If You Would Hearken to My Commandments

Friday, December 14, 2012

Memorial of St. John of the Cross, priest and doctor of the Church

By Melanie Rigney

If you would hearken to my commandments, your prosperity would be like a river, and your vindication like the waves of the sea… (Isaiah 48:18)

Blessed the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent, but delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night. (Psalm 1:1-2)

Jesus said to the crowds: “To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance, we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works.” (Matthew 11:16-19)

Piety

Lord, help me to love as You love, to accept as You accept, to delight as You delight.

Study

So here we are in the homestretch for Christmas, one of the happiest days in the Christian year, the day we celebrate the coming of the Christ child.

Then why do we spend so much of this time judging rather than loving? The examples are myriad:

·         We send Christmas cards, snail mail or e-mail, then complain about people who don’t send them back.

·         We take in candy or cookies for the office or for a gathering of friends, and steam quietly about people who didn’t bring a thing and still filled their plate three times.

·         We dutifully travel hundreds or thousands of miles to be with family or friends, then get annoyed when they in turn don’t kill the fatted calf and drop everything in their daily lives to honor our presence.

In short, we complain the same way those children did, finding fault instead of celebrating goodness and love.

We try to blame the stress of the season, but the thing about stress is that something, good or bad, is always going on in our lives. We are continually changing, and that will be stressful if we allow it to be thus. How much better to focus on giving ourselves a gift this season and all others: the gift of focusing on our relationship with God, and the goodness He brings. For when we do that, we send the cards because it makes people, including ourselves, happy—and God delights in happiness. We bake and cook because we find joy in it and in sharing—and God delights in joy. We travel because we love to see the faces of those we treasure, even if we don’t spend every waking minute together while we’re there—and God delights in love.

Action

Every time you are tempted to judge someone today, offer up a prayer for the person instead.