Our God: A Merciful God, a Generous God, a Forgiving God

Today’s liturgy opens with the following entrance antiphon from Wis 11: 24, 25, 27:  “You are merciful to all, O Lord, and despise nothing that you have made.  You overlook people’s sins, to bring to repentance, and you spare them, for you are the Lord our God."

I was reminded that this is true for each of the campaigners and for me as well, as I am deeply troubled by what I see in the campaigns for being our next president.  I asked the Lord to open my eyes to His Way, my mind to His thoughts. He did so in the following feedback:

Dorothy Ann, I know that you are disappointed about the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, that persons would win who vilify others with words, who attempt to sway votes by publishing obscene messages about their opponents on social media, who attempt to rise up by putting others down. You are seeing humans acting badly. You are seeing ambition at its worst—the search for power and control being out of control. As I said to Samuel when the Israelites wanted a king like other nations around them:  give them what they want.   I will not usurp free will.  If acting foolishly, if making poor decisions, people will suffer the results of those decisions.

Sometimes I allow the worst to happen to teach humankind that they are not God and to each you that you are not God. I right the wrongs. I put people on the straight path when they give me a crooked one!  I am God. There is no other! And I am at work even when you do not recognize me.

Peter's Discimination Challenged by the Lord

In today’s first reading, Acts 11:1-8, Peter is given a vision of all kinds of creatures, ”four-legged animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky,” and hears a voice saying to him: “Get up, Peter. Slaughter and eat.” Peters immediately objects: “No way.” He insists on remaining true to the Jewish dietary laws.  God retorts him: “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.”  The Spirit then instructs him to accompany three men to the home of uncircumcised men: “Accompany them without discriminating.” I wonder, what instructions the Lord would give the Church and  us, as we continue to discriminate against one another, men against women, women against men, Christians against those of the Jewish, Islamic, Muslim, Hindu, Methodist, Baptist, Protestant, Episcopalian, Presbyterian and other religions and them against us; Whites against Blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, Japanese,  Arabs,  Mexican,  Indian, Native American and other races and them against us.  “Accompany them, include them, speak to and about them ‘without discriminating’; stop your prejudice,” I think the Lord would say to us, challenging  us,  and the Church, for the ways in which we discriminate against anyone in our everyday practices.

As Peter insisted upon the Jewish dietary laws, upon what man-made laws do we continue to insist?  Where do we need the Lord to say to us, as He said to Peter: “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane”?

The power and effects of love

Today, I invite you to read the first reading of today's liturgy as God addressing you personally. It would then read as follows:

“(insert your name) , beloved, My dear one, if God so loved you, you also must love others. No one has ever seen Me. Yet if you love one another, especially those whom you find repulsive or obnoxious, I remain in you, and My love is brought to perfection in you.

This is how you know that you remain in Me and I in you, that I have given you of My Spirit.  Moreover, you have seen and testify that I, Your Abba God, sent My Son as savior of the world. When you acknowledge that Jesus is My Son, I remain in you and you in Me. You have come to believe in the love I have for you, my Beloved, My cherished one.

I am love and whoever remains in love remains in me and I in that person. In this is love brought to perfection in you, that you have confidence on the day of judgment because as I am, so are you in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.

But you, (insert your name), are being perfected in love through your faith in My Son, Jesus Christ, and your effort to love, first yourself so you can love others, and, second, others with whom you live and work and play.” (1 Jn 4: 11-18—I made adaptations).

Wow! What love! I am awed by this passage, especially when I think of married men and women growing in love with and for one another and for their children! All of you in marriage are truly blessed.  Those of us in religious life and/or in the single life are inspired by you but also called to grow in love excluding no one!  That, too, is a challenge but one reachable through the power of God’s love at work in us.

Seeing God at Work: What's My Reaction?

In today's Gospel, Lk 11: 14-23, Jesus "was driving out a demon that was mute, and when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed." Others accused Jesus of casting out demons by Satan's power. From Jesus' question to his objectors, "By whom do your people cast out demons," it is obvious that there were individuals among the objectors who also had the power to cast out Satan.   I can imagine the objectors saying to themselves: "Who is this guy? He is not one of us!He's not authentic!  He must be under Satan's influence!" 

Satan's goal on this earth is to create division, to cause chaos, to lead people to mistrust God at work in ourselves and in others.  The snare Satan sets for us is to engage in behaviors, in conversations, that pit one person against another, that leads others to question the authenticity and the motivations of another.  We may not be aware of  why we believe that "'nothing good' can come from the source which we are opposing.However, many times, when God is doing good in another, we are faced with mystery.  The response that brings about unity is one of reverence and awe, gratitude and affirmation; in short, behaviors flowing from our spirit-self, not from our egos. The ego always wants to be the center of attention, the one on the pedestal, the one who is right and the other wrong. The ego, as the egos of Adam and Eve, wants to be a god unto itself and does not believe God's promptings anymore than Adam and Eve did. Satan plants a doubt and says, in effect: "God really did not say you couldn't eat of that fruit. It really is not true that you will die. No, God knows that you will be like Him if you eat of it." And we know the rest of the story. We, too, get caught in this game of pretending to be God, always right and never wrong in our relationships with others, as with the objectors of Jesus doing good by the power of the Spirit working through  Him.

Humility in the face of God at work in another, especially if I do not like that person or believe what that person believes,  or if I perceive that person in competition with me, does not come easily.

God never abandons us

As we read today’s first reading, Is 10: 5-7, 13b-16, we might want to imagine how Jesus would say this to us. I came up with the following imaginative conversation parallel to Isaiah’s message to those who brought harm to Israel:

             Dorothy Ann, nations rose up against my people Israel. They boasted of their of

             crimes against my people: raping women, killing those left as orphans following

             a hostile, bloody takeover. They destroyed sacred vessels and confiscated treasures.

They boasted of their military prowess, their domination and destruction of all

that survived the massacre. These same abominations persist throughout the

world of today and have been a reality of one nation putting down another, one

ruler putting down his people, one violent individual putting down another.

 My inheritance you inflict:

 Widow and stranger you have slain in your wars,

the fatherless you have murdered with violent weapons

 or with violent words of gossip;

women you have raped; young girls and boys you have sold into the sex slave;

young men and women you have killed for drug money

or by the fleeting pleasure of gossip;

unborn infants you have slaughtered in the womb.

 And you have the audacity to say, as Assyria said:

 “By my own power I have done it,

And by my wisdom, for I am shrewd…

(L)ike a giant I have put down the enthroned….”  (cf. Is 10: 5-7, 13b-16)

 God’s response to us is contained in today’s psalm (Ps. 94: 7-8, 9-10, 14-15)

                 “Understand, you senseless ones

                of my people;

                and, you fools, when will you be wise?

                 “Shall he who shaped the ear not hear?

                Or he who formed the eye not see?

                Shall he who instructs nations

                not chastise,

                he who teaches [human beings] knowledge?

                 “For the Lord will not cast off his people

                nor abandon his inheritance;

                but judgment shall again be with justice,

                and all the upright of heart shall

                follow it.”

My response: O God, have mercy.