Pondering for Monday, September 16, 2024

Daily Office Readings for Monday of Proper19: Year 2

 Morning, Psalms 56 and 57; Evening, Psalms 64 and 65;

Job 40:1 to 24; Acts15:36 to 16:5; John 11:55 to 12:8:

“Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)”  (John 12: 3 to 6)

This is what happens when we look at each other around Jesus instead of “through” Jesus.  Judas, who the evangelist informs us, is less than honorable, gazes upon Mary with contempt. This looking around Jesus is also reported in the Gospel of Luke. I think it was at the same time, with the same people, in the same room, but seeing from a different point of view.  “Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.”  (Luke 10: 38 to 41)

My point in both of these situations is that Judas, in the first reading, and Martha in the second, move their eyes off of our Lord Jesus to look directly at Mary.  When we look around Jesus, instead of through Jesus, we see others through our human lens rather than through how God sees them.  If we take the time to see family, or the stranger through the eyes of our Lord, we would see them with love. If we look around Jesus instead of through him, we tend to see people with contempt, disdain, disrespect, and sometimes, if they are different than us, with hate. Let’s not see people in this way. Try to always look upon another through the eyes of our loving Lord.

Please keep up your thoughts and prayers and hopes for Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Palestine, and our schools. And, as we listen to what the Spirit of God is saying to us, let us live to love and serve, and to teach others to love and serve, while pondering anew what the Almighty can do. John

Let us pray:

O Lord our God, you taught us through Jesus what it means to love unconditionally, and we struggle. Stay with us Most Holy Spirit and enable us to see one another through your divine and loving lens in order that we might see each other as the infants we were when we were born, and the people we were born to be, Amen.