19/07/2023

Today's Psalm becomes words to match the awe which we all feel but cannot quite express when we sincerely follow the first commandment; when we grasp in our inmost selves that everything we know and is is a reality that is created for us by Our Father. It is the only physical reality that we will know until the end of time. We know that our earthly lives will come to end and that this worldly reality will also end.

The "Word" came out of a bush to Moses the one chosen to reveal by deeds the greatness of God. From the time of Adam, mankind has continually become absorbed by ourselves and by our own deeds and those of our ancestors. We fill our beings with pride at the depths of our understanding and our time with acquiring earthly goods which we know will rot into the atoms etc that are the components of all matter .

God is a non consuming flame in a shrub.  He is IAMIAM. He fills the being of Moses and drags him back to the covenants he has made with his ancestors' ancestors. God is never changing. God revealed in the flame is God of the prophets. God is compassion and love in the psalm. He is Jesus on the Cross and he is the real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar.

Although the providence of Father, Son and Holy Sprit had enabled human development  by the time of Moses the chosen people needed to be reminded of who they were. They had to know that they were children who would be blessed by humbly accepting that God is their Father. Since the time of Moses the whole of God's care and our response has been recorded by the witness of Prophets, Evangelists, in both Old and New Testaments.  

Jesus tells us today that we do not need to be "learned" to know him and love him. Moses stood in bare feet on the "Holy Ground". Mary of Bethany sat at his feet. Jesus washed the feet of the Apostles. We can all fulfill the First Commandment by the simple act of putting it first in our lives. "Do I accept or reject God's will for me"? Am I the child that Our Father has created me to be? 

Dear Lord on the cross you gave Mary to be our Mother in the person of St John. This is another unending truth given to us by Our Father. May we all become children of heaven and may our lives become a mirror of your compassion and love until we leave them to accept the judgement of heaven, praying always for the Mercy and forgiveness that is your free gift to all who seek it.