A town called Malice

Today’s gospel (Luke 13:10-17) shows Jesus affirming a certain way of interpreting the moral law. He heals a woman on the Sabbath. To some, the fact that this action was a miracle appears to be irrelevant; for them, He was wrong to heal on the day of rest. Should we see this as a peculiar blindness in those committed to a strict legal framework? Not necessarily.

It would be a mistake to imagine that Jesus’ action is an overturning of the law. The healing of the woman is not a lawless action. In fact, in some ways it is as strictly legal as the interpretation of the sabbatarians. After all, the law that Jesus observes as He cures the woman is the law of mercy by which a lower law gives way to a higher law. Moreover, Jesus himself points out that even his critics would have watered their animals on the Sabbath day.

We might say, therefore, that the real problem in this gospel is not the legalism of Jesus' critics but their hypocritical malice; they condemn in Him an action that they would have permitted themselves. In other words, theirs is a fake accusation, an insincere indictment.

Jesus’ command not to judge others seems to urge us to blame all wrongdoing on ignorance or error in the mind. In an endeavour to be charitable, we prefer to think that it is an exaggerated legalism that leads Jesus’ critics down the wrong path. Yet, it seems rather that their criticism arises from simple bad will. They were not being high minded. They were actually being perverse.

We have to consider this carefully. Human malice and hypocrisy are real factors in the shaping of our lives and the shaping of the lives of others. They are real and present dangers for the human heart, tethered to this earth by jealousy, pride, self-regard, anger, or the unregulated neediness that turns neighbour into an idol and makes a fetish of the fashionable.

What we need in this case is the healing touch of the merciful Lord, coming to our aid even after many years of our slavery. Our salvation lies neither in legalism, nor in some form of deluded largesse about observing the law, but in embracing the eternal law of divine love which alone can cure us of our malice, heal us of our sins, cast the mighty from their thrones, and raise the lowly.

Of true poverty and fake riches

Today’s gospel passage (Luke 12:13-21) might tempt us into thinking that as long as we are not grasping at money, then we are probably doing okay. We stand back and look askance at the man in the parable who planned to build up his wealth, only for God to require his soul of him that very night. But, as we listen to the parable, I also wonder whether there is not a tiny corner of us which is really muttering to itself, “I thank you, Lord, that I am not like that man.”

The problem here is that there are different kinds of wealth and riches that we can be tempted to pursue. In reality, money has little value in itself. Its value arises from social convention and legal recognition. So, in a sense it is quite possible for us to be as grasping as the man who wants to build up his barns if we are in pursuit of those things which by social convention are considered to be valuable. People talk a lot these days about virtue signalling: the performance of some good act not because it is good but because it is perceived by others to be good and to reflect well upon the doer of the act. But what good is it to have a barn full of social recognition if, beneath it all, our love extends so far and no further?

Let us push this further, however. Perhaps there is one more level to this kind of grasping that Jesus identifies in the gospel. Is it not also possible for those of us who are considered devout, or at least regular in our religious observance, to live a kind of grasping in our faith? Thereby, we keep one eye on our religious bank balance, our merit, our worth and our value, as we try to live our faith. In this case, is it not easy to be tempted to do more, rather than to go deeper?

Yet, in God’s eyes, those who do more are principally those who are loving more. The devout philanthropist is a pygmy beside the obscure religious whose joyous heart celebrates the love of God and offers penance for the sins of the world, unless of course the celebrated philanthropist is a saint behind closed doors. It is not the all-powerful chair of the parish council who props up the parish but the unnoticed penitent who prays in the shadows. 

This is not a reason not to do great things or even useful things. It is just a reminder that God's barns can only be built by humble, recklessly open-handed love. Every attempt at grasping - grasping even the things of God -  falls foul of Jesus' censure.

Give witness, repentant and don't worry

Today's gospel passage (Luke 12: 8-12) appears to be a random set of counsels, but seen from another perspective there is a logic about them.

Jesus' first command is both an order and a warning. The order is that we must give witness. There are many ways of giving witness in this world, and no doubt discipleship allows us to call on these different modes at different moments. Nevertheless, the essence of things is this: we must be who we are, and if we are the sons and daughters of God, then we should appear to be the sons and daughters of God. We must be true to God and to ourselves. There is a psychological idea called the looking glass theory according to which we consider ourselves to be who we think others think we are. If we project ourselves in this way, as many do on social media, then we are lost. We are not who others think we are; we are in fact whom God knows us to be.

