Bend my heart to your will, O Lord,
and teach me your law. PSALM 118: 26, 29
GENESIS 1:20-2:4
My Soul's Beloved,
The psalmist says in wonder and awe:
What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
God our Father created the whole world and all in it before He created us in His image and likeness, giving us intellect and free will and setting us over all creation for our well-being and happiness. He made us masters to rule the earth with wisdom and benevolence and He desires that we delight, and enjoy this beautiful and most gracious gift. He desires us to be good caretakers of this earth and we will be called to account for our stewardship.
Beloved, just as we are created in the image and likeness of God You too came to this earth that God created with us in mind, to make that image visible and tangible. You are the Model par excellence we are all called to aspire to for as long as we have breath. We are called to be alter Christus to one another and thus fulfill the purpose of God's will for our lives.
Lord God, after we come to the end of our pilgrim journey on earth we will be invited to enter into Your rest. This rest will be our reward after a life of toil in this valley of tears. In this rest, we will behold the beatific vision and rejoice in the beauty and goodness of God forever. We have a foretaste of this rest every Sunday, when we are called to forget the grind and toil of the week and sit at Your feet as Mary did and drink deep of Your love, goodness, and wisdom, and be renewed and refreshed to face the world again until the next Sunday until we enter the eternal Sunday, the Day of the Lord that will never end.
Thus heaven and earth were completed with all their array. On the seventh day God completed the work he had been doing. He rested on the seventh day after all the work he had been doing. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day he had rested after all his work of creating.
Such were the origins of heaven and earth when they were created.
PSALM 8:4-9
How great is your name, O Lord our God, through all the earth!
Thus heaven and earth were completed with all their array. On the seventh day God completed the work he had been doing. He rested on the seventh day after all the work he had been doing. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day he had rested after all his work of creating.
Such were the origins of heaven and earth when they were created.
PSALM 8:4-9
How great is your name, O Lord our God, through all the earth!
When I see the heavens, the work of your hands,
the moon and the stars which you arranged,
what is man that you should keep him in mind,
mortal man that you care for him?
the moon and the stars which you arranged,
what is man that you should keep him in mind,
mortal man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him little less than a god;
with glory and honour you crowned him,
gave him power over the works of your hand,
put all things under his feet.
gave him power over the works of your hand,
put all things under his feet.
All of them, sheep and cattle,
yes, even the savage beasts,
birds of the air, and fish
that make their way through the waters.
birds of the air, and fish
that make their way through the waters.
How great is your name, O Lord our God, through all the earth!
MARK 7:1-13
My Soul's Beloved,
My Soul's Beloved,
We are all guilty of sometimes following human traditions so scrupulously that they become an excuse to neglect what we ought to do. The Pharisees and the scribes insisted that the Jews follow these man-made traditions giving them an importance and relevance that they clearly did not have. So when they tried to guilt because Your disciples did not follow the rituals for washing after returning from the marketplace and before eating You pointed out to them the hypocrisy of these traditions that were meaningless but which they insisted be carried out.
In the first place, these Pharisees and scribes sought You to trap You their hearts and minds were closed to the Truth and hence would never see it, hear it, or know it.
So these Pharisees and scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not respect the tradition of the elders but eat their food with unclean hands?’
You called them out saying: ‘It was of you hypocrites that Isaiah so rightly prophesied in this passage of scripture:
This people honours me only with lip-service,
while their hearts are far from me.
The worship they offer me is worthless,
the doctrines they teach are only human regulations.
You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.’
while their hearts are far from me.
The worship they offer me is worthless,
the doctrines they teach are only human regulations.
You put aside the commandment of God to cling to human traditions.’
How many of us are pharisaical in our own justification of irrelevant traditions. We deceive ourselves and others by attributing a false but high-sounding morality to avoid the things we ought to do just as they did and as You rightly pointed out and condemned.
And he said to them, ‘How ingeniously you get round the commandment of God in order to preserve your own tradition! For Moses said: Do your duty to your father and your mother, and, Anyone who curses father or mother must be put to death. But you say, “If a man says to his father or mother: Anything I have that I might have used to help you is Corban (that is, dedicated to God), then he is forbidden from that moment to do anything for his father or mother.” In this way you make God’s word null and void for the sake of your tradition which you have handed down. And you do many other things like this.’
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, we are often so stupid that we fool ourselves that the wrong we choose to do is actually right but You are God and cannot be deceived. Grant us wisdom to search our hearts and to root out any evil in us that we have convinced ourselves is good and may we have the courage to do what we ought even though it is painful, and requires discipline and courage.
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