Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Lent

  • The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C Readings

    The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C Readings

    Today’s readings

    Today we have in our Gospel reading one of my very favorite parables; maybe it’s your favorite too. It’s one that we have heard so often, and I think it’s one that we can see with the eyes of our imaginations. Three main characters: a forgiving father, a prodigal son, and a loyal, but perhaps cranky, son. It’s the kind of family situation I think we can all wrap our minds around; maybe it sits a little uncomfortably close to home.

    So it says right at the beginning that “a man had two sons.” And I think we need to keep that in mind, and I’ll say more about that in a bit. But the one son is dissatisfied with his life so much so that he feels the need to change it: he asks for his share of the inheritance right now, before his father is even dead. And that is a request is so presumptuous that it feels hurtful. Kind of like saying, “Hey dad, I wish you were dead, give me my inheritance now, please – I just can’t wait.” But the Father gives him the inheritance immediately and without ill-will. And you better believe that would have ruffled the feathers of Jesus’ hearers: there were strict rules of propriety in families and this absolutely flies in the face of that.

    But the other son is almost as guilty of that as the younger son. When the story runs its course, and the younger son returns to the father with his little memorized speech, the father, who has been waiting for his return, is moved with compassion and runs out to meet him. They throw a big party, but apparently they didn’t send someone out to invite the older son. On his return from the fields, he is indignant, partially, I think because he was overlooked, but also and importantly because He feels the injustice of the younger son being rewarded after tearing apart the family. His refusal to come in to join the feast and his making the father come out to him could also be seen as sinful.

    What amazes me is that the Father comes out of the house to meet both sons. That’s significant because a good Jewish father in those days wouldn’t come out to meet anyone – they would come to him. Probably on their hands and knees, begging for forgiveness. But the Father meets them where they are and desperately, lovingly, pleads with them to join the feast. It’s an image of our loving, forgiving Father God who won’t let anything – not past hurts, not resentments, not social propriety, not even our darkest sins – get in the way of his mercy, and love, and forgiveness, and grace. That’s the God we worship; that’s the Father we have.

    I love to call this the parable of the Forgiving Father, because I don’t think the point of this is to look at the son. I think the point of this is to look at the father, whose mercy and forgiveness are prodigious and even a little outlandish! The point of this is that, if we prodigal ones would just return, God will meet us more than half way. That’s a great message for Lent, and it gives us the action item of admitting our sins and returning to the Father.

    But there’s another way to look at this parable too. Again, the emphasis is going to be on the father, but this time the father is us. Bear with me on this. Amy Jill Levine, a Jewish scripture scholar, reads the parables with the eyes of one who has grown up with the Old Testament, much as Jesus and his hearers did. And so she sheds a little light on this parable that made me look at this anew this week and say, “Hmm…”

    So the father is us. A man had two sons, but he forgot to count. Let’s face it, the older son does get the rotten end of the stick here – I’ve always felt that when I read the parable growing up. But it was selfish of me because I saw myself as the loyal, hard working son, which, seen at age sixty, I can see is far from true. But that son does get the rotten end of the stick. Look at what happens: the younger son is rewarded for his initial disrespect in asking for the inheritance, and then when he comes back poorer and broken, he is rewarded with a feast. And not only that, apparently they had time to call the caterer, and time to shop for a ring and sandals, but they didn’t have time to tell the older son, who is out working hard for his father in the fields? What kind of craziness is that? Any one of us would be indignant.

    A man had two sons, but he forgot to count. That father, who is us, is all about taking care of the child who is most needy, to the detriment of the other son. Professor Levine says that it reminds her of her students: it’s easy to cater to the A-students and reward their accomplishments; it’s even easy to journey with the students who are having difficulty, offering them tutoring or answering questions. But the ones who are the B+ students, who can’t seem to cross the line to the A, do they count too? Think about that in our lives. The people who are good to us and doing good things are easy to walk with, they even support us. And we have the ones who are challenging, and we do everything we can to help them, out of love. But are there people in our lives that we forget to count? Who do we need to notice more, to think of more, to love more, this week? Perhaps that’s our action item this week.

    So whether our action item is admitting our sins and returning to the Father, or remembering to count and love the ones in our lives who we tend to forget, we have work to do. We have to return to God for forgiveness and mercy, and we have to love everyone in our lives as if they were the only ones there. The stakes of letting this parable fly past us and not engaging it are too high: we would be missing out on the banquet of eternal life to which Jesus Christ came to bring us. Taste and see that the Lord is good!

