Dedicated to God for God's Purposes

In today's first reading, Jeremiah 1: 4-5, 17-19, God tells us, through the prophet, that God knew us "before [God] formed us] in [our mother's] womb" and that He "dedicated" us before we were born. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God asks us "to gird" ourselves and to do and say what God commands us to do or say; "Be not crushed on [account of others], as though I would leave you crushed before them....[Others] will fight against you but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord."

And God does not break His promise!  We see that truth in Christ Jesus. In today's Gospel,  Luke 4: 21-30, after Jesus spoke in the synagogue of his hometown, the people turned against Him. They took Him "to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong." Jesus "passed through the midst of them and went away."  God the Father delivered His son from the evil ways of those plotting to harm Him and He does so for us, as well!  God is on the side of those who do His will and who follow the plan God has marked out for them!

Who am I in today's Gospel: those who, out of anger or jealousy, rise up against others or those who, girded with grace and the power of the Spirit,  speak the truth as directed by God, as Jesus did?  Do I, like Jesus, trust the Father in fighting for us and protecting us from evil?

A True Disciple of the Lord

Today we celebrate the feast day of  the archangels, Sts. Raphael, Michael and Gabriel.  The Gospel, John 1: 47-51,  recalls Nathanael’s call to follow Jesus. As Nathanial approaches Jesus, the Lord says of him: “Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.”  If I approach Jesus, what might Jesus say of me? Am I as single-hearted, as pure of heart as Nathanial was?  Would Jesus say: “Here is a true disciple of My Father?”

Nathanial is taken aback that Jesus knew Him that well? “How do you know me,” He asked Jesus. And Jesus responds: “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”  Yes, Jesus sees us under “the fig trees” of our lives, as well. He knows us through and through just as He knew Nathanial. This Gospel story ends with the Lord reminding  Nathanial that he will see greater things than he’s already seen, that is, he will see  the “heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” 

Was it Nathaniel’s lack of duplicity that gave him the clarity to eventually  “see the heaven opened and angels of God ascending and descending”?  A friend of mine, once told me that, in a very dense fog, she saw an angel  pushing the fog aside so she could see to drive. When she was in an emergency room, unable to breathe because of severe asthmatic attacks, she saw an angel sitting beside her keeping her calm. Was it that she, too, was so steadfast in her faith, so focused on the Lord and the things of God, on doing His will above all, that prepared her for such encounters?

What drives me? To what do I tenaciously cling?