Sunday Gospel Reflection, December 3, 2023: We are all the work of your hands...

We are all the work of your hands…

Are we letting God’s love work in our lives? 

    Toward the end of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the people of Israel are nearing the end of their exile in Babylon. Knowing they have incurred distance from the Lord, their God, they pray, Return for the sake of your servants. Although they recognize their own sin – our guilt carries us away like the wind, they admit – they still don’t realize that it’s not God who hardens their hearts, but they themselves who need to allow God in, that their hearts might be softened. Where love is allowed to work, hardness of heart cannot exist. Their error is similar to that described Psalm 80: Lord, make us turn to you. The distance of the people from the Lord is their own choice; they are not who he made them to be, but who they themselves have chosen to be. Our salvation depends on our own choice to be obedient to God’s will; the change required needs to happen in us, not in the Lord. Only once we become clay in the hands of God our Father, accepting of his will, can love truly be at work in us. 

    The Corinthians were notorious for going in their own direction, rather than accepting the will of God. Paul’s first letter to that community calls them to something that they are not currently participating in: union in Christ. God has bestowed grace on them; have they received it? Or are they still relying on their own spiritual gifts as they wait for the revelation of Christ? Paul reminds the Corinthians that God is faithful, and that they were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. But they must choose to open to his love revealed in their lives, and accept the union, the fellowship, he offers. Are they ready? 

    Be watchful! Be alert! Jesus says to his disciples toward the end of Mark’s Gospel. We don’t know when the Second Coming will occur, when the lord of the house is coming, as Jesus puts it, but so long as we are who God made us to be, servants commissioned to love the human race, so long as we live the faith, we can rest assured that we will be ready for all God calls us to. The Lord calls us back to love again and again and again; we have but to be watchful over our hearts, open to his love at work in us, letting go of all that keeps us from God, that we might be one in him. 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com