  • The Third Sunday in Lent, Cycle C Readings

    The Third Sunday in Lent, Cycle C Readings

    Today’s readings

    God is extremely patient when it comes to extending mercy. That’s what Jesus is talking about in this rather odd parable. I have to admit that I’m no gardener: I’m just not patient enough for that! So I needed to do a little digging (no pun intended) to get a real sense of where this parable is going. I discovered that there are a couple of things we should all know before we get into this little story. First of all, fig trees actually did take three years to bear fruit. During those three years, of course, they would need to be nourished and watered and pruned and tended. It was a lot of work, so when those three years of hard work were up, you better believe the farmer certainly wanted fig newtons on his table! And the second piece of background is that, since the days of the prophet Micah, the fig tree has been a symbol for the nation of Israel, and Jesus’ hearers would have known that. So when they hear of a fruitless fig tree, it was a little bit of an accusation. Maybe more than a little bit.

    Conventional wisdom is that if the tree doesn’t bear fruit after three years of labor and throwing resources at it, you cut it down and plant a new one; why exhaust the nutrients of the soil? And if you’re an impatient gardener like me, why exhaust the gardener?! But this gardener is a patient one; he plans to give it another year and some extra TLC in hopes that it will bear fruit.

    So here’s the important take-away: God is not like Father Pat; he’s the patient gardener! And we, the heirs to the promise to Israel, if we are found unfruitful, our Lord gives us extra time and TLC in order that we might have time to repent, take up the Gospel, and bear fruit for the kingdom of God. That’s kind of what Lent is all about.

    But we have to remember: we don’t get forever; if we still don’t bear fruit when the end comes, then we will have lost the opportunity to be friends of God, and once cut down in death, we don’t have time to get serious about it. The time for repentance is now. As Saint Paul told the Corinthians, and us, on Ash Wednesday: “Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” The time for us to receive and share God’s grace is now. The time for us to live justly and work for the kingdom is now. The time for us to stop bickering and be kind to one another is now. The time to work on our prayer life is now. Because we don’t know that there will be tomorrow; we can never be presumptuous of God’s mercy and grace.

    The consolation, though is this: we don’t have to do it alone. The Psalmist today sings that our God is kind and merciful: We get the TLC that our Gardener offers; the grace of God and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We can trust in the Lord God, our great “I AM,” to come to us and lead us out of captivity to sin just as he was preparing to do for the Israelites in the first reading today. We can put our trust in God’s mercy. We are always offered the grace of exodus, all we have to do is get started on the journey and begin once again to bear the fruit of our relationship with Christ.

  • Saturday of the Second Week in Lent

    Saturday of the Second Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    That Jesus would welcome sinners and eat with them is obviously a huge deal. In those days, it was thought that associating with sinners made one complicit in the sin, or at least showed approval of the sin; so the audacity of such an action was sinful in and of itself, at least as far as the religious leadership was concerned. But as an act of mercy, it’s grace unlike anything else. And the significance for us is understandable. Jesus still welcomes sinners and eats with them. If that were not true, none of us would be here for the Eucharist today, would we?

    Something that often gets overlooked in this very familiar parable is that both of the sons are sinful. It’s obvious that the youngest is sinful: taking half of his inheritance before his father is even in the grave, living a life of dissipation and sexual excess, using up all that money in a short time, content to eat among the swine which no good Jew would even think about touching, and finding himself very, very broken. But the so-called good son is sinful too. On his brother’s return, he refuses to go into the house to welcome him back, and takes his father to task for showing mercy and love. In the Gospel, failure to forgive is itself sinful.

    Both sons are sinful in their own way. Both need the father’s love and mercy and forgiveness. And both receive it. Far from the way a proper Jewish father would act, he runs out to meet both sons where they are. Protocol would have them come to him, and not he to them. But he comes out twice: once to meet the younger son who is on the way back to him, and once to meet his older son who refuses to come in.

    There is often discussion on where we find ourselves in this very familiar parable. Are we the sinful son? Are we the good son? Are we the father? It probably depends on the day – we might be like all of them at one time or another. I don’t think that’s what matters here. What matters is that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them – in our case, feeding us with the finest bread and wine which are of course his very own Body and Blood. Without this grace, we would have no life – salvation would only be a pipe dream. But because this grace is very real, we have the opportunity to gather here at the Table of the Lord, and one day, please God, at the great heavenly banquet. Praise God today for his forgiveness, mercy and grace. Praise God that he welcomes sinners and eats with them.

