“Let the nations bestir themselves and come up ...” (Joel 4:12).

Lord, I pray today that I might make real in my life this most fundamental truth that I am ONE with Christ through baptism. Help me to grow in awareness of the consequences of that reality. Let me live out that solidarity in Christ that has been given as a gift. This gift, faith, allows me the freedom to imitate Christ. I seek to be “clothed” in Christ as St. Paul says. Let the “mind” of Christ be mine in all its wonder and freedom to serve others as an imitation of Christ. As Christ “poured out his life” for others, may I be similarly poured out as a reflection of the freedom and faith with which I have been gifted.

 I was at Wal-mart the other day, rushing to buy a few things I need, not paying much attention to the other shoppers when a woman with a small child came up to me and asked, "Would you like to know about Jesus?"  I didn't want to be rude, but I was in kind of a hurry, so I replied, "Thank you!  I do know about Jesus!" and then walked to another aisle for something else I needed. 

I was impressed with her enthusiasm and obvious love for Jesus Christ and the example she was setting for her child as an evangelist.  I'm not sure I have the courage to walk up to complete strangers (and who's stranger than I am?  lol) and ask them if they know about Jesus.

I have been thinking about this woman for a couple of days and waiting for an opportunity to incorporate our encounter into the blog.  When I read the Gospel for tomorrow (Saturday), I thought it was just the opening I was looking for:

While he was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”—Luke 11:27-28

Like the woman I encountered at Wal-mart, this woman is deeply impressed with Jesus and His ability to hold the crowd’s attention with His healing and His story telling. She does the most natural thing in the world: she thinks how proud His mom must be to have raised a child to become such a man, and she congratulates the child by blessing the mother with a beatitude: “Blessed is the womb that carried You and the breasts at which You nursed.”

When Jesus answers—“Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it”—it may sound at first as if He is deflecting the compliment to His mother by using it to make His own point, as if He has said that anyone who does God’s will is greater than His mother. In fact, He increases the honoring of His mother. He is saying, in effect, “Greater even than her human mothering of Me is the way Miriam has heard the word of God and carried out that word.”

It may help to recall that the daily prayer of Jews was (and still is) the Shema (“Hear!”), from the first word of Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” So the whole of the life of the covenant could be summarized in the phrase “to hear the word of God and live it out.” Mary exemplified that kind of deep hearing—a total response to the word of God expressed in the Torah. It was the readiness of that deep hearing that enabled her to become His mother in the first place.

In the 9^th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, we have the vision of the transfiguration, where Peter, James and John first see and hear Moses and Elijah (who represented the Law and the Prophets who mediated the word of God to Israel) speaking with Jesus; then those two disappear and Jesus is standing alone, when the voice of the Father is heard to say, “This is My beloved Son, hear Him!”

For us, Jesus is the word of God. We imitate Mary by hearing and following Jesus. That’s what this business of daily reflection (on the word of God about the Word of God) is all about. Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

Sometimes we lose our sense of awe for the divine, and we need to “bestir [our]selves” from time to time.  While we may find comfort in our familiar patterns and think that surely God doesn’t mind, some of those patterns are not pleasing.  Our ways fall short of God’s ways; our thoughts fall short of God’s thoughts.

The prophet Joel projects hopeful messages designed to encourage and uplift.  (Joel 4:12-21) First, judgment will set things right.  We who live in the tension of the present age can identify with a desire for relief from evil and injustice that occur all around us.  We can look forward to having God set things right, particularly when we seem unable to do so on our own.

Second, even in the midst of setting things right, we are told that “the Lord is a refuge to his people.”  This is a good thing.  If we are really honest, we recognize that we are sometimes part of the problem that needs correcting; we need things to be set right in our own relationships and attitudes.  The enduring love of God is a source of great comfort, particularly when we know that we share the infirmity of our fellow humans, who are likewise made of dust. Yet God still chooses us and if we respond to the call, He will even send us, flawed as we are, to convey His love to the world.

Calling down justice to rectify the faults of others may make us feel good for a time, but it is fraught with peril.  Sometimes it may even be like calling an artillery strike on your own position.  Be prepared to hear the Word of the Lord and to observe God's Word. Psalm 97 promises that "light dawns for the just; and gladness, for the upright of heart."

This involves doing, but it also involves contemplating the living Word, who perfectly reflects the Father’s love.  Through doing so, we may be more likely to set things right, both in our own lives and in the world around us that we encounter daily.  Listen for the call of the Lord!