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MEDITATION ON SUNDAY'S LITURGICAL READINGS

Collect for the Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

(A literal translation from the Latin.  The English translations adopted by the Bishops’ committee for the translation when the Liturgy was changed did not give a literal translation, and in fact, changed the sense of the prayer in most instances.)

 

O God, Who in the humility of Your Son lifted up a falling world, grant holy joy to Your faithful, so that, You may make those whom You rescued from the slavery of sin to enjoy eternal gladness to the full. Through our Lord.

 

Latin: Deus, qui in Filii tui humilitate iacentem mundum erexisti, fidelibus tuis sanctam concede laetitiam, ut, quos eripuisti a servitute peccati, gaudiis facias perfrui sempiternis. Per Dominum.

 

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, B

Readings: Ezekiel 2.2-5; 2nd Corinthians 12.7-10; Mark 6.1-6

 

First Reading

Am I the prophet sent by God?  We read the lines of this reading and  think about  our possible vocation as a prophet.  What  acceptable social causes am I involved in which makes me feel like a prophet?  Or rather am I  the one to whom the prophet has been sent?  Isn’t it more appropriate to see ourselves among those to whom the prophet has been sent to set them on the path.  Right now, I am the one in the reading who needs the prophet.  The prophet needs to be sent to me to speak to me of my rebellion, of  my obstinacy of heart.  I have held a hard face toward God in prayer.  My face is hard from my own self-reliance and my preoccupation with my own agenda.  In centering prayer with the daily practice, twice a day, I appear before the Face of God in silence and love.  In the Spirit I long for the Face of God.  “Lord, let us see the Father, and it will be enough.”  Let the Prophet be on his feet and come to me, Spirit-filled, and speak with the power of transformation.

 

And now I ask do I dare to act in the Prophet’s role?  The anointing by the Holy Spirit has sealed me in the prophetic power of Christ to be His face to others.  I act in the prophet’s role only after I have been healed of my own rebellion and obstinacy.

 

Second Reading

It is about time that we  recognize the thorn in the flesh that is peculiarly mine.  I know the presence of the angel of Satan in my life who beats me unmercifully.  The Angel of Satan is my own false self system, the fallen human condition, “the lump of sin” as the author of  Cloud of Unknowing  calls it.  The grace from the buffeting is that I really cannot glory in anything but my infirmities.  I come to experience the perfection of God’s grace in Christ Jesus, the gift of freedom wherein I find the will to be in love with  God.  In my prayer I am quite content to be present to my powerlessness.  The powerlessness rises quite naturally, spontaneously in silent contemplative prayer. The contents of my false self when not repressed become the ground of surrender into God.  What a grace of God!  It is in that moment of the arising of the contents of my weak and misdirected inner workings that  the Sacred Word brings me back to the fundamental intention of my heart:  The Sacred Word says Yes to Christ’s power within me.  This gentle surrender in the intention, silently, goes beyond all my powers of thought, imagination, of conjuring-up visions of my spiritual grandeur.  This is the work that the Father accomplishes in us:  All for the sake of Christ, the Beloved of our inner-most being, the center-point of the divine, Triune Presence within me.

 

The Gospel

No angel of Satan can come close to our Lord Jesus.  No thorn of the flesh, as a part of fallen nature, clings to the human nature of Jesus, the Son of God.  Jesus faces the constant external opposition from the angel of Satan.   “Where did he get all this?”  The attitude  expressed in this hostile question shows the resistance, the obstinacy, the rebelliousness that the First Reading describes.  It is hard faces that are turned to the Face of Jesus.

 

In my prayer my heart is open to You, Lord Jesus, as you come to me through the humility and hiddenness of your Sacred Humanity.  In my prayer I am one with You in the silence of my acceptance.  It is your Father who draws me unto You; it is the Holy Spirit Who whispers your name in my heart.  I become silently one with the Spirit that draws me into You, the Spirit Whom the Father sends to me constantly in my contemplative prayer.  I believe that Your transforming presence is most powerful in the terrible moments of feeling abandoned .  Then I am like You, with the thorn in my flesh, with the Angel of Satan in the stream of thoughts, I am like You in that moment in Nazareth.  In the Nazareth of my daily life, in the tasks and encounters of daily living, I remain with You and You in me by the faith, hope and love infused into my soul at Baptism and renewed through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

 

My contemplative prayer is expressed in the Psalm:  The eye of my inner true self,  bathed in the grace of Christ, rests steadily upon the Face of Jesus within the Father’s Bosom through the seven-fold Gift of the Holy Spirit.  The eye of the  servant is upon the hand of the master.  The master is the Father;  the hand is the Son;  the lifting-up is the gentle power of the Holy Spirit Who accomplishes the Work of Salvation.

 

It is our powerlessness that we bring to the communion of our Sunday Holy Eucharist.  The Christ  who suffered powerlessness like us in His sojourn now meets us and brings us in the Spirit into the Father.  Mary, Mother of God, pray for us that our hearts and minds be open to Jesus our Savior.

--William C. Fredrickson, Obl. OSB, D. Min.