For some people, this call to witness might manifest itself as a kind of self display or showiness. But this would be to ignore Jesus’ second counsel today. In this counsel, Jesus offers this mysterious guidance: that those who sin against the Son will be forgiven, while those who sin against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. What happened, we might wonder, to the need to forgive seventy times seven if to be unforgiven it suffices to commit this sin against the Holy Spirit? But that would be to misunderstand how the Church sees this text. It is not that those who sin against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven, as if God were powerless to do so; it is that by sinning against the Holy Spirit, they have withdrawn themselves from His almighty power. For the limits of His almighty power stop at the threshold of the individual heart whom He will not force to love him. What, then, is Jesus’ second counsel today but that we must remain in an attitude of repentance even while we are giving witness to the God who has saved us? Let us give witness to being the sons and daughters of God, but let us do so knowing that we are unprofitable servants.

And then comes Jesus’ third counsel: we are not to worry about what to say if indeed Providence brings us to stand before human accusers who find fault with our profession of the faith. There is something very contemporary about this scenario because we seem to be living in a moment where even quite fundamental Christian convictions - one might think, for example, of the belief that marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman - are increasingly seen as toxic. There is even the suggestion by some people that this commitment to retaining a biblical understanding of spousal relations is unchristian - the fruit of rigid minds that are stuck in the past.

But, as Jesus says, let us not worry about what the accusers might throw at us. Let us bear witness humbly and repentantly, and we will have obeyed His word. The rest is in His hands.

  

Knowing our blessings

Today's gospel (Luke 11: 29-32) could be seen as another difficult passage but below the surface it is all illumination. We hear the pain of Jesus who has preached to the people the good news of the coming of the Kingdom and has found them indifferent. They have heard something greater than the Queen of Sheba when she came to listen to Solomon. They have been given greater reason to embrace repentance than the people of Nineveh who repented when Jonah preached to them. Jesus draws on these iconic moments in the history of the people of Israel, and in so doing he holds up a mirror to His listeners who were so fond of claiming their lineage but not so fond of emulating it.

Where are we in this gospel passage? Is there something we share in common with “this wicked generation” that Jesus preaches to? Unlike them, perhaps we have to consider what blessings we have received and (like them) not embraced with a full and generous heart. We should not do this as an exercise in self-hatred but rather as an exercise in self-knowledge. As we journey towards God, we grow not only in knowledge of Him but in knowledge of ourselves, and that self-knowledge becomes less of a burden or an obstacle to union with Him.

What those blessings are is known to each individual alone. There are many moments of grace in the heart of each of us. God works with us all where we are, tracking our steps like a shepherd in pursuit of his wandering flock, or to use the image of Frances Thompson once more, like the hound of heaven,

with unhurrying chase

And unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy.

To know a person's desires is to know them in their very depths. It is, then, an extraordinary grace that Jesus has revealed to us the depths of His longing for us. Do we think enough on this visitation?

The people of Jesus’ generation wanted a sign, but had they stopped for a moment to question this obsession, they would have realised that God spoke to them, and had long been speaking to them, through the holy scriptures, through the circumstances of their everyday lives, and in their prayers. Sometimes we can be like them when we tend towards forms of religion that are subtly self aggrandizing - because we think they can assure us of our virtue - and in which we are all too readily like the people in this gospel scene who place show above sincerity. In contrast, grace is always a path of gentle, self-effacing and attentive love. 

Our prime duties lie daily in listening to wisdom (like the Queen of Sheba) and embracing repentance (like the people of Nineveh). Then, we can know our blessings better, and try to return some semblance of love to the One who has first loved us.

RSVP

The meaning of today's gospel (Matthew 11: 1-14) changes somewhat depending on whether you read the short version or the long version. Both long and short versions, however, are full of resonances for those following the path of COLW.

The parable begins with the festive invitation from a king who wants guests to join him for the wedding of his son. As Christians, we instantly recognise the meaning of this story. To recover its freshness, we ought almost to introduce it with the words, “Once upon a time”. From a COLW perspective, we hear in these words the call that goes out from the heart of the Trinity to the fallen hearts of humanity: come back to Me with all your heart. This is the plan of God who, after being rejected by our first parents, sends His only begotten Son to rescue those who are lost. The invitation is the call, the appeal of God for our return. When we speak about vocation - whether it is seen as our state in life or as our particular vocation that shapes the intimacy between God and ourselves - we are talking about how God’s plan for the world’s salvation is realised in the concrete details of our own lives.

