Tuesday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time
Date: Tuesday, July 23, 2024 | Ordinary Time after Easter
Year B | Roman Missal
First Reading: Micah 7:14–15, 18–20
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 85:2–8 | Response: Psalm 85:8a
Second Reading:
Gospel Acclamation: John 14:23
Gospel: Matthew 12:46–50
Preached at St Peter Faber Jesuit Community in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia.
Remembering how the LORD came to the exiled Israelites in Egypt, the first reading tells once again how his people are asking for a sign. Psalm 85 is celebrating the end of that exile, many years after the prayer of the Prophet Micah in our first reading. In our Gospel Jesus – as he often does – turns the question on its head and asks us for a specific sign instead – to do the Father’s will. The Gospel challenges us to ask ourselves how authentic our membership in Jesus’ family is. We might well think on that, but today, as we approach our Triduum, I want to invite us to hear today’s responsorial psalm “LORD, show us your mercy and love” (Ps 85:8a), in a new way. Not as a refrain from centuries ago but as a plea we can make our very own.
After Marcin helped us to reconnect with the fourth week graces of our Spiritual Exercises yesterday, on the feast of Mary Magdalene, what a wonderful echo this psalm is for us, I think, as we prepare ourselves to enter our Triduum.
It will be a time for us to more consciously reconnect with all the graces of the Exercises, and to savour, perhaps in a more deliberate way, all the gratitude we have for each other, for this time and this place, which has been so good to each of us in so many ways. Perhaps we can see how the LORD has shown us his mercy and his love for us through each other.
We can certainly use this Triduum to savour our gratitude. But it is also a time for us, perhaps, to be bold and audacious in what we are asking of the LORD. Perhaps there is something specific we still desire from God. Let us prepare to use this time, and consider perhaps asking Our LORD for even more than we might have dared. As we heard in the first reading “Who is there like you, … God … You will show faithfulness to Jacob, and grace to Abraham, As you have sworn to our fathers from days of old.” (Mi 7:18, 20)
God is faithful to Jacob and Abraham, and through our studies in these months, we know he has been faithful to Ignatius and to the Society. From our own experience of the Exercises we know he has indeed been very faithful to us – and will be again. For He truly desires to answer our prayers, so we can – perhaps – risk to be bold and audacious in what we ask God to gift us with in these days. Perhaps there is a particular grace – a specific virtue or a certain wound we want to bring to the LORD and ask him to help us with. Perhaps we might just want to be able to do the Father’s will, expressed through our superior’s mission, in a more loving and merciful way?
In our Gospel we hear Jesus say that any whoever does the will of the Father is his brother. Whatever grace we ask for in the Triduum, we can be sure that the grace that will be given will be for our good, and will help us do the Father’s will more perfectly.
Let us pray today that we might encounter again the God who wishes to lavish his love and companionship on us.
Let us pray that we might be faithful to God, as he is faithful to us, and be faithful brothers to each other.
LORD, hear our prayer.