  • Friday of the First Week in Lent

    Friday of the First Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    It would be so much easier if we could define our own righteousness. If we could choose who to reach out to and who to ignore, life would be good, wouldn’t it? If we could hold grudges against some people and only have to forgive some people, we would easily consider ourselves justified. But the Christian life of discipleship doesn’t work that way. Instead, our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees or we have no part in the Kingdom of heaven. It’s that simple.

    So when we bear grudges, we murder. When we label people and then write them off, we are liable to judgment. Because justice and righteousness in the Kingdom of God isn’t about looking squeaky clean, it’s about being clean inside and out, changing our attitudes, changing our hearts, renewing our lives.

    If Lent purifies us in this way, we can truly pray with the Psalmist, “with the LORD is kindness and with him is plenteous redemption.”

  • Thursday of the First Week in Lent

    Thursday of the First Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    During this first week of Lent, our Liturgies of the Word are teaching us about the Lenten disciplines: fasting, almsgiving and prayer. On Tuesday, we heard the Lord’s prayer, and today we hear the prayer of Esther and Jesus’ injunction to persistence in prayer.

    I love the story of Esther, and as I often tell people, you should read the entire book of Esther from the Bible (it’s not very long). It reminds us that we need a Savior. Esther’s adoptive father Mordecai was a deeply religious man. His devotion incurred the wrath of Haman the Agagite, who was a court official of King Ahasuerus of Persia. Mordecai refused to pay homage to Haman in the way prescribed by law, because it was idolatry. Because of this, Haman developed a deep hatred for Mordecai, and by extension, all of the Israelite people. He convinced King Ahasuerus to decree that all Israelites be put to death, and they cast lots to determine the date for this despicable event.

    Meanwhile, Esther, Mordecai’s adopted daughter, is chosen to fill a spot in the King’s harem, replacing Queen Vashti. Esther, however, never had revealed her own Israelite heritage to the King. She would, of course, be part of the extermination order. Mordecai came to Esther to inform her of the decree that Haman had proposed, and asked her to intercede on behalf of her own people to the King. She was terrified to do this because court rules forbade her to come to the king without an invitation. She asked Mordecai to have all of her people fast and pray, and she did the same. The prayer that she offered is beautifully rendered in today’s first reading.

    Esther knew that there was no one that could help her, and that it was totally on her shoulders to intercede for her people. Doing this was a risk to her own life, and the only one that she could rely on was God himself. Her prayer was heard, her people were spared, and Haman himself was hung from the same noose that had been prepared for Mordecai and all his fellow Israelites. This evening, in fact, is the beginning of the Jewish feast of Purim, which is a festive observance of this biblical story.

    God hears our own persistent prayers. We must constantly pray, and trust all of our needs to the one who knows them before we do. We must ask, seek and knock of the one who made us and cares for us deeply. Prayer changes things, and most of all, it changes us. It helps us to rely on God who gives us salvation through Jesus Christ, the One who shows us how to ask, seek, and knock.

  • The First Sunday in Lent

    The First Sunday in Lent

    Today’s readings

    The devil wants us to forget who we are. That we are created good by a God who loves us more than anything; that we can never fall far from grace if we stay close to Jesus; that we are sons and daughters of God who have the freedom to love and grow and think and work with God to create the world anew. None of that serves the devil’s purposes, and so in our time, really in all time, he has worked very hard to make us forget who we are. If you think about any scandal or problem in the world today, I think you’ll find that at the core of most of it is when people forget who they are.

    Forgetting who we are changes everything for the worse. It makes solving problems or ending scandal seem insurmountable: we constantly have to cook up new solutions to new problems, because we’ve gone in a new direction on a road that never should have been traveled. That was the scandal of Eden, and the scandal of the Tower of Babel, among others. Once we’ve forgotten who we are and acted impetuously, it’s hard to un-ring the bell.

    One of the consequences of forgetting who we are is that we forget who God is too. We no longer look to God to be our Savior, because we instead would like to solve things on our own. Perhaps we are embarrassed to come to God because we are deep in a problem of our own making. We see this all the time in our lives: who of us wants to go to a parent or teacher or boss or authority figure – or anyone, really – and tell them that we thought we had all the answers but now we’ve messed up and we can’t fix it and we desperately need their help? If that’s true then we’re all the more reluctant to go to God, aren’t we?

