Be attentive July 29

Piety

Let us pray: God, source of all being, you are the source of endless patience with us. Too often we fail to heed your words because we do not listen with open ears and see with open eyes.

Help us to be as attentive to you as Mary was when she sat on the floor absorbing your message. However, if we are distracted, never stop teaching us as you did to Martha so that we may believe and act as you require.

Help us respond to you as these faithful sisters taught us. Amen.

Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/072906.shtml

“Reform your ways and your deeds,so that I may remain with you in this place.” Jeremiah 7:3

“I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and anyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” John 11:25-26

Keys let us in to places which are locked up…where our entrance is either forbidden or blocked. Today, the readings give us two different keys so we can enter the place where Jesus dwells – or at the very least where He wants to dwell.

Jeremiah details the way to keep the Lord with us in a version of the “Five Commandments.” Following these instructions elicits the promise from the Lord that He will remain with us in this place.

1) Deal justly with your neighbor
2) Do not oppress the resident alien
3) Help the poor especially the orphans and the widows
4) Do not shed innocent blood
5) Do not follow strange gods to your own harm

Through the close moment Jesus has with Martha, we learn a complementary key – Listen to the Lord. For if and when we listen, truly listen, then those lessons will strengthen out faith. Martha believes that had the Lord been there, her brother Lazarus would not have died. Jesus instructs her further that He is the resurrection and the life. Jesus, thus, holds the key to life for Lazarus and us.

How can we obtain that key? Listen to him. It is an instruction we hear repeatedly in the Good News. Jesus mother tells us to listen to him when they are in Cana at the wedding. When Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River, God tells the disciples to listen to him. Today, we hear that message again and see its positive consequences.

We all have a Martha nature and a Mary nature. This week, many of the readings from Jeremiah and Matthew prompted us to listen with open ears and see with open eyes. Today, we are once again reminded that we must first, above all else, start by listening to the Lord. Once we learn His message, we will know when to act and how to act when He calls on us.

Action

Let us pray for peace in the world but especially in the Middle East. Pope Benedict’s homily from last Sunday included these words:

Precisely in this moment -- in a moment of great abuse of the name of God -- we need the God who triumphs on the Cross, who wins not with violence but with his love. Precisely in this moment we need the face of Christ, to know the true face of God and thereby to carry reconciliation and light to this world. Thus together with love, with the message of love, with all that we can do for the suffering of this world, we must also carry the witness of this God, of the victory of God precisely through the non-violence of his Cross.

Let’s return to where we began. What we can do is to render the witness of love, the witness of faith; above all we can raise a cry to God: we can pray! We are sure that our Father hears the cry of his children. In the Mass, preparing ourselves for Holy Communion, to receive the Body of Christ that unites us, we pray with the church: "Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and give us peace in our day." Let this be the prayer of the church in this moment: "Deliver us from every evil and give us peace." Not tomorrow or the day after: Lord, peace today! Amen.
Lord, deliver us from evil and give us peace today. Amen.