God's Knowledge and Love of Us

Today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 139, opens with us acknowledging that God has "probed me and...[knows] me."  We go on to pray:   "O Lord,...you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. My journeys and my rest you scrutinize, with all my ways you are familiar. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know the whole of it. Behind me and before, you hem me in and rest your hand upon me." 

God probes me! God knows what I am thinking.God knows what I am pondering. God knows my desires.  God know what motivates me to do what I do or not do what I do not do. God knows me more than and better than I know myself.   And yet God loves me beyond all telling! Why? Because God sees me as one redeemed in the blood of Christ. In Holy Communion, God visits me: "Take and eat," God said to the disciples at the Last Supper: "This is my body given up for you. Take and drink; this is the blood of the New Covenant" (cf Luke 22: 19-20)--the blood which saves us from Satan's pursuit every day. The Blood of Christ marks us as God's redeemed, as ones saved by Christ, just as the blood of goats sprinkled on the door posts of the houses of the Chosen People saved them from physical death.

Thank you, Lord, for this gift of faith!

God Does Not Grow Weary in Responding to Our Needs

In today’s first reading, Isaiah 40: 25-31, Isaiah reminds us that God “does not faint nor grow weary, and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.”  How often, I wonder, do I not reduce God to my level of weariness and my limited knowledge? If I did not, consciously or unconsciously, do this, then why am I hesitant to follow God’s lead, to rest, to take my burdens to Him, or to realize that God knows me through and through, that God knows the heart and the mind of every human being?  Every detail of a human endeavor is known to God before anyone initiates or implements that plan. Why, Isaiah asks, do we say “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”?  If I took the time to disclose my plans to the Lord, He would give me the enlightenment that I need to move forward with the plan or to discard it because it is against God’s will and violates the rights of others.

Jesus says in today’s Gospel, Matthew 11: 28-30: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” But, no, I keep on frantically being involved. I do not give myself the gift of letting go and sitting with the Lord in total stillness, letting the Lord give me the peace which the world cannot give. Only then will I do what is right and experience God’s abundant blessings.

 Often during His lifetime, burdened by the demands of His life, Jesus stopped and withdrew into the mountains to be with His Father in prayer. We, too, need to do that. Our desire for peace, our hope in the Lord, needs to be expressed by stopping from time to time to visit the Lord in quiet. We will then know the truth of Isaiah’s teaching: “They that hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings; they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.”

Laboring and Carrying our Burdens in the Strength of the Lord

Jesus says to us in today’s Gospel, Mt 11: 28-30, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”    In the first reading, Isaiah 40: 25-31, Isaiah reminds us that God “does not faint or grow weary” and that “his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.”  There is nothing about you or me  that God does not know.  He knows when you or I have grown weary. He knows when we feel faint and overwhelmed by what we are facing in our lives, in this very  hour.  He knows exactly where you and  I are on this journey to the Promised Land. He knows whether we are in “inclement weather,” buffeted by storms too much for us, whether  we are on a smooth path or a rough one, whether we have encountered an “enemy,” or are approaching a hostile or a friendly environment.  He also knows whether we are “armed” for the battle or ill-prepared.  “Why,” God asked, “do you even think that your “way is hidden” from me or that your rights are “disregarded” by  me? “Do you not know or have you not heard, Isaiah asks, that the Lord is the eternal God, creator of the ends of the earth, that God “does not faint nor grow weary,” that “his knowledge is beyond scrutiny,” that he “gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound.”  Do you not know  that those who “hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings; they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.”  Yes, if we come to Jesus, in good times and in “bad”, we will know all these things!