    This forgetting who we are, and forgetting who God is, is the spiritual problem that our readings are trying to address today. Moses meets the people on the occasion of the harvest sacrifice, and challenges them not to make the sacrifice an empty, rote repetition of a familiar ritual. They are to remember that their ancestors were wandering people who ended up in slavery in Egypt, only to be delivered by God and brought to a land flowing with milk and honey. And it is for that reason that they are to joyfully offer the sacrifice.

    St. Paul exhorts the Romans to remember who Jesus was and to remember his saving sacrifice and glorious resurrection. They are to remember that this faith in Christ gives them hope of eternity and that, calling on the Lord, they can find salvation.

    But it is the familiar story of Christ being tempted in the desert that speaks to us most clearly of the temptation to forget who we are and who God is. The devil would like nothing more than for Jesus to forget who he was and why he was here. He would have Jesus forget that real hunger is not satisfied by mere bread, but must be satisfied by God’s word. He would have Jesus forget that there is only one God and that real glory comes from obedience to God’s command and from living according to God’s call. He would have Jesus forget that life itself is God’s gift and that we must cherish it as much as God does.

    But Jesus won’t forget. Satan in his arrogance thinks he can make him forget, but he is not more powerful than Jesus. And so, Jesus refuses to turn stones into bread, remembering that God will take care of all his real hunger. He refuses to worship Satan and gain every kingdom of the world, remembering that he belongs to God’s kingdom. He refuses to throw away his life in a pathetic attempt to test God, remembering that God is trustworthy and that he doesn’t need to prove it.

    The way that we remember who we are as a Church is through the Sacred Liturgy. In the Liturgy of the Word, we hear the stories of faith handed down from generation to generation. These are the stories of our ancestors, from the Old Testament and the New. In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we engage in anamnesis, a remembering, or re-presentation of Christ’s Passion and death, and as we do that, it becomes new for us once again; it brings us to Calvary and the empty tomb and the Upper Room. There is no better way for us to remember who we are as a people than to faithfully participate in the Sacred Liturgy.

    And so we come to this holy place on this holy day to remember that we are a holy people, made holy by our God. We remember who we are and who God is. We rely on the Spirit’s help to reject the temptations of Satan that would call us to forget who we are and instead become a people of our own making. We have come again to another Lent. Lent is a time of conversion and springtime and re-creation. For the people in our Order of Christian Initiation for Adults – OCIA – it is a time of conversion from one way of life to another as they approach the Easter Sacraments. For the rest of us, Lent is a time of continued re-conversion and re-commitment to our sacramental life. Our Church teaches us that conversion is a life-long process. In conversion, we see who our God is more clearly and we see ourselves in a new, and truer light – indeed we see who we really are before God.

    That is life in God as it was always meant to be. Remembering our God, remembering who we are, we have promise of being set on high, as the Psalmist proclaims today. This Lent can lead us to new heights in our relationship with God. Praise God for the joy of remembering, praise God for the joy of Lent.

  • Saturday after Ash Wednesday

    Saturday after Ash Wednesday

    Today’s readings

    “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.”

    A few months ago, I had a reaction to my cholesterol meds: hives, itching, severe joint pain. At first it was just the hives and I dismissed it, thinking it was a bug bite. But they quickly spread. I was thinking if it didn’t get better I’d call the doctor the next day. But then I realized I had had this reaction before, and I knew it wasn’t going to go away on its own. I was sick, and I needed a physician. How often, though, do we just dismiss the illnesses we have and hope for the best?

    It’s important that we learn to do that in the spiritual life. If you don’t think you need a physician for your spiritual life, then you aren’t going to get much out of Lent, I’m afraid, and that’s sad. If you don’t admit you’re sick, you deprive yourself of the doctor. If you don’t admit your spiritual life is ailing, you deprive yourself of the Savior. Jesus is very clear today: he came to call sinners to conversion, and that includes all of us. It’s been said that the Church is not a museum of saints, but a hospital for sinners. And thank God that’s true, because all of us, me and you, all of us, need the medicine of grace in our spiritual lives time and time again. And the good news is that Jesus gives us Lent to do just that. Let’s be converted, be healed, be made whole so that the glory of Easter can brighten our lives.

    So our reflection this morning is two-fold. First, where and how do I need the Divine Physician in my life right now? And second, invite him in and ask him to heal us.

  • Ash Wednesday

    Ash Wednesday

    Where do you see yourself in forty days?

    I’m sure many of us have had to answer some version of that annoying question when applying for a job. You know: “Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten years?” But I ask that question today because I think we have to decide what getting ashes on our foreheads today means for us. If it’s just to check a box, or avoid the question “I thought you were Catholic?” at work, or to prove to Mom that we made it to Church, then we’ve missed an opportunity. Ash Wednesday is the busiest day at any Catholic Church hands down: busier than Christmas, and busier than Easter. And it’s really good that we are here today to mark the beginning of Lent, but seriously, where do you see yourself in forty days?