Then, the parable shows the drama that arises from those who say ‘no’ to the invitation. God does not give up on those who say ‘no’. He continues to strive to call them in. He does not accept their refusal. He does not sign a peace accord with their rejection. He will not tolerate the fact they consign him to irrelevance. He does not even consider an alternative plan in which these guests can skip the wedding but perhaps come along to the after party. So, this is an invitation, but because it is from the king, it is also an imperative. It does more honour to its unworthy recipients then they can even begin to fathom. And, without their really understanding its implications, it exposes their priorities for what they are worth.

It is important to dwell on their reasons for saying ‘no’. The gospel says they were not interested. Rather, they were too much entangled in their own affairs and their pursuit of commerce and money. They even turned on the servants of the king, no doubt accusing them of hate speech against the legitimate pursuit of wealth. I imagine a newspaper article in the land of those who refuse the king's invitation saying something like this:

Does the king not realise the disruption that this frivolous and extravagant party will cause? Does the king not value the making of money at a time when so many of his subjects suffer from poverty? Is there any greater proof of the king’s tyranny than his anger at those who have refused the invitation? Why do we really have need of such a king?

Then comes the next act in the drama of this gospel: the invitation goes out to the waifs and strays to come to the wedding. The gospel glosses over what happens when the new invitation reaches this wider audience, but only one thing was required from any of the invitees: ‘yes’ at the crossroads, ‘yes’ in the dark places, and ‘yes’ from saints and sinners alike. Some who say ‘yes’ clearly look the part. Others who say ‘yes’ appear decidedly unsuitable. Go fetch the bad and good alike, is the king’s instruction. What matters is not where we have been, so much as what we do with the invitation that has come to us: will we say ‘yes’? Will we say ‘yes’ in every moment of our lives and fill up the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of ‘yeses’ to the Lord who loves us? Our ‘yes’ to the Lord determines the extent to which the wedding hall will be filled with guests.

If we only hear the short version of this gospel, however, we miss an important nuance that Jesus places at the end of the parable. In the final scene, the king approaches one man who is not wearing a wedding garment and questions how he managed to get into the party. When the man does not answer, the king orders his servants to bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the darkness where there is weeping and grinding of teeth. Many are called but few are chosen, is Jesus’ alarming conclusion. What are we to think of this? I've had some appalling guests in my time, but I don't think I've ever banished them from my table in that way!

This little coda to the parable changes everything. The King's invitation had seemed like unstinting largesse but now we find it is not free of conditions. There is need for a wedding garment. In fact, the lack of a wedding garment merits ejection from the wedding feast. But did not this man say ‘yes’ to the Lord in the first place? Does his presence not show that he has put the king's priorities before his own? On the surface, it does, but something deeper down has gone wrong.

The wedding garment in this parable is evoked by the symbol of the white garment in the baptismal ceremony. Quite simply, the wedding garment is the state of grace. The wedding garment is the sign that we have put on Christ - put on Christ and have not cast him off again for anything in this world. The mistake this man has made, therefore, is that he has put a price on his own ‘yes’. He has said ‘yes’ with certain actions - after all he is at the feast - but his ‘yes’ has been partial. Either there is something he has not surrendered, or perhaps he has somehow taken back part of his ‘yes’. Our model Mary’s ‘yes’ was the perfect ‘yes’: be it done unto me, according to your word.  How much it would it have changed the meaning and value of her fiat had she said, be it done unto me, according to my word?

‘Well, does the king need to be so pedantic?’ I hear the man say. 

But there, the man would be mistaken. This invitation was no mere social convention or civil nicety. The king was not inviting him for cocktail fizz until carriages at midnight. This was not the kind of party for which he could simply dress casual.

This was an invitation to the greatest friendship and intimacy with the king himself. One wedding feast with the king was worth more than a farm, a business, and a million thrills the invitees would like to allow themselves. Even if, therefore, the man said a cheap ‘yes’ to the invitation, he has not understood the hour of his visitation.

Of deafness and fake listening

Today’s gospel (Luke 11: 15-26) is complex and sees Jesus speaking at his most rabbinical and paradoxical. It was quite necessary too. Some of the people in this passage of the gospel argued that He was casting out devils by Beelzebub.

What follows is Jesus' complex refutation of what was a perverse account of His actions among the possessed. Anyone with a fair mind could have seen that what Jesus brought the possessed was liberation and freedom. The gospel frequently comments on the peace and calm of those delivered of an evil spirit. Had we seen it ourselves, we might have tasted the tranquillity that hung in the air after such an act of mercy. But the naysayers have their way with accusations: Jesus is of the devil.

