Sunday Gospel Reflection, July 9, 2023: Come to me...

Come to me…

Are you ready to embrace a relationship with the Lord? 

    At the time of the prophet Zechariah, Jerusalem was considered to be God’s home, the center of the world’s destiny, the locus to which all people turned to find God. God calls that city his daughter, pointing to God’s desire for an intimate relationship with the people, a reason to celebrate: rejoice heartily, o daughter Zion, the Lord says, shout for joy, o daughter Jerusalem! God’s gift is one of peace, peace born of the Lord’s dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. The people could therefore, in the words of Psalm 145, bless God’s name forever and ever, in awe of a God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. God’s faithful ones are those who remain bound to the Lord in covenant, firm in the relationship to which he invites them. 

    Jesus similarly gives praise to the Father, Lord of heaven and earth in Matthew’s Gospel, which can be read as a kind of handbook of how to position ourselves in faith. The little ones are those, childlike, whom no formal learning keeps from knowing the Lord. They are open to revelation, to wonder and awe, and can enter into the intimacy of relationship to which Jesus calls them: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. We can rest peacefully in him with whom we are in relationship; the challenge is to remain meek and humble of heart, that we might recognize God’s gift of himself in Jesus, and Jesus’ gift to us. 

    For if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us, then he will give life to our mortal bodies also, Paul tells the Romans. With the Spirit, we have life, so long as we accept the relationship offered to us, a relationship that promises not only eternal life, but also an altered, transformed life here and now. To be in the Spirit is to act in concert with that relationship with God using the gifts of the Holy Spirit – it is to embrace that relationship with all we are and in all we do. For to know that we are loved by God and in intimate relationship with him is indeed a reason to rejoice! 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class. 

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