SUNDAY’S READINGS | March 20, 2022
Ex. 3:1-15
Ps. 63:1-8
1 Cor. 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9
Good news may, at times, come in the form of a warning. Is it not, after all, a good thing to be spared an unnecessary calamity?
Reminding us of the tragic fate of the Israelites in the wilderness, St. Paul says, “God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did” (1 Cor. 10:5-6). Jesus tells of “Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices” (Luke 13:1). He mentions as well “eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them” (Luke 13:4). Three stories of death and destruction are told as a warning. Do you think that these people were worse sinners than you are? “No,” says Jesus, “but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did” (Luke 13:5).
For good reason, nearly every public liturgy of the Church includes a confession of sin and a call to amendment of life. Absolution then falls like clean water, washing away sin and death, making us new again in the newness of Jesus Christ. Although baptism is never repeated, it is often recalled, as if every day is a baptismal day. Every day is a day of illumination, as baptism has been called, a day to see again, like Moses, “a flame of fire out of a bush” (Ex. 3:2).
Incredibly, the flame does not destroy the bush but perfects it. “The bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed” (Ex. 3:2). In this image, we see not only the mystery of the Incarnation but also the mystery of every act of grace in nature. Grace leaves the bush as a bush, unharmed, yet illuminated and perfected. We meet this light again and again — a light-infused cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night, the radiant skin of Moses after speaking with God, Jesus as the light of the world, we ourselves as luminaries in the world and shining in a dark place. The fire of God destroys nothing because God cannot hate anything he has made. God so loved the world that he sent his only Son, the true light that enlightens everyone coming into the world.
The God who speaks from a burning bush, saying, “I Am Who I Am” wills in perfect love and freedom that “we may be who we are,” uniquely, and irreplaceably. God wants us to be our true selves, free from oppression and compulsion. God hears our cries of affliction and comes to set us free, free to worship him without fear, free to be, in the deepest and truest sense, ourselves.
Turning to a modern spiritual master, Thomas Merton, we pull these strands together. “It is not only human nature that is ‘saved’ by the divine mercy, but above all the human person. The object of salvation is that which is unique, irreplaceable, incommunicable — that which is myself alone. This true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from distraction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent” (New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 38).
St. John of the Cross says nearly the same thing: “It is a wonderful thing and worth relating that this flame of God … does not consume and destroy the soul in which it so burns. And it does not afflict it; rather, commensurate with the strength of love, it divinizes and delights it, burning gently” (“Commentary on The Living Flame of Love”). In the grace and flame of God, we are reborn as true persons.
Look It Up
Psalm 63:2
Think About It
You are the holy place where God is.