We might not like to recognise it, but this gospel shows us to what extent some people place themselves beyond dialogue or at least beyond help. To take one contemporary example, those who said Jesus cast out devils by Beelzebub are like those who today say defending the rights of the unborn brings misery to women. It is absurd, and the literal definition of ‘absurdity’ is deafness. Just as there are none so blind as those who will not see, there are none so deaf as those who will not hear.  

If we have the wit to be apologists, we should of course speak out. Be ready always to give a reason for that hope that is within you, says St Peter. On the other hand, dialogue has its limits. Dialogue means ‘through words’, but what can be done when we speak words to humans who no longer hear them, whose minds are locked up in a perverse understanding of the world? Jesus also gives us the response: don't despair. Some devils are only cast out through prayer and fasting. Now, many prayers are words, but they are words directed to God, not people. The only thing we can do for some people – like those who are determined to see Jesus as a servant of Beelzebub - is to carry our daily cross for them and commend them to the mercy of God which longs to shine on them if only they will consider its possibility. It is not that we withdraw; rather we leave room for them possibly to hear their own absurdity. We need here the supernatural wisdom to know when to scatter the seed freely, and when not to cast pearls before swine.

One could think the opposite of absurdity and deafness is, therefore, for us to listen to everyone. Of course, we must listen, especially to those in distress, but when we listen, we cannot do so uncritically, as if everyone had an equally valid point. We must recognise the truth where we find it, but we are not bound to honour nonsense or error. Jesus warns again in the gospel: he who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. Overly comfortable harmonies can be as deceptive and  destructive as open division. Easy compatibility can be a lazy way to disguise wounds that run deeper and require more honesty. The human heart is so prone to myth, especially about itself, that sometimes it needs a storm to clear the air and make the truth visible again. If you doubt that, don’t forget Jesus overturned the tables of money changers in the temple, not because He had lost control, but because -  in a way - they had. Of course, some clouds cannot even be dispersed by such an intervention; sometimes the air cannot be cleared. At those times, we have to endure the darkness. God is in charge, and we can also realise that He is with us in the darkest moments. 

We must not give in to despair: Jesus delivers. We must not give in to false peace: Jesus demands more. 

The challenge of the fisherman's haul

 Today's gospel (Matthew 13: 47-52) contains a lesson that may chill us but one which we must listen to.

 We do not like to think about the risks to our salvation. Yet the parable that Jesus tells clearly indicates that final judgement is a feature on the landscape of humanity. There are many mysteries that lie ahead for those whom the fishermen collect in the basket. May we be among this number. For those that the fishermen throw away, however, one truth is crystal clear even now: that it is possible to lose God, and that if we lose God, we will pay the price.

 Perhaps there was a time when Christians dwelt rather too much on damnation, although like so many things in the popular imagination, I suspect that the stereotype of hellfire preaching has always been prone to exaggeration. Nevertheless, what the prospect or possibility of heaven or hell both have in common is that they show to what degree our actions have a real importance and real-world consequences. According to the parable – Jesus’ parable, not mine – it is possible for our existence to conclude with the tragedy of damnation. Our existence is not just like a life in a video game which we can unplug and walk away from, or which we can renew by pushing another coin into the machine. Naturally, it reassures us to dwell on God’s mercy, but we must not take God for a fool. It is comforting to say that God loves us unconditionally but there are certain things He simply does not accept. Happily, we live now in the hour of His mercy which is never more than a prayer away from us.

The fundamental reason for His refusal to accept certain things is that disorder and wickedness are real. So too, we can add, is the universal human instinct to lie and deceive the self about the wickedness one has wrought. Every sin is a rebellious act of violence against the kingdom, and every attempt to disguise that rebellion is a myth. 

In contrast, Jesus' forgiveness brings not only pardon but enlightenment - enlightenment about God but also about ourselves. Jesus does not treat the sinner like a leper but neither does He behave towards them like a sugar daddy, or like a well-meaning, holy social worker, or indeed a shop assistant catering to sir’s or madam’s requirements. God is not a subcontractor to our self-esteem; He is our only lover with full rights to be jealous of our love. The embrace of this Saviour means we will have to let go of everything we have wrongfully laid our hands on. We must, therefore, be like Zacchaeus, come down from our tree, and make restoration for the wrong we have done. We cannot stay in the tree simply for the view or perhaps because we identify as a 'tree person'.

