Feb 1: Now, in a Mirror, Dimly

Pablo Picasso: Girl before a Mirror
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1932

Feast of Saint Brigid, abbess, secondary patron of Ireland

First Reading: 1 Cor 12:31-13:13

For now we see in a mirror, dimly [Gk: in a riddle], but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known (NRSV, 1 Cor 13:12).

Father, so intense was Paul’s awareness of the risen Jesus present to him that he proclaimed himself an apostle, the last, he thought, but most certainly the least of the apostles, he argued, because he had persecuted the Church. Paul’s understanding of the Church and our relationship with you, Lord, that filled his preaching and his writings came not from instruction from the others but from his immediate experience of your Word spoken to him, that same Word spoken to all. Still Paul admitted that what he understood, what he saw, was as if in a mirror, dimly, like some sort of a riddle. He looked forward to a fuller understanding, of knowing even as he was known.

And so, Lord, it is also with us. Over the centuries, as your holy people, and throughout our individual lives, we listen to the one Word which you speak to us. We have clearly grown in our grasp of what we hear once and for all. Your revelation is one, always the same, but our understanding of it has progressed. There have been remarkable breakthroughs in our discernment of what is that you speak to us. We have never been the same after our meeting with you at Mt. Sinai. And everything has become ever so much clearer in the resurrection of your Son, Jesus. But, as Paul says, we still see as if in a mirror, dimly, like it was all a riddle yet to be solved.

Continue, Lord, through your one Word spoken to us, to encourage us on our pilgrimage, not only of growing in your divine life, but of understanding more fully who you are and what it is that require of us, how you would have us live.

Help us, Lord, to avoid the trap of concluding in any aspect of things that we have arrived at the end of our journey, that our grasp of the truth has been finalized. Only you, Lord, are truth, and we must grow in that truth even as we grow in your life.

Moses and the Israelites received your Law on Mt. Sinai. There for the first time in history did we realize that you demand that we live in love of you and of one another. But ever since then, Lord, we have been refining and refining the meaning of what we thought had been concluded in the desert. Help us, Lord, in each moment, to learn more and more what love of you and love of neighbor means, of seeing you and all of reality with more light and less dimly.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.