What is a saint?
A particular individual completely redeemed from self-occupation, who, because of this, is able to embody and radiate a measure of eternal life.
. . . a human creature devoured and transformed by love.
- Evelyn Underhill
(Is this what you want for your life?)
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NEH 8:1-4A, 5-6, 7B-12; PS 19:8, 9, 10, 11
LK 10:1-12
Jesus appointed seventy-two other disciples
whom he sent ahead of him in pairs
to every town and place he intended to visit.
He said to them,
"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.
Go on your way;
behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.
Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals;
and greet no one along the way.
Into whatever house you enter, first say,
'Peace to this household.'
If a peaceful person lives there,
your peace will rest on him;
but if not, it will return to you.
Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you,
for the laborer deserves his payment.
Do not move about from one house to another.
Whatever town you enter and they welcome you,
eat what is set before you,
cure the sick in it and say to them,
'The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.'
Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you,
go out into the streets and say,
'The dust of your town that clings to our feet,
even that we shake off against you.'
Yet know this: the Kingdom of God is at hand.
I tell you,
it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town."
Reflection on the Scriptures |
There is something so intimate and evocative about hosting guests in one’s home for dinner. Rarely do we go about our preparations with sadness, greet each other at the door with long faces or hold some disembodied distance while passing the potatoes. More typically, there is a spirit of revelry and rejoicing. The meal and the sharing of it draws us closer to one
another. As we see in the reading from the book of Nehemiah and the Gospel reading from Luke today, the very act of gathering at table is tied up in how we respond to God’s law and labor in God’s harvest land.
Those learners and listeners in today’s first reading seem to feel overwhelmed by what is proclaimed and prescribed to them by Ezra from the scroll. “For all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law.” (v.9) In response to their tears and heavy hearts, the people are instructed to go and share a meal together while also sharing with those who had little.
It was through the breaking of bread that joy re-entered their hearts. Jesus draws from the same playbook in Luke’s Gospel when he sends out the 72 “other disciples” ahead of him. He tells them to take little for the journey other than their trust in the hospitality of others to sustain them and the offering of their peace in return. Presumably, it is at the meal table where this exchange will take place.
by Kyle Lierk
Revelations of Divine Love
- by Julian of Norwich
Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 64
Thou shalt come up above
And to all this our courteous Lord answered for comfort and patience, and said these words: Suddenly thou shalt be taken from all thy pain, from all thy sickness, from all thy distress and from all thy woe. And thou shalt come up above and thou shalt have me to thy meed, and thou shalt be fulfilled of love and of bliss. And thou shalt never have no manner of pain, no manner of misliking, no wanting of will; but
ever joy and bliss without end. What should it then aggrieve thee to suffer awhile, seeing that it is my will and my worship?
And in this word: Suddenly thou shalt be taken,—I saw that God rewardeth man for the patience that he hath in abiding God’s will, and for his time, and [for] that man lengtheneth his patience over the time of his living. For not-knowing of his time of passing, that is a great profit: for if a man knew his time, he should not have patience over that time; but, as God willeth, while the soul is in the body it
seemeth to itself that it is ever at the point to be taken. For all this life and this languor that we have here is but a point, and when we are taken suddenly out of pain into bliss then pain shall be nought.
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