Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

posted in: Homilies, Ordinary Time | 0

Today’s readings

I love that Jesus uses that phrase “the finger of God.”  If things are done by “the finger of God,” it shows a God who is active in our world and interested in our well-being.  It can be hard, sometimes, to see that.  We get caught up in all the complexities and tragedies of daily life.  But God is still at work, if we can pause and look around and see that.

Joel the prophet in our first reading is calling on the people to get themselves right so that they can witness God’s power.  Joel foretells the Day of the Lord which will be full of darkness, gloom, and somberness.  The people will need to fast and pray and cry out to God in order to be ready for it.  Those who are ready will be like the dawn spreading over the mountains and will become a “people numerous and mighty,” by the finger of God.

In the same way, Jesus is able to cast out demons by the finger of God.  But the fickle crowd doesn’t want to see that, and so they throw crazy accusations that Jesus is acting by the power of Satan.

Our hearts are certainly not as hard as theirs are, so we would never refuse to see God at work in a given situation.  But we do tend to be distracted enough to miss the “finger of God” at work in the craziness of our day to day business.  The Psalmist has the right idea today: “I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart; I will declare all your wondrous deeds.”  Let’s be on the watch today, then, for those wondrous deeds, recognizing the finger of God at work in our lives.