"Seeing the Bounty of the Lord in the Land of the Living" (Psalm 27)

In today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 27, we acknowledge our belief that "the Lord is  [our] light and our salvation,...[our] life' s refuge."  We ask the Lord for the the favor to "dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of [our lives and to]...gaze on the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple."  We then, at the close of the psalm, express our belief that we "shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living."  In order to experience any of the graces expressed in this psalm, however, the psalmist tells us that we  need to "wait for the Lord with courage....[B]e stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!"

"The Lord is our light." In order to know the Lord as our light, we need to experience darkness, as did the man in today's Gospel, Luke 4: 31-37. Think of the joy he experienced when Jesus, His Savior,  delivered  him from the power of an unclean spirit that had taken possession of him. To truly know joy, as this man did,  we need to experience the darkness of  sorrow. To deeply know the strength of our faith, we need to go through the darkness of doubt! To bask in the joy of being healthy we need to live through the dark times of an illness!  The man in today's Gospel, I believe, would have gone through all of these experiences! Even Jesus as a human being was not exempt from experiencing darkness, the most awful of which was His crucifixion and death upon the cross! He passed through death, however, to the glory of the resurrection!  We will, as well!

In Psalm 27, we pray to "gaze upon the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple."  How might that happen? I believe that the loveliness of the Lord resides in every human being and that all people and all of creation are God's temple. God, I believe, lives in each one of us and in creation itself. As temples of God and dwelling places of God's loveliness, we are called to make known God's loveliness and to build God's temple by co-operating with God's grace.  We have examples of this in creation. Everything in the universe reveals God's brilliance, God's loveliness, God's beauty, God's love for us!  As persons with free will, we may or may not cooperate with grace in revealing the loveliness, the beauty, the brilliance of God, the love of God within us and supporting and nurturing the God-life in others. 

The choice to live in the Light or in darkness is ours to make each day, as is the choice to move through "death" to resurrection or to new life each day!  If we choose life and reject death each day, we truly "shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living."

Wisdom: A Gift from God's Bountifulness

In today's first reading, Sirach 1: 1-10, we read that all "wisdom comes from the Lord and with him it remains forever, and is before all time....The word of God on high is the fountain of wisdom and her ways are everlasting....There is but one, the Most High all-powerful creator-king and truly awe-inspiring one, seated upon his throne and he is the God of dominion....He has poured her (wisdom) forth upon all his works, and upon every living thing according to his bounty; he has lavished  her upon his friends."

Because God pours wisdom upon all his works, upon you and me, and "every living thing according to his bounty," because he lavishes her upon us, we are empowered to know right from wrong, to reach out to those in need, to right what is wrong in  our personal, social, familial, ecclesial, civic and community lives.  Wisdom, which comes from God's generosity and concern for us,  enables us to assist others who have made poor choices.  We are able to direct others back to doing or not doing what wisdom inspires them to do or not to do, provided, that is, that we model such behavior!