“This Agreement with the Lord” by Melanie Rigney (@melanierigney)

“This Agreement with the Lord” by Melanie Rigney (@melanierigney)

Saturday of the First Week of Lent

“Today you are making this agreement with the Lord: he is to be your God, and you are to walk in his ways and observe his statutes, commandments, and decrees and to hearken to his voice.” (Deuteronomy 26:17)

Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord! (Psalm 119:1b)

“But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” (Mark 5:44-45) 

Piety

Jesus, help me to love.

Study

“This agreement with the Lord.” It sounds so simple, so transactional. You do what God wants, and you get the promise of eternal life. 

But call it the refiner’s fire or continual conversion or whatever you like. This agreement with the Lord requires us to dig deeper and deeper into what we say, do, and think. It requires us to shed very human emotions. It requires us to be meek, to be peacemakers, and all the other challenging things Jesus called out in the Beatitudes.

Hardest of all, it requires us to love. 

That love Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel doesn’t just extend to the politician you find odious or the businessperson you find craven or the celebrity you find untalented.

That love extends to the girl (you remember her name, don’t pretend you don’t) who was mean to you in seventh grade, the person who laughed or fell asleep during your very serious presentation last week, and the person without a mask who coughed as you passed each other yesterday at the grocery store.

That love extends to the person who last summer gave your father the virus that killed him, the construction worker who didn’t bother to mark the dip in the pavement that caused you to fall and almost lose your front teeth, and the drunk driver who killed your grandchild.

That love is not rational. That love is not easy. But the offering of that love is eclipsed only by the love God gives to each of us each day.  

Like that agreement with God, that love is so profoundly holy we cannot understand it fully. We can only open ourselves to it and say yes to the giving and receiving.

Action

Love the unlovable—in you or someone else. 

Image credit is armennano from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/sadness-angel-memory-celebrate-3794945/