Moreover, if He came to die to save us from sin, it is not only because He wants to invite us into the extraordinary mystery of His friendship. It is also because sin is a real, fundamental, and profound problem in our lives, no matter how much we dress it up with our self-deceit and our self-indulgence. And, moreover, while our ignorance diminishes our guilt, it does not save us from the disorder that arises from living as if God's plans did not matter.

There are, therefore, some things in our lives that - with God’s help and grace - we must exclude, for fear that in choosing them over God, we too could become part of the catch that the fisherman can find no use for.

Little ones and beggars all

 Today’s gospel (Luke 10: 17-24) is full of little glimpses of Jesus in His Divine nature: how He watched Satan fall, how He gave power to the seventy-two disciples, how He relates to the Father, and how prophets and kings would have longed to see His day. The mysteries of the faith teach us to embrace the paradoxes that God’s revelation has shared with us: that God is one and three, that Jesus is man and God and that He died and rose.

At the heart of this gospel, however, is Jesus’ prayer of thanks to the Father for revealing His truths to the little ones, the children. Jesus does not aim to condemn cleverness but only the sense of power and independence that it can give rise to. He does not mean to slight learning, but only the self-aggrandizement that some learned people indulge in. Who then are the children of this passage? They are the ones who surrender themselves to Him: the ones who say ‘yes’ and echo His prayer of thanks. Mary, Mother of God, is the first of these. We are all called to follow in her wake.

When the COLW Book of Life invites us to be the anawim of the Lord, it is inviting us to this attitude of being children before the Lord, beggars of His grace who hope that in His mercy He will reveal to us the mysteries of the Father. When we desire to make this surrender, it is no doubt because He has been there before us, clearing the obstacles that prevent us, and smoothing the path for our small steps. When He invites us to do some of the clearing work, we find ourselves subjected to the ‘Father’s forming action’. That said, the greatest thing we can aspire to accomplish by that grace is to surrender ourselves to Him, begging every day for our names to be written in heaven like the names of the seventy-two.

We are so poor – so poor, says the French writer Fabrice Hadjadj, that we must even sometimes beg a voice with which to offer up prayers. In such a moment, however, it is worth remembering that even while we hate our sins, grace does not mean hating ourselves; it means forgetting ourselves. Even if we suddenly have power over the devils, therefore, we cannot rejoice in our competence but rather in our dependence on Him.   

Nearer my God to Thee

 Another gospel (Matthew 18: 1-5, 10) and another pair of mysteries that complement each other. When we read the gospels, we are often dumbfounded by how transparently vainglorious the disciples can be. Today they ask Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” We just know that this is not a simple, objective question posed by honest and peaceable minds reflecting on the things of God. This is a question most likely about their own status. Who knows, they might even have established a pecking order amongst themselves before approaching Jesus on the question.

                As is so often the case, Jesus’ response entirely wrongfoots their assumptions and turns the disciples’ attention to one of the ways in which our path back to God mirrors the path He took towards us. As the second person of the Trinity lowered himself to become man, so we must ‘lower ourselves’, putting aside all our wrongful pretensions of independence and swagger, to become instead who we really are: children of the loving Eternal Father.

                That littleness that Jesus praises in this gospel passage seems to evoke several things. Many would associate it with the action of the gift of Piety which enables us through the Holy Spirit to embrace God as our father. This gift was most active in the life of a saint like St Therese of Lisieux. Yet it seems to me that this littleness also evokes the importance of even very small things.

Nothing under God's heaven or in the reality that God created is meaningless. Meaningless has only ever been created by human beings. Curiously enough, modern science has shown how important the microscopic level is. The microscopic is not a blank and faceless dimension but one that is full of detail and ingenuity. Likewise a child that has truly learned how to play (not one inanely gawping and swiping at a tablet screen) enters a world of miniature drama and happiness. Jesus’ praise of the child is a reminder that only a world seen with childlike eyes reveals the rich symphony of meaning that God's love planted in the world. Here is an antidote to all the resentment that simmers in our fallen hearts. When we have these eyes, not only can we do the humble and unimportant things with gusto, but they make our hearts sing for joy because done through love. My friends - the relief! We no longer need to seek the glory of being the greatest because we now realise that God invests our smallest actions with a glorious eternal dimension. We realise that one day spent in the courts of the Lord is worth more than a thousand days spent in the courts of men.

