Sunday June 4, 2023
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
God so loves the world
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but have everlasting life.
And when I read this, I think of the men and women healed by Jesus. They too will not perish, but have everlasting life.
Still, they all, at last, die. One of these days the healing will be over and the illness will begin – you know, the one that ends in death. Like us, our friend Clarence Heller grapples with the layers of physical and eternal life:
The blind man who was healed later got the flu, argued with his wife,
died a painful death.
Oh, sweet Jesus, help me to not be discouraged by what may happen tomorrow,
nor fear the pain and suffering that accompanies living.
Rather, help me fully cooperate with acting in love today.
Moses bowed down before God to ask his companionship and his help.
Do come along in our company. This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins, and receive us as your own.
Yahweh complied, but then the stiff-necked people made a golden calf, and even their leader Moses wanted to abandon them. Neither God nor Moses left, though. The Israelites were headed into a 40-year desert and needed all the help they could get, whether they knew it or not. In time, before any of them reached the Promised Land, all those men and women would die.
That they would not perish but have everlasting life …
Moses must have spent much of that 40 years praying. How could he not? He loved God, and he loved those stiff-necked people.
Henri Nouwen didn’t hear this from Moses, but he does seem to be on to something here about how to pray day after day:
The quiet repetition of a single word can help us to descend with the mind into the heart. This repetition has nothing to do with magic. It’s not meant to throw a spell on God or to force him into hearing us. On the contrary, a word or sentence repeated frequently can help us to concentrate, to move to the center, to create an inner stillness, and thus to listen to the voice of God. When we simply try to sit silently and wait for God to speak to us, we find ourselves bombarded with endless conflicting thoughts and ideas. But when we use a very simple sentence such as “O God, come to my assistance,” or “Jesus, master, have mercy on me,” or a word such as “Lord” or “Jesus” it is easier to let the many distractions pass by without being misled by them. Such a simple, easily repeated prayer can slowly empty out our crowded interior life and create the quiet space where we can dwell with God. It can be like a ladder along which we can descend into the heart and ascend to God. (from You Are the Beloved)
 While he was blind and waiting, Bartimaeus cried out, “Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” (Well, something close.) This “Jesus Prayer” stands millions of people in good stead every day. As the priest told the pilgrim, “Repeat this three thousand times and come back tomorrow.” The words get under your skin and into your blood. They pray along with your heartbeat. In the morning you wake up, and the prayer is on your lips.
Perhaps, however, it is better to pray this way than to desperately ask God for longer and longer life. Or maybe we could pray both ways? God in his omniscience is not mocked, while we on the other hand are walking in less than complete wisdom on the face of the earth. And God, on the other hand, loves us and wants to give us our every wish.
God so loves the world.
(Exodus 34, Daniel 3, 2 Corinthians 13, Revelation 1, John 3)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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