Written in Heaven

October 6, 2007

Saturday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time

As your hearts have been disposed to stray from God, turn now ten times the more to seek him; For he who has brought disaster upon you will, in saving you, bring you back enduring joy. Baruch 4:28-29

Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it. Luke 10:23-24

Piety

Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and observe it.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/100607.shtmlGod gave us our senses to use them, not to waste them. When we use them for good, we see, hear, taste, touch and smell the graces granted to us.

No matter what we have done before, what matters is what we will do with those senses today and tomorrow. Baruch may be lamenting the captivity of the Jews who are nearing the end of their exile, but he might as well be lamenting our own exile.

Even though not physically banished from our home land, from what are you exiled?

Perhaps a person or persons who you used to be close to…yet you have let that special friendship or relationship suffer due to time, distance and more.

Perhaps you have not been as active in your Church as you once were and yearn to return to the community, despite the problems encountered.

Perhaps you have put your job, your hobby or some other pursuits ahead of your Fourth Day quest for Piety, Study and Action yet still desire to get your priorities back together.

Yet just as Baruch sounds a note of hope, that note is passed through the generations to us. As we re-turn toward God like his Prodigal daughters and sons, God will welcome us back and reconcile us to the community.

Action

Tonight the sun sets at 6:44 p.m. Go outside just after six and watch clear and changing October light of the sun set in the western sky. Appreciate the grandeur of the world. This is your inheritance. This is your legacy to enjoy, endure, protect and pass on.

With your eyes, see the beautiful colors in the sky and clouds. Read what is written in the heavens. With your ears, hear the sounds of birds and wildlife, the rustling of the leaves and branches. With your nose, smell the fragrance of the falling leaves. With your mouth, taste the sweetness of the wind. With your hands, touch the goodness of the earth.

As the light fades into the blackness of night, Orion and the stars will rise up chasing the light in the dome above. Revel in the fact that you are not exiled from this beautiful land. Realize, that you share this scene with people of every faith and nationality everywhere as the sun sets westward beyond the spinning globe. Despite the creeping deepening darkness, in just a few hours, the faint pen lights of those constellations will give way to the breaking of another glorious morning. As Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.