    The hope is that today we get reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return; and warned that we need to repent and believe in the Gospel. Then we take those admonitions and unpack them for forty days by engaging in fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, so as to rise on Easter Morning, greeted by the Morning Star that never sets, a new creation that has died and risen with our Risen Lord. That’s where we need to see ourselves in forty days.

    They (whoever “they” are!) say that it takes 21 days to start a new habit. So in forty days, we should be able to really accomplish something important. So if we find ourselves right now looking for a better relationship with God, a better relationship with the people in our lives, or wanting to be happier, more positive people, then the traditional Lenten disciplines of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, if we really engage them, can make a huge difference in our spiritual lives, and in our lives in general.

    Maybe this year we will fast from spending so much time on social media, or on our phones or tablets in general, and really take an interest in the people in our lives. Maybe we will fast from the negative influences in our lives, whether that be news or media in general, or relationships with people that drag us down. Maybe we will fast from negativity, and choose to look at people differently, asking God to give us the grace to see them as he does.

    In almsgiving, maybe we will take the time to really give of ourselves. Yes, we can write the check to help any number of charities, but maybe we can also make a meal or even just a dessert for a lonely neighbor or relative. Maybe we will give alms by making time with our family a priority. Or maybe we will even volunteer to mentor someone in need, or to assist in faith formation here at church.

    For prayer, maybe this isn’t the only time we do daily Mass during these forty days of Lent. Perhaps even just a day or two a week before work or whatever the day’s agenda may be. Or, we could visit the adoration chapel for fifteen minutes once or twice a week. Or, maybe we try a new devotion like a daily Rosary or reading a few paragraphs of the Gospel of Luke every day.

    Forty days of some combination of that can really affect our relationship with God and our relationships with the people in our lives in an amazingly positive way. And doing this, we don’t blow the trumpet and say, “Hey, look at what good things I’m doing!” No, we do it unassumingly and note with joy the changes it makes in our demeanor.

    I hope this Lent is incredibly powerful for every one of us; that it makes our Easter Morning all the more joyous; and that it changes us in ways that will make our lives better for years to come.

    Where do you see yourself in forty days?

  • Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord

    Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes, when I take a step back in preparing for our Palm Sunday Mass, my head spins a little bit.  That’s because this is no ordinary celebration of Mass.  We have two Gospel readings: one at the beginning of Mass for the blessing of the palms, and one very long one in the normal spot in the Liturgy of the Word. And those two Gospel readings couldn’t be more different in tone!  The first one tells of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and it seems so triumphant. The crowds welcomed him and paraded with him into the city.  But then we get to the Passion reading and everything changes in a heartbeat.

    I think if we had to sum up the Liturgy today with a contemporary quip, it might be, “Well, that escalated quickly!”  We go from “Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”  to “Crucify him! Crucify him!  Give us Barabbas!” just two chapters later! This, friends, really is the hour for which Jesus came.  The hour for him to lay down his life.

    It seems like things have escalated quickly, but really we know they didn’t.  All through the Gospel, Jesus has been getting under the skin of the religious establishment, calling out their weak and self-serving adherence to the Law, taking care of the real needs of people as they should have been, and showing people a way of life based not on legalism, but on caritas, love poured out in service to others.  That he will punctuate that caritas love at the end of the Gospel today is quite instructive.  The whole of the Gospel centers around laying down our lives for others.

    And, really, if we take a big picture view of the history of salvation, things haven’t escalated that quickly at all.  All through the scriptures, Old and New Testaments alike, people – we – have been missing the point.  The cycle of sin that spirals all through the scriptures has seen God send messages, through signs and prophets, of how things had gone wrong and what needed to be done.  And all through the scriptures, people have heeded the message only in lip service, or have outright murdered the prophets who brought the message.  And yet again, God sent new messages, and yet again, the people sinned.  We know that the sacrifice of Christ, God made man, was always God’s plan for salvation.  It has been incubating for generations, and now, finally, the hour has come.

