Dec 15: God Calls Us Forth

Hieronymous Bosch: The Ascent of the Blessed (detail)

Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent
Reading I: Is 45:6c-8, 18, 21c-25

“Let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also; I the LORD have created it (NRSV, Is 45:8c).”

Lord God, Father, so often in the midst of life’s difficulties, whether they are self-inflicted or brought about by circumstances, we cry out, demanding from you, or merely cry out from desperation, “How could this happen? Why me?” Inevitably there is no answer. Because it is the wrong question.

When the Hebrews first recognized you, Lord, who had been there from the very beginning, they were slaves in Egypt. Everything that they wrote about you before the exodus out of Egypt is really a later effort to make some sense out of their origins. When they first recognized you, Lord, their enslavement was an accomplished reality but it was not as if you had condemned them to slavery. It was you who were calling them forth out of slavery into the future. You led them across the sea and then, as a column of cloud by day and fire by night, you led them through the desert. They thought that you were leading them into the land. It was the best that they could do, reading your message sown deep within all of them, but they were right in recognizing that you were calling them to a destiny, to a future. It was only in Jesus’ resurrection that it finally became clear that the destiny was not the land at all but rather a sharing in your divine life forever. They recognized, from Egypt on, that you were leading them but they were still unable to grasp that your presence was not only ahead of them, calling them, but also deep within them, that you had already shared your life with them. And not with them alone. Only an extended reflection on the mystery of Jesus would eventually make it clear that the destiny was not only for a certain people, but that all were chosen. The destiny of life with you forever and ever, with its beginning already here on earth, is the destiny of all humanity.

Lord, you not only called the Hebrews forth from Egypt and then led them out of the desert. In every moment, of every human’s life, you are there calling us forth, all of us, always out of a present that can only be seen as impoverished, into a future of greater freedom, a future of greater sharing in your divinity. Father, you are not the one who puts us into a situation; however it may seem to be. It is you, rather, who calls us forth out of that situation into something better.

If you are creator, Lord, you must be understood as the creator who calls forth: being out of nothingness, grace out of nature, forgiveness out of sin, eternal life out of death. Lord, you did not put us on the earth, into the situation; rather you summon us forth from the earth and out of the situation.

The question then that we should be asking in the midst of life's vicissitudes, in fact in every situation, is not, "How could this happen? Why me?" but rather, "How, in this moment, should I respond to God's call that what appears to be difficulty may become blessing for myself and others?"

Help us, Lord, in whatever condition we may find ourselves, to always search for you in the moment, to listen carefully to your call, and always to say “yes” as you summon us forth, all of us, to a greater share in your life. Every moment, however, bleak it may seem, has an opening to blessing for us, indeed for all.

Alleluia. Amen.