The second mystery in today's gospel that complements this mystery of the greatness of little things is what Jesus says about the angels of the little ones (today being after all the feast of the angels). It is a wondrous enough thing that we have angels as guardians in the first place. It is a truth revealed in the gospel that is oddly honoured in secular culture just as it has become a dead letter in much of Christian culture. When was the last time you heard any senior Christian figure talk about the angels? But if it is a wondrous thing that we have angels in the first place, it is a still more wondrous thing to my mind that those very angels possess the beatific vision of God. As they accompany us through life, they are never deprived of the vision of the homeland of us all. As they perform their duties by our side, their minds remain wrapped in joy by seeing the Blessed Trinity in all its glory.

In other words, the reality of the angels who see the Father even now shows us the nearness of the eternal – that nearness that we only grasp when we can become like little children. It is as if we are climbing a hill with them and they have already reached the crest from where they turn to us and urge us on, so that we too might see what they can see.

               

Yes!

This is an extra blog reflection for today because apart from being the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, it is also the feast of St Therese of Lisieux, one of our Carmelite patrons. Fittingly, today's gospel (Matt 21: 28-32) is rather Colwelian in its implications.

              Jesus tells a parable about two sons who are asked by their father to go and work in the vineyard. The first one says ‘no’, but later thinks better of it and goes to do his father's will. The second one says ‘yes’ but then does nothing about it.

              Right at the heart of the charism of COLW is the mystery of our ‘yes’ to God in imitation of Mary. Our minds dwell on the mystery of the Annunciation, that point in history when humanity, who had heard God's commands and failed to keep them, now yielded in the person of Mary and said ‘yes’ again to the creator. Mary’s ‘yes’ becomes the antidote for Eve’s ‘no’, paving the way for our second Adam, Christ. And in this mystery, we find a symbol and a source of our own calling to say ‘yes’ and ‘thank you’ to God in every moment of our lives.

We know that there is always the potential to betray that ‘yes’. St Philip Neri’s favourite prayer was, “O Lord, don't trust Philip.” This was no humble braggadocio. Philip knew he was not reliable. None of us are really, not wholly. In other words, Philip knew - and we ourselves need to come to realise the same thing about ourselves - that we must be like the tax collectors and prostitutes who, Jesus said, believed in the message of John the Baptist. We know that Jesus told sinners to go and sin no more. We cannot imagine that Jesus held any other position on this point than the position of John the Baptist who continued to preach repentance to Herod, even at the cost of his own life. The tolerance of Jesus for those who are slow to say ‘yes’ (pretty much all of us at any given moment), and his inclination to dine with those shunned by the Pharisees, is not accommodationism but a necessary condition of the quest of the Good Shepherd for the sheep who are lost. The terrible moment for Herod was not the preaching of John but the determined silence of Jesus during his passion.

The moral map of Jesus and the moral map of the Pharisees were quite different in some regards. Both Jesus and the Pharisees would have condemned the traitors’ injustice of the tax collectors and the money-getting impurity of the prostitutes. But Jesus sets aside the ritual shunning of the sinner which seems to class the sinner as out of the reach of any compassion. Instead, Jesus’ actions anticipate the words of Saint Paul. How will they hear without a preacher?

But, if it thereby becomes necessary for Jesus to spend time with the tax collectors and prostitutes, it is all the more important for the tax collectors and prostitutes to spend time with Jesus. We tend to see ourselves in this gospel scene as the ones who are meant to follow Jesus' example, and of course that is true. But we are also the tax collectors and the prostitutes. We are! We have to listen to Jesus. If we do not listen to Jesus - if we surround ourselves with the voices who do not speak his truth or who twist his truth – then, who exactly are we listening to and what will become of us? This is why Lectio Divina is such an important practice for COLW members. We cannot say our ‘yes’, however slowly and hesitantly, if we do not listen to Him day by day.

We say every day: O Mary teach us always to say ‘yes’ to the Lord every moment of our lives. If Mary teaches us to say ‘yes’, one of the things that helps us extend that ‘yes’ to every moment of our lives is the Little Way of St Therese of Lisieux. It is our Carmelite sister St Therese who show us in her Little Way the infinite value of every moment. We are given so many moments, like so many grains of sand, that it might seem they have no value. But the Little Way of St Therese tells us to invest every moment with the infinite love of God – even this moment, right now, which is passing through my fingers and before your eyes. When we invest every action in every moment with that love through our repeated intention, then by God's grace we turn every little ‘yes’ into a perfect echo of the ‘yes’ of Mary. Mary’s ‘yes’ paved the way for the infinite, obedient ‘yes’ of Jesus to the Father which itself becomes the source on which we all must draw to say our ‘yes’.