Returning the Word of God
Today's readings are from Is 55:10-11, Ps 34:4-7,16-19, Matt 6:7-15
This reading from Isaiah, two short verses, in many ways tells us everything we need to know about our relationship with God. We are creatures of the Almighty God, and our very being is the result of His willing it so. We and all of creation are but the echo of His Word. And what is the effect of this Word uttered through creation? "So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it." Or, to put it in the words of Christ in today's Gospel, "Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven." As beings endowed with the faculty of free will, we have two choices: we can cooperate with the will of God, and allow it to be accomplished through us, or we can reject the will of God, and allow it to be accomplished in spite of us.
So what will the effects be of receiving the Word of God within us, and allowing to to return fruitfully to God? To examine this we must understand something of the nature of God's will itself. First, we understand that God Himself is Beauty, and Justice, and Goodness, and Joy, and Peace, and Love, He is the sum of all perfections. And so God's will is simply an expression of that divine perfection, and it shares in that perfection. So whenever we accept the will of God in our hearts, we are in fact filling our heart with something of the perfection of God. We are filling our heart with beauty, and love, and peace, and justice, and joy, and goodness. When looked at this way, why on earth would we ever choose anything but to cooperate with this will? As St. Augustine writes in his Confessions, "When I ask people whether they would rather rejoice in truth or in falsehood, they do not hesitate in answering that they would rather rejoice in the truth anymore than they would do in saying that they desire to be happy. And there is no doubt that joy in the truth is the basis of the happy life. For this is joy in You, Who are the Truth, O God, my Light, the Health of my countenance, my God (Ps 27:1). This happy life all desire, this life, which alone is happy, all desire, and to rejoice in truth, all desire (Book X, Ch. 24)." This joy is what belongs to all those who open their hearts to receive the Word of God, by the reading of Scripture, by a prayerful relationship with God through Christ in the Holy Spirit, and by loving encounters with friends and enemies alike.
Finally, in the Gospel today Jesus ends with some of the hardest words He speaks in all of the Gospel: If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions. The first thing we need to understand about this saying, about forgiveness, is that forgiving those who hurt us is a necessary contingency to cooperating in God's will. If we learn only one thing from Christ, it must be that God's will is forgiveness, for it is for that reason that Christ died for us, that we might be forgiven. But we must keep in mind everything that we have said about cooperating in God's will, and the effect it has on our heart. When we are hurt by another, we are filled with pain, sadness, sorrow, hate, anger - in other words, everything which is contrary to the nature of God's perfect goodness. So if we want to get rid of all of these poisons, if we want to be filled instead with the aforementioned qualities of beauty, peace, joy, love, goodness, justice, etc., then we must choose to cooperate in God's will; and this necessarily, due to God's nature, includes forgiving those who have wronged us.
In conjunction with this, one of the hardest things about forgiveness is how undeserving most people are of being forgiven. Christ is not saying here that those who have committed the most awful atrocities against us deserve our forgiveness, and that is why we must forgive them. Rather, everything about Christ tells us that when we forgive those who have done nothing to deserve it, we are acting just like Him. We certainly have done nothing whatsoever to deserve forgiveness. Yet God offers it to us freely at all times and on every occasion, and just waits for us to accept it. We must do the same, not because the person deserves it, but because it is the greatest way to give thanks to God. We must offer our forgiveness to everyone who has hurt us, and leave it to them to accept the healing that it will provide. But simply by offering it, we are doing God's will, cooperating in God's will, and our offer of forgiveness will replace all the pain of the wrong done to us with all the beauty and goodness of God.
Peace in Christ,
Michael
This reading from Isaiah, two short verses, in many ways tells us everything we need to know about our relationship with God. We are creatures of the Almighty God, and our very being is the result of His willing it so. We and all of creation are but the echo of His Word. And what is the effect of this Word uttered through creation? "So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it." Or, to put it in the words of Christ in today's Gospel, "Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven." As beings endowed with the faculty of free will, we have two choices: we can cooperate with the will of God, and allow it to be accomplished through us, or we can reject the will of God, and allow it to be accomplished in spite of us.
So what will the effects be of receiving the Word of God within us, and allowing to to return fruitfully to God? To examine this we must understand something of the nature of God's will itself. First, we understand that God Himself is Beauty, and Justice, and Goodness, and Joy, and Peace, and Love, He is the sum of all perfections. And so God's will is simply an expression of that divine perfection, and it shares in that perfection. So whenever we accept the will of God in our hearts, we are in fact filling our heart with something of the perfection of God. We are filling our heart with beauty, and love, and peace, and justice, and joy, and goodness. When looked at this way, why on earth would we ever choose anything but to cooperate with this will? As St. Augustine writes in his Confessions, "When I ask people whether they would rather rejoice in truth or in falsehood, they do not hesitate in answering that they would rather rejoice in the truth anymore than they would do in saying that they desire to be happy. And there is no doubt that joy in the truth is the basis of the happy life. For this is joy in You, Who are the Truth, O God, my Light, the Health of my countenance, my God (Ps 27:1). This happy life all desire, this life, which alone is happy, all desire, and to rejoice in truth, all desire (Book X, Ch. 24)." This joy is what belongs to all those who open their hearts to receive the Word of God, by the reading of Scripture, by a prayerful relationship with God through Christ in the Holy Spirit, and by loving encounters with friends and enemies alike.
Finally, in the Gospel today Jesus ends with some of the hardest words He speaks in all of the Gospel: If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions. The first thing we need to understand about this saying, about forgiveness, is that forgiving those who hurt us is a necessary contingency to cooperating in God's will. If we learn only one thing from Christ, it must be that God's will is forgiveness, for it is for that reason that Christ died for us, that we might be forgiven. But we must keep in mind everything that we have said about cooperating in God's will, and the effect it has on our heart. When we are hurt by another, we are filled with pain, sadness, sorrow, hate, anger - in other words, everything which is contrary to the nature of God's perfect goodness. So if we want to get rid of all of these poisons, if we want to be filled instead with the aforementioned qualities of beauty, peace, joy, love, goodness, justice, etc., then we must choose to cooperate in God's will; and this necessarily, due to God's nature, includes forgiving those who have wronged us.
In conjunction with this, one of the hardest things about forgiveness is how undeserving most people are of being forgiven. Christ is not saying here that those who have committed the most awful atrocities against us deserve our forgiveness, and that is why we must forgive them. Rather, everything about Christ tells us that when we forgive those who have done nothing to deserve it, we are acting just like Him. We certainly have done nothing whatsoever to deserve forgiveness. Yet God offers it to us freely at all times and on every occasion, and just waits for us to accept it. We must do the same, not because the person deserves it, but because it is the greatest way to give thanks to God. We must offer our forgiveness to everyone who has hurt us, and leave it to them to accept the healing that it will provide. But simply by offering it, we are doing God's will, cooperating in God's will, and our offer of forgiveness will replace all the pain of the wrong done to us with all the beauty and goodness of God.
Peace in Christ,
Michael