    Honestly, though, we know things have continued to escalate.  Wars in Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and Gaza are decimating cities and killing thousands every day. The migrant crisis finds people coming to our nation with nothing, and being pawns in a great political argument, all while testing the ability of cities to care for them and take them in. Crime and terrorism abounds, and we find ourselves in the middle of an election cycle in which people use all these heartbreaking issues to advance their careers, their own agendas, and the coffers of their allies and supporters.  All of this almost causes Our Lord to fall a fourth time, crushed under the weight of the cross.  We certainly need a Simon of Cyrene to help us shoulder the burden of it all, and a Veronica to wipe the blood and sweat from Christ’s face once again.  People walk the Way of the Cross over and over, and the hour of Christ’s Passion seems to always be present.

    Who are we going to blame for this?  Whose fault is it that they crucified my Lord?  Is it the Jews, as many centuries of anti-Semitism would assert?  Was it the Romans, those foreign occupiers who sought only the advancement of their empire?  Was it the fickle crowds, content enough to marvel at Jesus when he fed the thousands, but abandoning him once his message was made clear?  Was it Peter, who couldn’t even keep his promise of standing by his friend for a few hours?  Was it the rest of the apostles, who scattered lest they be tacked up on a cross next to Jesus?  Was it Judas, who gave in to despair thinking he had it all wrong?  Was it the cowardly Herod and Pilate who were both manipulating the event in order to maintain their pathetic fiefdoms?  Who was it who put Jesus on that cross?  Even now, who do we blame for the death of our Lord?

    And the answer, as we well know, is that it is, and always was, me.  Because it’s my sins that led Jesus to the Way of the Cross.   I have been the selfish one.  I have been the one who has looked down on people who are different from me, using my privilege at their expense.  I have been the one that has withheld love and forgiveness and grace in so many different ways.  I have been comfortable with my sins and content to stay the way I am.  It’s my sins that betrayed my Jesus; it’s my sins that have kept me from friendship with God. 

    But as ugly as I have been, as much as I have nailed him to the cross, even so: he willingly came to this hour and gave his life that I might have life. 

    And you.

    He gave himself for us.

  • Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

    Today’s readings
    Mass for the school children.

    Have you ever thought that everyone in the whole world was against you? Sometimes it seems that way, for sure. We all go through times like that.  Of course, it’s not true; there are always people who believe in you.  But if you’ve ever felt like it was true, you’re not alone: we’ve all been there some time or another in our lives. 

    Maybe someone was telling lies about you and trying to get others to work against you, or maybe they were looking for any time you did the slightest thing wrong, or messed up in any way, so they could act all superior or get you in trouble. Or maybe they even sabotage you or tell stores about you behind your back.  It’s frustrating when that happens.  So since we’ve all been there, I think we might understand a little of how the prophet Jeremiah, King David, and Jesus may have felt in today’s readings and psalm.

    Jeremiah was one of the Old Testament prophets, and a prophet’s job is never easy. Nobody wants to hear what they don’t want to hear.  People don’t want to hear that they are wrong, and they don’t want others to tell them what to do. The prophets had to tell the people what God wanted and how God wanted them to live, and they didn’t find that welcome at all.  It can be difficult to stand up for what’s right.  So for Jeremiah, things are getting dangerous: people disliked what he was saying so much that they wanted him dead.  The same is true for Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.  Jesus now is rapidly approaching the cross; it’s almost the hour for him to give his life.

    And so the psalm today is kind of the prayer of both of them, and really all of those who are suffering at the hands of an enemy.  King David in the psalm finds that his enemies are pursuing him to the point of death, like the waters of the deep overwhelming a drowning man.

    But all of them find their refuge in God: God never leaves us alone in our troubles.  Jeremiah writes, “For he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked!”  King David takes consolation in the fact that “From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.”  And for Jesus, well, his time was coming close, but it had not yet come.

    When we are provoked like they were, how do we respond?  Is our first thought to take refuge in God, or do we try to solve the problem on our own? Or maybe we even try to get back at those who are attacking us. Those last two options never ever work.  If we don’t turn to God, we will sooner or later find those waves overwhelming us, because there is always a limit to our own power, a limit to what we can do all by ourselves. 

    But God never expects us to do the right thing all alone.  He knows that it’s hard for us to stand up for what’s right, to do the right thing when everyone seems to be doing something else, to speak up for those who are struggling when everyone else is making fun of them.  God always expects us to do the right thing, of course: that’s what he made us for.  But he doesn’t expect us to do the right thing on our own.  He will give us the power to stand strong in the midst of trouble – we just have to ask.  If we do things on our own, we have no one to turn to when things go wrong or when things get tough.  But if we turn to God, even if things don’t improve on our own timetable, we will always find refuge and safety in our God: there will be strength to get through, and we will never be alone.