Obedience, A Loving Response

Dear Friend,

Preaching on the Transfiguration last Sunday, Father Garrett Galvin invited us to pay attention to those moments on our spiritual journey when the dazzling brightness of God’s grace and beauty opens a path beyond the grayness and dullness brought on by fear, apathy, and cynicism. In his post-Mass presentation Father Garrett encouraged us to take that path. Ever the wise student of St. Francis, he showed us that our Lenten practice can help us engage with the expansive love of God along that very way of trust and beauty. As we saw, the hapless path of resistance taken by the prophet Jonah is not the way of trust exhibited by Abraham. 

In this week’s readings, we see that our guidance along the path comes through obedience and believing; that is, our energetic attentiveness. We give our obedience to the law of the Lord, which is a beauty whose “dazzle” can knock us off our feet (or, as in the case of St. Paul, off our horse). Indeed, the divine harmonies in God’s decree can be overwhelming, and of a depth that can be off-putting, “foolish”, too much to bear. Let’s face it, the command to “love your enemy” is not immediately “music to our ears” (!). And yet, from the womb of Mary where divine love unites with human flesh, Jesus opens his arms on the cross in resistance to all vengeance. God’s life-giving water falls on the just and the unjust.  

In this week’s Gospel the passionate love of Jesus knocks us from our “temples,” and from all those supposedly sturdy places we’re tempted to fashion in our own image. “Like our ancestors in faith,” writes Catherine Upchurch, “we discover that obedience to God’s law is a loving response to the God who loves us first and best.”

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan ofm, Pastor