesus be put to death
• Killed the Author of Life 
• Freed a murderer, that is, one who destroyed life

God:

• Fulfilled the divine will that we be saved from eternal death
• Fulfilled the prophecy that Christ would suffer to restore us to life
• Raised Jesus from the dead
• Glorified Jesus

In today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 4, we pray:  "Lord, let your face shine on us!"  Without God's face shining upon us, we will continue to be ignorant of God's will. We will, without grace, continue to deny Jesus! In the psalm prayer, we  beg for mercy, thus heeding the call in today's first reading: "Repent...and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away!"  We say to God through the psalmist: "When I call, answer me, O my just God, you who relieve me when I am in distress; have pity on me, and hear my prayer!" The psalmist, then, says to us: "Know that the Lord does wonders for his faithful one; the Lord will hear [you] when [you] call upon him...[the Lord puts] gladness  into [your] heart. As soon as [you] life down, [you] fall peacefully asleep, for [the...Lord brings] security to[your] dwelling."

What an incredibly humble God! What a merciful God! What a compassionate God! What a loving God! God stoops down to us who have denied Jesus, condemned Jesus, demanding the release of a murdering and shouting to Pilate when he asked what we wanted him to do with our King, the Author of Life, and we responded: "Crucify him, crucify him!"

O God, have mercy on us!  Every day, we continue to crucify you in unjust killings, in homicides committed in the name of self-defense, people murdered out of jealous rage, thousands dying of covid-19 because of refusals to take measures to lessen the spread of this disease; children dying of starvation and so on!  "Lord, let your face shine on us" that we might be saved from eternal death and restored to life!